Caffeinated Gonzo!

When I was a kid I poured over books that explained how just about any mechanical, electrical or thing-a-ma-jig that I could think of worked.  I loved (and still do) those exploding diagrams found in Popular Mechanics and National Geographic that showed the inner workings of every thing from the computer to the insides of the Queen Mary.  Although I still read mags like Pop Mechanics, Pop Science and National Geographic, today get I something akin to my exploding diagram fix from the ever expanding web site: How Stuff Works.

The articles are generally well written, the photos and diagrams are great, and the videos are something my tattered copies of Mechanics Illustrated can’t match. Not only that, when I am interested in more marveling at the technology behind my iPod, or showing my son how a Stealth Bomber remains stealthy howstuffworks.com is also a great resource for understanding how NATO functions or why European country’s switched their currency to the Euro.

Howstuffworks.com  is a  great place to go for a curiosity quick fix.

I have found the tips provided by Grammar Girl’s Podcasts to be most useful and enlightening.  Now if I would just apply her tips consistently, we’d all be better for it.

No this is not a post about exploiting lab animals for oily fun and profit on the Internet.  Instead, this is a simple “Post-it” note to myself to remind me where to find Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add “user scripts” (mostly DHTML) to any web page to change its behavior.  The “parent” extension can be found here.  A large repository of user scripts is located here.  Some of these scripts are very useful, some are just geek-fodder.  Use at your own risk.

Mark Pilgrim’s excellent print resource on programming Greasemonkey hacks can be found here.

Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, commented recently in his blog on the efforts to push for a meaningful update to HTML standards. For various reasons, past efforts to update the standard have largely been ignored by the majority of people creating web pages on a day to day basis. It will be interesting to see in efforts to reinvigorate the process bear any fruit and are adopted by the masses.

Read: “Reinventing HTML.”

The Freesound Project is a database of free sounds and sampling files available under Creative Commons licensing. Everything from riffs to bleeps to burps are available under a released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

Here lies a very nice introductory comparison of the predominant scripting languages on the web. The article compares PHP, AS, Perl, and Coldfusion.

Tiltomo is a development site working with visual image search algorithms. As of this writing they are currently beta testing their latest Visual Image Search Engine which compares the similarity & relationship between images to produce results.  The project’s test uses image databases culled from images uploaded to flickr.  The current tests include a search by theme, which is an analysis of subject, color and texture, and a seach by color and/or texture without relying on a common theme or subject. 

Retrievr is an interesting experiment in image search.  The experimental service currently allows you to search and explore through a subset of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch or submitting an image for comparison. Judging by my short but sweet experimentation with the tool tells me that the ability to draw in detail is not as important as color selection.

Anyone paying attention to the the state of the web these days knows that Web 2.0 sites are all the rage.  Frankly, they are all any one talks about when it comes to web site developments these days (outside of the sociological implications of MySpace) and for some this may be becoming a bit tiresome.  I know I have been a bit too guilty of talking too much about Web 2.0 myself.  All this talk is sure to kill the radio star, but in the mean time I will add one more person’s Top 10 list into the mix for people to explore.

Witness: Top 10 Web 2.0 Designs. From the mind and blog of one Cameron Olthuis. Enjoy reading ~ perhaps over a nice glass of wine if it’s your style.

Google.com is in my opinion for one good reason: I don't have to wade through a load of crap or wait way-way to long for a page to load before I can begin my search. Yahoo, MSN and others cram way to much stuff onto their pages in my opinion. Anyone who pokes around Google long enough knows that they offer many more options than those that appear on their default start page and that's just fine by me ~ I use a lot of them. All that I ask though is that they resist the urge to change the clean interface on default page. Otherwise I will be forced to use the tool bar even more than I do now.

When it comes to search sites I agree with Bokardo who writes on his Social Web Design blog:

Consider where Search is going: away from the home page. An increasing number of folks search on engines from the search box in the top right corner of their browser, without ever reaching the Google homepage. And with Microsoft planning on doing the same with IE7/MSN, it is clear that the homepage is becoming less and less important over time. Do people who use search from other starting points care whether they can find other stuff from the homepage? No, the thought never crosses their mind because they’re too busy searching for something of personal value.

Note to Google, et al: PLEASE keep it simple!

For more of this I suggest reading Bokardo's post raising the question: Does Google Succeed Despite-Bad Design?