Cool computer things
Anthologize – A Promising WordPress Plugin That Turns Your Blog Into a Book
More than one WordPress-powered blog has made the leap into book format and many more are hoping to follow suit. A WordPress plugin under development just made the platform the perfect place to start if you’re an aspiring author. Anthologize is under development at the Center for History and New Media of George Mason University currently at version 0.3-alpha and it already allows you to export your blog posts to a number of eReader formats.
Anthologize development is helmed by Boone Gorges, a developer specializing in BuddyPress. As a WordPress plugin, Anthologize is simple to install. From your WP admin panel, just go to Plugins, Add New and do a search for Anthologize. You can then install it from there. You can also find it and manually upload it to your servers from the WordPress.org plugin site.
Once you have the plugin installed and activated, you’ll find a new entry on the left-hand column of your WP admin fittingly called ‘Anthologize. If you expand it, you’ll see some options and since this is your first look at Anthologize, you’ll want to create a new project.
MakerBot and 3D Printing Premieres on CBS News
One of the segments of tonight’s CBS News featured MakerBot, the open-source 3D printer. The MakerBot is able to produce three dimensional objects in plastic up to 4″ x 4″ x 6″. 3D printers are nothing new but taking the open-source approach and being provided affordably in home-built kits is what makes MakerBot news-worthy. RepRap is the project that MakerBot is derived from and considers itself a self-replicating machine since it can print its own parts.
Host Your Own URL Shortener with Shorty, YOURLS, or Others
I’ve been in a domain buying mood lately and decided to purchase 404ts.com to complement my primary but longer domain 404techsupport.com. While thinking about having a short URL for the sake of convenience, what else am I supposed to do with it than setup a URL shortening service? Similar to Bit.ly, TinyURL, Is.Gd, and the dozens of other sites out there that provide URL shortening, hosting my own service gives me a few features none of them can: control and branding. If I became dependent on one of the sites out there and they decided to close up shop because they found there’s no revenue in the URL shortening business, all my links would go with them. By hosting my own service, I have full control of the database and the service operating on my server. Also by hosting and using my own domain, I get to brand my links as 404 Tech Support-affiliated instead of a random long link. So here’s an overview of two of the services that I checked out, Shorty and YOURLS, with other options at the end of the article. If you have your own hosting, these services are so easy to setup, it’s worth looking into.
Microsoft Research’s Sleep Proxy
Saving energy through IT in an enterprise environment almost always comes at the expense of trading off something else. It could be security by not keeping machines on for patching, it could be accessibility by not keeping machines on for remote access, it could be inconvenience by having to wait for your computer to boot up and complete all of its start up tasks, or it could be any number of other things. That’s why the Sleep Proxy system that Microsoft Research has been testing through its Greening Corporate Networks with Sleep Proxy project is so interesting. They’ve taken the approach to make the process meet all of these needs and be as seamless as possible.
Light-Bot 2.0 – A Game Teaching Programming
I enjoyed writing my last post that covered a tech-related Flash game, Manufactoria, and others seemed to enjoy it as well. So, I think this can be a welcome addition to the topics that 404 Tech Support writes about mostly because I’ve found and been enjoying another Flash game. This game is called Light-Bot 2.0 and requires the player to implement computer programming-like logic to complete the different puzzles.
Product Review: Apple iPad
I had the opportunity this past week to check out an iPad and use it as my own for a few days. The conclusion I’m walking away with is that I’m underwhelmed and grateful that it wasn’t my own money that I spent on the gadget. This may be one of the few critical iPad reviews out there but of course, it isn’t all negatives. There are a number of positive features on the device but still the overall conclusion that I walked away with was that the device was rather frustrating and didn’t quite have a fit in my habits. For the record, I’m testing the 16GB (no 3G) iPad.
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