Keep an online diary & send emails to your future self
After more than 5 years of planning and full year of on-and-off programming, I’m pleased to announce the public beta launch of My Future Self at http://MyFutureSelf.com:
“My Future Self is a new way to keep an private journal online. It will encourage you to write about your life and the stories from your past. If you have kids, it’s a way to start keeping a journal for them – for when they grow up and wonder what was going on during their early years.
My Future Self is not a website. It is a private journal you will keep via email, sometimes responding to questions about your life, sometimes by sending an email just because you feel like writing down what happened to you today.
The only time you’ll return to this website will be to explore what you’ve written. When you do come back, what makes My Future Self special is that your stories will automatically be organized into timelines, places, dates, and relationships so that you can better visualize and understand the story of your life.”
MyFutureSelf.com
How to change the width of an automatic WordPress embed
One of the superb things about WordPress is that it will automatically convert YouTube URLs into embeds (as well as URLs pointing to Vimeo, Flickr, Hulu etc.)
For example, the video you see embedded on this post was supplied from within the WordPress post editor like this:
How to set the size of automatic embeds for your entire WordPress site:
Login as the WordPress admin and go to Settings: Media. There you’ll see boxes for setting your maximum embed height and width. This will change the width of your embeds throughout your whole site. It’s retroactive so if you change theses settings, they’ll impact embeds even on posts and pages you authored before making the update.
Login as admin, look for Settings: Media
How to change the size for an individual embed:
If you need to make an embed bigger or smaller for a particular page or post, you can override the global media settings by adding a little code to your post, like this:
[embed width="390" height="300"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYZ[/embed]
Feedback for NPR’s Android App
Here’s some feedback for the open source development team that’s updating NPR’s somewhat buggy but hugely valuable Android application:
Please make it easier to listen to NPR programs with this app.
I’m sure there are users of this App who like to fiddle around with the program streams and create their own custom playlists, but the premise I’m working on is that the majority of people who use the NPR Android App use it for a simple purpose: to listen to a show. NPR is radio, and the great thing about radio is that you can listen to it while working, walking, running, or driving.
Consequently, every time I use this app I’m frustrated because it takes me about 70 seconds of pointing, dragging, and button clicking (14 steps in all) to listen to a show. Don’t believe me? Watch this video, which also includes a recommendation for improvement:
Have you figured out a way to bypass any of these 14 steps? Let me know in the comments.