Tag-team AOL IM tricks! You gotta read these two IM conversations simultaneously. Between Anil and myself, and between Anil and my brother.
It's wacky! It's goofy! It steers you into trees! A marvel of 1970s engineering, it's the Swing Bike!
Gigalaw: The Challenge of the Open-Source Business Model. [via dangerousmeta]
Tim O'Reilly: What's Next for Linux and Open Source?
Not many people know that there is a 1994 sequel to Bob Clark's humorous holiday classic "A Christmas Story." Originally called "My Summer Story" you can now occasionally catch it in cable under the name "It Runs in the Family." In fact, I'm watching it right now.
A whole lotta ass-kissing goin' on today. Gross. Please stop.
Walgreen's drug stores have it right. I just saw a TV commercial that says all of their stores are linked together electronically so that you can easily fill a prescription at any one of their stores anywhere in the U.S. If only we were so lucky in New York City, which is dominated by the drugstore chain Duane Reade, which has 172 stores. This past summer my doctor prescribed some medicine that I had to get filled evet 2-3 weeks. And since I was often in different parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn when I ran out of medicine, I used a different Duane Reade pharmacy almost every time. I quickly learned that every store's pharmacy had independent records systems and I had to have them enter my data again, every time. What a pain! You'd think that companies like Duane Reade would get with the times and link their pharmacies together as a convenience for their customers. It is almost 2002, after all.
Sigh...I have no less than 53 54 different forward/discard recipes filtering the email on about ten different domains, and I'm still getting way too much spam. I think it's time to start filtering based on subject line or message content (HTML email!), a measure I've been reluctant to start using. What's most depressing is spammers are now auto-generating email addresses based on domain, so I am getting a lot of copies of the same spam to webmaster@, marketing@, info@, and other common usernames, sent to each domain I own. It's pretty easy to filter these, but I still have to configure my spam filters for each domain, which takes some time.
Last week while in Michigan, my brother and I spent some time (and money) at the local Indian casino. I wasn't doing too well on the tables, so I was ready to cut my losses and go. On a whim, I dropped a couple $20's into a Jeopardy! slot machine and hit it big enough that they had write me out a tax form for gambling winnings. Needless to say, it was a pleasant Christmas present, which I used to buy my family gifts and a Playstation 2 for myself. Time to build up that video game callus on my thumb. Haven't had one of those since I was a kid playing Asteroids on our 2600.
So you want to be a Jeopardy! contestant...
Mental Engineering is a local Minneapolis cable TV show that mixes outrageous commentary about some of the world's worst television commercials. Only in America can there be a talk show about TV commercials, and still make it funny and entertaining. OK, well maybe in Japan too, except in Japan it'd probably be too bizarre to understand.
URLs seen on TV. Last edited September 8, 1996. Of course!
Another interesting cable TV access program is Invisible Girls.
"Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck. You got a copy on me, Pigpen? C'mon."
How to fold a dollar bill into an origami dress shirt. [via cardhouse]
I saw Kate & Leopold last night. I know, I know, it's a "ckick flick" but it was entertaining and funny, so not a complete loss. It being a time-travel, comedic, love story, I think they could have done a much better job of fixing the gaping continuity holes that exist in the movie. There's a concept in Hollywood called "suspension of disbelief" where the audience is expected to sometimes believe the unbelievable in order to enjoy the story. But Hollywood sometimes takes it too far and asks too much from the audience, as is the case with this movie.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks I thought of something, but never mentioned it publicly. You have to wonder why American Airlines and United Airlines were being targeted by the terrorists. If you put yourself in the terrorist's shoes it makes sense to choose airlines whose names reflect that which you are fighting (protesting?). American = America. United = United States. Why, for instance, did the terrorists decide to not use Delta or Continental, both of which have flights that fit the terrorist's modus operandi for 9/11. It must be especially bad for American right now since they had that flight go down in Queens in November and were the once again the target of terrorists last week with that shoe-bomb guy.
Funny! Am I a Hooters Girl or Not?
Have you been abducted? Perhaps you need Alien Implant Removal and Deactivation Method.
Eri Izawa: What are Manga and Anime?
CamWorld Essay: Metadata on the Radio
CamWorld Mail for December 28, 2001.
Economist: America the Unready
The Nation: Take This Media...Please! A must-read. Also check out the Big Ten chart that shows how ridiculous media consolidation has become in this country. It's a safe bet that at some point in the future, some of these companies will be broken up, very much like AT&T was in the early 1980s. Except by then, the damage will have already been done.
Once again, I point to a book written in 1996 by one of my college professors. The Transnational Media Corporation: Global Messages and Free Market Competition. He has a new book out called Telecommunications Management: Industry Structures and Planning Strategies. It's now on my reading list.
Religiously Correct: A few years ago it seemed that everyone was going to great pains to be politically correct. People were making a conscious effort to not use derogatory words, phrases, and euphemisms that could potentially be seen as discriminatory or hurtful to certain classes of people. Within a few years, the use of words like "dyke", "retard", and "black" were gone in favor of "lesbian", "mentally-challenged", and "African-American". Today's speech is full of descriptive words like "developmentally disabled", "learning-challenged", and "learning disabled". It took a pretty large education campaign to get the English-speaking public to recognize this change and start changing the way they refer to certain things.
Now, I'm seeing a new trend start to emerge that taps into the politically correct mindset. I grew up in a Catholic household and learned to say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" when greeting someone during the month of December. As a kid I thought nothing of it. But now that I am older I see the need for using the more general and less specific "Happy Holidays" since it can be applied to the holidays of Christianity, Judaism, Kwanzaa, and Ramadan; all of which take place around the same time every December.
I don't like clumping this trend in with the term "politically correct" since religion and politics should have nothing to do with each other (unfortunately many people tend to disagree). So, I am referring to it as "religiously correct". The irony in this is that the term "religiously correct" is discriminatory towards atheists and people who are religiously agnostic.
In reference to the Religious Liberty Protection Act, "If you think talking politically correct is hard, try living religiously correct."
People For the American Way: Religious Liberty
I'm pleased that Giuliani received Time's Person of the Year disctinction. Update: I can't think of anyone who deserves it more. Some readers are questioning this. I think that if Time had awarded it to Osama bin Laden, it would have sent the wrong message to a world already reeling on the verge of war (and not just in America). If Time had awarded it to George W. Bush, many people would be be very upset since Bush hasn't really done anything to warrant it, except manipulate an election with his family's money and influence (in my opinion). Perhaps if Bush really steps up to the Presidential plate, stops taking month-long vacations, and starts behaving more like a President rather than a puppet for corporate America, he may deserve it next year. Doubly so if his administration pulls the country out of this on-again, off-again recession we might or might not be in.
Tagged Message Delivery Agent
Heh. Unplug n' Pray. Heh.
Excellent NY Times article about quirky mathematical geniuses, The Genius Behind the Tree. I also recommend you read the book "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers."
Apple has developed a 5 Ghz wireless networking technology. Wow. Think of the uses for this. I'll bet within 2-3 years, every computing device in the world will be wireless using this technology. This includes wearable computers, portable personal digital devices like the iPod and whatever else Apple can dream up in their R&D labs. Computing is about to change dramatically once again.
Doh! A small liberal arts college in Michigan is now offering a course on The Simpsons. Siena Hights college was my number one choice for colleges when I graduated from high school in 1991, but I ended up going to a local college for a few years, instead.
ProjectorCentral: The Difference Between HDTV, EDTV, and SDTV. Excellent.
Ah! Nothing like a 9:00 AM root canal the morning after the company holiday party.
ZDNet: Content Mismanagement
Hmmm...
Advogato: The Rules of Open-Source Programming
Tim Booth, the lead singer of one my favorite British pop bands, James, has decided to leave the band. Damn. One of my favorite CDs is Booth and the Bad Angel, a collaboration between Tim Booth and Angelo Badalamenti, the guy who has done the music for most of David Lynch's films. By the way, I absolutely love the minimalist design of the James Web site. [via webcrumbs]
Andy J. Williams Affleck: Weblog Accessibility
Washington Post: Windows Vulnerable to hack Attacks. Shock! Horror! Amazing! Gosh! No one is surprised. So, do you still trust Microsoft with your private information? What about your sensitive business information?
CamWorld Essay: Online Community Technologies and Concepts. If you read all the way to the end, you might agree with a very interesting idea I came up with that may make Google even better than it is today.
Mail: December 19, 2001
Interface Innovation: The Future of Information Access
On the Apple-HI-Developers mailing list, someone writes:
I want a little wireless thingy I can carry on my keychain or something that knows all my preferences. I want my preferences to go with me, not with a file in some specific computer somewhere.
This is the direction everything is going. Microsoft wants to own this market with their Passport technology, which they hope will eventually make it into devices like AT&T Labs Bat Ultrasonic Location System. I remember someone at Netscape telling me that they had tied their employee access security card system to an LDAP-enabled database. So that whever someone quit or was fired, all they had to do was change the access flag in the employee database and that employee's security card would instantly no longer work at any building on the campus. Ingenius.
O'reillyNet: A Primer for Accessible Web Pages
Then Open Source Content Management System Conference, March 21-22, 2002 in Zurich, Switzerland.
Everyone has been saying that Time's Person of the Year will be President George W. Bush and/or Osama bin Laden. I disagree. I think it will be New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The Microsoft Toaster. An analogy of modern day software programming.
Psycho-Ex.com, Where We Make the Bitter Better. Great! In the same vein as psychoexgirlfriend.com.
Zorak: I had a dream last night that I was dating Satan.
Brad Templeton: Origin of the word "spam" to mean net abuse
A few readers have reported that they have never gotten a single piece of spam at their Hotmail accounts. I wonder what's going on here? Perhaps someone from Microsoft would care to explain this?
More Spam Nonsense: I'm starting to experience a problem with some Web sites and organizations regarding unsolicited email. These are legitimate companies (not traditional spammers) who offer methods for getting off their mailing lists, announcement lists, etc. Whenever I get an unsolicited email from such a company, I follow their instructions, change my email preference settings in their profile database, unsubscribe, notify them I no longer want their emails, whatever. Yet, it never fails. A few weeks later, I again am still receiving emails from them. I've been keeping track of what companies and organizations that have done this to me and have not honored my request to be removed from their lists, and now when I receive this unwanted email I unceremoniously report it as spam. If the company comes running to me because I did so, I have the proof that I followed their unsubscribe and removal instructions, but that my requests went unfulfilled. I've found that some companies are not being honorable in their marketing efforts and are only offering these unsubscribe/removal options because they do not want to be labeled or portrayed as spammers. Yet, in this case they are even worse than spammers because they are a legitimate company who is intentionally abusing the trust of their users and subscribers. I have found that with several of these companies in question the only way to stop receiving email compeltely is to change your profile setting to an email address that goes nowhere.
So many people liked my comments on spam the other day, I've moved it to the Essays section. It will also remain in the archives.
Lots of positive feedback about my spam rant yesterday. Thanks to everyone who wrote in.
A few people wrote in about Hotmail. Apparently, when signing up for a Hotmail account you are given the option of being listed in the "Hotmail Member Directory" and the "Internet White Pages". If you do not uncheck these you are included; it's a fair bet that spammers are harvesting this data. Question: But, does this apply to my Hotmail account which I created way back in 1997 or 1998, before Microsoft bought Hotmail? What if I was never given that option?
A reader named Jim reports that he tried the Hotmail test. After signing up for a new Hotmail account and making sure the two options were unchecked, he had "three offers of Viagra, five to earn money, and one to increase your penis size..."
After sleeping on it, I've decided to remove the Online Data Privacy Challenge. It simply provides too much potential for identity theft. Apologies to those readers who were having fun researching my life and identity.
The CamRants are back! After a long two-year hiatus, I have finally gotten pissed off about something enough to write about it. Yep, it's the man everyone loves to hate. The Dave Winer Big Ego Awards. More insight into the way Dave thinks. I should be afraid.
CamWorld feedback for 12/17/2001.
U.S. News: After years of denying a link, the government is tying Lou Gehrig's disease to Gulf War military service.
Paul Provost recommends the SpamMotel service for fighting spam.
A couple readers have recommended that if you have control over your own domain, you can set up email aliases like amazon@yourdomain.com and lists@yourdomain.com for determining the source of spam. I forgot about this. It's actually how I know that eBay is allowing their site to be scraped by spambots. I have ebay@ set up for one of my domains.
Michael Fraase: Is spam killing email?
Fighting Spam: I have written about the problem of spam in the past, most notably about how some Web sites and content management systems do not do an adequate job of protecting their users' email addresses from spam harvesting robots (spambots). There are also people out there who just want to cause trouble by using your email address as the return address for thousands of pieces of spam, as Dave Winer has recently found out. If you allow your email address to be publicly available, it will eventually be collected by the spammers. Short of filtering spam (typically using procmail) before downloading your email to your inbox, there is little you can do except to go to great lengths to keep your email address off of Web sites. Here are some things you can do:
Here is what I know and suspect regarding the following sites allowing spammers to scrape their user data for email addresses:
The last thing I can recommend is that you change your perception of the value of an email address. Treat it as a piece of your personal identity. Only give it out to people and entities that you trust. Treat it like you treat your home address, your phone number, and your social security number.
I keep thinking about how much food and medicine $343 billion can buy. As of 04/01/00 there were 281,421,906 people in the United States. Your contribution to the defense bill is approximately $1219. Am I the only one who thinks this figure seems a bit high?
It's important to note that even prior to 9/11/01, Bush was pushing very hard on this exact same bill ($343 billion) to provide financing for his "prized national missile shield." It's also important to note that Bush appears to have had plans prior to 9/11 to back out of the 1972 ABM treaty.
It's that time again. Yup, time for a sanity break. Back in a day or two.
Design For Community: A Conversation With Steven Champeon. Steven gets credit for verbifying the word "caffeine" in this excellent interview.
Rafe Colburn has started a mailing list to talk about using Java for building Web applications. I expect good things.
Richard Reeves: There is a Difference Between Dissent and Treason. Too bad it's not possible to impeach an Attorney General. And somehow I doubt we can convince Bush to fire this guy's ass.
For your reading pleasure: The impeach-bush Yahoo groups mailing list. Founded: Nov 8, 2000. Ha!
We're at War? I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty tired of the media declaring that the U.S. is at war. Even the fictional TV shows like First Watch and Boston Public are writing in plot lines that echo this "We're at war" mentality. Was I asleep the day that Congress declared war? I looked and looked and looked for an official declaration of war by Congress, and guess what? I couldn't find one. I couldn't find one because well, Congress hasn't declared war! I shouldn't be surprised that our government is taking advantage of the situation to foist outlandish bills through the House and the Senate ($381 billion defense bill? Yikes!). Given the kind of government we have with Bush in the The House of White, and the kind of shady people Bush has hired (ahem, can you say Enron? Yes, I knew you could) I should only expect three more years of the same. It's like all common sense has been thrown out the window, and all caution has been thrown to the wind.
Terrorism Survival Guide: Right next to my office in downtown NYC there is one of those stores that stocks every magazine known to mankind. On my way to lunch the other day, I spotted one of the most ridiculous things yet. A glossy magazine cover with a big, red, bold title: "Terrorism Survival Guide" and in small print, "Operation Enduring Freedom #2". As if one issue weren't cheesy enough, they came out with a second edition. I might go buy one of these just because I know one day it may become a hot collectible. Other than that, I think it might work as pretty good kindling for a fire.
NewsForChange.com describes these publications:
With names like "America at War" and "Terrorism Survival Guide," these cynical pseudo-publications -- "10s of Thousands Dead!" screamed the headline on one Ñ range from baseball-style programs packed with poorly designed photo montages and crude captions, to elaborate, slick "family safety" publications threatening to come out 12 times a year.
Brian Carnell: Free Speech Should Feel Good!
Christmas gag gifts:
About a year ago I forked over the $195 it took to become an ACM member. Included with this membership comes a subscription to Communications of the ACM, arguably the best trade journal around for keeping on top of trends in software development, Internet technologies and related academic concerns. Also included is access to the ACM Digital Library, which is an amazing wealth of 40 years of high-quality articles on a very wide array of subjects. This month's issue of Communications of the ACM is all about collaborative technologies. It is my current bathroom reading (really!).
NY Times: Interface Design Is Trickier Than It Seems
This is what I want for Christmas, but I don't think they sell them retail. [via Tara Calishain]
The Onion: Who Says Java Programmers Don't Have a Sense of Humor?
The Best of CHI-WEB. Awesome! BTW, I think that the list archiving of CHI-WEB is some of the best I've ever seen. The only thing I would do differently is lose the graphical navigation and replace it with textual navigation. Oh, and spambot-proof the email headers to prevent the scraping of the email addresses.
Jon Udell: The Event-Driven Internet
The World According to Hong, part of Hong's Cave.
Michal Wallace (a.k.a Sabren) has started a low-cost hosting company. I can vouch for him, having worked with him on a side project a few years back. He knows his stuff and is a very good system administrator. This looks like the perfect place to have an account for development purposes, since it's cheaper than someplace like Pair, and has a personable system administrator who can help you out with special requests like installing any custom server-side software you might need that other hosting companies might not provide because they are hosting thousands of Web sites on hundreds of servers and don't have the manpower to handle special requests.
When it requires a background check just to purchase an airline ticket, then the terrorists have already won. I'm not even going to talk about the hidden agendas of these data warehousing companies and the Federal government.
Down in the financial district near Wall Street, there is a guy who thinks he is a crow. I've seen him a couple of times, running across the street screaming "Caw, Caw!" and flapping his arms. Man, I love New York.
The 105-character username, a conversation at work:
camworld2: do we have a character limit on usernames and passwords for [the product we're developing] davezone74: upper limit for usernames is 105, I think. That is the size of the field in Oracle, I don't know if the CGI limits it beyond that. passwd is 20 characters. camworld2: great, thanks camworld2: can you imagine a 105-character uername? camworld2: "damn! I made a typo, let me try again" camworld2: (five minutes later) "damn! another typo..." davezone74: hahaha
My bullshit detector is set on high today. Tony Danza, purple monkey dishwasher!
One of the crazier things I've written of late, an analogy comparing open-source and proprietary technologies and solutions to that of chewing gum.
Back in November, I wrote about Microsoft's business practices regarding company acquisitions that end up hurting the software indstry by reducing competition. Andrew Grygus explains in a piece from last winter the Microsoft reasoning behind their $1.1B acquisition of Great Plains Software. [via Doc Searls]
www.enronX.org is a site for ex-Enron employees. [via Tara Calishain]
Still forced to use Outlook email client on the PC? Tired of getting HTML-email? Pissed off that you can't disable the reading of HTML email? Look no further, here's a plug-in that strips that email for you. No thanks to Microsoft.
We recruit tigers! Rwwwoooooaarrrr!
The Web app development crowd seems to have discovered Curl. This was a technology I was looking at about eight months ago when I learned that they were considering open sourcing it and were talking with CollabNet. My first impression was favorable, but after realizing it was a technology that relied on a plug-in architecture, I dismissed it as just another fad. The only time a plug-in-based technology is successful is if they make a deal with the browser companies to distribute it (like Macromedia did with the Flash player). And since Microsoft owns 90%+ of that market, I somehow doubt they're going just let a technology like Curl succeed, especially since it competes with some of the technologies that ship with Internet Explorer.
Open Web Application Security Project. [Warning: Crashes Netscape 4 because of too many nested tables]
Molly Ivins: Enron-gate
I guess publishing a popular web site online for more than five years pays off. Following are some search results rankings:
I just registered for KM & Communities 2001 East, which will be held here in NYC on December 11.
OSOpinion: EBay, Amazon, Others Balk at Microsoft's Internet Standard
Yes Brian, that's why I don't read Andrew Sullivan's site. If I can't get to the content because of a design that creates accessibility problems, then the content doesn't get read. I wish more people realized this basic rule of web design.
Nice list of collaborative groupware software.
Case Study: Bridging the Digital Divide: Communication Software Tools
White Paper: User Interface Design for Ubiquitous Computing (PDF)
Heh, One of my readers tracked down the portfolio of the company who built the KPMG site for Razorfish. They claim "innovative use of DHTML" as one of the highlights of the site. Hardly. There's a huge difference between being innovative with a technology and using a technology for technology's sake. Just because it looks pretty and makes the client go "Ooh" doesn't mean it's the most appopriate solution. It's a common mistake that lots of web designers make: they forget that they are designing the site for a client's users, and focus on the bells and whistles (often whizzy DHTML or Flash navigation and splash screens) because they care more about pleasing the client than making the site usable and accessible for the people who will end up using it. Part of every web designer's job is to educate the client about usability and accessibility issues -- this includes informing the client that using certain whizzy technologies comes with the consequences of decreased usability, accessibility, and sometimes performance.
Wow, it's amazing how much more stable a machine gets when you take a faulty RAM module.
Another article about Enron, from AlterNet: The Man Who Screwed the World
A petition to to Apple to put file sytem metadata features into Mac OS X.
I wish that I would start listening to my hunches. On Sunday I was very close buying more stock in both AAPL and AMZN, as soon as the markets opened on Monday. On Tuesday, AMZN was up 14% and AAPL was up 6%. I was hitting myself after I saw that. And today, AAPL is up another 6%. I am still hitting myself.
Today's arbitrary link: www.kpmg.com. Complete with lame, flashy, non-sensical navigation! If you don't know why this link is here, click around a little bit and you'll figure it out.
How kpmg.com renders in Mozilla. Hint: not very well...
Excellent article about the horrid state of UI in wireless applications. From IBM, of course.
Challis Hodge: Experience Design
An old friend from Michigan has developed a very interesting site called PillowMail, which allows you to customize sexy and steamy letters to your significant other. [Over 18 only, please]
Four Middletown, New Jersey teachers have been put in jail because they defied a judge's back-to-work order intended to halt a strike. This is so pathetic. Teachers really need to be paid more. When teachers strike, there is usually a good reason and that reason almost always comes down to one of pay or an unfair contract. It seems that Michigan has a higher-than-average percentage of incidents involving the educational system in this country. Some of you may recall back in 1993 when the superintendent of the Kalkaska, Michigan public school system chose to shut down the schools in March because there was no money left. (I graduated from Kalkaska High School in 1991.) [via MetaFilter]
I've seen a number of articles about the failing of Enron, one of America's largest commercial energy suppliers. While I do not know any or all of the facts, I'm willing to guess that the reason Enron has failed can be traced back to one single all-encompassing factor: greed [in combination with piss-poor business management].
Arianna Huffington:
While all these financial shenanigans [at Enron] were going on and the stock was flying artificially high, Lay, in his position as CPSO (Chief Pyramid Scheme Officer), cashed in stock and options worth $150 million. And former Enron executive Jeff Skilling pocketed $62 million before abruptly abandoning ship this past August.
Check out Redcricket's Camtoons. Where a guy with a webcam and an action figure have too much fun.
Crap. One of the mailing lists I run just started bouncing messages going to @home.com email addresses. What a pain in the ass...
I deleted this thing about 100 times today. Sigh, I wish someone would write a virus that deletes the Outlook client(s) and installs Eudora or something more secure.
mgkimsal: random thought - mgkimsal: why is it that virus writers invariably can't spell or write worth a dime? mgkimsal: do they think that by putting in bad spelling/grammar more people will think it's 'real'? mgkimsal: I swear, the first time someone puts together a *real* virus - something that can generically put together random yet coherent and real sounding email messages - we'll be in for a real treat. camworld2: i still think a virus that deletes Outlook and installs Eudora would be great mgkimsal: no argument here camworld2: think about it, a PROACTIVE virus that does good mgkimsal: actually, we were just talking about this here mgkimsal: one of the things diehard Outlook fans like is the calendar/appointment thing mgkimsal: if you wrote a virus that simply moved people's appointments around, without drawing attention to itself, you'd do more damage than anyone could imagine mgkimsal: don't have it replicate 50,000 times per hour mgkimsal: just now and then mgkimsal: and silently change Bob's appointment from 1:00pm to 9:30am mgkimsal: he'll drive somewhere when he shouldn't be, etc. camworld2: ha ha mgkimsal: I'm too evil... camworld2: insert things in to the office admin's calendar like "Buy the programmers pizza" mgkimsal: HA! mgkimsal: I like it!!!
A couple of readers have asked me how I'm able to offer free email to my family members under the Barrett.org domain. I use Pair Networks for the hosting of all my domains. With the Webmaster account, I get 50 POP mailboxes, which I can control very easily with their innovative web-based Pair Account Control Center. The best thing about Pair is their relatively low cost for superior hosting services. I'm paying about $50/month for hosting about 12 different domains, each of which comes with its own cgi-bin directory and custom email. Oh, and you also get free MySQL databases, PHP3, PHP4, and Perl 5. It's a pretty good service to use when you are doing a lot of mid-level Web development but don't have the resources or knowhow to set up (and maintain) your own development server.
Today's weekly Monday morning meeting had an interesting twist to it. The company I am currently contracting with has an R&D group in Israel who dials into the conference room for the meeting:
COO (into the speakerphone): Israel, do you have anything to add? Israel: Yeah, they just started bombing Gaza five minutes ago.
The other day I was shopping for food (yes, really!) and I picked up a box of Cinnamon Crispix. I was like: I like Crispix. I like cinnamon. Why not? I wasn't too impressed. But I like that companies are experimenting and are putting out interesting combinations. I remember about six or seven years ago, they came out with Corn Chip Pringles. Wow, those were good. Too bad they still don't make them.
Dean Kamen's super-hyped urban transportation device [IT/Ginger] is to be unveiled tomorrow morning. Here are a few sneak-peek links. NY Times. Time Magazine. Yahoo.
Early comments:
Tony Collen sent me this link to Dean Kamen's Pro Segway 2 video game. Ha ha.
Barrett.org: At long last, I have finally acquired the barrett.org domain name. I had to settle for paying a domain squatter too much money, but I now own the domain and will never let it go. For those few readers of mine (some of them relatives) with the surname Barrett, I'm offering a free POP email account. Contact me to learn more.
Not that I'm complaining or anything, but I wonder if Doc knows that he has three links to CamWorld on his right-nav. One link is plenty enough, Doc [grin]. Just trying to save some bandwidth!
Apple's QuickTime software is 10 years old today. You have to admit that Apple was years ahead of everyone with this technology. You also have to admit that technologies like DVD, Windows Media Player, and RealVideo would not even be around had QuickTime never shipped.
Zeldman posted a screenshot of the NY Times, poking fun at their use of Alt Text a banner ad. I laughed a bit, and then took a long look at how Zeldman has customized his IE 5/Mac web browser. That's far more interesting to me than what's inside the browser...
Hi! Just saying "Hi" to all my new readers. You know who you are...
Pulver.com: 10 US Telecom Policy Myths
I was looking on Amazon to see there was a DVD version of a very hilarious movie called The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human, and it unexpectedly came up with something called Czech Mating, which I think is a light gay porn DVD.
Flipping around the TV the other night, I noticed they finally doubled the question dollar amounts on Jeopardy! It's about time, too. That was a smart move.
37 Signals: Design Not Found
One word: Pathetic
This is wrong. It's December 1st. In New York City. And I just turned the air conditioner on. [Of course, a week from now it'll probably be 10 degrees and there will be a foot of snow on the ground.]
This is also very wrong. There is a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen cartoon series on TV on Saturday mornings. They are special agents who have a dog that talks. Run away! I imagine there are thousands of pre-teen boys popping their shorts over these girls. Can't escape it [society], I guess.
Eek! 'N Sync slash fiction. You don't even want to know what I was searching for on Google when this came up as a number two link. It's even worse. The same search query turned up Backstreet Boys fan fiction.
Robert X. Cringely: Why Microsoft Could Still Fail With .NET and How They'd Likely Recover From That Failure
Jan Schaumann: Software Development for the Palm OS
