Dispatches From The Internets

While working on a new site, I started playing around a little more with 8-bit PNG files, comparing them to GIFs. In a few cases the PNG was smaller (it didn’t used to be that way, but perhaps Photoshop CS2 does a better job of compressing PNG files or something), so used it. All was good until I started testing the design in IE, where the colors were all off. Here’s a breakdown of how the same graphic (placed as a CSS background image against a background color equal to its own background color) rendered between the two browsers:

I am well-aware of the issues regarding IE’s handling of alpha transparency in 24-bit PNGs, but had not heard of any color-related issues with 8-bit PNGs in IE6. I did a test in IE7B2 to see if the error was there too and it was.

Well, after much debate and deep deliberation, I did it. I quit my job.

Just when you though all the good purchases were going to Yahoo!, Google ups the ante by picking up Measure Map, the wonderful blog stats analytics tool from my friends at Adaptive Path. Measure Map is what web analytics should be all about—it is so simple and so addictive, no wonder Google had to have it.

On WaSP today, Derek wrote an incredibly poignant post about the NFB lawsuit against Target. In fact, I thought it so relevant to the interactive work we do at Cronin and Company (the ad agency I work for), that I forwarded a copy of it to everyone who works there. The reaction was, for the most part, pretty good (at least from those that read it), but there’s always at least one person who just doesn’t get it.

It appears that some Dems, including my Representative from the 3rd District in Connecticut, Rosa De Lauro, are trying to cripple our democracy under the guise of public financing.

Eric has a very enlightened post for those of you out to document bugs in IE7 Beta 2. He also echoed my feelings that this is a beta people!

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 for public consumption yesterday. Based on everything I’d been reading, the development team seemed to be moving in the right direction. I decided to take it for a test drive to see how things were coming along.

I got an email the other day from Steven Mading, a developer at the BioMagnetic Resonance Bank at the University of Wisconsin. In it, he shared his experience using jsTrace and, with his permission, I’m sharing it with all of you:

I just thought I’d give a quick thank you to you for the little jsTrace JavaScript utility you made available online. I found it from a Google search and it was exactly what I needed.

In a recent issue of Game Informer, I read an interesting news piece on the upcoming PS3, but its significance goes far beyond that system and even the world of video games. In fact, it applies to all digital media.

This is perhaps the coolest (albeit experimental) way to browse Flickr: retrievr from System One Labs.