How to force Google Sites to let you make a site public.

(Jump to the fix if you want to skip the introduction.)

Google Sites is the evolution of JotSpot. It allows individuals, teams, or organizations to create simple, revision-tracked web sites. Probably its strongest points are ease of setup and ease of embedding other objects, including Google documents, videos, slideshows, calendars, and any of the “gadgets” available to iGoogle home pages. The most obvious downside is frustratingly limited customizability, as is to be expected from a free hosted solution.

Another problem is that saves can be less than perfect. Configuring and adding gadgets can be particularly frustrating, as you may find yourself starting over several times.

InfoQ: Intro to Google Charts and gchartrb

Matthew Bass has written a nice introduction to the [dead simple] Google Charts API and to gchatrb, a Ruby interface to the API developed by Deepak Jois. (The article links to an older Google code repository. The latest version is at the github link provided here.)

Constructing the URLs for Google Charts is pretty simple, and gchartrb and its Python counterpart are almost as verbose, but it’s obviously easier to integrate the wrappers into a program’s flow.

I like Bass’ idea of using a Capistrano task to update the image, rather than rendering it from Google every time. He is a little harsh, though, on “the medieval monster which is ImageMagick.” I like ImageMagick. I’m awful with anything related to design, images, and the visual arts; but I often find myself lost in the (wrongly placed) ImageMagick docs trying out all sorts of esoteric combinations to do some stupid trick or the other. It may be one of the worst tools to have to get work out of, but in the end it does a pretty nifty (and usually not-quite-what-was-expected) job. If ImageMagick is a medieval monster, it’s Herbert the Timid Dragon:

French annulment

There’s a story which seems to have hopped over from the French blogosphere now making the rounds.

Usability or lack thereof

A few ongoing issues are building up my frustration level today. Note that these are not all strictly about usability, but if I allowed myself to title all posts “Frustration,” this blog would be worse than K-Menu (see #4):