Today's St. Augustine Record contained two awe-inspiring photos of a new Carnival Cruise Ship, the Miracle, sailing under Jacksonville's Dames Point bridge. The ship cleared the 177-foot tall bridge by six feet. More photos of the event can be seen on the Florida Times-Union. [Workbench]

Indi Young discusses how to conduct effective interviews, as part of a needs analysis process. Her five suggestions: Focus on Deeper Goals Slow Down Ask Why Forget the Clock Dig for Details Scrap the Questionnaire [Thanks to elearningpost.]... [Column Two]

12:35:26 AM

categories: Items To Review

 

Peter Van Dijck has pointed out a few new topic map tools and approaches: tinyTIM: a very small easy to use (50kb jarsize) in memory Topic Map engine. It implements the TMAPI interfaces, so one can work with TopicMaps via... [Column Two]

12:32:26 AM

categories: Items To Review

 

Elmore Leonard's ten rule for writers. Brilliant.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

(this is my third link from Teresa Nielsen Hayden in one day, which has to be some kind of record) Link (via Making Light) [Boing Boing Blog]

11:59:45 PM

categories: Items To Review

 

Comic blog includes feeds for Adam@Home, B.C., Big.Nate, Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Doonesbury, Drabble, For Better or For Worse, Foxtrot, Garfield, Get Fuzzy, Nancy, Peanuts, and PvOnline.By meryl@lockergnome.com (Meryl). [Lockergnome’s RSS Resource]

11:38:56 PM

categories: Items To Review

 

Been hearing about BitTorrent, but don’t know what the deal is? The FAQ should clear things up for you. By meryl@lockergnome.com (Meryl). [Lockergnome’s Technology News]

11:32:54 PM

categories: Items To Review

 

What kind of stuff do I read in my feeds? Well, I see there's a list of the 75 top security tools. Now, why do I link to those here? So that when I need them, I'll be able to find them in Google.

Thanks to Alex Moskalyuk's feed for bringing that one to me.

[The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]

11:07:13 PM

categories: Items To Review

 

Jed sez, "Cute Flash toy in which you try to determine the order in which to drag various items into the middle. Each time you drag an item, the items you've already placed change ("level up") and interact with each other. The goal is to drag all the items in the right sequence to advance them all to their maximum levels. (The maximum score is 20,000.) There are quite a few possible sequences that do this, as well as some sequences that don't reach the maximum but do produce fun effects." Link (Thanks, Jed!) [Boing Boing Blog]

10:15:04 PM

categories: Items To Review

 

FCC Chairman Michael Powell recently gave a talk called "The Digital Broadband Migration: Toward a Regulatory Regime for the Internet Age" at the University of Colorado School of Law. Powell sets out some "Internet Freedoms" that he believes Americans are entitled to: these are astonishingly radical ideas to hear coming out of the mouth of the Chairman of the FCC.

1. Freedom to Access Content. First, consumers should have access to their choice of legal content.
2. Freedom to Use Applications. Second, consumers should be able to run applications of their choice.
3. Freedom to Attach Personal Devices. Third, consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes.
4. Freedom to Obtain Service Plan Information. Fourth, consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans.

100K PDF Link (Thanks, Alex!) [Boing Boing Blog]

10:04:20 PM

categories: Items To Review

 

DOWNLOAD: Wireless Watch Home v2.0.

• 5M
• Win9x/2K/XP
• Shareware
• Screenshot

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=160

{Security} Wireless Watch Home is an intrusion detection application designed to monitor your home wireless network for intruders. Wireless Watch constantly runs in the background and notifies you any time a new and/or unauthorized device has joined your wireless network. The detection of an intruder prompts Wireless Watch to notify you via icon and pop-up window. [Major Geeks]

[Lockergnome Windows Fanatics]

Best Meta Search Engine
Best News Search Engine
Best Image Search Engine
[ClickZ]

“The New Grammar of Powerpoint (PDF file) is a review of how and why good grammar helps PowerPoint communicate more effectively, and what new grammar rules are evolving in the bullet-point format.”

I give it an A.

12:22:10 AM

categories: Items To Review

 

ClickZ's sister site, Search Engine Watch, released its annual list of outstanding Web search services for 2003. Your favorites are among them, but there were also surprises and controversial predictions for the coming year.

Methodology
Outstanding Search Service
 [ClickZ]