CSS analysis with The Web Developer extension (click to enlarge)

TUART Nicholls has been doing some stunning work on cutting-edge cascading style sheets (CSS). I first noticed his work roughly one year ago. More latterly I came to discover that he had implemented pure-CSS fonts! Imagine the complexity. Have a look at some time-consuming illustrations of the power of CSS:

• CSS font
• Snooker Cue (requires a Mozilla-based Web browser)
• Opaque, overlapping circles

No images are involved in creating any of the above, among many more which you can find in the site.

Also see: Barcharts using CSS

Picture from the BBC

XCITING news (for me at least) came out yesterday afternoon. I won the rowing competition (first stage among 10) with the time of 10:43.5 for 3000 meters. The second among the 10 contestants was almost 1 minute behind me, which considering my neglected endurance, makes this a high achievement.

Related items on exercise:

• Rowing Ahead
• Decade of Exercise
• Mr. Fitness

What is net neutrality? As one site puts it, it is:

“…the idea that every packet of information — a piece of an email, a piece of an mp3 of a radio broadcast — carries equal importance. That is, a message from me moves no faster or slower over the Internet than a message from the Queen. Or from CNN…”

It is no secret that the Internet is vast and it’s growing at a tremendous pace. With increase in size, unless capacity catches up, there will have to be compromises, in terms of resources. We are yet to discover how the entry of developing countries will change the terrain of the Web.

In other news, expect China to have 60 million bloggers by end of 2006.

High-bandwidth slows kills
CD-based distribution of software

HEN I was in an Art museum at Washington I suddenly realised that Open Source will affect commercial applications in the same was photography affected realistic drawings. Photography put a lot of power in the hands of common people and thereby drove down the worth of graphical reproduction. Open Source likewise. Some would say it fixes the price at 0. I, however, would argue that this move is inevitable and support will become the means to sustain businesses. Software can be duplicated; support cannot.

Will Open Source mark the end of a convicted monopolist and withstand its utter aggressiveness? Will it obliterate Microsoft or at least elbow them off course? I, for one, would love to see that happening. Nowadays, I seem to revel in their miseries and taking pleasure in their inability to catch up with Google.

The magnitude of mind games has reached detrimental level. Microsoft have become overly obsessed with Google and they come up with deceiving public statements. Here’s one:

Ballmer said Thursday he doesn’t think the company is lagging its competitors, noting that Microsoft has strong technical expertise and a loyal online user base with products like its MSN Messenger.

Here’s another one (from Gates):

Bill Gates has promised to keep Google “honest” by pushing the internet rival to “to better” despite coming late to the internet services market with an unfinished offering.

And yet, most recent figures show:

MSN’s search market share dropped from 14 percent to 11 percent

Google and Yahoo increased their market share in the online search arena as Microsoft’s MSN slipped, according to Web research firm Nielsen//NetRatings.

Moreover, on a separate and important Web services front:

But Microsoft is shying away from the 10-year-old name and hoping to freshen up its image as services such as Google’s Gmail creep up on its market share.

In short, Google mail’s annual growth stands at 114%; Hotmail, despite expansion of the Net, only grew by 16% in the same period.

N intersting article over at the BBC speaks about the idea of cloaking. To be more specific, a couple of scientists contend that it may be possible to hide one’s existence and presence. This notion relates to many science-fictioncal fantasies, so it sure arouses curiosity and fascinates, much like time travel.

The cloaking devices that are used to render spacecraft invisible in Star Trek might just work in reality, two mathematicians have claimed.

The front page of Slashdot on April 1^st, 2006

FTER Slashdot’s transition to proper CSS-based layout (it used to be heavily based on tables), a contest is run to select the new, permanent site design. Here are some of the latest design contenders. Some of these designs are included as actual Web pages, whereas others are appended as PNG-formatted screenshots. Shown above is the Slashdot front page as of April 1^st this year.