Posted by geetarista March 30, 2008
Wordpress 2.5 has been out for a little bit now, so I have decided to upgrade. Everything went surprisingly well and I luckily did not run into any problems whatsoever.
I really like the new interface as it seems much cleaner and easier to use. My favorite new feature is the ability to upgrade plug-ins with just one click. After upgrading Wordpress, I realized that I had a ton of plug-ins that were way out of date. Before this I had to download each individual plug-in and manually upgrade it to my Wordpress installation. Not anymore!
Overall, the upgrade went very well and I recommend that anyone that uses Wordpress do the same. Not only is it worth doing so for aesthetic reasons, but for security as well.
Posted by geetarista March 25, 2008
I previously wrote about an alternative to Quicksilver in Linux, but I think I have finally found what I’ve been looking for: Gnome Do. I previously saw Gnome Do when it was in its infancy and haven’t really taken a look at it since then. However, Gnome Do has greatly improved its functionality and consequently many plug-ins have been created. It still has quite a way to go to until it has the full capabilities of Quicksilver, but this beautiful app is definitely on its way.
To install in Ubuntu, just add the following two lines to your sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu gutsy main
Then just run:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-do gnome-do-plugins
And you’re set! Just add gnome-do to your session and it will start up every time you log in. To use it, just hit Super (Win) + Space and start searching! Then head over to the plug-ins page to add additional plug-ins that meet your needs.
Posted by geetarista March 19, 2008
I really love Google Reader and all of its wonderful features. However, I do have only one small issue that really drives me crazy: slow starred items. No matter if I only have one starred item, Google Reader will sit there “Loading…” for sometimes up to five minutes before it will switch over. I really rely on starred items as those stories that I do not have time for immediately and want to save for later. Every other feature of Google Reader works very fast for me–impressively fast, actually. I know it is not my computer either since I have tried this on several different computers.
Has anyone else had any issues like this with their Starred Items? I have searched around but have not seen anyone else with this problem or a solution for it. Until I figure it out, I’ll just have to (un)patiently wait.
Posted by geetarista March 19, 2008
I just tried out a presentation web application called SlideRocket. It’s a flash-based application that is hoping to be the one and only business presentation tool with a great deal of cool features. I heard about it on TechCrunch and decided I would take a look and see how it fared.
It honestly looks very cool. It has a nice and simple interface, very cool transitions and effects, embedded media, and even analytics to know how your presentation is received by its viewers. The big issue that I had with the program is that it was extremely slow. It was so slow that I had to wait sometimes between twenty and thirty seconds between slides with heavier special effects. Can you imagine trying to show someone a presentation and have them wait that long between slides? I couldn’t even make it through the tour slide show since it was just taking way too long. If this is going to be the paid business presentation application they hope it to be, they need to really work on getting it up to speed.
Posted by geetarista March 18, 2008
After watching all of the changes and buzz in the last couple of months, the new version of Zend Framework has been released. Some of my favorite improvements:
- Zend Form
- Layout/View
- Lucene search
- Ajax
- Web Services
Zend Framework will also be released in the Universe repository of the Ubuntu Hardy Heron release in April. This is definitely an important release for Zend Framework and even for PHP in general. I’m definitely liking the new release and I really like the direction they are taking.
Now head over to Rob Allen’s updated tutorial for a quick rundown if you want to get started.
Posted by geetarista March 12, 2008
When Twitter was first released I thought Why? It wasn’t really a new idea. I mean, people have used asides in blogs for a while and it seemed to work well. I figure that people didn’t catch on as much since it wasn’t really marketed as an application or product like it has with Twitter. However, it seems like the idea is now catching on like wildfire since Twitter was released.
Since I usually reject most hype, I was not really drawn to it at all and did not see the point. I have a blog and I do not even honestly post as much as I should, so why should I start using Twitter? Well, after finally taking a look at it, I have started to see some benefits that were appealing to me.
For example, how often do we want to let people know what we’re doing personally but just don’t have time to do it? I mean, if I go watch a movie, I might tell a couple people at work or even a couple of friends what I thought about it, but I don’t send out a mass email to everyone I know. I’m sure some people would like to know what I thought about the movie, but some of those people are left out of the loop. I’m also not going to write a blog post about everything that I’m doing in my personal life since that would just create a mess. Conversely, I can also use Twitter to follow friends and family that I don’t normally stay in touch with as often as I really want to.
So I’ve created an account at Twitter to try it out and see how I like it. If you want to follow me, my account is http://twitter.com/geetarista.
