Apr

29

Once Through the Firewall

Filed Under Interweb | Leave a Comment

Sites like eMessenger are often very useful. I once memorized the URLs to AOL’s and and Yahoo’s web-based IM clients. When I started keeping my bookmarks online that made it easier. Occasionally I have found myself needing to chat without being able to start up a client. For instance, going off to a training or workshop somewhere with limited a wireless network. The HTTP port (for the web) is so ubiquitous that no one would block it. Which means services like this would work.

eMessenger

What is e-Messenger? e-Messenger is a web application that enables you to chat with your MSN, AOL and Yahoo buddies without having to install any program or Java applet. All you need is a JavaScript enabled browser and you’re set to go and use e-Messenger, even if you’re behind a firewall.

Apr

29

10 Types of People

Filed Under Humor / Weird, Photography, Quotes | 1 Comment



10 Types of People, originally uploaded by sneezypb.

“There are 10 types of people in the world; those who understand binary and those who don’t.”

Its nice to have a Mom who encourages my geekliness. :)

Apr

25

Internet Elephant (in the Corner)

Filed Under Corporations | Leave a Comment

In the web design and web application world, Internet Explorer is always the Elephant in the Corner. The most popular web browser is one of the more cantankerous and annoying web browsers to design HTML and JavaScript for use inside it. For a long time a few web designers have preached a need for Web Standards. However, IE’s lack of standards made that unlikely. Only when IE actually move ever so slightly towards standards did the WS crowd feel vindicated.

Additionally, Internet Explorer is the gaping hole in computer security. People rarely need to patch Windows or Office so much as patch IE (and often).

Normally I roll my eyes at just about anything Dvorak writes. However, he does point out a new argument for the “No More IE” crowd. Unfortunately until Microsoft stockholders put the pressure on the company to change, I really doubt this elephant is going anywhere.

Column from PC Magazine: The Great Microsoft Blunder

I think it can now be safely said, in hindsight, that Microsoft’s entry into the browser business and its subsequent linking of the browser into the Windows operating system looks to be the worst decision—and perhaps the biggest, most costly gaffe—the company ever made. I call it the Great Microsoft Blunder.

Apr

24

The Importance of User Experience

Filed Under Computers, Photography | Leave a Comment



The Importance of User Experience, originally uploaded by soldierant.

Bryce Glass’ diagram on usability and user experience.

Apr

23

Company Culture

Filed Under Corporations, Interweb, Philosophy, Quotes, Science, Work | Leave a Comment

In this article, Rands describes the building of a company culture in getting a software product to 1.0. Company culture has become a topic of interest to me lately. In taking a new job in a place with a very different mindset, I want to better understand my component in this machine.

Thoughts in my head:

  • Change is good and bad. Depending on whether you pick a good or bad or ambivalent route you get different results.
  • Adapt or die.
  • Personal preference colors choice.

Rands In Repose: 1.0

In thinking about the difficulties of 1.0, I realized that Maslow’s [Hierarchy of Needs] model fundamentally applied to shipping the first version of a product. There’s a hierarchy that defines what you need to build in order to ship 1.0 and it sort’f looks like this.

Apr

23

A Penny for Your Thoughts, and 1.4 Cents for the Penny

Filed Under Gov't & Politics | Leave a Comment

This is a great story. The slowness the U.S. Mint is reacting to change is costing them. More than just the cost of the metals go into making pennies, so we could easily be close to 2 cents to produce a single penny. However, the U. S. Mint doesn’t exactly sell the money it makes, so why is it important the cost of making a penny is less than the penny itself?

The sales tax bit seemed to imply it would better not to have them or to have them round to the nearest nickel. Was I reading too much into that?

A Penny for Your Thoughts, and 1.4 Cents for the Penny - New York Times

WHAT happens if a penny is worth more than 1 cent?

That is an issue the United States Mint could soon face if the price of metals keeps rising. Already it costs the mint well more than a cent to make a penny.

This week the cost of the metals in a penny rose above 0.8 cents, more than twice the value of last fall. Because the government spends at least another six-tenths of a cent — above and beyond the cost of the metal — to make each penny, it will lose nearly half a cent on each new one it mints.

The real problem could come if metals prices rise so high that it would be economical to melt down pennies for the metals they contain.

Apr

23

Google, You Suck

Filed Under Corporations | Leave a Comment

One of the fun things about Google is they change the logo at their search page (and the smaller one for the results) whenever there  is something special about that particular day. Christmas and Easter are pretty obvious. However, they get things like the Olympics, election days, and other things one might know. On rare occasion I have no idea what they are signifying.

So… Today is Shakespeare’s birthday. Why nothing? Think of all the poor high school students who this school year have used to Google look up a synopsis of one of his plays. Think of all the poor high school teachers who have this school year used Google to catch the previously mentioned student plagerising. Shakespeare drives traffic to Google, but Goggle ignores him.

Sad.

Apr

20

Highlighting

Filed Under Computers, Work | Leave a Comment

Why, oh why, doesn’t Adobe include the highlighter tool in Acrobat Reader? I understand the intent of the tool. For the person creating the document to highlight the important parts.

Perhaps though the people reading the document would like to highlight the important parts. For an off-computer example, students highlight parts of text books. So instead, I will have to copy the important parts to text file. This means I will probably use the text writer instead of Acrobat and only go to the PDF when I cannot find what I need.

BTW, in the remote chance someone from Adobe reads this (hey, it could happen), add the Notes tool to Acrobat Reader too!

Apr

20

Underplanned Internet

Filed Under Computers | Leave a Comment

My have things changed. The number is probably in the millions to tens of millions considering people often set up networks at home.

RFC 1118 - Hitchhikers guide to the Internet. E. Krol.

When the Internet was designed it was to have about 50 connected networks. With the explosion of networking, the number is now approaching 1000. The software in a group of critical gateways (called the core gateways) are not able to pass or store much more than that number. In the short term, core reallocation and recoding has raised the number slightly.

Apr

20

Taking Screenshots of web pages without Spending $40

Filed Under Computers | Leave a Comment

Screen Grab will be very useful. It is easy enough to take screenshots, past them into GIMP and save them as PNG. Why do that when you can have something do it for you in one step?

Take Screen Capture of Webpages in Firefox » Digital Inspiration: Software Reviews, Technology News, Downloads, Productivity Tips

As the name suggests, Screen Grab saves the entire webpage as an image. The screengrab plugin can capture the current browser window, any visible portion of the browser window and even capture the entire website being viewed in Firefox.

When you capture the whole web document, this screen capture plugin scrolls the page around taking snapshots every time. At the end it stitches them all back together again and asks you where you’d like to save the image. The screenshots are saved as PNG format. Screengrab requires Java Virtual Machine. Supports Firefox 1.0+

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