Salon Blogs

Now that Radio Userland 8 is one year old, it raises a question: Do we owe more money? The software included "hosting for your Radio weblog with up to 40MB storage space and software updates for one year." ... (read more)

2003/01/13

I've added pingback client support to Radio Userland, though I'm not clear yet on what it does. I think it means that when I talk about a weblog post like this pingback description, that particular weblogger's ears will turn red. Update: Scroll down to the Workbench entry to see what it did. ... (read more)

2003/01/09

I'm using the Radio Userland add-on tool Kit to read news items. By preference, I read one hour at a time, then cycle backwards an hour until I'm caught up. Reading too many hours at one time is problematic because feeds often contain mismatched HTML tags that hose the font, font size, italics, and the like for all subsequent news items. I submitted UserTalk code to Kit developer Mark Paschal today that makes it possible to cycle backwards through news items one hour at a time by simply ... (read more)

2003/01/08

Woke up this morning to "Can't find a sub-table" errors in Radio Userland and "no space left on device" errors on the Linux server. For the New Year, I resolve to become a Luddite. Update: Radio Userland gets some really strange errors when upstreaming via FTP to a Linux server that some idiot has filled to 100 percent of disk drive capacity. Like these: Can't upstream because "Can't find a sub-table named "1558". Can't upstream because "Can't find a sub-table named "7369". Can't upstream ... (read more)

2003/01/02

"Radio has become a critical piece of my desktop," says Rick Klau, who is using it to write and publish content to four different Web sites on three domains. His full explanation does a good job of demonstrating the product's versatility. ... (read more)

2002/12/31

Radio Userland has been upgraded to support Really Simple Discovery (RSD), an XML-based protocol that enables weblog editing tools to easily find the Web services they can use to read and write a weblog. This ought to provide a nice boost to weblog editing clients -- especially if they are designed for non-technical users. A prospective weblogger would only need to know three things to get started: his or her username, password, and weblog address. This can get even simpler on Radio-style ... (read more)

2002/12/14

Radio Userland tip: When referring to the URL of your weblog in a new post, use the macro <%radio.weblog.getUrl()%> instead of the actual URL (even in HTML tags). That way, if you ever move your weblog to a new URL, all references to it will automatically be updated when you republish the entire weblog at its new address. Watch out for one thing: Radio weblog URLs always have a trailing "/" character at the end of the URL (example: ), so you have to account for it when employing the macro. ... (read more)

2002/12/09

When you're tinkering with the design of your Radio Userland weblog, you should occasionally save it as a new theme so you have a backup in case you completely hose the tables or some other element of the design. I save versions of Workbench periodically with the current date in the name because I frequently screw up this site's table-heavy design when tinkering with it. Once you have saved the design, it can easily be restored by choosing it from the themes page. Last night, I made the mistake ... (read more)

2002/12/06

Phillip Pearson runs down the early history of Radio Userland using cached UserLand pages from the Internet Archive, answering a question that's probably on the mind of many current users: Why the name Radio? I was a heavy user of Radio Userland's original MP3 queueing and playback features, broadcasting a Live365 station and using it to randomly cycle through my CDs. I may be digging out Music.root again to turn my copy of RU into a radio station -- I bought a U.S. Robotics SoundLink at a ... (read more)

2002/12/04

I'm enjoying Kat Donohue's She's Actual Size, Nationwide, Believe, one of the chart-topping Salon Blogs. Her entries on breakup letters, earrings in the workplace, and strategic stupidity are exactly the kind of wry, funny commentary you'd expect from a weblogger grown in Salon's petri dish. ... (read more)

2002/11/20

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