MovableBlog: Asides: March 2004

March 31, 2004

Adam Morris calls bullshit on Six Apart Adam says they should call the inability of China-based browsers to access TypePad sites for what it is: government censorship. Simon says it's outside their (6A's) frame of reference. [#]

Google's "press release" about Gmail Good one, but a little early. [#]

Redirect your old MT entries to the WP equivalent I did something similar when redirecting my the (MT-created) individual entries with the old URL style to the ones with the current style. [#]

Notable Wordpress-powered sites Not sure the tool matters as much as the content, but Matt—or someone else—could profitably run a WP weblog about weblogs powered by WP. (Between you and me, I've been trying to think of a subject to blog about using my installation of WP.) [#]

March 30, 2004

Open source voting software project [#]

The human face of 6A Jay raises the tired specter of Microsoft (a successful software company). [#]

March 29, 2004

Mena's Corner Putting the number of weblogs written by 6A employees (er, the ones that I follow) into double digits. [#]

Adam Kalsey wonders where the Google Alerts RSS feeds are Meanwhile, I'm wondering where the Google Alerts Atom feeds are. [#]

Not posting is incorrect [#]

March 28, 2004

Darren on the Vancouver geek lunch Boris has more. *grumble* [#]

Why Skype is no different than other VoIP services Different words for essentially the same thing. [#]

How to help someone use a computer By following these tips, you'll learn more about the people you help than they will from you about computers. [#]

Talking with the Googlers Interesting facts: Firefox does what the article says the Google Toolbar does, but isn't mentioned. Google Weblog is mentioned but they have not blogged the article. There is no weblog-friendly URL for the article. "Googlers" is a New York Times-sanctioned noun. [#]

Video games with an agenda Interesting site, but it's unclear how they came to the conclusion that RSD was a syndication format. [#]

Wrapping text around images uploaded in MT [#]

Setting the price I wondered why people weren't complaining about my rates either. [#]

Vancouver geek lunch I was invited but couldn't go (yeah and of course Tim Bray shows up, dammit!). Although in the future, instead of it being called a "geek lunch", hopefully geeks will smarten up and simply call it "lunch". [#]

March 27, 2004

Internet voting: pipe dream or reality? "Voter authenticity and security are not significant concerns" [#]

CSS as make-work [#]

March 26, 2004

Safari, Opera and Omniweb are not X7.45 compliant Another reason to move from Safari to Firefox. (Even IE is compliant!) [#]

Handling content from strangers Yes, strip_tags() does indeed suck. [#]

Flexible floats 2 With updated Javascript [#]

Douglas Adams' Mac Yes, that Douglas Adams. [#]

A blogger conference in Vancouver Would you attend? [#]

Using Quicksilver, you'll go from using OS X to owning it Well, I don't use it, so there goes that idea. But I still demand before and after screenshots. [#]

Effective favicons You'll note that this weblog did not make that list. [#]

For many firms, Linux costs more than Windows Interesting to note that most defections to Linux come not from Windows but from higher-end Unix. [#]

Flexible quotes with CSS and Javascript [#]

March 25, 2004

User sponsorship and managed growth at Kuro5hin "There's almost always been a few annoying people with enough free time to piss off everyone else." [#]

Adding your Blogroll to Blogware [#]

Running PHP 4 and PHP 5 concurrently I'm so doing that if I get my own Linux box. Some more detailed instructions. [#]

Turn your weblog into a PDF The PHP code orks with Livejournal, DeadJournal, UJournal & WordPress weblogs, and they're looking for MT developers to contribute. [#]

TypePad, blogs.com blocked in China I am outraged, just outraged, that a Stalinist regime would try to block free spee—oh, right. [#]

Free RSS reader for Internet Explorer I can think of 3 things wrong with that phrase. [#]

Feedster adds email alerts So email is still alive after all! [#]

Drupal's comment authentication is open and distributed (Please do not use a Maoist phrase to emphasize why competing platforms is a good thing until you are aware of how many people died because of that phrase.) [#]

March 24, 2004

How blogs work in 7 easy pieces Check out the Pollard-esque illustration. [#]

PHP 5 is all about turning PHP into Java WhatEVER! [#]

March 23, 2004

Debugging, a Slashdot review I don't read Slashdot, normally, but this one was filtered up. [#]

Automatic no-tables, CSS site generator ...as if millions of web desingers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. [#]

John wonders if there is a way to convert a weblog to book Funny, Hugh had the same idea. [#]

Technorati redesign critique When banner blindness strikes. [#]

XML in PHP 5 DOM, libxml2, SimpleXML, XSLT, XPath, while keeping SAX. [#]

Scalability In case you were wondering what people mean when your personal publishing software of choice—or anything, for that matter—doesn't scale. [#]

Comparison of MT and Drupal The comparison is a year old, so things may have changed since. Informative nonetheless. [#]

Known problems with the MT default stylesheets With some solutions. [#]

March 22, 2004

Technorati still in beta But it looks nicer, you get free watchlists, and the website's sections have more marketing-friendly names. [#]

March 21, 2004

U-blog is the official representation agent for 6A in Europe [#]

TypeKey: ideologies and information problems When you identify the lowest motive for something, it's not necessarily the correct one. [#]

Roland: Drupal is the Linux, Wordpress is the Mac of blogging systems More heresy. (Note that I do not necessarily disagree with Roland or Boris.) [#]

March 20, 2004

Migrating from MT to Drupal [#]

Recent articles in drop-down boxes using Javascript and MT [#]

Because of MT 3.0, MT-Blacklist will be no more [#]

Web Rank in the Y! companion toolbar Like Google PageRank, except not. Also: people who don't use Internet Explorer need not apply. [#]

Blogger threatened with libel action No, not who you're thinking of. But this is either legal chill or (the horror) a way to keep bloggers accountable. [#]

Search Google by date [#]

March 19, 2004

MT is the Windows of weblog publishing software Boris makes some valid complaints. [#]

Dave Shea: they can steal your site, but they can't steal your soul [#]

March 18, 2004

The Atom template in MT is wrong Mark Pilgrim agrees. [#]

onclick and onpress are not strictly invalid in RSS Don't tell that to the people that validate their sites in the competing validators and find that one validates the feed and the other doesn't. (Incidentally, I ran into this today with a client's feed that needed validation, with onclick no less.) [#]

Open source ads server Host your very own Google AdSense! [#]

Google introduces channels to track AdSense ads across sites Funny, I was talking about this with a colleague today. Also: downloadable reports. [#]

Doc Searls: Benjamin Franklin was a blogger Well, at least he didn't say he would have been a blogger, otherwise I would have to call bullshit on that. [#]

Making MT more secure But the phrase "since we know what we're doing" will not be reassuring to those who don't. [#]

Perl to PHP translator and vice versa But three other A-listers linked this already, so you've seen it. [#]

Central backup directory for emacs pico doesn't litter my folders with tidle files, but yes, using pico still makes me lame. [#]

March 17, 2004

Social networking is broken Using the word "broken" to say that you don't like how something works is broken. Or: "broken" is to 2004 what "funky" was to 2003. [#]

How to be completely spam-free Everything requires maintenance. [#]

Google set to become the Yellow Pages of the Internet (That is if it isn't already!) Currently only works for United States businesses. Also: compare sushi nyc to sushi new york city. [#]

Toilets are cleaner than keyboards Darren's not surprised. [#]

Open letter to Jakob Nielsen Andrei says physician heal thyself. [#]

Frequent MT support forum contributor killed in train accident :-( [#]

March 16, 2004

Content first inside the HTML, with sidebar float:right From the excellent disccusion at mezzoblue. [#]

The business case for documentation in web design [#]

New interface based and templates on web standards, centralized comment authentication (with API), Atom API and more hooks into the application coming in MT 3.0 Testing continues apace. [#]

March 15, 2004

What do do when "we're doomed" This no doubt applies to cases more than just managing software projects. [#]

Secure MySQL database design Might come in handy in a couple hours. Excellent links in the references. [#]

March 14, 2004

China's Growing Dependence on Technological Expertise My summary of a review essay on Internet dissent and information management in China. [#]

March 13, 2004

Search Engine Voodoo [#]

March 12, 2004

Linux kernal swear count Ooh, they said the P-word. [#]

Jay has a summary of the discussion on the "next generation" of blogging tools The ideas all sound more like refining than innovating to me. [#]

March 11, 2004

Two security exploits in Radio [#]

Matt wants to know the business case for bad markup Michel says there is a case, but guess who's business case it is. (Hint: not the client's.) [#]

How to say "blue screen of death" in Mandarin Admit it, you always wondered. [#]

March 10, 2004

Code is food I'm with Matt on this one (design matters, valid code matters), but still, unsubscribing is to 2004 what delinking was to 2003. [#]

CSS problem-solving Except for turning on and off borders (which I'll have to add to my repertoire, Dave has listed some of the CSS debugging techniques I use. [#]

March 9, 2004

Roland Tanglao rates the Canadian Conservative Party leadership candidates' websites All the sites are "tired". Each get a "thumbs down". How to...change Tony Clement's "thumbs down" rating; change Stephen Harper's "thumbs down" rating; change Belinda Stronach's "thumbs down" rating. [#]

NKTech: a weblog about computer technology in North Korea Part of the excellent NKZone constellation of North Korea weblogs. [#]

Who am I? A URI? [fr] Is there only one URI that defines us? Or can there be more than one? [#]

Simon Willison found the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction Now the United States can move to the daunting task of rebuilding Iraq's long-neglected websites. [#]

John Wiseman points to an "amateurish bug" in MT's import/export function The phrase "tedious emacs work", to me, is a redundancy. [#]

Jeremy says there needs to be a book for companies on how to profit from blogging [#]

Windows Re* [#]

The Lockergnome redesign is worse than Photomatt imagined it would be It takes a certain amount of skill to make a site look bad in Mozilla. [#]

March 8, 2004

Neoteny to focus most of its resources on 6A [#]

March 6, 2004

Anil has a lengthy reply in the MT support boards about the MT 3 alpha Also: a clarification to his comment at philringnalda.com. [#]

Anil: MT 3.0 alpha testing began on time That's probably news to these folks. [#]

March 5, 2004

FeedDemon 1.10 RC1 For registered users only, which now includes myself. [#]

Evidently you can meet people by using Trackback That's news to me. [#]

March 4, 2004

Importing someone else's Blogroll OPML into your Blogroll [#]

Slate has an RSS feed... ...here. And there was much rejoicing. Slate also links to open-source or free aggregators, and Feedster and Syndic8. There are also...notable absences...in the text. [#]

"Internet Explorer 7" Use CSS2 selectors in IE 5.5+ without resorting to hacks filters. [#]

Martin's Transparent Windows Alternative to Froost and Actual Transparent Windows [#]

March 3, 2004

Notes on PHP session security [#]

Matt calls into question a recent Lockergnome article His optimism that Lockergnome is listening to criticism is waning. [#]

MT-Revision plugin In case you want to keep yourself accountable. [#]

March 1, 2004

Luke is aware of and may have a fix for the Sharpreader memory hogging But at least there's Atom support. [#]