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I have a new theme.

I have a new theme. WordPress released 1.8 yesterday. I’ve been playing with one of its new features: theme browser. Just like plugins, users can now browse, preview, and install templates right from within WordPress. AWESOME. If you have a MilesRausch.com blog, I highly recommend upgrading. Let me know if you have any issues with it.

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Google Wave

This should have happened years ago. File this into my “Why aren’t things easier?” list.

UPDATE: Apparently the idea of spending an hour and twenty minutes on my website was too daunting for some readers. Let me sum up the video.

Google recently held the 2009 version of its annual Google I/O conference. Essentially, it’s a developers’ conference, devoted to all sorts of nerdy, engineer stuff that Google does so well with. The conference lasted for two days, and two keynotes were given by members of the Google company. The above video is from Day Two’s keynote, presented by a new team at Google: Google Wave.

In short, Google Wave is a new way of communicating online. Today’s online conversations are broken and broken up. I have emails in one place, blog posts in another, Twitter updates, Facebook messages, and instant messages in a third. What if you could seamlessly blend all of these communications together in a way that was intuitive, easy, and a little bit fun? What if it was as intuitive as Google Maps, as easy as Google Search, and a little bit fun like GMail? What if you could also collaborate and share these streams of communication like Google Docs? That’s what this video is about.

The video goes through a number of scenarios and demonstrations, stepping through the typicaly communication problems that they overcame with the new interface. What really helped to sell things was the live, interactive demos. You could see as one presenter typed and published how those results were broadcast on the other presenter’s screen. The demo was not without its sticky points, as the software is still very early, but the presenters handled it pretty well.

It’s something to behold. As you watch them work with the product, it really opens up possibilities. Simply hearing what it’s about, or seeing screenshots, does very little to demonstrate it. It’s a tool to facilitate communication, and communication cannot be adequately photographed or screen captured.

If you have the time, or you’re even a little bit geeky, definitely check out this video.

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House Keeping

1) What Lies In The Shadow Of The Statue has become my most popular post, at least recently. Only a small percentage of readers of that post realize that I have no deep insight, no knowledge to share within it. A small percentage of the rest have actually been adding their own theories, seemingly trying to help me with my lack of deep insight. I, ever uncouth, mock them for hours with my thoughts and then move on to something else.

2) Be sure to read Holli’s update on our latest news, if you haven’t already. Some pretty awesome updates.

3) Awayken.com has a purpose once again. What had originally started as my personal blog has found a new life as my web playground. Everything personally associated with me will be here and at MilesRauschFamily.com, but any projects that I want to show off or open up, any concepts or demos I want to test out, will live on Awayken.com.  I’m calling it “an odyssey of learning and growth, a menagerie of strange web trinkets.”

Those of you who do web development  may periodically find it interesting. I don’t find much time to work on these trinkets, but I’ll add things as I do find time (or as I dig them out of the depths of my old “test” folder). Right now, there are only two real projects: LinguaFranca.js, an inline language translation project for javascript, and The Latest MilesRausch.com Blog Post (Jetpack for Mozilla Firefox), a simple extension for the Jetpack API.

4) Tired. Mega-tired. But I thought you all should know.

5) Sad that LOST is done for the season. I’d forgotten how empty and cold life is without a LOST episode to look forward to.

6) See #5 above. But, very happy that Kings will be back in June.

7) Holli and I have started watching Star Trek: The Original Series. No, we weren’t inspired by the movie; we haven’t even seen it. Don’t bother asking me why. We’re just weird.

8) Also, I’m listening to more This American Life, so I can justify my obsessive monocle adornment. Blame my brother.

9) People comment that I’m losing weight, but I know that I’m not. This is puzzling, and it can only mean that I’ve been gaining weight, and at such an alarming rate and density as to bend the very light around me. This would cause me to look thinner, theoretically.

10) For some reason, I just thought of the pool at Unity Square in Milbank, SD.

11) I feel very fortunate that my job has allowed me to program in ColdFusion, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and Classic ASP. Most people probably don’t understand why having to learn more languages would be something I’m thankful for. I can’t explain it. I just love languages: foreign and domestic, natural and constructed, human and machine.

12) GOTO BED;

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Twitter: It’s Here, It’s a Little Confusing, and I’m Almost Out of Characters

You can now add “Webinar Co-Host” to my CV*. I was honored to be invited as a speaker for one of Lawrence & Schiller’s Social Media Boot Camps. This one was called Twitter Demystified. The topic, as you can guess, was Twitter, and I was joined by Robin Temple, as co-presenter, and Dave Haan, as mediator.

* I don’t actually have a Curriculum Vitae.

Read the blog post and watch the video at Twitter, No Longer a Mystery? on L&S Unscripted.