July 26, 2003
Nice book search engine
The AddALL Used and Out of Print book search has a nice, simple interface and search a large number of used/out of print book databases.
This service might just oust Bookfinder as my first stop when looking for an out of print book.
Sports Point Spreads
I'm in the process of creating a site to display sports point spreads and other sports information. I've found that so many sports sites are so overwhelmed by gaudy banner adds and contain very little useful information. Hopefully this site will be a bit better, although I will have the occasional banner add, too. Have to pay the bills some way :-).
List of Google PR 10 pages
So you're curious about what sort of pages are able to attain a Pagerank of 10 in google?
Google PageRank PR 10 Top List
MozEx
I've been using ieSpell for a while now and have been loving it. I've wished for a similar type od application for my primary browser, Mozilla Firebird, for a while now.
While it isn't as tightly integrated as ieSpell is MozEx will accomplish what I'll after. In addition to letting you choose an application to edit textarea text with, it also allows you to choose which applications should handle view page source, mailto, news, telnet, and ftp links, and download files.
July 24, 2003
Regex coach
The Regex Coach is an interactive regular expression tool that allows one to test out and debug Perl regular expressions before unleashing them on your data.
July 20, 2003
National Traffic and Road Closure Information
The U.S. Department of Transportation hosts the National Traffic and Road Closure Information page, which contains copious links regarding traffic conditions, road construction, road condition, and highway webcams. Over the past couple days I've enjoyed looking at a few webcams of notoriously congested areas, glad that I wasn't there.
July 19, 2003
Best rechargeable batteries
Digital Imaging Accessories Review: The Great Battery Shootout has a nice review of numerous brands of rechargeable batteries. Anyone who uses or is contemplating using rechargeable batteries should check this out.
Personally, I've been very happy with my Maha Powerex C401FS and my Maha Powerex AA2300mAh Batteries, which get top marks on the Imaging Resource review.
update:
The
Energizer 2300mAh appear to test a little better than the Maha 2300s. I am sure, however that the new Maha 2500mAh batteries will be the new performance leader.
July 16, 2003
Nielsen reams PDF
Jakob Nielsen's latest alertbox column, PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (Alertbox), is a rant on the PDF format's inherent lack of usability.
While I agree with much of what he says, since PDFs are best used for documents that you want to preserve formatting for printing and not for documents which are to be be regularly viewed on screen, I take exception with his comments on the format's inherent navigational shortcomings.
He states that even when a PDF file has its own navigation aides, they don't typically help because they’re nonstandard and based on a paper metaphor rather than hypertext navigation.
First, I'd say that Acrobat Reader's navigational aides, due to the application's widespread distribution, are quite familiar to many users. The application's "paper metaphor" can, admittedly, get in the way of efficient screen reading of PDFs, but this is quite useful for PDFs best use, the transmission of documents for which you wish to preserve a set print format (like forms). Finally, I've found that, through the use of hyperlinks and side-panel table of contents, I've been able to produce PDF files that have been praised for their ease of navigation.
Overall, I must agree with the gist of this article, since too often PDFs are thrown up on a site because it's easier to simply hit a "create PDF" button than transforming content into a usable HTML format.
Google World
Google World is a great source for all information about Google. The section on Google's issued and filed patents is particularly interesting.
Google Papers
Google lists a large number of papers written by Google employees at labs.google.com.
Netscape fades away
AOL Cuts Remaining Mozilla Hackers
While part of me was sad to hear this news, Mozilla might just be better off on it's own.
July 15, 2003
Newer, more secure formmail
A good replacement for Formmail can be found at nms. Matt Wright even recommends these scripts.
July 14, 2003
about:something
The Mozillazine forums has a great thread, about:something, where you can learn about all of the about: combinations that you can type into the Mozilla address bar to retrieve all sorts of information. The only one that I use with any regularity is about:config, although about:kitchensink is good for a smile.
the most popular "the"
Tim Bray has recently posted about stopwords in his blog. It inspired me to do a Google search for +the which forces Google to return results for "the". I must say that I got a little smile when I found out that the Onion came out ahead of the White House.
July 13, 2003
Seat intelligence
If you going to be flying in the near future SeatGuru.com is worth a look. It lists major airlines' aircraft, their seating charts, and explains why certain seats are more desirable than others.
Branch Cut for Mozilla 1.5 Alpha
Mozillazine has posted a note about the Branch Cut for Mozilla 1.5 Alpha. While Mozilla has stated that 1.4 will be the last version before switching to distributing standalone components (e.g., Firebird, Thunderbird, etc.), they are continuing development of the suite-based product until the standalone versions are ready for prime time.
July 08, 2003
The ultimate job
Popular Science details one man's work in the Underwriters Laboratory, Popular Science | He Blows Things Up So You Don't Have To. Is this everyone's dream job or what?
Is 6 the last IE?
I was reading Joel Spolsky's blog and came across an entry reporting that IE 6 will be the last standalone version of the browser.
Review of lightweight Linux browsers
Freshmeat has a review of Lightweight Web Browsers for Linux written by Kamil Klimkiewicz. Kamil reviews and compares Links, Dillo, Amaya, and w3m.
Blogging in the news
This past week blogs and blogging has received some high profile press coverage.
The NY Times ran a story,Blogs in the Workplace, outlining how organizations are using blogs to manage and improve the flow of information among employees.
USA Today Welcome to the Blogosphere, providing an overview of blogs, blogging, and blog software and services. It also lists some of the web's more prominent blogs.
Wikipedia
I've spent the morning browsing what is perhaps the world's most ambitious wiki, Wikipedia, a quite large user-contributed encyclopedia. Like all wikis, Wikipedia allows anyone to modify just about any page on the site or add new pages.
July 07, 2003
Categories of Free and Non-Free Software
Categories of Free and Non-Free Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
A good general description of common types of software licenses.
Is open source in deep trouble?
Richard Wilder, in his article "Is open source in deep trouble?", outlines some of the ramifications of the SCO-IBM case regarding the commercial viability of OSS. As always, the user-contributed "Talkback" commentary has some fiery comments on the topic.
July 06, 2003
Robert Byrd sticking it to Bushie
USA Today ran an article this month titled "Senator takes on White House and wins fans" about West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd.
From the article:
On the flak he has received for criticizing President Bush: "It makes me all the more determined to do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said."
Amen!
Bloggers Gain Libel Protection
Wired News reports that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has concluded that "Bloggers Gain Libel Protection".