h0bbel.p0ggel.org

Microsoft has announces their Web Platform Installer beta (Web PI) and it includes Gallery support!

I haven't tested this yet, but Web PI should make it much easier to install, amongst others, Gallery on your IIS 7 with FastCGI and PHP.

Gallery even has it's own download page on microsoft.com

Seems like something I need to play with ASAP.

Techcrunch.com is running a story called Automattic Spurns $200 Million Acquisition Offer where it's revealed that Automattic has turned down a large acquisition offer from a yet unknown source. I made a rather long winded comment on it, but decided that this warranted a post of its own here on my site, so here it is in its whole glory:

As interesting as this might be, the speculation is regarding Automattic and Wordpress.com not the Wordpress codebase. There is, or at least should be, a difference there.

Claiming this as “A great confirmation to the open source business model.” as Tim does above doesn’t really hold water though, as wordpress.com isn’t open source. The service is based on open source software, but Wordpress.com isn’t open source in itself. Sure, some of the work being done by Automattic trickles back to the Wordpress code base but thats being done on a case-by-case basis.

Everyone could potentially set up a service like Wordpress.com, based on any given open source platform, and make a bundle on it. While I applaud entrepreneurs who are able pull it off like this, this doesn’t have much to do with open source as much as it has to do with timing and providing a service people want.

In many ways, Wordpress.com isn’t much more open source than Facebook is, the only real difference is that the core service on Wordpress.com is based on a open source platform.

In my view this even further highlights the problem with differentiating Wordpress.com/Automattic (the business side) and Wordpress.org (The open source project).

For some reason I visited Netvibes for the first time in ages today, and suddenly I found myself wondering why I haven't been using it. For some reason I never really liked it the last time I tried it, but that definitely changed this time around.

After poking around for a few minutes, I tried to import an OPML file exported from BlogBridge, and in a few seconds all my subscribed feeds showed up on separate tabs in the Netvibes interface. It might be my general preference for installable applications that has steered me away from online aggregators in the past, but having all your feeds available from a single web interface is extremely useful. Netvibes has now been given status as my permanent start page. There seem to be some security issues, which might very well be resolved by now, with Netvibes, so I'm not trusting it with my email and such just yet.

I'm not ready to get rid of BlogBridge though, which still is my favorite Java application of all time (besides Gallery Remote of course), and to be honest BlogBridge performance has never been better than the v4.4 Weekly Build I'm currently running. On my Laptop, running Microsoft Vista Business, BlogBridge really performs well and I still love the centralized configuration/feed settings that I've praised before.

Now, if I could only find a non-manual way of syncronizing Netvibes and BlogBridge feeds...

How I managed to miss Netvibes in the first place is beyond me, it really is a great service with a very nice interface. After all, it's Web 2.0 (yuck) and all.

Thanks to Dave Adamson I got IE7 - Beta 2 running side by side with IE6. It does seem pretty speedy so far. I'll post some screenshots in my gallery as well.