November, 10, 2004 archives

feedster now has a ping interface. no changes.xml or any other way for others to get the ping data, naturally. i almost feel guilty for the whole feedmesh thing not getting any traction. but blo.gs is currently hobbled by a bug in mysql, and i have next to no energy or enthusiasm for dealing with computers outside of work. which isn’t to say that it is much greater inside of work. i did finally make blo.gs self-regulating to the point that when the server crashes and has to rebuild, it doesn’t just grind to a halt.

arafat may have money stashed all over the place. maybe in two hundred years, there will be a movie staring a distant relative of nicolas cage where part of the map to the treasure is on the back of palestine’s constitution.

since the election, i have heard some rumbling about wanting to invest outside of the united states. i’ve mentioned one way to do so before, but here it is again:

everbank offers fdic-insured certificates of deposit and deposit accounts in foreign currencies. (the cds have a $10,000 minimum, deposit accounts have a $2,500 minimum.)

the yields on all of their us-dollar denominated stuff is good, too. i should be more disciplined in taking advantage of that by putting more into certificates of deposit.

their online banking is pretty cool, too. it can tap into other sites to suck out your financial info. you have to provide it the username and password for those other sites, but it seems reasonable to trust an organization with mere passwords when you’re already trusting them with your money. but if i weren’t getting kickbacks from my amazon card and cheaper trades at ameritrade, i’d be using everbank for everything.

their site unfortunately shuffles you off to a useless landing page when using safari or firefox on the mac, unless you use the magic link above. i’ve complained to them about it before, but it didn’t have much of an impact.

fast company has a list of 101 ideas, people, and trends to watch in 2005 (via jason kottke). max barry’s next book makes the list at #8. the navigation of the section is annoying (no “next” links on each page, so you have to keep bouncing back to the index).

sxip is looking for a lead web developer.

this livejournal from the spouse of an electronic arts employee raises the too-many-working-hours issue that i’ve mentioned before. it is an interesting (and ugly) dynamic in the games industry (and internet startups, in my experience) that allows companies to get just-out-of-college employees to work absurd hours.

the eff is looking to hire a webmaster.