WordPress.com & Google Calendar

Although I do not feel like writing such posts these days, but I have cribbed a lot about WordPress.com in past on this blog. So, it would be kind of ungrateful if I do not applaud them for the changes that have come about in last two months and which has made it a much, much greater platform to blog on. The sidebar is highly flexible and configurable now, which is really good. Blog stats (has been there for quite sometime now) and Feed stats have been useful additions too. There are lot many more templates. And yeah, it is after using the current template that I realized why three column templates were so much in demand. Earlier with the current sidebar customization capabilities, there were several templates that I would have been happy to use. But not now. Now I want a three column one. It reduces to a great extent the headache of deciding priorities on what goes up there. In the sidebar widgets, I love the “recent comments” one. Several times, there would be a comment on an old post which had the capability of re-fuelling a discussion, but there was no way for the readers other than the one posting the comment to know that one was posted. Unless of course somebody subscribed to the comments, which hardly any one did. “Recent posts” could have been a good addition had it been done the blogger style. Meaning when you are on a post page, the “Recent posts” show the posts prior to that post and not your recent-most posts. But then, probably not many people want it that way or whatever. I do not care much actually. And today I noticed a small little thing in the “Reading Options”. You could actually choose to display a static page instead of the latest posts on the main page of your blog. Not for this blog, but it certain contexts, this could be really powerful. And then you could choose to display the latest posts on a page too. Last, but not the least, in order to have multiple blogs, now you do not need multiple accounts. I wish it were done earlier, so that I did not end up creating so many separate accounts. But better late than never

Since I am writing a post like this anyway, I might as well make a passing reference to Google Calendar. I have never used a calendar programme earlier; so can not give any expert comments. But as a first time user, I liked it. Unlike the messy Google Reader, it has not at all been a disappointment. I could even substitute a service like BirthdayAlarm.com with Google Calendar because of its ability to mark an event as recurring at various intervals ranging from daily to annually. So, I just enter a birthday and mark it as recurring yearly. I would get a reminder every year. Little bit more intelligence would have been helpful however. May be they would look at it in future. Suppose I mark somebody’s marriage or a baby’s birth and it could automatically convert this piece of info into anniversary and birthday from next year, it would have been wonderful! Given Google’s record of improvements with their good products (GMail, for example), it should not come as a surprise if they do it.

Not much of experimentation in the technological side of things these days… So, let such topics rest in peace for a while now.

Technorati : Blogging, Calendar, Google, Google Calendar, WordPress, WordPress.com