Year: 2006

Categories
Technology Web

Is Firefox the next IE?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I just posted a story at ScriptTeaser about a weblog post whereby the writer rants and rails (not the Ruby kind) against IE7. I find myself in the rather unusual position of responding in defense of this much maligned browser.

For all that there are rants against IE and Microsoft’s use of non-standard technology, that non-standard technology gave us the roots of Ajax, as well as the basic architecture of today’s DOM (Document Object Model). I remember very well when IE was the hot browser, while Netscape’s Navigator pretty much sat there, doing little.

In addition, it was Mozilla/Firefox 2.0b that gave us JavaScript 1.7–a non-standard extension to the JavaScript programming language. So, the team behind IE is not the only browser team that ‘innovates’.

In fact, about the only browser that attempts to keep up with all the standards is Opera, and it only has about a 2% customer share.

You have to make pages that work, and they have to work in all of the popular browsers, and should work equally well with or without JavaScript (or Flash). If you can’t, someone else will. That’s the law of this jungle.

Categories
Weblogging

AOL Screws the pooch

I have to agree with the Herd on this one: AOL screwed the pooch by releasing its actual search results. Even if the data is ‘anonymized’ (is that a new Web 2.0 word?), it shows a betrayal of confidentiality that’s going to end up costing the company big time. AOL is trying to paint itself as a newer, hipper company with its recent weblogger hirings, as well as monetizing (another new Web 2.0 word?) of linkers. This at a time when its customer service will eventually become a verb in modern dictionaries: to AOL a customer (i.e. argue with a customer, abuse the customer, not let them make legitimate changes in their account, and now, betray the customer’s confidentiality.)

There are ways to provide search term data that doesn’t rely on exposing actual search terms, many of which include names, phone numbers, and addresses (and other associated information in unrelated searches that could prove embarrassing). This is pure hype; attention grabbing stuff. Bad juju, may your CDs burn in hell, AOL behavior.

This site is where I first read the story (via Seth), and this is the site that seems to have broken the story. I wanted to give credit where it’s due, since certain A listing sites seem to think this is unnecessary.

(I’m pointing to Search Engine Watch’s post on the topic because of the last sentence in the post, related to a person’s reaction to the news: Want more wow. Though I don’t think we’re discussing the same thing, I want more wow, too.)

update

AOL has officially apologized.

Image of little boy, looking guilty as hell, one hand in grubby jeans, the other hand’s thumb tucked into the urchin’s mouth. He kicks his foot in the dirt, looks, down, cheeks turned red and mumbles, “I’m sowwy”. He then holds his arms up, wanting to be picked up and held, and told, “That’s OK, we still love you. Just don’t set fire to the cat again.”

Categories
Web

Happy B’Day Web!

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Yesterday was the World Wide Web’s 15th birthday!

It’s amazing when you consider how much the web is a part of our lives now. When I read the news, I immediately searched in Flickr for a CC licensed photo of a birthday cake–to honor the web in the most appropriate interconnectivitly way. This photo seemed about right to me.

Categories
Weather

Come on, let’s change the weather

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It’s so hot today, even the sun is sweating. Hot, humid, ucky air, ew.

I don’t known about anyone else, but I hate August. I do, I really hate August. I thought that since there are so many of us webloggers, since we outnumber the stars in the heavens and the grains of sand on the beaches and the little finches and wee babies in their cribs, I figure we could combine our mojo power and change the weather. Seriously, we’re only one shy of infinity in count and that ought to be worth a minor planetary upheaval.

All we need to do is write in our weblogs, “I hate August” and the weight of our words, the wind of our postings rushing past, our combined might will become a force of nature. We will make this world tremble!

Of course this is for the northern hemisphere. We may end up leading to an imbalance that will wipe out most of the southern hemisphere. If we do, we promise to remember those on the other side of the world, and their noble sacrifice. Why, I’ll personally post a “I remember the whatchamicallums. You know, the ones with the kangaroos and outdoor grilling fixation”, in my sidebar. Is South Korea northern or southern hemisphere? Northern? Well, we’ll probably wipe it out, too, so I’ll also make sure to mention those crazy kids.

Come on people, type those words, hammer those fingers down, stomp those feet, make the world shift on its axis!

I hate August!

Categories
Weblogging

Planet Powers

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m aggregating all of my posts at Planet Powers, providing both an HTML interface, as well as syndication feeds. I’m using the Planet Planet software, which is relatively simple to use, though requires a technical background. I appreciate the creators making the software available and the only quibbles I have are: caching can be a problem when you make a mistake in the configuration file; there’s no documentation on how to set some of the template values; and the authors would do well to change the example email address in the config.ini file–especially if they want women to feel welcome using the application.

Right now I’m using the default web page template, and have no plans to change this anytime soon. Well, other than to make a couple of minor changes so that it validates. It’s a nice, clean, interface and I have other things to work on. Besides, I’m mainly providing this site as a way of providing aggregated feeds for all my sites–a better approach than trying to remember to post a link here when I publish a new writing elsewhere.

There’s an Atom feed, which is the default. However, there’s also a RSS 2.0 feed and a RSS 1.0 feed, in addition to a FeedBurner page. All provide full content.

(Thanks to Sam Ruby for indirect reminder of the software.)