Ben's theory
I have this friend, let's call him Ben; because, well, that's his name. I haven't seen Ben in about 10 years but when I knew him he was married. The woman he was married to was the poster girl for the traditional wife. I'm not sure what that means exactly but Ben was convinced that she demonstrated the qualities that he imagined in an ideal wife. Even though he was married he still managed to appreciate the beauty of women he saw in his day to day life. The people he found attractive were completely different from the person he was married to; nearly diametrically opposite in fact. I asked him about this one day, and he said he believed that, when you're married, the people you find attractive are often very different from the people you're married to; part of what makes them attractive is that they're different. We called this idea 'Ben's Theory'. You might argue that this is somewhat related to the "the grass is always greener" idiom, except that Ben didn't suggest that the married people ever wanted the greener grass, they simply appreciated it because it was different. For a completely different twist on this theory, see Madonna-whore complex.
HTML Graph
Sala has written a cool little applet to map out the HTML of a web page. Give it the URL of a site and it will generate a tree of the site's tags. If you're curious about to what a program like that looks like, he's published the program source.
Blog services review
If you're considering writing your blog for the first time, you'll be hard pressed to find anything simpler than blogger. Still there are plenty of other services available. You can find charts online comparing the various features.
I've been writing my blog for years. I have posts as far back as early 2001 and have still managed to keep the total size of the blog small (just over a quarter of a gig) . I started it using homegrown code but decided in late 2006 to move over to someone else's product. Its running on my own machine so I still have to worry about the server and bandwidth so I would love to move it to some other service but there are a couple things that have been preventing me from making the move.
- I worry that if I were to host it on blogger, for example, that it would be very difficult to keep backups. There's no backup feature so I would have to back everything up manually. If Google decided that they didn't like my blog for, some reason, they could come along and delete it and I would lose years of work. Or, like YouTube, they could delete my account altogether.
- There isn't any way to change the date on posts. This is a convenience I've become accustomed. It would be difficult to give up. It seems like such a simple change, that it's silly that blogger won't just make it.
- I already have comments on my blog posts. Moving to blogger would mean that I would lose those comments.
- I have files, other than images, hosted on my blog. Blogger would prevent me from uploading these so I'd have to find somewhere else to put them. My current software allows me to manage the files, any images, my posts, my comments, etc, all from the same interface.
It looks like blogger is aware of some of these issues. In fact, the other day I stumbled upon a page that lets you vote for your enhancement request. I've included the list below.
- I want to restrict access only to specific posts.
- I want to show excerpts of my posts, with links to the full text.
- I want to export/import my posts to/from another blogging tool.
- I want to be able to upload other files to my blog besides images.
- I want to display my posts in reverse, or non-chronological order.
- I want to track where my visitors come from and how they interact with my site.
- I want Blogger to be available as part of Google Apps.
- I want to purchase domains through Blogger.
- I want the ability to post a podcast on my blog.
- I want the ability to read my friends' blogs all in one place.
- I want more gadgets for the sidebar.
- I want more template options.
- I want to recommend a Blog of Note.
You can find the blogger voting page by following these steps from the dashboard.
Help | Help Center | Manage Your Account | Getting Started | Where do I sign in? | write Blogger Support (located in the bottom right of the screen) | Skip authentication | Suggest a feature | Submit
The Super Friends reenact a classic scene from Office Space.
There must have been a Death Star canteen.
Color palette
When designing a website it can be difficult to decide on the colors to use. WellStyled.com helps by letting you choose a base color and showing you the complimenting colors.
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday is in two days. What Black Friday is to brick and mortar retailers, Cyber Monday is to online retailers. These retailsrs will be offering all sorts of sales and promotions like free shipping to attract customers. If you're looking for online deals, Monday is the day to ship. Check TechBargains for online sales or visit one of the other sites from my Sales and coupons online post.
Santacon / Santarchy
Santacon 2007 in SF is Dec 15 so get your costume and head over to your local
So far the location is TBD but it looks this year's location may be the same as last year's location. Check the santacon tribe for specific event information; or, visit santarchy.com and santacon.com to find out more about the event.
Mag my picture
mag my pic dot com has a cool service to convert your picture to a magazine cover. I wouldn't use that quick post gadget on the result page though, who knows what they do with your password.
The following covers are available: fortune, national geographic, people, playboy, rolling stone, sports illustrated, time, vogue.
Compete
I often wonder how sites compare in terms of popularity. Is yahoo.com more popular than msn.com for example? Compete.com can give you some insight into this.
Graboid
It you're the type of person that likes watching movies before they come out on video; or if you prefer to watch your cable shows over the internet, then Graboid is perfect for you. It gives you access to movies you would normally download using torrent except that you don't have to wait for the entire file to download before watching it. Best of all, the software and the service are free. You can find out more about Graboid by reading their review on killerstartups.
Startups
Several startups happen every day. KillerStartups.com has taken on the challenge of reviewing them. Their homepage says they review at least 30 of them per day.
This video is by a creative team in London. Check out others at
Cold Stone freebie
Cold stone is giving away ice cream. Click on the image and print out the coupon to get yours free.
Black friday ads
The Black Friday ads are out. Window shop your favorite stores online before heading out to the mayhem.
Orangina Naturally Juicy English version
American commercials suck. We don't have anything anywhere near as entertaining as this one.
6 Billion dollar experiment
On Nov 26, 2007, May 2008 CERN will switch on the LHC Large Hadron Collider. They're is going to try reproducing the conditions immediately following the big bang. They hope to answer the fundamental questions of life, "where do we come from"
"what are we made of", "what does our future hold".
Semantic search
For some time, we've known that the technology behind search engines was flawed because when we supply the words to use in the search, we don't supply any semantic information with them. When I supply the word "sex", for example, I don't indicate whether I'm talking about a person's gender or intercourse. Likewise, if I'm looking Paris Hilton, I haven't indicated whether I'm trying to make a reservation at a hotel in Paris or whether I'm looking for information on the celebrity. True Knowledge is trying to change that with their technology. It attempts to find answers to peoples' questions, not just a result of pages that contain the words the person supplies.
Office Space on Who Wants to be a Millionaire
Jeff Jones nearly explodes when he discovers that his $250,000 question is from Office Space. I think every nerd knows the answer to this one. In fact, the reason they put it in the movie is because it's a staple of nerd history. Also. did you notice the guy's wearing a Wally World shirt?
The
Derren Brown: Mind Control
Derren Brown is a mind control expert. This is an episode of his show on the scifi channel. [moviesfoundonline]
Surly no other word carries as many meanings as the word dood.
Make My Logo Bigger Cream!
Make My Logo Bigger Cream can turn any website into something you can be proud of! This must have been the stuff MySpace used when they were developing their site.
Polls on Myspace
The handy PollDaddy poll widget allows you to add polls to y our MySpace page. It's too bad they don't have an option to choose a random poll from your list.
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="never" allowNetworking="internal" height="330" width="252" data="http://www.polldaddy.com/poll.swf"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never" /> <param name="allowNetworking" value="internal" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.polldaddy.com/poll.swf" /> <param name="flashvars" value="p=128993" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="salign" value="tl" /> <param name="scale" value="autoscale" /> </object>
Four Eyed Monsters
This film is brilliant. They have a website so you can see how much money they've made so far.
Free stock photo
Decorating a blog or other website isn't easy. Even the most prolific artist is bound to run out of images. There are several websites online that offer free photos but many sites that claim to offer anything for free have a hidden agenda that make even the free price tag seem excessive. Laura Milligan has created a list of some of the better free sites to find free images.
Disk monger
Keeping track of disk space can be challenging. When a drive fills up, it can be difficult to tell exactly where that space is going. Is it being consumed by mp3's or is our movie making taking up all that space. A handy piece of software called space monger can help you sort out your disk space by presenting you with a graph that shows you what files are taking up the most space. It scans your machine and draws a diagram with boxes sized according to their relative disk usage. A bigger box represents a folder that takes up more space. The new version of the software requires registration but the older version requires neither registration nor installation. You simply extract the contents of a zip file and double click on the executable.
IcerAir 2007
SF hosted IcerAir 2007 at the Giants Ball Park. You might recall the event from 2005 when it was held on Folsom Street. Here's some footage of the ski jump from this year.
Craig Newmark on Charlie Rose
Craig Newmark is the founder of craigslist, the most popular site for classified advertising. He was recently on the Colbert Report.
Mentos
We tried the Mentos experiment at the Halloween party at work yesterday. It fell flat especially when compared to these guys.