A lot of ideas have been mincing around my noggin lately, and I keep coming back to the immense volume of opinions, half-truths and in some cases blatant fabrications that are floated around the Web, getting either assimilated into the collective stack as truth or is deliberately passed off as truth and equally absorbed by the mass of web travelers.

The net, to a degree, has become a soapbox for anyone who not have a voice otherwise; which teeters on the fence between good and bad. I'm not so arrogant or presumptive to make a statement as to how the web is full of trash, or that blogs are 99% bad - I'll leave that other, better known gabblers. It's like the internet has become Speakers Corner in London, if I use this list from Scott Berkun, it is almost exactly parallel.

1. It’s self-organized. Anyone can stand anywhere and start going.
2. People get interactive. There’s lots of yelling and heckling.
3. It’s mostly peaceful. No one is forced to speak or listen.
4. Some of the speakers are amazing. They own their crowds without microphones, podiums, powerpoint - just them and their voices.

Here's the problem: the expectation of truth has been severely overstated and in many cases completely misrepresented. People are constantly stating in many cases baseless opinions as fact, all the while people are swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. I've seen this in action many times before when I was hawking camera equipment in Portland. Some bloke would pop in and start on about how his buddy Jimbo said that this camera, scanner, lens, computer, monitor, or flash memory card was the best because.... the following dribble was just about always partially or entirely inaccurate, taken regardless, at more than face value because he has some casual acquaintance with this fellow. The exact same process repeats itself on the web, only it's more pronounced.

I say this in part because of the influx of Web Design and Development sites that have popped up all over God's Green Earth, all claiming to be the best provider of something, with truck-loads of experience and expertise and more than willing to wax poetic about it in their corporate blog. Just today I read an eMarketing piece (with 3 parts no less) which was all fluff. It had no meat in it at all and came to no conclusions based on the series title. Its sole purpose was to entice search spiders to crawl it and increase the ranking of their site by the not-so-clever use of keywords. Worse yet are the bloggers, developers, and whateverers that will post and spread erroneous information just because it is popular and will get them more hits. Flash is a favorite kicking target of half the web, and the other half seem to just repeat AJAX, AJAX, AJAX, like this is the magic phrase that will transport them to the land of SEO goodness. This is an excellent tactic when performed well, a one which I myself have implemented; the difference being that I try to research what I am writing about before I form or relay an opinion or post a (so-called) fact. Research is one of the most enjoyable parts of the writing process, which is in fact why I write. I enjoy learning more about the tools I use every day, and researching and sharing ideas about new ones.

How can we expect as a people that each other be honest, and perform due diligence to research information when our teachers, and paid Government officials are held to such low standards? When deception and lies have become such an integral part of society that it seems that, as a behavior, being deceitful is no longer deplorable - but admirable. We expect to be lied to.

I have no answers. None. Nope. Sorry. What I do have is simple advice to folks trying figure things out on the web. Read, read, read... then read some more. If it sounds too good or too bad to be true; flat out; it is.

It appears the good folks at Mozilla are trying to gain a bit of momentum for the Animated PNG file adaptation. Since it is currently only supported by 2 Browsers; Firefox 3, and Opera 9.5 (both in Beta), I wouldn't get too excited about seeing them sprout like warts on every web page as a replacement to the very antiquated animated GIF files still being used. Oh, and just for the record, it doesn't matter how you pronounce it. Period. The end. That's final. End of story.

This is something that is long over due, just like IE supporting transparent PNG files and passing the ACID 2 test. GIF files are a throwback from when the web was new, and they were the best we could offer. But like so many AMC Gremlins, they too should find themselves on the scrap heap. Unfortunately I think this will be adopted at the same rate that the HTML 5 specification will be finished and implemented, and that's only if the team doesn't pull it out of the spec before then.

There are some examples out there if you are so inclined to take a peak, pretty good ones too. I took a peak using Opera since the last time I installed Firefox 3 it screwed up a lot of stuff with my reliable Firefox install. So blip on over to animatedpng.com, and take a look at the samples, download the assembler and enjoy the bleeding edge of the web - all the while reveling in the fact that you are creating images that people will not likely see in their entirety.

Luckily, like most things on the web there is a fall-back option built-in and most browsers will show you the first frame as the image, rather than the handy little red x. Check out the Gran Paradiso page too while you're at it, there's some fun stuff on it.

Credits:
The SpinFox Firefox logo was created by Justin Dolske.

In a recent press release, Toyota has completed a 2,300 mile Journey from Alaska to Vancouver in their Fuel Cell powered Highlander FCHV. This pretty exciting news, and to-date, is the longest published trip (that I could find) of any of the big auto manufacturers. It boosts mileage exceeding 300 on a single tank of Hydrogen. Since the current/estimated cost varies from $1 to $20 a kilo (a gallon of gasoline has the same energy content as a kilo of hydrogen), it's still not really ready for these vehicles to hit the consumer market. Granted, on a 1 to 1 ratio, the Fuel Cell vehicles get 2 to 3 times higher mileage, it still could cost you $100 bucks to fill your tank to go 300 miles, or maybe only 5 bucks.

The other big guys in America are jumping on the band wagon too, and GM seems to have the jump on everyone else, plus they have themselves are really nifty set of icons to go along with their program. Although Ford is developing a Transportation system based on Fuel Cell buses, primarily shuttle buses right now, but this would be a huge step in the right direction.

Fuel cells also seem to be the greenest way to go, even though the question of a hydrogen explosion still keeps coming, since other fuels like BioFuels are so hotly debated as to how green they really are. For example, last year the US consumed some 140 billion gallons of gas, it would roughly take 12 million acres of corn to meet this need. That's a lot of corn. 1,870 square miles to be precise. which is roughly the size of Delaware; I wonder if they would mind? Governments are already legislating against the clear cutting of Palm trees in countries like Indonesia that are displacing communities all due to the need for BioFuels made from Palm oil. The lack of a standards system is also an issue right now, something which we take for granted with gasoline right now.

With all of the worlds Fossil Fuels and nonrenewable resources being depleted at an alarming rate, we need to find a renewable resource to fuel our cars, and power stations. With the fuel of Fuel Cells being hydrogen (the simplest element and most plentiful gas in the Universe), this is the best we have to date. Running out of hydrogen doesn't seem like it would be an issue, and besides it could be solution to the Polar Ice caps melting; they melt - we use the hydrogen in the water to run our cars and trucks. See? It's a win win.

Notes:

• information on Hydrogen
• Fuel Cells
• BioFuels

• Biofuels & the environment
• New on Mongabay.com
• NREL
• Wikipedia/biofuels a lot of good information and links
  

In an inspired move by our friends at the Federal Government, in particular the Library of Congress, has created The Commons on Flickr, billing it as "Your opportunity to contribute to describing the world's public photo collections."

The Library of Congress section of the commons has about 3,100 images in it now and is being used as a pilot program to decide the fate of this initiative. This isn't the first time they have had digital images available online, in fact they have had they're own library posted for sometime and it contains hundreds of thousands of images if not millions. From here you can order prints as well.

They have a pretty limited scope of photos available on Flickr right now, but I would expect it to grow. The categories posted now are The 1930s - 1940s in color and News in the 1910s. Some of the photos from around the war era are quite amusing in their very "poster-like" poses and coloring. I can very plainly see where a lot of the images from the various war posters originated from, very Rosie the Riveter.

In general this seems pretty remarkable to me simply because of how slowly the government seems to fully adopt many of the digital trends, or technological advancements. It wasn't to long ago that the vast majority of the .gov websites were simply lame. I remember back a few years when I was in constant contact with the VA for some "issues", and man did their website blow massive military-esque chunks. It's a lot better now, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's state-of-the-art. This move by the Library of Congress is, and I support it; it's a great idea.

Back in 2001 I waltzed into River City Bicycles in Portland, and bought myself some swankin' cool Oakley's and sauntered out lookin' just as cool as I am. After almost 7 years of nearly everyday use I finally decide to get them refurbished from Oakley. The only reason was the bridge gasket was getting loose and I was afraid they would fall off if I leaned forward too fast. Since I had actually only dropped them one time, and the lenses had no scratches in them at all - I didn't really need new lenses.

After speaking with the Consumer Relations folks at Oakley, I arranged to get them fixed, and I decided to put new lenses since it wasn't any more expensive in this case - the whole deal only cost me $50 bucks. So I sent them in just before we left on vacation.

After only 3 weeks, almost to the day (actually on the shy side), I received them back and I'll be dipped if they aren't almost as good as new. The bridge is as tight as they day I bought them, with new nose rubber and temple pieces. This is my second pair of glasses from Oakley, and the third pair in the family. I have always been a huge fan of Oakley, and this experience cements the fact - I will never buy another set of sunglasses unless they are made by Oakley.

It's (unfortunately) not every day that you get to have such a great experience with a company, and I can't say enough about this one. Oakley is a great company and a wonderful group of folks. Thank you for making the best damned sunglasses around!

Santa was extraordinarily good to the DeCoster family this year, and we woke to find a Nintendo Wii snuggled with care under the tree. I have read the reviews, watched people play, heard the media drone on about how they are being used, watched the prices on eBay go ridiculously high then back to normal, and yet I was totally unprepared for how much fun playing it is.

I have found myself playing everyday either just in short burst or at length, but daily and usually multiple times throughout the day. Granted I am still on vacation, but it's a lot of fun. Wii Sports is a great set of games and mini games with the training and fitness modes - so it provides a lot of variation considering it's only really 5 games total. My favorites are bowling, boxing then baseball. I'm getting used to the golf game, but I don't really like the tennis game much. Donovan is really good at the boxing and bowling games, while Dylan just like to drive over everything in Monster 4X4: World Circuit. This is a pretty good game too, and I like the fact that it came with a steering wheel, plus it's not too hard right off the bat and it's pretty easy to get into and start playing and have fun. We also bought Wii Play, which as it turns out, is my least favorite of the games we bought. To be fair, I have only played it for a very short amount of time, so it will be a good game for the kids - but I don't think I will be playing it much.

AWe played for a good amount of time on Christmas day we all wondered how many times across America the exact same scene was unfolding, and judging by how difficult they are to get still; I would have to say hundreds of thousands of times. The Wal-mart in town (Bradford) hasn't had them in stock for any length of time yet, they always seem to sell out the second they get them in. Granted, Bradford is not a big town, or a high volume type of community so they get very few - but the stores in Buffalo didn't have any either, we finally found them out here in Oregon. We even got Grandpa in on the action, and he was kicking some serious rump at bowling, but unfortunately, I didn't have a SD card in the console yet - so sadly there is no proof....

The only downside is that the games are very expensive, $50.00 each, so I will be doing research and renting the game before I go and buy anything. I bought Monster 4x4 on a whim and luckily, it worked out. We all have our own Mii's and Donovan can't seem to make up his mind to what he wants to look like, but he has a lot of fun playing it; and that's the point.