Another cool service. Doc2PDF allows you to convert MS office documents into PDF files. You can download and install it on your server or just send them a mail at doc2pdf@hotpop.com with the attached document to convert. Doc2PDF email robot converts the office file and sends back the PDF file to you.

To one of the questions related to typography in a CSS list I subscribe, I answered with the following link.

A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best?

It discusses the performance and preference of fonts in 10, 12 and 14 point sizes. This comparison indicates Verdana 10 (a sans serif font) is the most preferred font today. See, why we chose verdana font for our website.

This is so cool. Liorean has a bookmarklet which allows you to view stylesheet source of any page. This will surely go in my favourites. My list of bookmarklets is growing, some of the bookmarklets I use frequently are, Google Translate, Show Divs and Show Comments. At bookmarklets.com you can find some common bookmarklets. Welcome to the world of Bookmarklets.

"Boxes and Arrows is the definitive source for the complex task of bringing architecture and design to the digital landscape. " Go, Check it out.

An update. Here is most recent news on SMS in US. Things are changing, real and fast.

SMS in US

After reading Kiruba Shankar's blog today, I wonder where does SMS stand in US. It's not that popular here like its in Europe and Asia. US is 3-5 years behind Europe in the usage of SMS. There are many reasons for low usage of SMS in US.

The foremost being the lack of inter-carrier interoperability; unlike European countries operating on single GSM standard, US carriers are following many conflicting standards(CDMA by Sprint PCS, AT&T follows TDMA and VoiceStream has GSM). Another reason is that people in US pay per-minute charges for mobile phones usage(to make a call or send/receive a text message), whereas in Europe/Asia subscriber is charged for the number of messages sent. Third reason I can cite is the Generations X's and Y's in US has not got involved till now(for whatever reasons, IM??). Then there is Instant messaging and two way paging, which is more popular in this part of the world. Americans are more into small gadgets(the Blackberry and Motorola etc) then tapping short messages on their mobiles.

Microsoft provides a very good overview of MDAC in this article on MDAC Installation. Makes a very good read for anyone working on Microsoft based technologies(specifically for everyone making use of data access on Windows platform).

Found a very good paper on introduction to Extreme Programming by Chris Morris. Read it here.

Mark Burnett breaks the myth about Windows passwords in this article.

Onions with an attitude

We bought this bag of onions at the local grocery store. Indeed the onions were very bold, fresh and highly pungent. True, True...:)
BTW, Do you know that Onions contain antioxidants that help block cancer and appear to lower cholesterol.

Googlewhacking

OK. We are late at Googlewhacking, but we whacked Google three times in a very short period of time, And now the whacks have been stacked at The Whack Stack. Here are few of our entries:

benevolent embrangle

ecclesiological penknife

embroglio maverick

For other latecomers to this game like us, Googlewhacking game starts by typing two words into Google's search bar, with the goal of obtaining a single result. The ultimate goal of a Googlewhacker: seeing the words "Results 1-1 of 1" appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Also the words(Googlefactors) must exist in this dictionary.

Strange Search

Atomz is giving away a $1,000 U.S. savings bond and four Handsprings PDA’s to individuals who find the most strange, peculiar or unexpected search results at Fortune 500 company Web sites. Check out Atomz for contest rules and entry form.

Big Sale at Yahoo.

Find discounts on everything including Domain names, Astrology forecasts, Dating Services...You name it, they have it.

Feeling Good

In Issue No. 140 of A List Apart, Tim Murtaugh’s Mo’ Betta Rollovers shows how to avoid preload delays by using CSS for rollovers. We've been using CSS Rollovers on our site for the menu and in fact we also wrote about the same some time back.

How Did You Get Your Start? I have to get mine. Long way to go....

Now you can read The Christian Science Monitor as a PDF Document. Cool.

Late Night Wars
I've long enjoyed watching NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Letterman's Late Show(CBS) but I just can't find any reason behind talks of taking out Nightline and replacing it with Letterman's show. Nightline IS one of the most RELEVANT shows on TV.

He was still screaming when the guards threw him to the floor. Getting up on his hands and knees, he discovered that he was in another cubicle. Much like his own, it contained a chair and a desk with a PC on it. Mechanically, Winston climbed into the chair, and glanced at the PC’s screen, where a splash screen showed that an application was slowly loading. Then he let out a wordless cry of despair that, despite heavy soundproofing, was heard in all the cubicles throughout the Ministry of Truth.

The splash screen said: "Welcome to the StarOffice productivity suite."

- From Dr. Dobb's Journal (April, 02 issue) article by Verity Stob. Read her other articles here.