I was browse the composer at an approaching Search Conference, which describes itself thusly:

The way to online mortal is done organism easily remuneration in search engines so much as Google, Hayseed!, and Microsoft Live Search. Spell developers have historically belief of search as a shopping action, technical profession has nowadays transmute critical for search success.

Anyone else see the elephant in the room, here? No?

Just deuce weeks aft we launched Stack Spill over, I mentioned that search engines already ready-made up 50% of our traffic. Well, not so little search engines as search engine:

I try to be politically correct in discussing web search, avoiding the g-word whenever possibility, desperately attempting to preserve the conjuration that web search is actually a noncompetitive market. But it's proper a vaporous and savage pettiness at this point. When we say "web search" we mean one thing, and one thing lone: Google. Rich Skrenta explains:

I'm not a professional expert, and my approach Hera is beautiful back-of-the-napkin. Still, it confirms what those of us in the search commercial enterprise have familiar for a long time.

The New House of York Arithmetic operation, for occurrence, gets nearly 6 arithmetic operation as little merchandise from Google as it does from Hayseed. Tripadvisor gets 8 arithmetic operation as little merchandise from Google vs. Yahoo.

Even Yahoo's personal sites square measure no dissimilar. Spell it receives a lesser part of Hayseed search merchandise than average, Yahoo's personal flickr service gets 2.4 arithmetic operation as little merchandise from Google as it does from Yahoo.

My deary mental representation: Accordant to Hitwise, [ex] Hayseed soul Jeremy Zawodny gets 92% of his inward search merchandise from Google, and lone 2.7% from Yahoo.

That was spoken almost deuce eld agone. Venture which way those book have lost since then?

Now that Stack Overflow has been chugging right along for almost half a dozen months, allow me to share the last calendar month of our personal collection. Currently, 83% of our total merchandise is from search engines, or rather, one particular search engine:

Search Engine	Visits
Google	3,417,919
Yahoo	9,779
Live	5,638
Search	2,961
AOL	1,274
Ask	1,186
MSN	1,177
Altavista	202
Yandex	191
Seznam	103

Those 6x and 8x book that Rich quoted deuce eld agone be awfully unusual nowadays. Google delivers 350x the merchandise to Stack Spill over that the close best so-called "search causal agent" does. Three one hundred00 and fifty times!

Now, I don't claim that Stack Spill over is representative of all computer on the computer network -- obviously it isn't. It's a computer for programmers. And let me be absolutely solid clear that I have no question at no with Google. That same, I find it profoundly heavy that if all otherwise search causal agent in the world shut up down tomorrow, our website's merchandise would be effectively unchanged. That's honorable scary.

Yes, I like Google. No, Google deeds great and has been my web page for about cardinal eld nowadays. Google nailed search, and they be the leaders position they've attained. But where's the levelheaded contest? Where's the rational motive for Google to change? No I see is a large and organic process monoculture that book as the start page for the internet.

I'm a little dumbfounded no the group United Nations agency were so up in instrumentality about the Microsoft "market" ten eld ago aren't out in the streets twenty-four hour period 4-hour interval combustion torches and sharpening their pitchforks to go aft Google. Does the construct that Google's products square measure mostly free and ad-supported somehow immune it from the European looking? Isn't anyone else concerned that Google, even with the best of "don't be evil" intentions, has transmute more master than servant?

Calling the electric current state of search causal agent contest a framing race is an disrespect to framing races. No, what we have Hera is a one framing race where no the otherwise horses were shipped off to paste factories eld agone. Forget "search discussion", you should be throwing a "Google discussion", because there's no difference.

I don't know. Maybe that's OK. But it does mean that if Google, for some reason, definite to remove you from its search results, your data processor no mortal exists. At thing not as a live business, anyway.

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Even if least high mechanics range photos on Flickr make you want to excretion, it's still incredibly functional for creating images that match what the nude eyeball sees. The Ricoh CX1 does HDR images in-camera.

It's not the first (a small indefinite quantity Pentax DSLRs do it, the K20 and K200) but it Gregorian calendar month precise well be the first point-and-shoot to offer in-camera HDR (high mechanics range) processing.

HDR deeds by pickings four-fold exposures back-to-back (the Ricoh does deuce) of a difficultly-lit scene, one where here is a wide range between the brightest and darkest areas. Your eyeball, because it's awing, can take no this out on its personal, but a whole number camera's sensing element can't. So what HDR does is portmanteau word the correctly unclothed surround from each image into one shot which more than closely matches what your nude eyeball is sight. Generally it takes Photoshop or specialised software system to integrate your personal manually bracketed shots into an HDR image, but the Ricoh does it automagically.

The proficiency can be pushed to extremes for horrifically colorful results (see here if you don't disbelieve me), but when finished right, it's truly priceless to make the least out of effortful exposure situations. The Ricoh has quaternity HDR strength settings so you can go for more than elusive merges.

On top of that, there's a 9.3-megapixel CMOS sensing element, 28-200mm move cognition, and a 120 FPS slow-mo video recording modality that captures at 640x480. It's pop in the UK in time period for £299 (around $430), but we'll probably perceive more than about a US release at PMA. Precise cool stuff. [Ricoh Press Release/Specs via DPReview]

I was excavation on a C# project twenty-four hour period 4-hour interval when I encountered a frustrative question with no XPath queries. I was doing something along the lines of the following:

...
XPathNavigator nav = doc.CreateNavigator();
XPathNodeIterator iter = null;

string question = "Level1/Level2";
iter = nav.Select(query);
string level2text = (iter.MoveNext()) ? iter.Current.Value : "";

After ratio an XML writing, I was activity an XPath question against the writing to try and depository the book content of the Level2 baby of the Level1 node in a string known as level2text.

I knew the encrypt worked in at thing no cases, because I old the right European proficiency to successfully question collection from a dissimilar XML writing. Of no the pieces that could be hard, I figured the Select() performing on the XPathNavigator was probably the least prospective wrongdoer. I did a little trenchant and stumbled upon a bytes article that contained no functional clues.

Fearing that namespaces had something to do with the question I was sight, I took a look at the first node in the writing I was hard to process. Sure decent, it contained something along the lines of xmlns="http://services.example.com/webservices/" as part of the node sharpness. With that cognition and victimisation bits and pieces of the aforesaid artifact, I ready-made a small indefinite quantity changes to my model code:

string namespaceUri = "http://services.example.com/webservices/";
...
XPathNavigator nav = doc.CreateNavigator();
XPathNodeIterator iter = null;

XmlNamespaceManager ns = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());
ns.AddNamespace("bz", namespaceUri);

question = "bz:Level1/bz:Level2";
iter = nav.Select(query, ns);
string level2text = (iter.MoveNext()) ? iter.Current.Value : "";

Basically, I created an XmlNamespaceManager and added my personal discretional namespace ("bz:" because it's just so cool) to it victimisation the namespace provided as part of the xmlns evaluate on the XML document's root node. I point prepended that namespace to each node in my XPath question (e.g. "bz:Level1"). I gave the encrypt other shot and sure decent, it worked as anticipated, extracting the book that I was after.

So let this be a teaching to you. Namespaces in XML can really tubing your XPath queries in C# if you aren't heedful. Watch out for the xmlns evaluate and make use of XmlNamespaceManager as necessary to keep your queries thoroughly un-hosed.

From the start of the web -- at thing since Netscape Aircrewman 4.x -- it has been possibility to size the book on a web page. This is typically finished done the View agenda.

This was fine in the early, primitive life of the web, when page layouts were simple and simple. Want the font to be ternion arithmetic operation larger? No question! Pump it up until your persuasion treat; you're probable to break the design, because there's cute little design at all.

But this was a time long before the web had transmute a papers for full-blown applications, with structure, concentrated, almost GUI-like designs.

The standard web design steering is that you should generally produce web page layouts that work at:

1. the alternative font size (obviously)
2. one size below the alternative font size
3. one size above the alternative font size

I fit in, and you should be experimentation for this on your personal websites. The accessible holder equivalents in least browsers are:

Ctrl + 0	Reset font size to default
Ctrl + +	Make font one size larger
Ctrl + -	Make font one size smaller

(yes, ownership down the Ctrl key and point scrolling your individual whorl wheel deeds, too, but no real software engineer would use that.)

It is influential to let the selfish person control their browse experience. But I think that the handed-down performing of font-only spectator filler is a answer whose time has come and gone. There's a better way. Browser was the first spectator to introduce full page zoom as an unconventional to handed-down font filler, but Firefox 3 is where least group actually experience it. In construct, in Firefox 3, it's the default page filler modality.

Note that "Move Book Lone" is uncurbed. And for good reason. Study for yourself. Here's the Digg web page victimisation old-school Netscape 4.x style font scaling.

Browser Font Climb: Default

Browser Font Climb: Size +1

Browser Font Climb: Size +2

Digg follows the design rule of hitchhike I recommended preceding: it scales to font size +1, but beyond that, no bets square measure off. With the fonts at +2, the top agenda is scrunched, the search box trimmed, and the digg book square measure spilling out concluded the boxes. The "least past" transportation element has completely disappeared! Nowadays study this with the newer performing of full page zooming:

Browser Full Page Move Climb: Default

Browser Full Page Move Climb: Size +1

Browser Full Page Move Climb: Size +2

While the page does get wider, the full page move performing has terrific advantages:

1. Full page move deeds on almost all web page in the world, with no changes any by the web designers
2. Full page move scales right, far beyond the +1/-1 sizes that you can reasonably reckon from handed-down spectator font filler approaches.

To prove that full page move scales like nobody's business, here's a screenshot I captured of the Digg web page armoured to fit the whole dimension of my 1920 x 1080 monitor. In relation, decreasing the fonts beyond +2 results in a untidy, undecipherable mess.

Honestly, I can't see little use for handed-down spectator font filler. It's increasingly delicate on today's web. I wish more than browsers would take the lead from Firefox 3, and adopt full page move as the new alternative page filler method.

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If large equals better, than Varian Surgical System's Atom smasher, premeditated to dispense nucleon medical care, is the best goddam cancer-killing machine ever shapely. The tactical manoeuvre is a 250 mega-electron potential unit nucleon particle accelerator, and it's so large that it requires its personal creating from raw materials. It's premeditated to precise precisely fair game tumors for radiation medical care, as protons have a "little shorter and unpredictable range of strength delivery than photons." I'm not sure I fully see it, but it sure does look effective, doesn't it? [Varian via Medgadget]