Posts from — February 2008

I’ve been running Firefox 3 Beta 3 for a little while on my macbook, and so far I’ve found it to be quite good. It’s faster than firefox2 and I’m surprised by how quickly I warmed up to the new look (it looks more like a native mac app now).

The most noticeable change is the location bar, which lets you search the URLs and titles of your history (instead of just searching the beginning of the URLs as it does in firefox 2. Here’s what it looks like:

Some people don’t like it, but I think it just needs some more work. I like that it learns over time which results should be on the top for a given input (or you can star items to promote them). The UI is way too busy, though. There’s no easy route for the eye to follow (I’d love to see an eye-tracking study on this). I don’t find the bold/underlined keywords to be helpful at all, it just makes things busier.

It’s a beta, still, so there’s time to improve it, but otherwise I’m sure there will be a lot of extensions that tweak it.

From this article:

General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a “total crock of shit,” saying his views had no bearing on GM’s commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.

Heartwarming.

A map of the world made of music:

(from Strange Maps)

“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.”
–David Friedman

Joel Spolsky has an interesting article about the reasons the MS Office file formats are so complicated. It’s mostly stuff you could figure out on your own, but it’s good to read a reasoned explanation of why things are the way they are.

Photobasement.com has a roundup of 41 hilarious science fair experiments with pictures. Here are my favoites:

“Does exercising effect?”

I’m not sure that “The Ideal Pancreas” really merited a part 2:

Feel the excitement…

There’s really nothing to add to this:

By 92-year-old Irving Fields

For you kids:

You probably know Irving from his top-of-the charts group in the 1950s, the Irving Fields Trio. Or, perhaps you know the songs composed by Irving, such as “Miami Beach Rhumba” (recorded by Xavier Cugat), “Managua, Nicaragua” (recorded by Guy Lombardo, Emdundo Ros, and Freddy Martin), or “Chantez, Chantez” (recorded by Dinah Shore). Or, maybe you visited one of the world-class hotels and international clubs over the past 50 years who have featured performances by Irving Fields (such as The Imperial Hotel, Japan; Taj Mahal, Bombay; Carnegie Hall and The Copacabana, New York; and the Versailles Hotel, Miami).

(from his website)

As of today I’ve been at Google for a year. I’ll write something retrospective later, I’m too tired now. Another googler already wrote a lot from a similar perspective: 10 insights from 11 months of working at Google.

Courtesy of the GOP:

Send them at GOP.com

I guess the writers’ strike affects political websites, too…

If the presidential nominees are Obama and McCain, it’ll have a funny resemblance to the candidates from the last season of The West Wing… a minority candidate and an old guy.