Automate Your Business

Archive for November, 2009

I’ve just about cracked the back of a new version of the Javascript in Posts plugin, which will account for a lot of the issues people have experienced with more complex scripts.

For example, on my test WP install, I can have code like this:

<script>
alert(”ok2″);
alert(”ok3″);
document.write (”<BR>This is being done in javascript”);
display();

function display() {
document.write(”<br>And so is this”);
}

</script>

And everything works fine!

The only thing not working is code like:

<script src=”test.js”></script>

So once I’ve cracked that, I’ll pass it out to everyone to take a look.

A while ago, I ran a short competition to name a product. Well, I’ve finally gotten there….!

The delay has been caused by a re-think around the “SENuke alternative” concept. I’ll be releasing two products – one white hat, and in partnership with Paul Forcey, the other more black hat and launched just by me. We’re still discussing what will go into the white hat service, and once that’s agreed, I’ll announce what’s coming in the black hat product.

So.. the winner is: Robert King!

Well done Robert, and thank you to all who contributed.

I’m pleased to finally be able to say that version 3.07 of Caffeinated Content Scheduler is available. This adds functionality to not only support v3.38 of the Caffeinated Content plugin (which allows you to populate your autoblog with articles pulled from EzineArticles.com), but also adds support for non-English WordPress installs, as well as fixing a couple of issues.

The download details should already be on the way to existing customers, and if you’ve not yet purchased this product, but are interesting in finding out more, please see this page.

I loved Evernote… I hate Evernote.

(Evernote is a note-taking application – somewhere to store all those ideas, tips, and other useful info that you pick up online – or offline – complete with tagging, categorisation, etc).

Evernote 2.2 was fantastic. I foolishly upgraded to Evernote 3, which (like  most people) I assumed would give me extra benefits. But no! It’s essentially:

1. The capability to centrally store your data with Evernote.com (which you can then access via other PCs, online, via your iPhone, etc)

+

2. A missing set of features (removed whilst they adapt to the centralised data).

A few of those missing features were ones that I used regularly, which was disappointing. However, before I noticed this, I uninstalled evernote 2.2 and I no longer have, nor can I find, the installer for 2.2. So I’m stuck with version 3.

Well, I would be stuck, but I’ve found an alternative. It took me a long time, trying many, many note-taking apps to find one I liked. Then I was playing around with a piece of software, and realised it had all the features I like:

- Category-based notes + a richer tagging facility
- Date-based notes
- Short preview vs the “full view” capability
- A rich and ongoing development cycle to resolve issues, add features, etc.
- A stable platform
- An open and easy-to-use (for me) API (so that I can import all my old Evernote files into it).
- The ability to link between notes
- The ability to (relatively) easily transfer my data between PCs (or to a central web or FTP location)
- The ability to backup automatically.

And much more that I don’t use now, but will do in future, such as:

- The ability to change the view of notes to show titles only for lots of notes, as opposed to titles + previes for a few notes.
- The ability to create handy shortcuts in the side bar or in the “menu” area to frequently used notes
- The ability to auto-capture different versions as I update old notes
- The ability to create draft notes that aren’t visible in the main view.

And what was this wonderful software?

Was it Microsoft OneNote? No.
Was it any other formal note-taking application? No
It was…

Well, see if you can guess. Read that list of features again, and replace with word “notes” with “posts”. What do you end up with?

That’s right. WordPress.

Neat, eh?

Obvious, when you think about it.

OK, as far as I can tell, there is one difference between 3.37 and 3.38 which will impact the scheduler. The creator of the plugin has added EzineArticles.com to the possible sources, which has also entailed a change to the previous articles source, ArticlesBase.com

As such, if you are using articles, please bear with me one more day as I get the upgrade package for the schedule ready. I’ve finished writing it, and will be testing & releasing it tomorrow.

If you are not using articles, you can upgrade the plugins whenever you like on your WordPress blogs, then just install the Scheduler update later in the week. Using the 3.38 plugin on a blog when the Scheduler thinks it is 3.37 shouldn’t cause any problems if you are not using articles.