Movable Type is really good at what it does, but from the very start, I’ve noticed something kind of important missing from the mix. It’s really easy to output RSS for aggregators – it comes with templates to do this pre-installed and ready to go. The problem is, there’s no easy way to get RSS back in to your blog.
Yes, there’s plugins like MT–RSS Feed to do this, but it seems like it should be one of the features to be built-in.
Over at Heal Your Church Web Site, Dean is commenting on Jakob Nielson’s top ten web design mistakes of 2003. I found it informative, and I wanted to add my thoughts on a few of them:
3. Undated Content. Regarding your question about static pages: I think it’s always a good idea to include a date. In fact, in many cases, it’s a good idea to include two: one for last modified, and the other for last reviewed. That way, people know your content can be trusted, even if it hasn’t been updated in a while.
4. Small Thumbnail Images of Big, Detailed Photos. This is a really good idea, and one I hadn’t considered before. The problem I see is that these thumbnails are often made dynamically. Do you know better than me about an image module for Perl or PHP that can do cropping without help? Seems like it would be kind of difficult to code from scratch. You could do some fancy contrast comparisons and so forth, but we all know that machine vision isn’t ready for prime time yet…right?
5. Overly detailed ALT Text. ALT is for a general description of an image. If you need to be more descriptive, the LONGDESC is what you’re looking for. Basically, it lets you add a link to another web page with more detailed facts. You can visit W3C for an example of this.
Merry Christmas to all! May God bless you in the ways you least expect this year.
Less than 12 hours after Saddam Hussein was arrested by U.S. forces, I’m already getting spam telling me to switch to Dish Network. Lovely.
Voice chatting programs have been around for many, many years. CoolTalk, a program bundled with Netscape Navigator, was one of the first. Others followed, including Net2Phone, all of today’s popular IM networks, NetMeeting, and others. All of these solutions have one thing in common, however – they don’t really work all that well.
Thanks to a friend, I think I’ve found the future of the telecom industry – Skype (it rhymes with “type”). Like its competitors, Skype is a voice-over-IP application. It has text-based chatting as well. What sets Skype apart, however, is it’s peer-to-peer architecture.
P2P, for those of you who don’t know, is a way of transmitting data from user to user, rather than downloading it from a central server. It has a number of important benefits, including the ability to more effectively utilize bandwidth. As a network grows to service more and more users, its capacity grows simultaneously, ensuring there are always enough resources to handle the load. This reduces costs for everyone and usually increases performance significantly.
Skype, a project by the folks that created the [in]famous file-trading network KaZaA, uses P2P algorithms to maximize bandwidth and reduce latency. This, combined with a spectacular compression algorithm, allowed me to talk with my significant other, through a restrictive firewall, at better-than-telephone quality. Neat!
If you have loved ones beyond your local calling area, I would recommend giving Skype a try. Don’t worry, it’s not illegal any more than KaZaA is (the important thing is how you use software, not the mere fact that you use it).
Nobody disputes that the U.S. needs a law to stop unsolicited commercial e-mail before 2004. Not even the spammers themselves.
While I’m glad our representatives finally got a law to the President’s desk, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) law won’t do much good in stopping the onslaught.
The law, designed mainly to provide recipients a way to opt-out, pre-empts the anti-spam laws of 35 states. Many of these laws require spam to be opt-in, a crucial step to stopping one of the main sources of victim addresses – harvesting from the web and newsgroups. As of January 1st, however, all bets are off. Instead of empowering users, the law blocks individuals from suing the spammer, instead reserving the privilege for states and ISPs.
The opt-out nature of the law also gives “one free shot” to spammers, as reported by CAUCE (no permalink). The law is extremely lenient on “truthful spam” – spam that doesn’t misrepresent facts. This has the effect of legitimatizing the spam industry, an industry that has been characterized by many illegal acts in pursuit of its profits.
The primary problem with a law like the CAN-SPAM is that it ignores the fact that most spammers use tactics that are illegal now, today. Most spam, even from spammers working in the U.S., is bounced from country to country, rendering it virtually untraceable. Most spam uses subject lines designed specifically to evade anti-spam filters. If you tell a spammer to remove you from their mailing list, it gets you added to 50 more. All the passage of this would accomplish is ensuring that more spam will hit your inbox in 2004.
If my testimony isn’t enough, here’s some from Dr. Jason Catlett of Junkbusters Corporation, about a very similar bill Congress debated on in 2001.
Since the President has indicated that he will sign this, there is very little hope for a fix for the problems – for now. However, let me leave you with a word of warning – if the FTC decides to establish the Do-Not-Spam list, do not add your address. Doing so would be like hanging a neon sign on your inbox.