Blogger Sues Digg

I’ve had it.
No really.
I’ve become addicted to Digg and I can’t stop.

Digg, if you’ve been living in a cave the past year, is a tech-centered news aggregator that has become popular amongst bloggers and web sorts. The only problem is, I’m addicted to it.

Oh sure. It starts out simple enough… a little article about some cool css sites, then a free fonts site or two… The next thing you know I’m three days behind my deadline for a requirements doc, and I’m neck deep in some bizarre ball drawing thing, with another window running some Javascript based adventure game – that I don’t even WANT to play!

So, as far as my understanding of the law goes, I need real damages. Well, how about I haven’t done crap in over two weeks, my cats have lost (collectively) fifteen pounds, my eyes are going bad, and today is the last day of an invoice period where I’ve made NO MONEY.

Diggs fault.

So I am going to call a lawyer, and initiate a damages claim against Digg for wasting my time learning about some guy that created an animation out of the Bigfoot images, or another website where you can create a flipbook-style animation, or this other one I read where you can…

If you’ve experienced a loss of your life because of Digg, share your comments…

Finally the Phone Browser works!

Finally, a browser for a cell phone that acts like a browser.

I got a Motorola Razr V3 last month, and I’ve been playing with the built-in “web browser” that it comes with.  I don’t like it.  Even with Google Mobile, which is a great small screen renderer, the phone still relies on the controls that phone designers built.

Enter Opera Mini.  Aside from it having a better look and feel, the controls are built by browser designers.  For example the bottom of the browser ‘window’ uses the two ‘soft keys’ of the phone contextually, depending on what you’re doing.  Check out this graphic:

 

Notice the Menu link at the bottom?  When you click the softkey just below it, the menu opens up, revealing this:

Continuing through the functions is really easy, and the functionality is as you would expect from a browser, not a phone.

The features of the browser are rich, including bookmarks, history, image settings(low res, high res, none), some Sweet Shortcuts, page properties, etc.

A great pdf that shows many of the features can be found here.  They also have some great information on Small-screen Rendering (SSR), as well as how to author for small screens.  The browser is built in Java, and its a small download (around 100k for Motorola Razr).  Sidebar: Why does Motorola store downloaded Java apps under Games !?! 

I’ve been recommending SSR to many of my clients building web services, including theaters (schedules), restaurants (menus, events), and even to sales automation projects (inventory management, order management, etc.).  The more time I spend using Opera Mini, the more applications I can think of for SSR.   Considering the power of Opera Mini’s (server-based) rendering engine, and the overall ease of developing W3C XHTML compliant pages, the better question is why not?!?

It’s really nice to see that Opera has developed a usable platform for phones to access the web.  I think that phone companies could sit up and take a lesson.  All in all, this little browser rivals full-screen functionality and ease of use.

Bravo Opera!

 

Verizon Gives Cell Usage Info for Free!

Seems strange that Verizon employees don’t even know that they don’t have a ‘Special Needs Group’.  But if you call them and tell them that you are an employee, acting on the behalf of a speech-impaired customer, they will gladly turn over any of their customers cell phone records.

Maybe they DO need a Special Needs Group… 

Here’s the full story.