More to the point, I finally got to meet Podz and Matt.

For all the readers at home, you can check out the wordcamp flickr photostream.

Update 08.07.2006:

After lunch I went to talks about WordPress MU, server optimization and a really good one on microformats. I also met Ryan, Mark, Andy, and Donncha.

The day was made all the sweeter by the bumping afterparty. By the way, Ryan, your penalty for not attending the postWordCamp bash is to recommend to me a favorite beer of yours.

Well you can’t.

Sukah.

But you can hit up the next big thing (next great American novel, big) over at email for pics (dot com).

I’ve looked around occasionally for a good comment preview plugin for the site. There’s a few “Live” preview plugins around, but I find an as-you-type update of your comment really annoying. Plus, those plugins are entirely javascript based; they can’t know what the server will do to a comment after it gets sent off, so it’s not robustly WYSIWIG.

There seemed to be no good pre-fab solution fitting all my criteria:

1. Not live updating (who’d have thought you’d need to specify the negative)
2. All content filtered through WordPress ensuring solid WYSIWIGnitude
3. Delicious AJAX goodness to avoid hard refreshes

So I made my own.

Well, not entirely. I was inspired by the Live Textile Preview Plugin by Jeff Minard which is itself inspired by and an adaptation of some AJAX code written by chregu:bitflux.ch.

You, an avid and dedicated reader of this site, type in a comment and click “Preview”. The information you enter is sent back to my server via the snazzy XMLHttpRequest Javascript object. The server then decides how to format that information (where part of this decision is the filtration of the information through WordPress’ content filtration system – the real advantage of this method). The newly formatted information is then sent back to your browser where you can see exactly how your comment will look once you submit it.

If your browser doesn’t have all the clever bits necessary for all this, fear not. You can forego the comment previewing and just submit the comment as usual.

Testing

I get a number of comments on this post testing the system. A little odd, since it seems to me people should be testing the preview functionality (which is new) not the comment posting functionality (which is the same old WordPress standard stuff). Anyway, that’s cool. Go ahead. But please do me a favor; don’t just thow up some lame “testing” comment. Try sending over a poem or maybe something from the Farmer’s Almanac. Tell me your favorite book/artist/music. Don’t suck; try to be creative.

Via Dixie, I’ve heard of Thunderbird-centric solutions to this dilemma, but that runs into my second major feed problem. As a feed reader, Thunderbird is crap. It just doesn’t have all the bits I need (read “want”) and the interface is pretty kludgy. Plus, Dixie’s solution requires, as I recall, a physical object for the negotiation. That doesn’t solve the problem, it just transfers it from one object (me) to another (a usb drive). It still would not be centralized (in the sense I’m after) and, worse, it would be subject to my forgetfulness (How many times have I left my iPod in your posession, Dixie? You can imagine the pen drive would escape my notice with far greater frequency.)

So that’s out. My first idea was to set up some sort of feed server. It would grab all the feeds, and then I could subscribe to those central feeds both from home and from work. It’d need to have some sort of POP-like ‘delete item from server’ (server side) option, though, to prevent the same type of duplication I see now. That ended up being a bad idea: too much work.

So I looked around at a couple web based feed systems. “Heck,” I said, “I like web apps. Gmail has served me quite well, perhaps there’s some equally good feed reading web app out there.” Most notable was Bloglines. Somehow, though, it didn’t seem quite what I needed. In particular, the interface just didn’t cut it. Part of what makes Gmail great is it’s interface; it’s easy to use, intuitive and has that robust feel of a of a real app. Bloglines is not and does not, and that’s important. If I’m going to use something every day multiple times a day, I want it to be easy to use and to feel solid.

So I was out of luck. I was too lazy (and too ignorant) to set up some sort of central feed server of my own, and too picky to be happy with the web apps currently available.

In steps FeedLounge. Oh, man, does this look hot. I encourage everyone to check out the screenshots on the front page there and to take the little tour. The interface looks clean, and there’s keyboard action up the wazoo. Plus it’s geeky and zeitgeist friendly; as Alex King, one of FeedLounge’s developers said:

Pick your favorite web application buzzword: AJAX, tagging, keyboard commands, etc. – FeedLounge has got it.

I’ve asked to be in their beta testing phase, but I’m sure they’ve already received a lot of such requests. Maybe they’ve got a random number generator involved, and I’ll get lucky.

The news? Two new blogs driven by the best software for the job, WordPress (Sorry Dixie, xaosseed, Ted. It’s just plain true).

• Holly’s Hunger for Justice
• and Jeff’s \jeff{krimmel}.

Paul.za and I helped these two set up their impressive sites (impressive by their own accord, not through our help) in as many days. We may have to start some sort of venture. If we do, I say we call it “Phase three: profit!”.