Go, Go Gadget Geeks!

Hi folks... heads-up: The bloggers over at Engadget are in Las Vegas, covering the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Now, CES is where geeks and gadget freaks want to go after they die.

Even if you're not an early adopter when it comes to the latest and greatest gadgets, the stuff that's showcased at CES is a good indicator of what tech is going to trickle down to the regular folks.

The Engadget folks (who train the entire year to get ready for this event) have a CES aggregator page with all the latest headlines from CES.

However, if you like gadgets, but don't care enough to obsessively slobber over every product demo article extolling the virtues of the new Bluetooth phone headset with improved antimatter injector technology, the main Engadget site will have the pretty pictures right up front for you to scan.

Also, for the duration of CES, we'll have an CES Engadget widget on the AOL Blogs main page:

Just so you know, I don't write that copy -- it is unlikely, for example, that you will ever see me using the word "deets" (unless I'm talking about insect repellent).

Also FYI, if you can't be bothered with any of this, here's a cheat sheet to the three basic types of announcements you'll see about CES:

1. The phones get smaller.
2. The screens get bigger.
3. The computers get faster.

One last thing -- we seem to be having some problems with the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets -- they control the look of a Web page) on some of the People Connection pages, including the AOL Blogs main page.

Apparently, there was a CSS change that affected a few things, including a problem that's causing photos to bleed up into the headers:

This problem does not affect AOL Journals in any way, and should hopefully be fixed soon.

Also, it's only appearing in Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers (like the one that is part of the AOL software) -- Firefox browser is unaffected, which is where I took the CES widget screenshot. I haven't checked with Netscape or other browsers.

CSS can be funny that way -- I will probably be talking more about CSS problems on different browser types later in the week.

Thanks -- Joe

Hello Kitty Minefield

Hi folks... I'm operating a little slowly today -- I seem to have picked up a cold that's been going around, so sorry about that.

Below is the new 2006 calendar I picked up at lunchtime. I'm always out of sorts until I get a new calendar, and I'm too cheap to pay regular price for a calendar that's just for office use, so I wait until they're significantly discounted.

Of course, this limits the selection a bit, at least when it comes to suitability for the workplace. So, say hello to my new Hello Kitty calendar:

Actually, the odds are pretty good that I would have gotten this calendar anyway, as my 2004 calendar was an Oopsy Daisy calendar (a character I had not encountered before or since).

Bonus -- with purchase came a sheet of 75 Hello Kitty stickers, so I have been randomly vandalizing my co-workers' cubicles as I stagger around in a semi-medicated haze.

The sign next to it is a minefield warning sign I picked up from military surplus.

Thanks -- Joe

Tragedy Atop Tragedy

Morning, folks... as you've no doubt heard by now, only one of the 13 coal miners who were trapped in the Sago Mine in West Virginia has survived.

To make matters worse, around midnight last night, incorrect reports went out that all 12 of the remaining miners (one miner's body had been found earlier in the evening) had survived.

Family members celebrated, until they were told three hours later that all but one had perished.

People are now mourning the dead, though the recriminations and finger-pointing have begun as people try to figure out what happened -- both with the release of the incorrect information, and the reason why the accident happened in the first place.

Here are some resource related to the tragedy:

* Poynter Online is focused on journalism issues, and considers the issue of newspapers that went to press with variations on the incorrect "Miners Rescued" headline.

It also has a round-up of resources on coal mining, mine accidents, and other information for people who want to learn more.

* Found this one on Metafilter: It's the blog observations of a reporter who has been on the scene in West Virginia. It's kind of the raw, unedited, behind-they-eyes goings-on of a journalist.

Both of those links re-raise some of the questions I mentioned yesterday about the role of newspapers' dead-tree (paper) and online editions.

Also, my friends over at the AOL News Community have set up a condolences message board if you'd like to leave a message.

Thanks -- Joe

You Know You May Be Blogging Too Much When...

At risk of turning this into one of those silly blogging memes, I just now experienced a moment that would be best told in this form:

You know you may be blogging too much when...

...you're reading a news article on washingtonpost.com, and you wonder why there aren't "Feeling:" and "Listening to:" fields next to the author's byline.

I swear this is a true story.

Anyway, at the risk of overanalyzing things (as I tend to do), this is a nice segue into an entry that I wanted to do that I was going to title, What's Wrong With Online Newspapers?

Last week, there was a Slashdot article discussing an entry by blogger Kirk McElhearn entitled, Why Haven't Online Newspapers Gotten it Right?

It's basically a think piece that doesn't offer any answers, but invites readers to think about how newspapers should adapt for the Web.

Now, this is not a new question. If you thunk back to the early days of the Web, circa 1996, you might recall that the New York Times used to offer their front page as a downloadable PDF file -- basically, it was a big picture of their front page, which you would read on your computer.

(By the way, the Times still kind of does this, although it's not really meant to be used as... anything.)

This is not a very efficient use of the medium. It would be only slightly less silly than broadcasting a picture of the front page onto your television screen.

The rise of blogs has added another dimension to this question. Beyond just thinking about layout and presentation, the conversational nature of blogs has people asking: Why shouldn't journalists blog about their news stories, engage readers directly, and allow comments to be bundled with their stories?

These questions are pretty important to traditional dead-tree newspapers; in fact, you might say it's critical -- there's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth among publishers, because they're worried about declining subscriber numbers.

And so there's been a lot of navel-gazing. For example, the Washington Post has a self-criticism program wherethey pick someone to opine about what they need to do to fix the paper. (The self-flagellation aspect of this seems very Maoist.)

One of the more interesting ones I've heard of came from humor columnist Gene Weingarten back in November. He also used his weekly online chat to solicit reader suggestions for improvements.

Predictably, the full text of his critique made it out to the blogosphere, so check it out. It's focused primarily on the dead-tree edition, but it's still an interesting read on the role of newspapers in modern society.

Anyway, I don't have an ending for this entry, other than to say that all of this still very much transitional, and I don't pretend to have any answers. And, a lot of people smarter than me have been thinking about this kind of stuff ("If Woodward and Bernstein had blogged about Watergate, what would it have looked like?").

So I will just wrap it up here. Thanks -- Joe

Hey, Sexy Pants

Here's the content of an IM spam (or SPIM) I just received. IM Catcher caught it, but I was curious and I wanted to take a look (I don't recall getting SPIM from an ICQ account before), so I opened it. I'm glad I did:

297303857 - ICQ:  Hey Sexy pants, what are you up to? Do you have time to check out my dating profile? yxunfmuikkc[Spam Site URL Removed].orgpdpojtdueyfcwknhljs

A couple of things I saw:

* Notice the domain is a .org. Remember the good old days, when .org was for nonprofit organizations only?

* See also how the URL is padded in front and back with garbage characters. This is presumably to try to reduce the warning flags that make the IM look like spam. Of course, this means that it's no longer a clickable hyperlink, so perhaps that's a sign of desperation? One can only hope...

Thanks -- Joe

The Hammer Comes Down in 2006!

Here is my first photo of 2006, in accordance with the rules and bylaws of blogger John's Blog Photo Shoot:

This? Oh, this is just a meat tenderizer that I picked up on clearance yesterday at a certain concentrically-circle-logoed store.

I took a picture of it because I was also taking pictures of some of the other glass and steel purchases I'd made at a certain Swedish-or-other-Scandinavian furniture store.

Now, I don't need a meat tenderizer. So why did I buy it? It was half-price, and it has a satisfying heft.

I may buy a few more, you know, to have in the car, office, boat and RV.

Thanks -- Joe

Meet the New Year...

... same as the old year? Not sure -- too soon to tell.

Hope everyone had a good holiday break and a happy New Year.

I'm back in the saddle and catching up on mail and other things. I still have some baggage from 2005; today, I will be trying to clear out my hopper of some entries I didn't get to last week, as well as trying on a few other things.

Thanks -- Joe