Flash cat
Digital Snow globe
snowglobe [via Dan Gillmer]
Can I speak to the manager
A very attractive lady goes up to a bar in a rural pub. She gestures alluringly to the bartender. When he arrives, she seductively signals that he should bring his face closer to hers. When he does she begins to caress his beard.
“Are you the manager?” she asks, softly stroking his face
with both hands. “Actually, no,” the man replies. “Can you get him for me? I need to speak to him,” she says, running her hands beyond his
beard and into his hair. “I’m afraid I can’t,” breathes the bartender.
“Is there anything I can do?” “Yes, there is. I need you to give him a message,” she continues, running her forefinger across the bartender’s lips and slyly popping a couple of her fingers into his mouth and allowing him to suck them gently.
“What should I tell him?” the bartender finally manages to say.
“Tell him,” she whispers, “there is no toilet paper, hand soap, or paper towels in the ladies room.”
Open source needs more innovation
Fight over weblog technology
An article at CNET about the dispute over weblog technology
How Wal-mart is good and bad for business
Shopping Ourselves Out of a Job. Richard points to an excellent article about the business practices of Wal-Mart
This is such a difficult subject for me because I see both sides of the argument. Ultimately, it may be in our best interest long term to learn to deal with the global economy and the inequities it creates. We simply don’t have the control over people in other countries and may never be able to “compete” in an open market as long as salaries garner such a large percentage of the cost of goods and we continue to have one of the highest standards of living in the world. As one interviewee mentioned in the Wal-Mart article, we need to constantly be exploring new products and markets where our workforce and expertise can excel and which cannot be easily comoditized by foreign competition.
I also think that public companies who appear to be more beholden to their shareholders rather than employees and customers will continue to make short-sighted decisions all in the name of “growth” and short-term profits which often cause their demise in the long term. That’s what I got out of the article. After all: “The gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart became a devastating success, giving Vlasic strong sales and growth numbers–but slashing its profits by millions of dollars”. How can that be considered a success? It almost sounds like a pyramid scheme where people are rewarded for short-term growth but in the end those that remain lose their job.
Default buttons, focus stealing applications, and User Interface Continuations
Start reading the thread for “Default buttons, focus stealing applications, and User Interface Continuations.”
here.
There are a lot of good points. I just want to comment on the paper (PDF) Richard linked to about UI Continuations. We just have to remember that often, perceived UI “improvements” sometimes comes with a price and the price I see is complexity. The example sited of a person wanting to lookup multiple e-mail addresses at once and the desire to maintain multiple name-browsing contexts begins to make get muddled in my mind. I’m not even sure I can describe the point sufficiently using words alone. I don’t see a novice user benefiting from this “improvement”. Some will always prefer a single-task wizard-like approach.
An agile HTML parser
This .NET parser with source code allows you to use malformed HTML as if it were valid XML. [via Richard]
Virtual Monitor using 2nd PC
If you have an idle PC/Laptop this software can turn it into an extra virtual monitor. [Via Richard]