seeing my blog laid out the way it was. so un-user friendly. this isn’t a final stop on the re-design train, just a place to make a connection and catch the right rails for a final destination.
there were several things I didn’t like about the other layout but the biggest was the fact that only two posts showed up at a time. anyone who might have missed out on a few posts would have found it difficult to find them. terrible. I’m sorry.
the current one isn’t great, doesn’t have the bells and whistles I want to implement just yet. WordPress 2.5 is fantastic and that will be my first real upgrade here. once that is done we can deal with layout and prettiness.
craig: you brought up a good point in me not mentioning you at all thus far. there’s a whole untapped market of stories. watch out, you might have opened a can of worms you really didn’t want.
I swear, I have intentions of also bringing all of you into the 21st century with a little classroom lesson on RSS. it will happen. soon.
the mrs, kid, and myself are beach-bound this week. 2/3’s of the ross clan will be soaking up rays and splashing in the warm gulf waters while the other 1/3 will be taking pictures of the beach from 8 stories up wishing he was enjoying the life of luxury as well. we might check in there and rub it in a little.
I haven’t participated/done an April Fools joke in a long time mostly because people are pretty aware of the day and if you aren’t the first person to get them on April First, then really don’t stand a chance.
The web world though, seems to be another story. Google, in all of their humor and money, have a long tradition of coming up with new ideas/schemes to trick us all on this first day of April. This year is no exception. Funny thing is, plenty of other sites are joining in the excitement as well.
A few of my fav’s:
Google and Richard Branson (Virgin Airlines) starting a colony on Mars, project labeled Virgle.
Gmail’s “Custom Time” emails. Adjust the date on your email to resend for issues like missed birthdays.
Google Australia’s “gDay with MATE” technology that can predict the news one day in advance.
Woot’s woot-off. An all day event of selling the same product over and over. (I’m actually a little tired of this one, they keep filling my RSS reader with the same thing!” And I’m mad that I missed the 3am BOC.
And my favorite
Rick Roll’ing of all the Featured Videos on YouTube‘s home page. (YouTube, owned by Google; I’ll explain the concept of Rick Roll’ing later)
If you care enough to see some others (plenty of lesser known sites) seems like most are being documented here.
One day, one day only. If you don’t know, learn it.
Woot normally sells one product a day, once it’s gone the day is over. Randomly (seems like about every 30 days), they have a woot-off. When a product sells out, a new one is posted. This keeps going on until they get tired or run out of stuff.
Plenty of things will pass that you don’t want but there are some good deals from time-to-time. We’ve woot’ed a digital camera and mp3 player in the past. Possible chance that we woot a Dyson vacuum when one goes by or maybe if we found a good deal on a new (HD) video camera.
If you are lucky enough to snag a BOC, do it.
Other woot positives:
$5 shipping on everything you buy. 60-inch TV? = $5
Pretty decent writing skills on the captions. Would be an entertaining job for me
Located in Carrolton (north Dallas). Gotta count for something.
Abilene Christian University (ACU) will be the first school in the country to give out an iPhone (or Ipod touch) to every incoming freshmen starting this fall.
Wow. Why?
“Freshmen will use an iPhone or iPod touch to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances.”
You can see what the interface will look like at acu.mobi. Looks like they are also moving to Google for their services like email, calendars, and such. I guess it’s pretty forward thinking for a university but I’d like to see what the costs are involved in such a big project. Who flips the bill for the AT&T contract? Repairs to the broken phones? (these are 18 year olds, you know?)
Sure beats the free pencil and used mattress my alma mater surprised me with on day one. Go Chaps!