Why opening links on a new window is both annoying for your visitors and counterproductive for you as a webmaster.

A quick how not to guide.

You have a crm, and you need to import contacts in it. Problem, you have the first and last name into a single cell, but your need them as two separate columns

Just saw the visits stats on some of the sites I manage. Good news for the web developers, Internet explorer 7 is finally more used than the standard unfriendly internet explorer 6.

Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards.

In a world where records are increasingly kept in electronic form, Open Standards are crucial for valuable information to outlive the application in which it was initially generated. The question of Document Freedom has severe repercussions for freedom of choice, competition, markets and the sovereignty of countries and their governments.

Belgium has become the first country to mandate the use of the OpenDocument format (ODF) for office files. From September 2007 software in all Belgian government departments must be able to read ODF files. If the experiment is successful, ODF will become the standard interchange format - although departments will still be able to exchange office files in proprietary formats internally.

Friday morning, I have an appointment with the commune to fill various papers and, hopefully, register myself. A journey in the waiting room.

I remember as a teen two decades ago that the various options about how to organise a society where shrinking to one: market democracy. It was about the time when now one questioned anymore its benefits (even less its problems) over the other various options. It had become a fact, as the gravity.

You vote to elect, the market takes care of the rest.

Let's face it, most things sucks. At least, they could be better. Of course, I could redo some of them, fix here, tweek there, invent something better and build it.

It was my first idea, but it came to my attention that it might imply more time and work than I was willing to commit to, not to mention some skills that I might not have -yet-. Being (half) french, I came up with the next best idea: complain about it and not do anything.

So here we go, this place is going to be filled on an highly irregular basis with various suggestions to improve technology, the net, our political system and paint the world in pink. Might need more than one post.

All of that is unasked, but offered free of charge.

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