NevOn 2.0 Experimental

One of the things I was determined to do on my US trip last week (presenting at the New Communications Forum 2005 conference in Napa, California) was to get hold of an iPod Shuffle.

On Friday morning, Shel and I showed up at the Apple store in Walnut Creek to get one. I was after the 1-gig model.

But, out of stock. At least 4 weeks back order, the salesman told me. High demand everywhere.

So I bought a silver iPod Mini instead.

What a gorgeous gadget! About the same size as a pack of Marlboro Lights but half as thick, 4 gigs of storage on its hard drive (unlike the Shuffle which has flash memory), LCD screen with backlight, click wheel for navigation, weighs just over 100 grams (full specs).

Setting it up with a Windows PC was pretty easy, although getting it to work was quite tricky and required some fiddling which would present problems and concerns to someone who isn't too familiar with trying out workarounds.

And one major thing - on a Windows PC, if you don't have a Firewire port, you must have a USB 2.0 port. It will not work if you have only a USB 1.1 port. So if you don't have a very recent desktop or laptop (built within the past six months or so) that comes with USB 2.0 ports, you'll need either an add-in card (for desktop) or something like a USB 2.0 PC card (laptop) which I have. Works just fine connected to that.

While following the instructions in the setup guide was straightforward - install the iPod and iTunes software from the included CD and then connect the iPod - what happened was a continual warning on the iPod screen not to disconnect it. Nothing else happened: iTunes didn't recognize it and the iPod software installer just said it couldn't install the software as 'another process had locked it' (one of those really helpful Windows alert messages).

After delving into the online help on the Apple site, I finally just disconnected it (after listening carefully and not hearing any hard disk sound) and rebooted the PC. Then I visited Apple again and downloaded the latest iTunes there plus iPod Mini software, even though the iPod software I had reported it was the latest version. Reinstalled iTunes and the iPod software and went through the setup process again.

This time, the iPod software did install with the message on-screen saying I needed to connect the iPod to a power outlet so that the firmware could be upgraded. Even though I bought the device just two days ago, developments happen fast with hardware and software. So I did that and connected it to the PC again.

And this time, iTunes opened and recognized the iPod. It then proceeded to sync the music I already had on the PC plus the podcasts I had as well.

And what a listening delight! The interview podcasts Shel and I recorded in Napa with Fergus Burns and Jeremy Wright sound just perfect. Next up - setting up the ipodder software so that podcasts will automatically download and synchronize on the iPod into a playlist.

Oh, and the iPod Mini is also pretty good for listening to music ;)

(A quick word on pricing. The price differential US/Europe is astounding. I paid $269.54 including 8.25% sales tax. Compare that to Apple's pricing here in The Netherlands: €269.00 including 19% VAT. That's the equivalent of $350 at the latest euro/dollar exchange rate.)

Posted by Neville at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One problem I've consistently had with Skype in recent months is that, every time I load it up, I get an alert from Norton Antivirus 2005 to tell me that its worm protection feature has detected a remote system trying to access Skype:

No matter what I do, this alert happened every time I ran Skype. I just couldn't figure out why. Skype is included in Norton's list of permitted application yet Norton kept giving me these alerts.

The solution is actually very simple:

1. Close Skype if it's running
2. Open Norton Antivirus options and select: Internet Worm Protection > Program Control
3. In the resulting dialog, select Skype (which will be listed) and click on Remove and then click OK
4. Close Norton and run Skype
5. You'll get the warning, as per the dialog shown above
6. Select Permit and click OK
7. Exit Skype and run it again - you won't get the alert

Is this a Skype or a Norton issue? Or both? I don't know. This fix works - but you will need to repeat it each time when you install a new version of Skype.

Thanks to rocketman in the Skype Support Forum for this extremely helpful solution.

Posted by Neville at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Google released version 2 of its Picasa photo manager program today. I tried version 1 out when I had a blog on BlogSpot as I was keen to see how it integrated with Picasa's Hello, the service for posting photos to your blog. It worked well.

With TypePad, you don't need such third-party services, so I haven't used Picasa for over 4 months now. But version 2 looks good with some neat new and improved features, so it might be worth looking at it again.

There's a good concise overview on The Office Weblog.

Posted by Neville at 07:28 PM | Permalink

Engadget:

Sometimes when Skype rings we scramble to find the headset in time to answer the call. This wouldn’t happen with Actiontec’s Internet Phone Wizard. It connects a regular phone to a computer for making, and receiving calls using Skype. The box channels the sound through the phone instead of the computer speakers and mic. There’s also some echo-cancellation technology that enhances the quality of the call.

Engadget | Make Skype calls using your regular phone

Posted by Neville at 11:51 AM | Permalink

So I've put the new look at NevOn into effect. In doing so, I encountered a significant difficulty with TypePad.

What I did was upload two files to the root directory of the blog - the new style sheet plus the new banner image. The style sheet overwrote the one that was there. Then, I opened the blog in Firefox expecting to see the new layout - but the original one displayed.

I refreshed the browser, then emptied the cache and tried again - still the old look. Tried it in Internet Explorer, refreshed, emptied the cache - still the old look.

Then I thought: let's check the settings from within TypePad. Maybe it isn't just a simple matter of uploading a new style sheet. And that is the case - it is not just a matter of doing that when you make a major design change. At least, not with TypePad Plus, the service level I have, which doesn't let you directly edit page code or stylesheets.

When I looked at the design settings, I discovered that they were all still set to the blog layout as it was before the changes. Fixed pixel widths. The previous banner. So I manually adjusted the settings, uploaded the new banner through the settings interface (ie, not uploading it directly as I had done), and saved. This time, the new look took effect.

While I'm curious about how this all works, I'm not that curious! It works and I'm happy with the implementation. But note for any future change: whatever you do to the stylesheet, you still have to make the changes from within TypePad. And that has significant limitations on what you can do.

Posted by Neville at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Constantin sent me some new banners with crisper-looking text. Far better than those I was able to do myself with Paint Shop Pro 8, as per the RCs yesterday.

I've picked one which I like a lot, a considerable improvement on my efforts. But I encountered one little problem that's all too common with graphics for the web - shifting colours with GIFs.

Here's what I mean.

• Release Candidate 3 - with the new banner at the top. Look closely at the blue background.
• Release Candidate 4 - with my tweaked new banner version at the top. Again, look closely at the blue background.

With RC3, you can see a slight but marked difference in the blue background about three-quarters of the way along to the right. With RC4, there is no colour difference.

The banner in RC3 has the blue set as 345C84 (RGB: 52.92.132) whereas the colour should be 2D5781 (RGB: 45.87.129) as it is in the blue background behind the banner.

The way I solved this was to take the banner and make the blue (which has palette entry number 28) as transparent, then save it as a new GIF image. No other changes.

I've caused this situation from the outset by selecting 2D5781 as the blue colour. According to the rather neat Color Schemer Studio which I've been playing with for the past week (it has a 15-day trial), this colour is not web safe. So if you create an image with this colour and then save it as a 256-colour GIF, the colour will be matched to the closest palette entry, not this colour. There's more to it than that, though - here's a good explanation of web-safe colours on the Web Developer's Journal site.

Anyway, Constantin has been a massive help. So I'm almost ready to make the layout switch on my main blog. After a little further testing, mostly to make sure I don't mess up the style sheet, and some re-ordering of the sidebar items (it's a bit disorganized at the moment) in the blog, I plan to make that switch sometime later today.

Posted by Neville at 02:14 PM | Permalink

(Posting this with BlogJet. Yes, it does support multiple blog accounts. Thanks, Dmitry, for explaining how. It is actually quite simple to set up, when you know how.)

So I've tweaked the font size for 'NevOn' in the banner graphic so this further layout is really a minor increment:

• NevOn layout: Release Candidate 2

Not wholly happy with how the words look in the banner - not as crisp-looking as I would like - but that's the best I can do with Paint Shop Pro 8.

Sleep on this, decide tomorrow.

Posted by Neville at 06:40 PM | Permalink

Constantin's ideas and suggestions for the new layout I plan to implement on my main blog have been extremely helpful. The new layout is a 'minor current design refresh,' not a brand new design.

Thinking about what he suggests, I've now got very close indeed to what I'm happy with. Re-did the banner graphic with laptop-typing at the left now. I used a style sheet (style_1.css), edited the banner image location and file name and changed the alignment to 'left' rather than 'center.' The more I thought about how I re-did the banner, the more ranging it left seemed logical.

So here's the new layout:

• NevOn layout: Release Candidate 1

Yes, I like the look of it taking up the full screen width rather than the narrow columns with lots of space either side. The only thing I don't like right now is that 'NevOn' in the banner is too big, ie, font size. I'll re-do the banner with the name slightly smaller.

Doing all this in Paint Shop Pro 8, which is all you really need for simple work like this.

Posted by Neville at 05:40 PM | Permalink

Yesterday, I joined the beta programme for testing the new voicemail service that Skype may be rolling out soon. I posted comment about this service last week on my main blog.

It works just like any voicemail service. If you call someone who's also in the beta programme, you can leave them a voicemail. I have it set so that another Skype user can leave me a voicemail if I'm not online. I also have it config'd so that if someone calls me on Skype when I'm already on the phone, the new call diverts to voicemail.

In a word, it's excellent. I'll post more comment about it here as I use it more.

When will it be available? Hard to say. My guess: sometime during Q2 if the testing is successful.

Posted by Neville at 12:34 PM | Permalink

I was having a quick Skype chat with Eric Rice first thing this morning (about midnight his time). I'd just read his post about the iPod Shuffle, in which he offers a positive view about it and podcasting.

Eric has a brilliant suggestion for how to use an iPod Shuffle in the podcasting context that more than balances the negative views expressed yesterday by Doc Searls and Adam Curry that I posted commentary about on my main blog - promo giveaways as part of promoting a podcast and/or evangelizing it.

Further comment on main blog later.

Posted by Neville at 12:16 PM | Permalink

In my email this morning was an overnight note from Constantin Basturea who writes the PR Meets the WWW blog. Not only that, Constantin is the architect of the Headlines from PR Weblogs list and the owner of The New PR Wiki CEO Blogs List.

He has some great suggestions for layout ideas for my main blog. He did more than just that, though.

Constantin took those ideas several steps further by actually creating some pages so I could see what they looked like:

I tried a couple of tricks for the layout of your blog. First, I tried to see if there's a way to center the banner -- and I found one. Please see:

The only problem I see with this approach is that the banner will stay aligned to the right, and it will not look so good on very big monitors (bigger than, let's say, 1600x1200 px). But again, few people have such monitors right now.

In my email back to Constantin, I said I'd place these files within this experimental blog as I will be looking at them quite a bit, so rather than consume his bandwidth let's consume mine.

The most interesting thing here to me is the use of style sheets. That hadn't occurred to me. When I read Constantin's email, I had one of those duh! moments. Of course - a style sheet. I think I was too wrapped up in the assumption that I couldn't do a style sheet with my Plus service level on TypePad, as you can't dive directly in to the HTML code in the template.

That's erroneous thinking, as within the root directory of the blog, I see a file called 'style.css.' It might be just a simple matter of uploading a new style sheet file to overwrite the existing one.

So I have plenty more to do now with this design experiment than I originally thought. But that's cool!

This really is a massive help. Again, Constantin, thanks for your knowledge, skill and selfless help.

(Constantin was also my 'design mentor' when I first created a blog on TypePad, last July. He had some great suggestions that helped me understand how do some things on TypePad that would have taken me ages otherwise. A wizard!)

Posted by Neville at 11:51 AM | Permalink

(Using ecto again as BlogJet doesn't support mutliple blogs on the same account. Big weakness of that program.)

Using the banner from the main blog just doesn't look good here with the solid blue across the whole screen width. Plus re-creating it again, I didn't do the height the same so the overall solid look was way too much.

I've reverted back to the text headline as I re-think some more.

Blue text (2D5781) on a white background. Getting a bit closer to how I think I want it, but too much white overall. Added the faint silver tint (F2F2F2) to the left and right columns as per the main blog. The idea here is to help focus the eye on the main content in the center column. But, that white headline/banner background makes for too much white.

More experimenting tomorrow.

Drew dropped in earlier, left a comment in the previous post. Nice. Took me a bit by surprise, though, when I saw the Gmail notifier popping up with the comment notification from TypePad as I thought this blog wasn't on any radar screen. Obviously is :)

Posted by Neville at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

(I'm posting this using ecto for Windows, see how it works in this blog as part of the profile that ecto recognizes.)

So, re the banner.

One of the things I've not been able to figure out in TypePad is how to center the banner image. Whatever I do, it just won't center.

What I'm going to try is to recreate the current one with a transparent background, so you'll just see the title and the laptop-typing image. Then, I'll set the banner background colour to what it currently is on the main blog.

Then it won't matter too much if it's not centered. I think.

See what happens.

Posted by Neville at 06:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The template for this blog is a 3-column one, which I've customized so that the blog displays across the full width of the screen rather than in the narrow columns that are so common on blogs.

The settings are these:

• Left column: 200 pixels
• Center column: fluid
• Right column: 200 pixels

I like how it looks. My main blog has the same left and right column settings, but the center column is set to 500 pixels.

Before I make a change (and I will), I need to re-do the graphic banner on that blog. It's designed to 900 pixels width. I think I'll need to do one of two things:

1. Either keep it as is but ensure the banner background behind it is exactly the same colour; or
2. Think up something entirely new.

I'll likely experiment with it here!

Posted by Neville at 03:31 PM | Permalink

I've just set up this new experimental blog as a place to try out some things, mostly design and layout ideas.

I've not really explored all the options TypePad offer in this regard, and I don't want to mess around with my primary blog.

So let's see what develops here.

Posted by Neville at 02:39 PM | Permalink