Following my other mobile blogging related posts, both my colleagues @AfriGadget - Frerieke & Erik - adviced me to take a closer look at a wonderful (new) WordPress plugin called MobilePress.

“MobilePress is a WordPress plugin that will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customized themes.” - We’ve seen this feature with others before, but - as the author correctly points out: “Plugins exist, but, at best, contain sneaky ads and backlinks and are not all together well written.” I do share those feelings regarding the WordPress Mobile Plugin as mentioned earlier.

Despite of MobilePress being just the right choice for the mobile accessibility of your WordPress-based blog, I am still using the out-dated WPhone Admin Plugin because MobilePress (currently) lacks one important part: it automatically chooses the right rendering option based on the browser.

Now - I would like to choose that myself! WPhone does that by providing a “use mobile admin interface” checkbox on the WP login screen.

Mzeecedric and I recently had to look for a solution to a low-bandwidth blog-access issue and ended up using WPhone. I would, however, prefer to use MobilePress (also because it’s from SA, yay! :-) once such a “use mobile admin interface” functionality is integrated so that blog editors can actively choose a low-bandwidth login to the WP backend while using a normal browser.

(It’s btw interesting to see how a plugin is used for another purpose - something else than what it had been designed for. See M-Pesa in Kenya and how it is used these days.)

From a single (1280 x 800 px) notebook + cabled mouse…

…to a (1680 x 1050) 22″ wide-screen monitor and a cordless Logitech keyboard & laser mouse:

You know I actually didn’t want to go this far and attach another screen to my system as I was afraid it would compromise my freedom (~ uhuru! :-). But it is SO much better to work on a bigger screen - which btw also has a much more vibrant colour contrast and provides more reliable results when it comes to photo editing & co.

Saw this setup (notebook + ext monitor) in use somewhere else and realized that I should upgrade my own desktop. Besides, being able to move a browser window from one screen to the other is just very, very convenient. Yes, I know, I am a bit late at adopting such “new” technologies.

The 22″ LG Flatron W2242T-PF is one of the cheaper screens and even though it comes with both VGA and DVI-D ports (this is a requirement to me), it does of course only feature a cheaper TN display (which will never be as efficient for decent colour works as MVA/PVAs, for instance). The monitor stand also is a bit shaky - it’s just a piece of ligh plastic with no real balance for the 4,7kg screen (manufacturers obviously trying to cash-in on selling extra VESA wall & desktop stands). However, my funds do not provide enough room for a much better monitor, so I’ll stick to this one for now. Am a bit curious to know what kind of screen type those 13,3 MacBooks come with.

Oh, and if you happen to own one of those new LGs: just make sure you reduce screen brightness and remove blue colour to a value of 23 (23 …there you have it). I don’t know why LG came up with such stupid factory settings in the first place.

The keyboard is a Logitech Cordless Desktop S520, kind of new model but it also has a nasty software bug: Logitech’s SetPoint software doesn’t like the Synaptics touchpad drivers as found on a laptop like my HP nx8220. Which means that about 50% of all extra (programmable) keys do not work (until Logitech comes up with a working solution, that is).

Compared to many other wireless keyboard-mouse dekstop solutions, the keys have a relatively low drop and it almost feels as if you’re typing on a notebook. Nice! The laser mouse is average but still better than my older + cabled 9,- EUR optical Logitech mouse.

I also managed to buy a used docking station for the notebook, so unplugging the machine for mobile use is much easier + the docking bay also has a DVI-D port. This really is the setup for me: a business laptop + docking station, hooked up to an external screen and keyboard once I am at home (thus avoiding the difficult scenario of keeping two different computers at sync…unless of course I’d be using a Mac machine, but that’s another story).

As for having a native 1680×1050 screen resolution directly on the notebook: I tested this a few months ago with another display panel, but 1680×1050 at something above 128dpi is just too tiny for my old eyes.

p.s.: Logitech stole 5h of my life with their f******** “SetPoint” software that’s supposed to power the extra buttons on the keyboard. What the…..??! Also, considering that this software just has to power some extra buttons and the mouse, you’re probably wondering about the 50+ mb download that comes along with using SetPoint.  Logitech hardware is nice, but their software really pissed me off big times.

[update: Logitech support wrote in (at least!), telling me to deinstall the driver for Synaptics touchpad. WTF? Sorry guys, your driver software is either certified, or not. I won't install any shitty SetPoint crap on my system until that issue is solved.]

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Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain the future of the web (and how we can actively contribute to it by positioning our ideas/products) to non-techies?

This may be due to my bad rhetorics (e.g. speaking too fast), but still - another colleague told me the other day: “Oh, I think we shouldn’t put too much energy in knowledge management, but instead implement more projects”. - “No!”, I immediately replied, “I believe that a better distribution of our knowledge and approaches will also contribute to the dissemination of the basic idea we’re already giving out for free” (here: sustainable sanitation concepts).

I mean, they are still only relying on Google to search for interesting information (and are consequently overhelmed by the following information overload) while I am already relying on social bookmarking services (e.g. delicious.com), (CC)-by-sa licenced photo sharing websites (e.g. flickr.com) and blogs to find qualified (= pre-selected by human beings) materials we can use for our mission.

A lot of ppl out there constantly create great content without really thinking about how they could actually share it with the rest of the world. If you want your works to be found online, you’ll have to do something about it and not just put it somewhere on the internet and hope that Google will index it one day.

The world would be so much better if all scientist who publish their works online could just index it somewhere on delicious & co. The other day, someone even asked me if Google could come up with a dedicated service for his special topic…. WTH? - “Go and tag your works at delicious.com”, I replied, “and your files may remain on your server and thus generate even more traffic for you”.

Give them more semantic value!