Sadly, blogging APIs have never been the first-class citizens in blog engines. Sure, most people just use web interfaces to post to their blogs, but there are a lot of people who prefer desktop applications like BlogJet.

WordPress 2.6 is going to join Movable Type in discriminating against blog clients—they are going to disable XML-RPC APIs by default. Users will have to enable them manually. (Movable Type requires you to use special API key instead of your password.)

Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit, the excellent blog client for Mac OS X, has a good post on this in his blog:

In my opinion, an entire class of problems with WordPress (and other blogging systems) stems from this interface bifurcation. Establishing a single interface to WordPress would be comparable to the “pin code + card” interface at your bank. You pass through it by car, on foot, and even at the counter when they ask you to swipe before doing any transaction. If you’ve only got one “real API” that touches the critically important data, then you’ve only got one door to secure. Furthermore, when all views into the blog are required to share the same API, suddenly none of them is deprived of functionality that the other has. Imagine if the API that the web interface uses to access all features of a blog could be just as easily employed by MarsEdit or any other application you authorized. The end result would be lots less work “playing catch up” for the XMLRPC and Atom developers, and more time focusing on innovative and cool features for all blog users.

Read it now and come back.

Did I mention that most blogging clients (except for one) are made by tiny software companies, and that they spend a huge amount of time answering to support emails from their users who have various problems configuring their server software?

We do our best to make our software as easy to configure and use as possible: just enter your blog address, login, and password, and let the program do configuration as needed. Disabling API by default will throw this work away; it’s a way to increase the number of support requests, therefore, the amount of time we spend on support rather than perfecting our software.

Time to move on and develop other types of software? Or make our own blog engines? ;)

P.S. I have nothing against WordPress developers; actually they have one of the best implementations of the API, and I want to thank them for their work. However, I do not understand how disabling API will increase WordPress security.

Update: WordPress developers handled this issue with care: WP provides a meaningful error message and instructions on how to enable API. Thanks again, guys!

Downloaded Firefox 3? Miss something?

Here it is: the updated BlogJet This! extension for Firefox 3.

Update: It’s official: .Mac will be MobileMe soon.

I’m not in Apple rumors business, but… hell… why not?

Apple will rename their .Mac service soon. Hints are everywhere in Mac OS X 10.5.3 update.

iCal’s Localizable.strings file contains the following string:

/* Label of .Mac button in iCal’s General preferences. %@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac) (remove -XX02)

Safari has the following lines in its Localizable.strings:

/* Title of .Mac alert sheet, with .Mac brand name subsituted */ “You need a %@ account that has syncing enabled” = “You need a %@ account that has syncing enabled”;

Same with Mail’s Prefs.strings:

/* Title of button used to open the .Mac system preference pane. */ “AOS_SYNC_BUTTON_FORMAT” = “%@…”; /* Descriptive text for .Mac Sync. */ “AOS_SYNC_FORMAT” = “Use %@ to synchronize Accounts, Rules, Notes, Signatures, and Smart Mailboxes.”;

Almost everywhere “.Mac” has been replaced with %@, which means that the name of Apple’s online service will be inserted programmatically by applications.

I looked into binaries to find out what the new name is, but it seems like apps take this value from /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Mac.prefPane /System/Library/CoreServices/AOS.bundle (thanks, Mike!), which still has the old name. It seems like it will be updated via Software Update once Apple renames .Mac and — boom! — all your apps will have the new name.

Kudos to DeepApple [ru] for finding strings in iCal.

Update: next post: “Mobile Me” name found!

We have updated our support center — it is much better now (though contact form is not available yet. While we’re working on it, please use email to contact us.)

Also, we got rid of the old forum and moved discussions to Google Groups. There are two user groups now:

• BlogJet Users group

  This place is to discuss BlogJet usage, share your thoughts on blogging, ask for help and request features.

• Mémoires Users group

  This place is for Mémoires users to share their thoughts on journaling, ask for help, and discuss ideas for future versions.

We hope you will be satisfied with improved support!

We released a plugin for Acorn image editor that allows you to upload your pictures to Flickr.

Consider current version a beta release — it works okay, though it doesn’t report the uploading progress yet.

Get it here: http://www.codingrobots.com/acornflickr/

It’s free (and open source, MIT license). Enjoy!

This is a quick fix for embossing of days in calendar, as Mac OS X 10.5.2 update changed how shadows behaved in Cocoa.

Download

MacSanta is here.