#Tools

Interesting weblog post on the design philosophy behind MarsEdit beta , which has become my blog weapon of choice (much better than ecto IMHO). Basically, the UI philosophy was blogging like sending email.

It’s interesting, but misleading in terms of actual usage, because I think of MarsEdit as a blog management tool though do use it for posting from NetNewsWire and Firefox> (I use MacJournal 2.6beta5 for writing and posting much of the time). I’m not necessarily a normal user, but still. MarsEdit is great for adding in pix though which is a feature still missing from MJ.

Following up on Social Software Interfaces , I’ve been looking around at different classes of software (blogs, wikis, collaboration spaces, social softs) to help self-identify, self-create and self-publish a large, de-centralized global community. While outsourcing to a “private label” Blogger, TypePad or LJ (if they had it) might be an option, it seems silly even considering it with all the amazing open source tools out there once you abstract infrastructure and admin.

Joel on Software has a great usability article on the difference between designing social software interfaces versus user interface design. This is on my mind a lot right now as what my potential employer is asking me to, while fixing their corporate backend, is build software to power their society.

Whereas the goal of user interface design is to help the user succeed, the goal of social interface design is to help the society succeed, even if it means one user has to fail.

Often, even useful software never gets used, because it does not align with the way people want to work together. Getting the social interfaces right is critical. Creating belonging is key. We’re really building communities with social software .

Yesterday’s post about Firefox raised some questions about what else is on my desktop. I have to admit I feel much more productive on Macs. I’ve also selected the apps that really enhance my productivity. Macs have excellent apps. These are the ones I think help the most with little comments as to why I’ve selected them. Some of them have windows or Linux equivalents for those of you who haven’t switched or find other platforms work better for you.

OK, so a few people have asked about the tech setup, so this is how it all works.

WARNING! The following blog entry may contain scenes, depictions and descriptions of graphic technical content not suitable for non-technical audiences. Prolonged exposure may cause seizures. Viewer discretion is advised.

I’m using Wordpress 1.2 for the server. It is a php and mySQL based open source, open standards and free blogging system which I particularly like because it is fully standards compliant (XHTML even), very extensible, has rss everywhere for feeds (stories, comments etc.) and completely divorces presentation from data through the use of Cascading Style Sheets for the interface (so redesigning the site look and feel, I can just change it via css. No muss. No fuss.).