Transmitter -- Problems with Radio UserLand

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Transmitter :: Problems with Radio UserLand

This document lays out problems as I see them with Radio UserLand by UserLand Software:

• Unstable
• Proprietary
• Open but unopen architecture
• Clunky user interface that is good for advanced users but bad for Novices
• Requires a client PC
• Does absolutely nothing for klogging
• can’t be deployed in a hosted architecture
• LONG permalinks that break in email addresses
• Not amenable to textual indexing i.e. you could do this:
• http://domain/2002_10_01.php where this is a wrapper around 2002_10_01.xml which has the only textual content  AND a spider detect routines could change the served content dynamically to be solely the
• Outline support is mixed
• No support for pre-blog parsing such as:
  • spell check
  • did you link to this recently?
  • grammar check
  • do these links work?
  • suggest a link
• No support for different types of organization beyond chronological
• No real support for work in progress i.e. a drafts folder
• An emphasis on wysiwyg blogging when that’s NOT in the best interest of the user
• No real server side tools like “Allow people to subscribe to a weekly digest of my blog”
• Difficult to implement extensions based on proprietary scripting language that often seem to NOT work
• Poor selection of prebuilt templates
• Poor support for 2 way activities (limited commenting, etc)
• No support for tables of contents
• No way to view a collection of urls you;ve linked to
• Static blogroll, not dynamic based on which links are most followed
• No tracking of links followed
• No ability to schedule publishing of future blog events
• Poor view abilities
• unstable, nonqueryable content repository
• Radio does nothing to help the blogging process – despite an integrated news aggregator.  It’s not hard to imagine a blogging tool which (see don park’s comment below also)
• Pathetic user interface for a news aggregator

From Don Park:

| http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2002/10/15.html#a89
Blog Inline Image Service using Syndicated Images

[_ Scott Johnson ](http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/) _asked me to expand on my Blog Inline Image Service idea so here is the result of a cup of coffee.  There are two parts to the idea:

1. Syndicated Images - Allow people and organizations to syndicate images along with associated title, link, and description.  RSS already has <image> tag used for channel image, so all we have to do is add an attribute to distinguish non-channel images and allow multiple <image> inside <channel>.  I would also add a child element for specifying suggested use (i.e. icon, blah, blah).
2. Blog Inline Image Service - Integrate blogging tools with web services that provide content-related images to be inlined into weblog posts.  The idea is to make it really easy for bloggers to add images to posts by searching image database with words and phrases extracted directly or indirectly (by association) from the post content or the channel title and description.

Tie two parts together and you got something neat.  Imagine writing a post about Bill Gate and being presented with a selection of Bill Gate pictures including one taken this morning by himself.  Cool!

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