Sunday, March 30th, 2008

WordPress 2.5 has been released, and so far I am quite impressed. What’s new, you ask?

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

The Happy Cog folks were responsible for the UI refresh to the backend and it’s quite impressive. It seems that every little detail was re-thought from a user’s perspective and they have gone go great lengths to make the simple things like writing, editing and managing your blog much simpler. The administration panel is a lot cleaner now, with fewer options jumping out at you from the start.

On top of those features, one of the things that I’ve been most excited about was the now-functioning MarsEdit integration that allows me to set a post as a ‘draft’ and it sticking on the server. And my dear lord, is the auto-updating plugins feature amazing or what? No longer do you have to download a plugin to your desktop, upload it, log in to WordPress, and activate the plugin. Now, the software tells you there is an update, and you click ‘update’. Done.

If you are a Wordpress user, I highly recommend the 2.5 release. They knocked this one out of the park – not only from a design standpoint, but from a usability and ease of use angle as well. As a side note, the SquareOne blog and this blog now are on 2.5. Let me know if you see any visual oddities.

Ok, end blog nerdery … now.

Technorati Tags:
site-news, software, wordpress, wordpress-2.5

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Posted on March 30th, 2008 | No Comments »

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

With all of this talk about iPhone’s 2.0 release this summer, I must say that I’m quite excited about what the future holds for all of present and future Jesusphone owners out there. Tapping into the creative minds of larger companies along with independent software developers on a level playing field is going to produce some truly compelling applications for the iPhone, that’s for sure. However, while we all drool over what possibilities exist come ‘late June’, I have a bone to pick with the current version of Apple’s Mail application for the iPhone. I hope that by the time version 2.0 ships, they spend some time shoring up the issues making it’s mail client quite sub par.

One of the main issues that I have is pretty minor, but very annoying. There is not one ‘mailbox to rule them all’. In other words, there should be a default inbox that collects mail from all of the accounts that you have on your phone, and display them intermingled with one another. This behavior is no different from the desktop version of their mail application, and I personally feel that if this sort of behavior would work well anywhere, it’d be on the iPhone. It should not take 3 or 4 taps to get from one accounts’ inbox to another.

To fix this problem, Apple could add a toolbar at the bottom of the mail interface. Imagine a ‘toolbar’ at the bottom, similar to the one you see in the iPod application. It could be totally customizable to allow users to make the application work the way they need it to, just as the iPod application does. I simply dragged a few mail.app icons into this mockup, so don’t judge it on it’s artistic merits too terribly much, but I think the point is still made. A quick way to have a general inbox that shows all of your mail from all of your accounts would be super helpful. Additionally, there could be links to a main accounts page, your notes, to-do items, and even links to specific folders on IMAP servers if you like.

If Apple does not want to approach their problem this way, they could at least add a preference into mail that allows you to choose what happens when you tap the mail icon. For example, it could either it can go to the last viewed email (the current, and default behavior), or you can go to the main accounts screen. This way, users with multiple accounts can at least access any account relatively quickly.

Fingers crossed for a massive update this summer.

Technorati Tags:
applications, macintosh, iPhone, software

Posted on March 29th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

I can’t believe that I posted this link 3 years ago, and it’s amazing how it’s still relevant.

Hearing what McCain had to say yesterday is further proof our only shot is a Democrat for president in 08.

What a mess.

Posted on March 27th, 2008 | No Comments »

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

5 years ago today was my first blog post on wtmcgee.com. What an interesting 5 years it’s been. Currently, I have made 573 posts and received 1,574 comments. I’ve gone from Movable type to Wordpress back to MT and finally to Wordpress 2. I’ve also been through a handful of hosts, and a half dozen design revisions. We’re now sitting on version five, and hopefully we won’t be going through anything too massive on that front for some time.

Strangely, if I had to make a ‘best of’ list, I think I’d still refer you to this post for a rundown. Good times.

Anyway, here’s my first post!

Posted on March 26th, 2008 | 8 Comments »

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Well, it would appear there is a new FSU in town. One of my friends today told me that Full Sail is changing its name to Full Sail University. While this doesn’t actually change a whole heck of a lot about the school or what it offers, I must say that the name is certainly better than “Full Sail Real World Education”. That is flat out laughable when listing it on resumes or putting it in your portfolio.

The name certainly will help with getting prospective students that are feeling antsy about going somewhere that has such a long, sketchy sounding name. Full Sail University is probably the best thing they could have done to improve future enrollment.

Considering I have degrees from Georgia Perimeter College, Art Institute of Atlanta, and now Full Sail University, I suppose it’s nice to be able to say that I graduated from a university.

I guess.

Despite the fact that the school initials spell FSU, word is that they will not go by said moniker. As part of the deal to change their name to Full Sail University, they had to promise that FSU would not be used as their school name at any time, as it belonged to a certain school in Tallahassee.

Technorati Tags:
announcements, Orlando, Winter Park, full-sail

Posted on March 24th, 2008 | 2 Comments »