Now this is neat: BugMeNot.com provides a list of valid registration ID/passwords for sites that require free (but annoying) registrations, such as The New York Times and The Age. Personally, I’ve registered for The Age (and by association all the Fairfax sites) because I use it so much, but this is very handy for visiting sites you don’t use very often, or are wary about registering with.

If you mistakenly put backslashes in your relative hyperlinks, IE silently replaces them with forward slashes. Does IE do this on Macs I wonder? It seems a very DOS-centric way of doing things. This is not “embrace and extend”. This is “be nice to sloppy people, breaking it for everybody else”. Firefox doesn’t like backslashes, correctly replacing them with %5C and then choking.

Meanwhile, MS has released a developer’s toolbar for IE (beta). I don’t normally use IE, but I had a quick look. WTF — it requires a complete system reboot to take effect. It looks like it has some handy features, but boy, it’s a bit buggy… try and view table outlines, and it takes ages if there’s more than a handful. Not so good.

Frankly, the Firefox web developer extension craps all over it.

Dear Australian Communications and Media Authority,

Re: au.gov.aca.cas.numb.util.exception.ApplicationException: Sorry, your browser is not supported.

There is no godly reason why you should have a web site that only supports IE, or at least doesn’t support Firefox. (I’d love to check it in Safari, but the iCapture Safari checker is down at the moment.)

This is particularly stupid since part of your responsibilities include Internet services in Australia. Fix it please.

Regards,
Daniel

The Age and SMH web sites have seen the writing on the wall for popup adverts, with browser popup blockers now blocking most ads that don’t occur as a result of direct user action.

So you know what they’ve done? Triggered a popup if you happen to click on part of an article window which normally wouldn’t be considered clickable, such as on a non-hyperlinked word. It’s a user action, so the popup gets around the blocker. It only seems to be triggered to happen occasionally though, so you don’t notice how the popup is triggered. Sneaky.

How to embed a Word document (or other file) in another Word document

Sometimes it makes sense to embed one Microsoft Word document in another, rather than include a link to it, or paste the contents in. This is especially useful when sending multiple documents to people who can’t access your shared files. (Though only, of course, in environments where you can be sure everybody has Microsoft Word. If that’s not assured, you should be using something more universal, such as PDF.)

For some reason Word makes it quite tricky to do, its interface preferring to send you down the path of taking the contents of your second document and pasting them into the first.

The easiest way I’ve found:

1. Find your second file (the one to be embedded) in Windows Explorer. Copy it (Ctrl-C)
2. Go to the spot in the document you want to embed it in
3. On the menu: Edit, Paste special, paste as Word document (or as file), then turn on Display as icon. (Ignore the gibberish where it claims to be pasting as a bitmap picture.) (Note in the screen grab below how short filenames live on in WinXP/Word 2003, ten years after long filenames were introduced into Windows)
4. Click Change icon
5. Change the caption to something meaningful, as Word’s default behaviour is to give it the incredibly useless caption “Microsoft Word Document”
6. If you want you can change the icon, though unless you’re deliberately trying to confuse people, the default is probably fine.
7. OK, OK. It should be done. Test by double-clicking on the icon

Microsoft today started previewing the next version of Office. Ten bucks says it won’t make this process any easier than it is now.

Oracle acquired Siebel.

eBay acquired Skype. Paypal was a logical acquisition for eBay, but I’m not sure this makes much sense. There’s speculation they’ll be convincing buyers and sellers to talk to each other via Skype to speed up transactions, but would that be a huge benefit over email? There’s some speculation prospective buyers could call sellers, too, but is all this worth the billions (US$2.6 billion, plus stock plus performance bonuses) eBay is forking out?

Oh well, Niklas and Janus (Skype creators) must be pleased. Now, why can’t I think up something cool like that?

Me? I acquired a chocolate bar.

The Age and MacWorld this morning are saying Forbes magazine reports iTunes Australia will open on October 3rd — though possibly without Sony and BMG along for the ride.

Details of the many editions of Windows Vista have been leaked.

Play Steve Ballmer, but flinging chairs around an office. (via Scoble)

The Beeb and friends have released a bunch of free video content specifically for people to mix up and re-use. But only for people in the UK, dammit.

Firefox 1.5 beta 1 is out now. Judging from the release notes, there’s some nifty features in there. (Not sure why it’s named after an outer-western suburb of Melbourne though.)

Sorry, I’d love to give you my views on it, but I don’t have any scratch machines at the moment, and I don’t put betas on real machines anymore.

They’re not Microsoft

They innovate

People watch everything they do

They’re cool amongst da people

Despite being cool, they’re quite secretive (no Google blogs apart from an official one… no Apple blogs at all)

They don’t speculate on their products until they launch them, catching their opposition by surprise

I’d love to think of some more, but I’m late for dinner.

Well, after much speculation, this morning (AU time) Apple announced a swag of new stuff, including:

• the quite ludicrously tiny iPod Nano (I reckon I’d lose it)
• the very expected Motorola ROKR mobile phone, the first to include iTunes (shame it’s a Motorola. I hate Motorolas.)
• a shiny new version of the iTunes software, featuring parental controls (woo hoo, does this mean no more Lenny Kravitz’s What The F%$# are we saying for my kids?), syncing data with Outlook (at smeggin’ last), playlist and shuffle enhancements
• some exclusive content to the iTunes store, which therefore means we CAN’T BUY IT IN AUSTRALIA (grumble)

In the spirit of our VCR destruction (but less mindlessly destructive) is Apple Matters’ dissection of a Mighty Mouse and an iPod Shuffle.