The first cut over went pretty well, aided by the “MAMBO2WORDPRESS IMPORT WIZARD“ script by Rodney Blevins which - with some modifications for table names and the like - at least allowed me to get the primary content into WordPress.

It will likely take another week or so to get everything settled in, and finalize the plugins - but then I should be able to get back to writing about technology. Some topics I plan to cover soon include:

• Reviews of the Mac web design packages RapidWeaver and Sandvox.
• A look at the “big three” content management systems - well, at least as far as I see it, anyway - Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress.
• Some of the new Web 2.0 sites I’ve been beta testing.

Recently, though, I acquired a MacBook Pro and am loving it. Not just for the fun of using a Mac again, but also for the fact that it makes a great development machine for web applications. So the site will be adding reviews and articles about the Mac, and using the Mac for software devlopment.

Some details of the work include:

• Mosets Tree used for the directory of hotels, restaurants, and other points of interest.
• A custom module was written to allow the creation of customized search blocks into Mosets. For instance: search restaurants by district.
• Galllery2 was deployed to handle photo galleries.
• Simple Machines Forum was deployed to handle message boards. A module which lists the latest posts is put on Joomla pages where appropriate.
• The Event List component was used to maintain the list of special events in the city, and their venues.
• The site’s existing recipes database was migrated to the Rapid Recipes component .
• About half a dozen custom database converters were built to migrate data held in multiple HyperSeek databases into Joomla.
• The “ad tower” modules on the right side (actually called “Five-to-One” module as it puts five ads in one block … and a subtle Doors reference) connects to phpAdsNew and also takes section and category source tags, so that ad campaigns can be targeted to specific areas of the site.
• A special header banner module was also created to connect to phpAdsNew and uses the same source-tagging logic.
• The prominent Flash Video Channel component is something I wrote. It’s driven by XML files to define the video, text panels, links, and overlay contents. XML files are the most convenient means to manage the data based on past experience, plus it allows easy swapping and scheduling of changes to the channel.

But first, a little history.

Back in the early 1990’s Sun Microsystems‘ motto was “The Network Is The Computer.” The idea was you could log into any machine and get at your working environment. The concept of the desktop PC becoming more of an appliance than a place to put things was novel and … well … ahead of its time.

Now fast-forward about ten years. With the new Web 2.0 applications you can write documents, do online research, have a complete desktop, and so on all from within a browser window. The browser doesn’t care where you are, what kind of machine you’re on, or any of the things which fueled the various Platform Wars of the last couple of decades.

Which is why I sub-titled this: “Everything Old Is New Again.”

The applications listed below certainly aren’t the only ones of their kind. In fact, competition in some of these spaces is fierce. These are simply the ones which in my analysis look the most promising or show the most innovative and well-thought out functionality.

Meebo (www.meebo.com)

Meebo at its core is a multi-protocol instant messaging client. With it you can connect to Yahoo, GoogleTalk, AOL, ICQ, Jabber, and MSN networks - with multiple accounts on each - and view all these IM sessions through one web page. The system more or less treats the page as an MDI (mutiple document interface) container, so your actual desktop isn’t getting cluttered with a zillion chat windows (or all the ads which IM clients now seem to be geared around putting in your face). And your actual computer isn’t getting loaded up with a heavy application.The system remembers your account settings and has complete logging of all chat sessions. You can’t do some advanced things like a native IM client - file transfer, video, voice, etc. But who cares? The purpose of IM is sending messages.

in August, Meebo also launched their MeeboMe widget. This is a Flash-based widget you can embed on any web site. Anyone visiting that site will appear in your Meebo IM as an anonymous buddy. While this is still a little raw, you can’t help but see where this could lead in areas such as customer service and community building.

NetVibes (www.netvibes.com)

NetVibes is a web-top application and aggregator. You can group your content into tabs. You can also publish your tabs in the “NetVibes ecosystem” so anyone who shares your interest can share your news. The system has an API so folks are always writing new modules for everything from weather to managing other Web 2.0 applications.

When I first saw NetVibes my immediate reaction was that “they out-Googled Google.” NetVibes has the same clean look and efficiency of interface that Google has, but it’s better looking and somehow more “fun” than a Google application. It’s hard to qualify, but the user experience just seems better than what other similar systems are offering.

{mosimage} BlinkList (www.blinklist.com)

Think of BlinkList as kind of a “next generation” of del.icio.us. The big difference is AJAX. BlinkList uses all the Web 2.0 design methodology to produce a bookmark manager which in some respects is better than native desktop applications of the same genre.

BlinkList offers the same tagging and browser integration as the wide array of other such services. Plus you can share your bookmarks if you wish, and look for other things people on BlinkList have bookmarked. Again, nothing new. But when used through the AJAX-based interface a lot of the clumsiness of working with so much imformation (how many 1000’s of bookmarks do you have?) is made more manageable.

Also, BlinkList provides thumbnails for the sites in your lists which is more helpful than you’d think. Many times when looking for a site that was visited months, or years, ago one will remember what it looked like more than what it said. Thumbails help out in this regard.

A boomark manager is a pretty important application for anyone who works on or with the Web on a regular basis. Your bookmarks are your knowledge base and previously you had to rely on your browser or an application to keep track of them all. Which also meant the headache of synchronizing these from machine to machine. And, what happens if you’re at work and need a bookmark that’s on your PC at home? With a service like BlinkList you have all that information available from anywhere on the web.

RoundCube (www.roundcube.net)

RoundCube is an AJAX-based IMAP webmail client. This means you can do a lot of the things you would do through a native application like drag-and-drop messages into folders. In short, it provides a nicer email experience for web users.

 
What makes RoundCube more interesting is that it’s Open-Source, where as the other offerings described in this article are free services, RoundCube is free code. Already it has been integrated into the Drupal CMS, and no doubt into a few other similar systems as well. The “big picture” on this is that users are no longer beholden to Google or Yahoo to be able to get a nice, easy-to-use webmail client.

Writely (www.writely.com)

Writely is a web-based word processor on steroids. The boost isn’t from fancy formatting feature - this is not a web-based version of MS Word. In fact, the formatting is pretty much limited to basic HTML kinds of constructs. Writely’s juice comes from the ability to have a revision history of your documents; to be able to share your documents with individuals or the whole world; and to be able to collaborate on a document with other people on the ‘Net.
Writely does a decent job importing things like MS Word, so it is possible to migrate content to Writely from your desktop. But you still do not want to use this to write your next novel - it simply isn’t built for that. But for things like keeping your resume online (and up to date) or working on a business plan with someone over the ‘Net, Writely is ideal.

 
The “big picture,” though is seen when one considers how much of business is based on text documents. A service like Writely opens the door for the kind of remote workplace that previously requires a fairly significant corporate IT infrastructure to maintain.

Summary

All of the products mentioned here are in beta as of the time of this writing. But the quality of the products - from functionality to user experience - is some of the best work I’ve seen in a long while. And as far as trends go, another on which is reasuring is that these companies are getting multi-million-dollar venture capital investments. A few years ago a VC would not even take a meeting with someone doing “another dot-com.” So hopefully Web 2.0 will also revive the business of building things for the Internet.

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Or you’re working on a site and your CSS used to work and now it’s broken and you need to roll back. But did you save a complete copy of the site from that time someplace on your drive?

Version control used to be something only software developers used. But with the complexity of web site design, temnplate design, and Flash design, it can be a real boon to anyone who developers for the Web. Fortunately, version control now integrates right into the Windows XP desktop thanks to free programs like Tortoise SVN.

Tortoise SVN is a fully integrated client for the ((Subversion)) version control system. Subversion is what many of the current crop of software development IDE’s use to manage their code. It’s a very robust system which allows for multiple projects, checking files in and out, backtracking to old versions, and reconstituting entire development areas on other disks, or even other PC’s.

The system is pretty easy to use. Easy enough that there’s no excuse not to. For local use, simply designate a folder on a drive to be the Subversion repository and create a folder hierarchy in whatever manner works for the work at hand. One folder per web site or one per client or one per project. Whatever fits. Which is nice because it means the user does not need to change the way they work with their files in order to use version control.

It is also a good idea to set the repository directory to be on a drive other than the main working drive. Doing so basically provides a back-up of the primary drive as well as version control. Another option is to use a service like cvs-dude.com. This is a nice, well run service which provides Subversion space and other services on their servers. The price is reasonable and if off-site data storage is a concern, then this is a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Note that Subversion repositories can be (and on Windows XP, should be) saved in native file format. Which allows the Subversion repository to be synchronized between PC’s (I do so between my desktop PC and my laptop) or archived onto removable media for back-up.

Once Tortoise is installed on user’s PC a new menU (shown here) becomes available to manage the version control. For the most part, the “Check Out,” “Add,” and “Commit” commands will be what gets used most. Desktop icons will have overlays which show the check-in state of each file, so it is easy to see if changes have been commited to Subversion. And, of course, each check-in allows for comments - so if a big Photoshop file is being checked in as “final art” the comment can indicate this, and then be searched for later within the repository if it is needed to be recalled.

The real trick to version control is actually using it. The good thing is that the TortoisSVN menu is so inobtrussive that its very easy to do so. Much easier than creating back-ups which require handing removable media and lengthy wait times while large amounts of data are spooled. By contrast, a Subversion check-in of even large files take only a few seconds. And while not as bullet-proof as backing up to a CD-RW, it is still a back-up.

More than a back-up. The Subversion repository holds a complete history of every file checked in, in whatever level of detail the owner sets for it. So when a client says they want a feature back that a month ago they said they wanted removed, that code is still in the repository. Or if you accidentally delete a layer from a Photoshop file that held the styles needed for a mennu bar; that too is still in the repository.

Version control can be the best friend of a web developer. And best of all: it’s all free.