Tai Mingshen

Having just read an article on Problogger entitled “How to Restart a Dead or Dormant Blog“, I’ve got a pang of guilty conscience for not having updated Tai Mingshen during the last few months. I don’t feel too guilty, however, since my time has been well spent discovering other forms of social networking, including microblogging and wikis.

It’s so easy and immediate to post and receive replies via Twitter, FriendFeed and business-oriented instant messaging such as Chatterous and Yammer. It’s so gratifying to share and update information via wikis (once you get over the worry of your contribution not being 100% correct or complete).

I’m amazed at the ease with which social networking is being integrated using services such as Meebo, Ping.fm, Google Talk, Digsby and Scrapplet. Not to forget RSS feed aggregators (Google Reader is my favourite), which are essential for keeping up-to-date with blogs that post more often than Tai Mingshen!

Although I prefer web-based tools because of the availability of my accounts from several PCs, I’ve got to admit that Adobe Air desktop applications are usually more appealing to use. TweetDeck is a beautiful application for keeping those tweets under control.

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I attended a very interesting First Tuesday meeting in Bergen yesterday, where the theme was social networking trends. The speakers were:

Rune Røsten, managing director of Nettby, one of Norway’s largest social networks.

Jill Walker Rettberg, who is an associate professor at the University of Bergen and research blogger. Jill has provided a summary of her presentation on her blog, jilltxt.net.

Kjetil Manheim, an advisor on digital services and manager of Tarantell Innsikt. His presentation is available on SlideShare.

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Following up from my previous posting, this application has become my favourite blogging editor after problem-free use since installation. Windows Live Writer 2008 even supports WordPress tags. However, you have to use the Keywords field, not Insert Tags, for them to be stored in the WordPress database.

There are a number of excellent plug-ins available; I’m currently using Text Template and Polaroid Picture, available on Windows Live Gallery.

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I’ve just installed Windows Live Writer Beta to see how it compares with the standard WordPress composing interface. The current build lacks support for WordPress tags, but I’ve read that these will be supported in a later version.

This is my first posting using the tool, so it will be interesting to see the published results!

Mashable has published a nice list of Top 10 Free Desktop Blog Editors for Windows.

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Whatis.techtarget.com has compiled a huge collection of cheat sheets and tutorials. There are cheat sheets (quick reference guides) for blogging tools, CSS, HTML, networking, programming & scripting languages, search engines, operating systems, applications and more.

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I’ve just tried out the My Video WordPress plugin developed by Levi Putna at OzBlog.com.au. This allows you to display YouTube, Google and Metacafe videos in your blog with a minimum of fuss, and also lets you control the size of the videos. It worked without any problems - nice work, Levi!

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I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.1. Since this release doesn’t include the WordPress Database Backup plugin, I had to download it from Il Filosofo and install it myself. This didn’t go smoothly. In order get the backup to work, I had to do the following:

1. Manually create a backup directory; e.g. /wp-content/backup-directory-name
2. Change the permissions on this directory to 777
3. Edit the backup directory definition in the plugin file wp-db-backup.php from
   define('WP_BACKUP_DIR', 'wp-content/backup-' . $rand);
   to
   define('WP_BACKUP_DIR', 'wp-content/backup-directory-name');
   so that it points to the newly created directory.

I found the fix after combining several threads on Il Filosofo’s discussion forums.

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Following on from my previous posting on CSS cheat sheets etc., take a look at Veerle’s blog, Jesset.com and HTML Dog; sites I can definitely recommend if you’re looking for web design and HTML/CSS tutorials.

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One of my New Year’s resolutions is to learn more about style sheets and templates, so I’ve been searching around for suitable tutorials and guides. The WordPress Codex has loads of information, but I found the Lorrelle on WordPress blog to be a better starting point. This site is a wonderful resource for bloggers, especially those using the WordPress platform. Lorrelle writes easily understood articles and provides links to many other relevant resources. Her listing of cheat sheets has given me a flying start on learning about CSS and much, much more.

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Tai Mingshen is a blog which started its life on Blogger.com as taimingshen.blogspot.com

Blogger and Blogspot provided a simple way for me to get started and learn about the world of blogging. However, I felt it was time to move on and develop this blog on its own domain, hence taimingshen.com was born on 23rd December 2006.

In the process, I’ve changed my blogging platform from Blogger to WordPress, so the blog’s layout and functionality will be further developed during the coming months.

I’m looking forward to sharing interesting articles I come across with a focus on personal development & productivity, technology, science, music and people.

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