Microsoft acknowledges a virus on their home page

by Steven Garrity

The latest email virus that has been filling up our inboxes is brining all kinds of bad press down on Microsoft (and rightly so). However, I have seen one, however tiny and insignificant, gesture that Microsoft should be lauded for.

The Microsoft.com home page, as of this writing, features as the most prominent page element, a large item linking to information about the Mydoom virus (here’s a screenshot of the home page, as I’m sure it won’t stay up there for long). While this is, of course, the least Microsoft can do, it’s nice to see them putting the information that people are actually looking for right up front.

 

by Steven Garrity

Acts of Volition Radio is on the agenda for tonight’s Berkman weblogger meeting at Harvard

 

by Steven Garrity

The site silverorange designed for Sloan is featured at The Daily Standard

 

by Steven Garrity

Best politician-hockey-animated-gif ever

 

by Steven Garrity

If you have a weakness for Dave Barry, as I do, you’ll enjoy his coverage of the New Hampshire primaries

 

by Steven Garrity

Hawksley Workman performs in the CBC studios – four songs in real audio

 

by Steven Garrity

Mozilla Firebird browser tip: Ctrl+K will focus the cursor in the in-toolbar Google search box (Ctrl+L does the same for the location bar)

 

by Steven Garrity

If you are interested in the Gnome Desktop for Linux, there’s a good presentation about Gnome by Michael Meeks of Ximian/Novell from the Linux World Expo

 

I don’t need more flashing lights in my life right now

by Steven Garrity

I just came back from a grand tour of all establishments (that I know of) here in Charlottetown that sell car CD players. My sigfinicant other recently bought a used Toyota with a dud CD player. We like the factory default — it’s simple, it has a volume knob, it doesn’t light up live a rave/disco/acid-flashback.

As it turns out, factory default car CD players seem to be the only ones available that aren’t totally X-treme®!

I’m having a similar problem with replacing my cell phone. It seems that color screens on cell phones do two things (and only two things, as far as I can tell): 1) suck up the battery faster, and 2) obscure system icons with crappy photo-realistic but unintelligible icons.

Anyone who has tried to buy sneakers in the last few years knows that unless you are a go-go dancer from Mars, a mountain climber, or some kind of space athelete, there are no shoes for you.

I can understand that “dudes” want to buy wacky stereos for their dude-mobiles. I also understand that flashy lights might help sell products when they are sitting next to a bunch of others on a store shelf. However, is there not a market for simple and elegant user interfaces? I am not asking for much — from the last I’ve seen, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Subaru, etc, all have relatively simple factory default stereos. Why can’t we buy these after-market?

Are substance, value, and usability — factors that come into play after the purchase, not during or before — always going to be drowned out by flash and featuritis — which make their impression at the time of purchase, but let you down afterwards? Of course, I dont’t mind that these wacky products are out there — I just wish I could still get something simpler.

I don’t need more flashing lights in my life right now.

(by the way, if anyone knows where you can buy a used factory default toyota CD player in Charlottetown, please let me know)

 

Mammoth: noun, adjective, and beast

by Steven Garrity

I’ve posted here before about how the randomness and lack of context of the headlines on CNN.com often have disturbing/hilarious result. On any given day, the list of “Top Stories” headlines can almost always make me laugh out loud.

Today was no exception. Early today, one of the headlines read:

Mammoth skull found in a gravel pit

A few hours later, during which someone at CNN must have noticed the unindended brilliance of this headline, it was updated to the more accurate, but less hilarious:

Skull of mammoth found in a gravel pit

In case you are actually interested in the mammoth skull, you can check out the story and get a bonus “artists rendition of a mammoth”.