MarsEdit and its companion NetNewsWire comprise refreshing new alternatives to Radio's built in news aggregator and weblog publishing interface. Once installed, you might never visit the Radio Desktop site again!
This article focuses on MarsEdit, a Mac OS X weblog editor application by Ranchero Software that replaces Radio's limited web based interface with an intuitive environment that makes posting to your weblog as easy as creating a new email.
In a future article, I'll discuss how to use NetNewsWire as a viable replacement, or adjunct to, the built-in Radio news aggregator and explain how I use these two applications in tandem to publish a number of weblogs.
On the Apple site, they run a series called Tip of the Week for Apple "Pro" users. I really like the format of this page. The text is lean, the graphic supports the message, and there is a promo blurb on the right with an archive link to the previous tip. Nicely done. I'll try to emulate that on "rtmm" for some tips.
This is an exciting day for Radio users! I've been beta testing both of these applications for many moons now, helping to make them the best in their class. One reads weblogs, the other posts to them. There is synergy between the two apps as well and things are just going to get better.
Now that the beta is released, I can finally start talking about MarsEdit. I've been working on a tutorial that explains to Radio users how to use MarsEdit as a replacement interface for the Desktop home page. There are lots of screen shots and examples. MarsEdit is so easy, this tutorial might not really be necessary but I thought it would be a nice chapter in Radio: The Missing Manual. Keep an eye out for this. I hope to publish it within the week.
I found Radio: The Missing Manual on BlogShares. Now you can join in the fun by virtually investing yourself in this site. Current valuation: B$2,621.63. Whatever that means!
Dave Winer: "Speaking of Pike, before Radio was called Radio it was called Pike. We had to change the name because there already was something called Pike. Too bad, it was a good name."
Visiting the Pike beta site was a fun memory jogger. At that time, I had just moved from Hawaii to the Bay area, ready to make my mark on the net. In Hawaii, I started up a company called Web Surf Hawaii and hosted Manila sites. I thought I had found the golden key in UserLand's Manila product and even taught some classes on how to get a site up and running using this ground breaking system. However, if you want to get ahead on the net, you can't live on an island, surrounded by so many distractions.
So, I moved to the mainland and that's when Pike came out. It took a while to wrap my head around, especially since one of the first real uses of Pike was to see who else was online, view their playlists, and share outlines. Kind of an odd assortment of things, really. We got server space on a server that was called, I believe, ourfavoritesongs.com and then I started to see the light, the thing that Radio would become for me, my own powerful publishing system, for very little cost. Little did I realize at the time that Pike would turn into Radio, one of my most used applications. And the main reason that I moved away from Manila. Oh, and I definitely wouldn't have imagined that I'd create a site like Radio: The Missing Manual someday.
Lots of fun things are happening over at flickr. One feature they offer is the ability to post photos to your weblog. Radio users can join in the fun. You'll have to take a breath, configure a few things, and test it a few times but it certainly is possible and works very well. Now that I've set this up, whenever I see a photo on flickr that I want to weblog, I just click the 'blog this' button next to the picture and away it goes. flickr talks to Radio on my computer and automatically posts the image to my weblog. I get to add a caption as well.
Here's a weblog post to my personal weblog, iceplant radio, that was sent from a flickr web page. This gives you an idea of what your weblog post will look like.
If there is enough demand, I'll do a mini how-to here on RTMM since setup can be a bit difficult. This thread on the Radio Discussion Board might be all you need though. Let me know.
MarsEdit and its companion NetNewsWire comprise refreshing new alternatives to Radio's built in news aggregator and weblog publishing interface. Once installed, you might never visit the Radio Desktop site again!
