Well, my technical issues resolved themselves quicker than I expected, thankfully. Thinklings has been upgraded to Bloo version 1.35 (as yet unreleased, but just about ready to be set loose).

Here's what's new in this release:

• Bloo now supports full comment moderation
• The comment thread subscription is enhanced. For instance, you can now cancel your subscription to a comments thread - every comment email you receive has a link which, if clicked on, will unsubscribe you
• Added two new spam Captchas: Bloo Captcha (which we've been using here for awhile and which is currently in force for Thinklings comments) and Google's reCaptcha service.
• Private Site, a new Bloo extension SnapOn, which allows you to set your entire blog private, meaning that only logged-in users can see it
• Max Links Spam Filter, also a Bloo extension SnapOn, in the Spamicide collection. Spammers, we hates them. we hates them forevah!!
• Emails coming from the system now look better (or that's the theory)
• Fixed a bug that caused comment counts to show no comments when viewing posts by category
• Performed various other bug fixes and architectural improvements

For some of you who have been thinking about starting to blog, and want to go the less-travelled road, you might think about giving Bloo a try. Be part of something small! (As you can see, marketing and snappy slogans are not my forte)

I'll be upgrading our little blog to the latest version of Bloo later today (this is a pre-release upgrade. I want to test the new software for a day or two here before releasing it into the wild).

I'm targeting the upgrade for maybe 7:00pm tonight, just in case you're on and everything crashes.

Update: OK, I said 7:00, but I guess I meant 8:30pm. Upgrading in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .

Update 2: Sigh. I've run into technical issues unrelated to the upgrade. May need to wait on this until I get those doped out.

For those of you using Bloo for your blogging software: Three new themes have been deployed to the Bloo Themes site and can be downloaded from there. More are coming - the hope is to start releasing more themes and extension SnapOns in the near future.

Note: for those of you who are blogging at the Bloo Community, these are available there too. Just login to your admin panel, select Look and Feel, and set the desired theme as your default.

Here are the themes.

Flower Power, based on the Wordpress theme by Mark Hoodia.




Japan Style, based on the Wordpress Theme by Good Design Web




Old Type - an original Bloo theme.



In addition, some problems that have been discovered when browsing with IE 6 have been fixed in the following themes:

Field of Dreams




Red Train



There are other themes, some in the core product, that don't render correctly in IE 6 (bleaugh on that browser). These will be fixed in the next version of Bloo, coming soon!

If any of you are interested in having a free blog, and want to try something besides blogspot or Wordpress, and if you don't want to have to manage the technical aspects of a blog, such as uploading code and setting up a database, you should check out the Bloo Community.

I'm launching it today. It's a site where you can request your own Bloo Blog. Once your request is received, I'll activate a blog for you (takes me just a few seconds, unless I'm at work or sleeping or something). Once your blog is activated, it's yours: a full-blown Bloo blog, all your own. Free. Easy. And upgraded with new themes and features as often as they can be rolled out.

Anyone interested in trying it out? Click here.

We interrupt our normal blogging for a crass commercial.

There's a new version of Bloo available, Bloo version 1.10. If you're one of the three people on earth who hasn't already got themselves a blog (or gotten and abandoned a blog, or two, or six), and you want to have one that is hands-on, meaning you upload the code, create a database, configure it, etc. Bloo might be for you. Thinklings is powered by Bloo, for instance.

Plus, I work on the development "team" for Bloo, along with my fellow geeks me, myself, and I, and I'll be your best friend if you start using it. ¹

You can download it by following the instructs here. It's free, of course.

And there are some new themes available for Bloo too, with more coming . . . You can see all themes on the Bloo Themes site.

¹ That was meant to be funny, not desperate-sounding. <sup>2

2</sup> OK, I lied. That was meant to sound desperate, not that I am <sup>3

3</sup> OK, I lied. I am.

The latest release of Bloo is now available. This is the first full production release of Bloo and I'm so excited I'm snorting. This is huge news!

[Bill yells over his shoulder] "This is really huge news, right honey!?"

[Bill's wife replies from the next room] "What's really huge news?"

[Bill hollers back] "You know, silly, the first full production release of Bloo!"

[Bill's wife, quizzical] "The first full what of what?"

Oh well, I think it's pretty cool. :-)

Actually, Thinklings has been one of my test sites, so as features were developed they were deployed here; in other words, nothing huge is changing around here since we're already on 1.00. But if you're a Bloo user on a previous version, there's lots in this release that's an improvement over what you have, so you might want to download the latest version and do an upgrade. Once uploaded to your site, the upgrade takes just seconds.

And if you're not currently a user of Bloo, what's wrong with you? It's free, and getting better all the time. Be counter-cultural, people, and use Bloo. All the cool people are! (Plus, I'll be your best friend).

For a full list of new features and fixes, you can check out the Bloo Development Blog.

Below is a summary of some of what's new:

- Commenters can edit their latest comment for a period of around five minutes, even if they aren't logged on.

- Static pages are here! The bios and history in the left navbar are static pages.

- Bloggers can create Private posts, viewable only by other posters and administrators logged into the blog.

- If you're have a userid and password on the blog and you lose your password, the blog gives you a way to get a new one, quick and easy.

- We have a Contact extension SnapOn now, which allows you to contact the Thinklings via email (even though you won't be able to see our emails). It's in the left navbar.

- You may not have noticed, but the main page now has navigation links at the bottom to page backward and forward in the posts.

- Created the Favorite Posts extension SnapOn, which you can see in the left navbar.

- Fixed our RSS feed problems.

- Added a Comments RSS feed (both feeds are in the left navbar).

- Bloo now has a new logo (up at the top of this post)!

- Now we can send trackbacks as well as receive them (does anyone do trackbacks anymore?)

- Plus lots of other bug fixes and enhancements.

There's already lots of thought going into version 1.10, coming soon (hopefully).

Sorry for the commercial. You may now return to your regularly scheduled blog.

I thought this would be appropriate to post this weekend. Ignore the glam rock hairdos ...

I mentioned in this post that changes were going to start appearing on this blog. The first change was the addition of guest comment editing.

Tonight I'm rolling out another change - a moving time window on the Popular Posts extension SnapOn. If you've been hanging around here any time at all, you've probably noticed that the ten posts appearing in the Popular Posts section of the navbar, um, never changed. Whether it's just that the Thinklings have lost our commenting mojo, or the fact that, with 4,000 plus posts, the competition for getting in the top-ten is pretty intense, or a combination of the two, I dunno.

I originally discussed with the other Thinklings the idea of creating more of a "rate this post" feature, so that the word "Popular" in the Popular Posts section might mean more than "garnered the most comments even though the post is lame". And this is something I still might do. But Thundergeek suggested that perhaps just putting a moving time window on the Popular posts might be a cool thing to try (and it's certainly easier). This will keep the popular posts a lot less anachronistic and a lot more fluid and might help keep some excellent conversations going beyond their normal 3 day half-life.

The Popular Posts extension now allows the blog administrator(s) to set a time window (if desired) for which comments are counted. I've set it to 90 days, so the ten posts you see in the sidebar are posts that have received the most comments in the last 90 days.

And, um, I see Blog Free Association is still at the top . . .

(For any Bloo-bloggers out there, this enhancement (and a bunch of others) will be rolled out with the full 1.00 production version, coming soon)

Oh, also - the Gatorade post is not lost! It now holds an honored space in the Artifacts section of our navbar.

Now, ask yourself . . . What Color is That Liquid?

A while ago I solicited a bunch of ideas for a Bloo logo, and I came up with this one:



It's really a poorly done logo. I like the concept, but not the execution.

Does anyone out there want to try to do this one better? It doesn't have to be exactly like this, but I like the puzzle concept, the color family (blue, for obvious reasons), etc. But I'm sure someone could maybe take this one or two steps closer to something that looks halfway decent. Or you might have a completely different idea that is totally cool. I'm open! I'm getting near the first full production release of this software (this blog is running under the release candidate 2 version) and want to upgrade the logo.

If any of you are interested in taking a shot at this, send me your ideas to Bill AT NotMyEmail.com, but replace NotMyEmail.com with outofthebloo.com (kapiche?). If I use your concept/logo, you'll get full credit for it.

Thanks!

This is a follow up to my Changes Coming post:

As I'm working on the full version 1.00 production release of Bloo (the public-domain object oriented blog software that powers this site) I've decided to start streaming new features out to Thinklings and Out of the Bloo, rather than making these two blogs that I webmaster wait for official releases.

Some of the features coming out will be stuff you've seen elsewhere, others will be more unique. The feature I just rolled out may or may not be unique to Bloo, but I've not seen it elsewhere.

We've all left comments on blogs that we regretted, either because of grammatical mistakes, poor wording, or the fact that we shouldn't have written what we wrote. Mea culpas and corrections work, of course, but wouldn't it be nice to just be able to edit your comment?

Of course, if you're a Thinkling or Honorary Thinkling and have a login and at least Poster privs here, you can do so. But guests are out of luck - or were until now.

I've turned on Guest Comment Editing. Now, when you leave a comment, you have five minutes to edit or delete your comment if desired. You will only be able to edit your latest comment on the blog. (Note to Bloo Bloggers: it's an optional feature and you also can control how many minutes the Guest editing is enabled after a comment hits the blog).

Hopefully this will help our guest commenters feel the wind in their hair a bit more in their blog experience here at Thinklings.

Bloo version 1.00 release candidate 2 is now officially available. As you may (or probably may not) have noticed, Thinklings was upgraded to this release recently.

You can read the full release notes here. But the stuff Thinklings readers and posters would care about is below:

• Multiple Category Tags. Finally . . .


• Redesigned the layout of the post admin and post display. In particular, made changes to accommodate multiple categories.


• IP Blacklist - just more spamicide to deal with nasty spammers and trolls. We hates them, we hates them forevah!


• Multiple comment protection. Some of you had problems with your comments hitting twice. This has been fixed.


• Reworked the ThemeSelector so that the admin can select which themes he/she wants to be in the rotation. This gizmo allows you to pick the Thinklings theme of choice that best fits your mood and preference. Check it out in the navbar.


• Fixed problems with the RSS feed. For like the gazillionth time.


• For those of you who are Thinklings chess players: you can now login to the Thinklings blog itself. Feel the power! Actually, you can't do much when logged in, but you can change the name you're known by in Thinklings Chess, you can now change your password, and also your email. Click on the login link in the navbar to check it out. Once you're logged in, this link will change to the pretentiously named "Administer blog" link. But all you can really administer is yourself :-)


• Plus a whole lot of other little fixes and enhancements

Now, for the crass commercial: For those of you who blog and who maintain your own blog site: anyone interested in giving Bloo a try? You can get the software on SourceForge, and the best way to find it is via the main Bloo site - just click on Download. It's free, of course.

There is a small yet growing community of Bloo blogs out there. Join in!

And watch me for the changes . . .