• MoFuse Instantly Converts Sites for the iPhone – MoFuse is a service that will take your website and instantly create a mobile version of it, sparing you the development costs of doing so by hand.
• The 4 Cs of Good Form Design – A simple model, the 4 Cs, for designing new forms or critiquing existing ones.
• Lawsuit targets Network Solutions, ICANN over the 'front running' of domain names – A Los Angeles firm this afternoon has announced a class action against Network Solutions and ICANN over the former's practice of locking up domain names as soon as they are searched for on its site
• BlazeDS – Released in conjunction with Adobe AIR 1 and Flex 3, BlazeDS is an open source backend for connecting AIR and Flex applications to server-side data sources.
• Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex 3 Now Available – They’re out! Full press release here.
• The Rise of Click Fraud: Is Everyone on the Internet a Criminal? – The overall industry average click fraud rate rose to 16.6% in fourth-quarter [2007], up from the 14.2% click fraud rate for the same quarter in 2006 and 16.2% for third-quarter 2007.
• All clicks are not equal, says Microsoft – Microsoft is proposing on Monday a new way for marketers to think about the value of clicks on Internet ads, with the understanding that the last click a consumer makes isn't necessarily the most important.
• WaSP Round Table: IE8′s Default Version Targeting Behavior – A worthwhile listen, in which Aaron Gustafson, Faruk Ates, and Porter Glendinning sit down with Microsoft’s Chris Wilson to discuss IE8′s proposed (and controversial) X-UA-Compatible feature for browser version targeting.
• How it works | Openvatar – Openvatar is a avatar system that links with your openid, brilliant
• Click Fraud Keeps Rising, Up 15 percent in 2007 – Forensics has some data out on click fraud (clicks on Internet ads that are not real) in the fourth quarter of 2007 and for the full year. The industry-wide average click fraud rate for the entire year went up 15 percent, ending the year with 16.6 percent
• Opera CTO: How to fix Microsoft's browser issues – In an editorial on The Register, Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie complains that the browser market is effectively a monopoly, and suggests what changes Microsoft must make in order to remedy this.
• Google Analytics Hack » Count Me Out! – keep your Google Analytics data pure you should remove all traffic generated by yourself or others that may not be real visitors. For example, if your company has a large call center you should remove the traffic they generate
• Microsoft Sings a New Tune? Wants to Play Nice With Open-Source – Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols.
• Logo War: Red Hat Takes On DataPortability – After months of positive news, the DataPortability group has had its first hiccup, a cease and desist letter from RedHat over their use of the Fedora logo.
• 500 Million Downloads of Firefox (almost) – The Firefox browser has been downloaded nearly 500 million times, says their SpreadFirefox website. Parent organization Mozilla is celebrating by raising 500 million grains of rice on FreeRice.
• The Internet Explorer 8 User-Agent String – That’s right. Microsoft has lifted the veil on IE8′s user agent string. Yawn.
• YUI 2.5.0 Released – 6 new components: Layout Manager, Uploader, Resize Utility, ImageCropper, Cookie Utility and a ProfilerViewer Control that works in tandem with the YUI Profiler.
• Facebook loses a few users – Facebook has suffered its first drop in monthly users, according to numbers from web analytics outfit Nielsen Online. Five per cent fewer people in the UK visited the site in January compared to the previous month.

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• Social Media Buzz Pocket Mining: The New Keyword Research – An interesting description of tools that take the temperature of a social community's “chatter” patterns.
• Beware of id and name attribute mixups when using getElementById in Internet Explorer – "When using getElementById to get a reference to an element via the id attribute, Internet Explorer for Windows (and some versions of Opera) will also match an element whose name attribute contains the same value."
• Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 3 Release Notes – "Firefox 3 Beta 3 includes approximately 1300 individual changes from the previous beta, including fixes for stability, performance, memory usage, platform enhancements and user interface improvements."
• GWT-Ext 2.0 Released – The GWT-EXT team has announced the release of version 2.0 this week. The project is a combination of the Google Web Kit and Ext.
• 6% of users click 50% of all ads – This study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population, yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks.
• Handy jQuery API Reference – A simple, useful reference guide for the jQuery API.
• Yahoo Offers All-You-Can-Eat Storage and Bandwidth – Yahoo! launches surprisingly reasonably priced web hosting for small and medium sized businesses. Unlimited storage and bandwidth for $11.95 per month.
• Gallery: How Google Got Its Colorful Logo – The various iterations that the designer of Google's logo went through before settling on the final logo. I have to say, they're pretty ordinary!
• ICANN turns on next-gen IP addresses | CNET News.com – The great migration from Internet Protocol version 4 to IPv6 has officially begun, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers added the first addresses to its root servers that conform to the new version.
• Macworld Encore – Very funny and useful Macworld session by Merlin Mann. Another angle on GTD.
• Microsoft Responds to Yahoo! Announcement – Microsoft issued an official statement in response to the announcement by Yahoo! Inc. that its Board of Directors has rejected Microsoft's previously announced proposal to acquire Yahoo!

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It’s been a while between drinks. Luckily, we’re back. There’s been a lot going on across the intarwebs lately — check it out:

• $1.2m paid for the letter ‘s’ in a domain
  A British travel company has paid $US1.1 million ($A1.2m) for the domain name cruises.co.uk, a price that is effectively $1 million just for the letter “S” since it already owns the address cruise.co.uk.
  (tags: domain valuation)
• uTest – Software Testing Community
  A software testing tool based on the “crowdsourcing” business model.
  (tags: testing crowdsourcing development software qa)
• Yahoo Offers All-You-Can-Eat Storage and Bandwidth
  Yahoo! launches surprisingly reasonably priced web hosting for small and medium sized businesses. Unlimited storage and bandwidth for $11.95 per month!
  (tags: hosting yahoo!)
• Safari is about to get crazy fast
  Holy cow is this thing fast! I am currently testing Webkit build r30090 (DMG download link) against standard Leopard Safari 3.04. This unoptimized WebKit build version is running circles around the standard Safari browser. It isn’t even close.
  (tags: apple safari browser firefox)
• W3C Gets Excessive DTD Traffic
  The W3C is suffering from its own success. If only developers could get a handle on XML catalogs, or popular XML validating parsers began bundling common DTDs like these, the W3C might be able to put these resources to better use.
  (tags: w3c standards xml)
• PayPal funds freeze plan draws fire
  Plan to hold payments sent through its PayPal payment service for up to 21 days in certain circumstances. The freeze will apply to transactions eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) considers high-risk, and is intended to protect buyers from the hazards of a bad tran
  (tags: ebay paypal)
• Court Finds That Trolls Can Remain Anonymous
  New judgement from the California courts, affecting anyone who owns a blog or forum where people can comment.
  (tags: blog comment troll forum privacy)
• Apple’s Safari 3.1 to support downloadable web fonts, more
  The ability to download and immediately render non-standard web fonts is just one of several advancements Apple Inc. has planned for Safari 3.1, a small but significant update to its share-gaining web browser for both the Mac and Windows PCs.
  (tags: apple safari design fonts)
• OpenID Welcomes Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM
  OpenID is welcoming some big new partners to the club – Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM
  (tags: openid microsoft google verisign ibm)
• Heroku Lifts Ruby on Rails Development into the Cloud
  A completely in-browser development environment where RoR programmers can build their apps instead of doing so with software on their own computers. Allows you to deploy your application to Amazon EC2 automatically when you’re done.
  (tags: rails ruby amazonwebservices ec2)
• Exposing device capabilities to web applications
  “There is huge potential for mobile web applications that can access device capabilities from client-side scripts.” The W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative takes on mobile phone API access from web applications.
  (tags: mobile standards w3c javascript)
• Web Site Grader
  This reporting tool produces some pretty useful statistics from an SEO point of view.
  (tags: seo tools analytics marketing )
• Performance Research, Part 5: iPhone Cacheability – Making it Stick
  The YUI blog investigates how to optimize web performance for the iPhone. The iPhone’s cache clears at each power cycle, and it will not cache files 25KB or larger. These facts call for special considerations when optimizing for performance.
  (tags: yahoo! apple iphone mobile)
• The Times (UK) Spamming Social Media Sites
  Yesterday, I discovered that The Times (UK), a well-respected newspaper owned by News Corp., is involved in an extensive campaign to spam social media websites with links to their articles.
  (tags: SEO black.hat bad.publicity)
• Opera Mobile 9.5 with Flash Lite 3.0
  Opera brings Flash Lite 3.0 to millions of new devices with the release of Opera Mobile 9.5. The new version also adds support for Opera Widgets, SVG 1.2, and more.
  (tags: opera mobile software flash)
• Amazon Payments Account Management
  Do you want to accept Amazon Payments on your website? Integrate within few minutes and accept payments on your website with “Pay Now” button. Give your customers a familiar Amazon payments experience and fraud protection.
  (tags: web amazon ecommerce payment api development)
• Aviary Invites Readers To Try Their Online Design Suite
  Aviary has released the first of its massive suite of online design apps to private beta testing: image editor Phoenix and pattern maker Peacock. An impressive YouTube video shows Phoenix in use.
  (tags: design ria aviary phoenix peacock)
• Bobby and WebXact No Longer Free Tools
  As of February 1, 2008 the Watchfire WebXact and Bobby Online products will no longer be publicly available.
  (tags: accessibility tools testing usability 508 bobby)

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• Is your website greenhouse friendly?
  The organizers of the Web Directions South conference share their advice for Australian-hosted sites seeking to eliminate their carbon footprint.
  (tags: business hosting )
• Google Presentations Released
  Google has launched the latest in its stable of web-based office applications: Google Presentations. A direct competitor to Microsoft PowerPoint, Presentations is still a simple offering, but may be enough for many less demanding users.
  (tags: google ajax gwt )
• Facebook investors start $10 million fund for developers
  Facebook will be giving away $10 million to developers who submit worthy proposals for Facebook applications—no strings attached!
  (tags: socialnetworks php business )
• Yahoo! Acquires Zimbra
  Yahoo! acquires all the coolest companies! The latest (joining Flickr and del.icio.us) is Zimbra, the pioneers of Ajax-powered email. Yahoo! hopes to use Zimbra to break into educational and institutional markets.
  (tags: yahoo! ajax java business )
• Mozilla tries Firefox recipe with Thunderbird
  Mozilla is splitting off a new company to focus on the development of Thunderbird, its open-source, cross-platform desktop email client.
  (tags: business opensource firefox )
• CSS Grid Positioning Module Level 3
  A convincing alternative to the long-promised CSS 3 Advanced Layout module, CSS Grid Positioning has just been released as a public working draft by the W3C. But with critics questioning whether the W3C can finish anything it starts, will it do any good?
  (tags: standards css design )
• jQuery UI: Interactions and Widgets
  jQuery seems set to continue their unbroken streak of “holy crap!”-impressive releases with jQuery UI, a library for building rich web application user interfaces in JavaScript.
  (tags: javascript opensource software )
• The Times, they are a chaaangin’
  After two years of being one of the most notorious paid access sites on the Web, the New York Times has stopped charging for access to the bulk of its content. Could this be the death knell for mass market paid content business models on the Web?
  (tags: business )
• How to create an unobtrusive print this page link with JavaScript
  A quick script that demonstrates how to add a “print this page” link to the page dynamically, using JavaScript, in an unobtrusive manner. For users browsing with JavaScript disabled, the link (which requires JavaScript to work) will not appear.
  (tags: javascript )
• Better Connected, Better Results: Alt Text
  A clear and concise description of the alt attribute, and how to use it to improve the accessibility of your web site.
  (tags: html accessibility )
• WAI-ARIA in HTML
  The Accessible Rich Internat Applications (ARIA) spec specifies roles and states for user interface elements that will enable assistive technologies to make RIAs accessible. This article shows how to include these properties in HTML documents today.
  (tags: accessibility javascript html standards )
• The longdesc lottery
  The latest debate to spring up in the HTML 5 Working Group is over the fate of the longdesc attribute, meant to point to a full description of a complex image. The WHAT-WG’s research shows less than 1% of images that use this attribute do so correctly.
  (tags: html standards accessibility )
• CSS 3: A Giant Serving Of FAIL
  Dojo’s Alex Russell is the latest industry voice to publicly despair at the state of CSS standards development.
  (tags: css standards )
• We Are Opening the Social Graph
  Six Apart, the company behind LiveJournal and Vox, is working with open standards like hCard, XFN, and FOAF to turn the entire Web into an open social network – something the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world are desperately trying to prevent.
  (tags: socialnetworks standards )
• IBM Releases Office Desktop Software at No Charge to Foster Collaboration and Innovation
  IBM has released Lotus Symphony, an IBM-branded variation of the free, open source OpenOffice.org office suite. Yawn.
  (tags: opensource )
• WordPress 2.3
  The latest version of this popular, open-source, PHP-based blogging platform is now available. WordPress 2.3 “includes native tagging support, plugin update notification, URL handling improvements, and much more,”
  (tags: php opensource software )

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• +1.5 Years: Where Are We Now?
  The Dojo Toolkit’s Alex Russell notes the amount of time that has passed since IE7 was released, and how little has been said by Microsoft about IE.Next. Is Microsoft working on something amazing in secret, or is IE at risk of renewed stagnation?
  (tags: ie microsoft )
• Screen Shots And Feature Overview of Delicious 2.0 Preview
  Like the SitePoint Design Contests, Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is launching a complete re-write of the service to improve the scalability and agility of the system. A complete rewrite means a complete redesign, however, with plenty of new features!
  (tags: socialnetworks yahoo! )
• Mobile Usability Tips #1 – Registration and Login
  The first in a series of tips on enhancing the usability of mobile web sites, this brief article provides hints on how to design usable registration and login forms for mobile web sites.
  (tags: mobile design usability )
• WordPress 2.2.3
  WordPress 2.2.3 contains an important security fix. Upgrade your installation immediately.
  (tags: security php software )
• Rainbow Hash Cracking
  An eye-opening peek into the password cracking technique of Rainbow Hashes, which in a recent test was able to crack the password “Fgpyyih804423″ in 160 seconds. The good news is there are simple things you can do to guard against this kind of attack.
  (tags: security )
• WYMeditor 0.4 released
  The latest release of this somewhat experimental JavaScript semantic HTML WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) editing component is built on jQuery 1.1.4 and includes its own XHTML and CSS parsing code, rather than relying on the browser to do it.
  (tags: software javascript wysiwyg )
• Why we need standards support in HTML email
  This call to action from Campaign Monitor, the experts in standards-compliant HTML email (or as close as it is possible to achieve these days), builds a case for HTML and CSS standards compliance in email clients, and asks you to help make it happen.
  (tags: email html standards )
• Help us form a baseline for standards support
  The Campaign Monitor folks begin the process of encouraging widespread standards support for HTML email by developing a baseline list of features that we should be helping email client developers to support.
  (tags: email standards html )
• Holy Komodo!
  ActiveState (yes, as in ActiveState Perl) is open sourcing large chunks of its flagship product, Komodo IDE, a complete environment for Web developers working with Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl, as well as client-side HTML/CSS/JavaScript code.
  (tags: software opensource php rubyonrails python )
• jQuery 1.2: jQuery.extend(“Awesome”)
  A major new release of this nimble JavaScript library, jQuery 1.2 contains too many new features to go into here. Suffice it to say, this upgrade will make any JavaScript developer’s day.
  (tags: javascript software opensource )
• BEA and Adobe Form Enterprise Partnership
  In enterprise news, BEA will bundle Adobe® Flex™ Builder™ 2 with BEA Workshop™ Studio. In return, Adobe will distribute evaluation licenses of BEA Weblogic Server with Adobe LiveCycle® Enterprise Suite (ES).
  (tags: enterprise adobe flex air java )
• Sun/Microsoft Announcement
  In a break from long tradition, Sun will offer Windows Server OEM licenses to run on Sun x64 server hardware. It will be interesting to see if (and how) this will affect the Solaris market.
  (tags: enterprise windows solaris )
• The name riddle
  A solid piece on how to design forms to prompt users for their name. This sounds simple, but the form of names—and how they should be used—varies wildly in different parts of the world.
  (tags: design i18n )
• Can the alt attribute be omitted without hurting accessibility?
  Roger Johansson provides an excellent summary of discussion within the HTML 5 working group about the fate of the alt attribute.
  (tags: html standards accessibility )
• Social Networks And Group Formation
  A fascinating article about the structures of online social networking. It turns out they very much mirror the patterns of real-world social networks, which were described as far back as the 1940s.
  (tags: socialnetworks )
• User Testing footage of header/id combinations, @summary and @longdesc
  Controversy surrounding HTML table markup within the HTML 5 Working Group continues. These user testing videos not only seeks to settle the argument, but makes fascinating viewing if you haven’t a seen screen reader in use by an experienced user.
  (tags: html accessibility )
• Styling File Inputs with CSS and the DOM
  Long thought to be un-stylable, file upload fields in HTML forms can actually be styled to look however you like with this clever JavaScript hack by Shaun Inman.
  (tags: html css javascript design )
• The Browser.Next List
  Another excellent list from Dojo’s Alex Russell. This time, it’s a list of simple JavaScript/DOM features that would make developers’ lives so much easier.
  (tags: javascript )

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• Update to Internet Explorer’s Cookie Jar
  The latest auto update to Interent Explorer increases the limit on the number of cookies per domain from 20 to 50. The total size limitation of 4KB of cookie data per domain remains unchanged.
  (tags: ie http )
• Forbidden Color Combinations?
  The COLOURlovers site has a fascinating article showing off color combinations that traditionally don’t work, but in specific cases actually do.
  (tags: design )
• Google Gears 0.2 developer release ready for download
  Google has a developer preview of Google Gears 0.2 Beta, its browser extension for building offline-capable apps for Firefox and IE6. The new release offers a cross-origin API and improvements to WorkerPool, including XMLHttpRequest and Timer support.
  (tags: google javascript software ajax )
• Top Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design Revisited: A Survey of 500 Top E-Commerce Websites
  A list of common mistakes with e-commerce shopping cart design were identified in a 2002 usability study. This article revisits that list and reviews how 500 of the top Internet retail sites of today implemented their shopping cart design.
  (tags: usability design )
• Lazy Function Definition Pattern
  A classic example of a functional programming pattern in JavaScript. Many developers are familiar with object oriented programming in JavaScript, but functional programming can often provide cleaner, more efficient solutions.
  (tags: javascript programming )
• Microsoft settles browser patent spat
  The patent dispute between Microsoft and Eolas over interactive plug-ins is over. The original 2003 ruling in Eolas’s favor was overturned in 2005. But now the companies have settled under undisclosed terms. Which browser will Eolas target next?
  (tags: java flash flex ie microsoft )
• The Tagging Growth Curve
  The apparent lull in the growth in popularity of tagging is not necessarily a bad sign. Rather, as with most new technologies, tagging may simply be undergoing a process of “punctuated equilibrium.”
  (tags: business informationarchitecture )
• Focus Areas during Kestrel Development
  A preview of what to expect in the first public alpha of Opera 9.5 (codenamed Kestrel), due out today.
  (tags: opera )
• Code Beautifier: CSS Formatter and Optimiser
  An online tool for applying consistent (and efficient) formatting to your CSS code.
  (tags: css )
• Magento – Open Source eCommerce Evolved
  Built on the Zend Framework, Magento is a powerful, open source eCommerce platform in early beta release. It’s probably a bit early to use this in production, but it’s a very promising project!
  (tags: php software opensource )
• jQuery for JavaScript programmers
  Ex-SitePoint blogger Simon Willison provides a complete overview of jQuery, and why it’s worthwhile for experienced JavaScript developers to learn.
  (tags: javascript )
• CoScripter
  A Firefox extension that lets you record actions online as a script and then share that script. Other CoScripter users can then load and run the script you created one step at a time, or all at once to achieve the same result. (thanks paul.annesley)
  (tags: firefox software )
• Opera Mini 4 Beta 2
  A thorough review of the newly-released Opera Mini 4 Beta 2. The major new features are a landscape viewing mode, and quick access to a custom list of favorite search engines.
  (tags: opera mobile )
• Go and get Opera 9.5 alpha!
  As promised, Opera 9.5 (Kestrel) alpha is now available for download.
  (tags: opera software )

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• GWT 1.4 release and out of beta
  The latest release of Google Web Toolkit is out, and this is the first release not marked as Beta! As usual, the release is full of must-have improvements, including fundamental improvements to application size and performance.
  (tags: java javascript google gwt software opensource )
• Plone 3.0 released!
  A major update to the venerable Python CMS based on the Zope framework , Plone 3.0 includes many powerful new features, including document versioning, inline (Ajax) editing, link checking, and tons more!
  (tags: python opensource software )
• 12 Things You Should Dislike About PHP
  Another impressive list of things you may not know about PHP, this time focusing on the annoying foibles of the language.
  (tags: php )
• 15 Cool Things About PHP That Most People Overlook
  Far from another lame collection of semi-obscure PHP functions, this list of language features will likely contain at least a few mind-blowing items for all but the most seasoned of PHP veterans.
  (tags: php )
• The IPhone Is IE4 Again (in a good way)
  Joe Hewitt (of Firebug and iUI fame) speaks out against those who decry the iPhone for encouraging the development of sites that only work on a single device. His point is well taken, but his attack against the standards community is a bit over the top.
  (tags: standards mobile ie )
• New Flash(R) Developer Center launched
  In addition to the respected YUI JavaScript library, Yahoo! has now launched its Flash Developer Center to host ASTRA: the ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Applications, including many useful Flash components and libraries.
  (tags: flash flex yahoo! opensource software )

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• Slap in the Facebook: It’s Time for Social Networks to Open Up
  Wired magazine puts out an open call to the web programming community to build a social networking service based on open standards like XFN.
  (tags: socialnetworks standards xml)
• XRAY :: for web developers
  Westciv has released a free bookmarklet called XRAY that allows you to inspect the style properties of elements of a web page in Safari and Firefox. While XRAY is very slick, most developers will find Firebug is a better day-to-day tool.
  (tags: software css)
• Gang of Four Design Patterns – Does it stand the test of time?
  A tight summary of recent discussion surrounding the classic “Gang of Four” design patterns book, and its relevance today.
  (tags: programming)
• YUI 2.3.0: Six New Components and a Prettier Face
  Yahoo!’s recent update to the YUI library contains some pretty massive improvements: a beta rich text editor component, a beta color selection widget, dynamic dependency loading, a beta unit testing framework, and a formal skinning system!
  (tags: javascript software)
• MWI Team Blog – Progress for XHTML Basic 1.1
  The W3C delivers XHTML Basic 1.1 as a Candidate Recommendation, closing the divide between the two previous specifications for mobile web markup. But with mobile devices increasingly able to cope with full HTML, does this specification arrive too late?
  (tags: mobile html standards)
• What happened to object databases?
  An interesting thread on Javalobby about object databases (as opposed to relational databases), and why they haven’t seen the success that many have predicted.
  (tags: databases)
• blueprintcss
  “Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your CSS development time. It gives you a solid CSS foundation to build you project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, and even a stylesheet for printing.”
  (tags: css software opensource)
• Syncotype Your Baselines
  A short-and-sweet tool to assist in aligning page elements to a regular baseline grid. When invoked, this bookmarklet will overlay any page with a regular horizontal grid so that you can check your element alignment. Works in all major browsers. (thanks gnarly!)
  (tags: css software design)
• design|snips
  This site collects snippets of good design from all over the web. Need some inspiration for a particular aspect of your design? Just browse the relevant category. (thanks spiky_simon!)
  (tags: design)
• The Wii Remote API: Now your userbase is four.
  Opera has published an API for the Nintendo Wii version of its browser that allows JavaScript developers to monitor and respond to the four controllers supported by the console simultaneously.
  (tags: opera javascript)
• Moonfall: CSS with variables
  A neat little program written in Lua that will dynamically generate CSS property values to ease some of the maintenance associated with static CSS layouts.
  (tags: css software)
• Fixing The Web – Part 1
  A fascinating collection of problems that web technology currently faces, followed by brief interviews with some of the leading minds currently working to tackle them.
  (tags: html accessibility ajax security standards mobile)
• The Positive Side of Negative Margins
  A clear and concise run-down of how negative margins work in CSS.
  (tags: css)

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• ACCC takes on Google
  Google is facing charges from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission claiming that the difference between sponsored links and organic search results is unclear and misleading.
  (tags: google search business)
• Google To Add “Unavailable After” META Tag
  Google plans to introduce support in its search engine for an “unavailable_after” meta tag that will let Google know when a page’s contents will no longer be relevant.
  (tags: google search)
• Conflicting Absolute Positions
  A fascinating article about an improvement in IE7 that has gone largely unnoticed until now. Better support for CSS positioning in IE7 makes the creation of stretchy layouts much easier, and with a big of JavaScript IE5/6 can be made to play nice too.
  (tags: css javascript design)
• Google Gears ORM v0.1
  The first official release of GearsORM, the first object-relational mapping layer built on top of Google Gears.
  (tags: google databases javascript)
• CSRF Redirector
  In his ongoing efforts to spread the word that Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerabilities are a real danger, Chris Shiflett has developed a simple script that generates a forged POST request out of any GET request. Maybe now Amazon will fix its security?
  (tags: security)
• A Recipe for OpenID-Enabling Your Site
  From Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect for Plaxo, an awesome calendar and address book syncing service, comes this practical guide to adding OpenID authentication support to an existing site.
  (tags: identity)
• Tables in HTML Emails: Nesting, Padding and Widths, Oh My
  The fine folks at Campaign Monitor report on the current state of support for table-based positioning within email clients. The behavior of widths in relation to table cell padding/spacing may surprise you!
  (tags: html email)

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• Dojo 0.9 lands softly.
  Dojo 0.9 beta is out with a significant speed boost, pervasive improvements to accessibility (including keyboard navigation), a revamped and consistent themeing engine for widgets, and redesigned online documentation.
  (tags: javascript software opensource accessibility)
• 30 free HTML email templates
  The fine folks at Freshview (and Campaign Monitor) have assembled a collection of 30 clean, free, and highly compatible HTML email templates for download—no strings attached.
  (tags: email design)
• Presentation Layer Performance Tuning
  This article provides a nice summary of client-side performance issues and the solutions available for solving them.
  (tags: http css javascript)
• HTML elements index
  A table of HTML tags, with their availability in HTML 3.2, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, as well as the work-in-progress specs, XHTML 1.1, HTML 5, and XHTML 2.0.
  (tags: html standards)
• Ultimate htaccess Blacklist
  An interesting approach to combatting comment spam and bandwidth theft, this .htaccess blacklist will also block legitimate users of mass download and screen scraper products such as GetRight. Whether this is an acceptable tradeoff is up to you.
  (tags: apache security)
• Web Application Form Design
  A fascinating look at HTML form design, from the perspective of usability. As described in this article, different form layouts may facilitate different usability goals.
  (tags: html design usability)
• Realitycheck: What Works on the Web
  Information Architects Japan shares some of the lessons is has learned in building an online business. These lessons include the discovery that giving things away for free works better than charging a little in the hopes of attracting a lot of customers.
  (tags: business)
• New WordPress Blogs: 12 Steps to Set Up for Success
  This to-do list for newly-installed WordPress blogs is full of really useful (and non-obvious) advice. They should really make some of this stuff part of the installation wizard.
  (tags: search marketing opensource)
• Introduction to Programming Using Java, 5th Edition
  A free, online textbook on introductory programming, which uses Java as the language of instruction. This book is directed mainly towards beginning programmers, although it might also be useful for experienced programmers who want to learn about Java.
  (tags: java programming)
• Dojo Offline: 0.9 and Gears
  “Brad Neuberg and SitePen have released a new beta of Dojo Offline. This release includes a full port to Google Gears, a port from Dojo 0.4 to 0.9, and more.”
  (tags: javascript software google opensource network)
• GoPHP5.org – helping speed the transition to PHP 5.2
  This grassroots campaign calls for PHP developers to cease support for PHP 4 in new releases of their projects from Tuesday, February 5th, 2008. Significant projects include Swift Mailer, PHPUnit, Drupal, phpMyAdmin, Typo3 and Symfony.
  (tags: php hosting opensource)
• PHP 4 end of life announcement
  On the 3rd anniversary of PHP 5’s release, the PHP development team has announced that support for PHP 4 will cease at the end of 2007 (with critical security fixes continuing until August 8th, 2008).
  (tags: php hosting)
• JDocs beta
  A major update to this community-driven Java API reference site includes wiki-based versioned annotations at all levels and, at long last, includes documentation for the Java SE core API.
  (tags: java)
• Authoring HTML 5 – A Call to Web Professionals
  The W3C HTML 5 WG responds to criticism that the HTML 5 draft specification does not address the need for a specification that describes how HTML documents should be authored, including rich semantics (as opposed to font tags) and consistent syntax.
  (tags: html standards)
• Google Mapplets Officially Released – Mashups 2.0
  Google has officially released the Mapplets technology it announced in beta in May. The new name for the technology is Mashups 2.0, and is essentially a plug-in API for Google Maps.
  (tags: apis google javascript)
• Bringing the Browser to the Server
  John Resig has thrown together an impressive experiment: a virtual browser that will run ”headless” on a web server, or any other environment that can host the Rhino JavaScript engine. This environment is already sophisticated enough to run jQuery!
  (tags: javascript opensource software)
• CSS Selectors – Speed Myths
  Jack Slocum tackles a few of the myths surrounding the impressive performance gains made recently by the popular JavaScript libraries in their support for CSS-style node selection.
  (tags: javascript)
• Various Notes
  Dojo’s Alex Russell wishes that Jack Slocum’s analysis of CSS selector performance had included Dean Edwards’s Base2 library, claiming it’s the fastest implementation around. This point is debated in the ensuing comments.
  (tags: javascript)
• Gears Roadmap and Development Process
  Google announces its plans for the ongoing development of Google Gears, including short-term plans for a cross-origin API (allowing site A to access the local database of site B) and improvements to make the Workerpool API easier to use.
  (tags: google opensource javascript)

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• iPhone JavaScript Experiments: Day One
  JavaScript guru Joe Hewitt is not impressed with the iPhone as a rich application development platform. Lack of mousedown and mousemove events, for example, prevent developers from taking advantage of the iPhone’s multi touch display.
  (tags: javascript mobile)
• Firebug for iPhone
  Firebug creator Joe Hewitt sensed the need for a Firebug-caliber diagnostic tool for the iPhone. He has built an experimental Python-based server that you can run on your desktop computer to provide a remote JavaScript console for an app on the iPhone.
  (tags: javascript mobile python software)
• Building a desktop application with Ext, AIR, Aptana and Red Bull
  A proof of concept ends up producing quite a polished result: a desktop-like to-do list application that will run either in the browser (with Google Gears offline storage) or on the desktop (with Adobe’s AIR).
  (tags: javascript air google)
• Flip
  A cute online tool that will rotate plain Unicode text 180° (upside down). The result is not exactly accessible, but it is impressive.
  (tags: design)
• jQuery 1.1.3: 800%+ Faster, still 20KB
  jQuery keeps getting better with a massive speed boost. A smattering of new features, a revamped animation system, and a rewritten events subsystem round out this update. Also in this announcement: jQuery UI, a new drag & drop library for jQuery.
  (tags: javascript software)
• HTML Purifier – Filter your HTML the standards-compliant way!
  HTML Purifier is an impressive PHP library for filtering HTML user input against XSS attacks and to ensure standards compliant output.
  (tags: php security html)
• Web App Autopsy
  A look inside four web application startups at different stages in their lifecycle. Compares them in terms of lines of code, daily support requests, conversion rates, average revenue per customer, and best/worth month of the year.
  (tags: business)
• Zend Framework
  The first production release of the official PHP framework is now available! If you’re in the initial stages of a PHP project, you could do a lot worse than adopting this framework for the foundations.
  (tags: php opensource software)
• Project Zero
  IBM has launched Project Zero, a closed-source framework and Eclipse-based IDE for agile web applications in PHP and Groovy with an emphasis on REST architecture. The documentation is very beginner-unfriendly, but maybe a project to watch.
  (tags: php groovy http software)
• What is the CSS Working Group Doing?
  An informative—if not particularly encouraging—post from the W3C CSS Working Group that attempts to answer many of the criticisms levelled at the group recently.
  (tags: css standards)
• GPLv3 and LGPLv3 have been released!
  The Free Software Foundation has released the final text of both the GNU General Public License v3 and the GNU Lesser GPL v3. The main differences are in allowing users to modify software for private use, and freeing developers from software patents.
  (tags: opensource)
• Planet I18n
  The W3C’s Internationalization Activity Lead Richard Ishida has created an aggregator for blog posts related to Internationalization.
  (tags: i18n)
• London 2012 Olympics branding film causes epileptic seizures
  As if the story surrounding the London 2012 Olympics logo and branding weren’t twisted enough, we now have reports of members of the public suffering epileptic seizures after viewing a promotional film posted on the Games’ web site.
  (tags: accessibility design)
• Mashing up microformats
  From Jeremy Keith, a fascinating look at how multiple microformats may be combined in overlapping code to enable a single piece of HTML content to express more than one semantic data structure.
  (tags: microformats html)
• Memory Leaks: Gone!
  It appears Microsoft has updated IE6 to largely (if not completely) correct widely-known JavaScript memory leak issues with the browser. The fix is for Windows XP only, however, where the forced IE7 may render this fix moot.
  (tags: javascript ie)
• AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide (free PDF book)
  Courtesty of Adobe and O’Reilly comes this free PDF version of the upcoming pocket guide for JavaScript developers looking to get up to speed on the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).
  (tags: javascript air adobe)
• WYMeditor 0.4 beta released
  WYMeditor, the web-based What You See Is What You Mean XHTML editor now has improved XHTML code cleanup abilities thanks to a built-in XHTML parser. Also now includes a CSS parser used for configuring available styles.
  (tags: javascript html css software)

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• Instant.js (now with IE 6/7 support)
  Exploiting the dynamic graphics features of current browsers (e.g. the canvas element), instant.js (along with corner.js, glossy.js, and loupe.js) adds special effects to images on your page that you can configure by applying special CSS class names.
  (tags: css design javascript software)
• Beta of Opera Mini 4 is here!
  Opera has released a beta version of the new Opera Mini 4 browser for mobile phones. You can play with the live demo in your desktop web browser, or install it on your phone for free.
  (tags: opera mobile)
• Google says Vista search changes not enough
  In response to Google’s antitrust complaint regarding Windows Vista’s Desktop Search feature, Microsoft has pledged to make changes to the operating system, but Google claims the changes are not enough.
  (tags: windows google microsoft search business)
• Yet another one more thing… a new Web Inspector!
  Although it remains unclear whether or not it will be released along with Safari 3, the Safari team has announced a brand new Web Inspector window that brings most of the power of Firebug (the only exception being JavaScript debugging) to Safari.
  (tags: safari css javascript http)
• Implementing Silverlight in 21 Days
  This tale from the trenches documents how a team of developers on Novell’s Mono team (the open source .NET implementation) got together and implemented the basics of Moonlight—an open source Silverlight clone—in time for a conference demo.
  (tags: .net opensource silverlight linux)
• “The Business case for Web Standards” Wiki
  Chris Heilmann has launched this wiki project to collectively document arguments for (and counterarguments against) the adoption of web standards from a business perspective. Different audiences are considered and significant case studies are included.
  (tags: standards business)
• SlickSpeed Selectors Test
  Produced by the developers of MooTools, this benchmark tests the major JavaScript libraries’ CSS selector features (selecting a set of DOM nodes using CSS selector syntax). Some of the time differences are amazing!
  (tags: javascript)
• Ajax, javascript and threads : the final truth
  While it’s common knowledge that JavaScript is single-threaded, the experiment described here—and the ensuing comments—demonstrate that blocking functions like alert can enable waiting tasks (like Ajax callbacks) to run immediately.
  (tags: javascript programming ajax)
• Victorian Government Accessibility Toolkit
  Written by Gian Sampson-Wild for the State of Victoria, Australia, this is essentially a free ebook on web accessibility from one of the leading experts in the field!
  (tags: accessibility)
• Testability Costs Too Much
  Also from Gian Sampson-Wild, a new critique of WCAG 2.0 based on the requirement that all of the accessibility guidleines be “testable”. In her view, this has watered down many useful parts of the spec, most notably in the area of cognitive disabilities.
  (tags: accessibility standards)
• HTML 5 differences from HTML 4
  From the W3C HTML Working Group, an excellent summary of the significant differences between HTML 4 and the current draft of HTML 5. None of this is final, and the document itself is under active development, but it’s a very worthwhile read nonetheless.
  (tags: html standards)
• The State of Proxy Caching
  Proxy caches are slipping between the cracks in the push for standards compliance on the Web. According to this detailed survey, most products seem to implement HTTP standards only so far as is needed to support current usage on the Web—just barely.
  (tags: http standards)
• Judge rejects Google’s anti-Microsoft antitrust bid
  Possibly ending the Windows Vista Desktop Search antitrust saga, a judge ruled on Tuesday to dismiss Google’s latest complaint against Microsoft in the case.
  (tags: google microsoft search business)

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• WCAG Samurai
  An anonymous group of developers, led by accessibility guru Joe Clark, has published an independant review of the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Independently reviewed by two additional experts, this document was a year in the making.
  (tags: accessibility standards)
• Trying not to pretend
  Accessibility guru Joe Clark has announced his departure from the world of web accessibility. He believes current web accessibility standards are both sufficient and largely irrelevant, now that developers know how to produce quality sites without them.
  (tags: accessibility standards)
• Safari 3 Public Beta
  Apple has released a public beta of Safari 3 for both Windows (XP and Vista) and Mac OS X 10.4. See Matt Magain’s blog post on SitePoint for more details.
  (tags: safari software)
• WWDC 2007 Keynote
  In his keynote address, Steve Jobs demoed the new Safari 3 beta, including the Web Clipping feature that allows Mac users to create widgets from portions of web pages. Also shown was the Safari-powered platform for Web 2.0 applications on the iPhone.
  (tags: safari)
• Camino 1.5 Released
  Based on Mozilla’s Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine, Camino 1.5 is lightweight browser with a native Mac user interface. The new version includes feed detection, spell checking, session saving, and improved tabbed browsing, among other new features.
  (tags: software)
• The All-New Netscape Navigator 9.0
  It’s the browser that just won’t die! Not only is Netscape back with another new release, but some of the features are actually very clever-looking. Best of all, these features may be added to Firefox 2 as extensions if you don’t want the whole shebang!
  (tags: software firefox)
• GoLive 9
  Also in the “back from the dead” department, Adobe has released an update to ex-Dreamweaver competitor GoLive. The $399 product focuses on providing an approach to web design that will be familiar to print designers, with heavy use of CSS under the hood.
  (tags: adobe software css)
• Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)
  Adobe has upgraded the pre-release of its desktop application framework, formerly known as Apollo, from alpha to beta status, and given it a new name: the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).
  (tags: adobe flash flex software)
• Adobe Flex Builder 3 Public Beta
  While many developers are still getting a handle on Flex 2, Adobe is steaming ahead with the development of Flex 3, including Flex Builder 3 and the Flex 3 SDK. This release marks the availability of nightly builds and public roadmaps for both products.
  (tags: adobe flash flex software opensource)
• HTML 5, microformats and testing accessibility
  Bruce Lawson writes about a few of the accessibility flubs turning up in draft specifications including the Microformats and HTML 5 drafts. The common theme is that specs are not being tested for their accessibility in practice.
  (tags: accessibility standards html microformats)
• The HTML Scope/Headers Debate
  The headers attribute, which enables authors to explicitly associate one or more header cells with a table cell in complex tables, is not yet included in the HTML 5 draft specification. In this article, Gez Lemon demonstrates why he believes it should be.
  (tags: html standards accessibility)
• Headers Attribute
  In a further effort to push the W3C HTML working group to include the headers attribute in HTML 5, this document has been compiled with an impressive body of research into current support for this feature, and why it is needed.
  (tags: html standards accessibility)
• A Closer Look at Movable Type 4 beta
  The Movable Type blog engine has been released to open source in preparation for the next major release, Movable Type 4. SitePoint author Jonathan Snook takes a look at the current beta release to see if it can stand up to its competitors.
  (tags: software opensource perl)
• CSS3 module: Multi-column layout
  The W3C has released an updated working draft of the CSS3 multi-column layout module, which allows text to flow into multiple columns in a CSS block.
  (tags: css standards)
• CSS3 Module: Media Queries
  The W3C has released a candidate recommendation for CSS3 media queries, which enable you to restrict the application of CSS properties to particular device types, display dimensions, and color depths.
  (tags: css standards)
• The CSS working group is irrelevant
  Google’s Ian Hicks summarises the many problems with the W3C’s CSS working group. In all, these accusations are pretty damning. With the CSS WG be the next to get revamped in the same way that as the HTML WG?
  (tags: css standards)
• The Ultimate MySpace Layout
  This single piece of CSS code will solve all your MySpace layout issues!
  (tags: css socialnetworks design)
• Best MySpace Layouts That Don’t Look Like MySpace At All
  Okay, okay, if you really want to make your MySpace layout look nice, here are some real examples from which to start.
  (tags: socialnetworks design)
• WYMeditor 0.3 released
  WYMeditor is a web-based WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) XHTML editor, the goal of which is to produce XHTML compliant code by guiding users to format their content according to meaning, not appearance. This release is based on the jQuery library.
  (tags: html software javascript)
• 10 Things That Would Have Been Nice to Know When Starting My Facebook Application
  Facebook recently launched a PHP API enabling developers to create applications that are hosted on a 3rd party server and expose their UI in the profiles of users who install them. This checklists will save the new Facebook developer some head scratching.
  (tags: socialnetworks php)
• Technorati: When Will The Traffic Party End?
  An interesting analysis of a looming problem that may affect Technorati in a big way. Specifically, Technorati tags drive up Technorati search results pages in Google … until Google decides to exclude them as they do all search results pages.
  (tags: business search)
• Ask Relaunches: Now “Ask 3D”
  Search engine Ask.com has relaunched with a whole new user interface, more structured results, and a pragmatic attitude about the obvious “marketshare” issues in the Google-dominated web search market.
  (tags: search business)
• Gaping holes exposed in fully-patched IE 7, Firefox
  Polish hacker Michal Zalewski has published full details and exploit demos for four security holes affecting the latest, fully-patched versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox.
  (tags: ie firefox security javascript)
• Google launches antitrust complaint against Vista’s desktop search
  Though Google has obviously gone to some effort to keep this quiet, it has been revealed that the company has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft for the exclusive hardwiring of its own desktop search engine into the Vista operating system.
  (tags: search google microsoft business)
• Google PageRank: What Do We Know About It?
  This is the most comprehensive and readable summary of Google PageRank – publicly, the best understood of the many algorithms used internally by Google search – that I have seen.
  (tags: search google)
• myIPneighbors.com Reverse IP Domain Check DNS Tool
  According to this useful tool, one of my sites is hosted at the same IP address as 529 other web sites! Luckily it’s a clustered configuration, but still…
  (tags: network hosting)

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• JavaScript 1.8 Progress
  jQuery’s John Resig summarizes enhancements to JavaScript that are now available in the nightly test builds of Firefox 3. Warning: this ain’t your father’s JavaScript!
  (tags: javascript firefox)
• Google Gears ORM
  In what was an inevitable development, the first (simple) object-relational mapping library has been built on top of Google Gears, the client-side database framework launched last week by Google.
  (tags: javascript google software)
• Toggler
  From Art & Science of CSS author Jonathan Snook, a nice, little script that enables users to select a range of checkboxes just by clicking and dragging the mouse over them.
  (tags: javascript software)
• HTML Entity Character Lookup
  Even more useful than it looks at first glance, this page lets you look up HTML character entity codes by typing in text that’s “similar” to what you want (e.g. type “tm” to get the trademark symbol). Mac OS X Dashboard widget also available. (thanks lox)
  (tags: html software)
• Give your web app international appeal
  A slick solution to translating your PHP-powered web site into multiple languages using the gettext functions, which are available in most PHP installations. (thanks paul.annesley)
  (tags: php i18n)
• Obscuring HTTP
  Jeff Perrin provides a thoughtful critique of ASP.NET Web Forms based on the fact that they obscure the simplicity of HTTP in attempt to emulate desktop application development, when that simpler model is all that’s required for many web applications.
  (tags: http asp.net)
• Get JRuby onto the Rails on Mac OS X
  A newbie’s guide to JRuby, the implementation of the Ruby language that runs on the Java VM. This tutorial gets a Ruby on Rails app up and running under JRuby. Though written for Mac OS X, the JRuby-specific instructions will work on Windows or Linux too.
  (tags: rubyonrails java)
• JRuby 1.0.0RC3 Released – And This Is It!
  What is intended to be the final preview release of JRuby before 1.0 is now out! 1.0 is expected later this week.
  (tags: rubyonrails java)
• Google: Don’t let your kids use Gears
  The license agreement presented when installing Google Gears requires the user to be of legal age. Gears is BSD-licensed code, so I suppose minors could make their own “child-friendly” version of Gears just by crediting Google.
  (tags: google)
• Microsoft and IronRuby
  Microsoft developer John Lam provides some more solid information about Microsoft’s plans for IronRuby (the Ruby language on the .NET CLR), and just how compatible with other Ruby implementations it will be.
  (tags: rubyonrails .net)
• Opera Mini™ Simulator
  It couldn’t be easier to see how your site will work in Opera Mini—an extremely popular browser for mobile phones. Just visit this page and try it out for yourself! (thanks gnarly)
  (tags: opera)

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