No More PDF's

I used to hate PDF files, more recently I have started to appreciate them a little bit more. Mainly as we now tend to have faster internet, and computers that can display the files with out too much delay. It's interesting to see that others still have issues with PDF's too.
Contentious - No PDF Press Releases


Another Surprising issue that I have come across is the number of people who don't know what a PDF is, and don't even realize that the Acrobat (aka PDF) file they read inside their web browser is any different to the other webpages they have viewed. I'll bet this is great for Adobe, but because of its wide spread use, every windows user is forced to install Acrobat reader on their computers! This does not give us much freedom of choice.

James

Where do car names come from?

Heres a excerpt from todays AWAD:
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The very first car I owned was a black hatchback Volkswagen Scirocco.
Before I plonked down my hard-earned graduate-school allowance for this secondhand (euphemistically also called pre-owned or pre-loved) automobile, I made sure its air-conditioning was A-OK. With a name like Scirocco (hot, dry wind), I felt I just had to.

How do automakers come up with names for their cars? Some christen their models with feminine sounding names (Ford Festiva, Chevrolet Lumina), probably following the traditional way of naming boats, while others go for macho names (Mitsubishi Galant, Nissan Armada).

Some prefer animal names, as a way of ascribing those qualities to their cars (Mercury Cougar, Dodge Viper, Ford Bronco). Others name their cars after cities (Dodge Daytona, Chevrolet Corsica, GMC Yukon). Still others take the easy way out and use what appears to be a jumble of letters and numbers though these often indicate engine capacity or some such characteristics.

Here are some interesting auto tidbits:

o Camry is an anagram of "My car".
o "A TOYOTA" is a palindrome, and forms a mirror image.
o Chevrolet named a car Nova. In Spanish "No va" means "It doesn't go."
o Then there was the unreliable Yugo which earned the nickname "You no go."
o Saab is an acronym for Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (Swedish Aircraft
Company Ltd); BMW is Bayerische Motoren-Werke (Bavarian Motor Works).
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I thought it might make interesting Reading (and I haven't posted in a while :)

Have a great week,

James

Linguistic Articles

Hi Everyone,
I stumbled across a couple of articles that might be of interest to you all :

Changing Places

This article talks about the "black" language in that US of A. I don't profess to know much of the cultural issues around this, but I think it is interesting our own indigenous people, the Maori, also have dialect to themselves. As with all such languages there are some white who speak "Maori" and many Maori who's accent is the same as mine...

Political Slang

This article might be usefull to figure out what all those politicians are going on about in the US right now :)

And finally...

Reflections

Reflections on "Engineering Expressiveness". Does all our new technology really help us to be come more effective communicators, or do will we just fall into uniformity?

James

First Site I am Hosting

JAMBE has just started hosting websites, the first being, Good Samaritan Inn (from tonga)

If you want to host a website, just email us and we will give you a free quote.

English in anyone's Language

Heres another article worth reading (especially if you understand australian)
Humorously highlighting the diversity of the English language:

English in anyone's language

James

A bit of linguistics for your day?

TIME Europe - On language changes in Germany

I found this article very interesting, its talking about how the German government has changed its spelling system, hoping to provide a system that is easier to learn...
Already countries like Switzerland have attempted similar changes, It basically means that everyone needs to learn two languages. The current "proper" Spellings and the old style so that you can still communicate with everyone...

Anyway read the article,

James

John The Baptists Cave?

I thought this was an interesting discovery, even John the Baptist never went their, it is interesting that the Biblical Stories of John the Baptist are depicted on the walls...

Cave linked to John the Baptist

Google + Nutch Blogs

As the Blog revolution continues to expand, we are starting to see both companies and individuals, blogging about their work. Athough this is probably just an attempt to show how smart they are, It can make informative reading :)
Here are two blogs I have enjoyed reading:

Google Blog
- Google is a Search engine (you might have heard of it?). Their Blog seems to feature various examples of their cleverness, as well as other "Google Life" commentary.

Nutch Blog
- Nutch is an Open Source Project that is developing Search Software that aims to equal to google in quality. The Blog is written by Doug Cutting Nutch's Lead Developer.

AWAW Begins

For a while I have been thinking about starting "A Word A Week" email. Although there are many good "A Word A Day" emails, Recieving an email every day if often too much for a busy Schedule. I also want to focus my attention of useful words, but ones that aren't used very often.

I have started A new blog for this venture, go check it out at http://awaw.blogspot.com

Updated Gmail Program Policies

I just finished writing the short article (below) about gmail when I noticed the they had updated the Program Policies.
The change is very small just a few added words, that don't affect me.

But how do I know you say?
What I really thought was worth noteing is the "view changes" button Which just puts a line through and colors red things that have been deleted, and underlines in green text that has been added.
I assume that it is automated, and I like the simplicity of it.
Some thing to "borrow" for your own web site :)

See : Gmail Program Policies

Gmail, Tips and Suggestions

Gmail

I thought I'd wait a little bit before talking about Gmail.
As a lot of bloggers got free Gmail accounts they all talked about it at once. So I thought I'd wait :)

I have been using gmail for a while now, and really really like it. I don't even notice the ads, and I don't talk about anything sensitive enough
That I really care about google analyzing it. The best features are labels, and searching.

Labels

Labels are a little bit like folders, they help you sort and categorize your email. The advantage of labels is that the same email can have more than one label.
Labels work very well with Gmail's archive feature. They way I have been using them is to apply labels to emails I might want to find again, and then archiving them.
The emails stay under the label, and are very easy to find. If you were a very busy user who had enough email that you wanted to remove things from under you label, but still be able to find them, It would be good to be able to archive with label attached. Perhaps an archive from label button...

Searching

Normally when you want to search for an email it takes ages for the program sort through the data, but as Gmail indexes all your emails, It can instantly recall anything you want.
Also it searches all your email an once, no longer do you have to rerun searches in different folders to find the right thing. Of course you can restrict your searches to certain labels, and to key words in the subject vs. the body etc.
I have heard people talk about a theoretical filesystem where you don't store files in directories you just attach meta data, and search for it.
Having seen gmail, I not only think that it is possible I really wish to had it.

Suggestions

Although I love Gmail, I do have some Ideas for improvements.
I have submitted most of these to the gmail team so It will be interesting to see if any show up soon.

1) Spam/Not Spam marking in filters. If Gmail's spam filter decides an email is spam, it puts it in the spam folder.
Emails in the spam folder can have labels attached, but they don't show up under the label buttons. The spam folder doesn't give you any indication
that you have received any new spam, therefore if a message is misclassified it might go unnoticed. I think the best way to get around this problem would
be to allow filters to mark email as Spam, or as not spam. Thus you could make sure the important emails didn't get missed.
An indication somewhere of how many new "spam" messages have arrived (since last login?) would be useful.

2) I am sure everyone has talked about this, and the gmail team is working on it, but it would be nice to be able to merge conversations that gmail has missed.
They could also use this information to improve the automatic conversation merging feature.

3) Altogether the search function is brilliant, I often find my search results are cluttered up with emails that I have sent. It would be nice to be able to search just the received mail.
In the meantime, you can get around this by typing in your gmail address in to field, as all the received email comes to you :) However your email might have been in the cc or bcc fields, and you will get any emails that you sent your self. (yes I do send my self emails :)

4) Even though gmail focuses on searching not sorting, sometimes its good to be able to sort search results. You might like to reverse sort the arrival time, or sort by senders name so that you can easily access the different emails from that person. You could add that person's name to your search, but it's easier to just click 1 button. And if you are anything like you probably can't spell their name.

5) If gmail could add in a google style spell checker to the search it would be helpful.

Try it out

I still have a couple of gmail invitations if you want to try it out. Just send an email to james.brunskill@gmail.com and ask for one. First come first served...
Well I just published my gmail address on the net, so It should be interesting to see how the spam checker holds out :)

I am still using my other email address to most of my mail, so if you want to ask me a question, make a suggestion, or anything else please send it to james@jambe.cjb.net.


James

Picsearch: map isreal

I guess a lot of you will know about google's image search, but I just found out that they have competitor, picsearch.
Example search : Picsearch: map isreal

It seems to be very fast (probably due to low load :) and very accurate. It has built in family friendly features which is a bonus.

James

UPDATE: lots of people seem to be finding this page when searching for "map isreal", just so you know the correct spelling is 'Israel'.

Best of Crypto Gram

As usual I have been reading cryptogram, and found some stories you might like to read...

Penetration Testing Using Social Engineering (Part 1) | Lineman.Net

Why Windows is a security Nightmare

Rebuilding a 1960 code breaking machine

All worth reading...

Search: avg grisoft.com

MSN Search: avg grisoft.com
I just saw in my logs that someone visited my site from that site.
Suprisingly my site is number 2, for a search avg grisoft.com!

I wonder if I could get avg to sponser me...

James

WorldNetDaily: Sustainable oil?

WorldNetDaily: Sustainable oil?

This is an Interesting Article suggesting an alternative to the current theory of where oil came from.

This is in contrast to the latest National Geographic,
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/index_19.html
which predicts a shortage of oil soon...

James

Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring

Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring

No doubt thousands of bloggers around the world have already commented on this. If you have a few minutes spare for a laugh you should take a look. I am applying today!

Howstuffworks "How Power Grids Work"

Howstuffworks "How Power Grids Work"

I have just spent a few minutes browsing about the howstuffworks site. It is fascinating to find out thing from how to pick a lock to how GPS works. If you have a couple of hours spare you should check it out. www.howstuffworks.com

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

I have moved my entire site over to my new server and my old pages now point to the new site.
Now that I have the extra space the bible pages are now on the server as well.
Online KJV Bible

Now I just have to start updating it more often and doing a redesign...

James

www.jambe.co.nz : DNS Issues

I am having a few teething problems as you might has found out with my DNS. Two of my dns servers are resolveing to the wrong address for somereason...

Should be fixed shortly

James

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

Hey Everyone,
I just wanted to tell you all about my new domain. www.jambe.co.nz
I have a new server from rimuhosting (who I now work for)

The site is still that same, but expect some changes soon.

James