My Digital Tools (Part 2)…
For my second installment of my Digital Tools series (part 1 here), I will be going through my blogging and web-based tools. These are my little doodads that let me keep up with the web wide world.
Full descriptions after the break.
Even as a proud Mac user, I stick with Firefox for the sake of its extensions. Safari is surely faster, and even some of my extensions work on there. But still, I stick with Firefox. Though large and a little sluggish, I very very rarely have an issue with website compatibility. Plus, I am really used to doing a [command + number] keystroke in order to pick through tabs.
Here are the add-ons I use:
- Xmarks – This is my bookmark synchronizer. Very handy again over multiple computers. Plus its mobile website is clean to get through when on a phone.
- Adblock Plus – This is really the reason I stick with FireFox. Adblock leaves blank all those obnoxious ads on the sides of website and even cuts through commercials on Comedy Central’s website (though not Hulu.)
- 1password – This is one that gets installed with 1password that I explained before.
- Firefox PDF plugin – This plugin is handy because I hate having to download every single bloody pdf file that is online. Having them come up in clean, fast-loading Firefox tabs is good stuff.
Frankly, reading through my list, I may switch back to Safari for a spell and see how well it works for me. I don’t toy with as many add-ons as I used to, plus Safari has a built-in pdf reading function.
This is one of my favorite and most-used programs. Since discovering it, my use of the standard web browser has dramatically dropped off. Frankly, if a website I want to follow doesn’t have an RSS feed, or it doesn’t display full articles via RSS, I won’t bother keeping up with it.
A brief introduction to RSS feeds: Standing for ‘Real Simple Syndication’, they are direct lines to the updated content of a website. So every time a blog post pops up, it shoots out just the text, none of the actual website decoration around it. Really, it turns the web into a very customizable newspaper that gets updated by the hour.
Google Reader is the workhorse behind NetNewsWire, and definitely deserves a mention. It does the full aggregation online which NNW syncs up to. Also, it has a pretty good interface, particularly for mobile. I just prefer a standalone reader program that can hook directly up to my blogging software.
One of the few pieces of software I have actually been willing to purchase outright, MarsEdit holds a lot of power. It automatically picks up on my blog and I can just get typing away. It can also be as complex or simple as you like; the customizations are pretty endless.
MarsEdit’s one issue is that its text input isn’t WYSIWYG (‘What You See Is What You Get’). You actually write in code. But really, other than a few little pieces here and there, the code is light. Pasting in a link is actually easier [shift + command + a] and the URL you copied is automatically wrapped around your selected material.
Another behind the scenes workhorse for me is WordPress. Not too long ago, my friend opened up some of his webspace to me so I could host my own blog instead of through another company. So now instead of Blogger or WordPress.com holding all my information, I hold all my own, with far more customization and future profitability potential in there. But in there is the WordPress software.
WordPress has been pretty good to work with. I haven’t had many issues with my plugins (gotta love extensibility). Also, I love being able to tweak certain things in my themes. More little tidbits of code for me to experiment on.
My only issue, and this goes for MarsEdit too, is that there’s no clean way to upload and insert multiple images. One of the few things I try to keep up with here is posting pictures of my growing children, and it’d be nice to have eight pictures upload and insert in a single shot, rather than go through individually. But so far, I’m surviving.
Another thing I would love to get into would be having a self-hosted video option, where I could upload a video file and have it convert into a simple flash player, a la YouTube. That way I don’t run into YouTube’s rubbish copyright policies. I’m still toying with moving all my videos over to Vimeo; I like their player better anyway.
DreamHost is the web server and domain host I use (server space through my very generous friend Josh). I have to say, they have a great service. I was able to install and import my previous blogs all through their well-constructed website. They have a whole bunch of one-click installs, including that for MediaWiki software (you’d recognize it as Wikipedia) that I used for a project for school.
Tweetie is my go-to Twitter client, both for iPhone and my laptop. I went ahead and paid for the iPhone app, but stick with the free, ad-supported version of their Mac client. Three bucks is easier to swallow than twenty.
I love Twitter. I get to follow friends, writers, comedians, and companies that I’m interested in. But they don’t get in my way, communication is fast and simple, and there’s nothing else to it. Tweetie does a mighty fine job of putting it in a clean interface and can notify me when I get messages of various kinds. And I still say it beats Facebook with both twittering thumbs tied behind its back.
My instant messaging client is Adium. Adium connects to nearly every single possible chat client, including ones like Google Talk and Facebook that are usually built into their respective websites. Usually I’m still chatting over AOL Instant Messenger accounts, though.
Adium has lots of room for visual customization, so my chat window isn’t giant and obvious. Plus it keeps good logs of my chats so I can find a link someone sent me without any trouble. The only downside is there is no video chat available in it. But really, that feature wouldn’t get used very often anyway.