Catching up with Zeldman sent me off in six different directions, of course, but I especially enjoyed reading Web architecture | XML zone : The Web's future: XHTML 2.0 at IBM's developerWorks site.
The proposed changes to HTML (I mean XHTML) sounds like steps in the right direction (ditching presentational tags, rationalizing noncontaining tags, dropping img in favor of object, etc.). Reading about them gave me this little frisson of excitement I remember from first learning HTML. All that power at your fingertips, with conceptual clarity possible as well.
categories: fireweaver
11:11:06 PM 
say what []
Well, after that self-indulgent post about Salon rankings I thought I owed it to myself to dig a little deeper and go look at some more Salon blogs, starting at the recently updated page.
I stumbled across a fairly new blog, Standing Room Only, by Hugh Elliott. His topics are Media, Humor, Television, Gay, Life. I read all the posts and now I want more! Hope he keeps it up.
categories: salonika
5:53:53 PM say what []
Well, the race is on. Will I catch up to the (on vacation) Plan B blognovel to become the number two all-time Salon blog after Scott? Or will the Cowgirl lap me before I make it?
For all I know I may have plateaued (that can't be the right spelling) already. It's embarassing to be beaten by both halves of filchyboy (I still don't get what's up with his site being registered at two usernums—it really cuts into his rank!).
At our current differential, RevCow will outstrip me in twelve days or fewer. I just have to hope Plan B's vacation lasts that long! Nevertheless, I'm afraid I'll be back in third place again before long even if I do make it to the coveted (if meaningless) number two spot. I shouldn't count out Michel Vuijlsteke either, especially not if he spots another topless model sometime soon.
At least I'm keeping ahead of the anonymous Pornographer.
categories: radioactive
5:26:01 PM say what []
Keep them reviews coming! You work long and hard on a project like my last book (and there was a big team of people working on it with me) and then it goes out the door and it all starts to seem a bit like a dream. Oddly, reviews like this remind me of what I was trying to accomplish with that book:
[A]s a writer I would find it very challenging to write a book combining the use of two of Macromedia's complex software tools. Author Christian Crumlish met the challenge...I wonder if Matt Brown got his review copy yet? No review on his blog yet.
Dreamweaver MX Fireworks MX Savvy is aimed at users of all experience levels. ... Crumlish takes an approach that matches real-world work flow. This work-oriented approach starts in Dreamweaver with planning and setup, moves into Fireworks for graphic creation, and then back to Dreamweaver to build the site.
categories: fireweaver
4:45:16 PM say what []
Inscrotable! The always-hinky MichaelZ sends along this link to the Scrotum Gift Shop down under.
categories: x-pollen
4:18:30 PM say what []
So now people looking for christian nude are finding their way to RFB.
Don't worry.
Best item on the first page of results: Should a Christian do a nude scene?
I also get a lot of e-mail queries from people wanting to publish religious-themed books because they've searched online for a "Christian literary agent" and they find me instead...
categories: x-pollen
9:30:37 AM say what []
Web addresses were never supposed to be human-readable. The fundamental hyperlinking concept of the Web is intended to mask the underlying Internet protocols and commands required to retrieve data. But the reality is that we see, store, type, copy, and paste URLs all the time (or else the "dotcom" meme would never have taken off), and we sometimes need to guess a URL by chopping, rewriting, or simply conjuring a possible address from the imagination.
So reality suggests that we create URLs that make as much sense to people as they do to databases and web servers. Jesse James Garrett writes about how to make your URLs user-friendly in an article at AdaptivePath.com:
Systems that don't take this user behavior into account pull the rug out from under users who have come to rely on readable URLs.
categories: fireweaver
9:20:44 AM say what []
Dylan Tweney's latest Business 2.0 column advises businesses to steer carefully between the six-figure CMS overkill solutions that thrived during the dotcom boom and the other end of the spectrum, reinventing the CMS wheel yourself in-house.
I've been doing content management-related consulting for the last five years and there's a big hole in the middle of the market for CMS framework software that will handle 80% of the needs of most clients. There's no need, most of the time, to spend half a million dollars implementing a universal document management, record-keeping type system.
I wonder how many businesses could manage their web and intranet content just fine with affordable tools such as powerful blog systems (for example, pMachine or Movable Type) or more full-featured but still affordable-bordering-on-free CMS tools (for example, Manila and PostNuke).
categories: knowhow
9:13:46 AM say what []
Catching up with Spartaneity this morning leads me to the Weblog Blog at CyberJournalist.net. The site is for and about journalist bloggers (referred to there as J-bloggers).
Hey, if enough of these blogging about blogging sites appear, I think I can put my feet up and just let everyone else do this work!
So, there are no permalinks there (although there is a link to an article that discusses why permalinks are important), which means I don't know what you'll see if and when you follow the above link, but the two most recent entries are both interesting.
The first deals with how Sheila Lennon posted the entire transcript of her interview with Times reporter David F. Gallagher, thereby offering a supplement to the single paragraph of quotations from the interview that made into print.
The next item is the one that Spartaneity commented on, an update on MSNBC's blog initiative:
MSNBC.com has launched a new feature called "Weblog Central," which aims to "serve as a perch from which you can observe and participate in the brave new world of personal news." The site's Will Femia will write a daily Blogspotting weblog to "shine a light on life in the blogosphere. . . .We'll count on bloggers and those who know and appreciate online journals to help us spot trends, share tips and make connections," says Joan Connell, MSNBC.com's Executive Producer for Opinions and Communities.
categories: metablog
8:45:44 AM say what []
