Kottke.org (KTKE) Lowers Earnings Estimates

March 18th, 2005

So, in essence, Jason Kottke, is now running a public company. Right?

I’d like to see him report his earnings.

C’mon, Jason. Spill the beans. How much did ya pull in?

By my count, he had 627 micro-freakin-patrons. I’ll be aggressive and say the average, er, patronage was $30, the suggested amount.

Carry the one…. $18,810. Minus taxes.

I suppose this makes Jason (because all bloggers call each other by their first name, even though we don’t know each other) the most popular blogger below the poverty line.

And I quote - “downloading will not work with Internet Explorer”

July 31st, 2004

Went to download the latest update to Roxio’s Toast CD burning application, and was surpisingly greeted by this message:

In order to download the update you will need Safari, Camino or Netscape browser ñ downloading will not work with Internet Explorer.

This is really no better than the silly coders who disallow any other browser, it’s just that you don’t often see the apple fall on IE’s side of the tree.

9/11 Commission Report Free on iTunes

July 29th, 2004

Get a free audiobook of the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report Executive Summary from the iTunes Music Store.

Vote.

Evolt likes me! They really like me!

July 22nd, 2004

Or, rather, they like my recent search engine optimization paper, just published on the venerable site.

Evolt, in case you didn’t know, is a “world community for web developers, promoting the mutual free exchange of ideas, skills and experiences.”

Read up, and hook me with any comments, corrections, or suggestions you have. Try not to make too much fun of my picture.

p.s. Yes, this is the same as this SEO whitepaper, just on a different site and in HTML instead of PDF.

Baby Got Back, or Usability Ain’t All About The Front-end

July 21st, 2004

Which is more ridiculous?

Posting a URL in a web community forum with automatic URL-to-link functionality without including the “http://” (?), or the fact that no forum software recognizes a URL without the http:// with its URL-to-link feature?

Yes, the latter. I agree. No forum software I know even gives you the option.

Fill in obvious rant about not placing the burden on the site visitor and putting the site to work for the site visitor here.

MT3, Comments, TypeKey, Registration? Oh my! (Help.)

July 20th, 2004

Update: Reloaded all the Comment templates, and it all seems to work more sensibly. Did I miss this part of the upgrade instructions or are they not there for me to miss?

I fancy myself a pretty intelligent and web-savvy guy, but I must admit that I need some help figuring out comment registration and MT 3.

I would like to only accept comments from registered users. However, when I enable this, upon submission of a comment, one is given the rather unhelpful message, “Registration required.” No further information is given, such as how to actually go about registering.

The MT docs say that all I have to do is enter my TypeKey token. I’ve done that. I see nothing about any other configuration or code changes I have to make.

So, what am I doing wrong? What am I missing?

FYI: Right now, I have unregistered comment moderation enabled, so as to not make commenting impossible, but still enabling me to deal with comment spam before it infects my site.

Research-based Web Design and Usability Guidelines

July 19th, 2004

The Department of Health and Human Services has authored a massive paper entitled, Research-based Web Design and Usability Guidelines. The title pretty much tells the story.

This paper is nothing if not well-documented, researched, and plain old big in scope. 17 chapters, 128 pages, full of screen shots, and a handly little rating guide to help you quickly determine the relevance and strength of evidence of a particular issue. Usability out of a usability handbook. Fancy that.

Not only that, they’ve gone one step further and provided us with a web-based sorting tool for this rating system. They smartly realized that users/readers of such a cumbersome tome need many different ways to access and retrieve the information therein.

While you’re there, check out the Usability University for upcoming classes and seminars on a variety of usability and accessibility-related topics.