CIW Community - Get caught in the Web!

A while back, a noted expert in user interface design named Mike Rundle created a pretty good entry in a long line of scatological comments about Web design. After all, how many people have used basic, earthy language to describe a site's poor design? Enough said. But Mike took his discussion to another level.

Starting with its Foundations series of books, CIW distinguishes between front-end design and back-end design issues. Back in September of 2007, Yahoo's Steve Souders published a pithy set of 14 rules that front end designers can follow. Entitled "Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site," it's a pretty good - though technical - read. You can read more about his insights from his O'Reilly book, entitled High Performance Web Sites.

Most Web hipsters prefer Firefox. Designers and developers prefer it, too. But, at least according to an article in ComputerWorld, their bosses don't. While the way the article is written doesn't really grab one's attention, it does have an interesting argument: That the corporate mainstream has avoided Firefox for three primary reasons:

Back in July of 07, Mashable published a nice article containing some nice Firefox add-ons that make it easy to post blogs on your favorite blog servers. I haven't seen a better collection, so I've decided to post it. Enjoy!

An article re-published on Slashdot alleges that Adobe's CS3 software has a built-in function that secretly monitors its users. Whether or not this is the case, I find it interesting that many respondents on Slashdot felt that such functionality constitutes an invasion of privacy to some degree.

TechCrunch has created a sardonic little "Dead pool" archive for companies and projects that have gone the way of the Dodo. The latest?

Too bad there's not video of this, but IBM has posted a prognostication about the Big 5 over the next 5 years. No, the article doesn't talk about how the Big 5 sporting goods store is going to get even more boring in the next five years (is that possible?). Rather, some wonks over at IBM have created a list of five big innovations that will affect you over the next five years (opens new window).

For you folks who've been looking around for the ubiquitous end of the year "best of" lists, here's one from ABC News, an "old media" site who is trying desperately to look hip (like the rest of them). It's an article that cites the 25 biggest Web celebrities for 2007 (opens new window).

Seasons greetings to one and all! I'm going to make this a short one, as my parents have just come into town, and I need to entertain them. Have a good one!

- Tangent

I've been thinking lately that a lot of people - including high school and community instructors - would love to see a hands-on "Blogging 101" course that taught blogging best practices to people. We could accompany it with a fun overview of applications such as Audacity (opens new window), so that people could also get some podcasting going, too.