My initial thoughts, based on what I gathered from a couple Dashboard clicks:

1. I’m glad I’ll be able to activate several plugins at once, this will save me some time. I tried to do this with w/ MySQL but for some reason you can’t just copy the options from an existing blog, the numbers don’t match up, maybe.

2. Looking forward to trying out Gears, I just downloaded GoogleGearsSetup.exe, I’ll check it out tonight. I would love to see Flash go away, maybe Gears is a step in that direction?

3. Glad to hear WP is implementing shift-clicking, which I’ve waited for 14 years now. Shift-clicking has been around forever, even before Windows 3.1, it’s funny how slow the Internet evolves. My webmail had shift-clicking in IE for a while, but it never worked in Firefox. Anyway, saves time/energy clicking off spam/junk, thanks WP!!!

1. Small Internet devices, like the iPhone. For just a couple hundred bucks you can get a little Internet gadget now with WIFI connectivity, allowing you to connect to the Internet. These little gadgets will try to auto-scale websites down to fit a little screen.

There’s no point designing for one specific device because there’s several of them out there now, and you know they’re all going to render pages a little different. As long as you stick to XHTML standards you’re pretty safe. While I’m on that tangent, a glimpse into my design philosophy:

When spacing out design elements I avoid subjective tags like “br” and “p”. I space out everything with divs and margins, I rarely use padding. I never use vague measurements like “cm” or “em”. I do everything in pixels. Fonts, margins, everything. I gave “em” measurements a chance but nothing is more aggravating than guessing what something will look like on xyz browser, then having to go back and redesign everything, besides running out of coffee, realizing you should’ve paid extra for a larger cup ;-)

But back to Internet devices. My point here is, even if little devices scale pages well, they can’t perform miracles. The screens are small so “thinner” designs will scale better. I’m not saying I’m reverting back to 800px but I’m not going push the 1024px envelope either.

2. Sidebars. Firefox add-ons are popular now. They’re great for news feeds, Twitter, whatever. Click “View > Sidebar” in Firefox to check out your options. Sidebars are just handy. The problem is, there goes more of your 1024px. For a while I just accepted my design was dorked with the sidebar open, but now I’m thinking I’m probably not the only guy surfing with a sidebar panel.

3. Square units. If you’re an Adsense guy like me you know square units work well, they kick butt. CTR on square units isn’t anything to write home about, but in my experience square units pull a higher CPM. Because of this I dropped my wide (header) banners last night. As for smaller banners, they’re not as wide but they’re just too small IMO, they are so 1999. So I figure, as long as square units work, why not use them to slim down my pages?

If you disagree, let me know, drop a comment or two.

Let me tell you about the last time I brought my ideas to “Idea City”. They basically kicked me out. A couple of years after the dot bomb I moved to Texas from Florida. It seemed Austin was full of praise for GSDM. Sounded interesting. After exchanging emails, phone calls, they say stop by with your portfolio.

The receptionist asks for my portfolio, says it might be a few months before anyone looks at it. Huh? I was expecting a review of my portfolio, why else would I be here? I’m thinking: Do they really expect me to just hand over hundreds of hours of my best work without a word? I explain to the receptionist the work in my portfolio is all original, I can’t leave it, and the work is very intricate, I could not, would not make copies.

My portfolio is still my most prized possession, save my soul. If my house was burning down I’d rush to save it. I have sold signed copies of my larger chinamarker drawings to collectors, but only when the loss of resolution is acceptable for a piece given the circumstances.

So I’m looking around the enormous museum-like atrium, admiring a twisted cast-aluminum sculpture, checking out the vibe of the place. People file in from lunch, badges swipe. Would I work here? An angry woman stomps out of nowhere, “Why are you still here?!” Houston, we have a problem.

Looking back now, whoever she was, her hissy fit was worth it. Before going down there I spent several nights editing my portfolio, made several improvements in the process, time well spent. And it turns out the tighter borders I came up with look real nice float-mounted on mat board with heat-activated adhesive.

Laney is aware now of gifts without name. Of modes of perception that may never have previously existed. He has, for instance, a directly spatial sense of something very near the totality of the infosphere. He feels it as a single indescribable shape, something brailled out for him against a ground of backdrop of he knows not what, and it hurts him, in the poet’s phrase, like the world hurts God. Within this, he palps nodes of potentiality, strung along lines that are histories of the happened becoming the not-yet.

Laney is central in Idoru too, another book by Gibson.

On this same subject Chris Anderson ranks today at Techmeme:

At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality.

Your Flash nightmare is finally over: the solution is Flash Switcher for Firefox. Download and install the Flash Switcher plugin, then in Firefox click “Tools” and under “Flash Switcher” you will see the option to remove Adobe Flash! Enjoy!

Update: It appears you can update your Flash player to protect yourself, but let me remind you this isn’t the first time Flash has been exploited by malicious hackers.

Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. The Web sites offer tremendous educational potential.”

I agree. This attitude drives Ferodynamics.com, one of my other domains. It’s incredibly popular, hundreds of thousands of visits/month, and most of the comments come from young people.

These kids remind me of myself back when I was in middle school designing ANSI graphics for bulletin boards. Those bulletin board graphics got me involved in computer programming and art, leading to all kinds of awards and opportunities throughout high school and college, including an IBM internship building OS/2 multimedia code. If they’re passionate about the web I’m sure they’ll enjoy similar success.

Today I decided to try Summize. My first search was for Adsense. Almost half the results were in Spanish. That surprised me. Last I checked the worldwide usage numbers, English and Chinese dominated the Internet. But apparently Spanish-speaking Adsense publishers are active on Twitter. Anyway. So I’m surfing along and I see someone posted a link hypothesizing measuring the traffic rise and fall of key web properties, like Bankrate.com, might indicate economic health. I couldn’t read their charts. A solid idea but their methods didn’t impress me. But Yahoo! HotJobs was on the list, what’s going on with them?

I searched for “Wordpress” in Austin, TX. Two jobs came up. Here’s one of them:

Assist and advise clients in the creation and revision of web content using planning tools as needed, i.e., storyboards, site maps, flowcharts, mock-ups, etc. Develop and maintain dynamic pages and web based applications, including all phases of product development: analysis, project planning, programming, testing, maintenance and documentation. Manipulate graphics and format images as necessary. Perform daily content updates for the site. Monitor for currency of content, and initiate contact with clients to resolve currency issues. Maintain archive of back up materials and image database. Document project tasks and processes. Perform other related duties as assigned.

Sounds like your typical information architecture job, right? Or is this a system administration job:

Exposure to Apache, PHP, MySQL installation and maintenance on Linux and/or Unix operating systems.

No wait, maybe they really want a software developer:

Exposure and understanding of both procedural and object oriented programming methodology.

Now I get it. They want Commander Data to Rubik’s Cube a box of wires into a datacenter with a popular Web 2.0 website, complete with diagrams explaining how he did it so they can replace him with Commander Data 2.0. Seriously, if they can’t write up a realistic job description, what does that tell you? It tells me they don’t appreciate what an information architect does, what a system administrator does, what a software developer does, three roles for three people, not one. You don’t want your system administrator building websites, he’s got to keep the server up safe from hackers and DoS attacks, load balanced and all that jazz. And do you really think a software developer will piddle around in XHTML and CSS to come up with usable architecture? Dream on. If you still want the job you are “invited” to write them a letter, with all those tech skills you can’t even apply online.

Let’s look at the other one:

As part of Surgient’s marketing team, you will join as a web designer and developer where you will bring your innovation and creativity to interactively manage and update overall corporate and internal websites, implement web marketing programs and SEO. In this role, you will be working in a fast-paced environment where marketing success is considered critical to achieving the overall goals of the company. We are looking for someone who is experienced in designing and developing websites that convert effectively, increase organic search traffic, and communicate clearly.

First sentence, “implement” should be “implementing” or “and implement”. Last sentence has the same problem. Looks like they added duties to an existing job without actually reading what was written the first time! Maybe their traffic guy increased his own traffic and left the company. No problem, we’ll just give the web designer a few more responsibilities and call him a web “marketing” designer. This job probably takes on responsibility like The Blob =o

Lori Drew created a fake profile on Myspace and allegedly talked a young girl into killing herself. Now if convicted she faces up to 20 years in prison:

The Los Angeles indictment is the first time that a social networking user has faced federal charges for accessing protected computers for harassment.

This is a very sad story, I hope we learn from it. You are more than what other people think of you, more than you now know. And be yourself online, works for me! ;-)

Artists are poor because of cheap posters. Most people walking into a frame shop, the few with an eye for art will buy a poster at Art.com or from their favorite art museum. And people buy assembly-line paint-by-number knockoffs from China and $5 field paintings from Ebay, painted on fabric you can’t stretch because it’s as thin as tissue paper.

And now everyone has a digital camera. Press a few buttons, drop the prints in $5 frames from China and hang a show at Starbucks. Overnight success!

For abstract artists there’s no market besides people looking for splashes of color (from Rothko wannabes) to match furniture, which is why Etsy lists color categories at the top of their homepage. Real color composition today is truly a lost art because the market has no patience or eye for it.

So I interview abstract artists at Knowingart.com to educate and give some credit where it’s due. I don’t feature my own work, just the work of the few artists I find online my trained eye appreciates.