Safely back in Houston after a lonnnnggggg, lonnnnngggg 10 hour+ flight from Paris. Had a great time apart from getting sick with a bad cold/cough for the last few days, but still managed to go out despite that. Even though I was generally trashed by the afternoon.

Pictures will be up somewhere, soon. ;-)

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

Instead of relying on users to browse to the page and look for new content, RSS uses a feed of links, called an RSS Feed to identify when new content has been added to a web-site.

This allows a new breed of slim-line web browser called a News Reader. A great example is shown in the picture. NewsFire is a brilliant little application that allows users to subscribe to RSS Feeds and to continuously track when new stories become available.

For web-sites like Slashdot and Digg, which are used by many people, and have fairly unpredictable posting frequencies, a news reader allows you to read the stories when they appear, rather than fruitlessly rescanning Slashdot every 5 minutes, like some of … errrr, scratch that!!

Here’s a great post about how Google PageRank works.

In summary, the number of pages on a site adds up and gets distributed to the pages that the page links point at. So, I just contributed a small amount of page rank to web workshop. Cool.

Things you can do to improve your page rank, which governs how high your web-site appears in Google results, include planning the way you link carefully, and having plenty of content … the kind of content that other people link to.

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has reviewed the new Intel Core Duo-based iMacs.

His conclusion is that the iMac is by far the best available computer for the average user. The convenience and reliability of Mac OS X, and the brilliant design of the Apple / Intel hardware make this a machine that’s a pleasure both to own and to use.

Will I hope the tobacco-chewin’, duct-tapin’, gear-jammin’ hillbillies of Numb… sorry NASCAR are happy. My highly enjoyable ‘Legends of Motorsport‘ on Speed was pre-empted again. The upcoming schedule looks great, with the Alpine Rally, Niarobi Rally, Le Mans all coming on.

For those who haven’t watched it, the program features a varied set of archive footage with either updated commentary or the commentary of the day. many times the old commentary is absolutely hilarious. My favourite so far has been a deadpan Tony Pond racing a Nissan against the much more powerful cars of larger factory teams.

When interviewed and asked whether, like the other drivers, he would be off to warm baths and masseurs, the laconic Pond merely replied that he just ‘fancied a cup of tea’. Understated by highly able guy.