Friday, July 9, 2010

Fiat Siena 2011

Mais um Fiat passa por mudanças para 2011. A extensa lista de beneficiados agora contempla o sedã compacto, que recebe pequenas novidades tanto para a versão principal como para o modelo de entrada Fire, na verdade as mesmas novidades aplicadas ao restante da linha Palio.

O Siena Fire, que mantém a carroceria da geração anterior, começa em R$ 29.740, e recebeu as mesmas mudanças da versão homônima de Palio e Strada: nova grade dianteira, com um elegante filete prateado em destaque, parachoques com leves redesenhos, novas rodas tanto de 13 como de 14 polegadas, e novos revestimentos internos.

Enquanto isso, o modelo principal, com a carroceria renovada, teve a versão ELX extinta. Em seu lugar vieram as Attractive com motor Fire 1.0 (73/75 cv) ou 1.4 (85/86 cv). Assim como o compacto e a perua, o sedã recebeu novas calotas e traz novas rodas de liga leve opcionais, ambas de 14 polegadas. E por dentro, oferece novo acabamento do interior, com direito ao console central tingido de uma nova tonalidade de cinza. Tudo isso por a partir de R$ 36.410 (1.0) e R$ 39.630 (1.4).

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Zemanta and your Blog: how to add and remove it

This article is about Zemanta and your blog: what it is, how to add it, and how to delete it.

Overview

In June 2009, Google announced Zemanta - a tool for "blogging smarter", which had to be downloaded and installed into your browser. More recently, they announced a closer integration between Google and Zemanata: there is now a Google-hosted page where you you can choose to install Zemanta with pretty much a single click.

Zemanata is basically an assistant that sits inside Blogger while you're writing, and makes suggestions about related things (pictures, articles etc) that you might like to link to. It's fine in theory (although I'd prefer to control my own research process, and take responsibility myself for meeting copyright conditions), however I found real performance issues when I tried to use it - which is why I went looking for the removal instructions! Some people at Blogger clearly like it though, so it must have some advantages.

It's possible that there will be some more Zemanta integration coming: eg options inside Blogger for enabling and disabling it and setting the user-options/preferences. But in the meantime the basic information about adding it to a blog, and removing it too, is presented here.

How to add Zemanta to your Blog

To turn Zemanta on for your blog:

Log into Blogger with a Google account that has admin-rights on the blog which you want to use Zemanta with
Click here to add the Zemanta gadget

In the window that opens, choose the Blog from the drop-down list

Click the orange "Add Zemanta" arrow.

Immediately after clicking the arrow, you are taken to the Post Editor with a new post for the blog that you selected. There is an extra gadget showing on the right hand side of the editing window. This gadget will be on the screen every time that you edit a post.

It's not currently available in the Page editor - but if you really want to use it while writing a Page, then just write the contents in a Post, save it as draft (ie don't publish), and use the HTML copy/paste approach described in Moving a Post from one Blog to Another.

How to remove Zemanta from your Blog

Log into Blogger with a Google account that has admin-rights on the blog which you want to remove Zemanta from
Open the Post Editor (eg by clicking New Post).

In the top row of the Zemanta gadget, at the right hand side, there's a small down arrow. Click the arrow and choose "Remove this gadget".

Click Ok.

Some people reported that removing it from Chrome was different: they said that there you would not see the small drop-down arrow, but instead need to look in the browser's address bar and use the Zemanta icon on the right hand side, which has an option to isable Zemanta for blogs. However this clearly isn't the case now, because I just removed it from Chrome to make the pictures above. It may be that these instructions apply if you have used some other method to install a toolbar: in this case, you may need to go into the Control Panel and use Add/Remove Programs to remove it.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Seven simple steps to a snazzy new-look blog: preparing to change template in Blogger

This article is about making a plan to change your Blogger template if your existing blog-template has been customised: it covers how to make a list of the changes that have been made to your template, and using this as the basis of a list of changes to re-apply when you change templates.

Overview:

Changing your template in Blogger is easy: you just choose another template, press save or Apply to Blog (in the Template Designer), and the changes are applied.

But if you have ever customised your template using the Edit HTML feature, then ALL the customisations are lost when you change templates. This is fine for some changes (eg hiding things you didn't like in a particular template), but it means you lose changes that you may want to keep, eg a favicon, meta-tags, Google Analytics or Webmaster verification, Amazon Product Preview, etc - in short anything that you want to keep, no matter how your template looks.

If you're worried about the consequences of changing templates, you have a basic choice to make:

1 Remember what you did:
Try to remember what you've set up on your blog, and think about which of these things you want to apply in your blog-with-a-new-template.

2 Code comparison:
Compare the layout-template code for your blog with the same code from another blog that has the same template and widgets as your blog, but not the HTML customisations. From this comparison, make a list of what customisations you need to re-apply after you change templates.

The first option is quicker and a lot easier - but you might miss something important. Personally it's not an option I'd like to use for any blog that has "weight".

Unfortunately the second option doesn't give a 100% correct list of customisations, unless you kept a copy of your current template at it was at the time when you first applied it to your blog. This is because Google may have upgraded their copy of the standard version of your template, but not been able to upgrade your customised version. (See Advantages and Disadvantages of Editing Your Blogger Template for more about this). However the list that you can make may be close enough - and I used it myself to make sure I didn't miss any details in migrating the blog you are reading now.

This article is about the second option, and how to use the results of the comparison to make a detailed plan for moving your blog from one template to another.

Applying Option 2:

Follow these steps to compare the template from your blog with another un-customised version of the template:

1 Make a test-blog which is like your Real-blog, except it doesn't have the layout-template customisations. See Making a test-blog for more details about this: it's NOT as simple as just copying the template over.
IMPORTANT: If you do have a backup copy of your template from immediately after you last applied a new template to, then apply it to your test blog before giving it any widgets. (Doing this will give you the chance of making a 100% correct list.)

2 Line-by-line, compare the template code in your test and main blogs. For each difference, work out whether it's due to a customisation that you want to keep when you "migrate" your main blog to a new template, or something that you can leave behind.

To do the comparison:

Get the template code for your test-blog by choosing Design > Edit HTML for it, and clicking on Download Full Template. Save the downloaded file somewhere with a name like testBlog-Template.xml

Get the template code for your main blog the same way Save the downloaded file with a name like realBlog-Template.xml

Use a text-file comparison tool to find the differences between the two files.
Comparing two text files using Excel discusses this in more detail, and links to a tool that makes this process (a little) easier.

Note that there may be some differences which aren't explained by modifications that you made to the template: these will be due to improvements that Google have made to the template file. You need to decide how much time to spend investigating each difference, based on how likely it is that you made it.

3 From the list of differences, write a plan of the existing customisations you want to apply to your new template, and also of any new changes that you want to make at the same time. Put it in order of most-to-least important (eg I usually put "load Google Analytics code" just after "apply template, because the statistics are very important to me).

3.5 (optional) Decide which new template to use, and practise the upgrade:
Use the test-version of your existing blog (the one you made in step 1), and give it the new template. Apply the extra customisations from your list. Possibly even copy in some posts from your main blog into it. Test how well it works, and tweak your list of the changes that need to be made when you migrate your real blog.

4 Back up the current template of your blog.

5 Apply the new template you've selected to your blog.

5.5 (Optional) make another back-up of your template - before you re-apply any of the customisations. This will be the basic version that you compare against if you ever need to do this exercise again, so save it somewhere safe.

6 Make the other changes from your plan.

7 Test your blog to see that all is well.

That sounds easy enough. Seven simple steps to a snazzy new-look blog. Let me know how you get on.

Comparing Two Text Files - using Excel

This article is about comparing two text files, making a list of the differences between them and categorising each difference according to whether you care about it or not. An Excel file tool (available for download) is used, because this helps with making the final list.

The tool was made to support comparing two Blogger templates,as part of Seven Simple Steps to a Snazzy New-look Blog. But it can be used for many different types of file-comparisons where you need to think about the between the files, keep track of individual differences, and plan actions based on them.

In theory, you can compare two text-files line by line manually. But in practice, especially when the files are made from code like HTML and not English-language sentences, this is very hard to do: even a one-character difference may be significant, but hard to see.

There are many existing tools that will compare two files. But a spreadsheet works just as well - and it has other features that can be used to help with making a plans based on the differences found, and tracking progress with fixing them.

I've put some notes about where to put the comparison text files, and how to use the formulas into the spreadsheet, and some detailed pictures below. But the main point is that when you find a difference you need to:

Work out where the difference ends,
Insert some blank cells in the other column so that the code lines up again,
Re-copy the comparison formulas into column F (because the insert will have mis-aligned the existing ones),
Make notes about differences as they are found - this list is important for deciding what to do next.

Preparing to compare text files

Get the two template files that you want to compare, and open them with a text editor (eg Notepad).

They will look ugly and hard to work this - this is ok, the next step puts them in a better format.

A text file, viewed in Excel and looking ugly

Download the Excel tool for comparing text-files.

Paste the contents of the template file from your real blog in the left-hand column.

Paste the contents of the template from your test-blog in the middle column.

Paste the contents of the comparison formula cell (ie the red-shaded one) into every row where there are contents from either of source files.

NB the comparison forumla is =IF(D8=A8, "", "Not the same")

In the spreadsheet the cell is shaded red, and you cannot see it unless you look in the formula bar (this makes the pictures easier to read).

Doing the Comparison

In Column F, look for the first row when "Not the same" is displayed.

Look at the code for that line, and work out what caused the difference, and whether it's is due to a customisation that you made and want to keep, or someone that you don't want to keep, or something else that Google have done in the meantime.

If the difference is due to a customisation that you want to keep, then make notes about this into the Comments and ToDo columns.

In the example shown, the first difference line is a meta-tag, which I do want to keep, but the second is just the tag-close command: I don't need to put it separately into my plan, so it's marked "no".

Re-match the lines of code:
If the difference was due to extra code, then

insert some extra rows in the other column so that the matching code lines up again, AND
re-copy the comparison forumula into the rows from there down.

Repeat these steps until all the differences are understood.

At the end, copy the comments and notes columns into another worksheet, and use Excel's sort functions to extract a list of the differences that you need to deal with.

(I like to use Excel to keep lists of planned changes too - but that's a whole different topic.)

Making a test-blog for testing template changes

Seven simple steps to a snazzy new-look blog.

Showing a PowerPoint presentation as a slideshow in your website

Planning changes to your blog - in private

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Fiat Doblò 2011

E agora o Fiat 2011 renovado é a multivan Doblò. Sua maior novidade é o motor 1.8 16v, que estreou com o Punto, e é um dos integrantes da nova linha E.torQ. As versões de entrada do modelo continuam com o motor 1.4 Fire de 85/86 cv, porque as beneficiadas são as de topo; HLX, Adventure e Cargo recebem o novo propulsor.

Desenvolvendo 130/132 cv e 18,4/18,9 kgfm, o novo motor aposenta o antigo 1.8 GM de 112/114 cv e deixa o Doblò mais esperto, agora fazendo aceleração de 0 a 100 km/h em 11,6 segundos, e indo até 175 km/h de máxima. Os itens tanto de série como opcionais de todas as versões continuam os mesmos, e o preço básico começa em R$ 40.700 para a Cargo 1.4, R$ 51.990 para a versão básica 1.4, e em R$ 64.550 para a Adventure Locker.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Fiat Idea 2011

A megarreforma da linha Fiat para a linha 2011 agora atinge a minivan compacta que a marca oferece no Brasil. Mas a Idea aproveitou as últimas tendências da linha e ganhou de uma vez os dois upgrades que podia. O primeiro foi a adoção dos novos motores E.torQ e da linha de versões que troca as siglas por nomes. Já o outro, um face-lift que não tentou fazê-la parecer outro carro, e por isso acabou ficando tão bem-feito que a deixou mais sedutora do que nunca.

Totalmente renovada, a frente projetada no Brasil traz linhas modernas mas que preservaram toda a harmonia das linhas retas do modelo, trazendo faróis de dupla parábola e parachoques mais agressivos. As laterais trocaram de retrovisores, ganhando exemplares mais elegantes e com repetidores de luz de direção para todas as versões, enquanto a traseira ganhou um interessante visual mais limpo e lanternas mais bonitas. Quanto ao interior, as novidades são o novo quadro de instrumentos e bancos dianteiros especiais para algumas versões.

Agora a Fiat Idea tem quatro versões. Além da topo-de-linha Adventure e da inédita Sporting, ambas com 1.8 16v de 130/132 cv, temos a básica Attractive (R$ 43.590) com o 1.4 Fire e seus 85/86 cv de sempre, e a requintada Essence (R$ 45.610) com o 1.6 16v de 115/117 cv. Ambas trazem de série direção hidráulica, computador de bordo e vidros dianteiros e travas elétricas. Mas esta última traz acabamento mais caprichado e mais ofertas de opcionais, como bancos de couro, airbags laterais, e teto solar, além do câmbio automatizado Dualogic (R$ 47.720).

Friday, July 2, 2010

Fiat Punto Sporting

O Punto no Brasil é um caso curioso no Brasil. Enquanto a maioria dos compactos não possui sequer uma variante esportiva, ele possui logo duas, e que conseguem ser esportivas de maneiras diferentes. A T-Jet segue esse conceito da forma tradicional, e oferece visual todo diferente, e um motor exclusivo, o 1.4 Turbo. Enquanto isso, a Sporting se adapta melhor às necessidades de custos menores, para quem não precisa de tantas mudanças mecânicas.

Considerando que nenhum comprador de um compacto premium vai levar seu carro a um autódromo, a Sporting procura se destacar é pelo visual. Oferece rodas exclusivas e cores mais chamativas, além de ter os faróis e lanternas com apliques fumê. E sua cabine traz discretos apliques na cor da carroceria e lista de equipamentos de série mais generosa.

Mas se antes esse Punto usava um motor 1.8 antigo e não tão eficiente, a linha 2011 trouxe novas forças ao modelo. O novo Sporting agora traz o 1.8 16v flex da recém-lançada série E.torQ, e que rende interessantes 130/132 cv e 18,4/18,9 kgfm (gasolina/álcool). Segundo a marca, as 16 válvulas não afetam o torque: 93% dele já estão disponíveis a 2500 rpm. Este motor também está presente na versão Essence, esta com proposta mais urbana.

Toda essa força é comandada pelo câmbio manual de cinco marchas (Sporting 1.8 16v, R$ 51.200), mas agora o câmbio Dualogic também pode equipá-lo com este motor (R$ 53.730). Com o mesmo sistema que está presente em desde o Palio ao Linea, o Punto consegue aliar conforto à esportividade, e chegar aos novos números de 0 a 100 em 10,1/9,8 segundos, e 189/191 km/h de velocidade máxima.

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