March 15, 2008
This week I took a break from my usual freelance projects to work on a couple web sites that are a little closer to home—one for my wife and the other for a friend. Because they were both rush jobs, I've been getting very little sleep the past few nights. Still, it's always fun to be able to help out …
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September 19, 2007
I started to write this entry back in January, thinking that these few web sites could be helpful to people. But it has been languishing in draft mode ever since, because I never knew what to say about them. Well, here they are anyway, with a brief description of each: GetHuman: "a consumer movement to improve the quality of phone …
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August 23, 2007
It's probably not worth mentioning (how's that for an opening phrase?), but I managed to fix the broken stuff on the English Rules site within a half hour of sending out the entry with the exaggerated title. So, carry on as usual. Still, I'm wondering if anyone else gets the same feeling that I do sometimes — that everything in …
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August 22, 2007
If you're trying to look at previous entries on this blog and you're being thwarted at every turn, it's because I broke this site tonight while trying to upgrade it. If you've managed to find a previous entry, but only one of many comments is being displayed, it's because I broke that, too. I should have known better than to …
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July 17, 2007
After seven long months of writing, reading, coding, and learning, learning, learning, I finally have something to show for it. Jonathan Chaffer and I just had our first book published. When we started back in December, the goal was to write a single book of roughly 250 pages. Somewhere along the way, however, we got a little carried away and …
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March 28, 2007
After three months of laboring in relative silence, I'm able to explain publicly why the activity on this site has diminished so much. I'm writing a book. Now, before anyone gets too excited, I should specify that I am writing a book on how to use the jQuery JavaScript library to enhance interaction design on websites. The book is an …
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January 4, 2007
It was recently brought to my attention that some legitimate comments have been captured by my spam trap and held hostage. Unfortunately, because I had never checked the junk-mail bin on my blogging system until this morning, and comments were being summarily executed after having sat in the bin for more than five days, there is no way to know …
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October 15, 2006
Over the past month or so I've been having an affair of sorts. No, not that kind of affair. I've just been splitting my time between English Rules and my new techie blog, Learning jQuery. jQuery is a new JavaScript library that lets programming neophytes like me do cool things on web pages. It's what has allowed me to dynamically …
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October 1, 2006
I'm not sure what this says about me, but one of my favorite techie blogs lately has been Popgadget, which is all about "personal tech and innovative lifestyle for women." Last week they featured one of the coolest gadgets I have seen in a long time — so cool in fact that they make the Segway look dorky. Well, I …
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September 10, 2006
At the end of the work day on Friday, there was one last thing I needed to read on a web page to help solve a problem that had been vexing me for a couple weeks, but I knew that if I took the time to look at it in the office, I'd miss the bus and have to wait …
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August 31, 2006
Maybe it's the summer doldrums that have been keeping me from posting an entry on this blog for the past couple weeks, or maybe it's the photography gigs I've had, or maybe it's just the lack of anything interesting to write. One thing is for sure, though — I haven't been collecting dust. And while the site's content has been …
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July 16, 2006
The Grand Rapids Press featured an article in its business section yesterday about the local grocery chain Meijer starting up a new online store — meijer.com — focusing on gourmet, upscale, and hard-to-find items that shoppers might not be able to find in their brick-and-mortar stores. The article noted that shipping takes 2 – 5 days and its cost is …
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June 4, 2006
If you've visited English Rules lately, you may have noticed a few changes around here. The site is sporting a brand new look, which evolved out of a little collaboration with a friend at work, Jennifer Wetzel. Jennifer and I struck a deal a few months ago to help with each other's sites: She would design a "mockup" for my …
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May 16, 2006
My evenings (and early mornings) have been pretty busy over the past few months. After coming home from work and eating dinner, playing with the kids and putting them to bed, spending a little time with Sara and taking care of a few household chores, I've been sitting down at the computer and cranking out a few web sites. A …
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May 8, 2006
Video is all the rage on the internet now for people with a broadband connection and a little too much time on their hands. Sites such as YouTube and Google Video are garnering millions of visitors as user-published video clips—some legal, some not—find their way on the web. Two videos that I've found especially entertaining recently are the Stephen Colbert …
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April 17, 2006
Dramatic changes are afoot at the New York Times website. First they hire one of my favorite web-design bloggers, Khoi Vinh, to head their web design department (see his eloquent post on the subject). Then they release their beautiful new look that just about everyone is raving about. Jack Schafer of slate.com thinks it's so good, in fact, that he's …
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February 23, 2006
Lately I've been trying hard to improve my meager skills at work by reading the excellent new book DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith, the contents of which are too techy to go into here. Let's just say it appeals to the geek in me. Anyway, the book got me thinking about this clever little extension for Mozilla Firefox (a web …
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December 1, 2005
Last night as I was scanning my inbox for new email, I came across a message from my dear friend "Mailer Pharramacy." Since I hadn't heard from her in a long time, I immediately opened it to see what she has been doing for the past few months. But when I read through the email, I was a little confused: …
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November 2, 2005
A recent issue of PC Magazine noted that the organization Reporters Without Borders has released a Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents. The free handbook is intended to help those who want to get a message out, but face persecution if caught divulging unflattering information: Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or …
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October 5, 2005
Calvin College was a great school back in the late 1980s when I attended it, but it seems to have even more going for it now (and I'm not talking about the George W. Bush commencement address). Each year Ken Heffner and the Student Activities Office put together an extraordinary lineup of concerts, and the January Series is widely considered …
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September 6, 2005
Technology has not been my friend this summer. In fact, it's been downright nasty. All these little gadgets I own have been breaking, leaving me with the strong desire to ditch them all and set up camp in a cabin somewhere in the mountains of Montana. The problems started back in July, when the 6GB Hitachi microdrive for my digital …
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July 7, 2005
Ever since Google released their Maps site, people have been creating "mashups," overlaying all sorts of data on the U.S. map or parts of it. Last month CNN ran a story about these Google Maps tinkerers, and the weblog Google Maps Mania announces new mashups as they appear on the web. The best of the new sites tap into the …
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June 14, 2005
A friend of D. Keith Robinson made up a MadLib for Keith's birthday the other day and asked him to post it on his website and start a "meme." It looked fun to me, but all of the fill-in-the-blanks were embedded right in the story, so it was missing that element of goofy surprise that I remember about the MadLibs …
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June 1, 2005
The time seemed right to change the site, so that is what I'm doing. I'm taking it slow, though, beginning with the home page and adapting other pages to the new design as I find the time. So let's just call this a work in progress. In keeping with my "process" attitude, I'd love to hear from anyone who has …
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May 26, 2005
So I finally bit the bullet, took the plunge, made the switch from the dingy Windows of old to a bright new OSX future. Well, I'm not getting rid of my Windows PCs altogether, but last week I plunked down a fair bit of change and purchased an iMac G5, the new one with the gorgeous 20-inch monitor. Now it's …
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March 29, 2005
A couple people have recently asked me about how I got my weblog started, what software I use, how much it costs, and what I would recommend for them. Here is my reply to one of them. If anyone else out there has a favorite blog platform, maybe one that I'm failing to mention, let us know about it in …
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March 15, 2005
Grand Rapids, MI In what is widely considered a stunning fulfillment of expectations, the English Rules blog—along with its companion blogs Photography, Word of the Day, and Writing Guide—did not win any of 2005's prestigious Bloggies™. In fact, the collection of blogs at englishrules.com was not even nominated for an award. Early this morning, site owner and editor Karl Swedberg …
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March 2, 2005
Funny how "nerds" and "jocks" never seem to get along in high school, when in the "real world" they have a surprisingly symbiotic relationship, each group feeding off of the talents of the other. The nerds produce new technologies that give the jocks the edge that will justify their exorbitant salaries, and the jocks use their exorbitant salaries to …
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February 18, 2005
All sorts of social software sites are popping up on the web, trying in various ways to link people up with others who share their interests. Here are a few sites that I think have a lot to offer. And so far they're all free. Furl: This site lets you save, share, and recall web pages. It "caches" those page, …
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February 3, 2005
That crazy Google has become very generous with the Gmail accounts. They've supplied me with 50 more to give away. If you'd like one, make your request by posting a comment. If you want to know more about Gmail, see my previous article or visit Jim Barr's collection of Gmail tips. …
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January 24, 2005
There is a great tradition of visual artists using "found" objects to create new masterpieces, be they sculpture, collage, or mixed media. Musicians, too, have mixed a variety of elements into new compositions—bird songs, environmental noise, samples of other recordings. Now, someone who goes by the name Clown Staples has created a song using only the very basic Sound Recorder …
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January 21, 2005
The response to my Gmail account giveaway was more enthusiastic than I had expected. Google refreshed my supply, and I still ran out. For those of you who are just starting with Gmail, you might want to visit Jim Barr's collection of Gmail tips. …
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January 15, 2005
I still have four GMail accounts available for anyone who would like one. Just request it through the comment form of this entry, and I'll send you the invite. If you haven't heard about it yet, GMail is a cool web-based email program that Google has been beta testing for the past year or so. It gives you a full …
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January 12, 2005
Though Skype has been on my radar for quite a while, I haven't been motivated enough to try it out. But after reading an article on Neville Hobson's blog about it, I thought I should bite the bullet and give the program a whirl. Skype is an internet telephony program based on peer-to-peer (p2p) technology that allows people to communicate …
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January 5, 2005
Watching the 60 Minutes report on Google the other night reminded me of how much I love the nifty little tools that they keep churning out. Here are a few that I think are particularly cool: Google Suggest: As you type, Google will offer suggestions. Use the arrow keys to navigate the results. I love this feature. And I can't …
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December 18, 2004
Technology is not my friend today. While taking pictures of a friend's baby, the battery in my Nikon digital camera ran out. No problem, I thought, I'll just switch to my 35mm camera while I recharge the digital camera's battery. But when I tried to turn on the Nikon N80, its batteries were dead, too. I ran to the closet …
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December 18, 2004
If you've ever had to contact customer support at amazon.com and wanted to do so by phone, you've probably run into the same roadblocks that I have. The number is nowhere to be found on the customer support pages. One intrepid reporter, Timothy Noah of slate.com, managed to track it down by calling a corporate number he found on an …
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December 17, 2004
Newsweek has just come out with an article all about blogs and their growing influence in the world of ideas. I guess this means blogs are really, truly in the mainstream now. What's interesting, though, is that two of my coworkers in the past week have asked me what a blog is. And I work at a hip interactive communications …
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December 15, 2004
Every time I add an article to my website or send a cool new link to my wife, she asks me where I find the time to do all this stuff. Part of the answer, as I mentioned in a previous post, is that I stay up late at night. Too late. But the other part of the answer—the part that …
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December 8, 2004
Here's an idea so cool and eco-futuristic that it looks like it must be a hoax. Because of the explosion of cell phone users and the maddening upgrade cycle for new features, there has been a problem with the number of old phones being dumped into landfills. An R&D company contracted by Motorola has come up with a creative solution: …
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November 21, 2004
A friend of mine recently challenged me to limit my time on the computer, outside of work, to one hour or less each day. He didn't think I could do it for a month. So I've accepted the challenge, which means that I'll probably be posting fewer entries on this site and I'll definitely be reading fewer online magazines and …
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November 9, 2004
After eight days of vexing back and forth with tech support from two companies, I finally have my little blog software running again. Just like a long-lost friend. Thanks, everyone, for your patience and understanding as I worked through the byzantine world of cgi, mysql, php, and other odd strings of letters. Now brace yourselves for some pent-up blogging energy …
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October 4, 2004
If you've looked at englishrules.com lately, you may have noticed a few changes. First, I tried to freshen up the look a little bit, with a color palette pulled from the new image across the top of the pages. I also made the photography section match the rest of the site. There's a new search field at the top right …
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September 22, 2004
Every once in a while I come across a cool little tool that makes life on the web just a little easier, or a bit more fun. Here are three that I use fairly often: TinyURL: Let's say you just read a great article in The New York Times and you want to tell your friends about it. Unfortunately, you're …
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August 25, 2004
Because I care very deeply about the online experience of anyone who visits my web site—all three of you—I've added a little feature to my "Resources" pages. In the right-hand column of each resource page, you'll see a list of related links from a featured site. The links, popularly known as webfeeds or newsfeeds, are automatically updated through a syndication …
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July 19, 2004
If you're using a computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system, you might be thinking that your only choice of web browser is Internet Explorer (IE). After all, it's the only one that shows up on the computer's desktop when you first turn it on. Most of the Mac users I've talked to seem content with Safari, but the Windows …
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May 31, 2004
For a long time Rotten Tomatoes was my critic compiler of choice whenever I thought about seeing a new movie or couldn't decide which one to rent. Especially after the demise of Mr. Showbiz, Rotten Tomatoes was my go-to site; the now-famous Tomatometer, displaying in a simple bar graph the percentage of positive reviews from its culled critics around the …
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May 3, 2004
My boss/friend recently tipped me off to a Wired News article about a subculture of Windows users who like to "skin" their user interfaces to appear as much like Apple's OS X as possible. As a Mac zealot, he of course wonders why people would waste their time trying to imitate something when they could just get the real thing. …
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