September 28th, 2006 – Only a “moron” would buy YouTube, says Cuban
October 9th, 2006 – Google to Buy YouTube for $1.65 Billion
Is Google the moron?
… we shall see.

I probably should have known about this bug a long time ago, but apparently Windows IE (I’ve only tested v6) likes to double your margins on floating DIVs. What’s the solution? A tiny-ass, stupid line of code:

display: inline;

Other CSS tips:
How To Clear Floats Without Structural Markup – now this one I have known about for a while and its very handy.
What I like to do when I’m testing out my CSS is to turn on borders all all DIVs in my document. Many times it takes the guessing out of why your page is behaving like it is:

div {
border: 1px #333 solid;
}

and if by some chance you’re old school and having table issues, you can do the same:

table td {
border: 1px #333 solid;
}

Aside from some freebie codes my friend gave me from Continental Airlines, I haven’t bought any new albums from the iTunes Store since version 6 – basically since Apple changed their DRM, breaking the open source program JHymn created by hymn.
I want my music like the 40 gigs I ripped from my CD collection – free. If I can’t unshackle my legally purchased tracks, then I’m not buying anything from the iTunes Store.
With that said – I have bought a few iPod games from the iTunes Store and they’re great – they make my crappy commute from Morristown, NJ to DUMBO, Brooklyn fly by. ZUMA and Texas Hold ’em are pretty fun.
update: Achtung, baby! Why DRM might kill your music collection

I actually had a chunk of time today to take another one of the tutorials over at GoToAndLearn.com. Not only does Lee Brimelow know his sh%t, but he has the ability to convey it in a way that is understable to designers and developers with an intermediate level of understanding of Flash (and he includes source code for all his examples).
Before you go blow a ton of cash on some flash courses at some college like SVA, go through some of his tutorials. Start with his Flash Video lessons. Video in Flash is only going to get more popular in interactive design, and he shows you how to tackle it.

MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter – The Combustion Chamber rejoices. 🙂

So yesterday, Microsoft did something I’ve been guilty of doing in the past, they couldn’t contain themselves and had to tell everyone about their cool idea before everything was done by sorta-kinda releasing the Zune MP3 player.
Now I’m not going to go off on a MS-bashing rant, but I have a general question regarding a good handful of MP3 players – what’s the friggin’ deal with integrating an FM tuner?
Why don’t they just offer phonograph integration too? I have Sirus Satellite Radio in my car, why do I want an FM tuner in my MP3 player?
Am I alone on this?

Flash & XPath – it looks like I’m a bit late on this, but XPath looks a hundred times easier to use than my old-school way of looping through millions of ChildNodes in Flash.
update: my co-worker has tipped me off to XMLSA …claims it makes XPath look like dookie … hmmm
The Coming RIA Wars – It seems I have some homework to do.

“…Rupert Murdoch moves back up to the top of the heap of Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list…” – I’m sure the aquisition of MySpace helped him get up there. How about some props to the guys who built MySpace? Maybe they should be up there? Like Murdoch, I am also a good shopper, and I usually pick some of the coolest clothes and gadgets before many of my friends know about them. Top of the list for being a good shopper. Well done, Rupert.
And in other news…
MySpace is Over – the age-old cycle continues as the rich companies buy the cool stuff, make it uncool, and search for the next cool thing.

Most Influential Flash Site Of The Decade – 2Advanced wins at theFWA.
I agree with this win 100%. Let me start off by saying that I am not a fan of the Eric Jordan style – probably because I have seen hundreds of sites that imitate the techie-futuristic-slick style that he established. Being the most influential in any subject sounds like a great thing, but in this case I’m not so sure.
I’m going to alter the title for myself and declare the most influential person to me as an interactive designer – Robert Penner. Robert Penner took the concept of movement and friction in Flash and broken down to what it is: position is a function of time, or p=f(t). From here came the birth of the Tween Prototypes from Laco…. and from there was created the Fuse Engine.
I would never have to deal with Zeno’s Paradox again.

Well the folks over at Analogue.ca are doing some crazy stuff with the Flash player webcam functionality.
From analogue.ca:

With the launch of You Appear in Art (webcam required), we are putting out a call for submissions. We want to see photographs of what people are creating using You Appear in Art. Simply taking a picture of the creation on your screen is all we need you to do. Then send it to us.

For complete info, head over to analogue.ca.

Why I Hate Digg – an interesting perspective (and discussion) on the social technology news site.
The Next Net 25 – I appreciate the level-headedness of this article. It’s forward looking but also realistic, acknowledging the fact that not all the companies on its list will survive.

Mosessupposes.com has dropped a new Fuse Kit on his site. Go get it!
Why do you need The Fuse Kit in Adobe Flash? Do you like the motion on Leo Burnett? Billy Harvey Music? Any of the work of Seraph.nl? How about Group 94? Kurt Noble? Firstborn? TCC?
Now I’m not saying every one of these sites uses the Tween class (mine does), but if you want to achieve the seemless motion and transitions that these sites achieve, using the Fuse Kit would be a step in the right direction.

So Microsoft came out with a patch to fix a security flaw, but broke it instead.
from Security Focus (found via Slashdot):

The flaw, initially thought to only crash Internet Explorer, actually allows an attacker to run code on computers running Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 1 that have applied the August cumulative update to Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, security firm eEye Digital Security asserted. The update, released on August 8, fixed eight security holes but also introduced a bug of its own, according to Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer for the security firm, which notified Microsoft last week that the issue is exploitable.

… I’m sorry, what? I don’t speak Bacchi, C3PO, was that English?!
It’s amazing how many screwups Microsoft makes and and it still can maintain its empire. I wish I had that kind of resilience.
… and in other news:
Dell withdraws from MP3 player market. Haha. Take it deep Dell. I wouldn’t be so happy if it wasn’t for their Apple trash-talking way back in the day. Maybe the smart thing would have been to put those explosive batteries in the DJ Ditty instead of your laptops.

I’ve known about Alexa.com for a while, but sometimes its fun to see how my site and everyone else’s ranks in the world.
1,926,864th in the world. I know you’re all jealous.