Archive for the 'Tech' Category

Savannah’s Sister

The Internet has evolved tremendously over the last decade. The World Wide Web has given way to a truly global network capable of almost anything you can envision.

The newest evolution is web based applications. Google has been a big player in this field, having developed, financed, or bought projects that bring normal home and office apps to the web. As these get more robust the days of having a true global office are coming in sight.

Some simple examples are the variety of API’s (Application Programming Interface) for use with Flickr. The picture on the right was created using one of my Flickr photos and an API that allows you to add captions. Sure it’s not rocket science but these are the walk before you run steps. The limitations for this kind of web based programming have not been reached yet.

One nice effect this should have is to reduce the “bloat” that is becoming all too common in utilitarian applications. There is no reason a word processor should take up gigs of hard drive space, no matter how cheap storage is this day.

So both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0 have been released. I have been kicking the tires of both and to be honest I still lean towards Firefox. The big hangup with IE is once again CSS support. You would think that with the widespread use of CSS and the fact that CSS standards have been in place for quite a while now that Microsoft could produce a browser focused on observing those standards. But as always IE is more focused on bells and whistles. It’s like getting a car which has the all the fancy gadgets but only 3 tires.

In the long run it may be Opera that benefits the most as users look for a fully CSS compliant browser.

Today I opened up my email and was the glorious recipient of an email with this “helpful” tip to stop mass mail worms: Create an contact in your address book with an address of “AAAA@AAAA.AAA”. Ah, if only it were that simple.

Now my mother can attest to how upset I get to receive emails like this. It irritates me to no end that in a world today where “Google” is used in everyday language that folks still blindly forward these hoaxes, chain letters, the kid with cancer letters, and the Bill Gates will give you $1000 of his hard earned money emails. Please take FIVE seconds and “Google” that email to ensure it’s valid before you spread it around. It’s no wonder that those guys in Nigeria are still making a living off emails.