Any Radio UserLand experts? My site almost validates on the W3C validator. I'd like to make it validate completely. But the code that's not validating is generated by Radio internally and I don't know how to fix it. Any ideas?

Interesting, just found this Agile Management blog, which says that it'll have thoughts on management, software, constraints, and agility.

I found it on FPatrick's list of business blogs. Very interesting blogs, and many that I need to subscribe to.

Does Apple have an "iBox" (er, Tivo killer) up its sleeve? I haven't heard anything, but this rumor site says one is coming. Just remember, it's a rumor site.

Laurent Mihalkovic: How serious is Microsoft about killing off COM?

See, this is what's bad about our language. When people say "Microsoft killed a development project" what they mean is we aren't spending anymore time on it. That doesn't mean it goes away. Remember at the PDC where we showed off a DOS app running on Longhorn? You really think we're still working on DOS? No. But, we aren't going to break old apps.

Thanks to Aaron Swartz' Google Blog for the link to Google's 2003 Zeitgeist. Very interesting differences between countries. Not everyone is searching for the same thing.

I've been doing some optimizing. You might notice my page loads faster now. How did I do it? A couple ways. First, I'm only displaying the last two days. That makes my front page 1/3 faster to load alone. Then, I looked at my div names and saw that instead of naming a div "disclaimer" that I could simply name it "d." Optimizing div names made the page size here smaller too (and once I finish republishing my site, will make my CSS file size smaller too).

Might not seem like a big deal, but look at my file size compared to anyone else who has a Radio UserLand site.

Why do I do this? I think it's respectful to the people who pay my bandwidth bill. I have 1000 to 4000 visits per day now. The smaller I can make the file size, the less load I'll put on UserLand's servers and bandwidth bill.

Plus, I'm stuck using dialup right now, so any optimizations I can get pay off bigtime for modem users.

Downside? It's a little harder to figure out my div structure, but I don't have that many divs that it's a big problem.

By the way, want to use my Radio Userland files on your own blog? Feel free to download and use them.

USAToday: Freewheeling 'bloggers' are rewriting rules of journalism Objectivity? Not here -- and the masses eat it up.

If you've read one article about blogging, you've probably read them all. This one is no exception.

Dori Smith and I are trying to get a geek lunch together in California's wine country. Maybe Saturday at noon? Whadda ya think? If it doesn't happen this weekend, maybe soon. I owe Dori lunch. After all, she's the one who got me into blogging.

Scott Watermaysk has uploaded a new version of .TEXT, which is the blogging engine that drives Longhornblogs.

Oh, what's this? Open Source free software? Huh? On Microsoft platforms? What's the world coming to? Scott, how do you do it?

Iran asks "why are our quakes so deadly?" Here's a hint: you have tons of "moral police" who make sure boys and girls don't hold hands in the street (not to mention homosexual behavior certainly isn't allowed), and they make sure that girls wear scarfs so that their hair doesn't show, but you don't have the same number of people who go around making sure buildings are built properly.

Translation: get rid of the moral police and start worrying about the real safety of your people.

The real answer, though, is that their people are poor and can't afford homes made out of metal or wood, which is how most homes in California are built. Every Californian knows that unreinforced brick is the worst kind of building to be in during a quake. This doesn't take a rocket scientist.

Get rid of the religious influence in your government. Open trade and better relations with the West. Educate your population to participate in the modern economy and stop sending your best and brightest overseas (California, for instance, has tons of Iranians -- many of whom tell me they'd love to move back home if the government got rid of its religious control).

Stop blocking Google and other sites, even those distasteful to your culture. The reason your brightest people keep leaving is because they yearn for real freedom over their lives.

But, until real change is made in Iran's society and culture, earthquakes there will continue killing tens of thousands (if not more -- I watched a recently-made video of Tehran a few nights ago, and most of the buildings there are unreinforced concrete).

Lora Heiny has a ton of pictures and a good report on her experiences with the new Toshiba Tablet PC (M200).

Russell Beattie: Micro$oft Mobilizes its Minions Again.

Please note that I kept Russell's spelling of Microsoft intact and I did not call him a "Microsoft hater." Happy New Years Russell! :-)

I find it ironic that Slashdot is worrying about offshoring of programming. These are the same folks who cheer everytime a country like Israel or China chooses to go with free software over software written in America that costs money. Nice to know they care.

You might not have noticed it, but for the past few weeks I've been on "RSS vacation." That is, I turned off my news aggregator. So, I haven't been pointing as much at other sites.

While I have my news aggregator off (it gets turned back on next Monday) one of my favorite bloggers is Ole Eichorn. He points at all sorts of interesting stuff, like this Always-On article about the top 10 trends of 2003.

Hmmm, Tim Bray's looking for a job. But I note he doesn't list a reason that Microsoft should hire him. But, I'll list the reasons Microsoft should try to hire Tim: 1) Tim is one of the top authorities on XML. Didn't he invent it? If you haven't noticed, XML is important to nearly every product and service we're doing now. 2) Tim is one of the top authorities on Web standards. Even in a Longhorn world Web standards are important. Even in Longhorn there are lots of Web standards projects going on. 3) Tim is one of the top authorities on full text search. Something I note that Microsoft hasn't quite figured out yet. Hey, MSDN? Microsoft.com? MSN? Surely we could use another search engine expert, no?

Now, why should Tim come to work at Microsoft? I'll tell him what I told a few other people who came to work here: he shouldn't. Whoa? He shouldn't come here if he doesn't want to write code that hundreds of millions of people will use. He shouldn't come here if he doesn't want to work with some of the most interesting researchers in the industry (hey, where else you gonna work with the guy who invented Tetris?) He shouldn't come here if he can't handle a bit of rain. Finally, he shouldn't come here unless he thinks he's going to get the support he needs to really change the world.

Happy New Year! I spent the evening dancing with a bunch of Iranians. They sure take to our Western Holidays just fine. (Iranians have their own New Years, which happens in March on our calendar).

I asked my wife why Iranians like our holidays so much. "It's the food," she answered. Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday because of all the food.

Anyway, hope 2004 is a good and prosperous one for you.