Today on through the end of the week will be a busy time – may not have time to post. Or, I may have a lot of posts over the next few days.
The company I work for will be performaing a “DR” or Disaster Recovery test this week, and I’ll be participating. We always learn a lot about what a small group of dedicated people can do when we run a test like this, and we manage to have fun doing it.
So I’m going to try to “Blog DR” this time, just for fun.
Ugh! Somewhere I must have deleted a “/div” statement. The strange thing is that it shown up a few hours after I had done some editing of the index.php file, so it was hard to track down.
Thanks to the forums over at WordPress.org – they helped me find the simple things that most users miss when editing their layout files.
Ugh, more layout/rendering issues. I’ve had this happen before where the darn sidebar all of a sudden starts rendering after the end of the main page. Not sure what caused this all, but last time it had to do with the code from StatCounter being in the wrong PHP template file. This behavior started around 8pm CT tonight, and I had not made a change to the site, so I’m a little confused at the moment as to what is causing the problem.
Anyway, I’ll be working to figure out what the issue is and make it right. Sorry for any inconvienence! The sidebar content is here, just scroll down to find it.
UPDATE: Nothing so far, I’ve reviewed all the theme files, and believe it may be related to something else because it happens with the “kubrik” theme as well, which has not been modified on my installation. Well, I’ll keep working at it – strange though, because I did not change anything.
Would you like to see the first HTC flip-phone? If so, check out MS Mobiles‘ post on the new HTC STAR100 phone.
They’ve got a full photo spread on the new device, and a lot of information including the scoop on AKU2 (Push Mail update) and A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth Headphone) support built in.
Well there is more in their post than I can do just in hinting at, I mean they have a LOT of photos of the new phone.
Well, OK it may not be “new” news, but it had been awhile since I checked out the updates that coComment has been working on for their wonderful comment tracking service. Among the enhancements to already supported blogging software, they have added a Promotion page and an Integration page.
Both these pages have additional information on promoting their service and coComment functionality to additional blogging software. Go have a look when you get a chance.
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Overview
Attensa Online is a free basic RSS reader, available via both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. Similar to NewsGator, Attensa has products for purchase that fill a more feature-packed roll as News Readers. Attensa for Outlook ties into Microsoft Outlook similar to NewsGator Inbox, and Attensa Mobile (available soon) is targeted to mobile device users. The free Attensa Online product also plays a role in the other product offerings, mainly as a central synchronization tool, so you can access your feeds from anywhere.
Accessing news from anywhere has always been a useful part of the Internet experience. And Attensa Online answers that need in full with a simple, easy to use, speedy news reader. Attensa can be accessed from anywhere via browser, using a nice AJAX interface that makes reading your feeds quick and simple.
Primer
Before we get too far into this review, here are some links to read up on what RSS, ATOM, Web Feeds, OPML, and news aggregators are.
Features
The main attraction of Attensa is the simplicity of the interface. The list of feeds are on the left, while the scrollable reading pane is on the right. I was impressed with the ability to scroll the reading pane while the feed list remained stationary on the left. NewsGator Online does not have this ability, and you will enjoy not having to scroll back to the top of the page to move to your next feed. In addition, you can adjust the reading pane using three different view types. One displays the feed contents in a one-line-per-post view that makes efficient use of space, the second option shows two lines of the body of each post in a list view. Both of these view options use the upper-half of the reading pane for the list, and use the bottom half as a viewing pane – there are options to turn this off/on. The third (and my choice) shows three lines of the body text of each post, and allows for more space in the view list. The bottom viewing pane is not available in this view and each click of a feed’s post opens a new browser window (or tab) that displays the full post at the respective website.
There are the standard tools which allow you to mark posts/feeds as read, delete them, import new feeds via OPML, or add them manually. Again, there is no method for exporting your list of feeds once you’ve set them up. You can manage the feeds, by folder or category, but little else.
Usability
The simplicity of the AJAX implementation here is great, because all commands are available via a right-click on a feed or folder. It is quite intuitive to right-click and “mark all read/unread”, or to delete the feeds/folders. Performance was snappy in both Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.5 with very little hesitation between feed loads.
Summary
The casual or “newbie” RSS consumer will appreciate the simplicity and easy to read layout of Attensa online. Similar to NewsGator Online, seasoned RSS users would probably pass on the service as it simply does not offer any compelling functionality to match more mature feature-rich news aggregators.
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This is the same thing American leftists want to do in our nation. Heavily regulate speech and control who gets to do what and when they can do it. They think our Bill of Rights are a "living breathing document". They're not, they're God given rights recognized by the document.
“I’m a criminal because you didn’t stop me from being one. It’s all your fault.” 🤣
