My first impressions of WP-Super-Cache are that it’s really worth taking the time to install if you are using WordPress. I’ve got it going on Storynory.com and the pages are loading like lightening. Apparently the excellent WP Cache was still using PHP resources, where the suped-up version is creating HTML pages which load fast and are lighter on the server.

I should install it here too….  I know that I neglect Blog Relations, but it’s benefiting indirectly as it’s on a shared server with Storynory. One day soon I’m going to start devoting time to BR here, but at the moment running Storynory and keeping up with my nanny duties for our small son is all that I can manage.

I’ve mentioned my search for a good sound editor on the Mac. Well I’ve found one. It’s Sony Sound Forge. Ah, but that’s Windows only, I hear you say. Ah yes, but with Parallels, you can run Windows on your Mac, so long as it’s one of the new ones with Intel inside.

Parallels opens up a virtual terminal within your Mac desktop. If you have an XP disc and license, you can install Windows inside the terminal. It’s not hard to do. Well, if I can do it, then it’s not difficult at all.

Sound Forge runs smoothly inside Parallels, but it was hard dealing with a large sound file until I noticed that you can distribute the computer’s ram between the Mac OS and Windows as you wish. You can save files inside folders than can be accessed by either system. If you press fn alt return, the Windows screen revolves round in impressive 3D and becomes a full screen.

It’s a little odd running Windows on the Mac, especially as I don’t have a right mouse button to click. I get confused between using the ctrl button and the Apple button. Otherwise Parallels makes it a lot easier to ween yourself off Windows because you know that you can have the best of both worlds. iMovie on the Mac - a really simple and great video editor - and Sound Forge on the Windows terminal - the best sound editor.

So is Mac really better than Windows? It certainly looks nicer, and it’s easier to find your favourite applications in the bar along the bottom. I also think it’s easier to have several applications open at once, and to switch between them, partly because they tend to open at different sizes so you can see one behind the other. It’s nice the way you can dock applications at the bottom where you can easily find them again. All in all, these little advantages do add up. But it really is useful to have the option to run Windows in tandem for those hard-to-find applications.

Switching has been made even easier by the fact that these days, most of what I do isn’t on either the Mac or Windows. Many of my applications are online - Google Documents, Bloglines, GMail, WordPress, - even a quick-fix picture editor. I keep media files on a big external hard drive, which is just as well, as I will have to give this Mac back to Exbiblio one day. It’s convenient to work like this in the day of the disposable computer that lasts a couple of years at max - and besides, I like to drop down to the Internet cafe to get away from wife and baby sometimes.

Google Co-op, custom search engine - search all our Bloglines feeds:

We don’t normally write about “hot babes” here - not my turn of phrase - but this is the most unusual suggestion I’ve ever heard for the art of Link Baiting (gettng other people to link to your blog). It comes from John Chow, and I’m sure he’s getting lots of links and diggs just for writing this up. I’m not sure these days how legit link baiting is. A good blog should network with others per se - but this is an interesting approach.

The Trade Show Photo Trick

I meet many fellow webmasters during my party at the Consumer Electronics Show. During the party, I get a few hot babes to take pictures with the other webmasters. They love this because it’s the few occasions when they can get a picture taken with a real girl. The picture gets posted at The TechZone’s photo gallery. An email is fired off to the webmasters, and they’re instantly linking it on their sites to show all their readers what a stud they are.

Unfortunately, I’ve never had the opportunity to try that one out, so I don’t have a pic to go with this post.

My colleague Matthew Lynn has been writing in the Spectator how Google has peaked and it’s only downhill from here on.

Matthew may be right about the stock market valuation - it’s rated on the basis that it’s going to keep on growing exponentially - but as far as my own online life is concerned, I use Google more and more.

Google documents (which Matthew and I use all the time to collaborate) has replaced Word for me, and is starting to edge Excel out of my life. It means I can easily switch computers - for instance borrow a laptop - and still have all my work to hand.

I was probably the last blogger on the planet to start using Google Mail, but I can’t imagine how I got on without it. It has the best spam filter of any emailer that I’ve ever used, and organises correspondence brilliantly.

And now the latest version of Google Reader might well tempt me away from my beloved Bloglines. It has a temptingly clean interface. I won’t rave about it yet, as I’ve only just started using it - but it’s certainly worth a try.

I thought I would share my favourite del.iciou.us hack with you.  If you use del.icio.us you probably know that it’s great for spotting webpages and blogs with buzz , as its popular function tells you what’s being bookmarked in large quantities now.  If you are regularly hunting for a particular topic, you can set up an rss feed to keep you up-to-date.

I’m starting to blog more about kids stuff for our other site (sorry to bore you with Storynory but it gives my every day practical experience).  So I went to http://del.icio.us/popular/kids to see what people are book-marking with that tag.  But because it’s a pain to return to that page every day,  I have taken the RSS feed off that page and put it into my Bloglines feed reader.  I’ve done this with some other popular tags and it’s a great way to keep up to speed.  It throws up goodies all the time.  I recommend it.

A nice introduction to OPML here as a screencast by Alex Barnett. Among other things, he points to OPML Manager which makes creating an outline easy.

Matt Heaton, the founder of Bluehost, writes on his blog that Utah is the place to succeed. Bluehost can keep its costs down in Utah.

I still think that Bluehost offers excellent value, though I’m still reeling from being told by customer service that they can’t sell me any more bandwidth because they lose $25 per month on their package as it is.

We’ve put our latest post to our Storynory podcast for children on Libsyn. I note from their blog that they all work at Libsyn without any salaries at all.

It seems to me that the publishing revolution that is blogging, video/picture hosting, and podcasting has made the hosting business very competitive indeed. People are actually using the bandwidth that they buy, instead of leaving it redundant. This is costing the host providers real money - even if they do live in Utah where you can buy 3000 sq ft home for around $200K.

Firefox has the reputation of being the most web 2.0 browser, but my vote goes to Opera. Its RSS reader knocks the socks Firefox’s, and most dedicated readers. But Opera lost a march by charging for its full version, until about six months ago when it saw the light. Charging is not very Web 2.0.

When it comes to getting web hosting if you are just going to have a personal site then most budget web hosting may be all you need. If you’re going to need hosting for a site that sells things or is in some way monetized then decisions like Windows or Unix web hosting start to come into play.

Glad to see that one of my favourite online tools, Writely, has been bought by Google. Writely is an online word-processor. It’s great for collaboration. Matthew and I use it all the time to work on joint projects.

You can see why Writely is attractive to Google. A free word processor is a brilliant way to undermine Microsoft. In fact, pissing-off Microsoft is fast becoming the main purpose of Google, especially now its income growth is starting to slow.

The good news for Writely users is that it’s going to stay free now it’s in the hands of Google. The bad news for those who’ve just heard about it, is that Writely is closing registrations of new users. They are worried that the publicity will overwhelm them.

Now the top priority for the Writely team. Clean up your HTML code. No line-breaks where there should be paragraphs. Then I for one will start using it to write blog posts.

A comment on Lifehacker about Storynory let us into a secret of podcasting that was hitherto uknown to us. You can now subscribe to podcasts on TiVo. There’s an article about how to do it on this Tivo blog.