More IE7 Details Emerge

Ars Technica: More IE7 Details Emerge

"Internet Explorer 7.0 is on the way. Microsoft has said from the outset that the focus will be on security. What about improved support for CSS? It looks like that's on tap as well. [more]"

Homemade EVDO/WiFi Mobile Access Point

Now, THIS is cool!

Slashdot | Homemade EVDO/WiFi Mobile Access Point: "Over the last few weeks I've built myself a mobile access point for my car. It's based on a Soekris net2421 embedded Linux box and uses Verizon's 1xRTT/EVDO network as its uplink, resharing it over 802.11b. Wherever my car goes, my Internet link goes! :) I finally put some webpages together on how I built it. The components are pretty cheap and anybody with basic Linux skills can build their own just as easily. I've also got it interfacing with Google Maps to do live vehicle tracking via gpsd. It also uploads pictures from an on-board webcam every five minutes or so."

Comcast Sued For Giving Customer Info to RIAA

Slashdot | Comcast Sued For Giving Customer Info to RIAA: "The first legal missile has been fired at ISP collaboration. Comcast, the top U.S. cable TV network operator, is being sued by a Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court records showed Thursday.' From the article: '...no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an outside party...'"

Trent Reznor Releases Single for Public Remixing

Slashdot | Trent Reznor Challenges Music Norms: "Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) has released the new single from NIN's upcoming album as a GarageBand file for fan remixes. Though by no means the first time a major-label artist has released a track to the public for remix, this is the first time such a project has been as open to the common user. The repercussions to 'traditional' IP views in music could be beneficial to all. Note that the license agreement does not allow commercial use of the included sounds. From the download text: 'What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for 'the hand that feeds' in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible."

O'Reilly Releases Firefox Hacks

On my list of things to buy this weekend...

Slashdot | Firefox Hacks: "If there is an application I run more often than my Web browser, particularly since I also use it as my email client, then I don't know what it might be. As a Firefox convert, that made the arrival of Firefox Hacks from O'Reilly a wonderful surprise.' Read on for the rest of Williams' review."

Happy Birthday, Gmail!

It's GMail's first birthday, and they've gone and doubled their inbox capacities to celebrate! Check it out, along with some other new features. I love Gmail - I just wish I could pop other email accounts with it! Then I could covert completely to Gmail.

About Gmail: "Just Launched!

G is for growth
Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.

We're not in the plains anymore
Fonts, bullets and highlighting, oh my! Gmail now offers rich text formatting. And over 60 colors of the rainbow. Discover a land of more than just black and white."

Firefox Continues to Bite into IE Usage

Slashdot | Firefox Continues to Bite into IE Usage: "'According to Information Week, Firefox usage is now over 6 percent, pulling Internet Explorer usage down below 90 percent. 'Firefox is currently the only browser that is increasing market share on a monthly basis, and it is growing at the direct expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer''"

Students Do Better Without Computers

Slashdot | Students Do Better Without Computers: "'The Telegraph is reporting a large study that shows that the less students use computers at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy and math. The more access they had to computers at home, the lower they scored in tests, partly because they diverted attention from homework. Students tended to do worse in schools generously equipped with computers, apparently because computerised instruction replaced more effective forms of teaching. ' Worth noting that it took almost 20 years for PCs in the corporate environment to actually have a positive impact on productivity; might the same be true in education?"

Yahoo Readies Blogging Tool

PCWorld.com - Yahoo Readies Blogging Tool: "Yahoo is developing a free service designed to let users stay in touch with acquaintances such as friends, family, and co-workers via new and existing Yahoo services. The service will include the Sunnyvale, California company's first blogging tool, according to a company executive.

Called Yahoo 360, the service will enter a restricted beta, or test, period on March 29, when it will be available to select users invited by Yahoo to try it out. Yahoo will expand the scope of the beta testing in coming weeks.

Interested users can join a waiting list online."

CSS Support Could Be Internet Explorer's Weakest Link

CSS Support Could Be Internet Explorer's Weakest Link: "Microsoft will be doing a lot to make developers and customers happy with its pending Internet Explorer release, if partner sources with inside information on the IE 7.0 browser are right. ADVERTISEMENT

But there's one area where Microsoft won't be winning a lot of applause.

The company will continue to drag its feet by refusing to provide full support for the CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 2) W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) standard, Microsoft partners say.

Sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft's IE 7.0 plans said the company will add some additional CSS2 support to its new standalone browser.

But Microsoft isn't planning to go the whole way and make IE 7.0 fully CSS2 compliant, sources said.

IE 7.0 is expected to go to beta testers this summer. [more]"

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Details Begin to Leak

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Details Begin to Leak -

Will it be available in 2005?

Will it support CSS 2.0 standards?

Will it be a tabbed-interface browser?

What security features will it have?

Read the article above for the latest scoop!

Gmail Goes Public

Slashdot | Gmail Goes Public: "Google has apparently given the green light for Google's e-mail (Gmail) to be open to the general public.' From the registration page: 'As we make room for more Gmail users, we want to first extend invitations to Google users. We're still working to make Gmail better, so for now, we're just inviting a small number at random. Looks like that's you! We're really excited to share Gmail with you and we hope you like it.' Observed at the P-I Buzzworthy Blog as well."

TiVo and Comcast Hook Up

TiVo.com | TiVo Press Releases: "Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), the nation's leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services, and TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that the companies have reached an agreement to make the TiVo� service and advertising capability widely available to Comcast customers in the majority of its markets around the country.

Under the terms of the agreement, Comcast and TiVo will work together to develop a version of the TiVo service that will be made available on Comcast's current primary DVR platform. New software will be developed by TiVo and will be incorporated into Comcast's existing network platforms. The new service will be marketed with the TiVo brand, and is expected to be available on Comcast's DVR products in a majority of Comcast markets in mid-to-late 2006. [more]"

Firefox Update Version 1.0.1

MOZILLA FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES UPDATE TO FIREFOX: "The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today released an update to its award-winning Firefox 1.0 browser. The Firefox security update is available for the 27 million users who have already downloaded the free browser. The Mozilla Foundation encourages all users to download the update, which is available now on all platforms at www.mozilla.org.

'Regular security updates are essential for maintaining a safe browsing experience for our users,' said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. 'The Mozilla Foundation has developed a community of users and developers who continuously provide feedback on Mozilla software, and as a result of that constant vigilance, we are able to provide quick and effective responses to security vulnerabilities.'

The Mozilla Foundation evaluates security issues on an ongoing basis and will issue security updates as warranted. The security update for Firefox includes several fixes to guard against spoofing and arbitrary code execution."

HTML or XHTML?

SitePoint Tech Times: "XHTML 1.0 is a language for writing Web pages using the same tags as HTML, but with the more tightly controlled tag syntax of XML. XHTML makes it easier for programs of all kinds to read and generate Web pages, while making the job of the Web developer only slightly harder.

XHTML also allows for other XML-based tag languages to be mixed into a Web page for specialized needs (e.g. MathML). Browsers that support these tag languages can then display such specialized content within the page. This extensibility puts the 'X' in XHTML.

The case for avoiding XHTML was pointed out to me by the author of SitePoint's upcoming DHTML book, as I tut-tutted his use of HTML (as opposed to XHTML) for the book's sample code.

Here it is in a nutshell:

1. Browsers decide how to handle a file based on the MIME type that the server sends with it.
2. HTML Web pages are identified with a MIME type of text/html.
3. Pages written in XHTML that are sent with a MIME type of text/html don't benefit from any of the features of XHTML.
4. To benefit from the features of XHTML, pages must be sent as application/xhtml xml.
5. The most popular Web browser (Internet Explorer 6) cannot view pages sent as application/xhtml xml.

From this, it follows that you cannot benefit from using XHTML without breaking compatibility with Internet Explorer 6. So you might as well just use HTML.

With this in mind, the case for using XHTML is a lot weaker than I had come to believe. What it comes down to is 'Web standards are good, so to help promote them, support XHTML by implementing it however you can. Your clients all want it anyway.'

What most standards-conscious professional developers do today is write XHTML and allow browsers to treat it as HTML. Meanwhile, advanced developers who want to take advantage of XHTML can configure their servers to send XHTML pages as application/xhtml xml to browsers that support it (not Internet Explorer).

Assuming that isn't practical for you, you're left with a choice: support the XHTML standard by feeding it to browsers that expect HTML, or stick with HTML and send browsers what they expect to receive."

-- Yikes! I didn't know this about XHTML. Me, up on my standards soapbox all the time... Well, good thing I use Mozilla Firefox! With IE7 supposedly coming out this summer, who knows - this ignorance on IE6's part may be solved, and this issue will be no more. But, I will continue to code my sites in XHTML to support the continued progression of web standards, while my web servers keep sending out the XHTML code as HTML type. My reasons for using XHTML have more to do with supporting the standards than with displaying my sites on other devices like cell phones and the like. The appolication MIME type issue, then, really doesn't affect me.

And Jeffrey said, "To Hell"

Anil Dash: And Jeffrey said, "To Hell": "Four years ago, Jeffrey Zeldman said, 'To Hell With Bad Browsers' and ended up changing the web. That's damned impressive."

And thank God for Jeffrey!! It took some time, but four years later, the web is finally starting to come around to a somewhat standards-compliant environment. Browser manufacturers are taking note of standards, and starting to move away from proprietary implementations of code. ("Starting to," anyway). The success of a browser like Mozilla Firefox is proof of concept that standards-compliant browsing is better.

No more coding for Netscape 4!!!!

I sure don't miss it!

Blockbuster Sued Over Late Fees Claim

I knew it was too good to be true!!

Slashdot | Blockbuster Sued Over Late Fees Claim: "'CNN has a story about Blockbuster's violation of New Jersey's consumer fraud act in which they made false claims in their 'No More Late Fees' campaign. New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey filed a lawsuit today in hopes that Blockbuster would stop misleading their customers into thinking they could keep their movie rentals as long as they want without penalty.'"

A New Firefox Look

You know you love it! :) I've obviously converted my blog to a new Mozilla Firefox inspired theme. I got the idea from a template on Blogger-templates.blogspot.com, and modified it a bit to fit my needs. Any problems - let me know! Thanks!

McAfee Goes XHTML

SimpleBits | McAfee - "Standards-based redesigns of corporate sites are becoming so frequent, it’s amazing to just stumble upon great work while clicking around randomnly for research. Bravo to the McAfee team for embracing the good stuff. Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, even."

What a Pig

Yahoo! News - Harvard President Releases Transcript of Remarks on Women - "Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers released a transcript Thursday of controversial remarks he made last month suggesting that women had innately lower aptitudes for math and science than men.

The transcript — posted on Summers' Harvard website — showed that in addressing a Jan. 14 conference in Cambridge, Mass., of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the university president said that intrinsic gender differences, family pressures and employer demands played a larger role in keeping women out of top-level science jobs than discrimination.

The remarks sparked protests from female scientists and others, and Summers had been under growing pressure to release the transcript.

Summers conceded in his remarks to the gathering of economists and scientists that he was being deliberately provocative.

"So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity," Summers told the audience.

"In the special case of science and engineering," he said, "there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination."

At a meeting Tuesday of about 250 undergraduate faculty members, numerous speakers criticized Summers and used his remarks about women as an indictment of his leadership and management style.

A task force on the status of women at Harvard was appointed as a result of the president's comments.

His remarks fueled an ongoing controversy at Harvard about the decline in tenured professorships for women in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which is the university's primary academic body.

The percentage of women offered tenured positions has dropped every year since Summers became president in 2001. Four of 32 tenure offers in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were extended to women in the last academic year.

Summers has repeatedly apologized for his remarks, which he said he believed were not for general distribution.

The flap spilled over to the Yale University campus in New Haven, Conn., where more than 100 graduate students protested Thursday what they said was inequitable treatment of women.

The protesters faulted Yale President Richard Levin for not joining the presidents of Stanford, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites) in denouncing Summers' comments. "