Handy HTML color tool

I don't know how often I end up needing a tool like this, but thought others might appreciate having a HTML Color Tool.

Place this HTML Color Code tool on your website free

You know what would make The Microsoft Surface cooler?

If it was released!

I was reading Hugh's posts and noticed he keeps bringing up The Microsoft Surface which I think is an IT workers wet dream.

I don't develop software much as a general rule, mostly because it negatively affects my health. I don't let go of problems that don't have a simple solution. Most general help desk questions can be answered, and relatively quickly. Once answered, they no longer nag at me and keep me up at night. I would pretty willingly set that aside for the chance to develop on the Microsoft Surface.

So my suggestion to Microsoft is don't play all Apple on us with this one boys, release the damn thing and let us sort it out. Trust me anything that runs on your Vista or XP will have and endless number of kinks (though so many fewer on XP), most of the people that will have to work on this type of project know that. We are ready, and my drool is starting to dry (gadget ADD is kicking in, and I have seen other cool things that could occupy my attention).

Afterthought:
I also am wondering when Microsoft Marketing was going to start eating its own dog food and use MS software(Silverlight) for the product pages? I hate Flash and really really hate Flash 9.

Amen brother, Amen

Gizmodo writer Wilson Rothman bemoaned the degrading CE experience as we move toward the connected home lifestyle. I have to agree with him, I spend my whole day trying to explain why the complexity that Active Directory brings is worth the hassle. Valuable hours of the day are spent trying to untangle complex errors that could be behavior (i.e user error) or transient (something someone else was doing caused their error), keep in mind this is a skill set I make a living with, I don't necessarily feel the need to do this at home.

Vista Media Center, Xbox360, and various other smart devices, routers or wireless ap's running DD-wrt. Switches, unmanaged and some managed, some Gigabit other 10/100. The level of complication in my own household has risen dramatically. While my wife enjoys some benefits of the complexity, at some point it she just throws up her hands in frustration. Such as when she cannot convince the media center to play a DVD. (To her credit, she was the high master VCR programing Queen so it is not for lack of ability.)

Beta Bloglines

I will give you an "A" for effort Bloglines, the beta features mentioned on TC sound nice (the save feature especially), but not quite enough to make me switch back from Google Reader. I have overcome the shortcoming of no save feature by email tags. I setup several filters, and email articles based on content to the correct filter. Not the perfect solution, but the results are searchable in gmail, and makes it relatively easy to forward on when someone asks for some information I have squirreled away about this or that product.

Toshiba You Foul Temptress

In spite of the post title, I do like Toshiba's hardware (it is some what flaky I know), and have worked with a few in my personal/professional life and even still employ a Tecra M1 running Vista Business. It runs Vista poorly I might add, but it seems that all upgrades are destined to suck, while shiny new machines seem to suck less. All that aside and getting back to the point, I am sick and tired of getting bumped to the Tecra at home when It comes time to do some browsing, because my wife insists on having the Viao. Well I found the Laptop that will make it ok:




Toshiba's Dynabook appears to be pretty sexy. The newest revision will be running the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 GPU that has been getting good reviews, and I want it.

So if you know someone that can get an english language version for me, that would be great.

Help Needed

If you are concerned about media ownership being concentrated into the hands of the few, then you should take a moment to participate in the following campaign.

http://action.freepress.net/campaign/ownership/8w88ini296m8i66?

The FCC is currently looking to relax the rules governing how many local news agencies one company is allowed to own. This was thrown out before after public outcry, don't let sneaky Kevin get away with it under a President that will look the other way.