blogbuoy

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Google Docs Is Inspiring

Kudos to the folks at Google for making this simple presentation on how to use Google Docs for simplifying the creation and sharing of and the collaboration on word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents.

Watch and listen to this video for more. Even if you're not into Google, the presentation technique alone is worth the time:

Official Google Blog: Our feature presentation

Thursday, September 06, 2007

I got a widescreen monitor at work and new software. . .

So, the boss decided that no one should be stuck staring at a CRT in the office anymore.

My colleague, David, was given a budget and the authority to eliminate as many CRTs as possible. I got a new wide screen monitor in the shuffle!

So, I read on LifeHacker about this free software for taking advantage of the valuable new space on the screen. Sizer let me customize the "resize window" options on my computer so I can click on a window and instantly set it to take only half of the screen width and reposition it to the left or right side of the screen. It's fast and, now that I have so much more screen space, I can have two different windows on my screen at the same time.

Unread Items in Google Reader Has Changed -- Finally!!

I always found it ridiculous that Google Reader did not show the count for unread items in my reader account for anything higher than 100. They would just show "100+" I noticed this morning that they now show the actual count.

So now I know how far behind I am on my reading and can also gauge a bit better whether I'm subscribed to too many feeds.

Not sure why I didn't hear about this on the blogosphere already. . .maybe it's because I'm behind on my reading!

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Case Sensitive Name Attribute for Radio Buttons in FireFox

So a customer of mine discovered this problem for me today. I have a pair of radio buttons on some search fields for an AND/OR choice. When he clicked OR (the default is AND) the AND stayed selected and his search threw an error.

Here's a code example:

<input type="Radio" 
 name="search_recipient_group_ao" 
 value="And" 
 checked>
&nbsp;Or&nbsp;
<input type="Radio" 
 name="SEARCH_RECIPIENT_GROUP_ao" 
 value="Or" >

So, in IE, this works just fine--only one selection is allowed. In FireFox though, both can be selected at the same time. I'm guessing FireFox is relying on JavaScript for the functionality and is, therefore, case sensitive for form field groups.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Breast Feeding Extremism and Corporate Political Power

In this article, it sounds like the original ads promoting breast feeding contained some fairly extreme images. Women and families should have accurate information about the benefits of breast feeding--but they should also be free from the extreme guilt that so many La Leche League types proliferate. If a woman or her child experiences trouble when trying to establish a healthy breast feeding habit, postpartum is no time for mommy to be worrying about all the negative pressure that certain segments of society apply to this issue. Mommy and family should have the facts about the benefits of breast feeding and the, relatively low, risks of not doing so. The rest of us should shut the hell up, support and let mommy decide for herself what she and her baby are going to do about meal time.

Just as important, this article talks about another example of just how corrupt our government has become and how the power of corporate lobbying fucks up so much of what we call our American Democracy. Is it really that important for a government agency to change it's approach to a public health education campaign so that the sales of infant formula do not drop? If the original ads had run, would the economy have toppled? Maybe the formula companies would have defaulted on their mortgages and the entire world market gone down the drain? Maybe this wouldn't be so bad either.

HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads - washingtonpost.com

UPDATE: Here are the ads before and after the corporate lobbying efforts and an excerpt from the lobbyist letter:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/08/31/GR2007083100089.html