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Our post a few weeks back about when to use Drupal and Wordpress generated a pretty good discussion in the comments and on other websites. Below are the best questions/comments and our responses.

(1) Amnon – Drupal Israel: “Did you notice any performance difference between the systems?”

Considering the functionality both of them possess and what both the platforms are trying to accomplish, we have found Wordpress is more resource intensive then Drupal. By default, Wordpress makes a ton of database queries and has no built-in caching. Drupal has caching out of the box. Poorly optimized Wordpress sites have actually become a sort of running joke on Digg, where Wordpress site after site that appears on the Digg homepage goes down within a few minutes due to overwhelmed database servers. However, those with a bit of experience can run Wordpress efficiently by using the WP-Cache plug-in and by optimizing your hosting set up. In addition, the brand new Wordpress 2.3 release supposedly includes some serious speed improvements. We are testing the new release now.

In addition, when implementing both Wordpress and Drupal you should be conservative in the plug-ins you use, as they can cause performance problems. This has been less of an issue for us in Drupal, mostly because Drupal has most of the functionality we need out of the box and we haven’t had to install a ton of plug-ins. (more…)

Google Maps has always been pretty easy to use to embed maps in your website. The tool has featured an open API since the beginning, which made it easy for folks with a fairly advanced understanding of the web to post maps on their site. But it still wasn’t dead simple

This all changed in April when Google launched My Maps, which allows users to create maps from a simple web-based interface that they can then embed into their own website using an iframe. My Maps made using Google Maps as simple as inserting YouTube code in a blog post. It even allows you to draw line between points on the map and insert HTML code in the little address pop up thing. You can view a sample map below that highlights the location of our office here.

I’ve personally been using this tool a lot in my work. For simple maps, this tool can save you a lot of time. Check it out if you haven’t already. (more…)

I started to write about the top 5 sports blogs, however I feel I wouldn’t do that post justice. The fact is, I grew up in San Antonio, TX, which, in terms of pro-sports, has the Spurs as the only game in town. So for this weeks Friday’s Five I bring you the Top 5 Pro Basketball Blogs using the only metric that makes sense, my opinion.

The Best

TrueHoop

Henry Abbott has a background as a journalist and the quality posts on TrueHoop show it. Anybody who loves the NBA and thinks little is happening during the off-season should start reading this blog. The original reason I started reading was very simple, I was tired of getting the same stories about the same things over and over again in the mainstream media. TrueHoop was an island in the storm providing great insight from true basketball fans both in the posts and the reader comments.

When Henry is on vacation or assignment, the backup bloggers, led by Kelly Dwyer , continue the great posts. Recently Dwyer has been doing a series called KD’s DVDs where he goes back into his archive of game film and gives his comments on the games of yesteryear, reminding readers of the epic games that made them become basketball fans in the first place. And all this greatness exists despite the fact that TrueHoop has become part of the ESPN Empire .

The Rest

Basketbawful

This is a basketball blog with an “it’s funny ‘cause it’s true” brand of humor. With posts about the trials and tribulations of what to wear and how to survive pickup basketball, and words of the day like “Circus Shot,” it’s easy for a longtime hoops fan to relate. Add in some old school highlights and commercial clips and you’ve got pure gold.

Basketball Jones

This is a great basketball blog with an even greater basketball podcast. In fact thebasketballjones.net podcast is currently ranked number four in the category of Best Podcast on the Blogger’s Choice Awards.

Agent Zero: The Blog File

More and more players are starting to blog their thoughts about basically everything. Gilbert Arenas blogs about his workouts, his games, players, video games, his home life, shoes, and whatever else pops into his head. Arenas is a funny guy and the NBA, who hosts the site, lets him be himself. Anyone in the public eye wanting to start his or her own blog should take a lesson in transparency from Agent Zero.

SB Nation

Team blogs. It stands to reason that a lot of the basketball blogs out there are fans writing about the team that they love. As a Spurs fan, all of the Spurs fan blogs would tie for a place on this list. But there are a lot of other great team blogs out there and several of them are part of the SB Nation blog network. The “recent posts” section combines all of the member site headlines, and if you want to stray, the network also includes baseball, football, college, and the catchall “other” category.

Get ready for the NBA blogs to explode in the coming weeks. Opening night is Tuesday October 30th 2007 .

This week alone four co-workers/clients/friends have asked me how they can save videos off of YouTube to their local computer.  I’ve tried doing this a million different ways over the years and have settled on a pretty simple solution: I use Keepvid to do it. 

Keepvid allows you to grab a source FLV file from most video sharing sites (YouTube, Blip.tv, etc.) simply by copying the URL of the video you want into the site.  Keepvid then spits back a link to the source file, you right click and save as and you are on your way.  The only complication is that you have to change the extension of the file you save from “.html” to “.flv” after saving.  Works like charm, although I’ve mostly used it for YouTube videos.

My previous method was to use the Video Downloader extension in Firefox.  I found it to be somewhat buggy and annoying to use.  Keepvid is much simpler. 

If you are interested in diving into this topic in more depth, you should check out CNet’s breakdown of the different ways to save videos.

Today we launched a new public demo of our media management platform, ImpactWatch™. To quote our marketing materials, ImpactWatch “is a web-based media management platform used by public relations and corporate communications professionals to continuously observe, track, gather and analyze high-volume media coverage of any brand, product, issue, event, or industry.”

Put more simply, we track mentions of your company/product/issue in newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc. and provide you with tools that help identify trends in coverage.

Our new demo looks at coverage of the real estate market.

If you want to give ImpactWatch a quick test drive, sign up now.

In my article last week on Wordpress vs Drupal, I gave some examples of sites built using those tools. Frankly, most of the examples I gave were sites we’d worked on. I figured I’d loop back and give examples of some exceptional sites I’ve come across (and didn’t work on) using each toolset. The goal is to show just how far you can push things using Drupal and Wordpress.

Drupal

(1) New York Observer

A full on newspaper website built using Drupal. (more…)

UPDATE (January 15, 2008): We now recommend choosing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD.

Please see our updated post here . 

When I began researching this post, I was aiming to write an article laying out the specifics of HD DVD and Blu-Ray, attempting to make sense out of this DVD format war. What are the advantages/disadvantages of each? Which should I buy? I discovered, however, the CNET already has those topics covered, with everything you never wanted to know about HD DVD and Blu-Ray in their Quick Guide. To avoid redundancy, I'm not going to repeat their expertise.  Instead, I'm going to take a different angle–figuring out what movie studios and dvd providers are working in which format, as well as the affordability of HD DVD and Blu-Ray players.  After all, these factors are what will probably influence most consumers' buying choices, rather than the actual technologies themselves.

Studios and Retailers

(more…)

This one is probably better titled, five more great Wordpress plugins, as we’ve covered this ground before. So here are five more great plugins for your blog:

(1) Wp Poll

Add swank, Ajaxy polls to your blog.

(2) Brian’s Nested Comments

Add threaded discussions to your comment area.

(3) WP-Sticky

This plug-in allows you to stick important posts at the top of your blog, breaking chronological order.

(4) Count Comments

This plugin counts the the number of comments each poster has made on your blog.

(5) Official Comments

Presents posts from the authors on the blog in a slightly different format of that of other commenters.