Chris RageBoy Locke — whom, btw, has posted a knockout portfolio of his Web design work — points out in an email that pages Google translates automatically now let any reader suggest a better translation. So, if you go about a third of the way down this page and look for the first book cover, you’ll see a work by Alan De Benoist, titled “On Being a Floyd.” Hover over the title and you’ll see “On Being a Pagan” in a popup, with a button for you to suggest your own alternative translation. RageBoy is the one who suggested “On Being a Pagan.” Chris refers to Google’s approach as “wide area knowledge acquisition.”

If evil-ass spammers start translating Rilke’s poetry into Viagra ads, then Google will have to come up with some social way of monitoring the reader-contributed translations. But this is another instance of the 1% rule: A tiny percentage of people can make the world better for all the rest. And it’s pretty darn cool. [Tags: ragrboy translation google everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Elliot Noss of Tucows has blogged a list of questions to ask of Internet domain name registrars before registering a domain name with them. This is in light of ICANN’s revoking of RegisterFly as an accredited registrar.

Since some points on Elliot’s list are difficult to ascertain, what we really need is a wiki spreadsheet — paging Dan Bricklin! — with those questions (and more to come, undoubtedly) so that knowledgeable customers can fill in the blanks.

(Disclosure: Elliot’s company, Tucows, is a registrar. But Elliot, who is a friend, relentlessly works for the best interests of the Net and us users.) [Tags: icann registry domain_names registerfly tucows elliot_noss wikicalc dan_bricklin]

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I woke up yesterday morning with this cartoon in mind. I didn’t dream it. I just woke up with it.

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I’ve googled until I’m gaga, but I can’t find the javascript code that will refresh an iframe from the server without refreshing the rest of the page. For this app I am using — forgive me — IE 7.0. Yes, I know iframes are not In, but I don’t know of another way to do picture-in-picture, so to speak, where the page being displayed is scrollable.

The iframe itself looks like this:

<iframe id=”browse” src=”http://www.JohoTheBlog.com” width=’100%’ height=’600px’ style=”display:block;”></iframe>

To refresh it, I’ve tried the following (and many variations of each):

var fr=document.getElementById(‘browse’);

fr.src=fr.src;

document.frames[“browse”].location.href=fr.src;
window.frames[‘browse’].reload(true);
window.fr.location.reload(true);

top.frames[‘browse’].location.reload(true);

top.frames[‘browse’].location.href=fr.src;
window.location.reload(true);
fr.reload(true);
fr.refresh.dammit.you.bastard(true);
fr.i.will.hurt.you.i.mean.it(true);

Some of these do nothing. Some refresh the entire page, including the iframe. None refreshes only the iframe, forcing a reload from the server. Although nothing hangs on the project, I’ve now spent several hours trying to solve this little problem. Ack.

What is the vector of my particular dumbness this time? I’m sure it’s something embarrassing. But it’ll be worth displaying my ignorance yet again if someone knows the magic incantation that will end my misery… [Tags: programming javascript iframes refresh]

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Jessica Duda blogs the Politics Online Conference. Good overview. [Tags: politics politics_online_conference jessica_duda]

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Ethan Zuckerman has the story of a 24-year-old American from New Jersey being detained in Ethiopia. Our State Department is not demanding Amir Mohamed Meshal’s release from a prison system known for its brutality, even though our own investigation cleared him of any connection to Al Qaeda. In explaining the situation, Ethan provides the context regarding our involvement in Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia; no one explains this stuff better than Ethan.

Meshal could easily disappear into Ethiopia’s prison system. His government — our government — should not be letting that happen.

Ethan also links to a great story in the Christian Science Monitor by Stephanie Hanes about a radio show in the Congo that lets the Congolese ask questions — via phone and SMS — about the 1998-2003 war in which 4 million people died. The participants are kept anonymous because it’s still too dangerous to talk openly about it. [Tags: ethiopia kenya somalia amir_mohamed_meshal ethan_zuckerman congo ]

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Great post by EthanZ about Pittsfield, MA (and about more than that). [Tags: pittsfield towns ethan_zuckerman ]

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Tumblr is a microblog. A nanoblog. A nonce-blog.

Cycle faster, Web crazes, faster damn it! [Tags: tumblr twitter everything_is_miscellaneous]

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I quite like Yahoo Local, and use it frequently. But try searching for “bargain department store” in “toronto, ontario, canada” (without the quotes). The site tells you that it couldn’t find any stores in Toronto (because it only knows about the US), but perhaps I’d be interested in Kohl’s Department Store near Marion, KS.

If you zoom out on the map, it becomes clear what’s guiding this seemingly random choice: Marion appears to be dead center in the US. Thus, it is statistically most likely to be near any randomly chosen point in the country.

While this may make probabilistic sense (Or maybe not: I was a Humanities major), it makes no common sense. Yahoo would satisfy more query-ers if it picked an area dense with population. Or it could just say, “Yo, moron! Toronto isn’t in the US…at least not yet, bwahahaha!!” Although I have to say, I find something charming about being redirected to a small town of geometric significance.

(Disclosure: Years ago I was on a little Yahoo Local advisory board that met once.) [Tags: yahoo local marketing maps]

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I’m starting to blog for the HuffingtonPost. It’s way cool to be a reader of something and then get to write for it. Maybe I’m supposed to be blasé about it, but I’m totally not.

The piece is an appreciation of Elizabeth Edwards’ understanding of the Internet, but it’s really just a way to say that I love her. I’ve never met her, but I sure feel like I know her through her book and blogging. I am so sad today.

It just got posted. [Tags: elizabeth_edwards huffington_post politics ]

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