Auction Aid

Courtesy of Aunty Spam's Net Patrol, there's Auction Aid, to benefit charitable relief efforts:

Win a live one-on-one talk with Guy Kawasaki or Warren Farrell, or a personally autographed book from Sir Harold Evans or Anne Fadiman, or CD from Bela Fleck, or an iPod Nano!

Proceeds benefit the Red Cross’s Hurricane Katrina relief fund, so go bid generously.

Missing our email?

Pair.com sent out a system notice today about Blocked E-Mail:

Beginning about a week ago, BellSouth began blocking e-mail from some of our user servers, gradually expanding the block to include more and more servers, as well as our relay servers. Despite our continual efforts, they have not provided us with any information as to why the blocks are in place, nor have they removed any blocks, despite the fact that we have followed their instructions on removal requests.

We have been unable to reach anyone at BellSouth who actually works with e-mail issues, nor will anyone there return our calls on this issue. There are numerous mutual customers who have also attempted to contact BellSouth on this issue, to no avail. Moreover, BellSouth is blocking the e-mail at the IP level, so connect attempts are refused, and e-mail queues on our system for days before being bounced back to the sender. This also means the remote system does not provide any error code that might explain their reason for blocking our servers.

Pass the word on, please. And if you're on BellSouth and were expecting something from either of us, let us know and we'll resend from one of our other accounts.

East Coast Macworld Expo: RIP

It's official: Macworld Expo Boston cancelled. It's no surprise to anyone who's paid attention, or to anyone who saw the pix of attendees/vendors at last summer's show. But it's still a darn shame.

Quotes of the day

Quote of the day:

Liquids that look like water are, clearly, just as healthy as water. Go ask a doctor; he'll tell you the same thing. Only he'll charge you a $20 co-pay, so don't bother. Trust me: all colorless liquids — water, 7-Up, a gin-and-tonic without any limes in it — are pretty much the same, nutritionally-speaking, and you should drink eight glasses a day for optimal health.

Or maybe this one's the the quote of the day:

Nostalgia leads to Melancholy. Melancholy leads to Sadness. And Sadness, never forget, leads to Tequila.

Both, from the inimitable AndyI.

Famine, then Feast

One of the things I've been unhappy about in 2005 is that I haven't done much traveling this year. So far, 2006 looks to be rather different: I'm going to be going to New Zealand.

Twice.

** NEW ** Microsoft "Gadgets"

In June 2004, at WWDC, Steve Jobs announced (as part of the Tiger introduction) something called "Dashboard Gadgets." As was quickly discussed all over the Mac community, the concept behind "gadgets" (renamed almost immediately to "widgets") wasn't new at all.

It's now September 2005, and today Microsoft Gadgets were announced:

What are Gadgets? Gadgets are a new category of mini-application designed to provide information, useful lookup, or enhance an application or service on your Windows PC or the Web. Examples might include a weather gadget running on your desktop or on your homepage, an RSS Gadget that pulls in your favorite feeds, or an extension of a business application providing just-in-time status on the pulse of your business.

Ummm... Microsoft? Gadgets may be a lot of things, but "new" isn't any of them.

Elsewhere on that page:

Have you ever wondered how new technologies get developed in Microsoft?

Oh my… with a straight line like that, it's hard to pick which snappy comeback to use. What would you say? Answer in the comments, please!

Widget lawsuit threatened

Someone got a copyright infringement notice due to a widget they'd written. For once, a lawsuit/cease-and-desist that doesn't involve Apple!

Today I received a copyright infringement notice from an attorney of the McGraw-Hill Corporation, publishers of the Business Week News Widget. They claimed that my ESPN and Wired widgets were in violation of their copyrights because
a) they look similar to the Business Week Widget and
b) I took a significant amount of code directly from the BW Widget.

... Yes, there are large portions of code that are nearly identical in both my widgets and the Business Week widget; that's because this code actually originated from Apple's example widgets.

CSS Syntax Checker for BBEdit

Useful, and long overdue: a CSS Syntax Checker for BBEdit and TextWrangler. One of my long-time gripes about BBEdit has been the lack of a CSS syntax checker. While this one doesn't come from BareBones, and it only works online, it still goes a long way towards filling a hole in one of my favorite tools.

Another hurdle to get over

Longtime readers know that we're pretty focused on getting Sean into a good college. Yesterday, we took him down to San Francisco for a personal interview with Harvey Mudd College. This article from Slate, The New College Try, looks at a particular aspect of the process that has gained increasing importance in the past few years, the personal essay. Things aren't getting any easier.