Why I Oughta...

We have a few new tools/toys to show off today.  The fine folks at Google have added some new capabilities to all Blogger blogs (that's the platform I use to power this site) including the addition of five new "Dynamic Views".   Those of you reading this should know (and likely do) that I work at Google and am writing this post on my own accord and these views posted here are mine alone and NOT that of my employer.    Now...back to the post: Blogger - as a platform - doesn't get the credit it deserves these days, but the product has come along really nicely and the flexibility it allows for these days is the best among it's peers.  Of note, for all you bloggers (Not capital "B") who are thinking about using the Blogger (capital "B) platform to power your blog, you should find a lot of comfort in the fact that the entire operation has been backed by Google's Data Liberation Front - and you can quickly/easily export your entire set of content

A week or so ago, my sister sent me an article ( like this one - but I don't think that was actually the one she sent) that had all these alarming stats about the air quality in our homes during the winter and how these things called VOCs get built up.  I had never even heard of VOCs, let alone knew that they were doing so much damage to our lungs.  VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds that come from a wide range of things in our homes like paint and furniture and cleaning supplies.  Turns out, because of these VOCs, the air quality *in* our home may be worse than the quality *out* of our home. This note she sent me said that all is not lost; that there was something you could do to help clean the air in your home:  buy one of these five plants.  Armed with the list of the five plants, I went off to Home Depot to see what I could turn up in the garden center.  On the list was something called an Asparagus Fern and after some digging and Google Image searching (the plants at Hom

With the arrival of a new year in my life (29th!), I thought that it would be appropriate to move RhodesSchool over to a different blogging platform. I've been on a custom-made blogging platform that has served me very well since 2004 and I am not done with it. My Wedding Blog is still on the platform, as are a whole host of my other sites. With RhodesSchool, I wanted to bring it to a new platform because this is the type of issue that I deal with on a day-to-day basis at FeedBurner. We deal with publishers who have to modify their .htaccess file, install the Ordered List WordPress plugin, and embed various widgets and items into their sidebars. I wanted to roll up my sleeves, get a little dirty, and get better acquainted to this particular platform. Will I stay at WordPress forever? I doubt it. It's one of many blogging platforms that publishers are using. Rick Stratton is using Feed.us and that looks to be a promising tool. I am planning on giving it a try next.