Ah, less clutter

Update: Ryan pointed out that my code got eaten

This one should have been obvious to me, but then again, my mucking level on my blog hovers at or around 0. This tip cleans up the overall page, lending itself very much to my goal of letting content (hopefully) rule this blog, rather than lots of formatting or clutter.

Here is the simple way to do this, that doesn't involve editing your stylesheet at all:

1. Go to the template tab on blogger.
2. Click "Add a Page Element".
3. Choose the "HTML/Javascript" type.
4. Cut and paste the following snippet:
   <style>
   #navbar-iframe {
   height:0px;
   visibility:hidden;
   display:none;
   }
   </style>
   
5. Click "Save Changes".
6. Rejoice as the top of your page is now uncluttered.
   

Fun Task for the Day

Music by color.

Go into your iTunes collection, type a color into the search box, and hit play.

Tonight's playlist for me: Green.

Tired. Dog Tired.

Yes, I am. I have actually wanted to get some posts out here several times already this year. Just too tired to make it happen until now.

However, I'm not nearly as tired as a technology/idea that I realized today I want to see die off much quicker then is currently happening. Voice mail. When I say voice mail, I'm using it as a general term to refer to answering machines, and any kind of voice mail such as those at offices, or used by cell phone providers.

They are all flawed. Steve Jobs obviously (to anybody not hiding under their rock) pointed out in his keynote that navigating in a sequential fashion is horribly outdated. That is just the start though. How much time each day do you waste listening to the following:

"I can't come to the phone right now, please leave your name and number after the beep and I'll get back to you"

Were you really wondering what to do when that person didn't answer and this mystery device started talking to you? Multiply that times each person you can't reach per day and you are just burning away minutes of your life. Put the 2 previous examples together, and now both parties are wasting double the time just trying to achieve asynchronous communication.

Why? We have already defeated this problem. It is called email. While not perfect, it is hands down better than anything voicemail has done.

So, we need smarter phone systems. Do like Vonage and send messages as audio clips via email (or optionally do speech to text as well). Then you don't need Job's iPhone, you simply need a phone that can do IMAP/POP.

Next, the stupid greeting has to go. Let your phone display a status on the screen, just like IM. You can quickly find out that I'm away, busy, screening, running from the plague, etc.

Make it so.