Category: Technology

Another Slide Show Flash Utility

May be it is buyer’s remorse, right after I bought / installed / implemented the SlideShowPro, I started to find the next better slide show tool. And I found a pretty good one – Showitfast (what a name).

So, the comparison … Showitfast is more expensive (US$ 99 vs US$ 20), it is easier to use (no more Flash 8.0 installation and extension manager needed), but the generated Flash is uglier (I hated the function icons), however it include some nice effects (e.g. image slightly zoom out when display) …

What is my pick ? Stick with SlideShowPro for a while …

Have nothing to do in another weekend …

No matter which photo album I use, I find their slide functions are no good. I finally found a good slide show utility in http://www.slideshowpro.net/.

It costs US$ 20 and a few hours of work – installation, configuration, testing and integration with my other site. Good stuff indeed.

http://www.80days.com/slideshow/. Enjoy !!

Have nothing to do in the weekend …

Worried about upgrading any software, I kept using Gallery 1.3 for many many months. With nothing to do one weekend, I decided to something special …

… so I decided to do something to my photo album – such as integrating Google Map into it. Then, I

  • Downloaded the Gallery 2.0.2, the latest version and installed it
  • Migrated all albums / photos from Gallery 1.3.3 to the new engine
  • Twisted a few graphics, logos and css
  • Downloaded the Google Map modules and themes; installed it
  • Applied the Google Map API Key from Google and installed it
  • Found all the GPS coordinates of the major albums, map to the Google Map.
  • Twisted again some more graphics, logos and css

Dah dah …

http://www.80days.com/photomap/

How’s that ? For a three hours work ?

Three Websites, Three Web Tools

Finally finished the revamp of three web sites and I used three different web tools to do the job. One is a Blog tool, one is a CMS and one is a Wiki tool. So first question, why three different tools ?

It was a very good lesson to me, because I learnt that all these tools are targeting different requirements.

If your web site content is like a diary, a record of something and you don’t mind to present your content in a chronological order – then you should use a Blog tool. If your site is a news oriented site and you need to present your content by sections or categories, then you should use a CMS.

Lastly, if your site is like a knowledge base, you need to update the same piece of content again and again, and you want to present your content like a mind map – Wiki tool is the way to go.

Lesson Learnt: Different tasks require different tools.

Web 2.0 ?

All a sudden there is a lot of talks about the Web 2.0 – i.e. Gmail, Google Map, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Wikipedia etc. etc. They all use commonplace technologies such as AJAX, RIA, Wiki, Blog, tagging etc. etc.

But what exactly we are heading to ?

I recently revamped one website (80days.com) from PostNuke to Dokuwiki. And apart from some minor hiccups, the installation / configuration was smooth and Wiki is really a lot easier than CMS (if your document requires changes after changes like 80days.com).

And I am sure, there are better tools out there to make the web to be our web / application platform. Don’t wait, try it out.

Lesson Learnt: Time to evolve to next generation of the web.