I learned something at work today. We were switching some DS-3 stuff around. The whole thing got shutdown by some cheap coax cable, that didn't get crimped right, or got shut in the door or something. The point of the whole thing is this? You are only as strong as your weakest link.<br />
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Everbody knows that saying, I know, but how people apply it. I think of this in terms of web apps. If there is a weak link in something, even though everything else is great, people wont use it, or worst, they will use it and call you asking you to help them make it work.

Del.icio.us has helped me to find some stuff that is so helpful. A well ago I was playing around in del.icio.us. I found a cool link to another lightbox thing, called <a href="http://mjijackson.com/shadowbox/">Shadow Box</a>. It seemed really cool. When the time came that I need something like that, I looked at my delicious links and there it was, and it took like 20 minutes to plug in. <br />
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<a href="http://listings.mainetourism.com/listing/1858/Atlantic_Birches_Inn_BB/">Here</a> is where I first plugged it in, but I am using it all over now, it's very flexible.

So twitter, (is a combo of IM and blogging if you didn't know). IRC, IM, twitter, I have never liked any of them. Long live short blogs.

I use gmail alot. I really like it. Lately there was something bugging me about it though. Gmail can pop your mail from any other account and pull it into gmail. The only problem is that it is not always very timely, sometimes it's over an hour between popping the accounts, and plus it will pop spam. So I decided that I was just going to forward my emails to gmail. It worked great, spam was filtered and mail was instant. As a plus, when I replied, it replied as the email account. Granted it still put in it's sender header, but still, it's better than the pop way of doing it.<br />
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Just in general, as a side note about gmail, it seems that they are gunning more and more for business users.

Recently over at <a href="http://chrisbrogan.com/screencast-of-google-reader/">Chris Brogan's blog</a>. I read an article about google reader and watched a screencast. I learned something. Google reader has keyboard shortcuts. I have used google reader for a while, and didn't know this. Gmail also has keyboard shortcuts, that speeds up it's use. It got me thinking. Most desktop apps have used keyboard shortcuts, but most web apps do not. I think that when the situation permits, shortcuts are good. <br />
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<a href="http://www.openjs.com/scripts/events/keyboard_shortcuts/">Here</a> is a place that has a js library that allows you to easily make keyboard shortcuts.<br />
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I am going to try to keyboard shortcuts in the near future, and as with any usability feature, it's important to use it, only when we needed.

I was looking at a picture of downtown Lincoln, ME from the 1800's the other day. I noticed almost all of the businesses were local businesses. Grocery stories, pharmacies, department store, all local business. Today there is McDonald's, Walmart, Hannaford, and Rite Aid. It seems like the small and medium size local business is slowly falling away to corporations, chains, and things made in china. It got me thinking about small local businesses, and how tech companies stand a shot at it. <br />
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The reason why I think tech companies stand a shot, is pretty simple, it's one of the few areas where little companies can provide something of both quality and value, something that can't be cookie cutter by large stock holder controlled companies or made in asia. I am proud to say that I work in a small Maine-based web company. As long as small local companies continue to provide true value and quality, there will always be a niche.

Google's <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/">web masters tools</a> is very cool. I have found it very helpful.

So once upon a time, google was cool. I guess they are still sort of cool, but they are starting to do some silly things. Case in point, my gmail, I use it a lot, I even use their pop other mail feature, but when I send from gmail as one of these other email accounts, google slides in an extra headers, it throws in a sender header that is too the gmail address and as well as a return-path to the gmail. What is that, I said send it as another account. Google, at times, reminds me of Microsoft.

Today I am not working at my companies main office but another location that has just me there. It got me thinking some about productivity.<br />
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One of the chief problems when I work at our main office, is distractions. There is always somebody calling, walking up and asking you something, people behind or beside you talking to something else. There is no shortage of distractions. Several articles outline how bad that is for productivity, this is my <a href="http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch07_Alone_Time.php">favorite</a>.<br />
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So today, I have alone, nearly no distractions (I have opened up my email twice), but I find something sort of strange, I desire background noice. My ipod has been going almost the whole time with some music. I guess I just like to have some background noise.

IE6 is a bad browser. It thumbs it's nose at standards, IE5/6 may have slowed down the development of ther internet as an application platform by 2 years in my opinion. So may developers spending extra time to make an app cross browser. I know I have spend how too much time having to turn standards compliant markup into IE compliant markup. But in IE8, they have plans to be standards compliant, as <a href='http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ie8-super-standards-mode.ars'>here</a>.<br />
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But it creates a very bad problem for them, how to be backwards compatible to stuff that worked in IE5/6 and even 7, while being web standards compliant. I guess they have this rendering mode thing.<br />
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So what's the point, I think the point is, that it's almost always not worth cutting corners, because it really comes back to bite you.