Ok…

So there’s been LOTS of work going on among the Triad lately.

HFO is midway through it’s efforts at re-creating itself.

It’s going to be a new and exciting site, and I personally can’t wait!

And several tweaks have been done here as well.

1) The XML / RSS pages have been updated.

Not only is it easier to navigate but I’m working towards listing the feed in iTUNES.

2) The Vlogs now play inline

So you don’t have to deal with a pop-up window to watch them.

3) And I’ve added the cool little calendar to the right of the page.

The Calendar highlights, in red, each day that there has been a Blog, Vlog, or Podcast.

Click on the red number to see the posts for that day.

All very exciting.

Some classified work has been going on behind the scenes as well, and it will all culminate in the launch of a new theme, and my RSS feed being available in the iTUNES directory.

Some big tasks still need to be done.

The “templating / style” system of Wiba has been a hack ever since I moved the main content to phpbb so I need to fix that before I launch a new theme.

Once done though it will be a big load off my to-do list, and all the old themes will once again be available.

Probably the biggest pain in the neck though is iTUNES.

I don’t have QuickTime Pro and I can’t find away to convert all my Vlogs to QuickTime with the “faststart” functionality without it.

And until I figure this out.. the iTUNES directory listing remains just out of reach.

This is a problem because I find I don’t even want to release a Vlog until I get a solution for this.

Which is slowing the content here. Sorry.

Now I know that most of you will say

“Um… go buy QuickTime Pro.”

To which I reply

“THIRTY DOLLARS?! Good LORD that’s a lot of money.
How about I give you a nickel and you sing me an iTUNE!”

But it looks like I may have to break down and get it.

Though… I’ll likely wait until after the holidays. All my extra cash is going towards presents at the moment.

So hang in there.

Thanks for visiting, and rest assured there IS activity.

Many good things are on the horizon.

+12 Kudos point to Dave for his work on this site, and on the HFO.

Well Dave did me a favor and made an update to my site that I had been “planning” on making for some time.

Now un-registered users who want to leave a comment will be asked to enter in a confirmation code that is displayed in an image at the time of posting.

That should cut down on the spam that the site has been getting in Blog comments and on the guestbook.

Thanks Dave.

Well as you can probably imagine the HUGE amounts of traffic that we get here at DougMeade.com is the envy of webmasters the world over. And accordingly many ill mannered marketers would like to leverage that traffic.

We’ve been hounded by spammers posting comments on the blogs, and leaving guestbook entries touting their snake oils and online casinos.

NO MORE!

Dave did me a favor and made an update to my site that I had been “planning” on making for some time.

Now un-registered users who want to leave a comment will be asked to enter in a confirmation code that is displayed in an image at the time of posting.

That should cut down on the spam that the site has been getting.

Thanks Dave.

Well the Vlog specific RSS feed is done.

You’ll find it here.

Now you can subscribe to the vlogs via your favorite aggregator.

(I suggest FireAnt… very cool application)

If you use mefeedia or something it should be in there too.

More enhancements to the RSS/XML area of the site are planned, but this is an important step.

Now go out… buy a Sony PSP, subscribe to my vlog, tell FireAnt to put them on your PSP and watch them on the bus.

… or something.

Wow been awhile since I added any site news!

Don’t let that fool you, there’s been plenty going on.

Yesterday Vlogs went live on the site and I’m looking forward to getting some more posted.

It’s lots of editing work and all that… but fun to do.

So look for more to come. Hope you enjoyed the last Vlog!

The addition of Vlogs is a long awaited accomplishment, but it doesn’t stop there.

The same functionality will make audio blogs available, as well as other forms of media!

Also you’ll notice a few other neat additions.

Tagging!

All the posts are now tagged with appropriate categories.

(check under the title for the “this post is filed under” line)

This will allow you to sort your view.

For instance if you only wanted to see Blogs that had video (Vlogs) then you could click on that category and only those posts would appear.

Very shortly I will add the same functionality to the XML/RSS page so that you can customize your subscriptions as well.

First though I have to add media enclosures to the RSS 2.0 feeds.

That should be done relatively quickly.

Tagging, Media, and the associated subscription feeds will be rolled into the news section of the site as well.

There’s no real ETA for the news upgrade, but stay tuned.

Lastly:

The Dev page has been updated.

One of the coolest “To-Do” items is the development of the mobile version of the site.

(designed for use on cell phones, PDAs, and PSPs)

Can’t wait to get started on that one!

I’m very pleased to announce that the Photo section is back up!!

It’s been down for a VERY long time (thanks to the hacking bastards that ruined my last site) so this is a great moment for DougMeade.com

Please explore the new and improved photo section and let me know what you think!

You can comment on any of the images you want right from the photo album.

You can also rate each picture!

It’s Hella cool.

Also The Quoteboard has been moved over from the Wiba platform to the current phpBB/Wiba 2.0 system.

That means you member logins will work with it, and we can do cool things later like vote for our favorites!

At the moment though the biggest advantage you’ll see is that the What’s New list will now be updated when the Quotes are.

There a couple new quotes already. (Dave and Myself have new ones!)

That’s all for now, but stay tuned.

There’s a lot going on in our Data center.

So I didn’t wear green but I pretty much turned my site all leprechaun.

Hope you enjoy the new theme.

Sorry it took so long to get launched.

Well the site made some steps last night.

The two mini-banners (geoURL and XML feeds) are starting to come around.
The geoURL data is hindered as the geoURL.org site is down.

There is another service starting up (geoURL.info) that is hoping to pick up the slack, but they aren’t as large yet.

Hopefully both will be viable soon, as it’s a neat feature.

The XML data is finally making an appearance.
(Big thanks to “iamtgo3″ from ipdg3.com for helping me figure out a syntax problem.)

I’ve got several RSS 2.0 feeds at the moment.

More feature rich XML feeds will follow… someday. But I’ve not taken the time to plan out what to put in them and how to layout the files.

For now please feel free to use the RSS feeds, and let me know if you need any help.

Ok ok ok…

I realize there are few things that need to be done to REALLY finish off the new changes around here.

Rest assured they are coming.

Soon your email will be hidden if you so choose (via your profile setup)

Soon your signatures will show up with your posts.

Soon you will be able to edit any comments you made so that you can easily fix type-os.

Well… that last one is a maybe.

I like making fun of all of your type-os…

Well Wiba (my pet web development project) has taken a drastic turn.

For the better I think.

Originally I thought Wiba would be a complete content management system.

Something like a .NET for php. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that this was both over kill, and redundant.

There are many great applications out there that do a good percentage of what I need.

Any good developer will tell you that if it’s been written once, doing so again is pretty stupid.

So now Wiba will we re-worked to be something more like a templating system.

Basically I want a system that will enable me to create sites for people that know nothing about web development, HTML, php, CSS, or any of the other acronyms out there. Many good applications exist for doing 70% of that.

Wiba 2.0 will focus on making use of those third party applications and still allow the site owner to point and click their way through site layout, design, and style decisions.

When its time to update the content.. that’ll be easy too.

This will of course take some time.

It is a complete re-work after all, but you’re seeing the first steps of that process here today!

DougMeade.com is now running on the first steps of this re-work.

You’ve probably noticed the new theme the site has taken, but that’s a tiny fraction of the changes that have been made.

(You can learn more about the new theme in the following Blog)

You’ll notice some subtile things at first:

1) You can register with the site now.2) Forms will remember your info once you register with the site.

3) The return of Eaton Web rankings, and web ring info.

But going forward there will be host of changes:

1) Polls2) Blog Trackback

3) RSS / XML feeds

4) The long anticipated return of the photo album.

That’s not to say we didn’t sacrifice anything…

1) The Blogger ping is no longer functioning on Blog updates.2) The PermaLinks for the Blogs changed (turns out they weren’t so Perma huh?!)

But rest assured, those things are being addressed, and the end product will be a stronger, more robust web application.

(Believe me it already is)

Stay tuned for more.