I just noticed that if you search Google, you may or may not actually get a display of Sponsored Links in the results. It appears as though if there really are no matching Sponsored Links, they won’t just display some unrelated links. Searching for “no ads here” (at least right now) gives me a result page free of Sponsored Links. Same thing with a search for “Jeremy Zadowny”. (Though Google suggest I might be looking for “Jeremy Zarowny” which I find slightly amusing, since a search for “Jeremy Zarowny” has no results. (Again, as of right now… give it a few hours…) Of course if you spell Jeremy’s name correctly, and search for “Jeremy Zawodny”, you’ll get better results… ;)

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if Google is evil, but not showing totally unrelated Sponsored Links when they could seems like a non-evil thing to do… Oh, and as a sidenote, I’ve been using Yahoo! Search more than AlltheWeb lately…

I have to sort of backup Dave when he mentions FutureMe (with no link?) and Mail to the Future. Sort of. First of all, why not link to FutureMe? Don’t we link to the competition? Was it an oversight? Second, while Mail to the Future did come out many years ago, I see one distinct difference between the two. FutureMe has a social software-like feature, in it’s public entries. This simple little feature, which makes your email to your future self public for all to read, is the hook. It’s the bing! that Mail to the Future missed. The fact that people will write something wacky or insightful, or stupid for others to see, makes this a site to see.

I seem to remember that Mail to the Future might have had some API’s behind it as well, which would allow you to do some neat stuff. It doesn’t look like FutureMe has that, but most people won’t mind, they just want to try it out and read other people’s emails…

I should mention once again that none of this stuff appears as technically hard to the average geekoid, I mean, there’s some dynamic pages, they hit a database, and there’s a cron job of some sort, right? These are the kind of applications you could build in a day or two, the beauty of it is in the details, and in actually doing it. The details require some clever thinking which some people don’t really possess. That’s not to say they aren’t smart. Smart and clever are two different things… I used to know this guitarist who could play almost any song he heard, and while technically proficient knowing all the notes and chords, he lacked the creativity to write a really good song. Creativity? Cleverness? Perhaps these are some of the X’s Mark was looking for…

Those familiar with The Road to Linux will know that we’ve dabbled with Linux for many years, and tend to use it a lot in the server room, and if “Mac OS NeXT” hadn’t come around to rescue Apple from the pre-X era, I’d probably be using Linux on the desktop right now. (Anything but Windows!)

That’s changed a bit, and I am now using Linux on the desktop, as time alllows. I’ve finally gotten hardware capable of running as a desktop machine with a real live GUI and everything. It’s no speed demon, but it seems to handle Fedora Core 1 ok. As of yet, I have not really stressed the system, I’ve mainly just been installing and configuring old favorites like Firefox, Thunderbird and jEdit (which required Java as well.)

The Road to Linux continues! (And I might even update it one of these days…)

Antiword is a utility to read Microsoft Word files and convert them to plain text, PostScript®, or DocBook files… The DocBook stuff is still experimental, but the plain text seems to work quite well for me, and I’ve successfully turned Word files into PostScript® files, and then turned those into PDF filess using ps2pdf. You could go one step further than the PS to PDF Converter site and build an online converter to turn Word Files into PDF files, or, well… whatever else you can dream up.

(See also: antiexcel)

I’ve been using SQLite this week, which prompted me to look up when I last mentioned it. It appears that in December 2002 I said this about SQLite:

Could you take Movable Type (or your CMS of choice) and make it use SQLite instead of MySQL?

Hmmm, I know they added SQLite support to Movable Type at some point, let’s see, it was February 2003, about two months after I mentioned it.

You’re welcome.

(Ok, to be fair, Perl’s DBI probably made it very easy to do…)

I had gotten a letter from my cable company, who is also my ISP. It stated that back in September 2003 they offered me a trial period of increased connectivity. Faster! Faster! or something like that… I declined saying my current connection speed was fine.

So the letter states that the trial period is over, and I can choose a Faster! speed, or if I do nothing, I can keep my current speed for just $9.99 extra per month. First of all, I didn’t want this trial thingy, second of all, I don’t want to pay more… So I call the phone number they supply.

I must say the woman on the phone was quite nice, and answered my questions. I explained that I never asked for an increase in connection speed, and was told that “technology changes” and all users got upgraded to the new speed. the old speed/price is no longer available.

Me: “So basically I’m being held hostage and have to pay more now?”

Yes

Me: “Will this happen every year? Will the price increase by $9.99 next year as well?”

I don’t think it will.

After determining I don’t have many choices, she tells me the new billing will take effect April 1st.

Me: “Wow, that’s appropriate. April 1st, that’s April Fool’s Day. I guess the joke is on me.”

(No comment…)

She never got upset in anyway (what a pro!) and then asked me if she could help with anything else, and I told her to add my name to the list of customers complaining about this. She then said she would fill out a complaint form with my name on it.

Thanks for the excellent service Charter!

Perhaps Mr. Catalano does get it. I ended up having an brief email discussion with him and I came away with the belief he understands weblogs. His main point was that if someone thinks they will start a weblog and instantly become popular and read by millions, they are mistaken.

I can see that point of view, but mine is this: What makes weblogs so damn amazing is the potential for someone to start a weblog and be read by millions. This is something that the average citizen has not had access to before. The old saying goes something like “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one” and more and more we all own the press known as the Internet…

I just recently heard about NeoOffice/J, and I finally got around to installing it this week. Wow! I’ve been using OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X via X11, and while it more or less works, the experience of using NeoOffice/J has been much nicer. It looks more like a Windows app than the nice Aquafied OS X apps you might be used to, but it managed to open Microsoft Word and Excel files with ease. One less reason to use Windows…

CIO Magazine: The Myths of Open Source looks at, and attempts to dispell the myths of open source in large organizations.

What are those myths?

1. The attraction is the price tag
2. The savings aren’t real
3. There’s no support
4. It’s a legal minefield
5. Open source isn’t for mission-critical applications
6. Open source isn’t ready for the desktop

Chris Pirillo sent me a link to the new new Lockergnome design, which happens to be valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, not that nasty mess of invalid non-semantic table gunk they spit out recently that we all complained about…

Thanks, Chris, you done good…