Instant Domain Search — what a great little app — this thing saved me a bit of time, and I think it’s a great idea. The basic concept is that it applies AJAX to searching for domain names, which speeds up the process quite a bit. Then, the person who created it can make a buck (or whatever) if you buy your domain through clicking on one of his referral links.
This site is designed to help you find the right domain name. We don’t offer computer-generated suggestions because we think people can outperform machines when using good tools.
Nice. Try it out »
Also, I noticed that GoDaddy has something faster than their normal search, if you look closely. Click the Quick Domain Search bar right above the login form, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s not as snappy as the Instant Domain Search site, but it’s better than the alternative on Godaddy’s site.
I remember searching all over the place for some reasonable “activity indicators”, which I could use in a web-application I was building. It was too late for that when I stumbled across this very nice collection, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy later. As an aside, I packaged the images up into this zip file… just in case.
I must say that, although very happy working on an Apple computer for about 2 years now, the closed and proprietary nature of Apple products continues to irk me. I think the system (the hardware/software combo) is solid, but it bugs me that you’ve got to buy into the system the whole way. It’s an all-or-nothing type of situation, and the lock-in is pretty obvious. If you feel the same way, Juggling oranges (written by a longtime Apple advocate turned hater, who was prompted by this article) is going to tickle your fancy:
…you can begin to see why I chose to switch away from Apple and onto a Free Software platform. Mac OS X is only available from Apple, and it only runs on Apple hardware. Running a Free Software operating system removes both of these risk factors at once. Furthermore, Apple has made it very clear that they will do everything in their power to protect this lock-in. Despite the fact that their Intel-based operating system could run on commodity hardware, Apple has intentionally crippled Mac OS X with code that checks the hardware to ensure that it came from Apple. They’re intentionally introducing friction between the layers, bolting their operating system onto their hardware. Some day there will be no hardware that can run Mac OS X, and because of Apple’s DRM it will be illegal to emulate it in software.
As of late, I’ve been doing my best to avoid falling into (what I call) the good-guy-bad-guy logical fallacy – where one feels the need to pick sides between two things, such as competing technology companies. This is an easy thing to slip into, and can be evidenced in many “switchers” that have a bad experience with, say, Microsoft, and decide to say, switch to Apple products.
The temptation is to buy into the whole marketing image of the products that you drop your hard-earned money on, while eschewing what you had used formerly. In this case, one might be tempted to adopt an almost religious fanaticism to, say, Apple, while droning on and on about the inferiorities of Apple’s competitors. This is commonly referred to as becoming a fan-boy.
The best attitude to have in this sort of situation, in my opinion, is a healthy skepticism toward organizations that are interested in selling things to you. If you can keep your emotional bonds to electronic goods and the people that peddle them, I think it’s for the best.
In Praise of the Hyperlink is a really excellent and well deserved ode to the fundamental building block that serves as the foundation for the Internet — a:
…Remember the realisation that you were interacting with something that was potentially neverending; a borderless labyrinth of information, all interconnected through the beautiful simplicity of the hyperlink. We may have grown accustomed to this miracle but that doesn’t make it any less wondrous.
We are storytellers, no longer huddled around separate campfires, we now sit around a virtual hearth where we are warmed by the interweaving tales told by our brothers and sisters. Everyone is connected to everyone else by just six degrees of separation. Thanks to the hyperlink, we can find those connections and make them tangible.
The dream of hypertext has become a reality.
You can’t complain about free stock icons. Silk from famfamfam.com:
Silk is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format. Containing a large variety of icons, you’re sure to find something that tickles your fancy. And all for a low low price of $0.00. You can’t say fairer than that.
