Well, its been a week without updates. I have some things to blame, including a full day without any utilities(the cable company hit a gas main outside my complex this weekend), rebuilding my brother's Band Web site from scratch(I never seem to be satisfied with any work I do.) and hard work on several intiatives at work. One of my goals is to get back to daily updates this week, so here goes.

Episode One hype is at its height this week. I am trying to ignore it, and at times embrace it. Lots of negative reviews(Time, Newsweek) and some positive ones. Does it really matter? Will it stop people from going to see the movie?

I think that this movie is insulated from this. I know that no one that I have spoken with even gives a hoot what critics say about any movie. As usual, I prefer to evaluate things on my own, and I invite you to do the same.

On that subject, there are some Episode One icons for your computer and some really visually striking desktop wallpapers at IconsPlus .

I got an email letting me know that darth-sidious.com is for sale on EBay. I have too many unused domain names as it is.

I went to the Apple WWDC satellite broadcast here in Atlanta. I am happy that they seem to be delivering on what they promised one year ago. It's refreshing because they were changing direction once a year. The new Powerbooks look nice, and I am going to try and budget myself so that I can get one. I wasn't too excited by the Sonata demo, but they are building in features(albeit more elegantly) that have existed in the Windows world for a long time. Sherlock II and Quicktime 4 reveal clues as to what the interface elements for Mac OS X will be.

CamWorld's latest rant is about Weblogs . Cameron has really good perspective. To do this right, I would have to devote more time to it than I can. Will this stop me from doing it as much as I can? Absolutely not, I enjoy doing it.

Web Review goes more into depth on the engine that the PlayStation II will run on. Without a doubt, this machine is designed to be far more than a traditional console gaming unit. I'm happy that they are building support for the first unit's games into the new one.

I'm loving the new Beth Orton CD . I had to work my way through six pages from bethorton.com to actually get to her real site. That's not good usability folks.

I am so tired of MP3 hype. Just listen to some music. The music industry is not getting it.

I have no energy. I seem to be in some kind of funk that is beginning to interfere with things. Perhaps I should get more sleep.

I also have become very excited about the release of the new Star Wars movie.

In case you missed it, here's a great Star Wars line story posted to a newspaper site recently.

If you don't want to ruin the movie for yourself, don't read the titles of the songs on the soundtrack. After months of avoiding "spoilers" on the net, I ruined the plot for rmyself by looking at the soundtrack.

Lucasfilm posted four new television commercials yesterday. They are quite good.

I was out at Toys 'R Us Sunday night at midnight for the release of the Star Wars Episode I toys. What a madhouse. There were somewhere between 150 and 200 people in line. Things were surprisingly civil considering. It seems like the figure everyone wanted was Darth Maul. All of the figures and other stuff is available online at shop.starwars.com . The figures are really nice and very detailed. I managed to get a whole set. I think I may be trying to make up for a lack of Star Wars toys as a kid the first time around.

There has been some discussion on the Camlist over the last couple of days about Weblogs , the reasons for doing them and their evolution. I like getting my thoughts out, and if people want to read it, that's great. I am not looking at making this page anything more than that, a neat place for my thoughts and Web links. It's cathartic, and I find that the people in my life have learned a lot about me from reading these pages. It's a journal of my mental process that I can go back to when I want to. It also helps me draw conclusions I might not otherwise find. I think that it's kind of dumb to do it for the other reasons stated in the article I linked to above.

I'm still looking for the holy grail of high speed access at home. Now I want static IP's and to build the serving of everything in house. I discovered a company that is doing this with DSL for $135 a month through the ScriptMeridian list. They are coming to Atlanta soon. This would be perfect(and I would finally get Frontier on my server).

TidBITS has a review of PhotoGIF that is worth reading if you make Web graphics.

Now that MCI Worlcom is considering entering the ComCast bidding , we here at Bump would like to say we have no intention of making a bid. 

Joseph Lowery's Dreamweaver 2 Bible is now shipping.

With summer approaching, it might be a good time for a visit to the Waterguns museum .

There seems to be no shortage of articles on Apple's comeback these days. Today's NY Times has a piece , and there have been several others over the last couple of weeks. I have to say that while I am optimistic about their business from a financial standpoint(how can you not be?), there are some serious things on the horizon that will determine their long term viability.

If they can deliver their next generation OS in the right time frame, and it is a high quality product, then I will be a lot more comfortable. As it is, they haven't seeded it to developers yet, and I wonder when they are going to start including this group in their development process(WWDC is a good bet, there are plenty of sessions listed that apply to Mac OS X.)

Pathfinder is closing From where I stand, this is all about the existing media companies not getting the Web. Not spending their money wisely and using business models imported from their print roots have hurt these types of enterprises quite a bit.

I somehow missed the Austin Powers Icons at Iconfactory

There are some Planet of the Apes icons at the Icon Planet site. I really liked those movies, they remind me of Sunday television when I was a kid.

Bungie has posted some MP3's from their Myth II and Oni game soundtracks at MP3.com .

All kinds of good game related Macintosh news today. The place to go for this kind of news is Mac Gamers Ledge . While I might not check it every day, I do check it a couple of times a week to see what is going on. One of today's announcements is that Aspyr Media is bringing EA Sport's Madden NFL 2000 to the Macintosh. Mac Users have suffered without good sports games for a long time so this is good news.(I usually buy these kind of games for either PlayStation or N64.)

Starbucks is reportedly going to invest big bucks in a new online venture that is not related to its core coffee business. My curiousity is running rampant.

Builder.com has a great overview tutorial on SMIL.

I just don't see how this could possibly be profitable. 

I'm analyzing the log files from March at work today. It's a ho hum job, but it gives me some peace in a normally chaotic work environment.

Scripting News is active again after Dave's vacation. It's funny to me how much I have come to depend on the Weblog circuit every day to keep myself informed and entertained. I really missed Scripting News while it was inactive.

My.Userland.com has been really active with new channels. More and more sites I read daily are appearing there, so I'm quite pleased and starting to use it more. Webmonkey and Fray both are now on there.

Connectix Announces Temporary Suspension of Virtual Game Station Shipments

I know that Sony has to defend their intellectual property or they lose rights to it, but I think that this really is a small thing in the larger spectrum to them. Playstation's life cycle is winding down as they get ready for the launch of the PlayStation 2 and this will only sell more games. I think they will drop the suit at some point in the near future.

I'm awaiting a copy of Mac OS X Server . I'll let you know what I think when it arrives.

Quicktime 4 is cool.

I found out Monday that a good friend of mine, who is also a co-worker, is leaving the company and the state. It's a tough time to be in technology, people are changing jobs every six to twelve months.

Take my Browser Please

I don't understand why people design their pages for only the latest browsers. There are so many ways to deal with this situation, and with more and more people accessing my sites with handheld devices of some sort, I want everyone to have the same amount of fun. I understand 

Apple Computer has lost a $26.4 million suit in which Apple Corps., the Beatles company, was suing them for the use of the Apple name. Apparently, Apple Computer agreed to not enter the music business as a part of an earlier agreement, and they have somehow violated that agreement. ouch.

Creative Labs has entered the protable MP3 player market with their NOMAD line of players. They have one-upped Diamond's RIO players by adding both voice recording and an FM tuner. They don't list Windows NT or Macintosh compatibility though.

I'm using Inspiration to diagram the two personal Web projects I'm working on today. It's really convenient, and cross platform software for this purpose. It also exports the charts in HTML, GIF or PICT format for easy communication with clients.

I'm currently reading Information Rules by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian. It's a really good book diagraming the economic concepts behind the network economy. Expect a review in the book section this week.

After giving it some thought, I've decided to go with the Amazon.com affiliate program with book links here. I had signed up for the Borders affiliate program as well, but it seems that the Amazon program is easier to use. I'm not looking to turn Bump into any sort of money making venture, but some free computer books now and then for the effort doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.

The last month must have been more taxing(no pun) on me than I thought. I haven't really had much energy, either physically or mentally, over the last week. I'm trying to rest myself, and reading some books because that always seems to get my mind into a more active mode.

I found this site to be well done and very moving. It's a tribute to the author's deceased pooch.

Guy Kawasaki has decided to shut down the Evangelist . For the non-Apple people in the crowd, this was a daily email list that spread news of an Apple oriented nature. I guess with Apple's resurgence(their financials look better than Dell's right now), he doesn't feel like there is a need for it any longer.

A group of people have gotten together and are proposing a metric time standard that is loosely based on Swatch's Internet Time. They have added a date element, which Swatch was lacking.

FatBrain.com, an Internet and storefront technical bookstore, is offering $15 off any order until Monday, April 19.

Fonesync lets you synchronize your cellular phone with your PC. It works with the Nokia 6120, which I currently use.

A Hacker's Haunting Vision of a Reality Within Illusion is a New York Times story talking about the basic idea behind The Matrix. To a certain extent, we become servants of anything we create.

Daryl Strawberry arrested, Lakers waive Dennis Rodman. These athletes have the world in the palm of their hands, yet they throw it away on the smallest of things. It bothers me.

The Industry Standard has fantastic infographics in every issue. Recently, they began to sell them as Powerpoint slides from their Web site . A great idea. They kept the cost down, but the information is for a very specific group of people. It differentiates the information and makes it unlikely that they will have competition for this specific idea.

I'm currently looking for a new host for Bump, if you wish to recommend a hosting company,mail me. I'm looking to resolve multiple domains to a single directory, and I must have my own mail server. Database integration via Cold Fusion is something else I would like, and I need to have access to a RealAudio server. 

XMLTree has a list of sites that are maintaining an XMLed version.

I watched American History X on DVD last night. It's a tough movie that made me do a lot of thinking. There are some really brutal scenes, but I still recommend it. Racism really bothers me. The site is pretty good, but you have to go a few layers deep to get to the content.

There is some really solid information and some great pointers at the CSS Pointers Group .

This Red Herring article talks about the deal between Microsoft and Audible. This will allow Microsoft to incorporate the Audible software engine into it's Windows CE devices, making them portable book players. There is a part of me that loves this idea, but I still don't buy the Windows CE platform. Sure it has a larger feature set than the Palm, but do I need a larger feature set? Still, I think that if something like this doesn't hurt battery life, why not?

The New York Times has a piece titled Record Companies Wary of New Microsoft Technology . They are right to be wary.

Macromedia updated Dreamweaver to 2.01.

I spent a lot of time yesterday rebuilding my home network from scratch to accomodate some of the new hardware I've picked up recently. I now have a home setup that is really convenient. I'm using one of Belkin's Omniview boxes to hook three computers(Windows, Be, Mac) up to a single keyboard and monitor. It saves me a ton of desk space, and allows me to experiment more. Now if I only had fast Internet access. 

I'm digging into some XML research tonight after a long day of usability sessions at the conference.

Microsoft's XML resource center is quite extensive. You can also download their XML Notepad from there. It's a very useful, but obstinate tool for working with and viewing the structure of XMLized files. I'm going to use it to edit Bump's RSS files for the next few days.

There is an annotated version of the XML 1.0 spec at XML.Com

Builder.com has a good tip article on Dreamweaver. I am becoming increasingly impressed with Macromedia as they integrate their tools to work together. It presents quite a challenge to Adobe to produce. It's the kind of competition that I always wanted to see in the page layout market.(I guess that may be finally happening now.)

I really have grown to like my Gateway FireAnt. Very light and fully functional. Now that I have Frontier 6.0 up and running on it too, I imagine that I will be using it more and more.

The Hamster Blast does exactly what I wanted the Hamster Dance to do. There are other alternatives(including a Pokemon page) at http://newgrounds.com/assassin/index.html

The Brain is cool.

I went to see the Matrix over the weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and highly recommend it. It's the first cyberpunk movie since Bladerunner that I really liked. Great effects, but the key was a really good story.

I absorbed a lot of interesting links over the last few days, and I'll be sure to report them as I work my way through them.

I've been attending the Web Design 99 conference over the last two days. Some great stuff, and I find myself wishing that I had more time to dedicate to a single site rather than having to split my time and effort across so many markets. It's tough to keep everything straight and to keep up with everything.

I've gotten to see some really dynamic speakers, and to see people like Jakob Nielson, whose work I have followed quite diligently over the Web, speak first hand. His talk was excellent, and drove home and validated the way I feel about site design. I'll definitely be working on the two projects that I am doing personally slightly differently as a result.

I also got a chance to go to lunch with a group of Frontier users who were attending the conference. I really enjoyed this "session" quite a bit, and it was nice to put faces with some names.

In the meantime, with the fade out from my death march at work combined with my attendance at this conference have conspired against regular Bump updates. I promise that this isn't a trend that will continue, and with the projects that I have planned for the next two months, I'm sure to have an active mind and site in the coming months.

So that's it for now, I hope to get things straight here in short order. A careful study of this site's usage statistics shows that nearly everyone is running a 4.0 browser, and I think I am going to start implementing some more complex things here to speed up load times and provide better navigation. Any feedback you might have would be very helpful to me.

I am now going through serious decompression after my sleigh ride through the valley of ultimate work.

I meant to get to Bump yesterday, but I had over 1500 email messages to read and plenty of work that had backed up on me in my absence. I find that these really tough times at work stimulate my thinking process, and I develop some of my best ideas during them. I'm proceeding now at an even clip and intend on taking at least one day off later this week to relax a little.

Bump is now a channel at My.Userland.Com. This is a great place to create a news page that catalogs all of the available channels. Dave Winer has opened things up by not binding folks with a restrictive legal agreement. I'm just happy that Bump is now syndicated in two places that make it a convenient stop for everyone.

I am still attending the ThunderLizard Web Design 99 Conference and would love to meet anyone out there who is attending and reads Bump.

A friend pointed out StatMarket to me.(Thanks Dee) Really good browser information to refer to when building sites.

I am getting a Web Certification at No Wonder . To get your certification you have to answer 100 questions from people searching for technical support over a three month time period. You are reviewed based on your answers.

That's all I have time for now. I'll let the flood gates open over the next two days as I catch up on my browsing and reading. 

I've been working 14 hour days, so I haven't had any time for Bump.

I'm traveling for the next four days for work. I may update on Friday if the opportunity presents itself. Please check back next week for more updates.

Sunday, and I've put in almost ten hours already today. The first project I am trying to put to bed is 90% done. Got some graphics to make and one large coding malfunction to figure out, and it's done.

There is an insane amount of Star Wars Information on the New York Times Star Wars Page . It includes tons of articles, but also links to the trailers on the net and other resources. They also have a long profile on George Lucas today.

Thunderlizard has handouts from their past shows up on their site . some of this information is really good. Best of all, it's free.

I've been experimenting with a right navigation bar for this site that contains links and the search engine for the site. I can't find a combination that I like that doesn't either look like other sites or clash with the current green color scheme. Looks like I'm going to have to rework the navigation banner.

Robot Wisdom has become a daily read for me again. I seem to almost forget about sites sometimes. Jorn has a running thing going now with WebCams. Worth an amusing look. 

I'm at the office, coding away. I thought I would take a Bump update break.

The answer to the previously mentioned Palm V alarm issue seems to be soft reseting the device through the reset button on the back. Two of us have tried this with great success. Just make sure you don't erase your data.

I'll be attending the Web Design '99 Conference. If you are too and want to meet up, please shoot me an email.

Wired News has a story about a contest that Kipling , the maker of the excellent line of Hacker bags, is running. It seems that no one has been able to break their code yet despite a mention on Slashdot . I have one of their computer bags and I love it. 

Blockbuster is buying a stake in DIVX? Bad move. That technology was close to dead(losses over $100 million a year for the last two years.)

Dan Schafer's most recent Builder.com article, IE 5.0 improves on earlier releases but complicates Web builders' lives is a fantastic overview of the problems with Internet Explorer 5.0 from a developer's perspective. It's another case of the browser vendor just ignoring the developer community. It makes me really angry. They had a great opportunity with this release to finally implement a bunch of things we have been asking for, and they blew it.

HeyIdiot.com sells one thing: stock in itself.

I downloaded Internet Explorer 5.0 last night and played with it quite a bit. Not much has changed to the eye of the Web user. I like the Radio component, which lets you listen to your favorite radio station while browsing. It took forever to download, even over a T-1, so there must be more than a few people joining in the fun.

Be continues to roll with a PC bundling deal in Europe. Go BE!! News.com has the story .

Silicon Valley's Awesome Look at New Sony Toy The New York Times covers the PlayStation II. Is this the beginning of the end for the PC? Not for me. Sounds really cool though.

I had a network volume go down this morning at work at the worst possible time. When I'm stressed out, I tend to smile and laugh alot.

Tim Bray, the creator of XML, talks about XML support in Internet Explorer 5.0 . It's actually something of a primer on real world use of XML for Web jockeys.

In his most recent, and very insightful, DaveNet , Dave Winer reveals that Userland will be doing an RSS engine like My Netscape, but open and less restrictive legally. This could be the thing I was talking about a couple of days ago, allowing us to do our own interfaces.

Mac OS Rumors is reporting that developers are looking at doing an XML interface as a part of the Darwin project. This could be of huge help in furthering the use of XML on the Macintosh.

One Week to the show. I have 5 projects that dead end next week. Going to be a fun, hard week.

Today also marks the release of Internet Explorer 5.0 for all of the Windows platforms.

News.com has a special report covering the release, it's implications, and its effects on the marketplace as a whole.

CNN has some coverage too.

You can also download it from Download.com

I'm not going to have time to experiment with and comment on it today, but I will write it up in full later this week.

The New York Times covers the Better Business Bureau's foray into online privacy monitoring. I think this is a really good thing. Being on the back end of things, people want to do all sorts of things with collected data that I'm not comfortable with. I stand really firmly on this stuff at work.

This move also encroaches on trustE's territory. Which one of the two seals is better? The Industry Standard has an article covering this today.

I've discovered a major issue with my Palm V, the alarms don't sound when the device is turned off. This makes it useless as a reminder. Apparently, this is an issue that Palm Computing is working on. I'm also still waiting for the modem that I ordered with the Palm V two weeks ago.

Builder.com has launched a new column called Critique of the Week . This week they look at the Hartford Courant, a paper I delivered as a kid. 

Reminder from yesterday, Bump is now live on the My Netscape Network channel system . To add my page to your My Netscape , follow this link

For those of you who don't want to go there to see what it looks like, here's a screenshot of the Bump Channel.

Macintouch has good unbiased coverage of the Mac OS X Server release event yesterday.

StepWise , a site maintained by a well respected long time OpenSTEP developer, has some notes on Mac OS X Server too. He had access to it in the limited beta release cycle, so he's pretty well tuned in.

I am encouraged by the pricing, and by the iniative of the open sourcing. I want to see more though. Open Source the whole thing. I worry that this is more of a media event thing than an actual committment, but we'll find out about that down the road.

Work will be crazy for me over the next ten days, we have our largest trade event coming up next weekend. You may see a small lack of consistency with regards to updates. Well, it does say sporadic in our statement of purpose above.

I've been playing with AvantGo on my Palm V over the last day and a half. I think it would be useful if I only wanted to read the sites, but I like to follow links, so it frustrates me. For me to cache all of the material I would want, I would have to have a Palm with 16 Mb of RAM.

PC WEEK has an article that reviews what the original Palm creators are doing called Catching up with the creators of the Palm They are moving towards a more consumer oriented device based on the Palm OS. based on what a good friend told me of his recent trip to Germany, they use the Palm in some very different ways there now. It all makes a lot of sense to me.

I picked up a copy of Fireworks 2.0 using their upgrade discount yesterday. I used it a little last night, and it seems to be much improved over the previous version, which wasn't bad at all. I think they have unified the UI in a better way. Builder.com has a review that I more or less agree with that was posted this morning.

Microsoft is attempting to move into the distributable digital audio market. There is a Wired News story on the subject this morning. Seems they have some pretty stiff competition from some companies, including Sony, which are already in this space. This has the potential to become a real mess if one standard isn't agreed upon. I like MP3 just fine, but I understand that there are piracy concerns.

Bump is now live on the My Netscape Network channel system . To add my page to your My Netscape , follow this link

The way this works is that Netscape grabs an XML version of Bump that I create when I build the regular version. You can view this file here. They parse it into their system, and it updates when you request you page. Pretty neat.

I'm excited by the idea of having all of my content sources in one place where I can quickly review them. I hope more people adopt this publishing scheme. I also would love it if this were opened up to anyone. It would be great to be able to build myself, and my visitors, portals that were customized within my own design framework. This could work if they opened their registry of files to the public. Anyone who knows how to parse XML could then build similar sites.

The CamWorld channel looks great. A "big up" to Cameron Barrett for getting it done so fast.

Broadcast.com: MP3 Will Die Wired News
I imagine that MP3 will be replaced at some point by another technology, but if you read this piece, you see that this is the viewpoint that he has to have. Otherwise, what reason does his business have for existing?

Cyberian Outpost has launched an auction site at http://www.outpostauctions.com/ They have things like Palm III's and iMacs for sale, and there may be bargains to be had. This is a closed auction model where they are the only seller.

Online Auctions Take The High Road Industry Standard
Since the low end auction houses have seen so much success, the big boys of the auction world are scrambling to incorporate Internet technology into their arsenals.

Builder.com has a discussion going about whether or not it is safe to use CSS now. Since it generally degrades gracefully, I don't think that it's that much of an issue.

A List Apart has a great CSS intorduction called Fear of Style Sheets I haven't used them yet at work because of the overhead of getting the entire site system reworked is really high right now. I'm holding out for a databased redesign that will make doing it going forward much easier. 

I'm waiting now for Netscape to confirm my entry into their channel system .

My first piece of writing to be published in several months marks the start of a monthly Web Authoring/Web Business column in MacNow Magazine . The name of the column is Leveraging the Web . While the magazine has more of a Macintosh focus, I'm far less interested in platform specific computing these days.

Palm Underground readers get $1 off any title they buy from Peanut Press , a company that digitizes books in a Palm compatible format. I downloaded their reader application and purchased two titles last night. My first instinct would be that reading books on a Palm device would be difficult on the eyes, but I read through about half of one title last night. I actually liked it. The Palm's backlighting made reading in bed better, and it is convenient to be able to carry a couple of titles around for my spare moments. They don't have a really wide variety of titles yet, but they do have Monica Lewinsky's book(which I would never buy).

The Netcraft Web server survey documents Apache's continued growth as the number one Web server. Despite a distant third place ranking, Netscape's servers saw the most growth over the last month.

So, I love the New Beetle . It's a really well designed vehicle, and is really visually pleasing to me too. I think the funniest thing is other people's reaction to it. In the three days I've had it, I've had several people approach me in parking lots to tell me how much they like it, and asking me if they could get a look at the inside.

It looks as if Byte Magazine's revival as an online only entity is progressing well. I always loved the print version of the publication. According to the San Jose Mercury News , the site was getting 600,000 page views a month without any new content at all before they relaunched it. When the magazine disappeared, I took it as a sign of things to come in the technology publishing field. While I doubt that magazines will disappear at any point in the near future, the Web has made it easier to keep yourself up to date on things in a daily manner rather than a once a month print thing. 

The feast and famine updating motif continues. I've been doing a lot of reading and working some substantial hours during the week. Not an excuse though.

I love my new Palm V

It doesn't have a lot more memory than the Palm Professional I had before, but it is faster. The screen is also quite a bit better, and the feel of the buttons is much improved. The biggest difference is the size of the device. Where it was once too large to slip into my pocket, it now is almost unnoticeable. I picked up the aluminum case for it, and it reminds my of a cigarette case. I'm still waiting on the modem so I will write more once that has arrived. It also worth mentioning that it is much better looking too.

The new MacPac connectivity software is solid.(I've been using the beta version for a couple of months so it wasn't a surprise. The new software that sync's with Outlook 98 on my Gateway works really well. All in all, it seems like my impulse decision was a decent one. Two things are nagging at me though: 1)It's not expandable 2)The integrated battery make sme nervous that I will find myself without power or a place to charge up. In honor of this new purchase, I have added a Palm Resources section to the links page.

Most of my focus over the last two weeks has been down three paths. Broadband Internet access and the changes we can expect from it. Network appliances and the dissapearance of the general purpose computer in non-technical homes. Security and privacy.

Feed Magazine has a story name Getting What You Pay For that talks about the Free PC movement in detail. I guess I understand the underlying economics, but I don't understand why anyone would build a whole business model around this concept. As an ancillary information gathering arm of a larger company, it might make sense.

CNN has a story on How to make your fortune on the Web Interesting statistic in the last paragraph. There must be a ton of bad business ideas proposed to venture capitalists.

The next issue of Wired magazine came today. My personal opinion is that this magazine has declined greatly over the last two years.

Web Review's current feature is Running Open Source Software They cover GIMP, Apache and Zope. Free is definitely a good way to go with software these days.

In the non-Free software department, I have picked up a copy of Headline Studio from Metacreations. A really comprehensive solution for all of your banner creation needs. I expect to be writing a review of it for MacNow magazine .

Finally, my Erricson cellular phone passed away this week after a year of loyal service, abuse, and being dropped about a hundred times.

Here's a site with Sim City Icons for Atlanta. Now you can enjoy building(and destroying) the city I live in with the game.

I've been listening to the Pixies a lot this week. It reminds me of home. 

Howdy. How ya been?

In the process of questioning whether or not my work process is proper and efficent, I have been spending all of my time this week using my FireAnt. It makes me realize that I still wish things worked together better than they do, despite the layer of compatibility that the Internet provides.

One thing that kills me is email. I have office email, Internet email, and I access both at home and at the office. In each place, I have both a PC and a Macintosh(Each running more than one operating system.), as well as a Pilot that I read mail from. I have to turn cartwheels to make sure I don't delete mail I need. Inevitably, its 10 pm, and I need something that is a 20 minute drive away. So I'm looking for a solution that doesn't involve my carrying equipment around with me everywhere I go. Web based email would be the answer, I guess, but I think that there has to be a more elegant way. Also, I prefer to be able to read and compose email offline. I also like to read my sent mail and refer to it. This has become an issue for me, and I haven't found an acceptable answer yet.

I did, however, find some useful things on my quest for an answer. The first is Magical Desk Interesting place to keep your documents so that you, or others, can access them. I am using it now to transfer documents from the office to my home. I wouldn't use the free email, if I wanted that there are a million other places, but I like the idea and interface. Since it's free, it makes good sense. It also would be great for traveling types.

HotOffice takes this idea one step further.(You also have to pay for it.) For a small business with high speed Internet access, this is a quick and inexpensive Intranet with all the expected features and a much lower cost. I wonder how many users you have to have before you hit the cost barrier of doing the Intranet in house? Great solution for a small company with a distributed workforce. Unfortunately, they seem to only support some WIN32 browsers, no Macintosh browsers. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose? Still, the idea is a good business model with the commerce they are building into it.

Scripting News is tracking the disappearance of the IE 5.0 beta from Microsoft's servers. I was waiting until I would have time to do testing to download it. I guess that makes me one of the developers that got screwed in this deal. Now I have to wait for three weeks to get it.

I'm doing the preliminary sketches for the new Bump, expect the development cycle to go beta within two weeks. I plan on adding a bunch of features, better content, and some interesting ideas.(I think)

I'm trying out Enfish Tracker Pro . It indexes and tracks information that you specify on your hard drives and on the Web and then links the information based on relevancy. Over time, I think it could be a really usefull tool in tracking writing and ideas.

Finally, there is a new Pilot in the family. Since I can't use it yet, I don't have any comments. I couldn't resist once I saw it. 

I'm finally approaching 100% after my bout with some kind of flu bug.

I did some work on the links page . Since I use it as my home page, I need to make sure that it's a correct listing of the sites I frequent. It's not currently.

Salon Magazine's most recent 21st column is a two side look at Yahoo . The half that looks negatively on Yahoo, Boo for Yahoo cliams that Yahoo's directory integrity is compromised by their commercial intentions. That their commercial success and market valuation have led to less improvement of service. It's hard for me to say whether or not this is true. I know that I have rarely been dissapointed by Yahoo's listing.

Are they evolving to give us better service? They are the portal that all of the others have modeled themselves after, but that design has changed little in the last couple of years. I think that this model has grown clumsy in the face of newer Web technologies. There is a lot of room for someone who does it better to come in and compete. I wonder what their vision of the future, aside from being a commerce site, is?

Reuters- United States, Russia Ponder Nuke Danger Of Y2K

Really scary. I was wondering about this a week or so ago. There isn't any easy way to establish how the bug will affect the computer monitors on either side.

E! Online -New "Star Wars" Trailer Coming 

My sinuses have betrayed me again. I find myself working despite being sick because I am so far behind(read overloaded). I missed a day of work yesterday.

News.com has a story(and picture) about the new Palm V . Looks really cool. Sounds like they aren't adding much in the way of features though.

Dan Gillmor pokes fun at Internet Companies with eTattler .

I've got a clearer picture of what I want Bump to become in the future.

I downloaded iCab, a German independent browser. Despite the fact that everything was in German, I found it to be fast and small.(It doesn't support Javascript yet though) Version Tracker has an unofficial English version listed. It has a built in HTML 4.0 syntax checker.

XML Pushes Web Mgm't To The Fore is an interesting Internet Week story about Web servers embedded in all manner of network devices and the use of XML as the communication protocol.

SF Gate has an article that talks over the points of the Amazon issue.

I don't think I mentioned that there is a new member of the Raster family . I should have.

I lost my 20" monitor yesterday. It just decided that it couldn't go on. It's an old Radius that I have had through six different desktop computers. I picked up a new one, but I wasn't happy about spending the money.

It may be President's day, and I may have the day off, but I'm not just sitting around and loafing.

Power On Software released their first version of GoMac , the utility that adds a Windows style task bar to the bottom of your Macintosh screen. I like having the same interface on my Macintosh that I do on my Windows boxes. This version seems more stable and they have added a couple of features that I really like to it.

I've set up my Palm Professional to be a full mail and Web client over a TCP/IP connection to my ISP. I've already found the limits of the devices built in memory though. I'm trying to decide if I want to upgrade the memory or wait and buy a new PIM altogether. It's pretty neat to be able to do this stuff with such a small portable package. Bump seems to be pretty Palm friendly.

Update: At the request of two readers, I am using HandWeb and HandMail from SmartCode Software . They are both designed to work with the built-in PPP app that comes with both the Palm Professional and Palm III. I set it up with my ISP's preferences, and was connected with the Palm Modem(which I bought) in minutes. I wish that HandMail supported IMAP(I get a lot of email) , but otherwise they both perform well. I do need additional memory to really use it on an ongoing basis, but it works in a pinch.

I've gotten two really well written responses to my Amazon question and rant.(See the entries from the 9th and 10th.) I think I understand now why people got upset about it. Amazon is viewed by the Internet community as a better bookstore. A community bookstore that takes our suggestions as well as its own. People didn't expect them to be taking money for those spots/recommendations without owning up. This method of doing business, while not completely unethical in this day and age, was misleading. I think the people in our community expected better.

Bump made CamWorld's Weblog listing. CamWorld is one of the real premium Weblogs in my opinion.(There seems to be no shortage of these types of sites and the number is growing every day.) I like the design of the page too, easy to read and well developed. He seems to update on a regular basis too

I think Bump 3.0 might be coming down the pike soon. It's a great release for me to redesign the site, and I obviously could do better. I have two other independent Web projects lurking, and I hope that I can spin some of them this weekend too.

Clinton Acquitted Decisively: No Majority for Either Charge (New York Times)

I have chosen to not address these proceedings before now on this page for a variety of reasons. I was really angry about the way the business was being conducted. I'm glad that a decision has been made, wish that things hadn't dragged out so long. Forgetting about President Clinton for the moment, there are some political wounds that need to be addressed. We need to move on.

They moved Scripting News over to Frontier 6.0 today. Userland continues to move forward. I think they have a real solid direction, and it fits with the dynamic way the industry is moving perfectly.

Builder.com has a great forum running What do you love about your job? . I read through a bunch of these. I have to say that, for me, I know I'll never have it all mastered. It moves faster than anyone can to keep up. There is nothing boring about that.