Don't Worry Be Happy

Just in case

The tree is decorated, the boys are on their way home, I'm preparing for our 'traditional' Christmas Eve fondue and Ross is out shopping. Have a happy, healthy and wonderful Christmas.

Gift alert! If you're expecting a gift from me this year and want to be surprised stop reading now. It appears that in the gift giving department I'm quickly turning into my mother-in-law. For years now she has been issuing cheques for presents. I'm a bit guilty of this myself (especially for some recent weddings) and I've come to realize that it's not a good feeling when you resort to this but hey, nobody minds getting money! 'Gift cards' have been around for awhile (and their predecessor the certificate) and it's making the whole gift thing a lot easier. You still feel that you're putting some thought into (however minimal) and not just giving random money that could otherwise drift into the economic ether. We've all been given gifts which we inwardly wonder what we did to deserve. We've all given gifts where the recipient tries hard to make us feel that they really appreciate the gift. Gift cards remove about 50% of all this nonsens...

I'll be doing a short presentation to the Alt staff in January about 'creating web pages'. The days of talking about html and uploading web pages appears to be past. What I am fast discovering is that the web is providing opportunities for the average non-Dreamweaver user to create and publish seamlessly. A few ones I'm currently researching: Goowy , Protopage , IG (Google) , NetVibes, My Yahoo , Start.com . Each one has its pros and cons and all of them tend to make one think - when will they start charging for this service? How (not when) will they start putting in ads to make it pay? The nice thing about Protopage is the ability to make pages publically available - AltSch22 . Other things to check out: Jotspot , Writely , Rallypoint, FreeMind , DemoStudio , ThinkFree Office Online