Archives for September 2005
The Taming of the Screw
Forbes has a great article entitled The Taming of the Screw which tells of a new redesign of the screw. “The humble screw has changed little in 2,000 years, until a stubborn engineer at Illinois Tool Works came up with a fascinating new twist.” – Very cool! Reminds me of a great book I read a year or so back: One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw which I highly recommend. It’s far more interesting than it sounds. I promise.
Hat tip to Jason Kottke for the link.
Hotels and Your Identity
Travelling? Staying in a hotel? Be careful with that access card. The information stored on the magnetic strip may contain more than you know, including your credit card info:
> Wallace, IT director at AAA Reading-Berks in Wyomissing, Penn. has been bringing a card reader with him on business trips to see what’s on the magnetic strips of his hotel room access cards. To his dismay, a surprising number have contained his name and credit card information – and in unencrypted form.
Scary stuff. Next time you take a trip, be sure to keep those hotel access cards and destroy them once you get home. While you are at it, ask the hotel staff what information is stored on the cards and whether or not that information is encrypted. If everyone starts asking, perhaps pressure will be brought to bear on the hotels.
Typetester
Typetester “is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen. It’s primary role is to make web designer’s or web developer’s life easier. As the new fonts are bundled into operating systems, the list of the common fonts will be updated.”
screenspire
screenspire.com – “the leading full( )screen inspiration – [638 screens and counting]”
Devmo
The Mozilla Developer Center (Devmo) “has been designed to be a comprehensive, usable, accurate, and valuable resource for web developers.”