he World Wide Web is becoming more open, but there are still sites which refuse to accept it. As an example, Microsoft included some sick humour in the download page for .Net specifications. When entering the page with Mozilla Firefox, the download button intentionally gets a bad placement (see screenshot, click to enlarge).

Once the button is clicked, it disappears outside the screen in an animated fashion! No download is possible until the 3^rd click.

Google made their toolbar available only for Internet Explorer. More recently, they were kind enough to refer to the open Google bar, which builds onto other browsers.

The excellent Google Desktop is only available for Windows. A message from Google said that they work improving it, rather than porting it to work under more operating systems. *sigh*

Finally, have a look at this offensive page from Yahoo.

The Public Wiki section on this domain

ome months ago I decided that only urgent messages are worth the use of E-mail. Somehow I just got fed up, even though I was spam-free.

A couple of days ago I took what I hope to be a step towards life without E-mail. I set up a Wiki where most of my correspondence will take place. Wikis are a collection of pages where content is editable by everyone, given access privileges of course. Why not use forums or bulletin boards for rapid communication? Here is a short comparison:

*Dependent on the package

s some reader may already know, Flickr are among the most popular services for on-line photo sharing. A Yahoo takeover was announced yesterday.

This, in my humble opinion, will mark the end of ‘cleaner’, more decent photo galleries. It is only a matter of time until cherished Flickr will be ‘decorated’ with mugshots of Britney Spears and Ol’ Dirty Bastard. I am also worried that Yahoo will do to Flickr the same type of damage they did to Geocities, of which I was a member at the time. That acquisition, which goes back several years back, prevented me from making further changes to content and my pages were flooded with advertisements, from which Yahoo profited.

According to the sources of Slashdot:

This is the third high profile Blog/RSS related buyout of 2005. Live Journal was bought by Six Apart, while Ask Jeeves snapped up Bloglines.

This photo (direct link) has got to be seen for its enormous size to be comprehended. Zooming appears almost infinite, without loss in quality. The site provides the tools for viewing and interacting with the data in real time.

If this photo were printed, it would measure 6.67 m by 2.67 m (300 dpi). The photograph shows Delft and its surroundings in the autumn of 2004.

On the right: my illustration of the extent of magnification

Big trouble lies ahead if planning is neglected before a project begins. This statement extends beyond the field of software development and reflects on situations in many aspects of work.

Spolsky who authors Joel on Software phrased this rather nicely:

Software engineers who dive into code without writing a spec tend to think they’re cool gunslingers, shooting from the hip. They’re not. They are terribly unproductive. They write bad code and produce shoddy software, and they threaten their projects by taking giant risks which are completely uncalled for.

It is amusing (with mixed feelings of sympathy) to see job ads from small IT companies. Here is a snippet from one of them:

…Right now our focus is on less experienced, thus less expensive people…

…We do not have an office so there is almost no social life here…

Almost?!?! Will you meet your colleagues on the sidewalk?

Eric Meyer pointed out the strange policies that some corporations instate:

We reserve the right to require you to remove links to the Site, in our sole discretion.

Linking to any page of the Site other than to the homepage is strictly prohibited in the absence of a separate linking agreement with Orbitz.

About a month ago I heard that Sainsbury’s require you to apply in order to get a permission to link. The only worry one can think of them having is a link name with an unflattering title, which then associates them with inadequate words in search engines. Try for example, ‘f**kwit’ in Google and the first result (as of the time of writing) will be John Prescott, the British Deputy Prime Minister. Ironically enough, the top SERP for this site is Teresa May, the Tory MP, though most visitors are after a porn star with the same name.