The basic umbrella has been around almost since the beginning of time. And in all that time, it hasn’t seen much, if any innovation. Sure, the materials have changed, but the basic design? Nope.

Check out the Nubrella. A hands-free, cocoon like umbrella.

I’ve been doing some pretty hectic slicing and dicing of xhtml and css of late and in the process have learnt a few more tricks with CSS. For example, how to properly use definition lists (<dl>, <dd>, <dt>), proper font sizing and absolute and relative positioning of parent and child elements just to name a few.

Here are a few CSS links that might be of interest:

• Formatting a definition list
• 8 fonts you probably don’t use in css, but should
• The Incredible Em & Elastic Layouts with CSS - proper font sizing!
• Pixels to Ems Conversion Table for CSS
• 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding
• Improving Code Readability With CSS Styleguides
• Listmatic - formatting lists (<ul>, <ol>, <li>)

I picked up an awesome package from the post office today from Liv.tv - some Liv.tv schwag! As you can see below, it included a cap, golf t-shirt and a personalised thank you card.

How did I manage to organise this? 1 simple blog post.

Update: Lerato from MWeb’s Business Division has just given me a call (as well Andre Joubert, the GM of MWeb’s business division has left a comment) and has apologised for them dropping the ball. Lerato is going to contact my Brother-in-law directly and help him get sorted out. So, kudos to MWeb for listening and responding almost immediately!

MWeb as a whole are a totally useless and overpriced Internet Service Provider, but their business division takes the cake. Read on why…

My “Brother-in-law’s” job is his phone and email. I’m talking 300 emails a day type of email. Blackberry email is also probably the only way he can stay in touch with his clients as they are mostly international, and their spoken English is very bad compared to their written English.

I setup his new Blackberry Pearl on Sunday just before he headed overseas. Anyway, because of the traveling and not having being able to use his Blackberry, his mailbox limit was reached and mails started bouncing. He called me to help find out what the problem was, so I called MWeb’s business on 0860 100 154 to get help increasing his limit. The technical guy was only helpful enough to tell me he had a 200MB limit and that he would put me through to the sales division who would be able to increase the limit to 1GB.

Suffice to say, I waited on the phone for about 30 minutes and no one answered. I called their sales division directly on 08600 32000, waited around 15 minutes and still no one answered. I gave up and asked our technical guy in my office for a direct MWeb business number. (Our company also has had major issues with MWeb, but that’s another story)

I then got hold of their reception on 021 596 8300. The lady put me through to a “team leader” in the business division, who, after scrounging around on her desk for 2 minutes to find something, told me that only “Vanessa” could help me. (021 596 7163). Vanessa’s number went straight into voicemail, so I gave up on that avenue. I called reception again, pleading for some help, and they then put me though to Gillian, who also told me that she couldn’t help me and that I must call Vanessa. I told her Vanessa wasn’t answering her phone. She then said she would get Clinton to call me back the second he gets off the phone. She logged my name, number and query, and I told her this is urgent as my clients emails are bouncing! This call ended at 11am on Tuesday.

It is now 48 hours later. I am still awaiting with baited breath for “Clinton” to give me a call.

About 10 days ago I decided to give Google Reader a full go as my RSS reader of choice. I’ve been using Bloglines for way over 2 years now, and have seen many people convert to Google Reader over the past few months.

So, I marked everything as read in Bloglines, exported the OPML file, and imported it into Google Reader. This process was pretty seamless. The only thing that bugged me was the order my feeds are listed in Bloglines is not the same in Google Reader. I’m guessing OPML does not support ordering of feeds, but this was a minor issue.

The main differences between the 2 is that when reading a feed in Google Reader, it literally feels never ending. As you continue to scroll the feed, Google Reader keeps on loading more and more posts, thus for high content feeds such as Techcrunch, you never know when you have reached the end of the un-reads without having to glance around the interface to find the number of unread posts left.

You do have the option of viewing just the updated feeds, which eliminates this problem, but then I don’t get to see a list of all my feeds in the left column.

Then there is the marking a post as read. In Bloglines, once I have clicked on a feed to view, it assumes that I will scroll down all the posts and “read” them, so it automatically marks the entire feed as read. In Google Reader, you have to literally scroll through or click on a post to mark it as read. Time consuming!

Mark all as read

I have a feeling that because of the above way Google marks feeds as read, its why people make use of the mark all feeds as read in Google. Its just too much clicking to quickly skim say 100 unread posts, where in Bloglines, I can just mark those high volume feeds as read by simply clicking on them once.

Conclusion

Apart from Bloglines also showing the favicon of each of my feeds (which adds to a sexier interface), Bloglines uses far fewer mouse movements, clicks and time to read my RSS feeds. In a world where time is money, I can quickly get to all my feeds far quicker in Bloglines than in Google Reader. Yes, I really wish Bloglines had Trends and the ability to share posts with friends like Google Reader does, but these 2 features are not enough to keep me coming back.

So, I’m sticking to Bloglines and I’m glad that this debate in my head is well and truly over! (I am glad that for once that I am able to choose a product over Google!)