Maria’s Guides

A reader chastises me.

The other day, while writing about the Reading Options in WordPress, I decided to experiment with this blog. I togged the settings so only summaries of my entries would be sent to people accessing with RSS readers.

Understand that I don’t use an RSS reader. I surf the old fashioned way, with a Web browser. I don’t surf that often and I don’t follow any one particular blog or site. So it’s never been an issue for me.

But for the book, I had to understand what this WordPress feature did. So I toggled it to the Summaries setting, downloaded a feed reader, and looked at the result. What I saw was a list of 10 or so posts in a window. I’d click a post title and the beginning of the post would appear in a window pane beneath the list. There was a link at the end indicating that there was more; clicking the link brought me to my Web site.

This seemed a logical way to release content via RSS. After all, didn’t I want visitors to come to the site where they could read not just the articles but the comments? And see all the pictures that came with the piece?

Dori of Wise Women didn’t think so. She commented on my “Stand Up for Your Principles” piece to stand up for her principles: that RSS feeds for blogs should include the entire content.

Whew! No problem. This morning, I remembered what I did to create the summaries (I did have to remember something I learned about 2 whole days ago!) and toggled the option back to its original settings. I just checked it with my feed reader and it’s working fine.

But this makes me curious. I’d like to know more from the folks who use an RSS feed reader to follow this blog. Here are a few questions; I’d appreciate it if you’d take the time to answer a few of them in the Comments for this post.

• How often do you check the site? Regularly? (If so, I’m flattered to be on your list!)
• Why do you prefer a news reader to a Web browser?
• Does your news reader display formatted text and graphics?
• Which reader do you use? On what computer platform?
• Would you like to share any advice for people considering using a reader or for bloggers like me who aren’t fully aware of the benefits?

Although I’m a technical person and write about computer technology for a living, I made a decision long ago to concentrate on only those technologies that I use or write about. There’s just too much out there to learn it all — and still have a life that doesn’t revolve around a computer! As a result, my knowledge of computer technology is spotty, with expertise on certain topics balanced by sheer ignorance of others. (Ignorance is bliss, they say.)

Perhaps its time to give the RSS feed reader topic a bit more attention. What do you think?

PostScript: I just used my RSS reader to check out the other blogs that were included in it. It appears that none of them include the full text of the article. What’s going on here? Perhaps that’s why I discarded the idea of using a reader when I first tried it about two years ago? Because you had to go to the Web site anyway to read the article? It seems that, in many instances, the reader adds an extra step to following blogs. If you’re commenting on this piece, please comment on that, too.

About the favicon.ico file and how you can create one.

Ever wonder how some Web sites put their own custom icons in the address bar of the Web browser window when you visit them? Or, if you read your site’s Web logs, why there are so many requests for a file named favicon.ico that you might not have?

As you might have guessed, these two questions are related. The tiny image that appears in the address bar is displayed from the favicon.ico file that should reside in the root directory of your Web site.

There are a number of Web sites that make it easy to create this file based on an existing image, using a Web interface. The one I like is on the chami.com Web site, at http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/. Chami is the maker of HTML-Kit, a “standards-compliant, full-featured and multi-purpose development environment for editing HTML and other Web-related file types.”

Click a browse button to find the image you want to convert to a favicon.ico file and select the file. Then click the Generate FavIcon.ico button. In moments, the image you chose is converted into the proper format and ready to download. Copy it into your Web site’s root directory and add a bit of HTML code to the HEAD section of your Web pages (or the header.php or index.php file in the active theme of a WordPress installation — whichever file has the HEAD section). The next time you load the page, the image will appear.

Cool, no?

Now if only I had some artistic abilities.

Information from Software Update

iPod Updater 2006-03-23 delivers:

• New iPod Software 1.1.1 for iPod
• New iPod Software 1.1.1 for iPod nano

For all other iPod models, iPod Updater 2006-03-23 contains the same software versions as iPod Updater 2006-01-10.

Important: After downloading the iPod Updater software, connect your iPod to your computer and launch the iPod Updater application. If iPod Updater determines that your iPod needs to be updated, click the Update button to install the latest software on your iPod.

Features of iPod Software 1.1.1 for iPod and iPod Software 1.1.1 for iPod nano:

• Volume limit
• Bug fixes

For more information on volume limit, go to target="_blank">http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303414.

Technorati Tags: ipod, update

Apple’s response to a lawsuit.

Someone realized that if you turn up the volume on your iPod and spend a lot of time with it blasting into your ears, it’ll damage your hearing. (Duh.) So they sued Apple.

Apple responded by creating software that enables you to set a maximum volume level for newer iPod models, including the Video iPod and the iPod Nano. Read more about it here: Apple Releases Software to Set iPod Volume

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, video

Informit.com posts sample Chapter of QuickBooks book.

You can now find a sample chapter of my QuickBooks Pro 2006 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide, in HTML format, on the Informit.com Web site. The chapter covers entering sales and related topics.

I used to know how to spell.

Plagiarism is not spelled plagerism. How embarrassing to have spelled it incorrectly — in the title, no less — of my previous post. I just fixed it.

Spelling checkers in word processing software have made me lazy. Why know how to spell a word when my word processor will simply underline it for me to call it to my attention if I get it wrong? Or, worse yet, simply fix it for me, as Microsoft Word often does? In exchange for convenience, just a little more of my mind is being sapped away by disuse.

WordPress, which I use to maintain this site, does not have a built-in spelling checker. That’s why you’ll see so many typos and misspelled words here. There’s no red underline to flag possible problems, so I just don’t notice them. I have, however, made a special effort to look up the spelling of words I’m not sure about (such as disuse and misspelled earlier in this entry). I do that with the Dictionary widget that’s part of Mac OS X. I leave it open and press F12 whenever I need to use it. Enter what I think is the right spelling and let Dictionary tell me if it recognizes the word. If it doesn’t, I think it out, trying to come up with the right spelling. It’s a good exercise for my brain.

The Dictionary widget is also useful when I’m reading an article online and need a word defined. Rather than try to glean meaning from use, I can just fetch the darn meaning to have a firmer grasp of the word and build my vocabulary.

If I can’t figure out a word’s spelling, I use Google. I enter my best guess at a word in Google’s search box — for example, plagerism — and Google instantly responds, “Did you mean plagiarism?” Uh, yeah. That’s what I meant.

Now at this point, Miraz, if she’s reading, is asking herself why I don’t use MarsEdit, like she does, to work with my WordPress blog. I tried it, but I wasn’t very impressed. I really don’t like using a lot of different software to complete a task. It’s more to learn. It’s more to figure out when it doesn’t work right. In my case, I couldn’t get MarsEdit to handle pictures the way I needed it to and I didn’t want to invest the time to make it work. I’ll probably use MarsEdit to do my blogging during the summer months when I’m away from a handy Internet connection most of the time.

So if you find a misspelled word in these blog entries, have patience with me. It could be my flying fingers unable to hit the keys in the right order. Or it could just be that I thought I knew how to spell the word…but was wrong.