Just release Drupal 4 Bloggers v0.7. This is a major release with lots of changes and bugfixes.

One of the most difficult to use Drupal as a blog is customzing the look-and-feel. It is almost impossible to do without some php programming knowledge which is beyond most bloggers – you are pretty much struck with what Drupal themes offers. This is one area where MT definately shines with its simple to use template tags. Well, wait no more! You can do likewise in Drupal 4 Bloggers v0.7 now :-)

There are also numerous bugfixes including the autodiscovery in trackbacks (thanks to drumm and crschmidt) and I also fold the contributed patch from mervissen. Thanks!

Please note that there are four database changes in this release. Please read the release notes before attempting to upgrade. As usual, bugs, patches and feature requests would be appreciated.

ps: Incidently, I need some help to document down the tags you can use for templating. Email me if you wish to help! Thanks.

Saw this on Straits Times paper today:

NO MENTION OF UPLOAD SPEEDS: Singapore’s Internet broadband providers are offering access speeds of 1,500 kbps and 3,000 kbps. However, one thing their advertisements fail to mention is the upload speed (data speed from user to Internet).

When I signed up for a 1,500 kbps connection last year, I thought both the download and upload speeds were the same. It was only later that I realised the upload speed was only 96-112 kbps. And worse, the connection is one-way – when I hit a maximum upload speed, my download speed is potentially 0 kbps. Is this the way to conduct business?

My friends in the United States and Canada tell me it is standard practice in both countries to mention both the download and upload speeds in ads. I hope the Consumers Association of Singapore will look into the matter.

SENTOSA GANI

Yoohoo, your customer is asking for more upload bandwidth, as I said in my previous entry.

I just realized typekey is using captcha (via charles). Yep, I am equally surprised that SixApart would use captcha given how much attention (hint: zero) they pay to my scode plugin.

Well, Ben put his bets on Jay’s blacklist which I believe is a mistake. And I think he made another mistake to think Typekey will solve the comment spam. My scode (captcha) has not stop an occassional comment spammer who has to manually enter the code for every spam he post. So what makes a ‘verify-once’ and hencefore licensed-to-spam Typekey will work?

Maybe I been in the cat-and-mouse game with spammers that I have little faith in old-tricks-that-didn’t-work. I suppose people likes to learn lesson which you can learn from history on their own because ‘it is different this time!’.

You know what? As a futurist and technologist, I realize there is nothing different and there is no new technology. Old ideas recycled, old tricks in new environment. Just because you put a new name to the hype does not make it different. Spam is spam. It exists before we have Internet and will continue to exists in what to come next.

ps: If you think deeper, Typekey just a ‘identity-solution’ similar to those proposing Public-Key solutions. Identity-solution helps in identifying the spammer. It does not actually stop spamming. (It is indirect and dependent on whether spammers is willing to expose themselves)

Sorry for nearly two weeks of silent. Was busy catching up with day work after my Brunei trip. Anyway, tomorrow is a holiday for me so I burned some midnight oil to do some hacking and release just release Drupal 4 Bloggers v0.6.

The major change in this version is Blog APIs which means you can use your favorite blogging tool (mine are ecto and Zempt) to post your blog entries :-) And yes, the APIs have been enhanced such that it recongize extended and excerpt entries. I also fixed the bug that will allow you to change the posting time via the tool. Oh, you can even upload files and images via the Blog API now! Take a tour at my demo/dev site. :-)

Two things left before I shall make my big move to Drupal: (1) Templating (2) MT Migration scripts. For the latter, there is some work done by Morbus Iff which would really save me a lot of time. Nevertheless, I think I might still do a simplier one-click migration tool because I dont like keeping my entries in HTML as Morbus’ method will do.

There are also some activities on the Drupal-Blog mailing list which I started for the project. Thanks for all the feedback and as usual, bug reports are welcome!