MaisonBisson

I can use my iPhone pretty much anywhere, but ATT is going to charge me $1.30 a minute for calls, $.50 per text, and $.02 per KB for data while in Denmark.

ATT requires international activation but they do offer some tips for international roamers. I bought an international iPhone data plan (20MB for $25), but I also learned that visual voice mail counts against that (regular voice mail counts against minutes, at the $1.30 rate). I could have paid $6 a month to get a discounted voice rate, but I’d have to make 20 minutes of calls for it to pay off. And there’s no plan to give me discounted SMS.

I’m a WordPress Partisan, so I agree with Mark Ghosh’s criticism of this WordPress vs Drupal Report. Still, it reminds me that I should point out XXLmag, SLAM Online, and Ford among the very non-bloggy sites built on WordPress.

All I know about Denmark is what gets imported: Legos, of course, but also a tradition of exquisitely clean and functional design. That’s why, as I prepare for my talk in Copenhagen later this week, I’m incredibly conscious of my own design and a bit jealous of Jessamyn’s outstanding use of orange.

Anyway, that’s where I’ll be all week. Any tips? Anybody up for a drink?

Connect the dots: Boys vs. girls in US colleges and too many men in East Germany.

NPR : Back to School: Reading, Writing and Internet Safety

As students return to school in Virginia, there’s something new in their curriculum. Virginia is the first state to require public schools to teach Internet safety.

How to pick up girls in the library. Indeed, it’s Picking Up Girls Made Easy.

Answers.com is throwing a bone to WordPress users with their new AnswerLinks plugin written by Alex King.

But wait, there’s an Answers.com API? A few pokes at the Google machine reveal nothing relevant, and Asnwers.com’s site is mum too. Taking apart the code, I get the following (modded enough to make it run-able if you drop it in the base of your WordPress install):

If the input string isn’t sufficiently long, the output will be empty (eliminating one of my potential uses for it), but it’s interesting to twiddle.

Thanks to Mike Giarlo‘s unAPI Server for WordPress. Now if only there were a library catalog built on WordPress, I could probably just drop it in.

Yep. Leopard comes with new stuff. Lazeez says it works fine, but commenters here are having trouble.

Ellyssa Kroski‘s Librarian’s Guide to Creating 2.0 Subject Guides is good introduction for Librarians who think know “there has to be a better way.” But why no mention of blogs and blogging tools? (I’m still really happy that when you search our catalog for something, a subject guide for that term appears (if we have one that’s relevant)).

Via Ryan: Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies at Centripetal Notion.

My hosting provider lost a server, and their most recent backup of my database was from Wednesday. That was newer than what I had, so that’s what I’ve got. Any comments submitted between then and mid afternoon today have been lost. I was luckier with my posts: I write most of them in ecto and had them backed up on my lappy.

At least the Sox won.

From Kim to Zach to me to you: Bush Vs. Zombies.

Now we know: the guy doesn’t understand the difference between fact and fiction. Most people thought Shaun of the Dead was horror/comedy, not documentary. Poor W probably read The Zombie Survival Guide as an instruction manual (don’t show him How To Survive a Robot Uprising, please).

Gah. The guy hired a cannibal, fears animal-human hybrids, and flip-flops on evolution.

Matt pointed out that Automattic has purchased Gravatar, the globally recognizable avatar service. Om speaks of the economics and Matt’s cagy, but it’s hard not to see the possibility of creating a larger identity solution around this. WordPress’ market penetration is huge, a service that connects those nearly two million blogs could offer real value, especially in connection with Automattic’s Akismet.

Aside: now that Gravitar’s reliability is up, I’ll probably get Sexy Comments running here soon.

Story: Timbuk2 develops a new line of messenger bags that features fabric made of <a href=;http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/dont_shoot_the.php">recycled material (engineered by RootPhi). Some of the fabric contains a symbol that Target lawyers say is their logo. Target lawyers cease and desist Timbuk2.

Thing is, the trademarked Target logo is a roundel, commonly used around the world (easily recognized in British aircraft of WWII). The particular design Target has chosen appears to be a copy of Peru’s official insignia.

Trademark law isn’t my thing, but I wonder if the roundel is trademarkable. “Most jurisdictions totally exclude certain types of terms and symbols from registration as trademarks, including the emblems, insignia and flags of nations….”

I’m as annoyed as the next guy about how hard it is to find a decent screencast app for Mac. The forthcoming Mac OS 10.5’s new iChat Theater (and the built-in screen sharing/control features) should create some new opportunities for developers, but right now it’s hard to know what works or is worth trying.

Further, I narrowed the field with the following requirement: I need an app that records to QuickTime-compatible files, not Flash. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• Snapz Pro X, the $70 oft-cited front runner is now native.
• iShowU, $20.
• ScreenRecord, $20.
• Copernicus, $free.

Extra: this how-to pointed out OmniDazzle and Mouseposé as tools to help draw users’ focus during both live or recorded demos.