Jerry D. Russell dot Com

In the battle of the search engines, Google has long held the top position. Most of the big G’s die hard followers claim it is the simplicity of the tool that keeps them using it.  Another smaller percentage will claim that they would rather eat week old gym socks than to have anything to do with a Microsoft product. In either case, they may need to rethink their stance on search.

Enter Microsoft bing, the new search platform from the software behemoth that has brought the world such mediocrity as Windows 95 and Windows Me along with such utter failures as Internet Explorer and Windows Vista, just to name a few. (Does anyone remember Microsoft BOB? <shudder>.) With a long sting of disappointments and failures under their belt, it would be a fair assumption to immediately class the newly re branded Microsoft bing as one of the many almost-great ideas the company puts out on a fairly regular basis. The only problem is, it’s not a failure at all.

On the contrary, bing works, and it works very well.  Under threat of being ostracized by every member of the “I hate Microsoft Society”, I’m willing to say that so far I’m willing to skip Google as my primary search engines in favor of this new Microsoft tool in most cases.

Wait! Before you get out your torches and pitchforks, let me explain why!

Bing is fast…  Blazingly fast. While Google Search isn’t usually slow, bing just feels faster, and that counts for a lot when you’re in the midst of looking for something important.

Bing gives you options… need to refine your search?  bing hands you a list of suggestions in a manner similar to Apple’s spotlight or Microsoft vista’s Desktop Search.  This can drastically reduce drill-down times. The mouse over quick view of page content can be a lifesaver in rejecting that “almost relevant” page or two in the listings.

Bing listens and tries to adjust to what you’re looking for. Rather than just throwing out a list of keyword specific results that may or may not have the slightest thing to do with what you were actually searching for, bing seems to take the time to put your searches in context.  Google doesn’t bother with little things like this; it deals more with keyword relevance. bing responds a lot more like the original Ask Jeeves, which was my search engine of choice before it was bought out in the early 2000’s

Bing Feels finished… This may be the Mac user and designer in me, but Google’s interface just doesn’t have what it takes to be considered a modern application. It stagnated somewhere in the early 90’s and now relies on iGoogle to make it feel mature.  Bing delivers a modern experience without the need to log in to an account.  In my opinion this is a huge plus.

In short, I think bing is giving users all the options and power of Google Search with the added advantages of intelligent algorithms and a polished experience that far surpasses the competition.  This time Google does have something to worry about, because bing is bringing a new level of search to the table, and one I think deserves your attention.

Jerry Productivity bing, Microsoft, research, search, Tools

A few weeks ago I wrote about ecto, a blog updating tool for Mac and Windows. At the time I was singing ecto’s praises and while I still enjoy using it, I may have just found a tool I can live without even less, ScribeFire.

ScribeFire is a Firefox extension that can update your blog from your PC desktop in the same way ecto can.  It has all the basic features, such as spell checking, the ability to assign posts to categories, WYSIWYG formatting of posts and the ability to save drafts (or notes, as it calls them) for later editing,  but it has several advantages that I think make it more usable and user friendly than ecto.

First and most importantly, as a FireFox extension ScribeFire is 100% platform independent and runs equally well on my Mac, My Windows Machine and all four of my Linux machines.  This alone would have made ScribeFire worth looking into, but would not have kept me looking at it if it was the only thing it had going for it.

Another plus is that since ScribeFire is a Firefox extension, it’s always ready when you are.  The activation icon sits happily in the status bar waiting for a click from you, at which point Scribefire will happily launch and let you post on whatever topic you like with the page still visible.  If you need to do more research, just click the utton again and ScribeFire falls back to the status bar to wait patiently for you to continue.

Another advantage over ecto is ScribeFire’s ability to edit blog pages as well as posts.  While this might not be necessary all the time, it’s handy if you just want to quickly update a page that you already have posted.

Just like ecto, ScribeFire will allow you to highlight text inside any webpage and launch a new post with that text quoted in the new post.  The advantage of ScribeFire is that the formatting used to do so is customizeable, which leaves you in control of your citations, rather than leaving it completely up to the software.

On the downside, even though ScribeFire will allow you to add tags to your posts, it does not store the tags you already have.  this means no auto tag completion and allows for the possibility of mispelling a tag name.  In my installation, the post preview function is not working properly and ScribeFire has no facility at all for adding custom fields in WordPress. These are small issues to me, but may have more significance to you.

After only messing with ScribeFire for a few hours, I have to say that I’m impressed.  For the moment it’s my new tool of choice for most things, though I’m not quite ready to give up completely on ecto, which is a more mature tool.

Jerry Productivity Blogging, Desktop tools, Productivity, productivity tools, ScribeFire, Tools

The mighty mouse was never really one of the things that drew me to owning a Mac, but once I started using it I found it to be very comfortable.  Unfortunately this little gizmo does not deliver in any arena other than comfort.

If, like me, you prefer to be able tu use left click and right click (CTRL + click) functionality with this litle guy, you’ll find that because of the rigid case design, the Mighty Mouse from time-to-time has issues figuring out which “button” you actually pressed.

It can be quite annoying to suddenly have a menu pop up when editing a crob selection or other photo related task, but it’s even worse when it happens the other way around and the mouse clicks on a link you were trying to copy.

The side buttons may work for some, but I have relatively large hands, which means that I’m constantly dealing with unexpected activations of Exposé when I squeeze just a little bit too hard, or having firefox seemingly randomly jump to the page I was viewing previously.

Each of these hings is a bit annoying, but for me the real deal breaker is the trackball. this tiny little addition which also doubles as a third button is prone to getting tiny particles stuck in it.  Every time this happens (sometimes several times a day, even in a clean work environment) you’re required to clean it by flipping the mouse over and rolling the ball over a damp, lint free cloth.

The loss in productivity from just cleaning the trackbal has cost me more time than the mouse is worth. I’m hoping that Apple will re-think this portion of the Mighty Mouse soon, but from all appearances even the next generation of iMacs is shipping with the same old flawed design.

For me, I’m going to go grab a Kensington bluetooth Mouse later today.  It has all the same features in much the same form factor, but includes an optical trackball that has no moving parts to get gummed up.  If you’re planning to buy a Mac soon, I would suggest doing something similar.

In the end, I have to say that Apple’s Mighty mouse was, at least for me, a mighty big dissapointment.

Jerry Productivity Productivity, Products, Reviews

The first rule of successful blogging is that content is king. to have a blog anyone cares about, you have to post, hopefully consistently and fairly often. If you run multiple blogs this becomes even more important. You need to post on each of them as often as possible to keep your readers coming back and get the attention of the search engines.

It’s bad enough to have to log in to multiple blogs to write your next post, but then there’s the visual editor of the blog platform itself. Web based visual editors tend to be clunky and error-prone no matter how hard the developers work and they have a nasty habit of changing what you type in them. If you are a Mac owner like myself, they simply don’t want to work with your mac, as many keyboard shortcuts that the editor expects also happen to control other parts of the system which can lead to a serious issue if you aren’t very careful.

If you’re on a mac and you’ve had these problems, try ecto. ecto is an all in one blog editing tool for Macintosh that has simplified my life immeasurably. I no longer have to log into multiple blogs to post. I no longer have to worry about the editor changing my code or even uploading images, ecto does all of this for me. Best of all, ecto uses the built-in Mac spell checking dictionary and follows Mac standard keyboard shortcuts. My routine has simply become something like: “Start at the top of the list and work your way down… Repeat.” having this ability keeps me on track and keeps me from forgetting to post on one blog or another.

Another advantage to having a desktop client like ecto is that it allows me to quickly turn the text from a website I’m viewing into a blockquote in a new post, with citation. This not only allows for quick and easy posting, but keeps me from violating copyright, as the source is properly cited and a link is automatically placed to the blog post or news article that I’m referencing.

The one place that ecto does not shine is in situations where you have a complex blog layout that requires the use of excerpts and custom fields to properly display posts. While ecto can do the job, it’s just simpler to use the web based editor and avoid the confusion.

In all, I have to give this piece of software a 9.5 out of 10. And in case you’re wondering; Yes, I’m writing this in ecto.

If you’ve been looking for a desktop blog client for windows, I’ll have recommendations for you in about a week when I get my micro-notebook set up.It will be my primary method for getting on the Internet when we move, so It has to be set up and functional as well. I just wish it ran Linux instead of Win-blows… Oh well. Can’t have everything, can you.

UPDATE: I should have done better research.  Ecto is available for windows as well as Macintosh.  (Why I didn’t see this when I looked the first time is beond me, but I just had to let all you windows users know.)

Jerry Productivity Productivity

What do you do when you’ve had an extended break from blogging and find that it’s nearly impossible to write? i found myself asking just this question at the beginning of this month. After almost 45 days of being under intense personal pressure, all I wanted to do was sit in front of my TV watching BBC America and wondering if my house had gotten dirty enough to be featured on one of their programs. It was close, let me tell you.

When I finally did manage to get out of my slump I found that I’d lost the habit of writing. it was nearly impossible for me to post even once a day, let alone the 8 to 12 times a day I had been posting before the world went sideways on me. The stress of the initial problem was gone, but I’d been out of the saddle for so long that I’d forgotten how to ride.

It isn’t easy to get back into the swing of things if you’ve been forced to take a long hiatus. Writing on demand is both a talent and a discipline. It took a long time to get to the point where writing that much in a day was “normal”, it doesn’t take long for your mind to rebel against the intensity of it all. but no writing means no money, so what’s a boy to do?

Simple. Start slowly and build back up. One post every day is a good start. Once that becomes habit again it is far simpler to add another post per day. It isn’t very long before you’ll find that you just keep writing as time is available. Writing = content. Content = Visits. Visits = $$.

If you’re having the same problem, just sit and write something today. Write anything. The subject doesn’t matter, the end result doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get back in and get your mind back in gear. the rest will follow.

Jerry Blogging, Productivity Blogging, Productivity, Professionalism, Work Habits