Caption Watch
From the did-they-do-that-on-purpose department.
This is the current photo and caption on Sportsline right now:
Giggity.
Walk the Line
Just a random observation: I was on 59th Street today, also known as Central Park South. There are a lot of horses and buggies there, waiting to take people on rides through the park or around the area. One thing that was interesting was the caretakers (I’m not sure what they’re called) would talk to each other, many leaving the horses alone. When the front horse left, the horses all moved up on the line, without their caretakers, leaving just the same amount of space between the horse in front of them as they had before, just as people do when they’re waiting in line. I guess sometimes we’re all trained the same way.
Random Youtube Thought
Youtube, now owned by Google, only has “add to Yahoo” links on their RSS page. Was there a previous deal in place with Yahoo to have these links shown, or has Youtube just been slow to pimp their new overlords and change it to “add to Google”?
ISAPI Rewrite for Expression Engine
I use Expression Engine (or EE) for many of my blogs, and I mostly use a WIMP setup (and I know the LAMP users love that acronym).
WIMP = Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP
LAMP = Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP
While I do have a LAMP box, I also use SQL Server and .NET, so a couple of my WIMP boxes are a bit more than well… WIMP-y, for lack of a better term.
EE has a nasty default URL. It would look something like this:
yourfunkydomain.com/index.php?/templategroup/templatename/article-title
Most people want to get rid of the /index.php? and I can’t blame them.
IIS doesn’t have mod_rewrite for URL rewriting, but there is ISAPI Rewrite and it’s very powerful, if not on par with mod_rewrite. I’ve posted my methods in the past for when I used Wordpress and decribed them when I added an All Posters front to hockeyfights.com.
I was reading the EE forums on pmachine.com today and saw someone asking specifically about getting rid of the /index.php? with ISAPI Rewrite and IIS and thought I’d post my method here:
First, it’s helpful to read the wiki entry about removing posts from your URLs.
Second, go into your control panel and remove index.php from any of the urls defined for your blog.
Third, in the control panel set “Force URL query strings” to no.
Fourth, get your httpd.ini file ready to go with this code:
[ISAPI_Rewrite]
RewriteRule (/(?:template1|template2|trackback|member|search|P\d{1,8}).*) /index.php?$1 [I,L]
That’s it 
I’m using what the wiki entry describes as the inclusion method because I use many other directories that aren’t associated with EE and I don’t want anything related to them. For someone like me who only has a few templates per domain, it’s not a big deal. For someone who might use many template groups and names, it’ll be a little more work, or they might want to look into using another method.
AIM Bounced Email: Pimp Us
At the top of a bounced email I received was this:
Reason: Remote host said: 550 We would love to have gotten this email to xxxxx@aim.com. But, your recipient never logged onto their free AIM Mail account. Please contact them and let them know that they’re missing out on all the super features offered by AIM Mail. And by the way, they’re also missing out on your email. Thanks.
I’m not sure if this gets sent if the screenname doesn’t exist at all, or only those screennames that are taken, but don’t have active emails.
Pretty creative way to encourage users to activate their email accounts: have others do it for you.
My assumption is the most common bounce is from one AIM user trying to email another within AIM and this message in the bounce email could cause one person to IM another and ask why they can’t email them.
A Great Headline
Politics aside, this is a great headline on CNN:
Bush uses ‘Internets’ to reach ‘The Google’
All CNN videos are in a pop-up, so I doubt many link directly to it (CNN’s loss), and the javascript that detects your Windows Media Player is very wonky in Firefox (allows me to at least watch on one machine, while it won’t let me in at all on other, despite having the latest plug-ins for both).
CNN news videos are nice, short segments and they have ads before you watch your first (and occasionally in between segments too?) so I assume they’re at least covering the costs of bandwidth. By limiting in-bound links (intentionally or not) they’re really stunting their own growth and popularity.
A New Gaim to Come
Linux.com has a preview of Gaim 2.0. I’m a Windows user, as well as a Trillian (Pro) fan, but recognize the program could use some improvements. I’m willing to give Gaim a test ride again, but there doesn’t seem to be much to pull me in. Trillian can be a little slow and clunky, but there are mentions of improvement in the yet-released Trillian 4 on the seldom-updated Trillian blog. Quicker load times and a smaller footprint would be nicer than any new feature I can think of.
Like Fluffy Crack
I’m not sure how else to title something about the sickeningly adorable stuff available on Cute Overload.
For some reason it came to mind after reading this post about Pablo Picasso and nervio.
The little guy (or gal) in the pic is from this page.
Stop Piracy
Don’t be a douche, stop piracy.
If I ever have to make a PSA, I hope it’s like this.
If Nancy would have said “don’t be a douche” instead of “just say no”, we’d have no more drug problems.
MyESPN Hits Beta
MyESPN is here. I think it’ll get a lot of talk because it’s ESPN, it’s customizable and it’s RSS-friendly, but I’ve yet to find another reason why anyone will mention it.
Put simply: it’s a customizable portal, similar (very similar) to My Yahoo!. Outside of a few ESPN-friendly only options, there’s not much more to it (yet?).
I was clued into MyESPN via Reemer, who was expecting something more:
They’ve made some curious decisions, for example, not displaying links to outside sites (they’re one click away). Intentionally making the product less useful is an interesting strategy.
Reemer points to FatMixx, who worked on the project. If you’re as impressed as Reemer is, FatMixx says don’t be quiet:
Based on early feedback, people are happy but a lot of folks have suggestions. Leave feedback. I guarantee that the team is paying attention. Your feedback will shape what we do next and how we make this product even better.
Some thoughts so far:
* During setup I was asked to put in a zipcode to find teams close to me. I don’t think it said “or city”. If so, disregard this: due to the internet, sports tv packages and fantasy leagues many are now fans of teams in cities they’ve never been to. Chances are, they won’t know the zipcode, don’t make them look it up. Yes, I know you can add/edit later, but initial setup should be as easy as possible.
* The scoreboard isn’t sortable. It should be. Leagues and teams in whatever order I want and maybe even a “hide when no games are played” option. Things are collapsable, but having them disappear completely is even better.
* Some sort of feed search would probably be helpful to many.
* Adding a feed is quick and easy, the way it should be.
* An autoplay on/off option on the video module! Thank you to whoever implemented that.
* Having the television module probably seemed like a great idea to promote whatever’s on ESPN, but having one channel at a time in a module is basically useless. This need to be asked when making a “My” page: if this wasn’t automatically on the page already, would anyone add it themselves?
* I don’t use ESPN for any of my fantasy leagues. I’m sure this module is useful for some and just wanted to point that out.
* The team modules are nice, but relatively basic. Links to ESPN pages like schedule and rosters along with the next game listed, news on ESPN (which primarily is ticker stuff you see on other portals) and local links, which could wind up being the bread and butter of this module, but I’m not sure how ESPN will feel about having the one of the better features simply be a collection of external links.
* You can add more customizable pages, which does push it outside of the “just a landing page” type of portal, but it’s not a feature I played around with (because honestly, I’m not looking for a multi-page portal).
So would I use it? Well, I’m not in the market for any portal right now, so no, but if I was, I couldn’t see any feature that would make me switch from a portal like My Yahoo! or even Excite (still the best tv listings) to ESPN. I can add all my RSS feeds to anything now (Y!, Google, AOL, etc…) and the original content doesn’t seem all that original outside of the videos, which are available elsewhere. I’m not sure how much else is going to be added between beta and “true” launch, but without any other big features, it’s just like any other portal with an ESPN Video module.