My thoughts and whatever about random topics.
“They’re coming to take me away, ha-haaa!” — and if you’re not happy with the way you’re taken away, try another one. You have 21 different ways to choose from.
This is of course about the Napolean XIV‘s 1966 hit single – and various international… eh… variations of that hit, making a total of 21. But there’s no use in me telling you this if you can’t enjoy it yourself, right? So strap into your straight jackets, and go to be taken away, ha-haa!
Enjoy! 😉
A while ago, we were told by Opera that they would have some big news for us at a later time. Speculations were rife if this meant a free version of Opera without advertising banner – but we didn’t know, and Opera wouldn’t tell.
Then there was a party, and to celebrate its 10 years, Opera gave away free registration codes. This were of course big news, and millions got their code for free. So in a way, it seemed that the big news we were promised were a free browser, without advertising – if not the way it was expected.
However, don’t forget: This is Opera, a company with a great taste for PR. Today Opera 8.5 was released – and it’s free! The advertising banners are gone! If the banners were turning you off earlier, now there’s no excuse anymore. Go to Opera, download it. And if there’s too much traffic, download with bittorrent.
Authors have tried experimenting with publishing their books in different ways on the web. Some put their old book(s) on the web, some put their new book out. Some serialise the book, some put it out all at once. Here’s a new way: The blook!
Tom Evslin is trying a new twist with his work, the murder story hackoff.com: He’s blooging his book! The web site is complete wit a faus company site (the company in he story) a wiki, forum and the unfolding story, so that readers can take part in it. I think this is an exciting experiment – it will be interesting to see how it develops.
The updates here are going straight into my feed reader! 😉
Interactive Fiction – or old fashioned adventure games if you want – may not be particularly visible these days with the commercial interests mostly being in other genres, but it’s still thriving. Also on the web.
I have no intention of writing a lot about IF this time, but the classic Hamlet by Shakespeare caught my eyes just recently. Not the book as such, but a little reworked into an IF story. So instead of encouraging you to read the book, I propose that you try to play Hamlet.
It happened first in July, and it’s happening again now: The majority of Firefox users that visit my site, are drawn to my page with unicorn poetry. That means that Firefox users are attracted to unicorns, right?
Of course, I can read my statistics a different way, too: There was a surge in Firefox users in July, and again now. They’re referred to my site – or that unicorn poetry page in particular – from a blog that is a bit popular: boingboing.net. Yep – I’ve been boingboinged for the second time. To the same page, from the same page. 🙂
Bad habits are hard to change, and with MS accused of killing off competitors before, recent news at Jogn Battele’s site are interesting to read. Former Microsoft employee Mark Lucovsky started to work for Google in 2004, and in legal documents in the current lawsuit between Google and Microsoft over Google’s hiring of Kai-Fu Lee, Mark has the following statement from a meeting he had with Steve Ballmer to discuss his departure:
At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: “Just tell me it’s not Google.” I told him it was Google.
At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: “Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I’m going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill Google.”
Ballmer calls this a gross exaggeration of what took place
For a long time, making web pages that work has been synonymous with making web pages that work in IE – that’s what matters. Well, maybe not for those who do the actual coding, but more so with those who make the decisions. Now that alternative browser, and Firefox in particular are getting known and mentioned in the press more and more often, it’s inevitable that “those in power” will find that the “IE only” way is not sensible anymore. Making web pages that comply with web standards should be the logical choice – or…
Robert Nyman tells us what a Firefox investigation means for a project manager…