Be Good Not Bad : Web Design :: Brian Warren : Denver, Colorado

There is an interesting new payment system on the block, and it’s called TextPayMe. It’s a bit like PayPal, but instead of sending money to someone’s email address, you just send it via SMS text messages on your cell phone to someone’s cell number.

Let’s say you’re eating dinner out with your friend Jimbo, and you want to split the bill. Jimbo pays the bill, and you send Jimbo your half via TextPayMe. Kinda interesting no?

Sign up now, using the following link, and you get $5 in your TextPayMe account, and you help me win an Xbox 360. It’s that easy: Sign up here.

I remember back years ago when PayPal was giving out $5 for each sign up too. Good times, good times.

A couple weeks ago, Anna and I got to go to the International Mead Festival as correspondents for Basic Brewing Radio, a podcast all about homebrewing. We interviewed several professional mead makers, tasted a lot of mead, and had an all-around fun time. I have got to tell you, I’m totally fired up about mead now. Mead, basically fermented honey, is the oldest fermented beverage in the history of humankind.

Also, about a week ago I spent some time talking with James Spencer, the host of Basic Brewing. Today, the whole show goes live, and even if you’re not a homebrewer or mead maker, you might enjoy the show. If you have any interest in mead or want to know about the people behind the scenes, you should check it out.

The four people we interviewed were:

Dr. Garth Cambray a brilliant meadmaker from South Africa who is a big innovator in the mead world. He built a fermentation system that is unlike any other in the world of mead. He’s a fascinating guy.

Michael Faul from Rabbit’s Foot Meadery. A true success story …

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Brrrr…. originally uploaded to flickr by Mr. Warren.

I’m playing around with a new website called Ma.gnolia. It’s kinda like Del.icio.us, but maybe a little more “social” in how it works. Also, the website has a beautiful design (done by Happy Cog).

I’m using Ma.gnolia for my “browsing..” links, so if you subscribed to my RSS feed for my links, you’ll need to update the feed to be http://ma.gnolia.com/rss/full/people/mrwarren

To see via a regular ol’ browser what I’m linking to in Ma.gnolia, just go here.

Lots of people are already using Ma.gnolia, including NPR’s All Things Considered, so I suggest you browse around there, it’s pretty interesting to see what other people find interesting. Hee hee.

A new article I wrote is online at ComputorEdge. I republished it on my website at Be Good, Not Bad, you can see it here. It’s all about a few Mac applications everybody should check out. (If you prefer to see the article on ComputorEdge’s site, by all means)

I also noticed that ComputorEdge now has RSS feeds (how fancy!). I’d like to think I’m pretty much single-handedly responsible, since a few months ago, I wrote, for ComputorEdge, a column all about RSS and Newsreaders.

We watched Murderball the other day. Fantastic movie. I expected to like it and was still impressed beyond expectations. Definitely check it out.

Murderball is the original name for paraplegic rugby, and the documentary follows these rugby players all the way to the Olympics. It’s amazing to watch these guys play. Their wheelchairs are built like tanks, and for good reason too. They are ramming each other, knocking each other over, and getting banged up in the process. The story also has heart too, as you learn about each of their pasts and how they got into rugby.

You couldn’t have scripted a better plot, too. Joe Soares, a longtime star for the USA team finally starts to get older and slower and gets cut from the team. After suing the organization to try to get back on the team, he leaves to go coach the Canadian team, one of USA’s biggest rivals. Remember, this is all entirely true, the movie is a documentary.

The documentary was done by Think Films, the same folks who did Primer. Check it out.

If you don’t want people to know about the bad stuff, then make the text smaller. I took these screenshots from the Privacy Policy pages from Blockbuster and Netflix (click them for a bigger version if you like).

Blockbuster chose to make their type size small and fine. Netflix chose to make theirs normal, easily readable text. On one hand, Blockbuster comes from the older, brick and mortar era of retailing. Fine print is intrinsic to how these guys operate, so naturally that will carry over into their web offerings. Netflix has never done the brick and mortar thing, so they dont have those ties.

Also, Blockbuster’s policy clearly states that they will give up your information to others, while Netflix won’t without your permission first. So, Blockbuster, naturally would be a bit embarassed to tell you that they give out your information. Netflix has it easier, they can proudly say that they don’t.

I say, as a company, make your type big, and easy …

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One of my favorite NPR shows is now podcasting each week’s entire show free of charge. It’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, the NPR news quiz. Very funny stuff. Something they had done to their RealMedia streaming shows recently made it not work very wel, if at all recently, so seeing them podcasting is a treat.

Wee!

Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me Podcast Feed

John and I went to the homebrew shop to pick up some goodies for our next batch of brew, and I bought a fun device called a siphon starter. It is a plunger-based mechanism that is supposed to make starting a siphon super simple. When I picked it up, Andy, the guy there, said “That thing is malty!” But he didn’t just say “malty”, he said “Maltaaayyyyyyy”. John and I looked at him. He looked at us.

“Maltaaay?”
“Yeah! Malty.. you know, like ‘Sweet’?”
“Ooooh, maltaaayyyy.”
“Yeah… Maltaaaaayyyyyy. Anyway, that siphon starter is great. You’ll love it.”

Spread the word. And the word is “Maltaaayyyy.”