CoComment is a site that looks very promising. It will allow you to track where you leave comments, put a copy of the comments you leave here and there on your own website for your readers. It brings everything full circle. Sadly it is a popularity contest apparently as you need an invitation code and nobody sent me one. Maybe I can trade a gmail invite (or wait that was then) or a Newsvine tip or two?

Google today hired a significant figure from rival Amazon’s K9 search team. Head of that division at Amazon, Udi Manber, will become an engineer at Google. This is just the latest in a number of high profile hirings over the past few years by Google. Working there must sometimes feel like you are in the internet hall of fame. Hey guys, I am available if the price is right. Please contact me …

I occaisionally say bad things about Microsoft here — when I think they deserve it. Sit down a second, I have something good to say on the subject of Microsoft! I am preparing to work on a book involving Vista, Microsofts new operating system (and more) schedule for release later this year. So I visited the official Vista website today and was super impressed with the layout of the page. It really seems to have depth to it.

One of the features promised for Vista, and a feature I could care less about (or is it could not care less about?) is the glass translucent buttons and menus. However on the website, they sort of mimic them with translucent buttons (very slow to load on and off states by the way on my connection speed) that you see through to the far off mountain vistas. Slick job. Kudos to the MS web designer (or contracted person[s]) who handled that task.

I occaisionally say bad things about Microsoft here — when I think they deserve it. Sit down a second, I have something good to say on the subject of Microsoft! I am preparing to work on a book involving Vista, Microsofts new operating system (and more) schedule for release later this year. So I visited the official Vista website today and was super impressed with the layout of the page. It really seems to have depth to it.

One of the features promised for Vista, and a feature I could care less about (or is it could not care less about?) is the glass translucent buttons and menus. However on the website, they sort of mimic them with translucent buttons (very slow to load on and off states by the way on my connection speed) that you see through to the far off mountain vistas. Slick job. Kudos to the MS web designer (or contracted person[s]) who handled that task.

This is a great read, even if it is not true. Can Google, the company who plans to do no harm, actually buy something called dark fiber? It makes sense that they would like to own such a system. It will create Web 3.0, essentially networked machines on their network. That will allow users to purchase low cost slave machines and use them on a system monitored, updated and kept functional by professionals. For many that sounds good … how else has AOL survived this long?

Firefox released a new version 1.5.0.1 overnight apparently and the update sniffer in Firefox asks you to update. The site is absolutetly silent on the update, no announcement, nothing tells you the latest version … just nothing.

More significantly, if you choose to upgrade immediately, your extensions may not work. They now have a hook in extensions that limit them by version of Firefox and when you exceed the current version, your extensions become invalidated. Some developers countered by adding a future release as the limit so that they will not stop working based on the hook. Of course they may not work if in fact they are incompatible. I think a better system needs to be developed otherwise an update means giving up interim functionality.

You get this message on completion of the upgrade: “This page confirms that you’re running the latest version of Firefox, with the latest updates for stability and security. It won’t be displayed again.” So which is it, stability or security. Given that they appear to have rushed this out the door, one must suspect a security issue was discovered. I appreciate regular updates. And maybe it was just to create buzz now that Internet Explorer 7, Beta 2 preview was publicly released this week?

I expect more from Mozilla, tell me you have an update out and give a brief overview of enhancements … in this case likely just bug fixes.

Note: ahh, this makes more sense … this is really a beta release according to this very helpful article. Now one would think it might tell us that …

I love finding sites that help you pick colors. Today I happened onto a nice utility on-line that lets you select from many preset color patterns and then shows you how they might be used. My only slam on it is that it will not let you pick two colors as the base and then contrast and compare between them. I already have my first two colors and am looking for the third. So this is not the answer tonight, it will be many other days. This is hitting my permanent web design toolbox.