Glassboth lets you see where each candidate stands in relation to the issues that matter to you through the used of a weighted quiz. Slick interface that I found very easy to use and understand. Even if you’ve alredy made up your mind I recommend you check it out.
If you use Google Reader, and you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch you should check out Phantom Fish’s Byline. Byline is essentially a Google Reader client that syncs so you don’t need a network connection at all times (and it offers features missing from Googles own iPhone interface, like an oldest post first view). It’s not perfect, but I find it a vastly preferable in most cases to the Google Reader iPhone web interface.
Seems to me that M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t exactly rule it out, but there’s no “it’s happening” in here. Still “Ubreakable” is probably in my top 10 list of films, and I’d love to see where it goes next.
Scott Brick, one of my all time favorite audiobook narrators, recounts the story behind his 1998 Comic Buyer’s Guide article “Who Killed Gwen Stacy?”, which delved into the creative decisions behind killing off Spider-Man’s girlfriend in 1973. Like most of Scott’s posts it’s also available in audio.
Ars Technica offers a nice JoCo primer, and how he succeded where the underpants gnomes failed.
“When I first started the important thing was audience: if I can reach enough people, that’s leverage, or power, and maybe that leads to something that does make money.”
Has some interesting thoughts on labels, and what may replace them in the future.
When Microsoft started adding some of the often requested features to their ASP.NET AJAX Client API they realized that jQuery (my personal favorite javascript library) already did what they wanted. Rather than reinvent the wheel Microsoft will be shipping the standard, as-is jQuery with full intellisense support in Visual Studio.
“For me, ideas stream through my head at a frantic pace. I feel like a bear trying to grab a salmon. If my paw misses its target, that salmon is gone for good. I don’t dwell on it. I just lunge for the next salmon.” Scott Adams (Dilbert) discusses ideas, and how he sometimes forgets he’s already used them.
Ajaxian brings word that John Resig is working an a new Javascript selector engine, which is expected to replace the one in jQuery. So far it’s less than 4k (but it doesn’t support IE yet). “4x faster in Firefox 3, 3x faster in Opera 9, 1.5x faster in Safari 3 than the other major JavaScript libraries.”
I always find Leo entertaining. I tuned into this a few times and was amazed at how even with numerous technical faults and no sleep he kept things interesting.
An interview with Steve Feldberg, content director for Audible’s science-fiction/fantasy line Audible Frontiers who have been releasing some very exciting audiobooks (including the upcoming release of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories)
IETester is a tool that runs the rendering and javascript engines from IE8b1, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5 in a single process so you can see how each one mangles your site in it’s own unique way (currently in beta).
While investigating line-height Eric Meyer used font-family: Webdings to display “Oy!” (Webdings doesn’t contain ‘O’, ‘y’, or ‘!’). Firefox 3 unexpectedly displayed “Oy!”, which, it seems, is technically correct, leaving him asking “which is less correc
One of those “that should have been obvious” suggestions. I’ve conditioned my brain to filter out most things that aren’t useful to me right now. This doesn’t mean I’m not interested in people’s anecdotes, and schedules, it just means I’m unlikely to remember them without some reminder.
Ah, IE6. I’m pretty good at getting it to do what I want, but it’s very existence makes most of the things I have to do harder than they should be. This tutorial deals with one of the harder issues, PNG transparency in positioned background images.
In the second part of the video Scott covers such diverse topics as Sci-Fi Channel’s lack of foresight and how when it appears he has made a mistake it is actually sabotage by J.C. Hutchins.
I’m not lucky enough to live near any of the book stores Scott Sigler was signing at, but luckily Natalie Metzger captured this video of one of the Q & A sessions.
This can only be good news. OverDrive has an interesting history with DRM. They have always claimed to be unable to work with iPods due to Apple’s proprietary DRM, while failing to make clear they were using Microsoft’s proprietary DRM.
I’m pretty sure once you’ve been hit by this parseInt() behavior in javascript you never forget it, but if you haven’t you should learn about it now before you do.
Eric Meyer’s Reset style-sheet (now in its permanent home, with versions numbers). Including this should reduce browser inconsistencies, and help you not to rely on undefined default behaviors.
Eric Meyer’s diagnostic.css (now in its permanent home). Including this stylesheet will highlight elements that are incomplete and may be degrading the user experience.
This caught be by surprise. Hopefully it will remain mostly unchanged, although adding stereo support to all the stereo BBC programs they carry would be nice.
Ever have someone ask you for a favor and simultaneously insult your career? Science Fiction author Robert J. Sawyer had this happen twice in one hour, and he posted his responses.
John Resig has released a prettyDate Javascript library that can take strings like “2008-01-28T20:24:17Z” and turn them into “2 hours ago”. It works standalone or as a jQuery plugin.
Paolo Severini of Microsoft’s Global Product Development team has released a utility to help find Javascript memory leaks in IE. It can be set to detect things that would leak in IE6, things that would leak in IE7, or actual leaks.
Possibly the most interesting thing to come out of the X-UA-Compatible discussions was this method for allowing IE7+ to apply styles to elements it doesn’t support.
A friend (thanks Kate) recommended this spin off of zenhabits.net which is billed as “Unmissable articles on writing. Twice weekly.” So far it’s living up to it’s promise.
Slice of Sci Fi has three photos of Mulder & Scully from the new X-Files movie. There nothing super special, but seeing these I’m a lot more excited about seeing this when it comes out.
One of my all time favorite audiobook narrators, Scott Brick, has launched a blog. If you’ve never heard one of his productions I recommend you seek one out and give it a listen.
Apparently Sony Reader is going to have a way to reflow and resize PDFs for reading. My opinion is the PDF is the single worst e-book distribution method, but this would at least make them usable. Hopefully other devices follow suit.
The first issue of Sci Phi (The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy) is now available. The download version ($7) contains all stories and articles in various ebook formats as well as MP3.
SaveJourneman.net brings word that episode 12 of Journeyman will air. Journeyman is my favorite show of the new season, and I hope it comes back, but at least it will get to finish it’s run.
Jonathan Coulton posted this summary of the New York Magazine blog’s summary or Wired’s profile of Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. I’m not going to further summarize, just read and be enlightened.
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