MOVIETIME
8:47A

I worked all day yesterday putting together my first 'movie' with iMovie from Apple (free download). Basically, it was just a slide show of my trip over the hill. You can pick transitions, sounds, and even have titles, subtitles, and rolling credits. I was going to put my lovely creation up here, but it is a whopping 1.4M. Was a Funday Sunday.

Speaking of Apple, looks like they're being nicer to retailers this time around.

Sandman is conducting his own Web experiment by trying out FITALY, an alternate to the QWERTY input on the Palm. He says some people are getting up to 70 WPM on their Palm. Stay tuned.

Also, I've been rounding up a collection of people who have created an AvantGo public channel (viewable on a Palm) for their weblogs. Here's one of them: Jason Pettus. Thanks again, Sandman!

Here's a comparison between a Palm and a Visor.

On my PC at work (for viewing purposes only), Netscape automatically opens to msn.com. Normally I don't find much on the top page that makes me look further into the evil empire's site, but I did run across this article from June 16th, Road Warrior Interview: John Perry Barlow. He's a former cattle rancher who co-wrote songs for the Grateful Dead and co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"He travels everywhere with his G3 PowerBook and two cell phones, and has a toll-free telephone number that hunts him down anywhere in the U.S., but when he has to jot down something important - like an e-mail address, a flight number, or a takeoff time - he writes it on his hand. This mix of techniques seems appropriate for a man who is widely credited for first using the old science-fiction term 'cyberspace' to describe the new online galaxy."

David Gelernter's The Second Coming - A Manifesto. An interesting look at a possible computer transformation all based on "cyberbodies".

Etiquette deteriorates in interviews. Tut, tut. Are the interviewees the only guilty party?

A SOUTHERN ACCENT
10:43A

WEB EXPERIMENT 300: Sound Files on Web Pages. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to record a sound file and then display it from Inflatable Sheep a la Greasyskillet.org. First I have to figure out what program to use to record. I try Simple Text but doesn't have any controls.

I pay $30 and get QuickTime Pro, but it doesn't have any way of recording sound. Geeez, and after Honey said it would...

Then I find Jenny's SoundRecorder 1.0 (freeware) and record an entry, save it as a Quicktime .mov. Check the size, what??? 2.8M! That's not gonna work. I check the prefs, but there is only a 44100Hz setting. Hmmm...

Then I download UltraRecorder (shareware), but it only saves at 44100Hz too. Hmmm...

Beginning to feel a little like Oprah. I go to About.com's learn how to record sound. From there, I got to Audio Shareware/Freeware. Nothing looks good. Hmmm...

I go to Version Tracker (Mac software), and put "recorder" into the search. This leads me to Authentic Sound Recorder. Hmmm....

Honey's starts foolin around with Jenny's SoundRecorder and finds a way to save a file at different kbs's, but I can't open my already saved .mov file with this program. Arghhh...

Okay, finally, the solution: Open hugeass.mov file in Quicktime Pro and do an Export. Then choose kbs option. Results: saving at the lowest quality (20kbs Voice LoMo), my former 2.8M file is now a svelte 127K.

WEB HEAVEN
9:41A

I want to thank Dave for creating his A List Apart channel at AvantGo and Jeffrey for mentioning it, because now I've created my own Makes Grown Men Cry channel. See the smile on my lips as I read Stupid Penis Tricks on my Palm.

And it gets better - I now have My Yahoo as a channel. Now I can view Web Experiment 298 with Web Experiment 299, and I can check out what movie's playing and use my free movie passes from Web Experiment 297 to go see it. Yes, I'm in Web Heaven.

Palmac. For Mac users who have Palms. A frequent blog of Palm info. See also Rob's Macintosh/PalmPilot Pages.

AOL 5.0 for the Mac: No High Fives. AOL doing the 'techno cutting edge' thang. AOL . . . techno cutting edge . . . what is wrong with this picture.

PALM-SIZED WEB PAGES
8:55A

WEB EXPERIMENT 299: Palm-Sized Web Pages. Just created my account with Avantgo.com so that I can see what Web pages and stuff looks like on my Palm. Entered A List Apart as a channel. Now looking at A List Apart on the computer . . . now on my Palm . . . WOW, am I impressed. I see the possibilities.

Speaking of Palms, check to see if your recently acquired (manufactured October 1999 and May 2000) Palm has defective 8 MB DRAM chips. Can cause random data to be written to the handheld's memory. Also affects some Visors. If you have a Palm, go to http://www.palm.com/support/dram/. If you have a Visor, go to http://www.handspring.com/support/ts_visor_test_download.asp.

Leftover from the 4th of July: Debunking "The Price They Paid".

Added Michelle to Michelles of the Web. Creator of MichelleWorld, this Michelle pulls no punches about being named Michelle. But she has a kind heart and shows compassion for the poor Britneys and Rachels of the world.

Eyetracking Study of Web Readers. Jakob Nielsen expounds more on the Poynter Institute study on eyetracking.

THE EYES HAVE IT
12:03P

The Stanford Poynter Project. A study about how people read the news on the Web. See Front Page Entry Points. From their studies, this quote: "We found in our early analysis that more often than not, briefs or captions got the first eye fixations when the first page came up. Then the eyes came back to photos or graphics, sometimes after readers had clicked away to a full article before returning to the first page." Geeez, content drives design--that's a new one.

WEB EXPERIMENT 298: Mock Stockfolio. As a way of learning about stocks and tracking how well a particular mutual fund does compared to another and helping myself get over my fear of math, I set up a mock stock portfolio. I chose Yahoo Finance because it was easy to find, easy to use, and I didn't know the name of any other Web site that would let yo do this.

I put in a mutual fund's top ten stock holdings and the proportional number of shares and the price per share for the market today. (The Yahoo experience would have been better if they would have a help pop-up for that particular section instead of the generic help link at the top.)

Just went to My Yahoo, and, voila, my new portfolio shows up. Que handy! They must spend a ton on usability at that place.

So now I've virtually invested $1,724.73 in the stock market. Let's see where this puppy will take me.

EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
10:15A

I don't think I ever got over the ERA* failing to pass in the early 80's.

*Equal Rights Amendment: written in 1921 by suffragist Alice Paul. It has been introduced in Congress every session since 1923. It passed Congress in in 1972, but was not ratified by the necessary thirty-eight states by the July 1982 deadline. It was ratified by thirty-five states.

Pissed me off at such a basic level, that I disconnected from their world and determined in MY world it would not be that way.

But blatant gender inequality rears it's head from time to time. The rage creeps back up and I wonder how I'm going to keep from becoming a bitter woman.

Looking around, I see that in the 106th Congress (1999-2000), the ERA was introduced by Edward Kennedy. The fight appears to go on . . .