I post virtually all of my photos via email. It is easier for me to attach a photo to an email, add my Title (Subject) and Body (with the nifty inline spell checking) and go on my way. But I don't want to make a separate Shortcut for each month that I might post to. So I've made a generic shortcut and then once a month I go in and update my settings for that shortcut to point to the current month. Maybe I'll write a little script that does this for me automatically each month (thanks crontab!). Anyways, I'm able to easily archive my photos by Month/Year using this mechanism. So if you're posting all of your photos through the Web in Blogware, try clicking on Settings--> Email Shortcuts and setting up a cool, simple way to post new photos to your blog. Do I rule? I think so.

I rarely take "lunch" during the week but today I thought I'd spend some time thinking about Blogware and how I've done such a poor job at conveying its strengths to other people. The challenge is not a simple one because as you add more features, you naturally tap into more markets but each market has its own need and does not necessarily care about the features which are great for a different market. In explaining everything to every person, I end up with a near 100% confusion rate. What I need to do is explain the features which matter to the person I am speaking with so they understand how the program can work for them. I always end up thinking that they *should* know about these other features but again, it adds to confusion rather than getting them excited about how the program can help their specific situation.

My goal for the next 30 days is to try and evaluate how this product might work for the person I am interacting with and refrain from providing information overload. Then I'll field questions about, "Can I do this?" or, "Can I do that?" and I'll [hopefully] say, "Heck yeah! Here's what you do...".

As we add more features to Blogware I'll also try to make a remark or two about them and the implications associated with those features so I have a nice history of what/why we have available.

Part of my job in managing the Blogware.com code development is handling support issues from some of the higher level users. I answer questions in both a private newsgroup and in a bugzilla implementation. This tricky customer is sending "from: someone@bloglines.com". Bloglines is a web-based RSS aggregator which has a cool feature that allows you to create a unique address "@bloglines.com" which gets content filtered into your RSS reader. So my response went directly to this person's fav information management process. I absolutely love seeing this sort of innovation and creativity and plan on copying it myself [insert update:] with my own bloglines account and my fav mailing lists [end update]. Great job! You likely know who you are but I'm not telling.

One of the guys here whipped up a couple of example signup scripts for interested resellers to have a look at, play with or install directly.  Important Note: These are not supported or sanctioned in any way by me, the author or Tucows/Blogware.  Basically we needed a way to test various signup procedures so these were created quickly, without thought of later upgrades or everyone's favorite coding style, etc. So if all of this is groovy and you want to have a go at it, here you are:

Sample Signup in Ruby
Sample Signup in Perl

Once you've installed your favorite flavor you'll notice that you can use the default Blogware domain or any other of your choosing.  The user will choose a username or enter an existing one.  The final step includes a simple captcha-ish image which the user will have to complete in order to finalize their request.  You'll be emailed a notice once the blog has been created.

Have fun!

We added a search mechanism on Friday without telling anybody... sorry bout that. It is a new component in your "Look and Feel" section... give it a whirl. You can search mine but I don't have any compelling content so it may not be all that fun. No phrases just yet but category permissions are respected, blah.

Roland asked that I put a quick Ruby snippet up for gaining access to your blog's ID. Remember, we are trying to work within the existing APIs and have not yet released an API of our own which would ride on top of (or directly along-side) what is already out there. We tend to move slowly here out of respect for the developers.:)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
require 'xmlrpc/client'

USER = 'XXX'
PASS = 'XXX'

begin
server = XMLRPC::Client.new('www.blogware.com', '/xmlrpc.cgi', 80)

puts "XMLRPC Methods:"
puts server.call('system.listMethods2')
puts

# create a few "proxy" objects to make our code look nicer
mt = server.proxy("mt")
blogger = server.proxy("blogger", "some_appkey")
meta = server.proxy("metaWeblog")

blogs = blogger.getUsersBlogs(USER, PASS)
if blogs.empty?
raise("You don't own any blogs!")
end

blog = blogs.first

puts "Categories for blog # #{blog['blogid']} - #{blog['blogName']}:"
cats = meta.getCategories(blog['blogid'], USER, PASS)
cats.each { |name, struct|
puts "#{name}"
struct.each { |key, val|
puts "\t#{key}: #{val}"
}
}

rescue XMLRPC::FaultException => err
puts "Error: #{err.faultString}"
exit
end
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No error checking was performed for this - just a quick implementation based on a request. Hope it helps. And, does this satisfy my post for today? Yeah baby!

PS, I did not write this code, it was one of my cool partners in crime.

There are new options in the "Look and Feel" area of Blogware. Mostly a bunch of "Recent blah" components. Check it in your Blogware Admin area.

We've had a phenomenal week getting Blogware additions/fixes/changes accomplished. The little things can kill you on time. But being that this is a short week, I'm feeling very good about where we are and what we have left to do.

If you're using Blogware today, I suppose you'll have a bit of an easter egg hunt to find all of the little improvements/changes. We should have the changes listed and noted as DONE in the next week or so. A couple of exciting features on deck... woohoo!

Be sure to check out the new template styles available as of today.