Ugo Cei’s Weblog
I was going to submit a proposal for the upcoming ApacheCon Europe 2005 conference, but the website seems to be down at the moment. Hope it gets back up soon, the deadline for submissions is Friday.
Update: it's about 12AM (CET) now on Thursday 3rd and the server is running again. Fine.
Robert Hoffmann - A gene network for navigating the literature: “A network of genes and proteins extends through the scientific literature, touching on phenotypes, pathologies and gene function. We report the development of an information system that provides this network as a natural way of accessing the more than ten million abstracts in PubMed. By using genes and proteins as hyperlinks between sentences and abstracts, we convert the information in PubMed into one navigable resource and bring all the advantages of the internet to scientific literature investigation.”
I'm quoting this for two reasons: first, I have a (marginal) professional interest in bioinformatics and second, the system is implemented using Apache Cocoon.
This morning I received my new iPod Shuffle 1GB, much earlier than anticipated. They say it takes 2-3 weeks before shipping, but evidently they had a few spare in the warehouse, since they shipped it immediately and it took less than six days from order to delivery.
I haven't got much to say at the moment. The real test will be when I go biking with it, but since it was -6°C this morning, I am waiting for warmer weather.
I also ordered a pair of In-Ear Headphones with it. They sound certainly better than the plain-vanilla, bundled earphones, in terms of sound brilliance and dynamic, but the response at the lower end of the audio spectrum is quite low. It gets better if you can equalize the frequency response in iTunes (the “Small Speakers” setting is good enough for a start) but you get no equalization on the Shuffle. I'm not even sure whether loudness is on by default or not.
I think it would be nice if you could pre-equalize the frequency response before uploading tunes to the iPod, don't you think?
Did-it, Enquiro, and Eyetools Uncover Google's Golden Triangle: “New EyeTracking Study verifies the importance of page position and rank in both Organic and PPC search results for visibility and click through in Google.”
Take a look at this image for a vivid demonstration of this fact.
This also fits nicely with Darren's observation: “The amazing thing about the Adsense advertising system is how one simple change in positioning of your ads can have a profound impact upon the earnings you receive from it.”
Maybe it's time I start putting my ads on the top left corner 
