Brian Fitzgerald

Here's one of the sharpest personal sites I've seen for a while. Very nice.

This is the MOST overlooked element, in my opinion, when it comes to creating a web site. People want to focus on the visual part of it but spend relatively little time on the most important part of the site -- the content. Asterisk discusses this...

P-P-P-PowerBook and the Billy Graham Special Edition iPod

Two articles: One from yesterday and one from today.

From MacWorld: A dangerous spoofing security hole has been found in almost every browser on the market -- except one. Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera and Netscape all suffer from the "moderately critical" vulnerability that allows the spoofing of address bar URLs and SSL certificates, but, incredibly Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer gets a clean bill of health.

I just saw a commercial on the TV for the new MSN Search. The commercial was cooler than the search is. In some ways, the new Microsoft vs Google battle reminds me of the longtime Microsoft vs Apple contest. Today's release of Google Maps elicits a response that is not uncommon for Google "applications". They are incredible. They obviously have very smart people there creating applications that actually make the web better. Microsoft on the other hand, continues to release product after product that is just enough to keep people from leaving. Don't want to leave the MSN home page to perform a search? We'll give you a search that's good enough. Think some of those servers are pretty robust? We'll give you one that's good enough. Considering a different operating system? Don't switch. We'll keep giving you just enough to hold on to you. Microsoft is all about the bottom line and rarely does anything that makes one say "wow!". Windows XP's "Luna" interface, at first made me say "wow", but after a short time you realize that it's just a prettier face on the same windows. Google, like Apple and many other companies continue to release new products that completely change the ways people do things while Microsoft sits back and watches for the next thing they will need to provide to hold on.

Google, in their labs area, has released Google Maps. These maps are incredible.

CNN is not podcasting, but has an article about it.

The Red Sox' Curt Schilling in response to the Patriots super bowl victory last night: "They're the Yankees of the NFL, but without being greedy bastards."

Macromedia's ColdFusion 7 is out! It bring flash-based forms and display tables, printable reports (flashpaper) and many performance enhancements. I can't wait to start using it! Learn more at http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/

Here's an interesting article at sfgate.com reopening the mac vs win debate (as if it was ever closed).

Wired published an article about employees with iPods at Microsoft's campus. Some are having to start sneaking around with them by not using the easy-to-identify white earbuds.

In a competition to create the best iPod accessory out of an Altoids can, a set of speakers won. See the winner and learn to make it yourself at Readymademag.com

O'Reilly is publishing a new book called Don't Click on the Blue E! in March to help frustrated WinIE users make the switch to Firefox.

Firefox extensions are fun and their getting better. PC Magazine reviews the "top 15".

Extreme tech has posted a new article detailing the current available browsing alternatives to WinIE.

Digital-web magazine has published a story called The Four Best Web Design Books You May Have Missed. Included are Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing With Web Standards, June Cohen's Unusually Useful Web Book, and a book I don't have by Eric T. Peterson titled Web Analytics Demystified. With our web statistics software recently upgraded at work, I am particularly interested in this topic right now. Looks like I'll be visiting Amazon soon...

Microsoft has released their new search engine: an updated MSN search. The search, which is supposed to be faster than Google, has in my opinion a terrible interface once you get past the search screen and according to some who have used it, poor search results. Of the newer generation of search engines that are competing with Google, the one that intrigues me most is Amazon's A9. Still, with all of these new options available, I still have found no reason to stop using Google.

Skype has released version 1.0 for the macintosh (along with version 1.0 for Linux and Pocket PC, and version 1.1 for Windows).

I am once again back to Panther (Mac OS 10.3) on my home computer after, what was a pretty successful couple of weeks using Tiger (Mac OS 10.4), I allowed it to upgrade and it broke Audio Hijack Pro. Having the choice of staying with Tiger or having AHP, I reverted back to Panther.

Here's pictures from last weekend's auto show in Omaha at the Qwest Center. I don't know enough about cars to take intelligent photographs of them, so my wife's brother Aaron snapped the camera. Lots of great rides... take a look.

The one thing that I really really want in Contribute is the ability to have user-created reusable items. So many things have gotten so much better in the product since version one, but management of a site's navigation is still restricted (as far as I can tell) to editing a single page and then copying and pasting those changes to the other pages of the site. This may be fine for a small site and perhaps there are some extracontribute based ideas that can make this easier, but I really think that this needs to be something that is in the program. It's really a pain for those starting with it to have to create a bunch of pages, then create a navigation, then copy that navigation across the pages. It's certainly not, in my opinion, a good method for the audience that Contribute serves.

Ben Goodger, one of the primary people responsible for Firefox has been hired by Google. What does this mean? His blog indicates that while this may delay the release of Firefox 1.1, it does not mean that he is off the project. I would like to think that this in fact means that a google browser is in the works and will be built on top of Firefox. So what? This would give Firefox the respect and recognition that it really needs to be successful. Firefox has already started becoming popular among those that have gotten tired of IE's spyware, popups, viruses and lack of standards support, but it is still mostly an unknown that is not seeing widespread adoption either at in the workplace or in homes. Simply adding the name "Google" to the browser, with no changes would drive people to start using it. Throw the resources behind the browser that Google would be able to and you would quickly have a serious contender to Internet Explorer.

Lately I've been enjoying a couple of "podcasts". PodCasts are audio web log postings. The thing that is starting to make these fun is that news aggregators, like NetNewsWire, are starting to be able to automatically take the postings and put them into iTunes ready for your next iPod sync. Interested? For one of the genres best, check out Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, then find others at ipodder.org.

I lost my website again. I backed up my server, installed Tiger and then found that my backup was bad. I'm starting over for what is now the fourth or fifth time in as many years. I've got to get better at this.