CristiPotlog

I just stumbled upon this gem: Top 25 Free Icon Resources for Web Designers.

If you are in despair for some free graphics those may come in handy.

Labels: Free, Internet, Programming, Software

Joe Wilcox, posted two news commentaries on his Microsoft Watch Blog, here and here.

Basicaly, he states that Ballmers' letter is one of the nastiest pieces of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) communications of the high-tech era.

"Microsoft seeks to set Yahoo shareholders against the 10-member board of directors. The letter, while written for the board, is really for shareholders. Microsoft's publication of the letter is evidence enough of the audience."

Joe Wilcox further analyzes the letter, paragraph by paragraph, revealing the real meaning of Ballmer's words: fear that Yahoo shares will further decline and during a period of huge economic uncertainty, the "large premium" is overstated.

"Microsoft will take the company or take it out. This isn't even an implicit threat. It's direct and deliberate."

Labels: Internet

A friend on mine pointed me at a recent article about blogging from New York Times , which raises a difficult question after enumerating some tragic deaths of some bloggers, hearth disease related.

"Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December."

Blogging is a lucrative business, many bloggers being well-compensated for their efforts to keep the rest of us up to date with breaking news and the latest gossip. It is unclear how many people blog as a job, but surely there are several thousand out there.

There is a growing number of online writers, reporting and even reflecting about sports, politics, business, technology, celebrities and every other conceivable niche. Some write for fun, but thousands write for publishers, or have started their own online media outlets with profit in mind. One of the most competitive categories is blogs about technology developments and news.

Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, said “I haven’t died yet”, but “this is not sustainable”, as he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.

Labels: Blogging, Internet

Microsoft press officials released the text of Ballmer’s letter to the media one day after unnamed sources close to Microsoft told some reporters that Microsoft was losing patience with Yahoo’s reticence to take up Microsoft on its January 31 offer to buy Yahoo.

Microsoft says Yahoo has three weeks to negotiate a decent deal, after which time Microsoft is going to take his case directly to Yahoo! shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy bidding to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board.

I don’t believe that Microsoft has any real intention of walking away from this deal. I feel there’s so much overlap between Microsoft and Yahoo that this merger seems feasible, but a hostile proxy battle is the surest path to mutually assured destruction. Microsoft shares have already fallen more than 10 percent since the company first sprang its unsolicited bid on Yahoo, and market research has shown that it can take years before companies recover from a hostile takeover.

However, even thou Microsoft implies that Yahoo! has not answered their offer, Yahoo! has released to the press a statement on February 11, concluding that the proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders.

Labels: Internet, Software

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Working Group has published a draft of the HTML 5 specification, the first major update to HTML in 10 years, factoring in changing tastes around rich-media applications and online collaboration.

Much has changed since the early dot-com days of December 1997 when HTML 4 was published. Now developers, designers and users have unlocked the Web's potential. Sites have moved from being a collection of static pages to media-rich communities leveraging participation.

HTML 5 is defined in a way that it is backwards compatible with the way web browsers handle deployed content. Some of the new elements in HTML 5 relate to structure and presentation. The new section and article tags, for instance, should be familiar to those of you who have worked with docbook. There are also new elements for navigation, headers, footers, figures, and dialog. Media support gets a boost, with the canvas drawing system as well as new audio and video tags. Improvements to HTML forms include support for date and time input elements and a new datagrid that will support interactive tables and trees. HTML 5 also gets basic templating functionality and support for repeating elements.

A full list of changes from the previous version can be found here.

UPDATE: Here's some more in-depth The HTML 5 Draft Hints at a Brave New Web

Labels: Internet, Programming, Software

I just changed my blog design. It's a new custom theme. It uses a lot from the old one, but it has a new twist.

What do you think about it? Seriously.

Labels: Blogging, Design, Internet

On a post on Netscape blog, Tom Drapeau, AOL's director of the Netscape brand, announced that AOL will end support and development for the Netscape Browser. Support will continue for the current version of the browser, Netscape 9, by releasing patches or security fixes until February 1, 2008. After that date, all development will stop and there will be no more active product support for the browser.

Originally released in 1994 during the nascent days of the web, Netscape Navigator was the underdog contender in the "browser wars" of the late 1990s, when it faced stiff competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Netscape released its browser's source code and created the Mozilla project in 1998. AOL then acquired Netscape in 1999.

AOL's Drapeau recommends for the nostalgic users to download Mozilla Firefox, and add on the Netscape's theme and extensions pack for Firefox.

As of February 1st, 2008, Netscape will continue to serve as a general usage Internet portal.

Labels: Internet, Software

I have started planning a project a few months ago. A Romanian clone of Digg. Not the first one, I assure you. I'm still gathering features for this site, hoping that it will be a blast. If not a ground breaker, at least a decent Digg clone :-)

And now, not at a totally surprise to me, comes this article from Scripting News, "The next step in Digg clones".

It talks about all other Digg wannabes out there, taking some points out, and insisting that there is a place, even if some might call it "niche" for sites that emulate Digg.

Even more, at the and of the article the author summarizes the whole idea:

"So that's the idea. I want starting a Digg-like community to be as easy as creating a weblog on blogger.com. Just fill in a form, click Submit and off we go. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Sure most will be ghost towns, there will be press articles talking about the abandoned communities, but I bet we look back in a couple of years and see the landscape in the blogosphere has changed yet again."

You might think that this will discourage me, but it feels nice to know that more people are working on the same field. It gives you a sense of competition.

Labels: Internet, Programming, Software

Mashable has published a list of tools and resources for building web sites and web applications aggregated from previous posts on their site.

"We’re all living on the web, and we all seem to be starting our own websites, so it’s time we all learned the languages that make it run. We’ve gathered over 250 resources to help you get going."

Check it out, it's pretty amaizing what they've done.

Labels: Internet, Programming, Software

I've just watched Jonathan Harris' presentation at TED about his new projects that not only gather from the Web the emotions posted by people (We feel fine), but even present with astonishing visuals search terms that float around the screen like clouds of constellations (Universe).

Universe presents an interactive night sky, composed of thousands of twinkling stars, which then connect to form constellations. Each of these constellations has a specific counterpart in the physical world — a story, a person, a quote, an image, a company, a nation, a mythic theme. Any constellation can be clicked, making it the center of the universe, and causing all other stars to enter its orbit. Universe is infinitely large, and each person’s path through it will be different.

Both projects are amazing, showing a truly innovative mind. Jonathan Harris is an artist and storyteller working primarily on the Internet. One part computer science, one part anthropology, and one part visual art, his work seeks to explore and understand the human world through the artifacts people leave behind on the Web.

"As humans, we have a long history of projecting our great stories into the night sky. This leads us to wonder: if we were to make new constellations today, what would they be? If we were to paint new pictures in the sky, what would they depict? These questions form the inspiration for Universe, which explores the notions of modern mythology and contemporary constellations."

You can watch the presentation here: Jonathan Harris: The Web's secret stories.

Check out Jonathan Harris' site for more projects, and even a short bio.

Labels: Internet, Search, Software