http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com Nick Valentino, The Guy with Answers to the Mysteries of the Web, answers questions about the internet and its... well... mysteries. Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:41:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Let me get this out of the way: Twitter sucks. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the idea of microblogging (I've been using it of late to test my abilities to write poems of exactly 140 characters in length--yes, it is about as hard and stupid as it sounds) and ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/08/30/open-to-microblogging/ Editor's Note: As my unscheduled summer hiatus dwindles away, I find myself newly motivated to update this blog. Look for more frequent contributions (i.e. way more often than once every three months) in the weeks to come. For awhile now, I've had a bad feeling about Google. Maybe it's my usual ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/08/25/is-google-becoming-just-another-massive-corporation/ If you haven't checked it out, you must immediately (do not pass go, do not collect $200) to DamnInteresting.com. For a trivia freak like me, this is the holy grail of useless, but fascinating knowledge. Oh, sure, I can spend days on end reading Wikipedia (who couldn't?) but the guys ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/08/24/my-new-favourite-web-site/ For those of who don't know, I gave up freelancing to work for a large Canadian university. The change in scenery has had a big affect on my perspective about things like new technologies and the role of online communities. It also means I'm reading blogs and publications that I ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/05/29/one-persons-trash/ I hate Javascript. It's a necessary evil, but it's hard to read, hard to debug, and has a tendency to not work for seemingly unpredictable reasons. I all but abandoned Javascript for a brief period a couple of years ago (when it was still possible to build a website without ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/05/17/scriptaculous/ This morning I read an article by Bob Caswell on Tech Consumer entitled, Bad Form: Companies Still Send Passwords via Email. The point of this article, as communicated in the title, is that many companies, despite email's inherent security issues, send via that method a person's username and password for ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/02/12/how-much-security-is-too-much-security/ Apple, Inc. has taken a great deal of heat over the past year for its environmental policies. Greenpeace, with their 'Green My Apple' campaign was the most vocal in its frustration with the Macintosh's poor environmental track record, targeting the computers for their use of "hazardous substances that other companies ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/02/05/are-apples-really-green/ Are you a Mac owner with a penchant for shareware? Looking to bulk up your Applications folder without draining your wallet? The clever fellows at MacHeist have the answer for you. MacHeist, for those not in 'the know', is an interesting organization created by three independent Mac software developers. The purpose ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/01/23/last-day-for-macheist/ The word on the street (and by "street" I mean, this article in the New York Times) is that the iPhone has been generating a disproportionate amount of mobile-phone-based internet traffic at Google and other sites. According to the article, while iPhones account for only 2% of all smartphones, there were days in ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/01/14/going-mobile/ (I think I just gave away that I'm a Canadian with my spelling of 'colour'.) Have you ever wondered why it seems that all new websites are green? Or, perhaps less specifically, why certain colours seem to come into fashion one year only to be replaced by others the next? I'm ... http://www.webmysteriesanswered.com/2008/01/11/colour-trends/