Technology

So: why doesn’t my web browser detect unlinked URLs in a page and turn them into links for me? Sure, sure, it should be an option I can turn off. However, I want to stop cutting and pasting stuff like http://www.meyerweb.com. For that matter, I wouldn’t mind if it picked up any hostname beginning with www — let it catch www.meyerweb.com too. Catching anything that registers as a domain name might be a bit much. On the other hand, perhaps it might be worth doing a DNS lookup and converting anything that returns. In a very optimistic world with sufficient computing power, you could do the DNS lookup, check port 80, and if there’s something responding then do the conversion. ...

So how come Dave Winer thinks that we should [maintain directories for free](http://web.archive.org/web/20111116223955/http://web.archive.org/web/20111116223955/http://www.xmlrpc.com/stories/storyReader$1583 (original) “How the directory on XML-RPC.Com works”) (original) but that it’s unfair to expect free programming?

Utterly elite. Amazon is now offering the Sidekick (original) for fifty bucks after rebate. And, come to think of it, if you use Share the Love I bet you get the full 10% of $250, which would make it an additional twenty-five bucks off, assuming one of your friends takes advantage of the deal. Um. That would mean you’re getting a Sidekick for twenty-five bucks. Twenty-five bucks. It’s a cell phone, an email station, a web browser, an AIM client, and a crappy camera. Plus all the essential organizer functions. But hell, even if you can’t share the love, it’s still just fifty bucks. ...

I’m standing at a bus stop in Harvard Square, realizing that I’m better off posting via Web than by email. Whoops; maybe not, since I can’t set categories this way. Oooops. Ah well. The first day review of the Hiptop: pretty good, it’ got a very thoughtful design. For example, the @ sign is unshifted, which makes a ton of sense since it’s used so much. There’s decent autocapitalization. The keylock automatically tturns off if you flip the screen open, cause you’ll never do that unless you want to use it. ...

I’ve been peering at this Scripting News post about cell phones (original) all day, trying to figure out what struck me as weird about it. I finally figured it out. Check this quote: “So why not make them just a teensy bit bigger and put a real qwerty keyboard on the darn thing and let me type into it like a human being.” That seemed totally reasonable to me the first zillion times I read it. I just went out and got a Sidekick, cause I wanted a keyboard on my cell phone. But wait — “like a human being.” He wants a keyboard-based interface, cause he wants to use the cell phone for more than just the classic telephonic voice based interface. “Like a human being.” ...