CUBE ME
6:59A

Steve Jobs kicks off Macworld Expo in New York City the other day. He announced a G4 Cube, an optical mouse, and a full-sized keyboard that will be shipped with all new desktop Macs.

See the QT VR of the Pro Mouse. Use the hand to rotate the mouse. It really is just one big ol' button.

Here's how easy it is to add memory on the Power Mac G4 Cube. Yea! Seems one advantage of the G4 Cube vs. an iMac, besides size and easy-to-add memory, is you get to pick your monitor.

And if you couldn't experience Macworld, here's how to get the flavor.

1099: The Magazine for Independent Professionals. Here's an article on the ultimate freelancer, Leonardo.

Skizz'z Designer Minds. Great read on same questions posed to various Web Designers. Thanks Skizz!

Palm VII getting a redesign. Le Visor de Palm?

Research future employers: Business & Employer Research.

RENT
8:56A

Rent is too damned high here. One-bedroom in Funnyvale runs $1500, the same in San Francisco runs $2000. Where is the rent control? "Rent control rejected. Sunnyvale Mayor Patricia Vorreiter said she was worried by the squeeze but noted that city voters have twice rejected measures to introduce rent control. She said voters concluded that the market was the best way to regulate rents. 'I think in principle, that's true,' she said. 'It's just such a crazy situation right now.'" Where are the poor people gonna live?

Finished reading Anne Michael's (Canadian poet) "Fugitive Pieces" at noon yesterday. Took two months to read a 300-page book (me, who read the whole People of the...Lightening... Mists...Lakes...Silence, etc. series in the same amount of time). But I wanted to go slow, to soak up every word. Near the end: "When we were married, Naomi said: Sometimes we need both hands to climb out of a place. Sometimes there are steep places, where one has to walk ahead of the other. If I can't find you, I'll look deeper in myself. If I can't keep up, if you're far ahead, look back. Look back."

Here are some discussion questions to comtemplate after reading "Fugitive Pieces". Here is Salon's review. Here is an excerpt. Here is an interview with Anne Michaels with George Jr.

CORN
8:01A

Made one of my periodic check-ins to see how the corn was growing in Iowa. It's 82" tall now (grew 32" last week). Apparently, it's a popular site as they have received 7000 emails and the ones posted are pretty darn...dare I say...corny. One viewer writes, "I can't believe that I noticed obvious growth from one day to the next. Why are we watching?" Maybe I've been around mechanical gadgets too long, but looking at this corn cam relaxes me. ;)

Was a stressful week last week. Had to say good-bye to Miz Liz at work. Good luck, Grrlfriend and MotoMama.

Looks like Rich stirred up a hornet's nest with his article, Fame Fatale. Some bloggers had their toes stepped on. I empathize. But everyone's entitled to their opinion, their freedom of expression whether it be on a personal homepage, a journal, a diary, a blog. Personally, I thought his article brought up some good points. Like his statement: "The personal web space is becoming a repository of lost souls who may never find each other, let alone themselves. But the very sites that add to the clutter - useless blogs - could, with a little work, become useful filters the save us from the glut and chaos." Breadcrumb trails, good ones. We need them. That's what I took from it. Inspires me to try and raise the bar for myself.

Here's Highlights of Jakob Nielsen's presentation at Oakland Marriott ballroom last Friday. Here's his "Writing for the Web" at Sun Microsystems. I'm not entirely sold on Mr. Nielsen, still too much of the scientist wanting to pigeon-hole 'facts'. I keep an open mind.

WEB EXPERIMENT 298: Mock Stockfolio Revisited. WooHoo, I now have made $103 in virtual dollars.

GRRLS GRRLS GRRLS
7:40A

Silicon Valley Webgrrls is going to be charging fees some time in the future. They have a mailing list that's particularly good for this area, but pay a fee for it? Apparently DC Wegrrls had to also consider charging fees, but decided to become DC Web Women, a non-profit organization. They bring up some interesting issues. This article tells of Boston Webgrrls going through the same thing. Did you know that Webgrrls is now run by a man? [Looks like Boston Webgrrls has now become Boston Web Women, but their site's not up yet.]

• More PDA Blogs:
Sandman's Screed. A feisty fellow with an opinion or two.
Tomalak's Realm. Yum. Good links.

• More Web Blogs:
Good Blog, Signal vs. Noise.
More noise, but this one's white and coming to you from England, Whitenoise Central.

LookSmart's list of Web browsers. Que handy.

Joe Gillespie's Some tips to make your Web graphics and animation look more professional. BTW does this look familiar?

No Spam Ma'am. There's a law in California that restricts Spam/UCE: California BPC, Section 17538.45.

*Things to Keep in Mind*

1. Matrix for HTML tags supported by AvantGo

No imagemap/usemap/map
No BODY: background, bgcolor, alink, vlink, text color
No FONT
No IMG: align left/right
No LI/OL/UL type
No TABLE/TR/TD: bgcolor/bordercolor
No Frames
No JavaScript
No Animated Gifs
No Java applets
No Shockwave or other plug-ins
No Cascading Style Sheets

3. Tips for designing for handheld devices

Include a <META NAME="HandheldFriendly" content="True"> tag in the head element. This is your way of telling AvantGo that you've optimized your page for being viewed on a handheld device. Without it, tables, JavaScript and certain image tags won't be registered.

*Steps*
1. Create a subdirectory. Ex., http://www.yoursite.com/pda/ (set permissions)
2. Create HTML file 150 pixels wide with one entry. Save to ftp.
3. Create new channel (Create Custom Channel Classic).
4. Get your channel ID. Go to Export Channels to get the url for people to add your channel to their account. Ex., Here's the url for to add the PDA version of Inflatable Sheep to your account.

EYE TRACKING
8:50A

I went to the Silicon Valley WebGuild meeting last night to hear Marion Lewenstein, a professor of communications at Stanford and one of the people involved on the Stanford/Poynter Study.

Testing took place between February and March, 1999; there were 30 women and 37 men. The study focused on how people read news Web sites, not Web sites in general. The only qualification for being a participant was that you read news online at least three times a week (these particular participants happened to read almost daily).

I took some rough notes.

People don't really want news customized (afraid they'll miss something).
People go to multiple sites at the same time (open multiple windows, view one as another loads)
People had high recall on stories about lifestyle, crimes/disasters, and sports. Low recall on opinion articles.
No difference in eye patterns between males and females.
The biggie: 22% of the people didn't look at artwork (=ads, graphics -- not photos and banners).
75% of the people read the whole article. Didn't skim.

YOU'VE BEEN FLASHED
9:49A

OOOOH AAAAH

Here's where you can vote for your favorite flash site.

Philip Dwyer's nice multi-sectional flash site, but doesn't work on IE.

Matthew Richmond. Nice way to display a portfolio. See their work in conjunction with Phish's "farmhouse" album.

Eric Rodenbeck. My favorite - sunflowers! Also like his airport as a metaphor for the Web.

one9ine. Nice presentation.

Flash cartoons by BigTwin. Fun stuff.

Steem. Different look and feel for a flash thang. I like it.

TUTORIALS

Virtual-FX Flash Tutorials

Designs by Mark. Also have PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Web Site tips.

Flashzone. See their search engine for flash tutorials.

FlashPlanet. Here's their tutorials.