This is one of those "scattershot" newsletters where I catch up on some of the doings on and around the site, clue you in to what's happening in the near future, and toss a short but juicy tip towards the end, just to make it worth your time reading the damned thing :-)

Strangely enough, the old pages at IBD still seem to be active. I've e-mailed Dave at IBD to find out what's going on with them, but if you're still visiting any pages with IBD in the address, forget about them and start coming to the www.toejumper.net/ pages instead. It was kinda cool seeing the old pages again (and humbling -- did they really look that bad?), but there's no need for anyone else to visit them. They haven't been updated in over a year. Note: While writing this, I got a notice that Dave's e-mail account is dead. Doesn't look like I'll be able to get rid of the old pages any time soon. Curses! I'm thinking that the pages are cached in search engines like Google; I can only hope that over time, the caches will expire.

I've had a bit of a rollercoaster ride with the article I submitted to SitePoint, "The Real History of the GUI.". The article appeared in the first week of August, and within a few days I was inundated with e-mails containing various kudos, corrections, and disparaging remarks. Apparently the article had its share of errors and misstatements, or maybe even more than its share. Well and good...I can accept that. Then the "geekerati" at Slashdot found it, and suddenly I was deluged with more kudos, more corrections, a few more disparaging remarks, and a wealth of first- and second-hand information relating to the article's contents. Wow! It's quite cool to get messages from people who worked at Apple Computers during the heyday of the early Macintosh, or from ex-IBM'ers who remember when Microsoft was writing code for Big Blue. I was astonished and humbled to hear from Jef Raskin, who you may remember as the head of the Mac development team, and an integral part of Apple's early success. Jef corrected many errors in the original article and then took the time to correct and comment on some of the corrections. Without his input, the article would remain mired in error. (I've written a long errata/addendum page that appears at the end of the original article.) What really floors me about the whole process is that I can take almost any error or misstatement in the article and show you the supposedly reliable source from which I obtained it. As I said to the SitePoint editors, I probably should take Woodward & Bernstein's advice and get every piece of information confirmed three times over before using it. Live and learn.... SitePoint and I seem to be getting off to a great start, so I'll be writing more for them in the future. I'll be sure to brag...er, inform you about upcoming articles as they appear.

Recently I took a look at a "pay-to-surf" site called Nitroclicks. I was, um, not impressed (notice I didn't include the URL...). The idea is to register with Nitroclicks, go to the sites they designate, register with the providers therein, log back in to Nitroclicks, and get paid a couple of bucks for doing so. When you accrue $500 worth of surfing, Nitroclicks sends you a check. I checked it out using false personal information, and was floored to note that the very first site I was referred to asked me for my Social Security number as part of the exhaustive and intrusive registration process. I didn't mind giving out false names, addresses, and so forth, but when I saw the request for the SSN, I said "enough's enough" and logged out immediately. Upshot: be very wary of any outfits that offer to pay you to surf the Net. The idea is to get you to register with nosy-parker sites that use your personal information for marketing purposes -- think floods of spam, hordes of telemarketers calling you at all hours, etc. And the damage they can wreak on you once they have your SSN doesn't bear thinking about. My advice is to avoid all of these sites.

Tidbit of the day, for Web masters and surfers alike: Microsoft is using an insidious little feature called "Smart Tags" in the beta version of their new browser, MSIE 6. What these tags do is insert links into anyone's Web page that are keyed to sites of Microsoft's choosing: for example, if the word "automobile" appears in your page, Microsoft could slip in a tag that links that word to any auto-retailing site that pays Microsoft for the privilege. Microsoft has been inundated with howls of criticism that has impelled them to turn off Smart Tags from their shipping version of Win XP (though the protocols will still be in the code), and they claim that the shipping version of MSIE 6 will not have them, either. Smart Tags are already included in Office XP, and word is that Microsoft will place slightly more palatable tags into later versions of MSIE and XP. Man, this grinds my gears. If I want to link to a site in my page, I'll make the decision to do so and write the link myself. If I'm on someone else's page and note a link, I would like to think that the link is there because the page author wants it there, not because Microsoft slipped it in under the door. Defenders of Smart Tags, including David Coursey at ZDNet, say that Smart Tags are okay because they can be turned off, they can be used for useful purposes, and they aren't limited to Microsoft -- anyone can create and use Smart Tags. Hmph. The excuse that "everyone is gonna do it, so it must be okay" never held a lot of water for me. I've included a META tag that reads:

Thanks for reading, and thanks to all the folks who signed up since the last newsletter. See you in September!

(Note: Due to AOL's pedestrian mail server, some of you received multiple copies of this newsletter. I apologize for stuffing your mailboxes. I am going to the Coollist mailing service for the next newsletter.)