One of the best parts of December, regardless of whether you believe in Christmas or that it belongs in December, is the fun of the advent calendar. As a kid I used to look forward to jamming a new piece of creche-themed chocolate (chocolate stablehand, anyone?) into my mouth every…
In an effort to help educate the general public about its browser, Chrome, and the web in general, Google released an online “book” called 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web. Done in the style of an illustrated children’s book that allows readers to flip through the pages,…
This is one of those posts I started back in mid-October and sat on, suspecting that there would be more follow-up, backlash, challenges, and general bickering. There has been some, but then it died down a bit. And then I remembered I should post this. The Yahoo Developer Network posted…
The history of the web is littered with unexpected patent claims that feel frivolous to nearly all. These are driven partly by a terrible system for reviewing and awarding patents and a litigious society that sustains a business model of lawsuits in the hopes that some will just pay.The latest…
This is somewhat old news now (it’s 5 days old — an eternity) but I think it bears mentioning. The URL shortener Vb.ly was shut down by the Libyan government when it seized control of the domain Vb.ly. The Libyan government runs Nic.ly, the registrar for all things Libyan. Nic.ly…
It’s kind of hard to avoid all the coverage of IE9 this week. There are some rather in-depth reviews and analyses out there that take it apart and try to outdo each other with intricate detail in coverage. I don’t care so much about that. I’m interested in the general…
We’re a week away from Microsoft’s beta release of Internet Explorer 9 (public beta, not just a preview release aimed at developers). This release promises extensive support for another “beta” standard, the incomplete HTML5 specification. IE9 is also supposed to come with broader CSS3 support, SVG support, and even embedded…
When Google changes its logo in honor of a holiday, someone’s birthday, or just for the heck of it, it sometimes gets some chatter. When Google created the Pac-Man logo, articles appeared of people trying to figure out how it worked, or commenting on tech support calls within organizations from…
In case you haven’t seen the Arcade Fire video, The Wilderness Downtown, you should take a look at it. Google and Arcade Fire got together to show off what Google Chrome could do with all the new gee whiz technology out there, and if you listen to all the major…
I will be speaking twice in September, both of them sponsored by Infotech Niagara. If you’re in the Buffalo area, these are great opportunities to boost my ego and watch me cruise abandoned plates for food. Developing Coding Standards The first event is Developing Coding Standards, where I will be…
I’m going to make the assumption that if you are reading this you have at least a passing interest in typography on the web and have heard about Google’s new font preview tool. There are already plenty of articles talking about how easy it is, how Google hosts the typefaces,…
The W3C has today announced its brand new validator, named Unicorn for reasons they do not explain. The new validator combines four other validators into one: Unicorn combines a number of popular tools in a single, easy interface, including the Markup validator, CSS validator, mobileOk checker, and Feed validator, which…