Tech Ravings

It’s Sunday now and I’ve spent nearly the entire weekend working on some Word Press plugins that have buzzing around my head. I probably shouldn’t officially tell you what they are yet because I have to wait till early this week to officially make an announcement on my other plugin. I’m sure if you look in the navigation to the left you might get a good clue as to what they are.

The first undisclosed plugin is really neat. My forum avatars now rotate on every page view. No more being limited to one avatar. It also works as a photo gallery if I choose. The second plugin really helps me as a developer because I can upload the files to the site. Then with the special code provide monitor the views and downloads of the files.

So that was my weekend really. I have to run to do my homework now and we have peeps coming over for dinner tonight. So I best leave now. If you do try the plugins I really hope you enjoy them.

I have came across a really cool web application that is a chat client but for web sites. I’ve been playing around with it for a day or so now and even installed it on my blog at http://www.techraving.com. This allows me real time communication to my visitors, and maybe even you.

Meebo, Inc http://www.meebo.com allows you to join their community which reportedly sends around 80 million IM’s a day. A really neat thing about the rooms you can set is that video can be played for all to share. type in a web url and a snap shot is displayed in the media window. After becoming a Meebo user you can also access your MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber accounts as well. Meebo Me widgets allow you to build a chat box for your web site as well. One option is strictly two-way, I chat with you and you chat with me or community chat. Registering for Meebo is relatively painless and quick with just an email verification. Setting up all the multiple types of IM accounts is also easy.

Creating the widgets is a different story. Once I realized that I could embed the room in a web page I had to make choices between public or private, with or without media player, could visitors post video but this depended on the size of the chat. I would also like to point out that the interface is completely browser based so you must keep a web page open. That’s a pain for a web developer like me. However my messages I miss are kept until the next time I log in.

All in all Meebo is a great application for providing my site with visitor interactivity. They have taken great steps in security as well which is a great thing. I’m still waiting to see how it handles spam though.