I recently found a website that intrigued me very much, it’s another so called web 2.0 application that essentially is like Digg where people submit articles for review and it’s called dotherightthing.com. The major difference between these two, and the part that intrigued me so, is that people can vote whether or not they are impacted by the article regarding whatever entity is being written about. Even further still, they can indicate whether they were impacted positively or negatively. Eventually, each company that has one or more articles can be viewed individually and their overall impact easily examined. Microsoft, for example, currently has two articles with 1.2 and -2.6 impact respectively. I can see as more articles become available to the community the better we can see if they consistently Do The Right Thing. Very interesting, go check it out!

Some of you fine professionals may already know of this new Adobe approved IE fix, but if you don’t, this is the post for you! Let’s start with the JS file you’re going to need. Create a new document in your favorite web editing tool (ie. Dreamweaver, Zend, NotePad). And you’ll need to past this in as your JavaScript File: Download Here: swfObject If you want the specifics on what this file does, let me know, or just drop by adobe’s site and search for swfObject. Now for where you want to embed your flash file. You’ll be using the SWFObject to insert the .swf of your choice with the following: <div id="flashFix">
<script type="text/javascript">
var so = new SWFObject("Style-85-P-E-cp.swf", "flashFix", "631", "526", "7", "#fff");
so.addParam("wmode", "transparent");
so.write("flashFix");
</script>
</div> (be sure to remove the spaces) A quick run down: “flashFix is the div in which the .swf will be embedded. 500 is the width of the movie, 250 is the height. “7″ is the flash player you’ve published your movie for and the #fff is the background color if one is desired. What so.addParam(”wmode”, “transparent”); is is the ability to display the .swf file without a background. Besides being very search engine-friendly, SWFObject degrades gracefully, can be used in valid HTML and XHTML 1.0 documents (that is, when pages are sent as text/html instead of application/xhtml+xml), and is forward-compatible. It should work for years to come. It’s so nice to have this “Fix” validate and work in all browsers. Test it out, feel free to drop any questions. Enjoy! -T

I’ve upgraded WordPress from the older version 1.5 to the brand new ‘Ella’ version 2.1. I waited this long because I was afraid of all the work that’d be involved with upgrading such a highly modified version of WordPress. I must say though that it only took about 15 minutes and there were no complications whatsoever. I’ll be sure to upgrade more often now that I know how easy it is. I also added some more spam protections and you may notice the string of links to add articles to your del.icio.us account or to digg it. As always, feel free to let me know if there’s any topic you’d like to see covered on here by filling out the contact form at the Contact Page.

I recently read an article over at CampaignMonitor.com that proves how Microsoft is taking email design back 5 years. The single act of no longer using Internet Explorer to render HTML emails in favor of the Microsoft Word rendering engine very well may do so. It is unbelievable to me that they spend so much on redesigning the look of the GUI and the functionality of the program but never thought about the repercussions of changing the rendering of emails. If you take a look at the post i mentioned before at CampaignMonitor.com you’ll see screenshot examples of just how different they can be. That being said, it’s only natural to wonder what about Outlook ‘07 is actually improved? Well there’s a few interesting things that i’ve discovered.

• The new system menus and toolbars were designed to better organize the 1500+ commands available in Outlook ‘07, so it wasn’t just a superficial ‘glass-ify’ redesign.
• Also, it includes a new category coloring feature that helps one locate, manage, prioritize, and respond to e-mail messages more easily.
• They also mention improved junk mail and anti-phishing technologies but I was unable to find specifics on these.
• Outlook 2007 provides an integrated solution for managing your time and information. I can see this new ‘To-Do Bar’ being pretty helpful, but on smaller resolution screens the four colums of information may not be very practical. (see photo to the right, click to enlarge)
• Another very cool feature, Outlook Mobile Service is a feature of Outlook that allows you to send and receive text and picture messages between Office Outlook 2007 and any mobile phone.
• Calendar overlay view makes it easy to navigate your personal calendar and your team calendar at the same time. I actually would love to have this at work, everyones schedule is changing and filling up so quickly that something that can make it easier to manage would be a blessing.(see photo to the left, click to enlarge)

These are just a few of the features that they boast on their website. Also check out the Product Overview if you’re interested in reading about all the features. So after all this, it’s hard to say whether this program will be Revolutionary or Disappointing, I think that for developers and mass email producers this is the worst thing to happen to computers since Windows Me. But for business professionals and the average Joe out there trying to get more organized, the new features and the new look are hard to pass up.

Found these sites through a friend, they really take the concept of ‘wall design’ to the extreme. Check them out! WallDesign Blik