troykitch.com

Here’s one more audio-related post. I suppose it’s now officially ‘audio week’ on this site (this wasn’t planned, but I’m on a roll).

I just listened to the latest episode of a my favorite radio show. The topic: an exploration of the relationship between biology and human engineering. Sound boring? Not interested in science? Listen to this show before you make up your mind. This just might be the best radio program in America. It’s Radiolab from WNYC in New York.

Of the many things that make this show special, the most apparent to me is the production quality. It’s not over-produced. It’s more about how cohesive and engaging the stories are in each episode. You know when you see a really great documentary or movie that just grabs you? The kind of show that draws you in? When you lose track of time? Radiolab is like that — for your ears.

What makes the show stand out? It’s hard to pinpoint. It has an experimental edge to it. They do things that I’ve never heard before on other ‘educational’ shows. They interview people (just like any other radio show), but the way they integrate the interview can be quite jarring and unexpected. Example: they often let the interviewee introduce him or herself — interviewers for radio/video usually ask the subject to ‘state your name and title.’ This typically never airs. It’s a method to ensure that the hosts get the name and title correct. On Radiolab, they often use this pre-interview audio to introduce the subject expert. This wouldn’t work if they did it every time, but my point is that they are willing to present a story in very untraditional ways.

Moreover, the storyline is sometimes nonlinear, which is relatively rare in audio stories. Interview sound clips can show up again later for effect (for humor, for emphasis). They also create and embed really interesting sound effects to illustrate visual elements. Some work, some don’t. It’s always entertaining and usually pretty funny, though. They also frequently use ambient sound to create tension, suspense and mood better than any show I’ve heard. In short, few shows know how to use sound as well as Radiolab. Few shows are as willing to push traditional boundaries to tell a story.

This experimental edge combines with the best part of the show: top-notch story telling. I don’t have much to say about this other than this: they spin a good tale. They take a potentially dry ‘science’ topic and bring it to life. They do this by finding amazingly interesting story segments.

I also think a part of what makes it work is that the co-hosts seem to genuinely like each other. They sound like they’re having a chat. It comes across so naturally, you might be fooled into thinking the show is effortless and spontaneous. That’s the kind of flow I’m talking about here — the kind you might expect in great video, but rarely find in an audio production.

I’m a big radio fan (the geeky ‘public radio’ sort of fan) and I’ve been listening to radio stories for a few decades now. I think what I’m trying to say is this: Radiolab is breaking new ground and raising the bar. It’s tossing aside traditional rules of documentary audio and opening up the medium. It’s 21st century radio. While This American Life (another amazing show) perhaps led the wave of alternative story telling and has done wonders to push the radio documentary envelope, Radiolab builds upon this. It takes it to a new creative level.

It’s worth going back in the archives to hear past shows. If you don’t, you won’t hear about fighter pilots with out of body experiences, the sound of a sleeping cat brain, the man who takes two hours to wipe his nose and thinks it only took him a moment, the guy who has had the same sound stuck in his head for over a decade, the woman who is really two women in one. In short, there are some great (and fascinating) stories to be found here.

Also check out The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania — it’s not a Radiolab program, but it was produced and hosted by Jad Abumrad (Radiolab co-host, co-creator). Abumrad is an outstanding storyteller — and this is one of the best audio programs I’ve ever heard. If nothing else, this show will surely answer all of those enduring questions I know you’ve had about Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

If you’re looking for a Mac connection here: Radiolab is available as a free podcast on iTunes. And the show is produced on a Mac.

I decided to stick with the audio theme today because there’s a new Mac sound enhancement app on the streets. It’s called Hear, it’s from a company called JoeSoft and it’s now available for $49.95.

Here’s the hype about Hear (from the developer’s site): “Hear greatly improves audio quality in movies and music throughout all of your Mac OS X applications. With Hear, music is richer, movie sound and dialog is clearer and games will blow you out of your chair!”

Here’s what you need to know: Hear appears to be a repackaged, more polished and (according to forum reports) less buggy version of a Mac app called OSS 3D. OSS 3D is the creation of Dmitry Boldyrev, the developer of MacAmp (now defunct) and WinAmp (still a popular Windows media player, now a Time Warner AOL subsidiary). As I understand it, OSS 3D development has now ended with the release of Hear.

I tried the OSS 3D demo last Fall (which, incidentally, costs $20 less than Hear; you can still buy it, but there is not and never will be a Leopard version). I also downloaded the new Hear demo today.

What do they have in common? A scary number of users options that may intimidate you. I tweaked some of the various and plentiful manual controls for a while — long enough to convince me I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I headed for the presets. I tested Hear with a range of music and a video using built-in settings optimized for various types of musics, scenarios, 3D, etc. I listened to some sound with my built-in iMac speakers. I listened with my headphones. I listened with my plug-in JBL desktop speakers.

My preliminary conclusion is that this product has potential, but I’m not convinced many people will dish out $50 for the potential of enhanced sound. I say ‘potential’ because my results were mixed — I achieved some pleasant results, some painful results. I was surprised that some of the presets just didn’t sound very good to me. I had some distortion issues. When I chose a ‘rock’ genre song from my collection and then chose the ‘rock’ preset in Hear… I have to say it sounded better without it.

If you are a serious audiophile, an audio professional, and/or more knowledgeable about audio settings than me, you may love this. Reading through the OSS 3D forums, it appears that there are (were) many passionate OSS 3D users who swear by this digital enhancement package, and Hear appears to be the new face of OSS 3D.

It would be unfair of me to say this isn’t a good product after such a short trial. More likely, it’s user ignorance. Still, what I look for in a good Mac app is usability right from the install. I didn’t get that sense here. I also didn’t get adequate user documentation. But I’ll end on a positive note: it did sound good when I ran it straight through my iMac speakers. It produced a solid subwoofer sound and made my built-in speakers sound better (wider, deeper, more robust). It also produced some noticeable and nice 3D enhancement with the video I tested out.

If sound is important to you, why not give Hear a try. They offer a 30-day trial. You may have a better experience than I.

I’ll close by noting that I currently use SRS iWow ($19.99), a plug-in for iTunes. It improves the sound of iTunes music quite significantly — especially for laptop speakers. It also simulates 360 degree sound for headphones. I use it with my iMac and it makes a noticeable difference. I like it. Mostly because it’s very easy to use and the results sound quite good to my ears (I immediately know when it’s not turned on when listening to my music). The one thing it doesn’t do, though, is work outside of iTunes. That’s a big shortcoming. I’d like to see this tool integrated into all of my Mac’s audio output.

Until that day, it appears that Hear is the main game in town for system-wide audio enhancement. If anyone knows of any other similar app, please let me know.

I like the iTunes music store as much as the next person, but the selection is poor when it comes to the ‘world music’ category.

For music that is other-than-English-language-pop (also known as ‘world,’ ‘global, or ‘international’ music — in other words, the vast majority of the music produced on this planet), you might want to try Calabashmusic.com.

The selection is outstanding, it’s DRM-free, tunes are cheap and it’s based on fair trade (50 percent of each sale goes back to the artist). For audiophiles, the sound quality is pretty good — downloads range from 160-192kbps. The files are in MP3 format so you can play them on any player. You can also return to Calabash at anytime and re-download your purchased music.

Did I mention the selection is outstanding? Calabash organizes their large music collection in two ways: browse by regions of the world or sift through scores of musical genres (Portuguese Fado, anyone? How about Afro-Peruvian?). Once you find something that interests you, try out a 60-second preview. They also offer 10 free downloads a week, which is a great way to start exploring new music.

I bring this up now because the folks over at Calabash are trying to launch a peer-to-peer microcredit program for international artists. Their goal is to raise $100,000 by May 31 so they can get it off the ground. You may have heard of Kiva.org. This is the same idea, but for struggling artists around the globe. I think it’s a great idea. Peer-to-peer microfinancing is one of the more interesting, innovative and positive things made possible by the social web.

If you love music from around the globe, also check out National Geographic’s online music section. The music content for this site is provided by Calabash, but it’s packaged a bit differently here. They strive for a more contextual, cultural focus as you might expect. Some of the content also comes from PRI (producer’s of The World, a great news program that daily highlights the global music scene, often in a political context) and Afropop Worldwide (the show that started me on my international music path back in the 1990s). One more: check out the BBC’s world music offerings.

Footnote: I love world music, but why do we have to call it ‘world music?’ Isn’t all music from this world? It makes no sense. David Byrne wrote a really good editorial way back in 1999 for the New York Times that gets to the root of the issue. It’s called ‘I Hate World Music.’

Here’s an interesting online game: The Glass Bead Network. A short message about this new venture appeared at the end of an email message received from my web host this evening:

Casual gaming just got a lot smarter. Players on the Glass Bead Network compete by connecting ideas in creative ways using know-how, imagination, and even the web itself to help them play the game.

How could I pass that up? I spent an hour or so checking it out and decided to sign up (free). So far, I've only observed others at play — it helps to watch a game in progress to get the lay of the land.

Here’s the object: each online player (a max of four people for one game) is dealt a hand of ‘beads.’ Each bead is a picture of a person, place, thing. The object is to place one of your beads on the board next to another bead to form a connection. It’s up to you to decide how the beads are connected. Once you conjure up a connection, you present it for the other players to evaluate. The other players then either approve your connection or reject it. If your connection is challenged, you may refine it until all agree it’s a valid ‘linkage.'

The hard part is that you only have a finite amount of time to make a connection that all players agree is valid (the amount of time you have to form a link is determined in the game setup). If you can’t come up with a good link, you pass to the next player. The first player to place all of his/her beads (or, if the board is filled up, the player with the least number of beads remaining in hand) wins.

I like the open-ended nature of the game. The most ingenious part of the play is that the players must form a sort of social contract to decide if a play is valid or not. This agreement-based gameplay reminds me of a philosophy book I read long ago called Infinite and Finite Games by James P. Carse.

Sidenote: I didn’t find a reference to this on the game site, but the name and inspiration for this game must come from The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.

Ok, I have a Twitter account now. Many people really enjoy this service, so I’m ready to give it a shot. But I have a confession: I don’t really get it.

Is this just a passing fad? Is it a revolutionary mode of communication? Or is just fun? Why should I invest the time?

An any rate, I’ve posted my first short message to tell the world what I’m up to. I have microblogged. By ‘the world’ I mean that I am currently following/followed by only two people: a friend of mine in San Diego…and Barack Obama.

Actually, I just added Obama to my list because, well, why not. He’s surely in friend-acceptance mode right now and I support his candidacy. Don’t mind getting updates about what he’s up to. And I’m sure he will eagerly read my tweet. Right.

Anyhow, I have more questions:

Why is Twitter substantively different or better than instant messaging? Why not send an email? Is it about networking? Is it about popularity? Is it about exchange of information? And here’s the real question on my mind: is there such a thing as being too connected?

I can see that what sets a microblog apart from email or chat is universal availability/viewability across time. In other words, it links ‘friends’ together with added benefits: anyone can peek in to read the posts of others (which encourages networking among like-minded people, I assume) and it’s a sort of time-logged journal. By this, I mean it’s like a shared microjournal among peers that persists in a thread across time into web eternity (I guess that’s why it’s called a microblog — no big revelations here). Is this a good thing? Maybe.

Whatever is behind this phenomenon, I’m going to try to get into the social web thing a bit more. I’m still pondering, though, the limits of sharing personal information.

Are you a Twitter user? What do you get out of it? Why do you do it?

ImageWell, a lightweight image editor for the Mac, is no longer offered as a free download. With today’s launch of version 3.5, the developers now offer only one choice: a paid full-feature version for $19.95. Prior to 3.5, a limited version of the app was offered for free with an upgrade option to unlock more powerful features.

ImageWell excels at quick and simple processing (aimed primarily for images heading for the web). It specializes in watermarking, adding annotations, creating shaped borders, taking screenshots, and batch processing. It’s not a bad option for a fast, easy to use, tiny little app if your image editing needs are light.

ImageWell offers a lot of what you will find with Skitch. In fact, you may find that the free Skitch beta serves up more choice, flexibility and options if your main interests are capturing screenshots, marking them up, and sharing them online. However, you’ll get more image editing functionality with ImageWell. In this respect, it’s most similar to Flying Meat’s Acorn in that both emphasize lightness, low cost, and simplicity and strive to meet most of your basic image editing and image sharing needs.

Perhaps the developers of ImageWell are making a smart move by staking out the low end of the Mac image editing field. The feature set and the price are not bad. I think the developers are trying to head for that sweet spot between Skitch and Acorn: not as much power as Acorn, but more features than Skitch, for the relatively low price of $19.95. Sure, the user interface is not as elegant as Acorn’s and it’s not free like Skitch (and who knows if Skitch will be free once it leaves Beta status) but it’s cheap and it offers a lot of tools. Acorn offers more image editing possibilities and is easier to use. Of course, it costs $30 more than ImageWell, too — a pretty big price gap.

I’ll be curious to see how this change in strategy pans out for the ImageWell developers.

If you’re looking for a cheap, simple editor (cheaper and simpler than, say, Photoshop) but think your image editing needs may grow over time, take a look at some of the other low cost desktop apps out there like Pixelmator ($60) and GraphicConvertor ($35) before you make a decision. Of course, you could also see if the various free online editors meet your needs. If all you want is a quick drag-and-drop tool to create nice thumbnail images for your blog or website, you may also want to try Thumbscrew (free).

Just a few short hours after I posted my WordPress review, version 2.5 was released. Of course this is a very major update, and of course my review is for version 2.3 (the prior version — there is no 2.4).

The new release offers, among other improvements: simpler plugin updating, easier gallery creation, a much better Dashboard (admin panel), enhanced security features, full-screen writing capability, a better WYSIWYG editor, and better searching capability (that now indexes static pages in addition to posts). Check out the full list of improvements here.

I just completed the upgrade. It installed flawlessly. The changes to the admin panel are indeed very substantial. It’ll take some time to get used to. The automatic plugin updating is quite nice, I have to say. Also, the Dashboard ‘start’ page is much more useful than the previous version.

The only minor problem I’ve noticed so far is that the WP Archive widget named has changed from ‘Archives’ to ‘Archive.’ This is significant if you use image replacement for the widget title — you’ll have to update your CSS to reflect the new name.

I also noticed that the new wp-config.php is different from previous versions, so be sure to use this updated file (this file hasn’t changed in a long while, so I’m guessing that many people are in the habit of keeping their existing config file during upgrades).

The easiest way to do this is to copy over your old MySQL settings (user name, password, database name) into the new file (which is called ‘wp-config-sample.php’), delete the old config file, then delete the word ‘sample’ from the wp-config-sample.php file.

The difference in this file is the addition of a secure key field. Enter a long, complicated key in this field as indicated (no need to remember it). This is part of a new secure cookie encryption protocol.

I’ll add my thoughts on this new version when I post the RapidWeaver Vs. WordPress final wrap-up.

This is the third in a four part series comparing WordPress with RapidWeaver (and speaking of RapidWeaver, don’t miss the comment from a lead RW developer on that review).

WordPress, a blog publishing system for Mac, PC, or Linux. I’m assuming that most people who read this probably have heard of WordPress and have perhaps noted that many blogs use it. In terms of blogging platforms, WP ranks second in use only to Google’s Blogger. That equates to millions of users. What accounts for this popularity? In short, it works. And it’s free. Not only can you get a blog up and running quickly with WordPress, you can manage your blog with one of the best browser-based administration panels out there.

If you’re considering WordPress, you need to understand the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

WordPress.com

 

The .com option is the WordPress answer to Blogger. It’s a commercial web hosting venture which employs a version of WP that allows for multiple blogs within one installation. Once you sign up, you get hosting space, automatic installation, and a fixed number of themes, plugins, and widgets to customize your site. In general, you won’t be able to modify much and you can’t put ads on it. However, you will be able to modify more than you would with Blogger. You’ll be able to choose from a palette of widgets, move them around on your sidebar, choose a header photo (this option is only available with some themes), and activate some plugins, but you won’t be able to style your page or modify the theme layout/design with the free package. Nor will you be able to choose from the wider universe of WP plugins and widgets available around the web.

The basic package is free, but there are paid upgrades if you want to customize the styles of your chosen theme, get more storage space, or change your domain name to something other than your_blog.wordpress.com. Most users choose the WP.com option because it’s easier to use, it’s just as free as the .org version, it offers better technical support, and it includes site hosting.

Last point: since you will be using tried and tested themes, plugins and widgets with this option, you will be ensured of a standards-compliant site.

WordPress.org

 

The .org option offers an open source package of core files to run a WP blog. It is free to use and abuse however you’d like within the terms of the General Public License. If you choose this option, you will get a download of the files needed to make WordPress run, but you won’t get a place to host it, you’ll have to install it yourself and you won’t get dedicated support. You will, however, have access to a veritable sea of plugins, widgets, and themes — and you’ll be able to fully customize and tweak your site. In other words, you have a level of freedom unmatched by what you’d get from a WP.com hosted blog. If you want the full features of the .org version, but don’t want to deal with the hassle of setting it up, there are many hosts that offer automatic installation (or you can get a WP expert to install your blog for free if your web host meets the requirements).

Last point: you may also choose the multi-user version of WP if you want the ability to have limitless blogs with unlimited authors with only one installation. It’s freely available as well (and, in case you are wondering, it’s the same platform used by WP.com).

This rest of this review will focus on the WordPress.org package because the flexibility inherent in this version most closely approximates the full capabilities of RapidWeaver.

Who is it for

 

While RapidWeaver is a website creation tool that also supports blogging, WordPress is first and foremost a tool for the weblog. Sure, you can add static pages to a WP site, but it is primarily designed to handle dynamic content. And it’s designed to support things that bloggers need most (moderating comments, managing posts, adding categories and tags etc.) right out of the box. While you can add photo pages, videos, and a variety of other content to your WordPress blog (either in posts or on stand-alone pages), it is generally not as easy of a task as it would be on RapidWeaver. And that’s the main difference. If you don’t want to pay any money up front, flexibility and customization options are important to you, and you have some (or great) knowledge of CSS and HTML, it’s a superb choice. It doesn’t hurt to know a bit about PHP and MySQL, too. If you don’t know anything about this stuff, you will still get a lot out of it because the basic administration tools are quite simple and robust. You just won’t be able to customize your site design/layout as much as you might like without a bit of research and studying.

About Themes, Plugins, and Widgets

 

Just like RapidWeaver, WordPress is based on the template (WP calls them themes). As I’ve noted before, templates are great because they are generally designed by people who know something about, well, design. Most of the hard work is done for you. However, if you roam far and wide for WP themes, you may find that some of them are not standards-compliant. Most are, though. However, they may no longer be compliant once you’re done modifying them. Fortunately, your can test this out compliments of the free W3C validation tools.

In addition to themes, WP offers plug-and-play extendability with plugins and widgets. Plugins are bits of code created by clever individuals that extend your site’s functionality. There are a ton of them out there and they are generally extremely easy to deploy. Some of the most popular are Askimet (a very effective spam filtering plugin), the ‘All in One SEO pack’ (to easily optimize your site for search engines), Google Analytics (to get some site stats), WordPress.com stats (more stats — you need to sign up for WP.com to use them on your site but that doesn’t mean you need a WP.com-hosted site), and Lightbox (responsible for the screenshot behavior of this site). But that’s just the very tip of a large iceberg. The WordPress plugin page is a good place to start your search.

Widgets are a special type of plugin. They are basically chunks of code that you can mix and match with ease to customize you sidebar content. WordPress comes with a bunch of widgets out of the box (search tool, calendar, recent posts, etc.), but that’s just the start. In addition to the standard WP widgets, for instance, this site uses an enhanced blogroll widget (which rotates links every time the page is loaded), an enhanced recent comments widget (to display chunks of the most recent comments) and a Feedburner widget (to optimize this site’s RSS feed).

Adding plugins, themes, and extra widgets to your site is easy. I’ll touch on this in the next section.

The basics of how it works

Now let's take a step back and take a deeper look at how WordPress is setup and how you manage it. I'm not going to go into great detail here, but it's important to have a basic understanding of how it's put together. Once you install WP at the desired location on your web host, the first thing you notice is that there are a heck of a lot of files and folders. Fortunately, pretty much everything you need to access is located in one folder labeled wp-content.

 

Inside there, you’ll find a plugins folder, an uploads folder, and a themes folder. My assumption here is that you have some sort of FTP client with which to install and view these files. If you don’t, you’ll need one. I use Panic’s Transmit.

Installing new themes and plugins couldn’t be easier (remember: extra widgets are also installed as plugins): you drop your new theme files in the themes folder; and (you guessed it) you place plugins in the plugins folder. The uploads folder is a good place to store images and other files that you want to place on pages or in posts. This organization scheme permits you to change themes on the fly while ensuring that your plugins and extra files remain properly in place. In other words, all of the images, files, and plugins are separate from your theme. That way, you can change your theme and your site maintains the same functionality and content, just with a new look.

All of your posts, comments, tags, etc. are also separate from your theme files — they are stored in a MySQL database. WordPress works its magic with PHP, an open source language that dynamically calls up and displays data and content from your database. It’s a bit complicated if you’ve never worked with it, but WordPress offers extensive documentation to help you understand how a site is managed. In a nutshell, the theme files control the layout/design and styles of your site (and you can manually add static content in here, too). The theme also contains all the PHP functionality that makes your blog dynamic. If this all sounds complicated, it is. It takes some getting used to. Once you get it down, though, you’ll find that WP is perhaps more robust and flexible than RapidWeaver, mainly because all of WP is accessible for modification and the pool of people who make plugins and themes for the WP platform is huge.

The hardest part to get used to with WP is how the PHP pages are split up into sections (into separate header, footer, index, etc). When you load up a WP blog page, all these disparate parts are called into play via the PHP code and then reassembled on the fly to spit out a dynamically-generated HTML page in your browser. When I first started to understand how all of these PHP files work together (and I confess I don’t understand all of it) it struck me as quite ingenious. It reminds me of an analog watch: looked at from the front, it’s a stylish, simple interface that tells the time. But open up the back, and you reveal a blur of cogs and springs and little gears somehow working together to create the time. Anyhow, to really get it, be prepared to spend some time with it. My suggestion? Try installing two copies of WP on your web host (one to use for your blog, one to hide and play with) or install MAMP on your Mac and install a copy of WP there. MAMP, by the way, is a great tool to set up a personal webserver.

While RapidWeaver content and user options are manipulated on a page-by-page basis and via inspector panes, WordPress is managed from a browser via a web-based Admin panel. The obvious benefit of this approach is that you are not tied to your desktop to manage your site. The Admin panel is the heart and soul of WP. It’s designed to give you the tools you need to effectively manage a site, even if you’ve never done anything like this before. For the most part, it succeeds. There are many aspects of the admin panel that I really appreciate. For instance, it’s very easy to activate and deactivate plugins. It’s as simple as turning them off and on. The discussion (comment) moderation is also excellent. You can choose to moderate every comment, just moderate comments from new users, or choose many options in between to get your settings just right. The built in commenting options blow RapidWeaver’s external Haloscan.com comment solution out of the water. In fact, many say it’s the best of any platform.

In fact, the level of fidelity with which you can control almost every aspect of your blog is superior. Given this tool is specialized for blogging, perhaps that’s not too surprising. You will also appreciate how easy it is to delete or edit a comment, monitor registered users, and move Widgets around (which is a pleasant drag-and-drop experience). You can also email posts in remotely with a few simple set-up steps. Like RapidWeaver, though, some of the admin windows are so chock full of options that it can be confusing to grasp.

For me, the weak link in the Admin panel is the tab for writing a new post. WP allows you to enter your post via a WYSIWYG or code-based window, but I find it to be clunky and limiting. At times, I’ve made changes to my posts via this panel only to find that other parts of my code changed in unexpected ways. I shudder at the thought of typing up a lengthy post (like this one) through the Admin panel. Likewise, I don’t care for uploading images or files for my posts via the Admin panel. I think it’s tedious; and it’s awkward to go back and move or change file names using the panel. My preference for editing and modifying posts? More on that in the next section.

To summarize the basics: you add themes and plugins by dropping them into folders on your web host using an FTP client; you manage all of your content, presentation options and plugins via the Admin panel; you change the design of your site by modifying the PHP and CSS files of your theme. Easy right? It’s actually not as complicated as it may sound, and it’s much easier if you use some good third party Mac apps.

Using Third Party Apps

 

Much more so than RapidWeaver, WordPress benefits greatly from the addition of third-party editing tools. For instance, I previously noted that I find writing posts on the web-based Admin panel a little annoying. It’s not that the WP Admin panel is bad. It’s actually quite good, especially compared to other CMS admin panels I’ve used. Still, once I tried MarsEdit I discovered how much better the experience could be. If there is one companion tool that is a must-have for writing, editing, tagging, and categorizing posts, this is it. Some people choose to set up MarsEdit to accurately preview what the post will look like. As I’ve mentioned, I post to a local server on my Mac on a mirror copy of this website using MarsEdit. I polish it locally, then publish it once I’m done. I find this to be an ideal set up.

Another third party tool you will need is a good FTP client. This will be useful when you need to update WP to a newer version (make sure you back it up first!), add new plugins or upload images.

If you are inclined to create/modify your theme, you will also benefit from an external editor such as TextMate or BBEdit/TextWrangler and a CSS editor like CSSEdit. I don’t want to go to deeply into this topic, but I want to point out that WP really rocks when you get a good workflow going with some extra tools. Of course, this comes at a cost. If I add together all of the third party tools I use to manage the site, WP actually cost me about as much as RapidWeaver! I have to ask myself how much of the pleasure of working with WordPress is due to these additional Mac apps. Tools like CSSEdit, TextMate, MarsEdit, and Transmit truly make it a pleasant workflow. In fact, one of the main reasons I stuck with WP for this site is because I really like to use these tools. Sounds kind of silly, perhaps, but I’ll stick by it.

Here’s one final tip: you can set up your WordPress admin panel to appear as a desktop application (and put it in your Dock) using a little app called Fluid. It’s still in Beta, but I’ve found it works great. With Fluid, in fact, you can set up any web-based app to function as a stand-alone application. Very handy.

Conclusion

 

So here’s the thing about WordPress: it’s a question of how far you want to take it. Pretty much anything you want to do is possible, but the need to understand a bit of what’s going on with the code behind the scenes increases exponentially the more you deviate from the standard WP model. In this sense, WordPress is an excellent training tool to learn about PHP, MySQL, CSS, and XHMTL. As I’ve said, I strongly recommend installing a version locally on your Mac using MAMP just for this purpose. Over time, you’ll start to gain the ability to bend your site to your will with greater skill. Until that time, however, you’ll be surprised how far you can get with existing themes, plugins and widgets.

While it’s certainly harder to set up (if you do it yourself!) and has a steeper learning curve than RapidWeaver, where you can take your blog with this version of WP is limited only to your ability, imagination and experience level.

What do I love about WordPress?

º It's free º It's easy to set up and maintain º Templates, plugins, and widgets abound º The admin panel is full-featured and about as intuitive as any that I've seen º It integrates exceptionally well with other editing tools, particularly MarsEdit

What's not to love?

º Compared to RapidWeaver, editing your site styles is more difficult º Editing your theme is even harder for beginners º The built-in WP theme editor is not easy to use º Updating a WP installation takes some patience and knowledge of FTP; it's also a bit scary º Compared to RW, support for adding slick graphics, javascript, video, etc. is certainly not as simple (but there are many plugins to help you along) º Since you can do whatever you want with this WP installation, it's easier to break web standards

If you are looking for a free and flexible tool to fire up your own blog, WP is a solid choice. It’s not only free and flexible, but there are just tons of user-created add-ons that you can quickly drop right in to your site. If you get stuck, you’re in luck: the web is rife with tips and tutorials and fixes for WordPress. I haven’t come across a problem yet for which I couldn’t find a ready-made answer online within a few minutes of searching. The user forums are great and instructions are comprehensive. The last thing I’ll note is that WordPress could do a better job at explaining the various options available for new users (.org, .com, multi-user, etc.). It took me a while to sort it out. I hope this review helps some readers make an informed choice.

That wraps it up. Next, I’ll conclude this series with a final summary comparison of RapidWeaver and WordPress.

learned that Adobe launched a public beta of Express yesterday. It’s an online photo editing application with a couple of free Gigabytes of storage. It was first demonstrated last September.

It’s pretty slick. It’ll be interesting to see how Picnik, Splashup, Snipshot, Phixr, Preloadr, and Pixenate (among other competitors in this crowded field) fare in light of this gorilla-sized competition.

I think Apple should enter the fray. I would think it would be a short leap from iPhoto and .Mac to a great web-based editing and storage solution from Cupertino. I’m guessing they wouldn’t want to make it Flash-based, though.

Here are two apps that recently caught my interest:

1. Iguania:

I heard about Iguania while listening to Adam Christianson's MacCast, which is incidentally one of the best general-interest Mac podcasts out there. Iguania is a novel application to edit your photos without all of those popup boxes and sliders. Instead, you use the keyboard to select the function you want, then adjust that value with your mouse. I've tried it out and love it. I found it to be quite intuitive. I couldn't help but think of how this idea could be applied to the iPhone/iPod Touch 3-axis accelerometer and the new Apple multi-touch trackpad. Some real innovation happening here. It's still in Beta, so give it a try and send some feedback to the developer.

2. Flux:

I came across Flux the other day while perusing my RSS feeds. It's a new website design tool just out of Beta (...and yet already at 1.1.1). I downloaded it, then went to the developer's site to read more. I have to admit it was a bit disconcerting to see the developer blog hosted on a Blogger site. Then I clicked on 'About' and landed on apple.com. Hmm. Still, I pressed on. Thirty minutes later, I concluded that the app has potential but still needs work. It just didn't feel complete to me. I pondered if I should post this or not, but decided I would. I think there are some interesting ideas here — the CSS view alone is worth a look.