I am elated to read about the talks breaking down between Microsoft and Yahoo!. I can only imagine that most Yahoo! employees are relieved, or will be once they hear the news. The past couple months have been extremely hectic and stress-filled, wondering and waiting for the evil business machinations to work themselves out like a chess game gone wrong.
Microsoft will announce shortly that they have withdrawn their offer to acquire Yahoo. Talks between the two companies and their advisors broke down earlier today, according to a source close to Microsoft, after a failure to come to agreement on price and other terms.
Bus seriously, from a realistic perspective, the deal never made any sense whatsoever. An acquisition and merge of this magnitude was bound for failure, even if the deal went through. Microsoft is just too incapable of adapting for the web, so they shot for the largest smart company who was perceived as being “in trouble.” Yahoo! apparently fit that profile.
The culture at the two companies are completely polar opposites. Microsoft is mired in red tape and politics whereas Yahoo! aims to get things done. Yahoo!’s employees actually enjoy working for the company, many of them never considering working for Microsoft because of the evil business practices of the corporate behemoth. On the other hand, Microsoft employees work for the company because of the excellent salary and benefits. I have not found too many Microsoft employees who take a huge amount of pride in their work, which is completely contrary to almost any Yahoo! employee.
Could you really see these Yahoo! employee’s taking pride in working for Microsoft, especially if the acquisition was completed under hostile terms? I know I sure as hell never expected the Yahoos to be happy about the prospect of working for one of the most despised companies in the technology sector. Having been through similar moves, I know Microsoft and Yahoo! are better off having not completed this ill-fated acquisition.
It should be interesting to see what final straw broke the proverbial camel’s back, sending both parties on their merry way with their tails between their legs.
Most people commenting on the fallout of the acquisition attempt are saying this is a Microsoft victory. I beg to differ; the fact that Microsoft walked away whimpering gives me the impression that Yahoo! is the big winner here. David told Goliath where to stick it, Goliath listened and walked away like the bitch he really is behind closed doors.
Surely Yahoo! will see this as a victory as well, potentially using the outcome to revitalize the company. That can only be a good thing(tm) because Google needs real competition!
The excellent 9rules blogging network relaunched today, opting to shift focus back to where it belonged all along: the content. All the superfluous features which were added in the previous incarnation have been stripped away, finally allowing posts from the very members that comprise the network to be front and center for all visitors to see. Many would argue that 9rules should never have shied away from their roots in the first place; what’s done is done, and it feels much better to see the Triad steer the ship in this new albeit old direction.
All the Notes, Clips and other “fluff” designed to keep people on the 9rules.com domain has been migrated to Chawlk. If you are yearning to participate in a community-like site which offers a low signal-to-noise ratio then definitely check out Chawlk. Since the site is not “mainstream” you will not find the standard internet trolls devouring newbs ever 17th second. But enough of Chawlk.
I really adore what Tyme, Scrivs and Mike have done with 9rules. By allowing the network to focus on the members I get the feeling members will have a newfound invigoration to focus on providing top notch content. After all, the content is what makes 9rules so uniquely exciting and refreshing.
The updated minimalistic design definitely aids in presenting the content in a much better manner than 9rules ever has done previously. Add in the ability to customize which communities interest you the most, and you can see why the new-yet-old-yet-new 9rules is just the change the network needed to be revitalized. Hopefully 9rules will recapture much of the charm it had in it’s heyday.
My hat is off to the great 9rules team of Tyme, Scrivs and Mike. Congrats on a wickedly cool update. You guys have always and will always rock!
I have been playing with the Firefox 3 betas on my Windows box at work ever since Beta 4 was released for mass consumption. At home I am primarily a Mac user, essentially performing 98.6% of my home work on my MacBook Pro. At home I am extremely dependent upon the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension for Firefox, using it as both my bookmark manager and to post links to del.icio.us almost daily.
It was because of the lack of a FF3 compatible extension that I did not make the move to using Firefox 3 on a regular basis at home until I recently ran across an alpha version of the extension released for testing purposes.
It was approximately 4 days ago that I made the move to start using Firefox 3 as my primary browser at home. I have always been fond of Firefox on OSX even though it looks horrible in OSX, mainly because of the ease of extensibility. Although Safari 3 is blindingly fast, I am exceedingly reliant upon del.icio.us for my bookmarking, opting not to use local browser-based bookmark solutions.
The default theme in Firefox 3 on OSX, while appearing much more OSX-like in look-and-feel, still leaves a lot to be desired. The huge “back” button seems pretty pointless to me; I do not think people need to be treated as if they are idiots, thus leading to the design of a larger-than-life “back” button so that people can easily find the one button used dramatically more often than any other browser button.
In addition, much of what John Gruber has said regarding Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3 resonates. I agree with many of his points against Firefox 3, with some of the complaints being far more annoying than others, especially when trying to use Firefox 3 on a regular basis.
But I digress.
Since I dislike the way the default Firefox 3 theme looks, I opted to install what is probably the best set of alternative FF3 themes available today: GrApple Yummy by Aronnax. I have been an Aronnax fan ever since his first set of native OSX-like themes for Firefox 2. He is an extremely talented Firefox theme designer who offers a lot of free goodwill to the community.
After using Firefox 3 with GrApple Yummy for the past few days I have found one particular annoyance which is, well, annoying me to no end. I am using the default theme While using Firefox 2 I never had a problem with accidentally clicking the “close tab” button. Granted there were times where I did click the close tab button even though I intended to click the tab itself. But that was the exception, and only in very rare circumstances. The point is that in the few cases this happened, I clicked the close button rather than near the close button.
I’ve noticed that the frequency in which I accidentally closed tabs has increased exponentially since installing the GrApple Yummy theme. I may have 15 tabs open, all displayed at once, click to jump to a new tab and wham, the tab disappears and I have to add extra sets to reopen the tab. This is a waste of time which should not be necessary!
After doing some minor investigating it appears the problem with the close tab buttons is due to the hotspot area being larger than the button itself. Here is what the default tabbar looks like when a bunch of tabs are open:
Take a look at how wide the hover hotspot has been defined:
It is blatantly obvious the region which defines the hotspot for the close tab button does not match the actual size of the close tab button itself. Either that or Firefox 3 is not properly interpreting the region definition, and then incorrectly enlarging the area which defines the close button. This creates an effect whereby the close button acts larger than it really is, increasing the frequency in which someone accidentally closes a tab even though the tab was clicked and not the close tab button.
I have faith that Aronnax will fix this bug within due time, but thought I would offer my thoughts about this bug in the event someone else was experiencing similar issues. It sure seems like an easy fix to a relatively small issue in the grand scheme of things.
Are you using Firefox 3 on OSX? If so, do you use the default theme or a third-party theme?
I have been running this blog for the past few years under the mantra of posting about any topic which I thought was worth writing about. There has never been a particular focus for this blog. Throughout the thousands of posts running rampant around this part of town I’ve posted about my family, Japan, politics, technology and whatever else came to my whack-ass head. If you have been following me throughout the years then you know I’ve never discriminated on the content I post. All topics are fair game!
Although this technique has worked well up until now, I have reached a point where continuing with the status-quo will do more harm than good for the site.
I have decided to break posting up across a variety of sites, each one focused on specific topics. The “one-size-fits-all” mentality I have employed is no longer a viable manner to post to the site any longer. A break-up of sorts is going to be a good thing both for you the reader, and me the writer, because you will know exactly what to expect when I post. No more, “is this moron posting about his damn family again?” Well, not here anyways!
So how am I going about this “break-up” of content?
jarkolicious.com is now effectively a technology focused blog, where I will write about technology-related issues such as applications (both OS and web based) reviews, web development and other similar items of interest. The focus of jarkolicious.com will solely be technology and geek related stuff; all political, family, personal and other such matters will be moved off-site.
My personal site, which I am essentially using as a tumblelog or even slightly enhanced lifestream, is now located at scott.jarkoff.com. My personal site will be specifically used for all my personal and family related posts. When Anthony busts out first place in his next track meet, and I crank out a nifty iMovie-based-flick out of our meager videocam efforts, I will share that with the world on Scott Jarkoff. When you think about it, a site named “Scott Jarkoff” should be about my personal life, not a site named jarkolicious, no?
At the moment these are the only sites I plan to break the information across. No single site I operate will aggregate the posts from across this makeshift network.
I do plan to sift through the thousands of posts here on jarkolicious.com and remove those which no longer fit within the criteria for being published on the site. Most of the posts will simply be migrated to my personal site, while others may just end up deleted altogether. I am not tied to a specific action at this juncture. This effort will probably take a few days, possibly a week, so please bear with me while I do a little housecleaning.
Many thanks to all of you who visit on a regular basis, those who have supported me throughout the years and those who have offered insight for direction of the site. Methinks this is a smart move, and a move which will enrich the site, which in turn assists everyone involved.
Sunday afternoon Junko and I attended Anthony’s school track meet. The event was no small deal, with approximately twelve different schools participating in the events. Some of the schools were just around the corner while others were hours away. What made this particular track meet so special is that it was the first track meet that Anthony competed in an event. Anthony has been to many track meets throughout his first year in Junior High school, but up until this point he never had an opportunity to complete.
Until now.
Anthony is obviously smaller than his school counterparts but he was still able to compete quite well nonetheless. He ran in the 100 meter and 200 meter races, finishing second to last in both events. No matter how he placed, Junko and I are very proud of his accomplishments and all the hard work he has put in to track and field. Those long days at school appear to be paying dividends so to speak.
It was a lot of fun watching Anthony compete. We were both pretty jazzed to watch our son compete in the events even though he did not place well. In fact, winning was not really the point or what excited us the most: what got us jazzed was just watching our own son compete, to see the determination and fire in his eyes.
If only he were more excited about education! Yeah, I know how that goes. All too well in fact.
Hopefully Anthony will have a much more prosperous track meet the next time around. In the meantime, Anthony has a lot of work to do before the next competition if he intends to place well in his events. Methinks it is time to get his legs muscled up and to turn him in to a lean, mean running machine!
The main objective is to ensure content is added on a more regular basis, and to turn the site more tumblelog-like in nature. I do not want to have stale content on the site any longer, though at the same time I do not want to inundate everyone with pointless and frequent content which nobody intends to read or find particularly useful. The latter being a natural side effect one might consider when attempting to continuously add content to the site.
My goal is really actually quite simple. I contribute quite a bit of content to a variety of sites on a daily basis. One day I may post a bunch of photos to Flickr, while the next I may add some links to del.icio.us and digg, all the while tweeting here and there.
Why not use the content I post on these other social sites right here as well? After all, if I have taken the time to contribute to these various social circles then surely I consider my additions particularly useful. Seems only logical to share this content with my loyal visitors in some capacity other than forcing everyone to visit these other sites.
I am, by no means, attempting to completely automate what information I post to the site, a la tumblr, but I do want fresh content added on a regular basis. Posting a link to del.icio.us or digg and then turning around and adding that very same data to the site by hand right here seems both tedious and repetitive.
Why not make use of some automated tools which pull the data from the various sites I post content to, and then have that very data added as a new post here on the site? Post once and syndicate the data when and where necessary is the mantra.
With all that said, I would like to introduce you to the beta site I am working on, currently called fuck jark. I made a number of style and design changes to accommodate my business process and flow modifications. I am aware some of the additions do not display correctly in Internet Explorer and will work to fix those in due time.
Please give the preview site a look and offer up any constructive criticism you may have to offer. Whether negative or positive, I am interested in what everyone has to say about the changes.
