Ralford.net

  [On the Web]

I stumbled into this new software client called Me.dium on the devnulled weblog (the writer is actually on the development team for the software). It lets you interact with others that also have the client. You can talk with them, and also see what websites they are browsing.

The neat think that struck my eye is the box that can sit on your webpage (you can see it running on the side of the devnulled page). Inside the windowy thing (I hate the word "widget"), it shows you who else is visiting the site and gives you links to what else they are browsing. Neat.

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  [On the Web]

When I recently upgraded to Firefox v2, I installed the Web Developer Toolbar, and have found it to be tremendously helpful for editing style sheets.

Under the CSS menu, there is a button called Edit CSS. When you select it, a sidebar opens with a copy of the active tab's style sheet. The sidebar is essentially a text editor, with built in open, save, and search functions. You can add or remove code, and see how it will affect the webpage on the fly.

In combination with the CSS editor, I have also been using the Outline menu's Outline Block Level Elements option. When toggled, it throws a red outline around all block elements of the active webpage.

These two features together were incredibly useful when I was adding footnotes to the weblog. At one point, blocks on my page were aligned in such away that groups of links on my sidebar were "dead". When I outlined the block elements, the block to blame was given away when I saw it overlapping the sidebar.

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  [On the Web]

Hmm... the features shown in the Google Analytics product tour remind me of FeedBurner's feature set (and dude's voice in the presentation also sounds familiar). Perhaps this has something to do with Google acquiring FeedBurner. Does this mean the search for the Google optimization recipe has come to an end?

FeedBurner users can read more about what'll happen here:
www.feedburner.com/google

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  [On the Web]

When I first starting using Gmail I was super psyched to give up my Hotmail account. After using Gmail steadily for two years, the best feature it's offered is that it's less clunky than Hotmail - this has been a blessing.

But speaking realistically, I'm happy with Gmail because it's the email software I used when I learned how to manage my email. The methods that make Gmail work for me are also available in Microsoft Outlook, but I prefer Gmail over Outlook for personal use because a web-based email service is more portable - it behaves the same no matter where I go, and requires minimal setup.

• My Filing System
  - All items in my inbox are categorized as soon as I get the chance. I try keep the categories as general as possible. This makes it easy to jump to all family emails or those pertaining to web accounts. Similarly, if I find that a category has just a few emails over a period of months, I try to merge it into a larger category.
  
  Occasionally, I'll file an email into multiple catgories, but I'm still getting into this habit. This multiple-category feature is on my Ralford.net wishlist, so once its integrated and in use, I'm sure I'll start using it more often in Gmail.
  
  
• The "Star This" Option (or Follow-up Flag)
  - I didn't use the star at first, but I've turned it into my follow-up flag. All items in my inbox that have stars must be followed-up with an email, phonecall, or similar task. Emails without stars are reminders, but do not require a follow-up.
  
  
• Searching
  - I mostly use the search feature to find discussions among old Cootie Brown (w) emails. Since there are seven of us, one email usually turns into about 15 within a day's time. This has been really helpful to find who said what about a song or venue.

In summary, I don't believe the bells and whistles of an email application are what make it useful. It comes down to how often you are using the features that are available to you. For a feature to be useful, it needs to be a habit.

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  [On the Web]

I just went to grab the latest version of TortoiseSVN and was tricked into clicking an Adsense ad. Under the word "Download" on the TortoiseSVN downloads page is a graphical arrow pointing directly to an ad. The catch is that the first link within the ad was matched to the webpage content, and happened to describe exactly what I was looking for - "Windows Installer Program" - I clicked the link.

As of today, the TortoiseSVN download page appears to be violating the AdSense guidelines for keeping an account from being disabled. Specfically: "Encouraging users to click on your Google ads, either directly or indirectly, can lead to inflated advertiser costs and can cause your account to be disabled".

Although the trick made them somewhere around $0.0001, I did eventually download and install TortoiseSVN version 1.4.3.

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  [On the Web]

I've found that a very reliable method of obtaining quick information on the web is to use the word "wiki" in conjunction with Google. For instance, instead of googling "pc/104" the traditional way, punch in "wiki pc/104".

For nearly every case, the first item that Google returns is the Wikipedia entry to the searched item. This actually seems to be faster than going to the Wikipedia page itself and using their own search engine. Part of the reason is because Google loads faster as a first page. Secondly, Wiki's internal search engine will usually obtain ambiguous results (not that this is a bad thing).

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  [On the Web]

I was checking statistics for ralford-dot-net today and stumbled across an incoming link from del.icio.us. The website was apparently created back in 2003, and there is now an actual company behind it.

The basic idea is that any user with an account can keep track of their favorite web links through the website. Users can categorize their links which can be browsed openly with or without an account. It's almost like a search engine that has sifted out links that aren't very useful.

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  [On the Web]

There are tons of websites that require log-in information. Usually this means punching in a user id and a password. Banking apps, email accounts, user forums, and just about any interactive website out there these days requires log-in information. Most people resort to using the same user name and password accross multiple sites, but I gave up and turned to an old-fashioned paper and pencil. My notepad has 8 pages of log-in information: about 30 pairs of user names and passwords. Cripes!

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  [On the Web]

I've been a fan of Tom Murphy 7 for a while, and don't believe I've shared this great find with others. He's a computer science guy, and I wish I were him because school is cooler than work (yeah worK! you suck!).

Tom 7 has a pretty bad-ass webpage. It's full of good clean humor and plenty of neat cartoons. I'd give it a pile of thumbs up if there were enough to go around. Anyway, you oughto go check out his set of true-type fonts. To name a few of the ones that are super cool, check out 'submerged', 'germs', and 'i suck at golf'. Good stuff!

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  [On the Web]

In my own words:

"[Not to give Microsoft credit, but] Robert Fripp, guitarist from King Crimson, is apparently behind some of the sounds for Windows Longhorn. For guitarists that engineer on the side, there's finally some hope of scrapping computer knowledge for a chance to work on tunes for software warnings. I would trade it all in for the right price..."

Funny how this interesting article comes from such a lame news source.

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