As the summer winds down (well, a few more weekends on the beach), I came to realize how quickly time passes by. Wow, this is the first update in 11 days! It’s really not in my nature to be neglecting this little corner of the internet - but I have been plenty busy. Major upgrades over at SkinnyChef.com (all behind the scenes so far), then a little work for some friends here and there - you get the idea. In addition to all this, sprinkle in some social engagements in the city, weekends on the beach, weddings in various parts of the country - it’s time that we return to the quieter fall season. I am looking forward to this….

It was a day for flashlights, transistor radios and hard-to-find payphones as Manhattanites trapped by the blackout abruptly discovered the failings of high-tech wireless tools. Read more…

While thousands of people in Manhattan are still without electricity, power returned to most parts of New Jersey throughout the night. Hoboken’s power came back on at 3:01 AM, and most facilities reported open for business. While sitting in the darkness last night, I jotted down some thoughts - after all there was nothing else to be done. Where Were You When It Happened?

Wondering what cell phone to buy? Wondering if you can take your cell number with you when switching providers? These and many more questions are answered by CNET editor Joni Blecher, a.k.a. the cell phone diva. Read more…

As commercial interests have increasingly dominated the Internet, Web logs have come to represent a bastion of individual expression and pure democracy for millions of bloggers.

So it should come as little surprise that a technology behind blogs - online chronicles of personal, creative and organizational life - has manifested the kind of bitter fight for control that is inevitable in any truly democratic institution. Read more….

A while ago (July 13 to be precise), I posted a blurb about Friendster.com. Now, USA Today has given it some more coverage. The Web site owes its rapidly growing popularity to a simple but effective formula. Unlike dating sites that disseminate profiles of people looking to meet others, Friendster lets people network only with their friends’ other friends - and those people’s friends as well. Read more….

Like a creature in the sea, I am constantly filtering the waters for nutrients - in my case filtering out the truly amazing web designers around the world. Frosch-Studio, although being online for a long time, has just now come to my attention. I can’t praise them enough, their site is outstanding…

A security flaw that left an order log exposed at a website operated by spam marketers of penis-enlargement pills “has provided the world with a depressing answer to the question: Who in their right mind would buy something from a spammer?” Answer: Some 6,000 people. “Do the math and you begin to understand why spammers are willing to put up with the wrath of spam recipients, Internet service providers and federal regulators,” says Wired which contacted several of the customers to ask them why they responded to spam marketing and why they bought something from a website with no phone number, no mailing address and no email address. Read more…

Designing with web standards has been one of my perennial pet peeves. As a web developer with an eye on cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility, I can’t stress enough that designing for all browsers and all operating systems is a formidable feat. Most clients don’t have a clue what goes into ensuring that a given web page is displayed at least half-way decent on a host of browsers, from the ancient Netscape 4.79 (there are still folks out there that haven’t upgraded) to latest newcomer Netscape 7.0 (as bug-infested as its predecessors), not to speak of the dozens of Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Opera versions. When you add it all up, you have to consider 4 browser types, 4 versions each, plus Mac OS, PC and Linux.

So let’s just do that and add it up: 4 x 4 x 3 = 48, 48 different configurations then…..

How much time do you think a web developer should invest in fixing all problems associated with the 48 configurations? Let’s see: current layout works in configuration 1, 3, 4 and 5, but only on the Mac and Opera OS. Fixing problems with Windows browsers, we’ll introduce problems in version 2 on Mac. Mmmh, you get the idea. It’s like navigating a gigantic maze, and the maze is getting bigger and bigger with every new browser release.

As you can imagine, there is only one solution: Web designers have to compose standards-compliant pages. This will force the industry to develop browsers that interpret standards-compliant code correctly, relieving individual web developers from proofreading pages against said 48 configurations. “Looks good on one browser? Great, don’t have to check against anything else.”

Update July 2005: Check out Jeff Zeldman’s Keynote Movie from Web Essentials 04 held in Sydney, Australia

“People just expect the dominant guy to win. But females learn through personal experience that these males can be hurtful,” said an Ontario researcher who observed Japanese quail. After female quail watched a fight between two males, virgin females showed preference for the winner, but sexually-experienced females chose the loser.

Female coho salmon also are more likely to mate with males, called jacks, that stop growing earlier and are smaller than their competitors, according to an evolutionary biologist in Arizona. The researcher suspects female salmon are attracted to jacks because early maturing could be a sign of quality and success.

“The females may also prefer to avoid the physical abuse of mating with aggressive males,” the magazine added.