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On asking the right questions

Instead of asking photographers what they might like, Fuji was said to have made up sets of comparison prints and slides: One set showed color as accurate as Fuji could make, the other sets had varying degrees of enhanced saturation—richer, warmer, deeper colors; healthier skin tones; bluer skies, greener grass, redder barns. Photographers, it seemed, consistently preferred the saturated versions. » about 400 words

People Ask Me Questions: Web Design Software (or is it Website Management Software?)

The question:

What’s a good user-friendly Macintosh web development program? A friend called. She’s thinking of buying Dreamweaver, but is afraid it will be overkill. She found Frontpage to be easy and needs something similar.

My answer:

If the intent is to design individual pages on an unknown number of sites, then I don’t have a recommendation.

If the intent is to build a site (or any number of sites), then I’d suggest looking at WordPress. It’s an open source CMS, and there’s a hosted version that makes it easy to try out at WordPress.com.

What I didn’t say, well, it was buried in my answer, was that I see a big difference between designing a page and building a site. The tools are very different.

Questions Are All Around Us

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/search/tags:library%2Creference%2Cinformation%2Csilly/tagmode:all/">These pictures are mostly foolish</a>, but here's a small point: none of us had ever seen a cop pull over a cab -- certainly not a cab with passengers -- before this, so we were all rather curious about why. <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=cambridge,+ma&ll=42.372947,-71.094954&spn=0.004137,0.013518">In front of us</a> stood a question, an example of the many questions we all encounter every day, and it's the kind of question that few of us would ever suggest going to the library to answer. » about 200 words

Is J. K. Rowling Carolyn Keene’s Sister?

I said previously that I drop my journalistic standards on Fridays. Today is no exception.

Background, from Mysterynet:

Carolyn Keene is a writer pen name that was used by many different people — both men and women — over the years. The company that was the creator of the Nancy Drew series, the Stratemeyer Syndicate, hired a variety of writers. For Nancy Drew, the writers used the pseudonym Carolyn Keene to assure anonymity of the creator.

Story, from Jens of Norway:

A sort of well-known movie director in Norway wrote an article in a norwegian newspaper (Aftenposten) today, stating that she thinks that J.K. Rowling does not really exist. That the woman we see on pictures and read about is none other than a paid actor and should be nominated for Oscar.

She links J.K. Rowling to the story of Carolyn Keene. [link added]

Wikipedia is rich with information about Rowling and the Harry Potter series, including the detail that “as of 2005, Rowling has written the last chapter of the seventh book.” But could these books have been ghosted?