Category: obscure pursuits

more discussion of why traffic log reporting matters

Reading Reader Reaction – Terry Sullivan

Obtaining genuinely useful site feedback is a complex and difficult task for any Webmaster. This paper proposes a systematic, inferential approach to analyzing and improving a Web site based on reader behavior, as recorded by the Web server log files. Systematic analysis of site traffic based on log files can provide invaluable information for improving the navigability and usability of a Web site, optimizing its structure, and improving both visibility and accessibility of content.

morning after

I don’t have buyer’s remorse after coming home with a new bike, which is unusual for me. I almost always regret purchases shortly after making them, but perhaps the last two years of not being to make any purchases but the absolute necessities has changed that for me.

I remounted my cyclometer, after calibrating for the new wheel size. There was some fiddling and diddling as I worked out how to make it work again, given the shoddy magnets Sigma ships with this unit.

I would have liked to get out and ride today, but with the young’uns out of school, we went out and did other stuff. Playground first, then off to REI to buy a rain jacket: found one in an iridescent/nausea-inducing yellow-green. Lunch there, a couple of bargains for K and home. I saw a pack of riders at Gasworks park this morning, getting ready to head out along the Burke-Gilman trail.

I may start bike commuting some days, just to get some miles in. The U supplies discounted light kits, so I’ll take ’em up on that this week.

using what you have

Gallup Publications – Now, Discover Your Strengths

At the heart of the book (Now, Discover Your Strengths) is the Internet-based StrengthsFinder Profile, the product of a 25-year, multi-million dollar effort to identify the most prevalent human strengths. The program introduces 34 dominant “themes” with thousands of possible combinations, and reveals how they can best be translated into personal and career success.

This is really tempting for me: it may be futile, given my current situation where it makes more sense for me to change my stripes than expect to have my talents accomodated.

But I may have to get it anyway, if only for the online assessment. I envy people who can accurately assess their strengths and talents, rare as those folks may be.

WiFi supplants 3G phones before they arrive

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Tune into the wireless

“Wireless LAN is a threat,” he says. “It is a high-performance, low-cost radio technology that has very low unit costs and comparatively low operating costs. It’s really cheap stuff.

“From the cellular operators’ point of view, there is nothing more nauseating: they spent countless billions to buy into the 3G mobile data future, and suddenly out of nowhere comes this upstart data networking technology that seems to be shaping up as direct competitor. And I think it will be in this crucial business user segment. It’s going to hit them where it hurts.”

The same article mentions a SFO based company that has a single wireless access point serving all of downtown San Francisco: we’ve already seen a few homebrew solutions like the Pringle can antenna extending the range of wireless base stations. Now we have Intel and AMD building 802.11 capability into motherboards. Why would I want to hook up my phone to my computer to surf the net or grab my mail when the computer is already networked?

I thought patents were to protect real ideas?

Stupidest. Patent. Ever.

Just in case you’re not fully up on reading patent language, that means that if your Web site uses frames, and there’s a navigation frame on one side, with links that load content into the main frame — you’re violating their silly patent, and they can come after you for licensing fees.

So if you used what frames suddenly made possible — content in a window with common navigational stuff outside it — you stole Ameritech’s, now SBC’s, intellectual property.

Or worse still: “The letter suggests that any website which has static, linked information (top banners, menus, bottom banners) which are displayed while other sections of the page are displayed as non-static (the area where products appear on most websites) infringes upon the patents they hold.” In other words, it need not be a frame: all that’s needed is a navbar and some content that’s linked to from it.

Is it any wonder why the notion of “intellectual property” is held in such low regard?

when was the last time you used yours?

CNN.com – Dell saying bye to floppy disk drives – Feb. 7, 2003

[T]he decision to eliminate the floppy drive came following focus group research with customers.

“When we would ask the question to people ‘do you need a floppy,’ the answer to that question would be yes,” he said.

“But when we asked them how long it had been since they used it, they would say six months, a year. Many couldn’t remember the last time they used the floppy drive.”