Archive for the 'Create a web site' category

WordPress is currently preparing a new version 2.3 that will bring new possibilities to work together (multi-author blogs and web sites) and to enrich the articles/posts.

We should see the final 2.3 version on September 20th.

You may remark (or may not) the appearance of a new feature on this web site: on each individual post page, there is now a little list of similar articles. It is intended to help you discover new articles that you may not know but are related to the post your are reading at this time.

Have fun!

For the interested WordPress users, I can tell that to get this feature I used the “related_posts” plugin of Wasabi.

Some people have been wondering how I did the random selection of 404 page not found messages that are used on this web site.

So, here is the nice little PHP script that I use here to redirect randomly to one of the right pages:

You can re-use it on your own web site if you want to. It’s free.

It is well known that the human brain has pattern matching capabilities much further advanced than those of the best equivalent software programs. This explains that failure rates of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program may be as high as 1% (or even 2%) of errors, which is requiring later human proof-reading to ensure a reasonable quality for document scans. But when the document is old, badly printed, or degraded, error rates may climb further into the unusable (even more so when we address the scan of thousands of documents like is done by libraries and cultural institutions all over the world).

On another issue, the SPAM problem on the Internet became a major problem: Prorams try to make believe that they are human beings in order to insert advertisment anywhere a user can write (in the messages of a forum, in the comments of a blog, etc). For some time now, it became common that human users must identify themselves by their capacity to recognize a badly written word. Theoretically, this is a very efficient Turing test allowing to differentiate a human from a machine only by the results of their actions. Practically, the abilities of software programs have become so impressive that SPAM is slowly coming back again through those filters named CAPTCHAs (those images that you must read and copy back in order to be identified and approved for a specific action).

The problem appears to be: create CAPTCHA tremendously difficult for the automated software and, simultaneously, bring human beings to the task of checking scans of documents difficult to read by program.

The solution: reCAPTCHA.

The idea is to provide a CAPTCHA service to thousands of bloggers and forum administrators (WordPress, phpBB, etc.) Users are invited to recognize two words specifically difficult to read (profesional OCR programs failed during scans done by Carnegie Mellon University). The user must recognize them both. One is used to check that this is a human being, the other will fill a database of OCR translations that will be used to deliver even more CAPTCHAs and to improve the quality of a document scanned by Carnegie Mellon. Dual core technology: efficiently fight spammers and deliver millions of human users to improve the scan quality of thousands of ancient documents (without using slave labor).

Example of a difficult to read/scan document:

One of the key advantages is that most pro OCR programs can tell when they fail to recognize a character or a word (when they are not confident enough).

Print on Demand (POD) has become a very affordable solution for people willing to publish their own books. Previously, you had to convince a publisher to invest in printing hundreds if not thousands of copies of your book; then, you hoped for success and -usually- failed.

With Print of Demand, the cost becomes so low that you can actually print one copy for you and one for your mother. Then, you print whenever you find a customer. This is still affordable and it works.

In this context, I wanted to help a friend interested in this and I started looking for a good solution. So, here are my rants and raves about publishing solutions I could find.

Best Print-on-Demand solutions

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I just installed a WordPress plugin to make Roumazeilles.net usable from a mobile phone (WordPress Mobile). If you want to test and tell me about problem, you’ll be thanked.

When, as I do, you want to include some bits and pieces of software code in a WordPress post, it starts to become a serious headache. As a matter of fact, WP has not really been prepared for this and it creates a number of issues. Those I already encountered here:

• The <?php tend to disappear (unless you start juggling)
• Some charcaters would not display at all (or badly)
• The overall presentation is pretty bland if you use <code>

So, I looked for a plugin (nearly everything in WordPress is done by adding on of those marvellous little code gems that can be included in a few seconds into the basic configuration) adapted to this task, easy to install (I don’t want to be stuck with heavy maintenance just for this), easy to use.

Here is the summary of what I checked and my opinion regarding them.
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Favicon’s are those little icon files that you place at the root of your web site. They display in Internet Explorer along with your bookmarks, in Opera and Firefox on the address bar near to the address of the site you visit.

When you want to produce a favicon for your web site, you probably do not want to loose a lot of time. I selected a small free software that takes a few simple graphics and transforms them in a small icon (it tells you the best choice of size and colors for a true favicon):

Simple and to the point. Exactly what you need in such a case.

I’ve been telling often (too often?) that you should replace your Microsoft Office with the cheap (free!) and powerful OpenOffice desktop suite. But some of my readers wanted to know about other replacement solutions for PC applications running under MS-Windows.

Here are my “Open source alternatives to popular PC software“:

Don’t ask for an alternative to PhotoShop; For me, there is none. Adobe still has an impressively good product.

You can also check the external web site I presented here some weeks ago: The Linux Equivalent project that provides alternatives running under GNU/Linux (about the same list as for Windows, but not always).

I did not yet have time to evaluate it formally but, on the paper, it seems that YAPB (Yet another photo blog) is a plugin allowing ot easily build a photoblog based upon WordPress (the size of thumbnails is configurable, WordPress themes are still usable, but there is no galery).

One rule: One image, one title, one description.

Worth evaluating. Worth downloading.

If you look at the left-hand side menu on this page, you will notice that there is a link to either register yourself (Register) or login (Login). These links are here to give you the ability to identify yourself when your are visiting the Roumazeilles.net web site. It is a two-step process:

1. Register yourself, for us to know your pseudo and to know how to recognize you
2. Login, to identify yourself when you are visiting the web site

But what are the advantages for you? There are several of them.

Once you are identified, you can directly send replies or comments to the various posts. Without further ado, you can help other readers with your experience relating to an existing post that you are just reading. Just click on the comment link you will find with each post/article. If you are identified and reading the special page for a post, you will also see a large empty box to type your comments.

When you are identified, you have access to the web site administration (Site Admin). One important possibility here is that you can write a new post/article. It will be submitted for approval and may end in the web site front page, like some other people did. In that case, your name (or pseudo-name) will appear along with the post/article.

If you are worried about providing personal details, don’t. We request only a very limited amount of data. The only compulsory information is a username (or pseudo) that you can choose freely and an email address that is not shown to the visitors. If you indicate a web site address, it will be associated to your username any time it is displayed (isn’t it a nice advertising feature for your own blog?). You will be provided a password that will protect your access rights, and that you can modify later by accessing your account.

Summary of the possible actions (available from the menu)

• Register to register yourself (and choose you pseudo)
• Login to identify yourself using your pseudo and password
• Logout to leave the site
• Site Admin to submit a new post or modify your account