Simon is a hands-on software architect and has a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Reading. Over the past 12 years, he’s been involved in projects ranging from rich desktop clients and web applications through to highly scalable distributed systems and service-oriented architectures; predominantly within the finance industry. He's also undertaken consulting and training roles with a broader focus on people, process and technology.
Pebble deskblog screenshots
As you may have seen on the Pebble website, in addition to Pebble weblog there are two new apps coming soon - deskblog and moblog. With moblog you'll be able to post to any Blogger/MetaWeblog API compatible blog. So, why a desktop blogger?
At JavaOne I noticed that there were an awful lot of people taking notes on their laptops in the technical sessions. Some were writing up notes and some were writing up their thoughts and questions. Essentially, they were "blogging" with tools like Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. Some people were weblogging in realtime, but most weren't. My thinking behind deskblog is that are probably (hopefully!) lots of people out there that read blogs and would like to keep a private blog of their own. Perhaps as a diary or maybe for keeping track of project progress. Of course you could download pretty much any weblogging software and run it locally, but there's an easier way. A nice desktop app that you can just download and run. When you think of something to write down, just fire up the app and type away. The benefit of doing this in a purpose built blogging application is that you can migrate your local blog to a weblog very easily.
Basically, Pebble deskblog is just a Swing GUI over the top of the existing Pebble weblog domain objects. It uses the same code, the same storage mechanism and requires zero setup. To migrate a desktop blog to a weblog, just take the directory where everything is being saved and point Pebble weblog at it. Deskblog also makes a nice offline viewer for an existing weblog.
In terms of functionality, because a desktop blog is essentially disconnected, it doesn't need to support things like comments, TrackBacks, XML-RPC update pings and e-mail notifications. At a minimum you need to write blog entries, save drafts and templates, manage categories, "upload" (save) files/images and edit some of the basic properties (e.g. blog name, etc). No referer filters, no RSS feeds, no custom themes, etc. Just plain and simple blogging. Here are a few screenshots showing some of that basic functionality.
Although there are some interesting Swing challenges to be had, the app itself is fairly straightforward and this is where some fun can be had. There are a whole load of other things that deskblog could do. Examples include...
- News feed aggregation with archive and searching facilities
- Synchronization with your (remote) Pebble weblog
- XML-RPC posting to any compatible blog
- Ability to generate a static website (perhaps via a Blogmento plugin or something)
