Properly designed websites keep usability in mind for 100% of possible users. They’re made with semantically valid XHTML and CSS. They don’t start animation or sound without the user clicking somewhere to request it. They don’t require the user to download something special like Flash or Java. They load faster because of the lighter page weight caused by separating the markup (XHTML) from the layout (CSS). They have a good navigational structure that doesn’t rely on drop-down or fly-out menus. They can be browsed effectively with a text-based browser or screen reader. They are very well-indexed on search engines because they’re so accessible.

Flash does have one redeeming quality. It is the current, defacto standard for video distribution. Until Silverlight gets out of diapers, it appears we’re stuck with Adobe’s pile of steam for now.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
-Sinclair Lewis

With those thoughts in mind, I direct your attention to the website www.wastelandofthefree.com

Folksinger Iris Dement makes McMurtry seem kind of tame. I heard this song on XM’s Cross Country a few weeks ago and thought I needed to hear it again. The website has a link to a YT video (of course) and an MP3.

“We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines/
and their speech is growing increasingly inkind.
They say they are Christ’s disciples
But they don’t look like Jesus to me
And it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free.”

-Dement

I just had a thought I should probably keep to myself…I wonder if any shoe stores use that song as motivation for sales.

“If everyone sells twelve pairs of shoes today, we will reach our goal…24 feet a time.” g

Techcrunch was quick to point out that it was important not to misspell it and type www.culi.com.

While ‘traffas’ consistently returns aarontraffas.com on Google, this site returns nothing but Sweedish results, a function at the very least of not accounting for geography. When I tried “aaron traffas”, the first result was a “page not found”.

Purple Wave returned a bunch of deep links, but not one link to our home page.

It looks like it has a ways to go. Perhaps it’s currently more useful to misspell it after all.

Vista has Windows Mail, which is a new name for XP’s Outlook Express. It’s the Microsoft equivalent of Thunderbird, and I can find no substantive feature differences between Windows Mail and Thunderbird in the limited investigation I’ve done. Out of the two, I’d use Thunderbird because it has an open-source community behind it.

Thunderbird is awesome, but it is email only. There are other functions of Outlook, like contacts and calendar, that Thunderbird lacks in its basic installation. If you use an Exchange server or a hosted Exchange service, which is a practice that unfortunately is still hard for me to not recommend, Outlook is about the only way to go. The closest product to Outlook as far as features go is a product called Evolution, but it only works on Linux.

My recommendation is to become one with the Google Apps suite. Their calendar is superior to that in Outlook, their email is the best anywhere, and they’re Docs and Spreadsheets package is getting more robust all the time. I wish we had taken that route instead of going with our hosted Exchange solution. Google Apps is the only realistic and free calendar-sharing system, and it also happens to be the best. Google’s Gmail product can be used by your domain, so you keep your email address, use Gmail’s absurd nearly 7 GB email limit, use Thunderbird to check your mail, and everything is in one place. It costs nothing and is a viable solution for everyone in your office to be better connected and better informed with schedules, contacts, etc.