Laptop Art
Back on February 5, 2006 I posted about my laptop stecil and posted a picture after I had finished transferring it to my Toshiba laptop.
Well almost 6 months later a lot has happened to my laptop as seen below:
My stecil is still going strong, I have a few stickers rocking my laptop including a Paul Frank Scurvy, My official EFF membership sticker and a Super Man logo.
Some technical things have also taken place to my laptop since February as well.
On April 11, 2006 I upgraded my memory from 512 MB of RAM maxing it out at 2 gigabytes and last week I upgraded from a 100 gig hard drive to a 120 gig which runs much faster, cooler and is really quiet.
What else can I possibly do to my laptop now you might be asking yourself?
Well when they come out with a laptop hard drive larger then 100 gigs that runs at 7200 RPM’s or faster, I’m going to upgrade once again.
Monopoly Money Safe In The United States
On July 24, 2006 I posted about Parker Brothers removing the cash from the game and adding VISA Debit Cards to the classic board game Monopoly so players could pay for properties with debit cards.
I found out today that the change is taking place but only in the UK version. American versions of the game will still come stocked with the familiar multicolored bills. Yay.
For my friends in the UK, don’t worry, you can now download and print sheets of your own Monopoly money here.
Monopoly Game Adds VISA Debit Cards
Game maker Parker Brothers has added VISA Debit Cards to the classic board game Monopoly so players can now pay for properties with debit cards.
According to Parker Brothers, they have phased out the standard multi-colored cash in a new version, so if you have the classic game with the paper money, hold on to it as it will most likely become a collectors item for sure.
What does this mean to new upcoming players of Monopoly? It means that players will instead use a Visa mock debit card to keep track of how much they win or lose. The debit card is inserted into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders’ earnings and payments.
That’s very interesting from a geek point of view. I wonder if the mock debit cards have a magnetic strip on them? I wonder what kind of information actually gets encoded on the card? I’ll have to track one of these new versions down and do some testing and of course report my findings.
So why did Parker Brothers decided to move to a debit card system for buying properties? According to spokesman Chris Weatherhead:
The new electronic Monopoly reflects the changing nature of society and the advancement of technology. It is part of an international deal between Parker and finance giant VISA, which designed the mock debit card and its electronic machine.
Ah, so VISA is getting a cut too. It’s all about the almighty dollar.
Now that I know VISA is part of this project, I really want to check out the mock up debit cards and see what makes them tick.
Matsushita to offer 103-inch PDP
TOKYO - Panasonic the brand for which Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. is known will offer a 103-inch PDP TV that uses a plasma display panel measuring about 140 by 240 centimeters (cm).
Can you just imagine playing console games on that? Mario would be huge! Read on to find out about the detailed specifications of this plasma beast.
The PDP offers full high definition 1,920 by 1,080 pixel resolution, a 4000-to-1 contrast ratio in dark surroundings and includes a connection for the High Definition (HD) Multimedia Interface.
Matsushita said in the press release that it will begin taking orders for the 103-inch TV in September 2006. This huge Plasma Display Panel TV will be priced around $50,000. Yikes! If I had $50,000.00 I could buy a killer new car or truck and have money left over.
To find out more about this cool new product from Panasonic-Matsushita, visit the Thinking big? Think plasma! website.
Image source: Panasonic
Google Accessible Search
Google is busy as always working on a project dubbed Google Accessible Search.
Accessible Search adds a small twist to the familiar Google search: In addition to finding the most relevant results as measured by Google’s search algorithms, it further sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts.
Heads up web developers. We need to pay attention to this. Why you ask? Well first lets learn how Google’s Accessible Search works, then you’ll know why.
In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully - pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op’s technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.
So what does this mean? If you’re not already doing it, you need to start building your websites with accessibility in mind if you want your sites to have even more SEO goodness.
How can we as web developers make our site content more accessible to the blind you might be asking yourself? I recommend you read up on the W3C Web Content Access Guidelines.
The W3C has a lot of useful information on the subject. Broad adherence to these guidelines is one way of ensuring that sites are universally accessible.
Some recommendations that I would personally make would be to add alt tags to all of your site images. Be sure to give them a descriptive name, example “photo of maple tree” and not something like “photo-001″.
If it’s a spacer image or filler image, I usually put an asterisk (*) or a period (.) in the alt tag.
Also, be sure to use title tags on all your links and be descriptive as well with them. You can check the links on my articles for examples of how I do it. Just mouse over a link or two and you’ll see.
Don’t forget to use acronym title tags on acronyms or abbreviations. They do help with accessibility. Happy coding.
Microsoft Beta Tests Outlook Express Replacement
Microsoft Corporation opened Windows Live Mail Center to public beta testing on Tuesday July 18, 2006, providing the first look at the e-mail client that will eventually replace Outlook Express.
Formerly titled Windows Live Mail Desktop, the code is based on Windows Mail, the e-mail application that will be bundled with Windows Vista when that Operating System ships in sometime early 2007.
The Windows Live Mail Center client lets users access Microsoft’s Web-based e-mail service Hotmail, which is now called Windows Live Mail, regular POP3 e-mail and other Web based e-mail clients like Google’s Gmail, all within one interface.
This new mail client also displays RSS feeds and newsgroup threads and messages.
Pretty neat I think. Maybe Microsoft is starting to get the big picture? Scary.