Testing Radio

Dave Winer hosts these websites out of the goodness of his heart, and to have tons of people hammer on his Manila server, shaking out the bugs in it so it is of even higher quality than if it was only tested internally. I've appreciated using the service, and I'll have to find some way to continue weblogging when and if he discontinues this free service.

And discontinue it he may. He has made noises in the past about how badly his servers are getting hammered. He's said he doesn't want to be in the business of serving web pages, so he won't take money for it now. Finally, he's hinted at a model whereby folks buy his Radio Userland software, and then edit their weblog entirely on their local system, only sending static pages to his servers, so they don't have to do any computation. Therefore, I'm now testing out the tool Userland is promoting for managing web content, Radio Userland. It's quite probable that I won't like it, but I think I'm going to have to learn it, given Dave's hinting.

I don't mind paying for the service that gives me Terebi, but I really find this tool clumsy to edit with. Dave is famed for having invented computer-based outliners, and so his editor paradigm is based on outlines. Well, guess what. When I write technical documents, I often think hierarchically. But when I write creatively, or compose an epistle, I'm much more nonlinear, and outlining just gets in the way. I'd rather just create text in the editor of my choice and paste it into the form window on the web. Well, we'll try it anyway...