Playlists are back! Well, in my copy of Radio at least. While I'm listening to music via iTunes the current song is added to my Radio playlist. The song title contains a link to the CDDB. You can view my playlist here, most recent song first:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0105891/playingnow.html

If you'd like this script (Mac users only I'm afraid) just let me know.
9:28:25 PM    

Started using a new piece of software today. For the time being I'll be running Conversant alongside Radio on my home iMac. I'll post pertinent observations here but so far both systems seem to happily coexist.

The Competition?

It has been mentioned more than once that Conversant could render Manila obsolete. It'll be interesting to see whether this is just hype or if it really could live up to this claim. Manila is successful despite the bugs and poor support from Userland because it's so easy to get started. You can do a lot with Manila without having to know anything about scripting. Of course if you can script using Usertalk (the language used by both Manila and Conversant, and Radio for that matter) then the experience is all the more rewarding. I have not had chance to compare Conversant 'behind the scenes' against Manila so I can't say any more at this stage.

Cost

One immediate feature in Conversant's favour is that it runs on top of Radio. This effectively gives you a Manila-like CMS (Conversant $499 + Radio $40) for a little over half the cost of Frontier + Manila ($899). If you've already shelled out for Frontier then it's unlikely that you'll want to pay another $499 for Conversant, unless a) their product is significantly superior (to be determined) and/or b) the guys at Macrobyte prove to be more user-friendly than Userland. Speaking personally, if I became a Macrobyte customer and Conversant plugin developer and if the first time I mentioned some bugs I wasn't ignored or ostracized then they will have already beaten the competition.

Practicalities

So what's the hit? Well for starters the Mac Classic version of Radio is unreliable as a server due to a pretty serious TCP/IP bug. But I know there are a lot of Windows and OS X users out there so this might not be a problem for the majority. However, how Radio on these platforms stacks up as a server for even a moderately busy site remains to be seen.

First impressions

All I can say at the moment is that Conversant installs very easily and you're up and running with a new website in less than 5 minutes. This compares favourably with Manila which can claim the same easy setup. Despite the inevitable comparisons with Manila, behind the scenes Conversant is totally different so I've not yet picked my away though how it's all put together.

Initially I was worried that there wasn't a plugin interface to Conversant but thankfully there is. Manila plugins will have to be rewritten if they are to work with Conversant so there's likely to be a delay before any significant 3rd party plugins appear unless some key developers have been primed. I've yet to find adequate documentation on developing for Conversant but maybe that's just me not looking hard enough. As an aside, the basic Conversant install results in around 15 root databases. This is either a smart move that underlies a highly modular application or else it points to an underlying fragmentary evolution. What will be the implications of this with Frontier's poor memory handling? Time will tell.

So that's about it for now. I have no idea how Conversant works so I've a lot to discover. My recommendation to you is to give it a go. There's an evaluation version that'll give you a couple of weeks worth of free use.

It's always been the case with long-standing Frontier/Manila users that you just have to put up with the bugs and poor support because you either use Frontier or you find something else. The trouble was there was nothing that came close to the killer combination of Frontier and Manila. Zope was about the closest but anyone who's used Zope will know that it's definitely not for the uninitiated. Manila's strength was that just about anyone could install it and get up and running with a sophisticated web site in minutes. Well now there is a potential alternative and all eyes must be on Conversant.
3:34:14 PM