Toys For Boys

Sam and I took the boys to Toys "R" Us last night more for something to do than for shopping. They had fun, smeared their germs on some toys while Sam and I got some ideas for Christmas.

Anyway, on the way out while packing everybody into the minivan at 8:45 PM (we didn't realize how late it was), I saw two younger guys getting out of their car and carrying a bundle of stuff towards the store. I didn't think anything of it until I started pulling out of the parking lot and saw them sitting down beside the store entrance, in other words planning to camp out for the night.

"I wonder what they're camping out for... is there a Ticketmaster outlet in Toys 'R' Us?"

This morning when I got into work and checked my feeds, Mister Scoble enlightened me as to what they were waiting for: The Xbox 360. It was cold last night, I hope it was worth it...

§184 · November 22, 2005 · Entertainment, Games, Kids, Life, Technology · 1 comment ·

DOM Tips

I came across this XML Matters article today: Beyond the DOM by Dethe Elza. For the most part if you're a seasoned web developer with years of experience with the DOM there's probably nothing new here for you, but I found a couple handy things that I'll be adding to my JS libraries that I include with my projects:

  • A JavaScript function that eases creation of DOM elements (link)
  • Some mapping and filter functions (note that Mozilla Firefox natively supports very similar functionality in their JavaScript implementation which should improve speed) (link)
§183 · November 18, 2005 · JavaScript, Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on DOM Tips ·

CDF Not Swallowed

Thank you Anne for clarifying my confusion between "activities" and "working groups". It was indeed the W3C announcement that caused my confusion when I misinterpreted the following quote:

The Compound Document Formats Working Group chaired
by Kevin Kelly (IBM) moves to this Activity, and continues to develop a
framework for combined documents

as an indication that the CDF WG would be absorbed into either the Web Applications or Web API Working Groups. Ok, I learned something new today...

§181 · November 17, 2005 · QuickLinks, Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on CDF Not Swallowed ·

A Couple Quick Links

  • Apparently the internet won't be split up anytime soon.
  • Via PCWorld. Google Base is now live. Just remember: "All your base are belong to us"...
  • Sony is having a real PR nightmare lately
  • Via Anne. The W3C is forming new groups that focus on Web APIs (like the existing XMLHttpRequest) and Rich Web Applications. Some interesting points:
    • The Web APIs Working Group will first be documenting things already "in the field": the XMLHttpRequest object, timed events (i.e. EcmaScript's setTimeout()), the Window object (i.e. interaction with the browser). Let's hope they don't deliberately try to break Internet Explorer's implementation of such things as they've done in the past. The more interesting APIs will be delivered later such as APIs for persistent local storage and file uploading...
    • Will W3C use the WHATWG's already-written specifications such as the Web Applications 1.0 spec?
    • The Web Application Formats Working Group will be striving to use an existing application format ("Mozilla's XUL, Microsoft's XAML, Macromedia's MXML or Laszlo Systems' LZX") and combine it with other existing technologies such as XHTML, CSS, SVG, etc. This is a great idea (i.e. we do not need a NEW format), but their tentative milestones seem a bit off: "First draft of requirements during October. First draft of specification during November. Candidate Recommendation 4th quarter of 2006.". It also means that there will be one winner and many losers...
    • The Web Application Formats Working Group seems to have swallowed the Compound Document Format Group.
§179 · November 16, 2005 · QuickLinks, Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on A Couple Quick Links ·

Pandora and Riding The Crap Wave

Via Scoble (and Google's Blogsearch shows this meme is spreading around the blogosphere today). Pandora is an online service that streams music to you. Read the rest of this entry ...

§178 · November 11, 2005 · Entertainment, Life, QuickLinks, Technology, Web · Comments Off on Pandora and Riding The Crap Wave · Tags:

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