Here and There

A blog can be proud of itself, eh? I mean, I’m sitting on top of Apple.

Like many bloggers, I live for comments. I don’t get nearly as many as I’d like, and that may easily be because of my inability to mentally stimulate.

But I’d also like to think that part of it is the extra step of having to register (for some), log in, then type a comment and save.

Well …

I’ve just made things a lot easier (I think, anyway): I activated the reCAPTCHA plugin, which allows readers such as yourself to enter a name, email (kept private), website if you’d like, your comment, and which then requires you to type words rendered as images. CAPTCHA, in case you didn’t know, is simply a way for applications to tell humans from computers. Not too many computers are sophisticated enough (yet) to look at a word rendered as an image and then type it out in actual text. Humans can do that. Yay humans!

Having people register and log in to comment is a blog setting I chose awhile ago as a way to prevent the copious amounts of spam I was receiving (and continue to receive, though it’s blocked). With reCAPTCHA, I no longer need such a barrier.

So hopefully removing that requirement will generate more and more comments on this here blog, and we’ll all have a happy new stop on the internets highway.

Happy commenting!

The last two places I’ve worked, the San Francisco Examiner newspaper and Wired.com, both suffered from at least one identical deficiency: Both of their internal website search functions sucked a big one.

Awhile back, a friend and colleague showed me the trick on Google Advanced Search wherein one can limit a search to a specific website.

Go to google.com and click Advanced Search. Then, under “Search within a site or domain:” enter the site you wish to search.

And don’t forget to love the google.

It’s time for them to go.

That is all I’d like to say right now.

Used WordPress’s backend to post that first blog post from the iPhone. Everything worked fine, except when I went to add categories. There was no scroll bar to scroll down my list of available categories, so I had to choose only from the first five or six that showed up.

Hmph … where is mobile MarsEdit when you need it?

Yes, I’m breaking somewhat of a cardinal sin of this blog, but I’ve got to get some of this down. I’m planning to buy the iPhone 3G on Saturday morning, breaking my contract with Verizon, and, well, seeing whether my life will indeed change with this seemingly awesome gadget.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you here, but I have a feeling I may become about as obsessed with the phone as I was Obama a few months back.

A Prolific Squalor is no longer with us, sadly.

RIP.

Anyone who knows what happened to this joyous little stop on the internet, please let us know in comments.

Some polls are showing a tightening race, both on the state and national levels.

This makes sense when you consider the almost mandatory shift to the center that occurs once primary battles are over.

We’ve seen it happen in Obama, surely. But not so much McCain. McCain’s rightward shift, while based on a plausible idea, will baffle me to no end (unless, miracle of miracles, he wins in November) considering the collective wisdom that the prize lies in the middle.

On Obama’s much-criticized policy shifts, I want to list the ones I’m aware of, and give a simple yay or nay:

• Iran: simply, he needs Jews to vote for him, so eh
• Public financing: excited yay
• Death penalty: nay, but also, whatever
• FISA: big bad NAY
• Second amendment: eh, yay

Two yays, two nays, and an “eh.” Zero-sum. Not bad. I saw this shift coming. It’s just the FISA one I can’t let go, especially considering that, as recently as last week, he said he would do what he could to strip the bill of telecom immunity.

With the most negative traction on McCain recently being his ignorance of technology, the poll-tightening is not surprising.

I expect people to slowly stop paying attention, at least on the fevered levels we’ve seen coming out of the primaries. And rightly so: the electorate stands every chance of growing bored and disillusioned if the candidates continue to hog the spotlight.

(A possibly recurring post)

Been running Firefox 3 since its June 17 release, and I’m pleased to report no significant glitches. Errors I have seen (two, I think) were corrected with a simple refresh.

Right now, one of my favorite features is how, when you’ve got enough open tabs that they crowd the tab bar and some are pushed “off screen” to the left or right, if you’ve got a trackpad that scrolls left and right, you can place your cursor over the tab bar and move left and right, bringing up the tabs that fell off.

It’s much more elegant than clicking a left or right arrow button, which, by the way, is still there.

And by that I mean the ability to share items and add a note to your share.

Google Reader has done it, and I’m addicted. I liken this to what I imagine Twitter to be: a way to get short, succinct messages to multiple people. Only with Google Reader, it’s based on things you read or see online, not what you’re doing that day.

Now, if only I could get more of my friends to sign up …

PS: I’m not claiming to have coined the term microblogging. But it’s what I first called Twitter, and now call the “share with note” feature. It can also be called macrotexting. Take your pick.

I’m still awaiting word on what exactly happened to Al Giordano’s The Field blog.

All I know is this: He posted this item sometime Friday, and by 9:30 p.m. EST, the blog was nowhere to be found. It was up again at this location, and Al says he’ll fill everyone in sometime today.

It involves being censored over a post about, you guessed it, how Obama won in the face of overwhelming odds.

Stay tuned.

No, not an approval/disapproval, but this:

Which is dumber: The “whitey” nonsense, or the fist-jab flap?

I’m torn.

I don’t mean to hurt this blog’s feelings, but when I’m browsing through content in my Google Reader, I often see things I want to share with friends, but not necessarily add here as link recs.

I discovered today, however, that I can link the world (or at least my faithful readers here) to my shared items. Not sure how new of a feature this is, but there you go.

A link to my Google Reader shared items now appears under Misc. on the left nav bar (scroll down if you don’t see it now). Here’s another link.

Oh how I love the Google.

Patent application shows that Apple may be adding instant-message capability to its popular smartphone.

We beat nytimes.com and Slate.com!