Category: All

All posts across the whole website belong to this category. They might also belong to some other categories as well, but this one holds all of them. Hence the descriptive name – All.

SUP buys LiveJournal

Russian (or, Russian born) company SUP acquires LiveJournal blog service from Six Apart.  The two companies have been working together for the last six month or so, with SUP “taking care” of the Russian users of LiveJournal, which are an impressive 28% chunk of population.

How do I feel about this?  Here are some points from the top of my head, that will give you an idea:

  • I have an account with LiveJournal, but I don’t use it that much myself.  There are a few blogs there that I read, but this is not by any means a vital service for my web life.
  • I think that LiveJournal is lagging behind its competitors for some time now.  It needed a “push”.
  • I don’t think that SUP will be able to “push” it.  For a number of reasons.  (Russia lags in technological development and understanding.   SUP is company established by “an international management team”, not techies.  And so on.)
  • I don’t think that SUP (or any other Russian company for that matter) has enough trust to run a blogging service.  I think that many bloggers (especially political ones) will look for alternative services.
  • I have a feeling that monetization of LiveJournal will get a bit more aggressive in the nearest future.
  • I think that it’s time for a lot of people to take a look around and learn about other excellent blogging communities, such as WordPress.com for example.

Google Sites – another tool to wait for

Some time ago Google acquired JotSpot – a wiki-like web service. There weren’t much news about it since then though. It was obvious that JotSpot will join Google’s office applications in one form or another. But details and time lines weren’t clear. Slashdot runs a follow-up post, saying that JotSpot will replace Google Pages tool. It will be called Google Sites. Here is a relevant quote:

Based on JotSpot collaboration tools, Sites will allow business to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration.

Obviously, this is something to wait for. There is a demand for a tool like this among small companies, and existing solutions could use a little competitive push.

Update: More details about Google Apps plans for 2008 at this Techcrunch post.

More polish with WordPress plugins

I am still polishing a few things here and there on this site. If you don’t follow my Twitter stream, then here is a quick update for you since I wrote about it the last time.

  • Installed 404 Notifier plugin. When somebody hits a non-existing page on my site (Error 404 – Not Found), I get an email telling me which page was missing, from where the visitor came, and what browser he used. Since I don’t have the time to monitor my web server logs closely, it was often that I missed something and didn’t know about it. Now, this plugin tells me if I need to fix something. First few days were a real something for my Inbox, but it seems that things are slowing down. Most of the stuff has been fixed and now it’s mostly notifications from SPAM bots and references from some really old web sites.
  • Installed Search Unleashed plugin (and removed Search Hilight plugin). Search Unleashed provides an extended (and much needed) functionality for WordPress searching. First of all, it does plenty of highlighting. When you search for something on this site, or if you came to this site from search results of one of the major search engines, you’ll see your query highlighted on the page. Secondly, Search Unleashed extends searching with patterns. So instead of searching for “Limassol” and then “Limasos”, you can now search for “Limas*”. You can also use quotes to search for an exact phrase. And you can even use some logic operators. If you are interested in these things, check plugin’s page for more information.
  • Installed WP-Cache plugin. This one should have improved the speed of the site quite a bit. Unfortunately, I can’t make sure of that myself, as my Internet connection is the real bottleneck. However, I do have a feeling that loading of the front page is a bit faster. On the other hand, I get a feeling that posting a comment now is a bit slower. If you noticed any speed changes here in the last few days, please let me know in the comments.
  • Installed Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator plugin. This one should help Google (and a couple of other search engines that support the standard) to index the web site better. Hopefully, this will bring more people to the site and increase the number of comments we have here.
  • Installed WP_PingPreserver plugin. I often publish posts with links to a few previous articles, and when I do it, only the first of the articles gets a pingback. With this plugin, all of the linked articles should be pinged.
  • Fixed Google Analytics code. Now my statistics will work again and I’ll know better who visits the site, when, from where, and why. Spotting problems will also be much easier.
  • Fixed plenty of links. Mostly these were links to my old photo albums. Before, I used to have them on my server, but then moved them to my Flickr photo stream. The links in the old posts were broken until recently. Now you’ll be redirected to the appropriate section in my Flickr archives.
  • Added protection from some major SPAM bots and other “bad guys”. This was done through .htaccess file with many of the tips coming from this article. If you suddenly get a “Forbidden” error message or get redirected somewhere that you shouldn’t, please let me know via comments. If comments don’t work for you, send me an email, SMS, or IM.

Update: Oh, and I’m still moving things around the sidebars.  This should stop eventually…

Maxim’s upcoming surgery

Yesterday I briefly mentioned that Maxim is about to have a surgery.  That was very inconsiderate of me.  I got a lot of people worried without providing any details whatsoever.   And for this I want to apologize. Thank you all who called and wrote.

Here are some more details just to lift that burden of the unknown.  Maxim will undergo removal of the adenoids and a related clean-up.   We are arranging blood tests and paperwork, and if everything will go OK, he’ll be operated tomorrow (Friday).  The procedure is widely practiced and should take only about 20 minutes, but will require general anaesthetic.   He should be back home before the end of the same day.

We tried to avoid the surgery for as long as we could, hoping that the problem can be cured other ways.  Unfortunately, in his case, it can’t.  And pushing it further is getting dangerous for his health.  He has been sick pretty much every other week for the last 6 month or so.  More often than not he needed antibiotics treatment.  His immune system needs a break, as well as his ears, which suffered to the edge of degrading his hearing.

So, that’s how things are for now.  I’ll keep you posted on how it will go.

Once again, thank you all for calling and writing.  Your support is very much appreciated.