March 7, 2011

Idea: A simple way to improve load-time performance by lazy loading some of the content on the page. Answer: Wijax. The more content in the initial download of the page, the longer readers have to wait to see it. Some content is critical to each page load, but why make people wait for every last [...]
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April 23, 2009
A few weeks ago I said I no longer needed the Wufoo embedding code that I’d put into bSuite. I was wrong. So I’ve taken another look, fixed the code from my old post, and coded it up into a stand-alone plugin. I’ve added installation and usage instructions to the bottom of the original post.
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March 23, 2009
I tossed this together a while ago, and it even made it in to bSuite for a time, but I don’t have a need for it anymore, and I’m cleaning house. Download the simple plugin here: wufoo_shortcode.php. Save it as wufoo_shortcode.php, upload it to your WordPress’ wp-content/plugins/ directory, then activate it. To use it you’ll [...]
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March 16, 2009
I’m cleaning house in bSuite, and I’ve decided that this shortcode function for embedding Slideshare items in WordPress needs to go. Rather than totally toss it away, however, I’m posting it here in case somebody else finds it useful. function shortcode_slideshare( $arg ){ // $arg = shortcode_atts( array( ‘id’ => FALSE, ), $arg ); [...]
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November 18, 2008
After writing the project page for wpSMS I didn’t have much more to say in a blog post announcing it. The cool thing about writing Pages in WordPress is that I can create a taxonomy like /projects/wpsms/ to place them in. The downside is that new pages never appear in the RSS feed. So I [...]
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September 24, 2008

WordPress‘ Pages feature makes the popular blogging platform a sophisticated CMS. bSuite adds a few features to make it even better. Write excerpts, tag, and categorize your pages WordPress excerpts are an underused but powerful feature that allow you to explain to your readers why they should read the page you wrote. Tagging and categorization [...]
Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology |
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July 4, 2008

For the past year or so I’ve been wanting to design a non-bloggy theme for this site — a beautiful theme with a magazine-like front page showing the most recent post in a handful of categories. But I’m further from it now than last year, so it’s time to move on. Which isn’t to say [...]
Posted in Uncategorized |
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June 11, 2008
I announced the bSuite 4 public beta not long ago, now I’ve just posted a new version to SVN that addresses some of the bugs and fleshes out some of the features. I have yet to update the bSuite page, but here’s a preview of what’s new or changed: Additional stats reports WP2.5-style tag input [...]
Posted in Technology |
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June 1, 2008

I’ve had a lot of features on the table for bSuite for a while, but this recently discovered comment from John Pratt (whose Smorgasboard.net is a lot of fun), kicked me into gear to actually get working on it again. The result is bSuite 4, which is probably what bSuite 3 should have been all [...]
Posted in Technology |
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March 30, 2008
WordPress 2.5 is out (and the WordPress site got a facelift), and I’ve already upgraded MaisonBisson using SVN. The changes are exciting, and seem to reflect a tradition that’s developing in WordPress of delivering some really revolutionary features in the x.5 release. The loss of file-based object caching was a bit of a problem, as [...]
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February 28, 2008

Take note of the “New Feature: Text this to your cellphone” line above. Adam Brin of Tricollege Libraries explained that the “text this to me” feature he built to send location information about items in the library catalog as text messages to a user’s cell phone is being used as many as 60 times a [...]
Posted in Libraries & Networked Information |
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December 17, 2007

There can be no arguments about it, machine tags are cool and they solve problems. And now they work in WordPress with bSuite too (svn only, for the moment). It’s not just because flickr popularized them that I like them, though it helps and you should definitely look at that stuff: The announcement Excitement from [...]
Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology |
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December 13, 2007

We all need a recognized icon to represent “translate this.” We’ve got one for feeds and social bookmarking, but where’s our translate icon? A lot of folks simply use flags, but that’s a bad idea because they’re “nationalistic, and represent ideals, boundaries, and political beliefs, but do not represent a language.” Joe Lee has developed [...]
Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology |
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November 26, 2007
ContentsFeaturesCMS enabling goodiesHacking goodiesWidgetsRecognitionI started bStat in 2005 when I ported my blog from pMachine to WordPress and needed to bring over the tools I’d built to identify popular stories and recent comments. I renamed it bSuite when I added tagging and other features to it. Now it’s bSuite 3. Get it here. Get installation [...]
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October 7, 2007
[[slideshow|height=375px|http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2410/1507480544_6070e748c5.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2282/1506619571_f36bd9da1b.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2249/1507473874_9ea5fede30.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2089/1507470768_fb2c7354b7.jpg http://farm1.static.flickr.com/251/1506610039_dbaee19d93.jpg]] We were there because of the Point Judith Corrosion Test Facility — the Rust Museum — but who can resist chasing seagulls? And who can resist posting the sequence? Assuming you’ve got a recent browser with JavaScript enabled, you should see a bit of a slideshow above. Photos on Flickr, [...]
Posted in Photoblog |
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The translate icon however says to me that a computer is going to translate something for me automatically, on demand. It’s probably not going to be as good as a human-translated page.
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