Archive for Internet
Why Does Windows have to be so stupid!
Posted by: | CommentsI sat there this afternoon looking at my daughters Dell wondering why the hell it had to be so difficult to join a wireless network. A Mac is so easy — turn it on and it finds the network for you. That’s it, nothing else.
A Blob on the site
Posted by: | CommentsAfter signing up for my Flickr account and noticing more and more sites with “tag blobs,” I decided to give it a try and see what it would be like on my site. A tag blob is the list of tags in the sidebar, representing all of the keywords I have used for blogs I’ve posted on the site.
The larger keywords are the ones that have been used most often and the smaller ones haven’t been used as much. It was fascinating last night to add tags to stories and watch the blob change keyword importance. (Okay, so my life isn’t that exciting, but it was fun anyway).
So, if you are wondering what I write about the most or if you are interested in a particular subject, just click one of the keywords and you will be shown all of those stories. I’m not finished going through all of the older content yet, but at least it gives an idea of what it will look like.
Signed up for a Flickr account
Posted by: | CommentsEverywhere I look these days, it’s Flickr, Flickr, Flickr. Like the saying goes, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” so I did yesterday afternoon. I’m still not convinvced Flickr is any better for me than .Mac, but I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that can give me some opinions and examples on why it’s better.
I uploaded a couple of albums already to test out the interface. Overall, it’s pretty good — there are quite a few options and there is a whole community of people that you can make as contacts. I quickly found several people that I know to add as contacts.
I’m currently using a Flickr plugin for iPhoto, which seems to be the best upload/management interface I’ve found so far. The plugin doesn’t seem to be able to create an album for me, although it did upload pictures just fine if I didn’t choose to create a new album.
Shortly after signing up, a good friend got me upgraded to a Flickr Pro account (Thanks), which gives you a whole lot of extras — mostly lifting restrictions of the free account.
Like I said, I’m not totally convinced yet, but I’m going to give it a try and see what happens.
Using Bad Behavior on spammers
Posted by: | CommentsBlog spam has become a real problem for all of those people that just want to post a few personal thoughts on the Web. For some, it has meant taking comments off their sites altogether. Luckily, the Wordpress community is very active and has a lot of good developers tackling this problem — the latest plugin I’m trying is called Bad Behavior.
Unlike a lot of the other plugins, Bad Behavior doesn’t require any interaction from the person making the post. For instance, you don’t need to require a special code be typed in or otherwise jump through hoops to make a post.
I was using a plugin called Bot Check that required a 5-digit code be typed in and it was very good. I had no trouble with it at all and would certainly recommend anyone having trouble with spam give it a try.
I like to test out all kinds of things server related, so I thought I’d give Bad Behavior a try and see how it works. I had this site up for a few days before I started reciving spam, so I know it’s out there — let’s see how this does.
If you find yourself blocked for some reason, please let me know.
Apple Spotlight type search on the site
Posted by: | CommentsI did some reading over the weekend on what it would take to implement “live searching” on the site. What I mean by that is searching a Web site in a similar way to how Apple has implemented live searching on a Macintosh using Spotlight.
This morning I decided to take the plunge and after toying around off and on today I got it pretty much done. I still have to work on the CSS a bit more, but it’s functional.
It should work on most browsers, although it doesn’t for sure on IE for the Mac — then again who cares. If you use Safari, you even get the rounded corners and drop shdows.
So, to use the live search function just click in the search box and start typing. Results should popup under the search window almost immediately; using your arrow keys (or mouse) scroll down to the story you want and hit enter. If you want to exit out of search, just hit the Escape key on your keyboard.
Online gambling IPO earns billions
Posted by: | CommentsWow, if you thought there was no money in online gambling, you would be wrong. An ex-porn business owner, her husband and two others will cash in $1.4 billion and have shares worth an additional $6 billion.
According to the Reuters story, Ruth Parasol and her husband Russell de Leon, both lawyers, are each set to cash in around $370 million and still own a combined stake worth about $2.7 billion.
Anurag Dikshit, group operations director, is the biggest shareholder. He will cash in shares worth about $720 million and still own a 30 percent stake worth over $2.6 billion.
Marketing director Vikrant Bhargava’s remaining 9 percent stake and cash from the IPO should be worth almost $1 billion.
The downside — and there always seems to be a downside — the group could face jail time if the U.S. decides to clamp down on online gambling.
Meeting old and new friends in Orlando
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s Wednesday night and the Photo Marketing Association trade show is over for another year. The show was much busier than I thought it would be, which is a good sign for the industry. I also took the opportunity to meet up with some old friends and meet a new one — or at least put a face to the email address.
Do people still read books?
Posted by: | CommentsI know it sounds like a stupid question, but I mean it. I can’t remember the last time I sat down with a good book and did nothing but read for hours. That’s not to say that I don’t read all the time, I do, but usually it’s from the Internet, not from a book.
The Iconfactory: Icons in the Macintosh Industry
Posted by: | CommentsFounded in the mid-nineties, The Iconfactory remains a favorite of many Macintosh users who value quality icon art. The Iconfactory gives away much of its work for free, giving users custom work for holidays like their recently released Halloween icon set, but they also design custom icon pieces. If you think your life hasn’t been touched by The Iconfactory in some way over the past few years, I can almost guarantee you’re wrong.
Among its large customer base, the Iconfactory counts Apple, Microsoft (Messenger, Office X), Macromedia (Studio MX 2004), Aladdin Systems (Stuffit Deluxe), Extensis (Suitcase), Matterform Media (Spamfire) and many other well-known and up-and-coming companies as customers.
But why should we really care about icons? After all it’s not like they are really important in the big scheme of things, right? Wrong!
Take a look at Mac OS X — part of the thing that people like the most and rave about is the fluid look and feel, the realistic nature of the interface. That is the Iconfactory. Actually I don’t know if they designed anything in OS X, but these people had an effect on the way icon art has developed over the past 8 or nine years. That’s a pretty substantial contribution to the industry.
Gedeon Maheux, one of the founding members of The Iconfactory, is probably one of the nicer guys in the industry. Gedeon, Corey Marion and Talos Tsui brought together some of the best artists and designers to build a business out of a hobby — not a bad accomplishment in itself.
There are many icon sites on the Internet today, designing Mac hardware icons and everything else you can think of from Star Trek to TV shows, but it’s all inspired by three guys from Greensboro, NC that call themselves the Iconfactory.
Safari supports new CSS properties; other browsers behind
Posted by: | CommentsI have been experimenting a lot with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) lately to see what can be done in designing a simple Web site. If you are using Apple’s Safari 1.1 or later, you are seeing things on this Web page that people using Camino, Firefox, Internet Explorer and most other browsers don’t: text shadows. Using shadows for story headlines is nothing knew; people have used Photoshop for years to make graphics with sophisticated layers and drop shadows, but the text shadows you see on this page are all done with CSS — not a graphic in there at all.
Safari supports new properties proposed for CSS level 3. In fact, Safari 1.1 has added support for three new properties: text-shadow property, rgba() colors with alpha values, and the :selection pseudo-element.
CSS has become much more prevalent in Web sites over the past couple of years — the recent redesign of Macworld and MacCentral (where I am the online editor) makes extensive use of CSS. Using a style sheet you can easily change text size and many other elements of a Web site, including the ability to add drop shadows to any text on your Web site.
While doing this blog I set out to use CSS as much as possible. I met my goals to a great degree, although there are still a few tables; ultimately, I would like to rebuild it without using a single table.
Unfortunately for some, Safari is one of the only browsers supporting these new properties. If you don’t use Safari, you can see what you are missing by checking out this image of the Web site.
