Big news today on the Amazon Kindle front. It seems that they will be selling their e-reader in a 100 new countries.
Except to the one just north of the 49th parallel.
Right. What ever you say Amazon.
Shooting at Bubbles now in the language of your choice
I’m not suggesting that this will fix any spelling errors or shorten any possible rambling posts but thanks to Google’s just released Translate widget you can now select your language of choice to read our content in.
At this point there are 51 languages available to be translated in and when you visit this blog it will detect your language settings (via your browser settings) and offer to translate the page. Hopefully this will encourage more readers to drop by the blog and get caught up with the thoughts and opinions of a cranky old fart.
This is what the blog looks like when translated into French:
Blogging and the WordPress theme learning curve
As much as blogging is about getting your ideas and opinions out there for other to possibly read it is also about creating an online identity for yourself. Part of that process is making sure that your blog’s look reflects your personality and style. Most bloggers are more than happy to find a good free theme that suites their tastes and let it go at that.
Others are willing to fork over hard earn money on the hope that they’ll be able to get a more unique look. Then there are those that just have to get their hands dirty and write their own theme code – I’m finding myself more in that crowd these days.
For me it’s just just a matter of posting stuff to read. I like to know how the machinery under the hood works. As a result it was pretty well inevitable that I would want to learn more about WordPress and the themes that make it look good.
My first effort was here at Shooting at Bubbles and on the whole I am pretty happy with it (although I’ll be heading back under the hood to tinker a little more with it). Happy enough that I decided to keep hacking away and create a new theme for my WinExtra blog.
After working on it here and there over the last couple of weeks I finally went live with it today and like the one here it is simple in design but I’m satisfied with how it turned out (even if IE7 doesn’t want to play nice – thanks Allen). If you’re interested head over and have a look around – any comments on it are more than welcome after all I’m still learning and more than welcome helpful pointers.
Windows Live Writer due for a UI refresh?
Next to FeedDemon one of the most important tools in my blogging career would have to be Windows Live Writer the free desktop blog editor from Microsoft. When word came that Joe Cheng was leaving Microsoft and the WLW team (which I was rather sad to hear since he has been a great source of help in the past), and tying in the fact that we had heard nothing about any work being done on the program I began to think that WLW would die on the vine.
It turns out that I may not have anything to worry about if this post from Scott over at LiveSide is any indication. According to a Twitter message from a Microsoft employee the next release of WLW (Wave 4) may see the (in)famous Ribbon interface being used. Since whatever testing of the next WLW is going through is still internal to Microsoft the best idea we have of what this could like comes from a mock-up by PicturePan2 at LiveSino
All I can say is that this is great news and I can hardly wait to get my hands on a new version to play with (hint hint 
)
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