Confessions of an Undercover Geek

Here are some of the cool stories I found out on the web this morning:

• Time Magazine - 50 Coolest Web Sites - You can definitely see a trend with what is popular out on the web these days. Could it be Web 2.0?
• CNN.com - 15 years of the World Wide Web - This story highlights some of the biggest events of the last 15 years of the web. A lot has happened since Tim Berners-Lee invented all this. If you want to read about what Tim Berners-Lee is working on now, read my paper on the Semantic Web.
• endgadget - Touring the Microsoft Xbox facilities - Kind of cool to get a peak inside where the XBox 360 was born.
• RussellBeattie.com - XBox 360 Latest Live Update: Kills Backwards Compatibility - I don’t think i’d buy an XBox 360 unless I can get some kind of backwards compatibility. I have bought maybe a dozen games and would want to play all of those on the same system.

Here is some cool stories on the web that I am reading:

• AP News - ‘Peace mom’ Sheehan in new play by Nobel winner - A Broadway show all about Cindy Sheehan, let me rush right out and buy some tickets. LOL! I am glad to see there is one more anti-American playwright.
• PC Pro - Analyst: Apple to shrink shuffle - This might be pretty cool.
• New York Post - Bloggers Rise Up Over E-Tailer Service - Newspapers are starting to take notice about how bloggers took down PriceRightPhoto.com.
• PingMag - The Website Development Process - Some guy wrote about the web development process and illustrated it using Legos. This is awesome.

Here are some of the cool articles that I have been reading:

• Godbit Project - Seminary Survey - This is a seminarian who is writing a paper about the church’s perceptions of the web. He says, “I feel as though Church/Religion is missing an extremely rich opportunity by ignoring the Internet and web technology.” He is looking for the thoughts of others.
• CNet.com - Ten things I hate about the Xbox 360 - I always thought the XBox 360 sounded cool but it was never amazing. This guys pretty much spells out the lacklusterness of the XBox 360.
• Out of the Way - OzeWAI… - By Charles McCathieNevile - A bunch of my W3C WAI colleagues are in Australia right now at the OzeWAI web accessibility conference. It sounds like they are having a good time. I wish I could be there with you guys.
• FoxNews.com - Spielberg’s ‘Munich’ Is the Best Movie of 2005 - I am getting more and more excited about seeing this movie.
• 24 ways - to impress your friends - This is an awesome advent calendar for web developers. They highlight a new technique each day of the advent season.

This is what I have been reading about this morning.

• ThinkSecret.com - Road to Expo: Apple’s new media experience coming soon - Apple has been doing so many things with content delivery and content production. I think both the pvr mac mini as well as a replacement for iTunes that encompassess all media would really take this all one step further. Then when you throw the new ipod in the mix. This is just nuts.
• Fox exec says company open to iTunes deal - Is it coincidence that Macworld San Francisco is in January and that the hit Fox television show 24 is premiering its new season in January? I think not. I expect 24 is going to be HOT on iTunes Music Store.
• Online Media Daily - Consumer-Generated Justice: Blogger Sidelines E-Commerce Site - Here is a great example of how bloggers kicked some a** in a major way against a shady online company. This site got more then 5000 diggs on the social bookmarking web site Digg.com. The media really hasn’t been doing a great job at holding people accountable. I think this cements the blogosphere as a mighty force that can take on anyone. Here is the blogger’s original blog post.

• RedStatesUSA.com - Jay Rockefeller and His Tangled Web By: David Limbaugh - David Limbaugh really wrote a great article here. Senate Democrats are trying to pin all of Iraq War and what goes wrong on George W. Bush. The Senate Democrats drank the kool aid on the pre-war intelligence just as much as anyone else. They are just trying to score poltical points. When the spotlight gets turned on them to lead, America will see that they don’t have anything.
• Molly.com - Web Standards and The New Professionalism - The magnificent Molly Holzschlag points out how we are in a new era of Web professionalism. Using table layouts, not valid html, and inaccessible development practices, is far out of the mainstream. So many resources are available on how to do all of this, people don’t have an excuse to not getting it done.
• Digital Web Magazine - Microformats Primer - Microformats are something we all need to take a look at. This is an amazing way to take your normal xHTML and bring it the next level. We need to give people more access to our HTML data than they have ever had before.

I haven’t done a “What I have been reading…” post in a while. Here are some good stories I have been reading or following.

• Associated Press - DeLay Smile May Foil Democrat Campaign Ads - Apparently Tom Delay smiled in his mug shot photo. By making the mug shot look like a nice photo, it is harder for the Democrats to use the mug shot in attack ads in the election. Good thinking Tom.
• WSJ - How Bush Can Save Bush By Peggy Noonan - Peggy talks about how George W. Bush can get out of his slump if he goes back to applealing to the conservative base that has gotten him elected. This is a really interesting column. Peggy Noonan is by far one of my favorite political writers.
• US News - White House Watch: Cheney resignation rumors fly - Apparently there are rumors flying around that Dick Cheney is going to resign, because of the CIA leak scandal and so that Condi Rice could become Vice President…interesting.
• Mac vs. PC System Shootouts - $2,500 Laptops 10/22/05 - Interesting side by side comparison of a high end Apple laptop and a high end Dell laptop.

• Google Rumors - Google Calendar may be days away from launch - I am a Mac OS X user and have been using iCal. iCal is nice, WAY better then Microsoft Outlook’s calendar, but iCal is not great. Google has just bringing out a lot of awesome stuff and I’d be interested to see what Google Calendar is like.
• capstart.com - Elvis Spotted in the Conference Room - This is a tutorial about how to make HUGE mosaics of someone out of sticky notes. This is awesome. If i had a big case of beer and a ton of post-it notes wow this would be fun to do.
• LoopRumors.com - Exclusive Leopard Inside Information - Here is some of the stuff that could be in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. Very cool!
• CNet News.com - Esquire wikis article on Wikipedia - A guy wrote a crappy article and posted it to Wikipedia. Then all the wikipeda people within hours fixed it. This is awesome. I wonder if all of a sudden you’ll see people posting academic papers like this.
• T-Shirt Hell - Wow he’s tight… - This t-shirt is soo funny. It’s soo wrong but it’s so funny. hehe. :-p

Here are a few of the online news stories that I have been reading throughout the day:

• Thomas Peterson - More Schools Pursuing Private iTunes Store Podcast? - I go to a techier school then the Univ. of Michigan. Why can’t we be all over this? Come on RIT, get your act together.
• Donald Trump - Donald’s Excellent Emmy Adventure - I really hope Donald Trump is the one that write’s his blog entries and not some ghost writer. The voice of the entry seems very much to be his.
• Om Malik - Google Made Opera Browser Free - Interesting….
• CNN.com - Rita begins Texas assault - My heart and prayers go out to the people that are in the path of Hurricane Rita and all the families that were affected by Hurricane Katrina I can’t imagine what they are going through.

Here are a few interesting online articles that I have been reading today:

• Daily Grit - John Kerry would have handled Katrina - My dad wrote a great post about how he is sick of the dumb knee-jerk reactions of the left to everything that George W. Bush does.
• Tetura Design - Microsoft and the iPod Nano - This article really shows how Microsoft’s monopoly stifles their ability to be creative. It is killing their company. They wish they could put together a product like the iPod nano.
• Happy Birthday Mario - Mario has apparently turned 20 years old today. The game started on this day in 1985. Super Mario Brothers is easily the greatest game produced to date.
• smh.com.au - Microsoft patents handheld computer click - What! When did this happen?

A few interesting stories that I have had my eye on:

• Information Week - Microsoft Looks To Developers To Catch Up To Google, Yahoo - They are finally going to be releasing a lot of API’s. I really think that a lot of this is too little too late for Microsoft.
• Business Week - Steve Jobs’s Tiny but Sure Bet - Anyone want to buy me an iPod nano? I promise to never whine again about the iTunes phone if Apple sends me an iPod nano.
• Share Skype: Skype for Mac 1.3 out now - Yay! Everyone download this.
• LHI - Some Thoughts on a Major Disaster By Phil Brennan - I am glad to see that my friends at the Lincoln Heritage Institute are still a great beacon for sound thought and judgement.