interweb

Microsoft just released Internet Explorer 8.

It's taken a bit longer than I'd hoped, but it's here. And it's good. If you've been holding back for any reason, please download Internet Explorer 8 today.

It's time to move on.

Somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the web's worldwide users are still running IE 6. If you're still using IE 6, it's time to move on. Your browser is eight years old. It has been five years since the last release. You are wasting a tremendous amount of time, money, and intellectual resources. Your dogged use of an archaic browser is responsible for more developer headaches than any other piece of software. It's time for IE 6 to die.

I won't go into all of the arguments here, they've been debated to death elsewhere. If you want more background, please check out the Bring Down IE 6 project.

There is a growing movement for a more peaceful demonstration of solidarity. But I don't think this is enough. Suffice it to say that I'm done arguing. I am convinced that outright war is the only remaining argument.

It's not too late. Download a better browser today. If you're willing to change, my fight is not with you.

Developers, bloggers, and friends. I invite you to join the war.

Please insert the following snippet in a blog post, in a comment, in your site template:

<!--[if lte IE 6]><style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input><![endif]-->

This HTML snippet is an antidote to Internet Explorer 6. Thanks to the magic of conditional comments, it will only inconvenience visitors using IE 6 or worse. And inconvenience them it will.

Note that in some content management systems, comments are automatically stripped out of blog posts and comments. If you publish on one of these platforms, I encourage you to add this snippet to your site template.

If this is too drastic a measure for you, please use one of these other tools to alert your users.

Internet Explorer 6 users please view this post, in its entirety, after the jump.

You can do market research. You can study focus groups. You can try to start a Facebook group or roll your own online community. Or, if you are Robert Scoble and Seagate, you can invite your fans to meet you in Times Square for a free hard drive.

Seagate just launched the fall lineup of their FreeAgent external hard drive family. They rented space on the two biggest screens in Times Square to tell everyone about it. And they gave away a handful of drives to some of their best fans.

I Googled something a minute ago and noticed that my SERP looked a little different:

In particular, check out those three grey icons. They appear next to every result on the page, but there isn't any noticeable indication why they're there. So I clicked one :)

The link turned green, which was fun. But the most exciting thing was that it moved to the top of the page—with a nice, slick animation. Apparently Google is letting me customize the results of my search.

Check out Google's editable search result experiment after the jump.

Every once in a while someone asks me what cool software they should install on their computer. Invariably, I say something like "check out the OS X tag on my blog."

Apparently I've been lying to everyone, because I looked at the software categories on my blog the other day and realized that I haven't been posting much there at all. So I decided to do something about it:

Introducing Technophobe, the future home of my tech rants and recommendations. I've started out with a really sweet Mac menu extra called Jumpcut.

More features, more reviews, more hotness coming soon. Check back for a regular dose of nifty applications. Subscribe to the site feeds. Enjoy :)

we're going to set a world record! download firefox 3 on it's release date to do your part (that's tuesday the 17th, if you haven't been paying attention)

i've been using firefox 3 on os x for a while, and i have to say it's amazing. doesn't crash (as often). doesn't have memory leaks. it's way faster. and it feels like a native mac app now. i imagine all you windows users will see similar coolness, but i can't speak from experience there...

it's tough to find a good example of "text only" typography on the web. most designers eventually throw in the towel and use images... so you can imagine my excitement when i saw the site for Seed Conference 2008.

textey web typography goodness after the jump.

the @colorwars are taking the twittersphere by storm. it's time to choose a team, kids.

and that team is @theBlackteam

1. pick your team (text follow theblackteam to 40404)
2. show your support... change your avatar to something more fitting, add a banner to your myspace page or blog, etc.
3. visit theBlackteam home base for resources and more info.

to get a ribbon that looks like mine, you should be able to copy and paste this code into any post on your blog/website/myspace. if that doesn't work, add it to your header or footer.

how to add your own ribbon after the jump.

i think twitter is a huge experiment in human interaction. what does a group of users do when given a service (for free) which does essentially nothing, with no real direction or constraints on its use? they play. yesterday i got to witness a twitter microevolution firsthand.

a less known feature of twitter is the ability to track certain phrases. whenever someone posts a tweet containing that word, you will see it even if you're not following the user who tweeted. the most common example is "overheard". in fact, twitter has been telling its users to "track overheard" for quite some time. judging from the lack of tweets they must have disabled it. until yesterday, that is.

sometime around noon, all hell broke loose. twitter began sending out updates to all the curious users who had ever tried to "track overheard". most of them had no idea what was happening. so they start responding:

ISPs need to stop taking down blogs because of legal threats. it just riles up the blagosphere.

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. —John Gilmore (EFF)

look how long it took for Craig Murray's website to come back...