Entries from March 2006 ↓

I have no idea what that means. Sorry about that…

arstechnica had a cool article on how to ‘hack’ Google in order to see their new interface. I have shamelessly pasted the following figuring that the link back to them, cancels it out. I’ll do a re-write when their lawyers start to call… Please note that I changed the tld to ‘.ca’ as I am Canadian ‘eh.

The steps are as follows. First, navigate to google.ca. Second, paste this string into your address bar, and hit enter. It’s going to respond with a dialog box; just accept it and move on…

Note: the string must be a continuous, single-line entry, so you’ll need to open a text editor and paste the sting, formatting it to be on one line. In reality, this is the first step but you’ll sort it out… Hey, no one said this was gonna be easy.

Additionally, the portion “domain=.google.ca” should be modified to whatever Google search server you are using (just do it all on google.ca; it’ll be easier for you). Now you are looking at the same Google page that you started out on.

Thinking mentally with your mind, come up with a word to enter into the search box. After typing your word, hit enter and voilà; the new interface

Wasn’t that fun? So I was playing around with this new interface and discovered something… Yahoo Travel was displaying images from my Asian trip pages! Hey asshats, I didn’t post those to your site and I don’t want them up there… Luckily I had done some .htaccess magic with the new host which prevents image theft but the thumbnails were still cached…

Well, I’m done. Good day.

Technorati Tags: ‘hack’ Google, Canadian ‘eh, Yahoo, .htaccess

Yes, there is a downside to all this Web 2.0 goodness. First off, was it just me or was GMail unavailable for most of the day today? This comes as I find myself relying on GMail for more and more for my primary email usage. Frustrating… More frustrating than all the spam I’m suddenly seeing in my Sevenapril account.

Secondly, 30Boxes is completely offline. This too after I have started to use it for more than just tracking work stuff. I’m onto my second account after the first one got killed by an ugly import bug…

It’s all good having your stuff online; no matter where you go as long as you have a connection your stuff is there waiting for you. The obvious downside is that someone else is holding your data. If they decide to pull the plug you’re done. I’m not sure that this is the case with 30Boxes but it’s cause for concern.

No one seems to think that we are in another web bubble but I have to wonder. Yahoo is apparently questioning their purchase of Flickr. It’s expensive as hell to run and provides very little oppourtunity to generate revenue from it. I don’t have a Pro account and I sure as hell won’t be ordering any prints. Seems like many are of the same mind.

What is the point of all this blathering? Just a reminder that things are looking a little 2000ish to me. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised to see the lights go out on some of these free, beta services. Seek out the Export feature of your favourite web service, back up your GMail to Thunderbird. Sometimes it’s good to remember that you get what you pay for…

Update: I just came across this article on Blogcritics which appears to agree with me Even Caterina Fake concurs but she’s already her money, so I doubt she cares very much…

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, GMail, Sevenapril, 30Boxes, bubble, Yahoo, Flickr, beta, web service

Keeping on with my list theme, I now present another installment of My 5. This week, my top sites for desktop wallpaper, from the standpoint of interestingness.

Mac Desktops ~ As the name says, a Mac-centric site. The name is a bit misleading as htere are more than strictly Apple The downside is that they require you to register in order to download. I created an account and haven’t gotten any spam so it seems that they’re ok.

Wallpaper Stock ~ I like this one as it allows you to filter by category and resolution which saves you from a lot of mindless clicking. Mostly decent images abound…

Skeedz ~ Nice selection of pictures but you’re forced to load page after page until you stumble across something cool. Wait until you’re at work before you tackle this one. They have some gems but you’ll need to do some serious clicking before you come across them.

InterfaceLIFT ~ Another nice site where a great deal of thought was given to the navigation. Content is really good too.

I had a couple others in mind but to my dismay, they were either gone completely, or last updated sometime in 2004… So, that leaves del.icio.us to come to the rescue. If you can’t find a good site using del.icio.us, you really aren’t trying very hard.

Hope you find something to spruce up your desktop.

Technorati Tags: list, My 5, wallpaper, interestingness, Mac, del.icio.us