Here’s an example of one of those simple ways your computer should be helping you out: making sure that when an email mentions attachments, it actually has them. The Attachment Scanner Plugin for Mac’s Mail.app does just that, and in a multitude of languages no less.
The Cornell alumni newsletter had an interesting piece on a new book, The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas
My coworker Shawn introduced me to OpenID, an Internet solution that offers something similar to a single sign-on at work. It provides a framework for replacing logins and profiles for many sites with one centralized identity. The system itself is decentralized, though, so you can choose any identity server you want, or host your own.
You can now even use OpenID leave comments here! This uses the WordPress OpenID Plugin, which took a few tweaks to deal with having WordPress installed beyond the root of the website. I submitted a patch with my changes; if you’re impatient, you can just download my version. A diff is included for the curious.
To get an OpenID, there’s a long list of providers, or you can host your own server. I went with MyOpenID.com since the server had a lot of dependencies. Even with an outside provider, you can still use your own URL.
Update: Disabled the in-line sidebar/navigation login form, linked the OpenID text in the comments form.
I thought I would take advantage of the mild weather with a walk in the park, but managed to pick the one hour of the day that a quick shower blew through! Still, I got some decent photos of a section of Valley Forge park I hadn’t visited before. Driving back in the suddenly sunny weather, I spotted a few other areas to explore on foot and in photos in the future.
The project I’m currently leading at work is building some corporate social software websites, and our management has come up with a fun rewards system. Each iteration of agile development, two people get awards for their outstanding contributions. The reward is a project t-shirt with a custom phrase printed on the back.
In true social software fashion, though, the phrase is chosen by the rest of the team! We’ve gotten some entertaining discussions going (on our own bulletin board tool, no less), and are already recording quotes for future recipients. My own front runner is “Fastest blogger in the east”, due to my speedy and prolific use of our internal blogging and wiki system at work. (Believe it or not, blogging here is actually my second addiction.)
del.icio.us/mbotos