Thinking about getting a new cell phone. I still prefer a candy bar-style phone to a flip phone, but the only good candy bars these days are sliders. The LG Shine is more stylish than most of them.

"The problem I am pointing to, however, is […] a simple problem that afflicts us all: people with any kind of technical knowledge of a domain tend to get hopelessly (and unwittingly) stuck in a frame of reference that relates to their view of the issue, and their trade’s technical parlance, not that of the ordinary humans with whom they so signally fail to engage."

Language Log’s Geoffrey Pullum on a phenomenon he calls “nerdview.” (via nostrich)

Using .htaccess Redirection to Standardize Web Server Addresses →

I feel like a Web guru now — using John Gruber’s .htaccess tricks, www.jessedarland.com now magically becomes jessedarland.com.

FontStruct →

This is so awesome: a Web app that lets you build your own fonts. It’s like Kuler for fontheads. I love it.

Via angad, via joelaz.

School computer wipes out grades | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star →

stumbled:

Two thoughts on this one:

1. That sucks.
2. LOL. 

Ouch.

TypeRacer →

asprettyasasong:

amwelles:

mirza:

Best game for increasing your typing speed

As a lover of touch-typing, I find this quite addictive.

 Why did you have to introduce me to this? I’m supposed to be studying!?

Argh and I’m just needing to get back to work, too.

This is the single biggest productivity booster that I know of. (Too bad it’s so hard to do.)

The Official CAPTCHA Site →

I’m working on a project that needs a CAPTCHA so I went to look at reCAPTCHA. Problem is, they seem to be a little confused about a CAPTCHA’s purpose:

CAPTCHA tests are based on open problems in artificial intelligence (AI): decoding images of distorted text, for instance, is well beyond the capabilities of modern computers. Therefore, CAPTCHAs also offer well-defined challenges for the AI community, and induce security researchers, as well as otherwise malicious programmers, to work on advancing the field of AI. CAPTCHAs are thus a win-win situation: either a CAPTCHA is not broken and there is a way to differentiate humans from computers, or the CAPTCHA is broken and an AI problem is solved.

Um, isn’t a broken CAPTCHA the opposite of a win situation?

Not only is Tumblr radar back, they’ve also added a preview button. This is huge!

dannygarcia:

For those of us that didn’t go to design school and never learned what this meant.

No, don’t look at it. It’s a curse, I tell you. Ever since I learned what good kerning is I can’t stop noticing bad kerning everywhere!

I want an iPod touch

For some reason I keep periodically visiting http://apple.com/ipodtouch just to stare. One of the exciting things about the iPod touch (now that the software has been updated to actually have an E-mail client and a text editor, which the iPhone has had from day one) is that it’s Apple’s first viable PDA since the Newton was killed off. It’s even better than most of the competition (at the same price, of course, since there are plenty of cheaper PDAs).

I’ve used PDAs for several years now. When I was in high school I bought a Handspring Visor with wages from my first job. I loved being able to take it out and keep my schedule and addresses in it. My desktop PC at that time (which was an old Packard Bell I’d scavenged and loaded with Linux and GNOME 1.4 — serious geek cred) didn’t even have USB ports, so I was entering all my info directly onto the PDA and backing up with Springboard backup module.

The Handspring lasted until my sophomore year of college, when I dropped it and cracked the screen. I went out and bought a Palm Zire 21, which was just about the same but smaller and running a newer version of the Palm OS. I used that until the battery ran down and no longer held a charge. Since Palm was no longer supporting the Mac OS, and since Windows Mobile definitely would not, I switched to a paper planner and hoped something would change.

Which, obviously, has happened. I want an iPod touch — which is silly, since I already have a nano with a microphone attachment that I actually use for work-related journalism things, rather than just as a music-playing toy. But I could check my email with an iPod touch! And surf the internet! I guess I just have a hard time justifying to myself that an iPod touch would be useful, instead than cool. I’d rather check my E-mail on a full-size PC that I can actually type on, for example.

At least the Nokia N810 — which is the same price — has a real keyboard. Doesn’t connect to iTunes, though. Sigh. Palm, which used to be the PDA big daddy, offers the TX at the same price point with a woefully inferior feature list: less memory by several orders of magnitude, awkward interface, nonstandard Web browser. Now the N800, TX, and Windows Mobile PDAs have the advantages of Bluetooth, real keyboards (built-in or snap-on), and catalogs of third party software. The latter advantage will disappear in a few months when Apple releases an iPod touch development kit. Hopefully Apple (or a third party) will also do something about that keyboard.

In the meantime, I find myself irrationally wanting one.