Camworld says “As a web designer I was intrigued by the CMS capabilities of Manila but did not like how the default HTML templates limited the kinds of layouts I could do and did not let me easily use my own from-scratch templates. I realize now that this is why every Manila weblog looks almost exactly the same and all Radio weblogs are very similar: it’s a limitation of the software being used to create them.”
The sameness of Userland blogs was one of my beefs with Radio (and Manila), and why I’ve returned to using Blogger. Other reasons I’m sticking with Blogger include:
- Not interested in news aggregation. I’m sure some people prefer all their content stripped of the original visual rendering and pulled into a list of paragraphs, but not me. One thing I learned by playing with Radio, is that I visit sites like A Whole Lotta Nothing or Glassdog nearly as much for the presentation of the content as well as the content itself. Reading weblogs in the Radio news aggregator’s list of content just isn’t a great experience.
- Not interested in web services. Okay, actually, I am interested in web services, but not in building my own. If you’re a developer, it’s swell that Radio provides you with a scripting environment. But I’m only a dabbler in development, so it’s functionality generally wasted on me (unless someone else extends the app in a way useful to me). Of course, this is sort of related to the next reason…
- Desktop Website: big deal. Userland hypes “A web server! On your desktop machine!” like it’s a revolution. Big deal. I’ve been running Microsoft Internet Information Server (or it’s scaled-down cousin, Personal Web Server) on my local machine since, like, ‘96 or ‘97. Talk about a web services platform. And while Radio is cheap at $40, IIS is free. More robust, less expensive, and while it has it’s own security issues, at least they’re known. Does anybody really know how secure the Radio server is?
- Split personality. No, not Dave Winer. Radio itself. Matt Trump wrote more eloquently about this, but basically Radio ties the application in with the community (radio.weblogs.com). As Matt points out, “The weblogs.com community must become the adjunct, which you can sign up for if you want.When I came to Radio, this is what I expected, to have the option to sign up for this very web site, the way you can sign up for Blogspot on Blogger if you don’t want to use your own server.” I was never interested in a radio.weblogs.com site, but you basically can’t get out of it if you use Radio. You can choose not to post to it, but you can’t choose not to have a site at radio.weblogs.com. Odd business decision; Userland could probably save money by allowing users to opt out of a radio.weblogs.com site.
- Radio is crippling until I’m a “full peer.” This is the primary reason I’m not purchasing Radio. A “full peer” is Dave Winer’s term for a server. Actually, he says it’s “a computer that can be both a client and a server and is operating 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It can call other computers and can be called by other computers,” but the client part is really moot. Every server can also be a client…it’s just that most people don’t use their server for client-side purposes. Basically, the point here is that unless you have a machine with a 24/7 connection outside a firewall (which I don’t), Radio is not a web service, but just another desktop app. If it’s installed on my home machine, I can’t post to my blog from work. As someone who works off of at least two separate machines (and usually more), this really makes Radio useless to me. I need “post-from-anywhere” service, which Radio can’t give…since it’s really a desktop app.
I’m sure Radio is great for some people, and at some point in the future (e.g. when I have a 24/7 connected computer outside a firewall), it might be worth re-visiting. For now, though, Blogger is the better tool for me.
Addendum, ten minutes later: Good comments from another disaffected Radio trial user at Winterspeak.
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In Kansas, a teacher has resigned over a plagiarism dispute. She discovered nearly 20% of her students had plagiarized their projects from the Internet…so she failed them. But the school board overrode her (and her principal and the district superintendent) and ordered her to give the students partial credit and reduce weight of the project in the overall final grade. So she quit. [link via Metafilter]
I’m torn a bit over this issue. A 20% cheating rate tells me that the teacher or that school may not have effectively explained plagiarism to the students. Twenty percent is way high. As a former English prof, I know that teaching students appropriate usage and attribution is not easy. Having students turn in drafts for teacher review is useful in helping the teacher discover these problems early in the writing process and work with the students to accurately use and attribute research material.
Of course, when the students know that the teacher can’t effectively enforce the penalties for plagiarism, what incentive do they have to not do it?
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Storyspace, from Eastgate Systems, was first released back in the 80s — in the pre-Web days — and was the hypertext tool. A small literary hypertext movement arose around Storyspace, spearheaded by hypertext authors like Michael Joyce, Stuart Moulthrop, and Ed Falco (who, in his pre-hypertext days, was one of my undergraduate mentors) and critics like Jay David Bolter. It’s still a really cool tool, but even though it has export-to-HTML capability, it has been entirely supplanted by the Web.
Anyway, now Eastgate is release a blogging tool! Eastgate Tinderbox is a “personal content management system” with an extremely visual interface and (this is the cool part) an intelligent agent that “scans your notes looking for patters and building relationships.” This should be really interesting.
Apparently they’re days away from release (according to the website). Unfortunately, its MacOS only now; they’re working on a Windows version. Somebody on a Mac download the trial and tell me what it’s like.
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I followed with interest this thread on Kuro5hin regarding the flaws of libertarianism (or Libertarianism, depending on who you ask), and this creative response to some of it. Although, I think both authors missed the massive flaw in Libertarian philosophy — there’s no pragmatic plan for getting from point A (the status quo) to point B (the “libertopia”). Libertarianism only exists as an ideal; I’ve never met a Libertarian who could provide a satisfactory response to a question like “How do we do away with taxation without the economy crumbling?”
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Google programming contest. This is one of those times that I wish I knew how to program, just so I could play with the innards of a super tool like Google.
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Great idea from MLWebblog (even though they can’t spell weblog): Dave Winer of Userland should give a free copy of Radio 8 to all members of Congress so they can blog their days in Congress back to their home districts.Everyone should blog the link on MLWebblog. Let’s get this up to the top of Daypop and Blogdex so Winer takes note. [link via BurningBird]
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The Nutshell Toolbar is getting a lot of traction (according to sites like Daypop and Blogdex), but I think Dave’s Quick Search Toolbar does everything — and more! — and does it from outside the browser since it lives in the Windows Taskbar. Go Dave!
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“So our opportunity is not to replace Microsoft on the PC. If you’ve got a perfectly good working PC, why you would go through the angst of replacing it?” — Bob Young, Red Hat CEO, in a Yahoo interview. [link via Slashdot]
At least I’m not alone on that point!
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The Washington Post reports that the Redskins are jettisoning the controversial “Indian head” logo. The logo, mascot, and the name “Redskins” has gotten a lot of flak from Native American groups. Many people don’t know that the “Indian head” logo of the team is fairly recent (1970). Prior to that, the Redskins helmets bore an image of a spear. This is the logo the ‘Skins are going back to, ostensibly in honor of the team’s 70th anniversary, but more likely as a step away from the controversy.
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