Just for fun this weekend, Keanna and I decided we were going to record something and send it to Grandpa Dad. I used OdeoStudio to record the mp3 in the browser and used PodPress to post the media here on the blog. It’s only 28 secs but you can tell we were having fun.

Listen Now:

 Message to dad from Keanna [0:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater is ready for download and as I was getting ready to update my software, I wanted to find out what everyone else thought of it and what issues they encountered with it, if any. In my experience, something is affected every time you have one of these updaters, especially if you do a lot of settings customization in Dreamweaver or use lots of extensions. I wanted to be prepared. Anyway, my first trip was over to Tom Muck’s blog where he does talk about how it may affect some of his extensions using dynamic SQL strings. Thanks Tom, that was great but I felt safe there since I like to write my own coldfusion code doing a lot of manual coding instead of using a lot of the server behaviors in DW and even though I love what InterAKT has done with their time-saving extensions, I haven’t yet tried them in real life projects. Another source of info about possible post-updater issues can be found at community mx. Tom Green’s tip is a vital one when you publish a lot of swf as I do.

I did get the updater and things went a little smoother this time, however, I will always be fond of the light-weight homesite/CF Studio to work with coldfusion code.

It’s been a while since I browsed Amazon to check out some items from my wishlist. I took a detour and visited the amazon web services blog to find out what cool things I can experiment with now that I have downloaded my Flex 2.0 beta 3 from the Adobe Labs and got very curious about this new service Amazon is trying to pitch lately. The service is called Amazon Mechanical Turk and it is extremely interesting concept of gathering user interaction data and user preferences and opinions. I think it could be very useful to create HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks ) and take the time to analyze a human response to a particular application task, web design or even an online course design feature.

If you are a web designer, chances are that you already have your favorite source for royalty-free or even rights-managed stock photography. However, it doesn’t hurt to see what is on the horizon. A new stock image source is scheduled to launch in August of 2006 from the UK. Ourstockworks promises to deliver to designers and to photographers great service and affordable prices. For now, they’re giving you a free image when you pre-register. I’m always up for original artsy images.