Whenever you need your web design to be pixel perfect a nice simple way to check things out is to to use CTRL+ (Mac: APPLE+) in Firefox to zoom in (use “-” for out) and then use the MeasureIt add-on to count the pixels.

Quick, simple and easier than screen capturing and bringing the cap into PhotoShop to examine.

Gaming like it’s 1969 but with a 2009 twist.  OnLive is the new “console” in gaming; everything is done on the server and sent down to your PC or your TV with their own micro console.  It’s quite possible it could work on a netbook one day.

It’s coming full circle again.  Back the 60s we had mainframes that supplied all of the processing to the dumb terminal.  Then the PC age came and all the processing went completely to the PC.  Then the Internet came and with JavaScript and AJAX the processing was split between the browser and the server.  And now OnLive is presenting the possibility of Gaming with processing of the heavy graphics and AI done on the server, and in their case a massive server farm.

They will be offering a micro-console for playing directly on your TV.  I imagine that this micro console code could easily be built into devices that are Internet ready with USB/WiFi support such as TiVo or even the Wii.

They have a beta program which you can sign up for.

I’ve been using TwitterBerry for my BlackBerry Storm, but I don’t quite love it so much as I use more and more desktop and web based apps.  I feel like there are some features that I need, that would make things easier.  So until I have the time to learn the BlackBerry SDK and write my app, I’m going to list out what I think is important and useful.

• Multiple Accounts - (for Corporate and Personal) all tweets from people you follow will be integrated into main list and have capability to have color coding
• Groups - The app will have grouping capabilites (along with automated groupings (such as per account groupings and recent friends etc…) and groups can be accessed by swiping sideways on the list view (also the abiity to hide groups from swiping and only view from group list availble from main menu)
• Tweet Caching - The ability to cache a tweet while you are not able to access a mobile signal
• In-app Flagging - for followup gets added to the “Flagged” automatic Group
• Search tweets of my friends - You know you recall a friend that tweeted about something particular, so search only within those tweets

So this is the start of my “favourite” twitter mobile app.  I’ll add more as I come up with more ideas and wishes.  Let me know what ideas you think are important or ones you think don’t work for you.

UPDATE: Here’s another feature I’d like it to have as well:

• Email tweets or add to social bookmarking service like del.icio.us

I write this post in the hopes that one day IT departments across the planet will wake up and realize the cost effectiveness of upgrading IE 6 to IE 8.  As a web developer I spend about one third to one half of my time when a bug arises (ussually for IE 6 alone) solving the problems of Interent Explorer.  This week alone I needed to code a few simple JavaScript scripts for a new project and each piece of functionality took only a few hours to get the basics in place, but then required about twice as much time getting it to work in IE 6.  Cross Browser functionality is a known task in my line of work, but it can be a nightmare when it comes to IE 6 and it’s outdated functionality.

Internet Explorer 6 came out in 2001 (eight years ago) and IE 7 came out in 2006.  According to Upsdell IE 6 accounts for ~26% of browser usage, this is still unfortunately a large enough user base to warrant developing web sites that are compatible.  MicroSoft still manages to push out security fixes every now and then, and that might be the real culprit of the situation.  If MS simply stated that they would no longer support IE 6 and that the only way to get new security features is to upgrade to IE 7 at least then I think companies would make the switch.  I think that the costs associated with a rollout upgrade are probably cost effective if you think about the time spent dealing with security risks to individual PCs that are vulnerable with IE 6, and you think about the time wasted on simple productivity of users that do not have a browser that was even built when Web 2.0 became a standard.

IE 8 is desgined to be a relatively decent competitor to the existing landscape that now includes Chrome and Safari 4 for the PC. The new version has many features such as their Accelorators and InPrivate browsing that can be very useful, along with tabbed browsing (a novelty of an idea that IE 6 will never support) that enhance the use of the browser as a tool.

The new Stargate Universe [Philosphocal] teaser looks awesome.  I stopped watching Atlantis a bit ago because it got boring, I hope this pumps up the energy as BSG did.  It has Lou Diamond Philips and Ming-Na in it, that could make it good.

So I thought I’d take a stab at using ping.fm to update my Twitter, LinkedIn, del.icio.us, GTalk and Facebook acounts when I post a new blog entry.  I imagine I’ll need to hack my wp-mail.php like I did with TwitterUpdater so that I can still blog from my BlackBerry and have the updates ripple out.

I tested their service from within their own interface and it didn’t update del.icio.us and LinkedIn took about 10 minutes or so to update.  We’ll have to see if it’s working fine from this basic blog post entry.

I notice that a few of people, particularly @davewiner like to go on multi twitting diatribes. Is this a proper use of the Twitter medium? Is it valuable to use a half dozen micro blog entries instead of a single entry that links to a full blog post.  Or possibly a more refined message that gets right to the point in 140 characters or less.  Now I certainly have nothing against Dave or others that twit in this manner, but it is not common amongst the few people I follow. Certainly Twitter was designed to be a status mechanism and this fact is why I see that it isn’t meant for an extended conversation.
Maybe Twitter is different now than when it started.  But I think the 140 limit is important to get users to commit to a single thought that is valuable to their followers.