Microsoft at one time threatened to make it’s own rss symbol and avoid the uniformity already existing in the RSS arena. Thankfully, C-Net cites some Microsoft employees as saying they will now adopt Mozilla’s RSS Logo. Thank you Microsoft.

I often run with my phone in my pocket. Sometimes it rains. I wold love to have a waterproof cell phone, and it appears that they are on the way. Japan always gets the best stuff first unfortunately for me.

OOo is short for OpenOffice.org. Since Massachusetts decided to pressure the MicroSoft Office folks by insisting on an open standard for document format for the state business, things have gotten interesting — and political. The most talked about article currently over at C-Net is this article on that very subject. Has everyone tried the new Open Office 2.0? I have and it looks very nice. I am currently reading a book called Point and Click Open Office. I’ll review the book in a few days probably, but it looks very good so far.

What I really like about Open Office for starts is that it seamlessly creates pdf documents. WordPerfect (I highly prefer this program over Word) will also make pdf’s pretty well. Not so with Word. After using Open Office for that, however, I find I am using it for more and more things and using Word less and less.

A big part of the argument over at C-Net is that Open Office — and open source software — is not really free because it lacks support when used as a free program. Now lets think a minute …. if I can buy a product at say $100 a copy and I need thousands of them, or I can get the same product for free, won’t it make more sense for me to train my own support person anyway? I don’t need the companies support if I have my own as any organization of the size of Massachusetts for example. Even in a smaller business, buy the book above for $20 and you are off to the races. It is an easy to use program.

This is an interesting article over at C-Net about how a research firm gathers comments from the Internet in an effort to determine how much buzz there is surrounding a television show. The theory is that a good show (meaning one that will be popular — not that it will have great artistic quality) will generate positive buzz. The problem is that if advertisers catch on to this, then how long before NBC starts paying people to hit the chat rooms, start blogging and so forth? I know, I’m a cynic … but am I right?

The show with the most buzz this year was “My Name is Earl”. I have to admit that I watched just one episode and found it hilarious personally. If I was looking to watch any more TV it would definately have been an add to my mix, but we watch exactly three shows a week — all on tape delay. I didn’t need another one.

Honda is working on robotic technology to make a non-human office worker. The robot is named ASIMO. The thing does some neat things, but for the cost of it, is it really practical and efficient or a novelty? It certainly is generating some PR for Honda, but do you really want to be greated by a robot over even an ugly receptionist who will smile and figure out if you need anything?

The robot will escort you to a location based on information it reads from a card supplied to you, fetch drinks and carry a tray, push a cart in all four directions, run at speeds over three miles an hour and keep your wife happy if she wants to talk (I just made up that last one). You can see video and pictures over on the Honda Site.

We are often asked it is necessary or prudent to validate your pages according the the W3C standards. Some say yes, and some say no. I guess to my way of thinking good coding cannot be bad, but bad coding might, or might not, be good. Why take the chance? Your comments are welcome below.

I like Firefox a lot! I use only a few extensions these days, mainly web developer, bugMeNot and form spell checking called spellbound (installation of this one is a little tricky). I used to use a couple of the tab extensions. This article over at wired.com got me thinking I should try a couple more of them.