Internet
Stuff “out there” on the internet
podPress
Late last night, I ran across podPress, “a dream plugin for podcasters using WordPress. It’s so cool that Candy went to sleep… because I was donking around with the computer far into the night.
I have updated my two previous podcast postings, Podcast #1 and Performance Bonuses for Politicians. If you get a chance, go back […]
A Penny Per Email
Spam disgusts me. It has rendered free email, one of the most heartfelt examples of human cooperation, completely untenable.
I have been relying on email, for business and personal connections, since I worked at TRW in 1980. I used to run a medium-sized UUCP hub at FileNet in Orange County, CA on a VAX 750 named […]
Internet Omnivore
I seem to be an internet omnivore, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project
Omnivores make up 8% of the American public.
Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with […]
Single Sign On - Finally
Don MacAskill over at SmugMug (my favorite photo sharing site) brought my attention to OpenID, a budding solution to an old computer problem: If you use a computer, you have way too many passwords to conveniently remember. You might use one or two passwords, perhaps a simple one for web sites that you do not […]
What’s New in Firefox 2.0
Are you wondering what is new in Firefox 2.0? Read eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: Firefox 2 Final Release.
Download Firefox (for free) from Mozilla.com.
Ms. Dewey Search Engine
Ms. Dewey is simply too funny. Crank up your speakers and prepare for a hillarious Flash event.
I don’t think that she will replace Google but then again… you never know….
Book Wish List and More
I continue to find more uses for the wonderful (and $free) LibraryThing. Like so many of us, I have bunches of books that I have never had a good way to keep track of but now I do. Like…
My wish list — yes, I do accept donations :-)
My to-be-read list. Most of these books are […]
Using LibraryThing
LibraryThing seemed so obviously good that I simply dived in head first and started cataloging all of the books in the house, even though I did not know what I would do with it beyond that initial step. I am even more convinced of LT’s utility because the first opportunity to actually use my on-line […]
LibraryThing
I’m addicted to LibraryThing. It only took a few hours and I only have a start on cataloging my library. This is great stuff!
Must sleep… must sleep… must ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz
eMusic: Music Without DRM
Are you sick and tired of being told that you cannot make legitimate copies of your own music? Did you buy a song for your iPod only to later discover that you could not play it on something else that you own? A “little” company, eMusic.com, has the answer: they sell good music for a […]
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Experience with OpenDNS
It has been almost three weeks since we began using OpenDNS and I am ready to Pronounce Judgement: Use OpenDNS. It works.
We had only one small problem. My wife uses a virtual private network (VPN) to access her company’s intranet. The default OpenDNS settings are incompatible with the VPN’S need to provide DNS resolution within […]
What is OpenDNS and Why Should You Care?
OpenDNS opened it’s doors on Monday, which was a nice birthday present; thank you very much. Why should you care?
DNS, or domain name service, is one of the key underpinnings of the internet to which little attention is paid. It is the service which turns domain names like “cheerfulcurmudgeon.com” and “cnn.com” into addresses of computers.
In […]
IE7 Web Site
I just ran across this cool resource on Internet Explorer v7: www.ie7.com
Ugly Web Site? That May Be OK.
We have all seen them: web sites that have great stuff on them but which look like they were designed by a trash compactor. Mark Daoust of SiteReference delves into them in his posting, The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites.
He makes some good points, in particular that some target audiences will be put-off by a […]
Government Site Serves Up Entertaining Irony
As reported by Netcraft in US Government Security Site Vulnerable to Common Attack,
The U.S. government site that tracks cyber security risks was recently found vulnerable to cross-site scripting, a technique commonly used in hacker attacks and web site spoofing. Several security sites have published a demonstration of the security hole in the web site for […]
Bank Shuts Down Web Site After Phishing Attack
Would you like to lose all of the money in your bank accounts? Fall for a phishing attack. These are web sites which are cleverly designed to look like your real bank’s web site but which actually collect your personal information and hand it over to crooks and thieves. Here is a short story about […]
Coming to a Browser Near You: Microsoft Office Replacement for Free
This press release on Sun’s web site announces the new agreement between Sun and Google for Google Desktop on Sun’s Java platform. That is very nice but the last couple of paragraphs hint at something much bigger:
Only the Beginning
The distribution of Java and the Google Toolbar underscores Google’s advocacy of Java technology….
The agreement between Sun […]
Understanding URI, URL, and URN
Prompted by a question from my wife, I finally went off and figured out the difference between a URI and a URL and a URN. I gleaned my analysis from the W3C’s article, URIs, URLs, and URNs: Clarifications and Recommendations 1.0. This might be the key paragraph:
Over time, the importance of this additional level of […]
DHTML Utopia Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM
I found DHTML Utopia Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM reviewed in Slashdot. The review makes it sound good enough that I will at least drop by the bookstore and take a look at it… and will probably buy a copy.
Migrate Applications from Internet Explorer to Mozilla
IBM has published an article about porting IE-specific applications to work on Firefox and Mozilla, Migrate apps from Internet Explorer to Mozilla.
Ever have trouble getting your Internet Explorer-specific Web applications to work with Mozilla? This article covers common issues associated with migrating applications to the open source Mozilla-based browser. You’ll first learn basic cross-browser development […]
RSS: The Executive Summary
Demystify the buzz. ION RSS printed* a good article in April titled Of course, you know what RSS is … so here’s an article for your clueless boss. The good news is that you don’t have to be a clueless boss to learn from Nick Aster’s words.
* How long will it be until nothing is […]
The Future of RSS is Not in Blogs
Sharon Housley of FeedForAll hits the nail on the head in her article The Future of RSS is Not in Blogs.
RSS feeds give readers a tremendously powerful tool to find and read the stuff which interests them.
Blogs give writers soapboxes from which to spread their witticism.
Most people are readers and “should” care about RSS feeds. […]
Interview with the Search Engine
Reminiscent of the old Eliza artificial intelligence program, and a lot more “relevant,” SatireWire has interviewed Jeeves of AskJeeves.com in their article, Interview with the Search Engine :-)
You can try talking with Eliza here and read about Eliza in Wikipedia.
My thanks to Jeremy Zawodny for finding this and brightening my day!
particletree · API Roundup
Chris Campbell did a very nice job of collecting a bunch of key web APIs onto one page in his API Roundup. Now all I need to find is the time to play with all of them.
Thanks, Chris!
Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger
Scoble rants about RSS feeds that aren’t full text. Rather than being “bad,” I think that the style of RSS feed simply tells you something about the author’s motivation. Does he want the reader to have the information? Or is it more important to get the reader to visit the actual web site and view […]
Remembering Netscape: The Birth of the Web
Picture a world without Google, without eBay or Amazon or broadband, where few people have even heard of IPOs. That was reality just a decade ago. The company that changed it—bringing us into the Internet age—was a brilliant flash in the pan called Netscape. For the tenth anniversary of its IPO, FORTUNE recruited dozens of […]
Email forwarding amounts to ritual gift exchange
I have two reactions to Email forwarding amounts to ritual gift exchange from NewScientist.com
Doh! I knew that! How do I get paid to do “research” like this?
Isn’t that interesting? I’ll bet there are a lot of people who never thought of that.
I am a bit fascinated that people actually study this stuff. I have always […]
Google Toolbar
Google just released a Firefox version of their Google Toolbar. This is a wonderful and free tool that can make your web browsing much easier. Installation is a snap and, if you don’t like it, you can simply uninstall.
The platypus of the Internet, from the Google Blog, has some details about the development. Or you […]
PHP Filters
OWASP has a collection of PHP Filters (a/k/a functions) to sanitize user inputs. I have not used them but they sure look useful!
MIT Weblog Survey
If you use IM or email or blogs, take a few minutes and take the survey.
This is a general social survey of the greater weblog community being conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our goal is to help understand the way that weblogs are affecting the way we communicate with each other. Specifically we […]
Search gets personal
The Google blog contains this article, Search gets personal, about “remembering” what you searched for and clicked on and using those data to improve your search results.
It’s very early but very interesting. Definitely worth a look. Click to check out Google Personalized Search.
Diamonds in the Rough: RSS Aggregators
Would you be interested if I told you that you could have your own, personalized newspaper, for free, cleanly organized, with up-to-the-minute information, and with sources from the local paper, the newswires, the web sites that you like, and people “in the know” who you trust? Get interested because you can have all this.
The magic […]
Straight Line Designs
Boing Boing gets credit for bringing this to my attention. Straight Line Designs creates some of the most unusual furniture I have ever been delighted to see.
Coincidentally, their Flash animation is stunningly wonderful! I wish I had that talent. The intro page is cute but the main site menu make wonderful use of both motion […]
Big Brother is Watching in Chicago
From Slashdot we learn that Big Brother, and everybody else, is watching if you commit a crime in Chicago. Check out ChicagoCrime.org to see where the bad guys are operating in the Windy City.
Possibly more practical is this Cheap Gas hack.
Hats off to Google Maps, which is providing the underlying mapping data for both of […]
Stock Photography, Images, Animations, Graphics
Looking for images for your web site? Be they photographs, animations, or graphics, here are a couple of good places to look.
iStockphoto has a wide variety of stock photography with some graphics. Prices are incredibly cheap, just $1 for low resolution stuff that is suitable for web sites.
Animation Factory has a huge variety of GIF […]
On-line Photo Galleries
I have two favorite on-line photo galleries, depending on whether you want to host the photos on your own server or let someone else handle the heavy lifting.
For free stuff on your own web server / web site, nothing beats Gallery. This works great until you start to fill up the disk on your hosting […]
Bug Fixed: One Reason Why Open Source is Cool
Ever wonder about why people like me continually rave about the wonders of open source software? One reason is because bugs get fixed really fast. Witness some of the security flaws in Firefox which were reported recently and patched within a few days.
Here is a more personal example. I had been having a problem with […]
Ease of Self-Publishing
Blogging continues to fascinate me on both the technological and the social levels. I noticed an article in Wired News this morning titled Bands Embrace Social Networking. Apparently lots of musicians, from indies through established bands, are using MySpace’s music section to self-publish, bypassing the radio stations and MTV. Add to this the rise of […]
Google Delivers
Google impresses the heck out of me. Obviously, it provides an awesome array of features, stuff that you can get from it. Underlying all of that stuff, however, is an incredible chunk of software that “understands” what you want. Google “knows” a lot about what is out there. When you type a query, Google matches […]
Hillarious Firefox Promo Videos
Ever wonder why so many of us think that Firefox is great? Watch these videos.
There’s nothing more that I can say…. :-)
