Category

Archive for the 'Technology' Category

YouTube Art

Just some cool youtube stuff I found on gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com.

The Church of the Future is my favorite.

Why resizing people’s browser windows is the devil’s work

( Design and Email )

I’ve been working on a bunch of holiday card emails for clients lately and they’ve all had designers asking if we can resize people’s browser windows to fit the square box they designed for the flash-based card. The answer is yes, but no.

Most people think everyone uses the computer just like they do, although there [...]

iPhone Complaints

( Design and Me and Technology )

Below I list out my current gripes about the iPhone. I think this post was spurred a bit by the fact that I’m a little disappointed with Apple’s first major update to the iPhone software. The complaints are also informed by my experience of traveling in Asia with it. It really is handy for traveling. [...]

Toilet Technology

You really need one of these. The Toto Washlet toilet seat. Who knew a toilet seat could do so much.

You really have to check out the marketing though. It’s amazing that they can sell toilets seats without using any potty words. It washes and blow dries your ass for you. They don’t actually say [...]

iPhone? Revolutionary is not an overstatement

( Design and Opinion and Technology )

So I don’t know why some people were suprised, but I got an iPhone last Friday. No, I did not wait in line.

I went down to the Apple store at around 3pm on Friday and there was a line around the block. I went back at 9pm and there was no line, but there was [...]

Vista Less Usable than XP

Guess what? Despite Microsoft’s efforts to provide for a more fluid and agreeable interface with Vista’s Aero, Pfeiffer Consulting found Vista to be even worse than Windows XP (SP2) –and of course Mac OS X. Their conclusion is backed with cold, hard research. Pfeiffer Consulting conducted the research based on an independently financed series of [...]

US Airways

I think US Airways needs to get a little more competitive on their pricing.

Something Happened

( Email )

I got this email regarding a rebate I filed online.

From: “CompUSA eRebates”
Date: December 12, 2006 11:02:27 PM PST
To: “Derek Gulbranson”
Subject: Your CompUSA eRebates Status

Dear Derek Gulbranson,

Thank you for participating in the CompUSA eRebates program.
Our records show that your eRebates account status has changed.

Your account status may change for ONE of the following reasons:

-Your [...]

Poop-Freeze™

Poop-Freeze™ is a specially formulated aerosol freeze spray that, upon contact, forms a frosty film on dog poop (or cat poop) to harden the surface for easy pick-up.

Should Google Fund Nuclear Fusion?

This is not your father’s fusion reactor! Forget everything you know about conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that’s been made new. While the international community debates the [...]

Hacking Democracy

An HBO documentary about electronic voting machines is on Google Video. Worth a watch.

Some interesting bits:

According to Cliff Arnebeck, an elections attorney present during the conference call, John Kerry told Jesse Jackson on election night 2004, after he had already conceded, that in New Mexico, votes that were counted with optical scan readers, regardless [...]

Cross-Platform Video Conferencing Now Available with Skype

( Software )

I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a cross-platform video conferencing solution that works as well as iChat on the Mac. I love iChat. My mom can figure it out.

I’ve tried to find something that works cross-platform so I could chat with friends on pcs. There are some solutions that are capable, but they [...]

Relativity drive: The end of wings and wheels?

This must be what they used in Star Wars for those hovering vehicles.
Relativity drive: The end of wings and wheels?
“Roger Shawyer has developed an engine with no moving parts that he believes can replace rockets and make trains, planes and automobiles obsolete … The device that has sparked their interest is an engine that generates [...]

Your Spam Filter Is Your Problem, Not Mine

( Email and Opinion )

If I send you an email and it’s intercepted by your spam filter, that’s your problem not mine. I’ve had people send me email telling me about how their spam filter blocked my email. Thanks for the info but that’s a problem you need to deal with. There is absolutely nothing I can do about [...]

Surfing the Web at Work is OK Says Judge

Judge John Spooner ruled that a New York City employee can
not be fired for surfing the Web at work. Judge Spooner stated that agencies
need to apply the same standard to personal Internet usage as they do to other
personal activities, according to CNET News. Spooner compared Web browsing to other
personal activities allowed by different agencies like [...]

The nosend Attribute

( Email )

What is the nosend attribute?

It is usually found in an image tag and looks like this: <img nosend="1"/>. It is generally discovered by inquisitive developers by examining a “right-click > view source” on HTML email messages in Outlook. Google generally provides more questions than answers, so I thought I would include what I believe [...]

Why Yes, Actually, I Would Like to Track That Package

( Email and Technology )

Since my Powerbook is in the shop I’ve been using Gmail for again for a week or two and I was reminded again how much I actually like computers reading my email. Wish they could read it all for me and just tell me what to do.

It gave me a link straight to the tracking [...]

Microsoft Verification Email Blocked By Microsoft SPAM Filter

This should be appended to the definition of ridiculous.

I just signed up for some kind of webinar from Microsoft about Exchange Server. After entering all my information and pressing “Continue” only to have it predictably lose all my information and make me enter it all over again (so 1995), I press continue once [...]

How To Use Outlook to Send an HTML File as the Body of an Email

( Design and Email )
I create a lot of HTML email templates and one of the more frequent questions after sending the HTML file to the client is how do I actually send that HTML file as an email. Here's instructions for how to get the HTML into Outlook so you can send it as an email. Save the HTML. If [...]

Mac OS X Supports Klingon

Since I signed up for my Arabic class I was just perusing through my system preferences to see how to enable Arabic input. I noticed that Klingon is a supported language. Cute. Doesn’t seem to have a character set for it though. (Don’t think Klingon is supported by UTF8).