Brian Fitzgerald

It may not be often that you give your mouse a lot of thought, but I just had one of those moments where I thought “Wow! What a great mouse."

I use a Logitech VX when I’m portable and a Logitech MX at my desktop. These are basically the same mouse with some small differences that make each better for the environment they were designed to be used in. The key feature on both is a scroll wheel that is able to work (as many scroll wheels do) in a mode that sort of clicks as you scroll, and a mode that is unique where it is free to spin like the Price-is-right Big Wheel. This last mode is by far my favorite. When you are on a long document of any sort it is really nice to be able to give the wheel a little flick and have the page scroll along until you stop the wheel. The wheel is weighted to keep it moving and has a good-enough build quality that it doesn’t feel like a cheap feature as one might expect that it would.

Digital-Web Magazine offers an educational article about PNGs and how to use them in ways that no other web image format can be used.

I have really enjoyed reading the blog recently started by our city’s police chief. It gives, what I think, is a rare and honest look at the inside of law enforcement. Yesterday he provided his response to the many complaints he hears about there not being enough police around schools in the morning to prevent accidents such as those that happened last week at Prescott Elementary.

AIGA has a current article titled Jack We Hardly Knew Ye. It tells the story of the creation of the Cingular and AT&T logos. The Cingular logo (orange X with a head) is of course on its way out as the AT&T brand takes over the new merged company. Its too bad. I think its one of the best logos out there today and really brings a fun and easy feeling to a phone company – which is not fun or easy.

They’ve added the classic star trek shows to iTunes. Get your ‘Trouble with Tribbles’ and ‘Space Seed’ now!

This can be filed under “posting so I can remember later”. Darwin Ports has become MacForge. This is a super useful, albeit geeky resource for open-source projects that run on OS X.

technorati tags:macforge

I’m in columbus, nebraska tonight between sessions of a two-day dreamweaver workshop that I’m facilitating. I turned on the TV, watched a replay of the US getting spanked by the czechs in the world cup, then saw the funniest thing I have seen in a long time: The USA Rock, Paper, Scissors League championship. A full blown sports broadcast complete with player back stories, expert analysis and guest referees. The winner, from Omaha, took home $50,000.

technorati tags:usarps

Which Universities have the most gamers? University of Washington tops the list forvisitors to MapWoW. Washington is known for its computer software and game development programs, so it's not too much of a surprise. Several other tech-heavy schools make the list including RIT, Purdue, Virginia Tech (Hokies rule) and Georgia Tech. A few big name schools win out on sheer number of students, such as University of Michigan, The Ohio State University, and The University of Texas (go horns!). The state of California has the most universities in the top 25.

MapWoW.com World of Warcraft Map Blog

University of Nebraska at Lincoln ranked 75 in this listing.

technorati tags:wow

They are finally coming…

This killer Coldfusion-based flash application provides a fullscreen (within your browser window) visualization of current news.

I know winter is over, but you’ve done this: You want to lounge around with your laptop and cover up with a blanket. Problem is that you either need to keep the blanket below your arms to use your computer or do some weird thneed-like thing with it to keep it between your arms and out of the way. What if your blanket had sleeves? The Slanket does!

This awesome umbrella was in this month’s WIRED mag. It receives radio signals that tell it what the chance of rain that day is, then blinks it’s blue handle to communicate that you to you. See the umbrella blinking madly near the door on the way out? Better take it with you!

Think secret reports locations of the many new Apple Stores expected this year and Omaha’s Village Point mall is on the list.

There’s a lot of pages out there trying to be the perfect page to set your browser home page to. PopURLs is about the best I’ve seen. It pulls in all of the top headlines/links, etc from sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, furl, and flickr.

Screenshots have been leaked of a calendar system in development at Google.

You knew it would be coming. I’m just surprised it happened this soon. You can now subscribe to Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report on iTunes. You pay $10/show and you get the next 16 episodes (one month). Get both and that’s $20 a month, but considering that that’s about all I keep cable for, it could be a great deal.

If you have a Tivo (or are thinking about getting one), better do it quick. Next week, Tivo plans to pull it’s lifetime subscription plan which allows you to pay a one time fee of $299 and never pay the monthly fee. Apparently they have decided it’s too good of a deal.

I heard somebody talk a couple of years ago about a taco bell or mcdonalds or something down in Florida that was experimenting with serve-yourself cashier counters. Looks like those combination restaraunts (KFC/Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut/Taco Bell, Taco Bell/KFC) are ready to start trying it out.

First video: Mocks Microsofts ability to make any packaging dull and over detailed.

Second video: Is this what Microsoft will be announcing tomorrow? 

There are so many “Web 2.0” companies that it’s almost impossible to track them. Here’s a poster that’s been assembled using web 2.0 company logos. It’s fun to see the designs and colors used. It’s also fun to just start going through them to see what’s being done by all of these companies.

Chances are that someone here in town got about 365 million dollars richer this weekend. A friend that’s currently in Minnesota makes a subtle plea for a share of it.

The photo to the right is a snapshot of the front page of the Journal Star web page (our local daily paper) today. I realize that they did $100,000 in damage and that’s pretty incredible, but really – is this front page news? DC had their beltway sniper, we have… “Get the whole story on their site”:www.journalstar.com/articles/…

MIT has put together the specifications for a computer that should cost no more than $100 to build. The 12 inch laptop computer has wireless networking, six usb ports and a shoulder-strap that doubles as a power cord. The computer would be built primarily for third world countries looking to introduce computers into the classrooms of their students. Given this, the computer also features a small crank which can be used to provide juice to the computer in areas without handy electrical power. The computer may be produced commercially for developed nations and would likely run around $200 with some of the proceeds going to the effort to get these computers, again, into more povershed areas.

I've been to a few conferences where "poster sessions" have been offered, but I've always been a little confused by the title since I have never seen a poster at these sessions. Here's a post I found that gives good tips for presenting a poster session and a definition of what one is (they are supposed to have posters).