Matthew Trump's Paradigm Watch

Tuesday, January 15, 2002

Touring through Radio 8 Preferences It's always good practice to take a tour of the preferences of any user application. I found that doing so with Radio 8 really helped me understand what the heck was going on. I give prefs a good B+. Nicely arranged, and intuitive. By clicking through each, I began to understand how upstreaming work, for example. That was a big help. Also the whole thing about "one button versus three" now makes me understand how Radio works vis-a-vis the remote weblog. There is hope. I'm not sold yet. I've yet to see what the advantage of switching to it would be, why I would want to purchase it. I have issues with Blogger, but so far Radio hasn't made me say "thank goodness, now I can really blog." If I were just starting out, it might look good, but it's going to be hard to convince me to change my habits. 11:45:24 PM

Another point for Radio I just tried chaning the title of my Radio weblog, which like I said, I wasn't even sure I wanted to begin with. In any case, things went very smoothly, save the inevitable "302 Found" Message I get instead of returning to the homepage.

I have to say though: I do prefer the Blogger way, where you see all your prefs at once, as a form. You can edit the values directly, without loading up another page. That's just me though. A personal application preference. 5:23:07 PM

Score a half-point for Radio The post from my Linux machine worked. I had installed Radio on my Mac, but wanted to use it from my Linux box, where I do most of my non-graphics work.

The first time I tried, I got an authorization error. I went back to Radio with the intention of changing this, pessimistically wondering how long it would take to figure out.

Bravo! By following my nose, I found where to change the prefs on this immediately. It was very transparent. A triumph of design.

Unfortunately, my first attempt to post from my Linux box failed. Sure I had succeeded, I tried to post a long explanation like this, and was thwarted when a password challenge came up. "Hey," I protested. "I unchecked that box about asking for a password. What the heck is this." When I tried what I thought was my admin password when I signed up, I got an authorization error. It wouldn't have been so bad, but my post was wiped out. Arggh.

So that's the reason for the half point, instead of the full one. I thought I was disabling authentication by leaving that box unchecked. I wasn't. I had to go back and create a user identity. I would have liked to have known about this the first time though.

But as far as locating the prefs for remote access go, Radio gets an A. 5:18:32 PM

Testing from Linux....1...2...3 5:12:43 PM

Why delay? Get yours today! That message along the side, by the Status Center is starting to bug me.

Why delay? I'll tell you why: it's because I'm not at all convinced this thing is worth forty bucks yet, that's why. 4:57:00 PM

Cutting through the Radio Fog. This is my main problem with Radio so far. I can't blame Dave Winer for being so enthusiatic about his baby, but at some point all the cheerleading begins to detract from good communication. The cluetrain starts to teeter on the tracks.

I hear so much "this is great" that I keep coming back to my bone of contention: "What exactly does Radio do?" It seems like I have to keep figuring it out on my own.

That is: I am using Radio because everyone is making such a big deal about it, not because I heard something that it does and said: "Oh yeah, I want to be able to do that!"

4:50:47 PM

Still trying to figure out Radio. It has to be good right, what with all these people crowing about it, or least Dave Winer crowing about. It has to be good.

I was going to approach this as "why should I ditch Blogger in favor of Radio?" Then I read that Radio uses the Blogger API and I can post to Blogger. Huh?

What about this weblog I'm writing to right now. I didn't even want it. I already have all the server space I need, and all the domains I can use. The last thing I needed was "Matthew Trump's Radio Weblog" yet it was created automatically during the sign-up. Yikes. I didn't even know what was going on. It gave the impression that Radio is for complete blogger beginners, and that you have to join the Userland Cult to use a Radio Blog. It reminded me of Microsoft: hey, use our software to connect to our web services. Yeah, right.

But I've learned otherwise. But I'm still confused.I would have liked to have something right at the beginning: "Do you want a Radio Weblog at radio.weblogs.com, or do you want to post to a Blogger, etc. account?"

I love the way Blogger asks you during the set up if you want to just ftp to an existing host. I love that.

This is a theme I know I'm going to come back to: using Radio, I often have no idea what it's doing or what's going on. Only slowly do I "get" it.

You might say I'm retarded,but most software I use doesn't require me to slowly "get" it. Blogger certaintly didn't. Its fuctionality seemed self-evidently. The use-cases were a perfect fit with what I expected. With Radio, It seems I have to dig to figure out what the use cases are.

This is first impression of what Radio lacks: a clear presentation of what it exactly does and what is going on at each step. The last thing I want is a Microsoft-style paperclip telling me this. It should be evident from the design.

12:39:07 AM