Math in Blog Posts

It is always a challenging task to render equations in web browsers. There are so many latex-to-html converters. The latex code is converted to an image file to be embedded into the html page. There are then MathML standards. The question comes next is if the browser is MathML compatible. I am not sure if blogspot supports latex. Do let me know if anyone says yes. I have just come to know that wordpress supports latex code though it uses the same trick of converting the code into an image. We need not do any conversion. Just write the latex code as follows:

$latex this-is-my-latex$

Insert this into the code of your post. It's done. You can also change the background and foreground colors of latex rendition as well as the size.

To change colors: $latex this-is-my-latex&bg=cc0000&fg=ffffff$

To change the size: $latex this-is-my-latex&s=3$

For more details, visit this page.

I told this feature to my friend Hariharan. He immediately tested it and was quite happy though he felt MathML is the key to math-rendition on the web. The tools are still under development for MathML, and browser compatibility standard is the key issue. You may also see this google gadget - equation editor (to convert latex code to an image)

Addenda

I was wondering how it had come to my mind the possibility of using latex in wordpress. I now remember the spark(!) came after seeing these posts of Mogadalai and Terence Tao. I then checked the wordpress help. Though I have been reading their blogs for quite sometime, the spark(!) gets initiated only when the time is right!!!!!!! Thanks.

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Del.icio.us

Kovaiputhalvan told me about this web service on a rainy day. When I asked him to write the link, he immediately said, "One minute, I will send an SMS." We heartily laughed at our dependence on "new technology" while wiping few pleasant driblets of rain from our faces.

From Wikipedia:

The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in late 2003, and is now part of Yahoo!.

From the website:

del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's. You can use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
• Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite -- they've already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.

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Google Blog Search

Google has now launched Blog Search.
More details are available here.
Google has a blog too.

Comment spam

To prevent comment spam, blogger setting now has one new option word verification. It is available in Settings --> Comments tab. Choose yes for Show word verification for comments. People who leave comments will be asked to write a random word shown as an image. This will prevent automated systems from leaving comment spams. The blogger help is here.

I have chosen this option. I hope those who like to leave comments would not feel this as a burden. A small inconvenience to keep the comments clean. Thanks to Mogadalai who informed me about this option.

New Feature - Shoutbox

I have added one shoutbox in the sidebar. You can now post your brief comments without much effort.

More on Feed Readers...

You will find the list of feed readers here.
A non-technical article on RSS feeds is available here.

Abilon - A Freeware Feeds Aggregator

There are so many news websites and blogs we are interested in. We visit some sites occasionally and find nothing of our interest. Now major news websites offer RSS feeds so that a reader-software can receive these feeds which contain titles and a brief description of the content. Some websites that give newsfeeds - CNN, BBC, Indian Express, Rediff - (Does The Hindu offer?) - Yahoo groups and Blogger. Many feed readers are available for online reading, for instance you can access these feeds through My Yahoo. There are also few Feed Aggregators that are available for download so that we can install in our computer and customize it. Abilon is one such freeware RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) Feeds Aggregator. I installed it two days back in my computer.

1. Download, Install, Start the application
2. Right click on All feeds
3. Give the details of the feeds and click OK
4. That's it!

You can add the RSS Feed of my blog by giving the URL of the feed in Step.3 as http://shencottah.blogspot.com/atom.xml

You can also move some news item from the feed for your later viewing. Abilon calls it memories.

1.Select the news item
2.Right Click and send to memories
3.Done

It has a built-in blogger tool using which we can directly post to our blogs. If you have more than one blog with a same username, you have to be careful while posting, and do check if it is getting posted to the right blog!

Many other features are also available but disabled in freeware edition, I guess.

Finally, I am not associated with Abilon developers in any way, and am obviously not responsible for any problems you may encounter while using it. This software has not given me problems so far. I have found it quite useful. Few user opinions are available here.