Technology

I’d like to congratulate LowEndMac on moving into the era of modern web page code, using XHTML and CSS. I guess my old criticism about their website (in reference to them judging the state of web browsers in OS 9) will have to fade into the background, but considering that they recognized that iCab was deficient (putting it kindly): On the down side, pages may not work as well in older browsers once we fully implement our CSS design. And iCab really shows its noncompliance. But with 98-99% of our visitors using modern browsers, we figured it was time to make the switch. ...

Tiger being released on April 29th was enough incentive for me to rationalize buying a fancy new Serial ATA hard drive. For a while now, I’d been eyeing the Western Digital Raptor, which is still the fastest SATA hard drive you can buy. However, it’s only 74 GB big and costs $185 (lowest price I could find). Then I saw a Barefeats article comparing the Raptor to a Maxtor DiamondMax 10. The question was which was the ultimate G5 boot drive. Well, I don’t have a G5, but I figure the question is just as valid for a G4 (and I’ll be moving to a G5 eventually). The verdict was that the Maxtor drive was the better drive because the performance was comparable, it was much larger (300 GB), and a little cheaper ($180 at ZipZoomFly). ...

So, I’ve heard lots and lots about Skype, the free Internet telephony service. Macworld noticed it early on, but that wasn’t enough for me to perk up. I mean, with iChat AV (which is full video conferencing), why would I care? I didn’t realize how cross-platform, flexible, and feature-filled it really is. Whether you use Windows, Linux, or a Mac, you can call your friends across town or the globe for free. Remember your hot French penpal that you got tired of writing to? Now you can talk dirty to them without thought of a huge phone bill. In fact, it’s so easy that even your tech stupid relatives can use the software. Now, what if you want to call someone without an Internet connection or computer? You can buy for a modest fee phone time to any normal phone number. That’s cool, but what if they’re not around when you call? You can buy a phone number for your Skype account (a flat yearly fee). Let’s say you’re not in. You can buy voicemail service from them. Now I ask you, how cool is that? ...

After listening to Adam at MacCast rant several times about the lack of student discount for high school students (which I think is a banal argument, but I won’t get into that here), a thought occurred to me. There wasn’t a good way to rebut his argument. Now, I could have visited the site after and posted a comment. However, seeing as most podcasts are listened to away from the computer, that’s not an easy or natural thing to do. ...

All right, so I’m way behind the curve on this, but one of the neat side-effects of widespread RSS adoption is a phenomenon known as Podcasting. RSS feeds (at least as of version 2.0) allow for a field called enclosures. It’s a bit of a misnomer, but a useful part of the spec. It basically specifies the location of a file that’s associated with a post. At the current time, it’s generally an audio file (MP3, WMA, AAC, etc.). In some cases it’s a video file (but that’s much less frequent due to increased cost associated with production and bandwidth). The natural extension of this capability is transfer to iTunes and then one’s iPod (hence, podcasting). New RSS readers aim at handling these feeds (and in particular, the enclosures). There are the open-source iPodder and iPodderX (which are free and $20 respectively). ...

I’m making Tag Central prettier. I can do all the colors and styling I want just fine. I think it’ll look super when it’s done (but then again, I’m not an artist and that will probably be painfully apparent). Anyway, I want the Flickr pictures to line the right side of the page. Then I want all the other sections to be contained within their own boxes, two per row. Old school webmonkeys would immediately think of using a table based layout. It seems natural and it would be very easy. The problem is, this is an abuse of HTML tables (and heresy when making an XHTML page). Only actual tabular data is supposed to go into tables. All presentation must be managed using CSS. There are many, many good reasons for this, not the least of which is that it makes the site more accessible. Besides, I’m new school. ...

I honestly had no idea that Yahoo! was interested in buying Flickr. I’m not entirely surprised though. It’s the business model that was born out of the Internet bubble of the 80’s. Almost. At any rate, the folks at Ludicorp announced that Yahoo! has bought them up. Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!! Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks! ...

As I am a .Mac member, I get a free Versiontracker membership. That was the main reason that I stuck with it over MacUpdate. Lately though, I’ve been getting fed up with the rendering bugs of the site. Those of you who also use the site might remember its earlier designs. Back when I first started visiting, it was extremely simple. It came up fast and there was no complicated code that screwed up. Over time, the site has slowly gotten more complicated and not for the better. Today I noticed that they have put up a new beta version of their site. It’s much improved. It loads faster, looks cleaner (though extremely similar to MacUpdate), and makes me feel better about visiting. ...

Yesterday evening started out wonderfully. The video card had arrived and dinner was pastrami sandwiches. Delicious. I probably wolfed it down too quickly to actually enjoy it, but that’s what happens when I get a new toy. Ask Dana how much attention I paid her after I used her student status to get my Powerbook. So I ran upstairs to my room and carefully installed the new card. I plugged everything back into my computer, removed the ADC to DVI adapter on my Formac display and plugged that in, and let her rip. The computer seemed to start up as normal. Good. ...

When Google Desktop first came out, it was moderately cool. You could search Outlook Mail, your files, Internet Explorer web history, and AOL IM chat history. I use Windows at work, so I tested it out. It worked from what I could tell, but I use Thunderbird for mail, Firefox for web, and Gaim for AIM chat. I totally forgot about Google Desktop. Then Google Desktop came out of beta. Not only did they add Firefox and Thunderbird support, they supplied a plugin interface. This is huge. That enables developers to add Google searching to any product. For example, someone could write a plugin to search Gaim logs. It’s tempting to get a free t-shirt, but as I don’t have a Windows box at home, I doubt I will even attempt making a plugin. ...