I just moved from Blogger to WordPress, and I’m loving it. Although I am only just beginning to explore what the software can do, I’ve already seen a few decided advantages over Blogger:

1) Extremely Customizable

If you know what you are doing and have your own FTP server, you can rip into the guts of your blog like a hungry zombie. Since WordPress allows you to download the entire open source framework and host it yourself on your server of choice, there are almost no limitations to what you can do with it.

On the other hand, if you don’t feel like going all “undead coder,” you can choose from hundreds of themes and plugins that never require you to open a css or php file, but still give you plenty of tools to make your blog your own. (Note that most of these options require that you have hosting; wordpress.com charges for all the extras – wordpress.org gives them away for free.)

The best part is, there is a large knowledge base and forum community to help figure out the many layers of WP.

2) Smooth Back-End Interface

Blogger’s dashboard felt outdated and clunky, but I just assumed that was par for the course. WordPress has shown me differently, however, with a clean, smooth interface that is arranged intuitively (for the most part).

You can see from the images below, it’s clear that WordPress has had some TLC that Blogger lacks. For one thing, WP utilizes the entire space; Blogger looks like it was built for a monitor resolution better suited to the ’90s.

The entire interface is just better designed, with better use of space, better organization of information, and smoother coding.

3) Categories for Your Categories

I blog about a variety of very different things, but none of them with enough volume to merit a variety of blogs. In Blogger, I organized them by a carefully chosen set of tags, but it always felt forced. WordPress addresses that need by allowing posts to be sorted by category, as well. The categories themselves nest, allowing for much finer control of the overall organization of a blog.

Not only posts can be categorized; I discovered today that feeds on my blogroll can also be organized in this way, and I can choose to show or omit each category. I follow a number of friends from Second Life, but I also follow a couple of gamer news sites, a friend’s blog, and a couple of design inspiration blogs. Now anyone who visits can quickly see which, if any, will interest them, and ignore the rest.

Closing Thoughts

To be honest, I’m disappointed in Google. Nearly everything they touch has magic (or maybe something more addictive – like crack) all over it, but Blogger is light-years behind WordPress. Perhaps the developers there have just thrown in the towel, conceding victory to WP. Either way, I’m never looking back. Between better core software and substantially more add-ons, WordPress is a pleasure to use and does exactly what I need it to.

I just found this free script site. I haven’t used any of the other scripts, but the fix for transparent PNGs in IE6 is clean and effective.

I just picked up some really good Apple iPhone / iPod Touch apps from the iTunes app store and thought I’d share.

Design / Development

iCheatSheets, by John Ohl - This convenient app lists the tags, functions, and attributes of 11 programming and markup languages, and even throws in a World of Warcraft command reference. It wouldn’t be much use to beginners of the language of choice, but for someone who already knows their way around and finds themselves going “what’s that tag again?” it’s a nice reference.

HTML Cheat Sheet, by Concentric Sky – Two paws up! Another quick reference app that does just what it ought to do. I got it for a quick ref to ASCII and ISO characters, and it does the job nicely. I only wish it would let you search for a specific character instead of making you browse the lists. Nonetheless, it’s a very complete reference, unlike others I’ve found which leave out one or another character set.

Color Wheel, by Trevor Gray – This is a simple color picker app, the main strength of which is its many color scheme options (Triadic, Split-Complementary, Analogous, etc.). It does not stand alone, but makes a good supplement to the more full featured apps available which do not ever seem to have as many classic color scheme options available.

CliqCliq Colors, by CliqCliq – This is an absolutely amazing app and worth far more than the $2.99 it currently costs. At first glance, it appears simple and plain, but after just a few minutes of exploration, I found it to be loaded with elegantly designed features that do everything – everything! – I want. From choosing a palette from a photograph to creating your own via sliders and RGB or Hex entry; to saving that palette and then emailing it to yourself in Photoshop or Illustrator format, this app is beautifully designed. Not all the commands are intuitive, but once found, they are easily accessed again, and the uncluttered design is outstanding.

Tomorrow, I’ll blog two really amazing iGames I’ve found and a couple I’m looking forward to picking up. Next will come productivity apps, readers, and art apps.

Holy waffles, Batman, this looks great! Mozilla continues to lead the way in Web development with their new tool Jetpack. “In short, Jetpack is an API for allowing you to write Firefox add-ons using the web technologies you already know.” Sounds dry? Check out the video to see why I’m excited. I <3 you, Mozilla!

Mozilla Labs Jetpack – Intro & Tutorial from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Just found a fun site that experiments with a new way to navigate. Instead of clicking on things, you drag sliders to make your choices. Fun stuff! He even includes a virtual keyboard to show that even a good idea shouldn’t necessarily be applied to everything. Check out IamLin.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of the average user of modern technology from overreaching corporate and government actions. They actively seek to defend us in the courts, provide numerous educational materials to help us know both our rights and our vulnerabilities, and keep us informed about current issues which need attention. It is my opinion that this is one of the single most important organizations of the modern age and a major bulwark against the formation of a Big Brother, Orwellian style government.

Copyright laws in the digital age can be fuzzy at best, with terms such as Fair Use and copyright infringement being tossed around with only a generalized idea of what they actually mean or when they really apply. To combat this, EFF has launched Teaching Copyright, a full curriculum resource for educators to help them provide their students with solid facts about the rights and responsibilities attached to copyright law.