PivotX is partly built with jQuery, Smarty, TinyMCE, PHP and MySQL.

I’ve got no intention of abandoning WordPress, but it’s interesting to experiment with alternatives like sNews and PivotX.

WordPress is such a large community now; there are so many themes and plugins to choose from.

My first impressions of returning to PivotX are positive. Setting up and making basic template changes were intuitive, at least for someone experienced with editing WordPress templates.

The features I particularly liked were the search and tag pages. Clicking on a tag link takes you predictably to a list of entries, but also shows related tags, external search summaries and a Flickr feed. Very neat!

On the downside, I couldn’t find a contact form extension and I wasn’t able to successfully insert an HTML form.

PivotX doesn’t have that many themes or plugins, but does have a large enough community to offer reasonable documentation and a constructive support forum.

It’s worth considering for self-hosted bloggers, that’s for sure.

Here’s a back-end screenshot:

More screenshots here.

Update #1: I figured out how to add forms. There is an “extra” template file, which can be renamed and modified with HTML or javascript. In fact, you could use any template file, but I created two for “contact” and email subscription.

Update #2: I received a twitter message that this isn’t a very thorough review. Well, I did say they are first impressions. Also, for the record, I am not a developer or a designer, just a long-time blogger. I will update my thoughts on PivotX here as I continue to explore the software.

Update #3, more likes:

• It’s very easy to create templates for special pages and sidebars.
• The site loads more quickly than a WordPress blog with lots of plugins.
• TinyMCE is built in and works, which means WYSIWYG.

Have you tried PivotX? If so, please comment here.

Update: Although I liked PivotX, I have discontinued the trial site for other reasons.

Well, they can actually be quite handy for editing pictures grabbed from the web.

I’ve been using Pixlr for just that purpose lately and I’ve been most impressed.

Pixlr is a flash-based editor with all the tools necessary for manipulating web images. Pictures can be cropped and resized, touched up with a brush, adjusted for color, curves, hue and saturation, etc.

It’s fast and easy to use.

There are extensions for Firefox and Chrome that make capturing a screenshot, cropping and resizing it a breeze.

• You can bookmark my audio channel.

I actually don’t use MS Office much these days, but its presence is ubiquitous.

I like Atlantis for quick documents, saved to RTF format and OpenOffice is my main choice in Linux.

At work we use Pongrass for text editing and I only need Word for opening contributed documents.

There was once a time I didn’t have Word at all.

At the Alpine Times in 1997-98 we typed our articles directly into Pagemaker. I can’t remember what the typesetters did (people who entered sporting results, letters, media releases, etc). They probably used Notepad or something like that.

We also had Lotus Notes. Reporters generally typed their articles in that program before saving them to Pagemaker.

Email was relatively new in those days. Most media releases still came by fax or post.

Lotus Notes back then couldn’t open .doc files. Imagine that!

Once I received a contributed article by email in Word format and had to explain that we couldn’t open it; please resend it as plain text or RTF.

To his credit, the gentleman seemed impressed we weren’t running Windows for everything.

It’s impossible to operate that way today, however.

Lotus Symphony

What prompted this post was the free availability of Lotus Symphony.

I have tried it in Windows before and tonight downloaded the Linux version. It’s a fully featured free word processor based on OpenOffice and the Open Document Format (ODF) with easy conversion to PDF among many other features.

It’s able to save files in .doc format and open them.

The only downside compared with something like Atlantis is the large file size, a massive 455MB in Linux.

Liking to experiment, I reinstalled Office 2007 and now wish I didn’t.

It’s hard to know why Microsoft changed the traditional interface that worked. Using Word 2007 is like learning the program from scratch; so many things are different, even how to save a file.

The default Calibri font, point size and paragraph spacing is annoying. I’m sure this can be changed, but why upset traditional users the moment they open a blank file?

The Help file says: “The new, results-oriented Office Fluent user interface presents tools to you, in a clear and organized fashion, when you need them …”.

It’s not clear and organised compared with the previous version.

There are meant to be new, improved sharing features for collaborating with colleagues, but I never use these and find them irritating when they sometimes appear in “finished” files.

I think Microsoft have over-engineered the software.

The only feature I like is the easy conversion to PDF.

I’m more likely to use Atlantis (which now supports docx files) or OpenOffice.

Speaking about docx, that’s the another annoying feature of Word 2007. So many people can’t open the files. Why change the world’s most common document format?

Rant over.

I told him I didn’t have an opinion on the actual software, because I hadn’t tried it, but in my view it was much too expensive.

As mentioned previously, I don’t buy the emotive sales pitch: What price do you put on your children’s education.

The first email read:

Hi Michael, I went through the blog on which Mathemagic computer tutor was being discussed. I am a father of a boy who will be attending year 1 next year & thought Mathemagic might help him (without knowing about other products). After visiting your website & going through various products & their features, I am more confused. If we forget money issue (which was discussed in detail on the blog) would you let me know your independent view what product would really be better for Maths development in Kids. What I am after is a quality package, if we forget cost issues for the time being. Thanks for everything.

After my response expressing concern about the price, the author wrote again:

I entered in the contract on last Wednesday (Sept 10th) & today after reading the blog, I have sent mail to sales rep. to cancel the contract. Blog was really an eye opener. I really appreciate your help, as these kind of blogs are perfect platforms for knowing facts & knowing different sides opinions. Surprising thing is, in their contract they talk about cooling of period in their written contract, however, they don’t say the duration. They did not leave any cancellation form behind. In any case, it was a very emotional sales pitch (close to blackmailing I would say) & after sleeping over it for couple of nights & reading your blog I have decided to do a detailed study of various softwares before I decide anything. I am not sure how many more parents who are desperate & who want quick fixes due to hectic life & work schedules gets trapped in these kind of “mouse” traps.

And today:

Believe me these sales reps are too smart for a normal person. Now as I am communicating with different channels for cancellation of contract, I can’t get sales rep. anywhere. I can’t contact her. I have informed about my decision to at least few people in their institute by now though. Why I am writing you again is I would request you to keep the issue on your blog as long as possible, so that other people can not get sucked in, if they google the words “mathemagic” & can get hold of your blog. In spite of it being long it is worth it. For me spending two hours browsing through links provided on the blog were far more crucial than sales person trying to convince me for the software. And the funny thing is, whatever she showed me during presentation, is available on their web site, that clearly says why she is in the middle in the first place.

So despite my reluctance to lead a consumer issues debate, I’m posting here and inviting comments in the Forum.

It’s a concern the sales people are happy to take calls to close a deal, but not to negotiate a refund.

My first discovery was a free script called PHP Easy Downloader. It cleverly creates a neatly structured directory of text or image links for all the contents in a web folder. It’s ideal for listing downloads of files or pictures.

The program includes icons for file types and can create thumbnails of images. It has an accurate search function and can list files according to several options. There’s also a back-end administration tool.

I’m using it to list file downloads and to show a thumbnail gallery of my images directory. The latter isn’t my main photo gallery, but I thought this script would be handy to administer the files I have uploaded previously for this blog and elsewhere, many of which are no longer in use.

I’ve been experimenting a bit lately with video and searched a while for an online video solution. Motionbox has limited free storage (300MB) but looks attractive and offers handy features like online editing.

An interesting new tool I thought worth mentioning is the Unyverse mobile wiki. It’s only been around for a few weeks, as far as I can tell.

It’s free to set up an account, which enables synchronisation of wikis between your phone and a personal web site. The wikis can be simple notes, RSS feeds, contacts or whatever you want them to be.

I typed in a test note on the web, then saw it on my phone seconds later.

Sure, you can synchronise data between Outlook or OneNote and the phone, but that requires a physical connection (eg USB, bluetooth). The beauty of Unyverse is that you can send information to your web-enabled mobile from any desktop and vice-versa.

I’ve been searching around for a free pocket PC feed reader and Unyverse performs that role as well as any other I’ve seen so far. It also provides an easy mobile-friendly Wikipedia search.

And you can measure how much data you have transferred.

I can see myself using this application quite a lot, especially if the feature to import contacts is added later this month as promised.

I have had ongoing problems with hardware recognition and installing software.

Firstly, to show that I’m balanced, I will write what is good about Vista:

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Okay, now for some of the problems:

Firstly, the pre-installed Roxio media creator software triggered an error message at startup: “this driver is blocked due to compatibility issues”. Frankly, I don’t know why Dell bothered to install it if they knew this would occur. Fortunately, there is now a fix available.

I tried to install Quark Xpress 7, but it was incompatible with Vista. Again, a fix is now available.

Worst of all, hardware issues slow down my startup by as much as 10 minutes. The Dell mouse and keyboard, which were recognised initially, suddenly caused trouble after being disconnected and reconnected to shift the computer. Vista now searches in vain for the drivers before eventually accepting they’re okay and allowing me to get on with work.

I’ll probably find an answer to this online at some point after an hour or so of searching.

Don’t get me started on Adobe CS3 and it’s installation woes. In this case however, I’m happy to blame Adobe, rather than Microsoft or Dell.

A good point I’ve read on a few forums is that people harangue Linux distros when they can’t install an obscure Bluetooth mouse or something, but generally blame the software/hardware vendor when they have problems with Windows.

I think Microsoft stuffed up big time with Vista. They had months to ensure compatibility. Dell isn’t blameless either. Surely the least to expect is that Dell hardware should work with a Dell PC.