Here's some stuff Neville has liked. To find more cool stuff, check out Explore »

Keith Childs says...
Sep 21, 2009

Switching-off on holiday

I went on holiday. My only connection to the digital world was my company Blackberry. I kept an eye on e-mail but there was nothing that couldn't wait until I was back. I did check a website once, but on a Blackberry the user-experience doesn't make you go wow. We rented a house and - understandably - no internet access. I had my Ipod Touch and could have gone looking for free wifi. I could have taken my netbook and bought a pay-as-you-go dongle, but chose not to.

I had no river of news- from RSS through to Tweetdeck - it felt strange. It was like missing school or lectures for two weeks. Not quite isolation. Sure, there was still television and the evening news to keep you abreast of what's going on in the world, but I realized how much of the web is integrated into my daily life. Checking the weather, opening hours of museums and art galleries and stores, restaurant reviews, immediate access to news, Google Maps for planning trips and so on. 

Then there's the whole social web. Yes, the opportunity to update your Facebook page- let all your "friends" know what a great time you are having at the pool/beach/bar/etc. Upload pictures of you having a great time. Postcards are hard work. Buy the cards, find somewhere that sells stamps, handwrite addresses, write a personal message on each one-  and legibly. I let my dear wife do this. Could not handle the stress myself. And then you have to go hunting for a letterbox to post the things. Facebook update sounded more appealing. And of course it's two way- the potential for someone to respond with something like- try that nice restaurant at ... we had the best fish ever. But of course I was offline.

On reflection I wish I had stayed connected. I don't feel better for self-imposed "isolation". You feel that you need to catch-up when you get back. It's bad enough with e-mail, but you also want to check your networks to see what your friends have been doing. My parents appreciated the postcard. It arrived one week after we finished our vacation. Holiday pictures were already up on Facebook and I had Skyped them twice since getting home. 10 days for a postcard from France to the UK. I'm sure it was an exception to the rule :-) Next vacation will be covered by twitpic. In the meantime, four postcards from me. My photos. Originals, unique- but the same message for everyone: "Having a great time. Food excellent. Wish you were here!"

       
Click here to download:
Switching-off_on_holiday.zip (297 KB)

Loading mentions Retweet
Comment (0) »

garry says...
Sep 16, 2009

Posterous Theming: It's here, it's live, and it's time to make your site yours!

Posterous is proud to announce the ability to change the look and feel of your Posterous blog! It's been a long time coming, and are we ever excited about releasing this feature to you guys today.

Choose from five built-in themes
Including one designed by theme creator Bill Israel. And we've got a whole ton more on the way. We wanted to get this in your hands ASAP, and we'll be releasing more into the system as soon as we create them.

Be able to upload header images
Customize your blog by creating a custom blog header in your favorite image editor. Then just upload it and see it at the top of every page on your blog. No coding experience necessary.

And choose new colors
Want to change the link color? Switch something up? Use our color picker and you don't have to code a single line of HTML.

For people who want to customize to the max...

If you're an advanced user, designer, or engineer, now you can totally change the CSS and HTML layout of your site.

Not only that, Posterous Themes are Tumblr-compatible. We built the Posterous Theme Engine to work great with the thousands of existing Tumblr themes out there! Just drop the theme code into the "advanced mode" editor. Want to add commenting and favoriting? It's just a couple lines of simple HTML away. Read more about it in our theming docs.

Some examples of Posterous Themes in the wild...

Check out what Posterous super-themer Cory Watilo has built with full CSS / HTML customization:

Our friends at Mugasha, Vidly, and Tweetvite have all chosen Posterous to host their company startup blogs. Dustin Curtis is liveblogging his 30 day flight on JetBlue on posterous too!

So what are you waiting for? It's enabled on your Posterous blog now. Go to your Manage page, and click Edit Settings > Theme and Customize to get started.

Loading mentions Retweet
Comment (195) »

brett says...
Sep 01, 2009

New Feature: Use Feedburner to track your feed

We made it really easy to use Feedburner to get analytics about who's reading your feed. Just burn your Posterous RSS feed and add the new Feedburner feed address to your site and you're off.

Grab the address from Feedburner:

Then add it to your site settings:

The next time you go to your site the feed icon will link to your Feedburner feed! You can find more setup instruction in our help section.

Filed under: New Features
Loading mentions Retweet
Comment (49) »