2006 February 02

I don't care who you are – you need this free plugin. In FireFox or IE, you'll finally know what you're walking into. For example, if you did a search for “gnome” on your favorite search engine with SiteAdvisor installed, you'd see a set of results with colored checkmark images next to 'em. These things will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about an unknown site. Hover over a spidered site, and it'll tell you how many pop-ups it serves, how many links to other “green” (good) sites, how many emails per week it sends, how many “green” downloads it points to, etc. Click the image for even more information. Lockergnome currently stands well, being a responsible Internet citizen. One of our sites, however, is yellow – File of the Day had featured something recently that sent up a red flag. We're looking into it now, but… how cool is that for the good guys?! How *GREAT* is that for the bad guys? :) [Disclaimer: I am on the board of advisors, happily]

Read more on The Only Browser Plugin Needed…

I am the BubbleShare poster child for the Bubbleshare contest. Coo-coo-cachoo. If you really, really want to see the larger version, just view the album.

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There's a trend that's forming with Windows Vista's UI: bigger is better. I'm here to tell you: no, it's not. We let 'em get away with Luna in XP, now we're about to let 'em get away with Glass bugaboos in Vista. Don't get me wrong: I think the new interface is pretty slick, if taken in small doses. What I can't abide by are the tall Title Bars, the super-sized Close button, the Play buttons with elephantitis, and the translucent pixel bloat that makes me feel like I should be using that space for better things. Dunno. Everything seems to be getting bigger in Windows Vista. I'm sure that those who love double-sized fonts are in love with these changes, but I'm trying to get more onto my screen – not less. I've got two monitors (one at 1600×1200, and the other at 1280×1024) and I'm still in need of more room. So long as I can run the Sidebar on my second screen, I suppose I'll be fine. If most of the world wants gigantic images to click on, great – and I'll probably be in that boat a few decades from now. Until then, can y'all give us an option to shrink some of that stuff?

Read more on Microsoft Windows Vista: Senile Edition…