As we come to the end of another glorious year we’re given an opportunity to look back from whence we came. The best way of doing so, as evidenced by the countless TV shows and posts across the internet, is through a year in review. Like everything else around here, things are handled a little bit differently. So, without further whoop-de-do (it sounds better, go with it), I present the 31st Annual Justies.
Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps
The Olympics were two of the greatest weeks of 2008 and there were dozens of amazing moments ranging from the incredible Opening Ceremonies to the unforgettable I Love Beijing theme song. There were so many great moments this year it’s hard to choose just one that stands out. Ok, that’s a lie. There’s one moment that was far better than any other and is, quite frankly, the greatest moment in aquatic sports history. The Justie for the Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps goes to Jason Lezak’s amazing comeback in the 4×100 relay which won the USA a gold and created one hell of a story. There has never been a comeback quite like that nor has there been an instance of shear determination. Way to go Lezak, way to go.
Greatest Thing on TV
All in all, it’s been a pretty crappy year for TV. The Writers Strike cut a lot of seasons short and seemed to affect the quality of TV for this season as well. So the pool to draw from here is obviously pretty slim. But there were some stand outs. The Office and 30 Rock have been stellar and new shows Fringe and Life on Mars have been entertaining. But one show has been better than the rest, so the Justie for Greatest Thing on TV goes to Chuck. Chuck is consistently entertaining and just quirky enough to be endearing but it was “Chuck Verses Tom Sawyer” that pulled it in. Twin Galaxies, arcade games and Rush? Can’t get much better than that.
Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic
People search for funny things on the internet. Some people spend tons of money and time trying to figure out the best combination of Julianne Hough, Will Smith, Taylor Swift, Brittany Spears, Tom Cruise, the Jonas Brothers and Wil Wheaton to get their search engine ranking high enough for people to notice. Around here I do things a little different. I write things and then see how people find them. If a Miley Cyrus mention gets slipped in, well, so be it. It was earlier this year while perusing my site logs that I came across this category’s winner. The Justie for Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic goes to this post about Chinese food and Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I’ll let you figure out what people were searching for.
Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me
A lot of crappy things happened in 2008 including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires and a new Rambo movie. I jumped off a cliff and blacked out in the water, but I’m exempt from this category for obvious reasons. No, there was one crappy thing that unfortunately deserves this Justie; the Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me Justie goes to the economy. Sure, I’m affected indirectly, but whatever. The economy pretty much sucked this year and have put hundreds of thousands out of work. Unfortunately it looks like it may get worse before it gets better but one thing is for certain, it will get better. Here’s to hoping that the economy earns the 2009 Justie for the Greatest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me.
Most Addicting Social Media Outlet
Hello my name is Justin and I’m a social media addict. This year there were plenty of social media sites begging to earn an addiction: Facebook, Shelfari, Strands, and Last.fm just to name a few. But there was one that stood out far above the rest — possibly combined. The Justie for the Most Addicting Social Media Outlet goes to Twitter. I wasn’t the only one addicted either. Not only did twitt rank as one of the years ‘buzzwords’, but now CNN even takes comments — and in some cases breaking news — from Twitter.
Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To
This one is a tough one to call. I’ve been a number of places this year including Seattle, The Bahamas, New Orleans, Key West, North Carolina, Georgia and Utah. In those various places I’ve seen a fair share of strange things, like the odd traffic lights on the highway in Seattle, but by far the Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To goes to Utah. Why Utah? Their numbering of streets is absolutely ridiculous. Everything is laid out in a grid, which makes sense, but that grid is far too large. For instance, we had to turn from S 700 E onto E 10600 S. Does that make any sense? Then, thrown into the middle of that was State St which does make sense. I don’t get it. Way to earn that Justie, Utah.
Coolest Thing of the Year
Despite all the crappy things that happened, 2008 had it’s share of some pretty cool things. Myron Rolle won a Rhodes Scholarship and I read Snow Crash, both pretty cool. The Dark Knight made a ton of money while the Devil Rays won the American League without any. Tiger Woods had the comeback of his career and Bill Gates ended his. All of these things are pretty cool, but only one can win the Award. The 2008 Justie for the Coolest Thing of the Year goes to The Olympics.
It was going to be pretty hard to beat the summer games. They began with the coolest Opening Ceremony ever performed (no video links available, stupid NBC) and included some unforgettable moments, a lot of which occurred in the pool. Michael Phelps won a record setting 8 gold medals, which will probably never happen again. Countless records were broken, smaller countries shined and for a few weeks in August the world actually came together and enjoyed each others company. You can’t really get much cooler than that.
All the Justies have been handed out and I’ve got nothing left for 2008. The ball will soon drop and bring in 2009. Let’s see what happens.
40 years ago today NASA made history when the first human beings flew from the earth to the moon. Once there Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders discovered how very small the earth is sitting out in the vastness of space. The three men in a tiny capsule floating around the moon broadcast live to an estimated 2 billion people around the world back home. Their message was short and simple and I give it to you here tonight.
“Good night, good luck, a merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”
Today Apple dropped a few bombshells announcing that they were ceasingtheirparticipation in the annual MacWorldconference and this year Steve Jobs would not be giving the keynote. In an equally surprising announcement Apple announced it was also cancelingChristmas. Tomorrow I’m sure Apple will announce it is canceling the value of it’s stock. High-oh! While Apple is currently in the mood to cancel things that have been a huge part of the company for years — I mean introduction of the iPod, iPhone and the iPod Hi-Fi — I’ve got a suggestion of something else they should cancel: the Dashboard.
The Dashboard has been a staple of OS X since 10.4 Tiger was released. It’s concept — that you can have different widgets that do different things — has been repeated all over the internet and now in Windows Vista. With the influx of Web 2.0 website offering basically the same functionality, the Dashboard has become outdated and, dare I say, useless. I can’t remember the last time I actually opened the Dashboard willingly — the occasional accidental F12 key strike does the trick — nor actually used a widget. 10.5 Leopard brought a new feature to the Dashboard, the ability to create your own widgets from any website you wanted using a button on Safari. I can safely say, I’ve never used this feature. It’s a good idea, but again, basically useless.
The problem is not the concept, that in and of itself is okay, the problem is usage. It’s a screen that runs in the background and, when pulled up, is ready to go. The problem here is that it sucks up memory causing the entire system to slow. The other problem — and here’s the kicker — is that why would I launch the Dashboard to see what time it is, look at my calendar, check a contact’s email address or see what the weather is when I can simply do that without launching the Dashboard. So maybe part of the problem is the concept after all.
So here’s what I propose: Apple cancel the Dashboard. 10.6 Snow Leopard is set to debut sometime next year and is not actually offering any new features, but rather a promise to slim down the operating system and make it run much more efficiently. Could there be a more perfect time to get rid of something that causes bloat and inefficiency? While people will miss MacWorld, and probably Christmas too, I’m not sure if I know many people who would miss the Dashboard.
I’ve been known to spoil a few things in the past on Twitter and here on the blog. Sometimes my excitement prevents me from using better judgement. To try and counter that, at least here on the blog, I’ve created a simple spoiler tag.
On the site, the spoiler tag will simply black out the text in question. Should you want to read the spoiler, all you have to do is put your mouse on the text and all will be revealed. Check it out:
You’re reading this text and all is really cool but all of a sudden I decided to drop some really revealing information that you weren’t expecting. Now, thanks to the spoiler tag, you don’t have to see if you don’t want to.
Should you want to implement this on your own site, all you have to do is add the following CSS to your style.css template file:
Then, the next time you decide to write something that could contain potentially spoilerific details, just wrap the text in a spoiler span:
<span class="spoiler">Juicy information goes here.</span>
I’m sure there are other things you could use this for, like making your blog posts look like something released under the Freedom of Information Act, but I’ll leave that up to you.
Notice something new? The 2009 version of Mindless Chatter hit the internet late last night. It’s been in the works for a number of weeks and has gone through a number of evolutions that resulted with what you see today.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been testing the design in a number of browsers to see how it looks. I stuck to Webkit (see Safari) and Gecko (see Firefox) based browsers. I did not test on Internet Explorer. Today I decided to render a few screenshots to see just how bad it looks. Follow along, if you will, a tour of how different web browsers render the exact same page.
Safari 3.2.1 (2008)
Camino 1.6.5 (2008)
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 (2008)
Internet Explorer 7 (2007)
Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
The worst is obviously Internet Explorer 6. It’s a piece of garbage yet still roughly 20% of the internet is using it. People, wake up! It’s now nearly 8 years old and there are two newer versions. IE7 handles the page, and web standards, much better than IE6 and the IE8 Beta is exactly what a browser should be.
If you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, it’s time to upgrade. If you can’t do it, get your IT department to do it for you and if even that isn’t possible, at least start using something else, like Firefox or Safari. You’ll realize how much better the internet is once you stop using a nine year old piece of software.
Internet Explorer screenshots were rendered using NetRenderer.
When season two of The Guild hits the interwebs it will be exclusively on XBox Live’s Marketplace — at least for a month. The good news, it’ll be free! They’re shooting the next season in high-def so hopefully Microsoft will offer that up for free as well. Correction, it will be HD and it’s out tomorrow! (0)
Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps
Today Apple dropped a few bombshells announcing that they were 
