Thursday, August 12, 2004

Pluto killed, or Why OSHA really needs strengthening I saw a shorter version of this item in the local fishwrap today and my eyes nearly popped out. It seems Disney World (that pro-family company) was fined $6300 yesterday by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Javier Cruz was playing Pluto at the park last February, and he was run over by a parade float. The local paper left out the part about OSHA, so at first I figured the fine came from a judge. "Oh boy, a fine that size will really deter Disney from killing its workers, now won't it?" I said to my wife. "They probably take in that amount of money in, what, 10 minutes?" But the complete AP story explains the reason for that amount: $7000 is the most OSHA can fine anyone for killing someone on the job! Here's one guy who hopes those evil trial lawyers get a little more justice for Javier Cruz's family from Eisner's crew. And that Congress reviews that particular limitation soon. 9:59:24 PM    comment []

Radio revives: A wish list As you may have heard, Radio Userland has a new product manager, Steve Kirks. This is pretty exciting news, as Radio has been stagnant as software since I bought it last year. Considering all the changes that have permeated the blogosphere in that time, Radio has stagnated, and few things (good or bad) has happened to it. Judging from his activity on the Radio discussion forum, the new manager appears to be excited to move this forward and as one extremely minor player in the success of the tool (by that I mean, I'm one of the relatively few bloggers who use it) I'm pleased to cheer him on.  In his initial Letter to Users, Kirks lays out the initial roadmap for Radio improvements, and then makes the traditional magnificent error of asking us what we'd like. The roadmap only goes to the end of the year for a reason: it's not done yet. We need imput from you, the Radio user base. What do you like? What do you hate? What features are missing from Radio? Use the power of your weblog to your advantage: write your comments in a weblog post and link to this letter. We'll comb through the responses and post some answers to the common questions in another letter later this week. In a matter of minutes, I came up with this list. Consider it one relative newbie's wish list: A better way to email posts: I know this is somewhat do-able now, but the instructions scare me to death. Create one email account (where?) that you'll email posts to. Radio will empty this mailbox and post everything with the secret subject. Don't get any real mail there, as it will disappear! Let me tell you what I'd like: Send a post to metaverse@radiouserland.com (or some similar address), and it's there. To prevent spammers from posting, let me specify up to 3 addresses from which the mailbox will accept mail; everything else bounces. Easier way to link to past posts: This one's pretty minor, and I'll admit this feature just may have escaped me. But it seems to me that the "Previous 10 posts" lists should include the permalink so we can copy/paste it, and we shouldn't have to leave the interface to find permalinks to older posts, instead of having to Google. Multiple installs, easily synchronizable: I have a dual-boot Linux/Windows system, and will in the not too distant future have separate boxes, and almost certainly a laptop to boot. I'd like to be able to post from whatever machine I'm using at any given moment, and have a complete www folder (containing all my posts, wherever I may have posted them) synchronized from the Community Server whenever I ask. Again, maybe we've got something like this already, but when I accidentally reformatted the Linux side of my hard drive a few months ago, I lost several months worth of posting that I can't access anymore. Better Linux support: With that last item, you knew this was coming, right? I got Radio working pretty well under Linux/Wine using the hack on the website, but it wasn't perfect. Let's have a real Linux port, and (as long as I'm wishing) an RPM package that'll install snappily on my SuSE box. "Subscribe w/Radio" aggregator button: Regular readers know that I'm a big fan of the Bloglines aggregator (and thanks to Bloglines, I now know I have regular readers! Thanks, whoever you are.). Bloglines also manages the blogroll you see to the right over there. One of the reasons that blogroll is so freakin' long is because it is so freakin' easy to add a feed with the "Subscribe with Bloglines" bookmarklet. Wherever I am on the web, the instant I see something interesting with an XML button, I can add it to my feed list. I'd use the Radio aggregator lots more if I could have something like this. Easier way to edit the template: I'm not an advanced web designer (yet). Whenever I edit the weblog template, to add that Media recommendation thing, or the Public Domain button or some other goodie that you or I might like, I find it difficult to copy/paste the appropriate code to the template, save, go look at the live home page (somewhat queering my referrer report) to see if the results match my vision of what should look like, go back, make changes, rinse, repeat. Can't we have a preview window, so we can fix things before they go live? Better referrer reports: I don't post much. I'm not really obsessive about knowing who is looking me up; what Google searches are pointing to me, etc. But I do check whenever I open Radio. It's interesting, but I have no idea when someone dropped by. I'm guessing the Referers page tells me about the last 24 hours, but that's just a guess. Is there any way to get  all referred links since the last time I checked? Maybe I'm just uninformed (and I certainly don't blame the software for that!), but these are things that would really make this user happy. So let's see what happens now. 9:28:21 PM    comment []