Let the celebrations begin!

Our author copies have arrived for Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide, and we're well into the celebrations, using our Macromedia martini glasses, of course. Those are probably collectables, now...

JavaScript Developer Center!

There's all kinds of nice stuff in the JavaScript Developer Center, part of the Yahoo! Developer Network. Code samples, articles, documentation, and links to stuff all over the net, all brought together in one place. Very nice.

Few Women on Tech Company Boards

There's some interesting data in this article, Women rare on boards in region: Silicon Valley 2005 numbers up but lower than nation's. Here's the highlights (lowlights?):

• 88% of S&P 500 companies have at least one female board member, but that number is only 44% in Silicon Valley.

• 49% of S&P 500 companies have more than one female board member, but that number is only 11% in Silicon Valley.

• Of the 12% of the S&P 500 boards with no female directors, 43% are tech companies.

• Of the 81 new independent directors added by Silicon Valley companies in the last year, only six were women.

If you're a tech company looking to help raise any of the above numbers, feel free to give me a call.

Your Macworld Questions Answered

Plenty of people know we're long-time Macworld Expo attendees, so they ask us questions. Here's the answers to a few of them:

Q: Is there a Macworld Expo Blogger Lunch?

A: Jason Shellen is organizing one again, according to this post on his blog. Go RSVP there.

Q: Will you be attending that lunch?

A: Probably not, as well before that I agreed to do a presentation at the Peachpit booth (#1507) at 1:00 that day. I don't think that I can make it to both, but I'll try.

Q: Where can I get free passes to the conference?

A: There are a number of companies that are giving them away. Peachpit has info here about free passes, but you have to request it by January 3.

Q: Is the "w" in Macworld supposed to be capitalized?

A: No, never. Never, never, never.

A Market Segment Beyond My Ken

Every so often, I come across products that make no sense to me. And once in a while, I come across what appears to be a large market segment of products, and I'm just baffled that anyone buys this stuff. And it must sell, or there wouldn't be quite so many of them. Today's case in point: Hanukkah-themed Christmas tree ornaments.

Yes, really. Here's just a few that I came across in a quick look around the 'net:

• A jeweled Dreidel Ornament by Waterford

• A Menorah Ornament by Waterford

• A burning flame Hanukkah Menorah Ornament

• A Jewish Star Shaped Hanukah Ornament

• Personalized Hanukkah Christmas Ornaments

And of course, I shouldn't have been surprised to find a few hundred of them on CafePress: round ornaments, oval ornaments.

Who buys these things?

Health insurance woes

Via Jason, there's this post on a family that can't get health insurance because they've used it in the past. We're in the same boat (yes, again).

Tom, I'm mostly posting it here because there's some advice in the comments that we need to look into: CostCo, for example. They've got both small business and individual plans.

Action figures, devil ducks, and more!

Over at his place, Al Hawkins wrote about Stupid.com: Librarian Action Figure:

I know, I know, you were going to buy that hot librarian in your life a book, weren't you? Yeah, after a hard day patrolling the stacks, that's exactly what she was looking for, another damn book.

How about thinking outside the box book a little. For instance, did you know that Stupid.com has a librarian action figure with realistic shushing action?

They also have have an Einstein action figure (for that hard to buy for theoretical physicist), Sigmund Freud (for the shrinks), cat lady (like they need another cat, eh?) and Moses (so you can give the Jew girl toys).

From the fine folks who brought you the male nurse action figure, to which I already pointed.

I tried to put this in his comments, but it didn't work^*:

I believe those are all made by Accoutrements, one of my favorite companies.

They also have a deluxe librarian action figure, a crazy cat lady action figure, an obsessive compulsive action figure, and, well, just about every other kind of action figure you might ever want.

They have lots of other fun stuff, too — Tom and I are currently arguing over how many devil duckies I'm allowed to purchase and display.

They only sell wholesale, so if you want to buy individual items you have to go to their retail arm, Archie McPhee. The Archie McPhee store is one of my must-visits when I'm in Seattle.

^* Here's the error:

WP-Hashcash Check Failed

Your client has failed to compute the special javascript hashcode required to comment on this blog. If you believe this to be in error, please contact the blog administrator, and check for javascript, validation, or php errors. It is also possible that you are trying to spam this blog.

If you are using Google Web Accelerator, a proxy, or some other caching system, WP-Hashcash may not let you comment. There are known issues with caching that are fundamentally insoluble, because the page being written to you must be generated freshly. Turn off your caching software and reload the page. If you are using a proxy, commenting should work, but it is untested.

The value you submitted () is incorrect. Check the javascript to assure that the value part of the (hash, value) pair is being correctly generated.

WP-Cache is detected, but for some reason, HASHCASH_PER_USER is not set to true.

This comment has been logged, and will not be displayed on the blog.

Not spam, no Google Web Accelerator, no proxy, no caching. Oh well.