Check out these websites that took one look at tables, the traditional way to arrange lots of content, and smashed the table to pieces. Rob Morris, Jonathan Yuen and Dave Barnes have some really off the wall sites that should make the designers of the worlds worst websites turn in their digital graves.

Digital mash is from down-under web designer Rob Morris. It is straight down the middle brilliant, with clear info and plenty of little touches to entertain and inform you. We would point out the pensive designer seated in a deck chair. Clearly a surreal, other-worldly picture, because there is no sign of lager or other 3rd party substance to explain this guy's over-active brain. We found digitalmash.com via a podcast from Practical Web Design.

Jonathan Yuen is on another planet, in a good way. Fire up this site, turn off the lights and enjoy the trip through what appears to be a real zen garden. And don't freak out, the cursor control is deliberate. Breathe deeply, exhale, it's all good.

Dave Barnes is chasing mississipi and doing a really good job. They say that embedded music that launches when a web page opens is a real design no-no. I have to agree, normally, but here I am writing this article, listening to a string of music blasting uncontrollably from this totally engrossing website. The guy is a total rule breaker. There isn't a straight line on the page, no discernible menu, and even the form to subscribe to his newsletter is a squiggly mark at the top of the page. It is a disgrace that there is no alternative version to cater for the rectangular thinkers in the world!

It is weird hovering on the homepage, because on the one hand, he has included features so people can play and explore, yet on this homepage there is so much to discover, I don't want to click on anything just in case I get whisked away, never to return. But rest assured, when the time comes to stop looking and begin delving, the site evolves yet again to a higher level.

Every link blows an info sheet away from the left side of the page and replaces it with another. So I don't ever leave the homepage. Wow. One moment I am looking at his tour notes, the next, a selection of Dave Barnes' music.

Fricking amazing and indicative of the minds and aims of all three web site owners. Got any totally out there fave sites?





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Joggers the world over are hitting the streets with their latest mp3 audio fashion accoutrements strapped to their bicep. However, sometimes it is difficult to tell what function the gadget on people's arms actually performs!

iPods are obvious

It is easy to know an iPod when you see one. All Mp3 players beginning with the letter i are elegant contraptions that look like they just grew there.

Although it may be obvious to us young things why a runner is carrying an iPod on their arm (if you forgot, it is in order to be motivated by low grade audio at 99 cents a pop), to others less hip and trendy, its purpose isn't so clear. Confused old Doris Macintyre, for instance, asked,

"What is the purpose of those garish white cords connecting the runners' ears to their arm?"

Her husband aged 95, replied "They are there to keep your eyes level relative to your torso when jogging."

Sharp as a button she retorted "Why isn't it called the Eye-Body then?"

iPods rock a robber's world!

Further testament to the foresight of the designers of the classiest musical devices to be found, is that they are the objects of desire for most muggers too. Light and easily transportable, iPods make for perfect petty crime, especially when beautifully presented in arm bands.

Doris' husband had no answer to her Eye Body idea but spotted a pretty jogger approaching and pushed his wife's wheelchair into her path, causing the young woman to fall. After helping the shaken runner back on her feet , Ginger Lightfingers Macintyre lifted her iPod too and sent her on her way.

"Happy Birthday Doris, have another hot iPod."

Less iPod more OMG

Harder to identify in terms of funcionality are the East German designed brick-like gizmos strapped to runners' arms. At first glance they resemble a medical device, perhaps a mobile iron lung? On closer inspection, however, these brown atrocities are found to be MP3 music players too, embellished with a name beginning with Z...! Clunky, wireless and expensive, the musical heavyweight Zunes should be kept inside at all times, in a darkened room similar to where you'd keep an iron lung.

check this head to head between iPod and Zune to see what you think.

Samson Y34XFC-V1

Judging by the strained and sweaty look on some joggers' faces, it would be wise to purchase the fictitious Samson Y34XFC-V1 mp3 player. Almost iPod-like in appearance, (but with the additional FM radio and sound recorder that Apple found impossible to incorporate), the marvellous gadget also has an in-built facility for checking blood pressure on the move. Who says you can't have too many features! And definitely one for Doris Macintyre to strap to her arm on her thrice daily pickpocket excursions?


Got any ideas for all-in-one gadgets?



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Many apps have the saving Ctrl-Z function, allowing you to jump back a step to rectify that loopy idea to Delete when you meant Save; to un-resize an image you should never have resized; to Open a document you never should have Closed. Some apps like Photoshop have what is called an Undo stack, so you can do multiple Undoes. But Undo is not universal and especially when you are working on-line, where is a damn Undo button when you need one?

Copy and paste to oblivion

I just edited a poor article written by my good self many months ago, and I was very pleased with the new draft. After a couple of hours of digging deep for a new angle, I had revitalised a lame post about not being able to tell the difference between some mp3 players and a blood pressure monitor. The banal paragraph was turned into a witty tale involving a couple of geriatric pickpockets who lifted iPods from the arms of joggers after accidentally knocking them over in their wheelchair.

It was a relief to see the last edit made, and all was hunky dory. But just prior to publishing, I changed some link code, nothing to do with the article per se. Without thinking, I copied the code and for some reason, the old article too, and pasted the whole lot over the spanky new document. In a second of lunacy I had overwritten my revised award-winning article and preserved a piece of crap.

But I was cool. I would just undo my stupidity. Fat chance. Ctrl-Z was nowhere to be found on my 21st century blogging software. No sign of the 20kb article in 768MB of memory either? Come on. (Plus a few expletives and, if you know Fargo, a few beatings of a non-compliant appliance!)

Incomplete functionality

Why is it that without resorting to a mouse once, you can do useless things like copy, paste, italicize, embolden, and underline any text, anywhere, anytime in any application on or off-line using keystrokes. Why is it that with the memory of an elephant you can abuse keystrokes and take stupid screenshots, launch useless macros, open specific documents, open one app and close another and so on and so forth without ever breaking your stride while typing - but you can't Ctrl-Z to undo all work at all times? What is that all about?

It is about developers not writing a script, that's what it is all about. End of that debate!

Is this my Undoing?

I am not a pirate, but I wish I could have pirated OS X Leopard when I had the chance and kicked Time Machine, the instant back-up feature, into gear, That would have done the work neglected by the bloody app developer who left me high and dry. Listen to me, I am being corrupted all because of the lack of an Undo script that could have been written by a knowledgeable chappy in 5 measly minutes.

Now I have to decide. Do I let it go and move on, or do I lose another hour of my life redoing the article? An hour may not sound like much, but it is like an aeon when writing under that cloud that engulfs you when you are repeating work that was to all intents and purposes completely fine! Maybe today isn't a good day. I will let it go - for now. Relax....



I didn't know about the foam hammer, so all I need now is a Ctrl-Z function to Undo the crack in my screen!

What is the most work you ever lost to a computer-based flake out?

btw, not one single pixel was actually damaged in the creation of this article.

Update. I managed to somewhat salvage the iPod armband saga

Grappling with a fading, pulsating downright irritating internet connection today, how ironic that I am trying to publish a short sharp post related to SpeedMatters!

High speed internet my ass

SpeedMatters have a cool USA-wide test for internet download and upload speeds. Once the fun is over, they offer all sorts of comparisons to perk your interest in the fact that the USA is sooo far behind the rest of the world in matters of internet, it isn't funny.

Seriously, if you are happy with your internet connection, you are being stiffed.

The report showed a national median download speed of a sluggish 1.9 megabits per second (mbps). Compare that to median speeds of 61 mbps in Japan, 45 mbps in South Korea, and 17 mbps in France, and it's clear that the U.S. is falling far behind. Median upload speed in the U.S. was an exceedingly slow 371 kilobits per second.

Their findings are so disturbing, that the organisers have drafted a letter to Congress begging them to make internet accessible to the masses. (Action you can take.)

For instance only a few percent of the 80,000 who took the speed test were on dial up. (I think only people with zippy Comcast connections did the test to feel good about how fast their line is, but who am I to judge?) The scary thing however, is, 40% of all US internet users are actually on dial-up, so the dismal results from the SpeedMatter guys were actually the most optimistically skewed figures could have produced!

I wonder if the asterisks explaining the lop-sided cross-section of testers will be rubbed out by the politicians and when they re-present the info to the public, they will say it isn't half as bad as the lobbyists make out because America has the fastest dial up in the world!

It is the truth that counts.

Bottom line, the SpeedMatters report is an indication that large swathes of rural America are missing out completely on the world wide web. Meanwhile, the rest are rolling along content with their hi-tech status, unaware that they are operating at an expensive snail's pace compared to the impoverished citizens in other nations. Imagine the glee of working in S. Korea or France, screaming through your surfing and on-line work days in triple quick time.

The USA is lagging, according to SpeedMatters, and, any which way you spin it, the internet service is appalling for a developed country touting itself as efficient. Take the test, and do your bit to increase the bytes you can play with on-line. Remember, the French work 35 hour weeks. If you had their internet service, you could go home an hour or three earlier every day!!

Out of interest, leave your results in Comments, and show us what you got!

If reading or writing online snippets of under 140 characters is your thing, you will love the inanane chitter chatter micro-blogging diary-gone-mad phenomenon of Twittering.

Twitter, our savior

Like we couldn't live without another Web 2.0-ism! Thank you Twitter for bridging the gap between manic text messaging on cell phones, (an unbearable and inordinately complex and wasteful pastime), and blogging.

But I jest, of course. Twitter is a new online communication paradigm suitable for instant messaging on phones and PC's and any other device you hold dear. Embrace!

Nowadays, to chuckle at your sister's private smitten kitten ramblings about boys, all mixed in with I hate my nosey brother comments, and every step of her trip for coffee, just find her Twitter name and track the conversation.

Hi all my best friends I saw an hour ago, I am going to the toilet now and then I am off to Starbucks. Aren't you pleased I am sharing that with you in real-time? What else do you need to know? Twitter / Jaiku me, ciao. XOXOX.

Anyone else at Starbucks? Jinx.

If that boy with the earring and weeping blue mole is still serving mocha at Starbucks, who wants me to say hi to him? Be quick, I just opened the door.

Oooh, it is cold in here. I asked them to turn down the a/c. They said, no. What should I reply? Quick.

I borrowed a coat. Mocha tastes like mocha. Is that how it is supposed to taste. Help.

Likewise, there is no need to even wait till tomorrow for words from your favorite blogger. Twitter and micro-blogging enable us to access and read blow-by-blow accounts of the life of any blogging Twit (Or not, in this case of Leo laporte jumping ship to Jaiku! ) It is sooooo cool - also not!

Chris Bailey is equally unimpressed, or is it bamboozled by the whole idea, likening Twitter to stalking! (Unfortunately it is almost impossible to get arrested for stalking, so I doubt Twittering will ever be outlawed.)

The good in twitter

I am cynical and ignorant. However, if internet gurus like Paul Boag or the guys behind MyBlogLog are behind Twitter, there must be a reason they talk it up?

In Mr Boag's case, I heard he doesn't really understand why it is so popular in his world.

My theory is, he met the founder of twitter who probably sounded credible enough to convince him that there must be something unique (and currently intangible) in this micro blogging idea.

One day, oh Web 2.0 warrior, Twitter 11.7 will be of use to the mainstream. One day it will save your life, so why not give it a go.

The satire in twitter

After doing a 180, and looking past Twitter's non-ruby related growing pains, I think the good may well outweigh the bad and bewildering aspects. For instance, how cool that you can pretend to be someone else, like this Condoleeza Rice imposter twittering as if (s)he were at the White House. Thanks to Open for that touch of twitter satire.

Or you can relive historical moments like the Hindenburg disaster!

Sign me up for that sort of creative misuse of a new technology. Rather like back in the 60's, using a trendy typewriter for a doorstop, so wrong, but if needs must...

In conconclusion

Micro-blogging is currently a fairly elitist tech pastime, but one day, it will evolve into the consciousness of every grandmother and aging uncle on earth, somehow, some day. Meanwhile check out another Twitter clone mentioned here, plus Jaiku and Tumblr.

Live a bit - under the microscope.

In MacSimum I was reading about an app called Yep, the ultimate PDF organiser. It does seem pretty cool and has all the bells and whistles to find anything, anytime. It occurred to me, though, that millions of us already have a pretty good PDF filer on our desktop, and didn't even know it.

iTunes is quite a well-known program for organising and playing music. It has morphed into a video and TV show player too. But did you know you can store all your PDF documents on it too and use the powerful iTunes search tool to keep track of them? Well, you can.

How to sort and search PDFs on iTunes

All you do is make a new folder in iTunes and drag the PDFs from your hard drive into this new folder.

To find the title of a PDF at a later date, just apply a search in itunes toolbar and iTunes will turn it up for you.

Double click on a PDF title and it will open in your default Preview or Adobe app.

Precise search

Searching for PDFs by keyword in iTunes isn't perfect, and where $35 Yep excels, but iTunes has a powerful search tool and if you go beyond a barebones title for your PDF's you will improve your chances of good results.

Keeping it simple, I would use the Get Info command and just write a descriptive entry for the Name of the file! Activities for teaching adults how to be funny I would then expand the name with some more keywords to further describe the content covered. eg Activities for teaching adults how to be funny - jokes, mimic


Create a smart playlist and then you can right click and Edit it to search for specific PDFs eg In the search fields write

name CONTAINS teaching
name CONTAINS jokes

This will show results for all Pdfs containing teaching and jokes in the name field.

If that tip just saved you $35 and / or a lot of time - send half the money to Yep to invest in a decent iTunes killer and the rest to a charity of your choice.

According to the latest ready reckoner from the Business Opportunities website, this blog is worth almost $56,000. The amount is a fictitious one, unless I am mistaken, but it does at least give you a gauge that is enlightening, in a money-grabbing capitalist kind of way. Money talks. Or does it?

Slowly does it

Wouldn't you rather have a website with 56,000 daily visitors and no income? Yes, if it were a blog, I would! Because with that much traffic, I would have a sound base from which to monetize the site at any time in the future. The John Chow character currently with all the readers in the world waited till he had a ton of traffic before he started to add in ads and nonsense paying posts and all sorts of revenue generators. Viola, as the illiterate Frenchman said, he built up his income to $10 or $12k per month and still his readership grows. Opportunistic and successful with it, he invested in his high readership stats and made them pay.

You need to act fast sometimes

Another smart guy (sorry I can't find the post!) came up with an idea for a site, but he wasn't so lucky with the money-making angle. He put his single page of digital genius online and attracted 40,000 visitors in no time. He was frantically asking around for advice on how to monetize his site, but by the time he took the decision to place a single Adsense block above the sole piece of info on the web page, the novelty wore off, numbers plummeted and he lost out.

Digg is another example of how poor judgement at monetization time can lose you everything - unless you have the luck of the Rose. A few months ago, Digg were offered $100m to sell. The founders were like tongues hanging out saying Yes, yes, Yes. The board said No, they wanted $150m. Apart from the adrenalin rush coming to nothing, it seemed like no big issue at the time. Their pay day was assured at some time in the future.

However, when that fiasco blew up over a set of HD-DVD encoding numbers, Digg teetered on the brink of losing everything. What would the management have said had the legal eagles nailed their ass to a post and that pay day had been buried forever? Gulp! Open another beer, and let's vodcast, probably

On balance

As editor of the Pisstakers, I would rather have the traffic and then generate revenue as subtly and fairly as possible, ie ensure that the readers who built the site up, don't get hammered with a poorer blogging experience. And if the monthly numbers are sufficiently ritzy then I am sure some enterprising so-and-so will make me an offer in order to ride on the coat tails of my success.

Relax, I am definitely open to offers. A one-off payment would do me fine. Somewhere in the region of $2.2m, my desired sell out price and guaranteed to keep me blogging for a few years yet!!

The iPhone from Apple has a few days left in hiding before its 29th of June release. If you watch the promo video, you will see the phone / iPod / GPS coffee maker has a screen that should make video-watching half way bearable. In response to a great new gadget, HungryFlix have launched a service to provide all you iPhoners-in-waiting with a plethora of fab films to download.

Feature length movies

From Wages of Sin to Mulva: Zombie Ass kicker available for quick and easy download, it is shaping up to be an entertaining commute to the office. And you don't need to work in the city to afford films - the two examples are $4.95 and $2.99 respectively.

Top rate music videos

If gore isn't your thing, and for many it isn't, how about some easy listening muzak videos? Top of the billing is My Virgin Widows, a Gothic Blue-Grass murder-ballad by the NYC band, Mors Syphilitica, just 99 cents. Having had your blood curdled by that one, you need a little soother of a tune.

Further down the available music vid for download list, I couldn't agree more with Erica Diaz, singing a song about a young girl imagining a better world she wishes to live in.

Conclusion about HungryFlix

The website is clean and easy to navigate and there are good summaries and clear pricing and the prices seem right. Should be a winner - eventually, hopefully.

With an iPhone, the world is supposed to be better place for us klutzes who can't make the buttons on a normal cell phone work. But if the iPhone is just a vehicle for B-rate movies and never-was songs, maybe I am better off not bugging my wife to buy me an iPhone for her birthday.

HungryFlix better live up to their name and be ravenous for quality content. Check out the HungryFlix site, it can only get better.

Jeremy Fain's blog, Tech It Easy is a good example of guest blogging put to good use. One of his international co-writers, Vincent, a Dutchman writing in his native language of better English than me, penned a quick round-up of interviews featuring the top IT CEO's and their thoughts on leadership. I couldn't resist.

Andy Grove

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Looking at the Intel guru he seeemed to have a great face for audio podcasting, and no wonder the slogan was Intel inside. He hasn't worn well and should stay deep inside a building, locked away from the cameras, only to come out for radio interviews and in absentia award ceremonies.

Jeff Bezos

This guy is wasted at Amazon, he should be on the stage with his 2 to 4 hour comedy routine. He had me laughing with his hyena-like enthusiasm about bizarrely named Mechanical Turk and Elastic Compute Cloud services. Sounds like a Belgian punk rock band? The Arrington analogy to the Matrix was hysterical too. Good one - mwahahahhahaaha.

Eric Schmidt

He blew the lid on running Google. It blew me away too to see that not only are 3 heads better than one, but the triumvirate of leaders at Google (is that tautological?) has actually morphed into one most important person. That is a stellar way to create a good leader and proof that at Google, anything is possible.

Reid Hoffman

He is clearly a great leader. Is his motto, Follow me, or I will eat you for my second lunch? Just a thought after seeing his bio pic.

The original Tech It easy article is full of more useful links. Merci beaucoup, have a bon jour, and blog on.

I thought that I understood the basic set-up at the natural language search engine, Powerset, but then again!

However clever the developers might be, I don't know if their publicity machine is working. Is the search engine called Powerset as per the clip below from the Powerset website?




Or is the search engine due for release in September called Powerlab and is part of a Powerlabs.posse of products already out in the wild?

I offer the second option which is in contradiction to the above banner but in accordance with press releases and other bloggings by Powerset company members.ie The latest press release states that Powerlab is coming out in September. Doubly weird when I am already a Powerlabber!

SCREAM SCREAM. Name please!

So wtf is the enthusiasm for natural language when the geniuses changing the way we search create such ambiguous weirdness with their naming scheme?? Since having errors in my basic research pointed out by their product manager, I have tried to be a good little thoroughly reliable Power whatever it is researcher, but I am getting really confused.

One theory is that the keyword searches I have been doing to find out about them in Google is the proof that they are onto something with a radical natural search engine that would clearly answer the question, So whichis it, please, the powerset or the powerlab natural language search tool??

Smoke and mirrors

Their naming protocol is so arcane and confusing it makes me still wonder what natural language they are going to be using at the core of their search program. And if there is such mental exertion required to grasp the name of the search engine, I wonder what they are doing involving the general public at this Beta stage? Are we being lined up for the blame for any final failure. It is the beta testers' lack of linguistic analysis abilities that has ruined this natural search engine!

Maybe I am illiterate and don't really merit a role in this exercise? I thought I was quite good at linguistics at University though. Should I get Noam Chomsky's ape to explain it all to me?

Google v Powerset

As I said in a past Powerset post, these guys are deserving of support. When you put their aims in the context of producing the search equivalent of a Babel fish that acts in a human way, good luck to them. I also think Google need a kick up the ass, but are these Power hungry guys the ones to topple Larry, Sergy and co from their lofty search perch? Dunno.

It is all about positioning these days and multi billion Gooogle have the clout to park right up Powerset's ass if they want, engines running, waving blank checks to make sure they get what they want. .

My money is indeed on Powerset becoming Powerdoodle, a part of the Google division, taking this AI style search onward to a final conclusion and inclusion in Goooooogle search. The founders are hoping otherwise, because no way are Google share options going to go up as much as Powerset's might. But please give yourselves a chance and get the Power*.* branding right first.

Traditionally everybody uses IE7, followed by a few renegade Firefox users, followed even further behind by the smart-set Safari brigade. However there has been quite an interesting stat showing amongst the browsers used to access The Pisstakers. Opera, probably the classiest of all browser software is up from 0.4% to sneak into 3rd place with a stunning 6.4% share!

Who are Opera?

Opera are the cross-platform browser guys who seem to set the surfing standards which others follow. But in commercial terms all-singing, all-dancing Opera is one of those perennial underdogs even lower down the ladder of deserved success than mega underdogs Apple. However, their users appear to be surfing the satirical world with glee and who knows, extrapolating like an idiotic fanboy, who's to say Opera won't evolve from a blip on IE7's radar, to the tidal wave!!

Opera's bid for marketshare - going mobile?

It is clear that quality means nothing in the war to grab MS share, and to go head to head and beat the big desktop boys is way too costly. So Opera do what all good innovators do, they find a niche and go for it. The niche was Mobile Web, and while everyone else was slapping their successful desktop backs, and probably snorting at the idea of browsers on phones, Opera perfected a browser to fit on a tiny mobile / cell phone screen.

The Opera halo effect

The halo effect worked for Apple with the iPod and Opera could grow their desktop by a similar default too. If enough of the billion phone users like the fab Mini browser, (Opera Mini is a pure piece of browser brilliance that takes a web page and compresses it onto a phone screen, without spoiling the overall effect) who's to say they wouldn't like the desktop version with more features than ever.

If our browser stats for Opera are showing principally Opera Mini users, then the browser boys could already be onto something, and are growing overall browser market share without even needing to sniff in the direction of desktop based Internet Explorer. Talk about going through the side door!

Is your website mobile ready?

The Pisstakers have a style sheet specifically aimed at cell phones, and there is a perpetual button in the side bar of the blog promoting the Opera mini version of the website. Could our surprising browser usage stat be related to this piece of foresight on the part of Ed and designer, Bonsai Studio? Are commuters guffawing at the Pisstakers in glorious Opera technicolor? It would be cool if they were. I just apologise for the current expense of the bandwidth if this is the case.

How do the browser share stats compare to your stats? Is your blog optimised for Opera mini or the upcoming iPhone and future iPhone killers? Do you think mobile surfing is the way ahead? Questions questions!!

Safari has arrived in Windows land. Wince IE7 and move over Firefox, the fastest slickest browser on earth from Apple is ready to take over the number 2 spot. Slap me upside the head that claim smells like Steve Jobs bovine fecal matter. But he has every motivation to aim high, because the FREE browser will earn his company loads of money!

Nothing in life is free, at least nothing from a big corporation. There is always some angle going on that brings in revenue without the end user immediately realising it. So how does freebie Safari, for instance, generate lucre? Easy. It has Google search built into the browser bar. That free feature generates, according to some research by this fellow, $25m a year for Apple (to use to pay the developers, presumably working for mercenarily big bucks in Cupertino.)

Free Firefox generates $50m annually for Mozilla to offset their code monkey pay roll.

In layman's terms, every time someone searches, Google make a note of it and pay Apple/ Mozilla et al a few cents. Simple economics and a win win and significant income if you can get a lot of folks using your browser.

Netting millions of new Safari users

The trojan horse is iTunes, another free software that has plenty of features to make music management a joy. It is also a free money-making ride into a billion dollar store.

Apple will be able to lump free Safari for Windows onto the 1 million daily downloads of free iTunes, and grow the user base by a couple or three. Sounds like a plan to capture a few percentile points of market share.

Blogs are free and easy to earn money from!

Related to browsers and free, I suppose a blog is another free-to-use money-maker, assuming the blog is set up to generate revenue. Adsense is free to use, but makes money for Google and bloggers. It is a good business model.

And the free funny quotes widget from The Pisstakers: quotes link to various monetized blogs, so the zero cost code being installed around the internet by bloggers should generate real money via subtle pay per click or affiliate leads. Sadly, any widget-generated visitors to my site go to a blog that has nothing to sell!

Old Safari for Mac is sooo old

Meanwhile, in typical fashion, I find myself going against the grain and saying that my old version of Apple Safari for Mac is in fact crap. I have dumped it for the nippy Camino browser, poor relation to Firefox. As Mozilla need the money more than Steve Jobs, I support my favorite free browser by using integrated search, as should you!

And thanks to John Gruber for the inspiration for this post

On a lighter tech note, loosen up a bit with the Willy Name Generator from Generator Land! Click and flip through dozens of belly laugh names for the magnificent male appendage filling your boxers, boys! And ladies, find something to adequately describe and jolly along that thing you have been putting up with since the honeymoon ended.

Ed was getting all giddy with thoughts of firing off a Trouser Bazooka, and then almost fainted when Mrs Ed revealed she had been asked out on a date with Admiral Slippery Bat.

I couldn't help but think that Lord Likely was the originator of Sir Quiver Bone, but we may never know, unless Botter has some beans to spill once he has cleaned himself up?

And I couldn't help wondering if the diminutive Peter, master philosophical blogger at Necessary Skills, is in fact the Pocket Dolphin, billed to appear next Saturday night at some Canadian male revue. Perhaps he could get back to us on that and if it is him, we may brave a full body search at Customs and pop into Canada for a laugh.

I could go on, but I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, Euh, sorry about that imagery. See anything you like? There are loads of other random generators too, if you feel uncomfortable looking through the guest lists at the Dr One-Eyed Club.

I have been hovering on the edge of my seat for a web search engine called Powerset. It is a natural search engine which could be a Google killer if it works. But the company seems to be getting more bad press than good.

This morning I wrote People don't like that they are teasing us with sideshows, holding back the main show for release, perhaps in September. To add insult to injury, the background to the search page is black! Just a couple of obvious issues that have planted seeds of doubt in another start-up company.

No wonder it made people doubt the credibility of these rocket scientists, because someone called Ed, plus a fair few others, got the wrong end of the stick when reading a press release this morning. To clarify in words of one syllable:

The search engine is called Powerset. It isn't released yet.

The pictures above are of Powerlab, which is like a preliminary exercise or run-out for the technology that is going to be used in the finished search engine.

Powerset just launched Powerlab. Got it? Good.

This clarification also means the people who can't stand black can probably be guaranteed that the final search page will not have a background color: 000000.

I had another more cerebral doubt. Is this really a natural and intuitive system for finding info, or are the owners just spinning?

Powerset is intuitive?

Working on the basis that software is a reflection of the owner (Google and the Google owners have a certain snug fit symmetry, I think) what is really going on with Powerset's intuitive and natural search engine?

The About blurb on the CEO's blog site raised my hackles about "intuitive" straight away and made me wonder at what level the intuitive idea starts to permeate the software, because intuitive sure doesn't start with PR from the top! To show you what I mean, join me if you will in reading this:

Powerset is a San Francisco company building a transformative consumer search engine based on natural language processing. By making search more natural and intuitive, powerset is fundamentally changing how we search the web, and delivering higher quality results.

I had to read it three times to work out that I understand everything except transformative. Not being a smart ass, but I have a pretty good vocabulary, and sorry, but this member of the masses hasn't got a clue what the hell you are talking about with transformative. However, my intuition tells me it probably isn't that big a deal of a term, probably some cyber geek terminology.

Let's not get too nit picky, though, this is a start up. Just assume the PR wording is a minor geeky detail, of interest to a tiny minority only.

And let's not get too irate at the idea of drip feeding a product launch to the press, and just accept that in this day and age it was a dodgy tactic that is simply unintuitive not illegal.

And let's embrace the idea that something deep in my subconscious tells me black is not welcoming but it still works. And now we know that the black screenshot isn't even the search engine, we can totally relax!

In fact I won't get too hung up on the train of thought that intuitive and About Powerset don't quite gel. I will be kind and assume that the CEO got carried away with the use of transformative, and that he didn't write the software, and the developers are more the intuitive type and they have a search mind set that has been intuitive from the start?

Let's hope so - and if this guy is to be believed, the people building Powerset do indeed have 2 brains and think in the 5th dimension, so it should all work swimmingly.

This is a product to watch, and I for one look forward to trying it out and I will of course start with a search for The Pisstakers web search, Funny Quotes of the day, and roger my uncle. Powersetting should be an interesting exercise, but whether it is more natural and intuitive than Googling, only time will tell.

Powerset is a natural search engine?

There was a bigger alarm bell this morning , however, about whether this Powerset deal is more spin than revolution when a sharp-eyed geek commenting on Tech Crunch wondered why could he see a category on the screenshot called Porn?

As has been mentioned, however, the PORNOGRAPHY crisis is over. That screenshot isn't the search engine and the Porn category, pah, it's a joke that all you sex industry tourists hoping for good deals for Thailand can just wipe from your sleazy minds. So I too can strike the words that tumbled out my irrelevant mind.

As I understand it, Porn is short for pornography . Soft porn is an unnatural representation of a natural act. Hard core porn can be a graphic representation of some pretty unnatural acts. This reference to porn in the promo screenshot therefore seems to go directly against what the Powerset guys are trying to achieve right out the box - natural search for the masses.Or does the term transformative explain away these criticisms , and Powersets is natural, intuitive and for the masses who struggle to read a black background?

Never has so much confusion reigned over natural language! But thanks to Powerset Product manager Mark Johnson for calling my attention to this confused state of mind. And I guess that judging by the way he mainly referred to "PORN" on the blog as the P word, the PTakers won't get a mention in our entirety!

Some shock jocks are good, like Howard Stern. I have no gripe there, which is just as well as I am sure if I got in his line of fire I would end up divorced and picking colors for his wedding to my ex-wife. No, my mini rant is at lame-0's Anthony and Opie.

Anthony and Opie

(I thought that was Oprah Winfrey at first billing!) They have plenty of rude factor in their show, so no lame-o-ness there, but now they are back in their seats after a 30-day suspension, their response was, business as usual. Doh. If that is the case, get ready for another suspension, and another and another, until the show is so neutered it ends up like TV's Opie show minus mega audience giveaways.

Maybe the next potential suspension will be brushed under the carpet in a welter of sincere apologism, but surely, if the shock jocks fell into a sexual assault routine again and apologised as shock jocks should respond - with disdain - XM would have no other option but to take them off air again. (Disdainful response, yes, because it is only radio, and if you don't like them, then turn them off.)

Anyway, however they spin it, it isn't business as usual at all at the Anthony and Opie Show.

Shocking loss of freedom

In my humble opinion the main twist to this particular case is that more freedom of speech has disappeared into hyperspace!! As I said, censoring any radio is dumb, especially satellite radio but, the off button and commonsense self regulation on the part of the listener has been hijacked by knee jerk executive decisions. The independent, I mean partners (with Sirius) satellite radio company have taken shocking jocking into censorship territory after bowing so magnanimously to political, I mean merger correctness?

Instead of censoring, they could mute the transmission I guess. Silent shocking radio, that should bomb as well as Sirius share prices. Or do what the UK government did years ago and made the BBC etc substitute the Sinn Fein politicians' voices with an actor's voice, to somehow diminish the impact of the words!

And another thought. If these shock jocks already moved from terrestial to satellite for unacceptable behavior, where do they go next? Deep Space Radio? Thinking aloud, there are benefits to the new frontiers and, who knows how many gazillions of new listeners they could have? According to some science show I was watching, statistically there are 1 million lumps of rock with the same atmospheric conditions as our little earth, so there must be some alien political leaders out there who won't mind being violated on air.



Thanks to The Motley Fool for inspiring me this sticky Monday morning. They have a pretty neat beta site going on with lots of fun for wannabe stockpickers. Don't take any notice of me, though. I bought AAPL for $8.50 and sold at $20. Now they are $125 and still rising!

The search from Swicki just keeps on accumulating interest. Compared to Google searches, it is miniscule, but it seems to appeal to a fair few users every day and over time, I am sure it will actually have some tradable value. Hell, if you can sell old postcards...

The key feature of a Swicki is that it is very web 2.0, user-modifiable search engine. So you can search your blog name for instance, and then add in your own description, proper and informative for future searchers' benefit. I suppose it is a bit like the Technorati WTF feature where you can go to town expounding/expanding on a topic to your heart's content.

To be honest it makes me wonder why people got to The Pisstakers to search. And for pantone? Maybe they want to know the colors of the website to rip it off!!!

Comcast are about as useful as a snowball in hell. You would think that the least a mobile computer user could expect from a homogenous faceless corporation is a standard internet service wherever you go. But no. Sending emails is a hassle.

Port 25 blocked - sometimes

Until this morning, two Macs in our new Comcast-fed abode lay dead in the water, as far as email out was concerned. Ordinarily, flitting from one ISP to another while on the move, you would expect a little aggravation (perhaps) sending emails from Outlook or Mail. Perish the thought that emailing could be straightforward, and companies stick to one system! But to have to reconfigure your email account when emailing via the same company - come on, what's with that?!!!!

Well, for the bored with life, what's with that is this:

Port 25 is standard for outgoing emails

If you use Outlook or some other desktop mail client, (rather than hotmail or gmail) emails leave your computer via port number 25. Sadly, spammers know that too, and use port 25 to flood the world with digital crap. Because ISP's are part of the spam problem, unable to keep up with spammer tactics, basically, most choose to bury their head in the sand and block bona fide idiots like me from using port 25 to send their own legitimate emails while on the move.

That would be almost fine as a tactic if a) - it were a consistent policy, and b) - there were a clear set of instructions on what to do when faced with port 25 blocking. Comcast screwed up on both counts. At my last house they didn't have an issue with port 25, but at this place they do. And getting info from Comcast is like pulling teeth.

Checking to see why you cannot send emails

If you try to send emails and you see your email timing out for no apparent reason, you can do this telnet trick to troubleshoot your mail client. In my case, it proved that I wasn't mad and it said in black and white that there was no address ie the ISP, the craptacular crock of Comcast was blocking port 25.

Comcast help not

With hackles up, locked out of sending email for what reason? you ask Comcast Help for help. Because they only have like 2 permutations in their help book, anyone who isn't using comcast email and Outlook is pretty much floundering for an explanation from a techy. How annoying is it to find yourself in that loop of "Not my problem, talk to the hand, and then talk to the people who make your eMail client."

Of course, when pressed, the techy can bullshit you with "expansive online cross platform real world help" and give you a URL to a page with lovely photographic instructions for various email clients, one of which included step-by-step moves to set up Apple Mail.

And that is where the real issues began, because the instructions to send emails out via the Comcast server don't fricking well work. After following their arcane and completely erroneous instructions, I get over 900 unread emails downloaded, and downloaded and downloaded. I know I am popular, but not that popular. And I could not send a hint of an email still.

Apple support

Thank goodness for unpaid non-Comcast affiliated experts who rove the help forums at Apple support and take the time to apply their expertise to write clear simple steps on how to solve other companies' problems.

For anyone who is interested, you need to use port 587 and keep the rest real simple, much more simple than Comcast would have you believe.

Or to keep it real simple, stay at home and stick to a webmail set up.

How cool is it to select a piece of text in a browser and email it, or skype it off - in one move! Or have the computer read some text to you, or summarize it or....

Well, Mac OS X Services is able to do just that - take any piece of text from one application and put it straight to work in any another application. Unfortunately, it is an under developed aspect of Mac OS X, and needs some work.

I read an article in Daring Fireball and recalled an affair in the past with Services. This isn't a particularly amusing post, but I really need to share my contribution to solving an issue that would make Services rule the world!

Services is a fantastic option with a long-winded shortcut

As you see from the screen shot, once you have selected some text to perform some magic with Services, activating Services is a bit Windowsesque. Apple haven't got over the traditional menu item structure.



It isn't exactly a stone age solution, far from it, but launching Services in its current format, it is barely faster than drag 'n drop or copy and paste.

Drag 'n drop flop

Services is an even niftier way to get work done than drag 'n drop, which in itself is a very flexible alternative to copy and paste. Currently on a Mac, neither Services nor Drag 'n Drop are super sharp. For instance, drag is universal, but drop isn't!

You can drag text from Word, or in this case, a notepad, and drop it onto a new email window - as long as both applications are open on the desktop.



You can drag a photo onto the photoshop icon and it opens Photoshop

You can't drag text onto the Mail icon and open a new email. Der. The solution is to drag the text onto the the desktop. It will be saved as a file which you then drag onto the Mail icon. Mail opens and you drop the file straight into a new email. That part of the operation is kind of cool, but overall drag 'n drop is inconsistent. Try the same procedure with Skype - you can't - which is annoying.

Anyway, that kind of drag and drop is soo 2002.

Exposé for drag 'n drop

There is a 2005 alternative to conventional drag 'n drop! Press F9 and you see every window open on your desktop. Far from eye candy, the Exposé ´féa´túré is a clever way to move info from application to application.

As an example, to move any text from one open app to another, all you do is select the text from the notepad (or Word or Firefox), drag it an inch or two, and then hold.

Press F9. Spot the the Mail thumbnail on the screen, for instance, and continue dragging the text you have in limbo, until you have it hovering over the mail window. Hold it steady... When the Mail window opens, you drop the text into the email window.



This is a pretty cool way to transfer text from one app to another, but again, only works if the destination app, Mail in this case, is already open.

Services stomps all over drag 'n drop

Services can not only take the text and open an application with it, but it will launch the function you want to perform too - in one single action. So you can copy text from Firefox, launch Services and in one move, Services will open Mail, create a new email and paste the text straight into it. You can use the same text and Services to open Skype and create a Skype message.

This is totally awesome, but as I showed above, it is a bit more klutzy to activate right now than it need be.

Ed's way to sexify services

In my opinion, this graphic shows the next generation way to make Services a killer easy option! Make Services options an extension of what is already available in OS X dock.

Basically you drag the text from your notepad or Word or whatever and hold it over the Skype icon in the dock. (The top 4 options are current Services options that I borrowed from the Services menu!) Drop the text onto one of the Services options and ... Mwahaha, how totally efficient is that!

Apple, kings of simple, currently have a long way to go to make the Services function as user-friendly as it needs to be, so it can become mainstream and must-have. What do you think to this solution? Is it technically possible? Or more to the point, is it a slicker solution than tear-off menus, or contextual menus like Icecoffee?

Normal service will now be resumed!

It is quite easy to hide behind anonymity, but it doesn't hurt to be polite on-line. And if you can't be polite, at least be gracious. Here are a few rudenesses that I have noticed on the internet.

ALL CAPs is a pretty rude way to address someone online, as is F... this f... that on a forum or site you haven't commented on before.

Racial remarks, hate and personal attacks are a no-no too. Did you hear of the nasty episode involving a speaker called Kathy Sierra

Spamming isn't exactly polite either , and off-topic remarks can verge on rude at times.

Mis-spelling someone's name is a faux pas to avoid (sorry Barry Hnetka) as is revealing someone's personal details to the world.

Ignoring emails When you go to quite a lot of trouble to write someone an email, to be nice, and they never acknowledge you in the smallest way. That is rude, especially when you are in their address book!

Ed's personal irritants with comments

There are a couple of comment-related things that really irritate the fricking HELL out of my ugly white ignorant hetero honky protestant ass currently located at IP adress 76.345.274.

Ignoring comments

Firstly, leaving comments that never ever get an answer or so much as a by your leave. Turn off comments if you don't reply to anything! If I sound hypocritical to anyone who thinks I haven't replied to their comment, that is blindness on my part, not ignorance, as I check the comments summary every day and do my utmost to acknowledge you all in some way.

Password protecting comments

How annoying is to go out your way to leave a comment and then you have to work out some captcha crap, or make out some contrived code of hidden letters or add 2 plus 2. I don't know what spam filters the commenting systems for Blogger and Wordpress use, or how much spam you guys get, but can we all please play fair and have the filtration work done by the same robots that haloscan use behind the scenes? No passwords or hoops to jump through at the front end, just comment and send.

I will probably be spammed off the planet tomorrow, but, honestly, not one single spam comment yet. Just wish my Pisstakers email filter was as efficient.

So, now that is off my chest, what online mal etiquette irritates you?

Sounds like Google are biting the butts of a certain genre of blogger , the ones who run backlink for review features that resemble Googlebombs. This term, according to Google

refers to a prank where people attempt to cause someone else's site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query

Googlebombs projected a certain politician to the top of searches for miserable failure, but it looks like they have evolved into causing failure for smart ass bloggers.

In a new angle on reviews, reviewers had to include links to a site using specific meaningful phrases (proscribed anchor text). Overnight, these terms, like make Money Online became new world googlebombs. The gamers would have got away with it, if they hadn't milked the idea to death to get top of the SERP.

This new algorithm isn't so harsh that it treats every review for links feature as undesirable. Good reviews with content and keywords of value to readers / searchers are what Google encourage. However, the gamers took a decent idea and turned it into a shady content-poor idea - and ultimately wasted the reviewers' time. With no desire to add any content of their own to the conversation, except make a link and ask for more submissions, the gamers banged away at the feature for months, building link networks and adding not a lot else to the value of the internet.

Google has taken a look at their contribution to content and decided enough is enough. The gamers have been knocked down a peg or two and to get back to the top of the search results they are now going to have to add valuable content again. How harsh is that!?

Surely experts know that Google search algorithms are nebulous and constantly in flux. The secrecy