Using googles own caching feature, Hank van Ess was able to unlock the secrets to the mysterious url eval.google.com. It looks like google hand-tunes its search results indexing. Google’s response makes sense to me - google needs to perform evaluation of their results to be confident the results are good.

Good detective work Mr. van Ess!

Rails Beta book available online now.

A Couple from the boing-boing blog
Some cool furnature designs like you’ve never seen before.
and a bad-ass firepit

Two more from plasticbag.org
I want these shirts!!!
Darth Gardener
This was supposed to be the future

Speaking of shirts - I’m putting in my order for a homestarrunner shirt right now!!!

Add LifeHacker to your RSS list. It’s the site that geeks like me need.

Their description: Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live

And they live up to it. Everything from articles on How to be a good customer, links to geek-NEWS articles like this one about Microsoft Office adoption of XML, or some advice if you’re trying to Give up caffeine.

Too often geeks like me forget that there’s more to life - and more to work - than knowing the latest technology or the latest gadget. Those soft skills that make people successful are invaluable. Sadly, for far too many geeks those skills are completely absent. LifeHacker helps us out with Life Hacks, their blog category for everyday things that make your life better. It makes use of that quirky, imaginative and creative geek brain - and applies it to everyday.

Ever had a need for Verbal Conflict Resolution Tips?
How about Matt’s strategy for Kicking Sugar to the curb?

There’s way too much goodness there.

The other day I was surfing around for a Java API when I came upon an interesting paper written by Donald Gordon - a former(?) student of Victoria University of Wellington. Donald wrote the paper as partial requirements for graduating Computer Science with honours.

A Framework for Lightweight Web-based Visual Applications [pdf] takes an interesting approach to the development of rich internet applications. Like the Java Server Faces specification, it controls very complex, dynamic user interfaces entirely on the server. In theory this reduces the complexity providing multibrowser support, and does not require the user to download or install any plugins. By eliminating the need for plugins, you eliminate having to worry about plugin versioning issues or programming API limitations that authors of applications written in Flash or Java Applets have to consider.

Sadly, all I could find is this paper. I haven’t found any other documentation, nor have I been able to find any downloadable implementations or even examples. I think that technology like this has great potential. I hope to see more of it soon.

This movie [mpg] from Sony Japan shows some remarkably innovative technology at play. The user dynamically builds their interface with a number of tiles. Each tile looks to be about the size of a CD. They build their interface by selecting the tile of their choice, and placing it on a grid interface where the tile comes alive. I’m not sure this application is something I would use, but I like the idea. I’m sure there are many potential uses.