Blog

  • What’s the background on the Easter Bunny?

    I’ll have to search for the real (?) story later, but just have to start Monday wondering that. We hosted a successful brunch and egg hunt, and the Easter Bunny excitement had the kids twitching with excitement… even before some of them found out about the candy inside.

  • Radio silence since Monday, April 5

    If a site updates, but the home and RSS feed do not, does anyone know about the updates? I think this is the new technical equivalent of the tree falling in the forest all by its lonesome. Radio Userland is driving me nuts, but the effort to fix the problem (whatever it might be) still seems less than converting to Movable Type or WordPress or something else… for now. No more replies from Lawrence Lee at Userland, and my post to the support forum was answered with… incredible complexity. By the time you read this, I’ll have either (a) figured it out or (b) deleted Radio in a fit of frustration.

  • DRM e-mail: figures, but who knew?

    Scoble is thrilled with his Outlook ‘magic folder’ blogging tool. It’s so easy, though, that he worries about making a mistake.

    I imagine a day when I accidentally drop something in there that I wasn’t supposed to. I wonder how it’d treat DRM’d email? Hmmm, we should try that out! (Execs here often send around DRM’d email to keep employees from forwarding it to the press or our friends).

    DRM = Digital Rights Management. Email is famous for being forwarded and/or sent inappropriately, so most companies only send bland announcements around if there is the tiniest bit of information which doesn’t belong outside the firewall. Execs, especially, must think about this all the time. Microsoft, of course, has rueful years of experience — and stacks of legal bills — from the promiscuity and longevity of email. So it makes sense that an Outlook (Exchange?) feature I had never heard about is the ability to ‘lock’ email so it cannot be forwarded.

    I’d like to know more, but have to go catch up on the TiVo’ed Survivor. Good Friday, indeed!

  • Card Sorting

    Card sorting is a development technique I’ve never tried, but maybe I’ll have a need someday. [via InfoDesign, which is often a good source for links]

  • YARR (yet another RSS reader)

    NewsYouCanUse is a menu-bar RSS reader for MacOS X. I downloaded it, installed it, found it slow, and quit it. I can’t write software, so I don’t mean to be dismissive, but even for free, there are better choices.

  • Movie: Phone Booth

    Not a great film, Phone Booth races through a small plot and never slows down. I appreciated that, at least. Kiefer Sutherland as the sniper on the phone is the star of the movie, although he’s on screen for about 90 seconds. The movie runs about 80 minutes, and it honestly felt a lot like an episode of 24, with the clock running. I wouldn’t move it to the top of your Netflix queue, but I guess I wouldn’t necessarily remove it, either. Just know you’re in for a short, semi-sharp ride.

  • Brevity: it speaks volumes

    Another “RSS in 10 words or less,” this time from iCite: Email, but you only get messages your computer asks for (turns out there are many of these attempts)

    I think RSS is better than email, and I like a separate application because I treat them differently, but I wonder if most people care. NewsGator (RSS in Outlook) is interesting, and some swear by it, but I spend a fair bit of time trying to keep my email inbox clear, so a steady flow of other material that’s not really to me is not welcome.

  • The Register moves to standards, too

    Last fall, CNET News.com moved to using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It wasn’t smooth, it wasn’t easy, and the site still doesn’t validate (in part because of our ad server, a common problem in these migrations). Looks like The Register made the move, too. Good for them. That’s a bit of incentive for us to finish the job we started.

  • Web pushes print to new heights (depths?)

    Reason magazine will customize every single one of its 40,000 issues with a satellite photograph of the subscriber’s house on the cover. The web continues to offer personalization at various levels, and print is pushing the boundaries of custom publishing to do the same. If the technology works — and is economical, which is probably a bit further off — then the last step left is the actual printing and delivery. E-paper anyone?

  • Who needs graphics?

    Zork and other classic text games are still alive and available for play via any AIM compatible client. Some might ask why you want to play text-only games in a visual world… we are in the 21st century, after all. But what games these days have a sense of humor? Here’s what you find on a small piece of paper, nailed to the wall, down in the netherworld underneath the house:

    Congratulations! You are the privileged owner of a genuine ZORK Great Underground Empire (Part I), a self contained and self maintaining universe. If used and maintained in accordance with normal operating practices for small universes, ZORK will provide many months of trouble-free operation. Please check with your dealer for Part II and other alternate universes.

    All this, without the overhead of a graphics engine that tasks my processor. Be nice to your CPU; play Zork.