shesafish

	Tuesday, April 08, 2003

 Idolonfox

I called in and voted for Carmen twice and the marine guy once. Carmen is only 18 and I thought she was good (plus they were way too mean to her). I must be blind because I don't see the Ruben "magic" from my living room.

Another idol fan told me that Lionel Ritchie was on Leno last night, singing with a metal guy and a rap guy. Sorry I missed that.

10:51:36 PM  comment [] | Topics: television 

 Presidential Candidates

Source: "Dollars for Democrats", Time Magazine April 14, 2003.

Questions:

• is this just for Q1, 2003 or are these numbers cumulative?
• when one candidate wins the primary, are the remaining funds then consolidated?
• what is the number for the GOP candidates? (G.W.)
• what were the numbers for the Demo candidates (Clinton included) at this time in 1991?

9:33:03 PM  comment [] |

 Viewing the War as a Lesson to the World

ASHINGTON, April 5 — Shortly after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued a stark warning to Iran and Syria last week, declaring that any "hostile acts" they committed on behalf of Iraq might prompt severe consequences, one of President Bush's closest aides stepped into the Oval Office to warn him that his unpredictable defense secretary had just raised the specter of a broader confrontation.

Mr. Bush smiled a moment at the latest example of Mr. Rumsfeld's brazenness, recalled the aide. Then he said one word — "Good" — and went back to work.

[David E. Sanger, New York Times]

9:19:10 PM  comment [] |

 Aggregator Feature Requests

Quarter Life  has put together a set of likes and dislikes for RSS Aggregators.  I know a bunch of my readers are writing aggregators of one form or another and this is probably useful to them.  Lots of good ideas here.  [The FuzzyBlog2: user blogs]

My list of must-have features for aggregators:

• must be able to delete items without deleting the source (Dan Gillmore has published three items, I want to delete two of them, but I still want to subscribe to Dan Gillmore). This is one of the only drawbacks to Amphetadesk.
• must be able to archive items that the user does not want to delete, but has already read: 
  • preferably by posting to a built-in weblog, where the user can post the news item and annotate with comments, etc. Radio, a weblog tool with a built-in aggregator, does this.
  • another way to accomplish this would to use the weblog api to post form data to the user's weblog software of their own choosing. I would love to post-to-Radio such that the item ends up in enclosed in blockquote tags and the author appears below.
• must not rely on MS Outlook as their interface (I use an aggregator to get away from email.) Note: if you are interested in an MS Outlook interface, newsgator is pretty nifty.

More on the meta-weblog api technique: I would like to customize the way a news item is formatted in my weblog posting form, such as

<P><BLOCKQUOTE>{$.rssItem$}</BLOCKQUOTE>{$.rssSource$}</P>

For further reading on this topic, see Simon Fell's Blog This! page.

7:24:54 PM  comment [] |

 Cybersquatting or Domain Sharing?

Interesting: point your browser to www.pbs.com. What you get is the webpage equivalent of an interrogation dialog (are you sure you want to open pbs.com? If not, click on pbs.org below, that was probably what you meant to do anyway.)

The top of page the instructs the user to click on a pbs.com logo if their original destination was correct: "For integrated newspaper solitions, technology built to meet your needs, and outstanding customer service, stay with us at pbs.com."

The bottom of the page has a friendly passive redirect: if the user meant to visit pbs.org, the public broadcasting company website, click on the other logo: "For mouth-watering cooking advice, giant yellow birds, and history brought to life, go to pbs.org."

I don't know what to make of it: Inconvenient? Advertisement? Cooperative domain sharing?

6:47:30 PM  comment [] | Topics: GoldenGate 

Don't Put All Your Data in One Basket [Business Week: Technology]

An article encouraging colocation and hotsite backup strategies.

10:19:33 AM  comment [] | Topics: GoldenGate