if you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail
Well another minor update for the iOS app. Since I resolved my hosting issues this is all going well. Smooth as silk in fact.
With the new version 5 of the Facebook app for iOS also popping up today it a big day for favorite apps. The Facebook app is much slicker and faster. Really about time as the old version was getting quite sluggish.All for now!
There is a new version of the iOS app for WordPress 3.1. It looks different works different. The app is more consistent with other iOS apps. The sideways move to access the menus.
It is now possible to access lots of functions this way including the dashboard.
There doesn’t seem to be anyway to edit photos from within the app. Otherwise it seems a great improvement.
A very slick improvement.
Now an addit from an iPad looks even better than on the iPhone
I have been a little frustrated with WordPress of late ,three issues have been bugging me. Updating only has only been possible after disabling plugins as a message appears about memory allocation. I followed advice from the WordPress forums and edited files increasing the memory allocation but only with partial success. I must confess that my knowledge of what is “under the hood” is limited. Regardless I have tried to find a solution.
The next hiccup was the WordPress iOS application this stopped working. More cryptic error messages and I gave up. My hope lay in the new release of the App, which sadly didn’t happen. The problem here was even more of a mystery than the previous problem.
The last issue was a plugin called WPtouch Pro, the folks at Bravenewcode couldn’t figure it out. This was another case of a memory allocation error!
I continued off and on trying to find an answer, this was ultimately found in the WordPress forums. After all theses months the answer lay on the web hosting service. I contacted them and had the amount of memory allocated to PHP increased. Voila WordPress iOS works on my iPhone and an iPad. moe importantly the plugin WPTouch also works! My faith restored.
Here is view out my office window taken with an iPhone and posted via an iPhone. Typing is tricky with the virtual keyboard, but manageable. I wrote this about two years ago and only found the draft on my phone today. This must have been originally done on version 1 of the WordPress iPhone App. It had been stored as a draft page for my blog that’s why it never got posted. In a post yesterday I noted how much the App has improved over time so the opening couple of sentences reflect an older clunkier version. I was also just coming to grips with my first iPhone a 3GS.
Another minor update just testing from the ole iPhone. Seems good no problems with the photo this time. Well may be something from the library.
this is version 2.8.2 and the photo of the pork is unrelated.
A new version of Microsoft’s perennial word processor Word 2010. This is s part of the Office 2010 suite. This version appears to me a more polished version of Office 2007. I am not complaining as I was eligible for a nice academic discount so it wasn’t expensive. I like being able to hide the ribbon easily, but I do prefer this to the old style file menu. I think it’s easier to find things. The learning curve isn’t too steep.
I like the new file tab which is an improvement on the big button on Office 2007. That about it the main purpose of this post was to do the writing in Word and publish directly.
I have just downloaded and installed Office 2010. On first impression Word 2010 seems faster and more responsive than the 2007 version that I have just upgraded from. Everything is in the same place and I am one of those who liked the ribbon from the start. I do however like the ability to easily hide the ribbon which frees some screen real estate. This post is being typed in Word 2010. The other feature on first use that is nice is the new file tab which gives access to all the things that you would expect in a file menu. This replaces the big button that was a feature of the previous version word.
Anyway I have managed this without resort to the instructions and all of my setting and document history have been upgraded without any problems. I also use Endnote X4 and this translated across without problems. The only thing is that I have changed my version of word in the middle of a major project. Time will tell if this has been a risky strategy.
Addit
I have noted that Word 2010 loads in a different manner and on the first load after a reboot and this seems to take longer. But once loaded hums along nicely. I might add that this is being run on a Win7 64bit notebook with an Intel core i5 2.54ghz processor.
Well here we go Internet Explorer 9. I must say it’s the prettiest version of this software i have used. It certainly noticeably quicker than the previous version and am almost reluctant to say this but a bit smoother than my current favourite browser chrome version 10. I’m not quite ready to abandon my favourite yet but I’m very happy so far with this new version of Internet Explorer having just installed the RTM version. I dabbled with the beta release and the release candidate version and had not experienced any problems with either.
So it looks good performs well I got the dashboard of my blog open hammering away with Dragon NaturallySpeaking all is good.
It would almost seem that I’m having a bit of a feast of posting on the blog. It’s not that I’m trying to enter a novel writing competition but rather I am testing Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11. This is my third post in two days. The two previous posts were both done using the admin pages of my WordPress blog but this one I’m writing within Word 2007 and publishing from within Word. I can add at this point that Dragon NaturallySpeaking correctly added WordPress in its camel case. In fact trying to use the word font made the font dialogue highlight that’s probably because I paused before using the word. But otherwise I must say that the trial is going quite well.
I can certainly pump out quite a few words very quickly using this software. It does seem strange sitting in the study by myself talking to the computer but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to type as fast as I’m writing this. There is always the danger when using this sort of software that you write as you speak. If you are not watching the screen and reading could go a long and get some very strange or misspelt words. And there’s absolutely nothing stopping you having run-on sentences.
Setting up the software didn’t take very long at all, a matter of about 20 min. The program seems to be able to localise to some of the more common versions of English including United Kingdom United States, Australia and New Zealand. I’m not sure whether it would cope will that Irish or Scottish accent but since I don’t have one of those I guess I will never find out. After each use the program takes some time to shut down and this might be to do with the program updating an individual’s profile. The program is certainly built around individual profiles so I imagine several users would be able to access the software on one computer.
Thinking about your writing certainly helps; I’m writing this as I go. This means that I have to halt think and then proceed. However I have now written about 400 words in the space of about 7 or 8 minutes. I think this would take me quite a great deal of time if I were actually typing. My typing is certainly beyond the hunt and peck method of using two fingers, but my typing is certainly does not have any sort of secretarial speed. I think it would be difficult using this software in an open office or even in a shared office. But working alone as I am now it seems to work quite well. There is some background noise I can hear but the microphone obviously isn’t picking this up so there is not any interference. I can report that Dragon NaturallySpeaking didn’t try to type the sad lamenting meow of our cat.
So here I am nearly up to 500 words the accuracy is quite good it does misunderstand some words but if I speak like a radio announcer and I mean a proper radio announcer like those found on public radio there is no problem. I haven’t mastered all the complex commands that come with this program it is possible to change words, delete things, highlight things and even control the computer with this program however my main reason for using it is to speed up my typing. Inevitably this may lead to more blog posts.
I have been using WinRAR some years now and generally find it to be quite a good program. However every now and again I get error messages. Generally speaking whatever I’m un-archiving seems to go okay despite the error messages. Recently I was an un-archiving something that I had downloaded and struck a problem with the an archive that had
very long filenames. My usual course of action is to Google for an answer. It turns out that this is a known bug of the WinRAR program. It seems it has a bug with filenames that are more than 260 characters long. Arguably filenames of this length are a little extreme however they do exist as I found out.
I searched around on the net and tried a couple of other archiving programs in trial mode. One was the venerable WinZip, which is now up to version 15, and this didn’t seem to solve the problem. Another program I tried was called Win7 or something like it. The latter program had a quirky interface and I just gave up.
I continued searching via Google and eventually came across a program called Pea Zip which is an open source archiving program. This program has a fairly straightforward interface and after installing it successfully un-archived what I needed without any errors. It did run noticeably slower than WinRaR rather but ultimately it did what I wanted it to. I was then able to use what I downloaded without any trouble.
I’m not sure that I will use it to replace WinRAR completely it does however offer another option for un-archiving files. I notice that there is a WinRAR version 4 in beta so maybe this will solve the problem. however Pea Zip offers a cheap alternative. I’ve installed it on my Windows 7 64-bit system without incident, and there are versions for most current operating systems including Mac and Linux. So go on over and visit their website at http://peazip.org/and give it a whirl.
