Aug 30 2006

Now Playing: Saints Row

Category: General — Jeremy Wright @ 1:40 pm

Gamertag: Jeremy Wright

Aug 24 2006

Downloaded: IE7 RC1

Category: From My Life, IT Thoughts — Jeremy Wright @ 5:04 pm

IE7 is finally nearing release. Release Candidate 1 just dropped today, and I’m downloading it now. The good news? No need to uninstall previous IE7 betas.

Aug 24 2006

This Week’s Theme Song

Category: General — Jeremy Wright @ 1:12 pm

This week’s video theme snog is Numb/Encore by Jay-Z/Linkin Park. One of my Top 10 favorite songs. I still get shivers listening to it. Something about the confidence mixed with Numb just gets me right there.

Aug 23 2006

List of IE7 CSS Bug Fixes

Category: IT Thoughts — Jeremy Wright @ 9:56 am

A note more for myself than anything, but here is a list of bug fixes in IE7:

established since IE6.  

Here is the list of CSS features and changes for IE7:

Bugs we fixed

Details on some of the other bugs (from sources other than the positioniseverything.net list) that we fixed:

  • Overflow now works correctly! (That means boxes do not automatically grow any more.)
  • Parser bugs: * html, _property and /**/ comment bug 
  • Select control: CSS style-able and not always on top
  • Auto-sizing of absolute positioned element with width:auto and right & left (great for 3 column layouts)
  • Addressed many relative positioning issues
  • Addressed many absolute positioned issues
  • % calculations for height/width for abs positioned elements http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=191182
  • <?xml> prolog no longer causes quirks mode
  • HTML element truly independent of the Body (now gets its own width, height etc.)
  • 1 px dotted borders no longer render as dashed
  • Bottom margin bug on hover does not collapse margins
  • Several negative margin issues fixed
  • Recalc issues including relative positioning and/or negative margins are fixed now
  • CLSID attribute of <object> tag no longer limited to 128 characters
  • :first-letter whitespace bug described in http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/02/460115.aspx fixed
  • Descendant selector now works properly for grand children when combined with other selectors
  • First-line and first-letter now applies when there is no space between word :first-line and opening brace {
  • Pseudo-classes now are working as expected if selector is excluded
  • The :link selector works now for anchor tag with href set to bookmark
  • Addressed !important issues
  • PositionIsEverything piefecta-rigid.htm now works
  • List-item whitespace bug fixed
  • Fixed Absolutely Buggy II
  • Absolute positioned elements now use always correct containing block for positioning and size information
  • Nested block elements now respect all overflow declarations (hidden, scroll, etc)
  • Fixed the opposing offset problem (absolute positioned element whit all four top, bottom left and right are present)
  • <a> tags nested within LI elements will no longer add extra bottom margin when hover occurs
  • We no longer lose the image aspect ratio on refresh
  • Cleaned up our ident parsing according to CSS2.1 rules
  • Fixed parsing bugs for multi- class selectors and class selectors that are combined with id selectors
  • And many more

We also extended our existing implementations to comply with W3C specifications:

  • Enable :hover on all elements not just on <a>
  • Background-attachment: fixed works on all elements – so Eric Meyer’s complexspiral demo works
  • Improved <object> fallback

Finally, we added new features from CSS2.1:

  • Min/max width/height support (also for images, which did not work in IE7b2)
  • Transparent borders
  • Fixed positioning support
  • Selectors: first-child, adjacent, attribute, child
    • A couple of CSS 3 attribute selectors: prefix, suffix and substring since we were working already in the code base (also the general sibling selector)
  • Alpha channel PNG support (Not a CSS feature but too important for designers to not call it out J)

Better Standards Support…
But as we’ve been continually reminded, better standards support in IE also means some pages break.  As we struggle to balance the needs of our user customers with the desires of web developers, we need your help.  The only way for us to continue to improve our standards support is to get your help in changing your sites for IE7. We have provided a set of documentation and tools to help you transition your pages to IE7:

Obviously not perfect, but a good step forward. The positioning stuff, rendering issues, border issues and margin issues will solve a whack of the problems developers run into on a normal basis. Of course, chopping off the bigger issues means there’re even more smaller issues that people will become aware of. While this means they won’t hit full compliance, the biggest change for me?

They’ve decided it’s okay to break older pages to actually implement standards. This is, obviously, needed. Otherwise things stagnate (ahem, like they hadn’t enough already). This really means that future standards fixes will be easier and faster. If the team is actually still planning to do yearly releases (as they hinted at), we could well see full standards support by mid next year. Well, full CSS support anyways.

Aug 21 2006

My Definition of Web 2.0

Category: Blogging, Business, IT Thoughts — Jeremy Wright @ 3:59 pm

During the TechCrunch party I realized why the whole Web 2.0 think bugged me. It’s all so Web 1.0. Yeah, sure, greater interaction, new technologies, VCs with more knowledge, etc.

But something really irked me. In Web 1.0 the single biggest mistake was … businesses with no business plan, no sales path, no income, etc. The perception that if you worked your butt off you’d IPO and everything’d be fine.

To me, 2.0 of a product should fix the issues with 1.0 as well as adding new features. In Web 2.0 we definitely added new features… but did we solve the issues with 1.0?

Here are some of the pitches I heard at the TechCrunch party (more on that later):

“We’re going to revolutionize search by providing geotargetted results”
“We’re going to reinvent search by negating spam”
“We provide the most fully featured photo sharing service ever imagined”
“We’re going to build an Office killer”

Seriously. An Office killer. One guy and his friend. All the best to them, but yeah.

I wish I could redefine Web 2.0. Screw the social stuff. Screw the AJAX. Screw grassroots marketing.

Web 2.0 should be “profitable online businesses”.

Update: To be clear, if a site isn’t a business, that’s fine with me. But if they are a business, then they should… Yeah, be a business. Without customers, income or a product, how exactly are you a “business”?

Aug 21 2006

Lost My Cell

Category: General — Jeremy Wright @ 3:23 pm

I’ve lost my cell in San Francisco… Either in my car, or the hotel. Calling now. But, for now, my home phone is 506 466 3855 if anyone needs me.

Aug 21 2006

My Business Cards

Category: Blogging, Business, From My Life, Work, b5media — Jeremy Wright @ 3:21 pm

For the TechCrunch event, I had some new cards made up. They were a huge hit. Hell, I even got a Robert Scoble post all about them :-D

I’ve always, always had issues with business cards. After every event, I try and email folk to say thanks and see if there are any opportunities there. But I have two problems.

1) I can’t figure out where I met each person… Was it a dinner? A conference? A party?
2) I don’t remember anything about the company… And don’t have time to Google 100 companies.

So, I tried to fix both these problems with these cards. Juan did the basic design, and I just tweaked it. Key features included:

- clean layout
- “@techcrunch” on the front of the card, under the b5media logo
- description of business on the back

Here’s Scoble’s picture of the card. Here are the images used (click for full versions):


Aug 21 2006

TechCrunch7: A Canvas of Many Colours

Category: General — Jeremy Wright @ 3:05 pm

Friday was TechCrunch. My first, really (I’d popped in on a previous one).

There are lots of folk talking about it already:

David Hornik (yowza VC, and host): It was great to have everyone, no this doesn’t mean it’s a bubble.
Mike Arrington: It was a success.
Jeremiah Owyang: Great food, great drinks, great people.
Scott Beale: Lots of great photos.
Paul Kedrovsky (smartest person met this year): It’s a bubble, but not a liquidity bubble. Strangest bubble ever.
Chris Law: Great chance to catch up with people.

And, y’know what? I agree with everyone. Most folk who asked me what I thought of the event got:

*little sigh* … *big sigh* … “God, I hate the valley” … *little sigh*

The truth is that TechCrunch was just at the end of my tour, and I was tired of all the hand pumping (alternately called “fisting”). TechCrunch wasn’t a little geek event. It wasn’t a company event where entrepreneurs hang out. The truth is that there were probably only 100 entrepreneurs out of 100 people there. Lots of groups from companies. Lots of PR people. Lots of media. Lots of VC’s.

And that’s okay. I just think the community wasn’t ready for what TechCrunch (the party) had become. I’m pretty sure Mike Arrington wasn’t either. It wasn’t bad. But it was a conference. And Scoble nailed it: it’s a place to see and be seen.

Again, not bad. But not the kind of thing I look forward to. I know it’s my job, and I “enjoy” it, because I get to meet new people. But my idea of a perfect mixer really is like 20 ish entrepreneurs in a room hanging out. Learn. Interact. Make deals. This was just a night of pitching.

Thankfully, I was able to take some time and hang out with friends. Marc Orchant, who I hadn’t seen in ages. Shel Israel, who I’d had dinner with the day before, but it’s always great to see Shel “in action”. Scoble, who got some inside info because I was so tired (4am my time). Jeremy Pepper, who was so high energy I couldn’t deal with it. Will Pate, who I love, but I kind of blew him off (sorry Will!) because I was tired and in the middle of a conversation.

Also met lots of new “friends”. Oliver Starr who has more gadgets than should be healthy, considering radiation concerns. Marshall Kirkpatrick who’s just so damned chill and nice. Some of the StashSpace crew, who were rocking.

I saw lots of great products (SalesGenius.com looks amazing). Didn’t hear Mike Arrington’s speech (except “my commenters suck”, which was ironic since most of the people at the event WERE his commenters). Had amazing food.

I guess my pluses? As a “big networking event” it was good. Having “rooms” available for folk to chat and debrief would have been great. Figuring out some way to let people who “should” connect, do so more easily would have been awesome. Meeting old friends. Meeting new friends. Handing out lots of cards. Dave Winer threatened to “fight” with a friend of mine. Classic.

The minuses? The sound for Mike’s talk. It wasn’t a real mixer, it was a marketing event. Too many VC’s doing too much grab-assing. Ask about my business, make suggestions, prove you’re smart money. Don’t just tell me how big you are and how much money you’ll give me. And too many people in pitch mode. I’d rather have a conversation. Get me engaged and I’ll bend over backward to work with you. If I can’t work with you, I’ll make introductions, help you find people and help any way I can.

Relationship trumps pitch every time.

Still, I’m glad I went. Really, really glad I did the rest of the trip. All the meetings were awesome. Everyone I met rocked. And just hanging out with Scoble for like 8 hours was not only fun, it was the exact “disconnecting” session I needed. So thanks mate!

Aug 21 2006

Back Home

Category: From My Life — Jeremy Wright @ 1:58 pm

Yowza, what a trip.

I’m back home now. Will blog more about the TechCrunch party, folk I met and general impressions on the valley tomorrow or so. For now, I’m working on my email ;-)

Aug 16 2006

On My Way to San Francisco

Category: From My Life — Jeremy Wright @ 12:05 pm

Alrigt, all set, on my way to San Francisco. My time is now fully booked (except for breakfasts and late Saturday). Sorry to those I didn’t have time to meet. I will be at the TechCrunch event, though I’m not flying in *only* for that!

Looking forward to this trip. Some good business meetings, some good partner meetings and some good socializing. I’m hoping to get some biking in while I’m out there. Not sure when, but I’m hoping ;-)

I’ll be back in the saddle on the 21st, so have a great week everyone!

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