Computers & Technology

1. Choose your blog's Settings (Configure> Settings).
2. Switch to Detailed settings, if necessary.
3. Choose the New Entry Defaults tab.
4. In the section titled Publicity/Remote Interfaces, select the sites you would like to ping (notify about updates to your blog).
5. Save your changes.

You can also choose to ping (or not) when composing a new blog entry, if you have the custom options displayed.  Choose the Customize the display of this page link, at the bottom of the new entry screen.

From Microsoft's LiveWriter blog:

One of the less obvious features available in Windows Live Writer is the ability to automatically ping (send a signal) to popular blog aggregators every time you publish something to your blog.  This feature actively pings the servers of the blog aggregators you specify and to indicate when there is new material.

To use this feature in Writer click on Ping Servers in the Options dialog (navigation: Tools | Options | Ping Servers). Then add the names of the servers you want to ping.

You can read the original posting.

Using WLW (Windows Live Writer) you can add tags to your post, and you can automatically ping aggregators of your choice.

NYU's blog service uses MovableType technology, and can also ping some of these aggregator services.  Read more about blog pinging using NYU's Blogs.

Links:

• See how pinging works.
• Learn about aggregators (or feed aggregators).
• Learn about Pinging from NYU's Blogs.
• Learn about Pinging Technorati in MovableType.

Quoted from SPSS 13.0 for Mac OS X | System Requirements

SPSS 16.0 is due for release in the second half of 2007. Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux desktop platforms will be supported. The Mac version will be a Universal Binary and compatible with Power PC and Intel-based Mac hardware.

So it seems like SPSS is finally getting with the program. The Macintosh version is being updated so that it will run on Intel processor-based Macintosh computers. They will also be releasing a version for Linux; that's kind of interesting.

In my dreams, there is a free simple to use / simple to support desktop environment that is Linux based, on which students, faculty, staff and administrators can get their work done. But this is a topic for a different post.

Mariner Software makes a program called MacJournal, which can be used to create, edit and manage journals and journal entries. And blogs, too, which can be a kind of a journal.

What's cool it's that it can post to popular online blog services, such as LiveJournal, Movable Type (the technology behind NYU Blogs), Blogger, WordPress, "and more". However, it can also be simply a journal that you keep on your computer. In fact, that is how their software was started (back in the days of Mac OS 8). You can store and manage your journal on your computer; it sounds like it might not be that interesting, to keep a journal offline, but trust me, for people who keep journals, it is a very good program. I used to use it a few versions ago.

Plus it has a "full-screen mode", which allows you to focus on your writing, without any of the distractions in other writing programs. The program does cost US$13, but it is totally worth the price if one is a journaler. Visit their website to see for yourself.

They also make a version of the same software that works on Windows (WinJournal).