VER wondered how quickly and trivially you could produce plain-text banners for a given word, name, or slogan? Using fixed-sized characters and common cross-platform fontsets, you can use an on-line tool to produce banners of choice. This obviates the need for manual and laborious composition or ‘off-the-shelf’ ASCII graphics (my long-standing favourite source). Below is some example output from the tool:

The real issue is trying to fit the characters properly given fonts that are not the same as specified in the original site. This tool might be valuable, on occasions at least, for E-mail that is plain-text or even for UseNet/newsgroups.

Other Internet-based tools:

• Cyborg Name Generator
• Polaroid Images
• Name Popularity

Google Analytics will know
even more than the Google cookie

OOGLE have introduced their site statistics service only a few days ago. They teamed up with Urchin who are among the best in their field, if not best in terms of the popularity and functionality of their software package, which analyses log files. With all the enthusiasm, concerns emerge as well, at least in my own mind.

Google continue to spread their wings, assigning innovative projects to their highly talented and Internet-savvy staff. This time, for a change, Google penetrate information that only sites can retain, i.e. in-house data. In that sense, they benefit from inside information, which perhaps leads to unfair, unbalanced competition which puts privacy in greater jeopardy.

Google’s quick expansion frighens me; it passively becomes a Web monopoly. First they stole the thunder from Alex King’s FeedLounge and now it may be Jeff Veen’s Measure Map (among others like Mint). I volunteered to help both projects, so I have seen or can foresee Google’s impact on ‘mom-and-pop’ sites. I have mentioned this implicitly in:

• Feed Readers Everywhere
• Google Print and AI

It all develops into a scary situation as you can never fight or resist scale, no matter how ambitious you might be. Services integration is yet another major factor which elevates the brand. Google can finally take a deeper look that transcends the level of SERP‘s and will be able to see what MSN, Yahoo and the others are up to. Moreover, expect abuse of reports, e.g. fabricated (i.e. spam) statistics that attempt to enhance a site’s image, at least in Google’s perception.

Is it just me who is slightly apprehensive? Are all bases belong (sic.) to Google? Google Base, which was officially launched just a few hours ago, crops to mind. I mentioned its possible impact among my Google pet peeves.

Google Analytics, by the way, is said to provide no statistics as yet. Many people suggest that its state is dormancy. I am not sure if the service is overwhelmed by demand or perhaps it is still in beta, much like most services from Google.

As an arbitrary set of useful links:

• An academic homepage provides a description and listing of mathematical symbols in HTML.

Nice examples like the following equations have been put together:

∆u  =  Δu  =

n ∑ i = 1

∂2u/∂xi2

+∞ ∫ −∞

exp(−x2) dx

=  √π

The above is valid HTML, but as expected, it makes heavy use of tables although data is not truly tabular. From a standards perspective, this may be frowned upon.

While on the issue of rarely-used symbols, below lie my related ‘pocket links’:

• HTML accents table
• HTML symbols

Media slowly becomes redundant
while network-based services take over

HE interesting item come from the Financial Times and discusses Microsoft’s wishful (and thus far unsuccessful) strategic move to providing on-line services, e.g. MSN and so-called Live Software.

For long-time Microsoft watchers, there was a strong sense of déjà vu about Bill Gates’s description this week of a new vision for the future of software.

The future, he declared, lay lies (I had to fix this typo that hurt my eyes) in delivering services over the internet, not selling shrink-wrapped CDs containing code that customers could load on their own machines…

[...]

But the internet’s impact on the software business continues to spread, and the idea of software-as-a-service is back in fashion in Microsoft’s Redmond HQ — this time under the new rubric of ‘Live Software’.

Microsoft’s CEO therefore admits that Microsoft’s weakest point is in fact where future IT is headed. Can the Internet become safe haven for the troubled and perplexed Windows code? Will Microsoft’s Singularity (a new O/S) become a reliable replacement/successor instead? It it all as realistic as edible manour?

RedHat Linux

previously mentioned the $100 laptop initiative and repeatedly referred to cheap computers in general. An article in the Wall Street Journal now claims that the $100 laptop is nearing reality. It will supposedly run Red Hat Linux on AMD processors.

A novel plan to develop a $100 laptop computer for distribution to millions of schoolchildren in developing countries has caught the interest of governments and the attention of computer-industry heavyweights.

Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.’s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company’s operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative’s founders. “We declined because it’s not open source,” says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Older items on inexpensive hardware:

• How Cheap Can Computers Become?
• Cost-effective Computers
• Dirt-Cheap Computers
• Expensive Developers, Cheap Hardware

ODULARITY or compartmentalisation, at least in the context of programming, are important and fundamental concepts. They accommodate for easy extension or change of any piece of software. In the context of Web design, elements to be dealt with apart are layout and content, as the former virtually ‘wraps’ the latter.

Design for the Web and typesetting must be treated just like programming. Almost no exceptions. Why rule out WYSIWYG paradigms and interfaces? Because Abstraction is lossy. Since even bloated application can never faithfully read one’s mind, they result in mistaken outcomes which make assumptions that should not be made. The issues are also ambiguity-driven. Below lie a few examples:

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): What is the motivation? The idea of maintaining one single file to rule them all — a magic wand to manipulation of files, which facilitates consistent change of layout in a variety of pages. Separate content from presentation is the core rationale. This accommodates for flexibility that is inherent in themes. Styles adhere to a given standardised mechanism/syntax, much like API‘s in the programmatic domain.

If you develop a software product, you can have someone else extend your code, add themes or utilise your services, e.g. Google Maps API, which are now trailed by Yahoo equivalents. Also worth noting are the number of Firefox and Thunderbird themes and extensions (plug-ins). WordPress provides a genrous number of plug-in ‘hooks’ as well, which encourages outside contribution. All extensions are attributed to good support to foreign involvement and modularity which separates the trunk of an application from its add-ons.

L^AT_EX: TeX styles are a similar scenario where consistent styling is easily achieved. Change can be applied to entire document where semantic structure has been embedded by the author. This, in fact, is why many books and eclectic conference proceedings are assembled using L^AT_EX.

Fortunately, more and more people begin the comprehend the value of this approach and the mantra which is not only inter-operability-motivated. It is also guided by the emerging importance of structural composition of documents, which must not differ. In the absence of serapate styles, many files need to be changed consistently, which can become a labour-intensive task. Such operatings are possible, e.g. using recursive search and replace, yet they should be considered nothing but a fallback option.

man was found to have cured himself of HIV, perhaps owing to his immune system. There appears to be no official confirmation, but doctors and researchers want the man for further tests. Understandably, the man declined the offers. The photo embedded in the BBC article rules out anonymity as a factor in his decision.

Doctors say they want to investigate the case of a British man with HIV who apparently became clear of the virus.

Andrew Stimpson, 25, was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2002 but was found to be negative in October 2003 by Chelsea and Westminster Healthcare NHS Trust.

This came just a couple of days after I had watched Constant Gardener, which is a strong and emotional film involving AIDS in Africa. The film can be rather cold and depressing, so it is most-suited for the faint-hearted. My negative reaction is amplified by the fact that I watched drama/comedy types at the cinema one week beforehand, namely Thumbsucker and Broken Flowers .