Ever heard of a “bookmarklet” (or “favelet”)? No? Stick with me for a second. Bookmarklets perform some action with the current page instead of loading a new one. Example: validator favelets check to see if a page is correctly coded.

Too esoteric? There are also cool bookmarklets available for mere mortals. Jon Udell‘s LibraryLookup is one example. The scene: you’re perusing Amazon or BN and you happen upon a book of interest. You’d like to read it, but perhaps not to own it. No problem. From the seller’s book detail page, just click the bookmarklet and a window will pop up telling you if your local library has the title available. Simple.

For a demo, I picked, oh, the Rochester (Mn.) Public Library. Drag, don’t click, this link [ Rochester Lib Look-up ] to the “links” bar in IE or Phoenix. (You might get a warning, but it’s perfectly safe.) Then visit any Amazon book page (sample) and just click the new button. A window pops up, giving you availability information. Here’s one for ISU: Parks Lib. Look-up.

Notes:

• It works by looking for the ISBN, a 9-digit identifier composed solely of the numbers 0-9 (though the final is sometimes an ‘X’) in the URL, so any bookseller that uses the ISBN in the URL will work.
• Because it works by ISBN and not title, it’s best to search from a hardcover book, the type libraries are most likely to have.
• Some pop-up blockers (and Phoenix) will make this appear to fail. It can be fixed to open in the same window with a little JavaScript. E-mail me for details.

Maybe the powers that be at eBay didn’t like my comments on the site’s fugliness.

It’s not bloody likely, but I’m having a hard time determining why my internet connection was painfully, brutally slow this afternoon — just as the clock for an R2 QaF DVD I wanted expired.

I’d been watching the auction for possible use in my Visual Comm. class next week. I even e-mailed the seller asking him if he could ship it to me in time, provided I won the auction. He said it wouldn’t be a problem, so I went to bed until 4 (headache theraphy.)

When I got up, my browser couldn’t complete a page. The progress bar crawled, never making 50% — in either IE or my primary browser, Phoenix. I turned off images and still got no love, even from Google. Desperate, I called people I knew with broadband. Jennifer was working, Matt}] and B didn’t answer their phones, Carole was at home preparing for a party… I was fucked.

Finally, I got some of the page to load (not the bidding part, mind you, just the top) and it was possible for me to see… “This auction has ended.”

Dude, Meg, I’m sorry.

First, it must be said: eBay is one of the ugliest sites out there. It’s definitely the worst-looking in the top 25 most popular sites.

I can only speculate that eBay is deliberately cultivating this thrown-together feel. It’s been over a year since I saw Meg Whitman on a BusinessWeek/CSPAN special complimenting Amazon by saying “They have a wonderful user interface.” Whitman is one sharp operator, so if they haven’t overhauled the look, it must be working.

Perhaps they think it would be a fruitless exercise when the sellers create 90% of the product page content. Not everyone is an artist, and sometimes the products themselves are weirdly ugly.

Other times you just have to wonder about the sellers. I was doing a search for “Linksys wireless” on a whim, and I came upon a USB adapter. The seller noted:

My son went off to college, taking his computer with him. I am hoping he stays in school, so I am selling the adapter.

I was amused, so I clicked to see what else the man was selling. The fun items include a Browning pistol barrel, an inside-the-waistband holster, and a bullet velocity measurer.

If I were the son, I’d be looking to stay in college, too. Far, far away.

The D.C.-area shootings, the slow economy, and the recent slide in consumer confidence make individual buyers, who account for 40% to 50% of total U.S. PC sales, less likely to pick up a new machine in 2003…
— Why PC Makers Are Saying “Next Year”, Business Week 12 Nov 02

What? The sniper shootings are depressing PC sales? Is this writer serious? What the hell does that have to do with getting a Dell (dude)?

Today Macromedia announced a very intriguing product called Macromedia Contribute. It’s intended to be a user-friendly (multi-platform!) application that will allow “content contributors” to make changes.

As a sometimes Web professional, I welcome this application. There’s nothing that bores me more than making small modifications (dates, prices, etc.) to a list of pages. However, it is essential that this product be extremely intuitive. If it’s just one more thing I have to explain, it’s no use to me. (I’m now downloading the “technology preview” version, so we’ll see.)

Also, Contribute supposedly includes “the latest Dreamweaver MX update.” I’ve been waiting for a fix to an annoying MX bug for some time, so I hope it’s more than just a plug-in to link the two applications.

The dilemma has been solved. Even when my connection returned, connecting the coax to the TV gave me nothing. Well, mostly nothing: EXTREMELY fuzzy channels 2 & 3 (which appeared to be Discovery and CNN, respectively.) So that takes care of that question.

After being away this weekend, I came home to a blinking cable modem. Turns out this particular flashing meant a lack of connection.

After a seemingly endless hold on Mediacom‘s tech support line I reached someone who told me to disconnect the coax and connect it to my TV. I don’t pay for cable, so I asked if they were trapping the signal to prevent me from doing this very thing. He said no.

As it turned out, I got nothing on the set, either. He punched into his computer for the next service date and came back with… November 12. I felt shortness of breath, as visions of my shitty, shitty previous provider came to mind. The tech soon found a better date (Wed.)

Fortunately, I was able to get on less than 30 minutes later.

Now I’m left with questions. Does that mean TV would work now, too? Should I get a splitter and try for “free” cable? Would I watch it? How many channels would that be? Hmmm…. (Well, I know what B-don would say.)

Just got an e-m from B that included this line:

In other news, what the fuck is up with http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jsp/?

[Note: if that page seems normal, see the jsp.org
mirror of the page as it was.]

Turns out someone replaced my web page index. That page only, it seems. How much access (s)he got to the rest of my Vincent account, I don’t know. I do know that an “ls -l” of the directory showed all of the files (save one) owned by “jsp”. The exception was homepage.html, which had “32766” listed as the owner.

I assume the message refers to the UNIX chmod command. Entering “chmod 755” would make something executable.

More when I have it. For the time being, I’m sucking everything off by FTP. Been meaning to do that anyway.