If..Else Log

The teams for the champions league group stages has just been drawn.

Of particular interest is that Chelsea and Liverpool have been drawn together. In contrast, Man Utd and Arsenal should have a relatively comfortable ride.

There's a good writeup by Ken Yarmosh which addresses some of the misconceptions about wordpress.com

A reasoned response by Tim O'Reilly on the recent search engine spam controversy.

Well the word is out. Google has released their Instant Messenger service.

The really good news about Google's initiative is that:

• They're using Jabber, an open protocol rather than their own proprietary system.
• They allow and support the use of other IM clients rather than
• deliberately blocking other software as Yahoo, AIM and MSN have done.
• It works off your GMail account which doesn't expire like hotmail and AOL accounts
• Builtin GMail notifier
• Free with no ads

WIKIWYG aims to allow users to edit a Wiki now needing to learn "Wiki syntax". Check out the demo if you're using Firefox.

A List Apart is back with a wonderful new design.

Congratulations to Jason Santa Maria, Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Benjamin, Kevin Cornell and Erin Kissane for producing what is a refreshing redesign for one of the major web developer resources..

Update: DNS propogation is still a bit hit and miss. Head to http://69.93.55.164/ if you're still getting the old site.

Ben Sekulowicz has released the gallery software that powers gallery.beseku.com. Elegantly designed, flickr powered and full of Ajax goodness [via].

Tim Bray and Dwight Silverman both write about how clicking on an RSS feed can be confusing as the xml data brought back to the user is "gibberish". Tim goes on to say that the real problem with feeds is due to the lack of a one-click subscription process.

However, isn't this a problem that is, for all intents and purposes, a non-issue?

The main problem is not really a technological one but one of presentation. The link to a feed shouldn't directly be exposed via a direct hyperlink. Instead, what a subscription link should do is send the user to a custom subscription page providing a short summary on what and how to subscribe ala what I've done on my subscribe page.

This way, meaningful information can be passed to the reader on what and how to subscribe to a feed.

Secondly, the feed URI scheme automatically provides the mechanism for one-click subscription *if* the infrastructure is set up. For example, Feeddemon can be set up to be the default handler for feeds and clicks to feed URI's automatically invokes a one click subscription work flow.

Finally, the location of a <link> element in the head facilitates autodiscovery of a feed if the browser/aggregator is aware without exposing the "gibberish" to the user.

The SYSOP is . . . IN!

However, as cool as it is, the engadget BBS is pretty bandwidth heavy resource for 1200 baud modems:)

An interesting interview with Singapore's first ever prime minister Lee Kuan Yew.