Category: Websites

I read a blog posting that said XBMC is a great project. Then there were comments to the posting that said how much they loved XBMC. Finally someone else posted that XBMC has been forked and now there is the OSXBMC.

Wonderful. What is XBMC?

I checked out the link to the supposedly improved forked OSXBMC. Nothing obvious on the main page as to what the project is. They only say what has been changed in the most recent version.

I hate that. No clear information as to what the project is about when you visit the main page.

Oh, great, there is an About link at the top of the page. Though it requires that I go somewhere else to find just basic information, at least it will be right there. Uh, no. It just says they are a group porting XBMC to OSX. There is at least a link to the official XBMC site in the side bar.

Too much work.

I am picking on this site/project because it happens to be the most recent one I have run into, but it happens often, and mostly in the open source community. There has always been a disconnect between developers and users. The developers give the users what the developers think the users want. Then the users have to think like a developer to figure out how to do it. Often the interface suffers in open source software.

The lack of information at a website is another example of this disconnect. The developers know everything about the project, therefore they don’t understand the need to explain it to the users. They expect the users to understand the project as much as the developers do.

And, no, I am not going to tell you what the project is about. It is not my job to be their evangelist. They need to handle that on their own and win me over as a user. Then maybe I will take up the cause.

I am playing around with a new theme as you can see. There is still much to do to make it “mine” but it is coming along.

Really this is a test to see what it will take to customize and make this theme something I might want to use on my ministry website. Currently I am using phpWebSite CMS software, but I am wanting to move it to a WordPress install like this site. My goal is to make the new WordPress site look similar to the current dpeach.com site, but give it a freshening up. And, WordPress is so easy to use, much better than the CMS software I am using. CMS has its advantages over blogging software, but for what I am doing with that site, WordPress will work just fine.

What do you think? There will be more changes in the next couple of days, but this is the basic look.

One of my favorite blogs, OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas, has an excellent post today. Solveig has written many great tutorial posts and today’s post links to the more popular ones from the past.

Some of the posts that she links too are long and detailed, but that is the beauty of her site. She gives very clear instructions as to how to accomplish a task in OOo.

I have gotten to where I check her site first when I need help with a project. I used to go to the unofficial OOo forum first. There is a newer forum that seems to be more active these days too. And there are some good tutorial sites out there.

I subscribe to the RSS feed at OpenOffice.org Training and always like to see what she has written. Sometimes the information does not apply to what I am currently working on, but just knowing that the info is there when I need it sure comes in handy.

I have mentioned this site a few times before, but it seemed absolutely perfect for Famous Friday since their post for today had to do with the word “famous.”

Yesterday they had a list of Yiddish words that we should all learn. I started to skip over it because I don’t know Yiddish. But I found out I happen to know quite a few words. It struck me as odd though that many of the words in the list such as schlep, schmooze and spiel are words I have used quite often, but always thought of as just strange (funny), made-up words.

There are posts about building vocabulary and others about grammar. Maybe not every day will be your type of needed information, but if you are at all interested in becoming a better communicator, then you should check them out.