Time is an interesting creature of change…  The more things change the more they stay same??  To a certain degree I find that to be correct.  Internet Explorer always seems to be a few revs behind its competition i.e. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.  I find it interesting how Opera and Firefox are leveraging the Internet to enhance the browsing experience.  It makes a lot of sense.  This could also be attributed to the general nature of improvement – things evolve over time.

Opera’s Unite, the web server in a browser,  is a good example of a web browser that is much more than a web browser.  It is an application that uses Opera servers (or personal servers) to share content.  That is a very vague overview, but it makes a point; web browsers today are much different than web browsers of yesterday.

I think this is a trend started by Firefox.  Firefox plug-ins that integrate delicious, flickr, facebook, or any kind of social media that is web based – is a change from the norm.  Even Mozilla is graying the line between desktop and webapp.  The introduction of Weave lets users sync up their browsers across many PCs and mobile devices.  Allowing for a more constant web experience – such a great idea.

Google Chrome lacks the plug-in features, but what it lacks in that area it more than makes up with speed.  The Javascript engine is a beast.   I’m certainly surprised by the lack of plug-ins for Chrome, but I do find myself using it more and more.  It just starts up so fast; maybe that’s why there are no plug-ins.  It renders things great and is just an overall great browsing experience.  Sometimes I think Firefox lost sight of that over the development of the application.

Who would of thought that browsers would come back with such innovation?  I remember back to the days of Netscape Navigator… Communicator…  Whatever it was called!  Internet Explorer was once a leader in this field surprisingly.  The most exciting thing is that there is more to come!  We are only beginning to touch the surface of the capabilities of browsers.  HTML 5 will be revolutionary for the web.  Google Wave is in the distance.  Windows 7 is on getting ready for deployment.

This is an exciting time for the IT world.  For the non IT world too because things renew so quickly.  Innovation is not hampered by centuries of corruption.  We are truly in the Wild West of Web Development.  We are learning as we go and innovating on-the-fly.  Treads come and go, but innovation is the key to what makes technology so appealing and productive.

This definitely has deeper implementations as your article propagates through-out the Internet or “blogosphere (buzzword)”. Social networking sites seemed to be geared toward people with the ability to write that great headlines. Even regular readers are drawn in by a great headline. Make it clever, make it short, grab their attention!

A lot of my articles are hit and miss, but I can definitely say that ones with good headlines have been read. I’m not doing this for hits though, this isn’t a money blog. I just want to write and if people would like to join in and share I think that is great.

Here is my list of keys to great headlines:

• Keep it short
  • We have short attention spans
• Action, Action, Action verbs (BAM!)
• Stay focused to main point(s)
• Write the headline first
• Don’t be afraid to change the headline
  • Your topic can evolve while you are write
• Look for articles of similar topic
  • Don’t forget Trackbacks
  • Don’t understand Trackbacks? See Revellian.com’s blog posting
• Ask for help if you are stuck
• Break rules, be different, have fun

My most read article currently is AT&T in Bush’s pocket and I think this is a good example of a great headline. It is short, has action, summarizes the main point, and draws the reader into the topic. The headline makes you think and makes you want to read more.

Also Here Comes Linux, Thanks Vista! is my second most read article. I think this illustrates that summarizing an article and making the reader want more is a delicate art. Also I think sheer luck plays a vital role in this whole process!

I don’t think there is some magical formula for effective headline writing, but there probably is. I think when writing an article you should have fun and hopefully that will show through to your readers. At least, that’s what I try to do, because that’s what I enjoy when I read an article. I’ve read enough technical documents in my day to know, that you can learn more when you are having fun!

Nothing endures but change.
-Heraclitus

I find myself in my final year of College, at last. This marks yet another year of changing faces, places, and alike. The common thread among all my education has been change. College is about adapting, learning, and changing.

I begun my college career in 2001. Yes I have been in school for going on 7 years now. I guess I am not a traditional student per say. I am thankful for my experience and I think I have an interesting perspective on college life. The landscape of colleges is totally different now as compared to 2001. I think this is true in about any area of life. Things change, times change, change occurs.

There has been such a bigger emphasis on “group work” in the past few years as opposed to earlier years in my college career. I think this is valuable experience for the work field. Working with people is vital in any area of the “real world”. The way we interact with people is crucial for success. I think I am an easy fellow to get along with and that goes a long way.

I hope this year, as opposed to years passed, I am going to integrate things from my classes into my blog postings. I think this will be interesting and fun to see what people think of the things I learn in school. This semester I have some fun classes like UI Design and Implementation, JAVA II, Network Security, and Astronomy. Hopefully this will keep me fairly excited about the subjects that I am learning.

I am ready for change, and we must remember that change is not bad. Change is the essence of life.

Well this post is all about http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/ because the author of this site is claiming Firefox’s Adblock is stripping him of income! You don’t need to visit, here is the general idea.

“The Mozilla Foundation and its Commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation, has allowed and endorsed Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites and also prevents site owners from blocking people using it. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.”

That’s right it’s no less than stealing! stealing, humbug, etc etc, those whipper snappers. Oh no, should the owner of a site have to actually change to adapt to his/her readers! That is non-sense! This reminds me of my previous post, The DRM Dream is Over, because it is similar to the views of the Music Industry/Movie Industry/etc. It’s really like any business, you have to adapt to your customers or your customers will go somewhere else.

The first reason why I started to use Adblock Plus was those stupid ads with the smiley faces that yelled at you! I can block ads in my own mind thank you, just like I can when I am watching TV. When there is a commercial I space out till the commercial is over. I have no idea what the commercial was about and ADs are much like that.

So Adblock Plus saves my mind much processing power, so I can do more critical functions. Like blogging.

I really don’t like ADs, I think they cheapen the online experience. TV has ADs, radio has ADs, newspapers/magazines has ADs. Does a medium have to have ADs to be considered serious? I don’t think so.

Look at our media, here in the United States, they failed us with the war in Iraq. Bloggers have to be journalists now-a-days because our “news outlets” are failing. They are nothing more than puppets of politics or their corporate sponsors. See AT&T in Bush’s Pocket.

Blogging, independent journalists, is the future of the news, I think so. I think there will always be “news outlets”, but I don’t think they are sincere. Blogging is sincere and it doesn’t have a hidden agenda. Well most bloggers don’t have a hidden agenda.

Recently, one of my articles that was on Digg got a comment, lets say I have a critic.

Here was my thought process on this comment by noamsml:

1. Anger
2. Sadness
3. Happiness

I was a little upset when I first read this comment. Illiterate? Is my writing that terrible? Is my writing so bad that people think I cannot read. Are my thoughts so crazy that they are ridiculous? I was angered and wanted to bury the comment, but I did not. Common sense grabbed a hold of me again. That’s his opinion and as my girlfriend said, “You can’t please everyone“, a truly profound statement at the time.

Next, I go through a phase of sadness, everything I write is junk, complete junk. Why do I even bother? I do enjoy writing, but if I’m not a good writer why should I even try? This stage didn’t last too long, because I think I finally got it. Criticism is how people become writers, better communicators, and well better at anything. People should have varying opinions and I can use this as an opportunity for growth; enter happy stage. So I went back and re-read my article Here comes Linux, Thanks Vista! to critique myself.

After re-reading my article I think there were a couple of things I could have done better. A lot of my thoughts were jumbled together and could have been explained more thoroughly. One sentence should have one idea and one idea alone, except those leading to another sentence. I didn’t like my use of the word “damn” and should have used something more descriptive and fitting to the post.

Things to Improve:

• Keep focused on topic
• Finish current thought than move on
• No profanity, unless absolutely necessary

Overall, I didn’t think it was a terrible article, but it did have room to improve. There’s nothing wrong with that; I don’t think so anyway. I will use this as a way to improve my writing and become a better person overall!

I like the use of the image and the use of quotes. I like articles with quotes from various people. Also, links to material that is related is something I would like to continue. So, I feel the article wasn’t complete crap, but I could have done some things differently.

Things that I liked:

• Use of images to illustrate point
• Use of quotes and blockquotes to set apart
• Outgoing links to related material

Writing “blogs” or articles or anything like this on the Internet is quite the personal thing to do. To put yourself “out there” for everyone to see and critique. I understand that you can’t make everyone happy; that is not my intention. I hope people reading this or anything I wrote understand that I am just a normal person writing about things that I enjoy in life. I have no alternative motives than to enjoy all things technical and not so technical; also to state my opinions on the things that I enjoy.

:-p

Thanks for the comment Noamsml.

I also implemented [http://noumenon.roderickrussell.com/wordpress-to-myspace-auto-crossposting] and I’m going to see how that works, so my blog updates to my MySpace account, what a cool idea.

That’s all I have right now.

• WordPress – blog management
• Zenphoto – photo management

The installation of these software packages was a great experience; it had some hitches but went over fairly decent. I also hacked Zenphoto to use my WordPress Theme – which I kind of enhanced the classic WordPress Theme to accommodate what I wanted. Also installed the Zenpress plug-in for WordPress so I can easily add images to my posts.

There are still things on the site that need to be finalized such as:

• The WordPress Theme
• Photo Integration

I’m going to add a del.icio.us plug-in sometime to display my del.icio.us bookmarks. yum.

I guess I’m fairly excited, ok very, that my France Spring Break is only one week away! I’m also pretty scared.

Farewell,

Brent