dolben.org Exists
The Internet domain name system (at least as far as my access) now has dolben.org. At the moment, there's only a PHP test page on its web site.

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IETF Approves XMPP IM as Proposed Standard
Instant Messaging doesn't have to be a space owned by disjoint protocols and megalithic servers. Now the open protocol efforts of Jabber have been approved by the Internet priests, freeing us, in principle, from AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. In practice, will the millions of users ever make the transition to standards based IM, or will the big IM service providers ever convert their servers to use standard protocols? Will ISPs routinely provide Jabber IM servers as they now provide email servers?

For now, users of multiple services are stuck with either an application that supports various protocols, or using Jabber and a cumbersome process of registering proxies for other services, in either case having to have accounts with all of the services used by the people with whom they wish to communicate.

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The Word of the Day
The Oxford English Dictionary's word of the day is "blog". (Thanks, Dave.)

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"Subscribe" Has the "Feed" Link
Reconsidering what I had done ten days ago, I decided to link in the conventional way to the XML, and link the word Subscribe in the sidebar to the feed, for which there is as yet no commonly accepted graphic.

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Yahoo! Is Cool

Over time I find myself using Yahoo! for more and more things.

• I used to use the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, but recently it (further?) restricted the entries available for free and suggests using the paid access to an unabridged edition when you lookup a word which is not in the free edition. So, now I use Yahoo!'s interface to the American Heritage dictionary.
• I used to use weather.com, but it loads slowly, possibly due to ads with elaborate graphics. So, now I use Yahoo!'s interface to weather.com.
• I've used Yahoo! Maps for a long time, preferring it to MapQuest.
• I use the Yahoo! RSS news feed, which collects stories from many sources, including AP, Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, in my news feed reader.
• I use Yahoo! Travel, as well as Yahoo! Yellow Pages to find lodging that isn't in Expedia's database.

Yahoo! pages are lean and clean and useful. In short, they're cool.

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Valid CSS Level 2
Likewise, according to the CSS validation service, the main page of this site is valid CSS level 2.

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Valid XHTML 1.0
According to the W3C markup validation service, the main page of this site is valid XHTML™ 1.0 Strict. It is unfortunate that in order to make the whole blog comply with the standard I would have to edit, and fudge the modification date, of almost every entry file because the entries themselves contain HTML, e.g., links and images. Oh well, nothing is perfect.

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Feed Validator
Mark Pilgrim has a good web page about his RSS feed validator, which is the one used by NewNewsWire when "Validate this Feed" is selected from the pop-up menu on a subscription.

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Nothing Is Perfect, but Blog Is Valid RSS
According to Dave's validator, this blog is valid RSS.

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Version 1.0.8 of NetNewsWire
Version 1.0.8 of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite fixes a couple small but important bugs and adds a bunch of feeds to the Sites Drawer. NetNewsWire Lite is a freeware, easy-to-use RSS Web news reader for Mac OS X.

Note that as of version 1.0.7, when a feed URL is passed to NetNewsWire by a web browser, as is done by Safari and Mozilla, it subscribes or selects that subscription if already subscribed. The in this blog's sidebar now has a feed link.

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Version 1.0.7 of NetNewsWire
Somehow I'd missed the announcement of the release of version 1.0.7 of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite, even though I subscribe to the ranchero.com news feed. Now that I can see it in the news reader, I'll have to figure out how to change my favicon from Netscape's (ick).

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Dead Duck Has Become Internet Chestnut
The following has reached the status of Internet chestnut.

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinarian. As she lay her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm so sorry, Cuddles has passed away."

The distressed owner wailed, "Are you sure?

"Yes, I am sure. The duck is dead," he replied.

"How can you be so sure," she protested. "I mean, you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room, and returned a few moments later with a Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head.

The vet patted the dog and took it out, and returned a few moments later with a beautiful cat. The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at the bird. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."

Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill which he handed to the woman.

The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!", she cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead?!!"

The vet shrugged. "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but what with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan..."

Posted here since I happened to have a picture of the consulting medical team.

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