Nigel Cunningham submitted his suspend2 patches [story] to the lkml for review and inclusion into Andrew Morton [interview]'s -mm tree [story]. Jens Axboe summarized the current roadblocks to merging suspend2, "now I haven't followed the suspend2 vs swsusp debate very closely, but it seems to me that your biggest problem with getting this merged is getting consensus on where exactly this is going. Nobody wants two different suspend modules in the kernel. So there are two options - suspend2 is deemed the way to go, and it gets merged and replaces swsusp. Or the other way around - people like swsusp more, and you are doomed to maintain suspend2 outside the tree."

Greg KH pointed out that the current focus with swsusp is to move the functionality from the kernel into userspace, called uswsusp, "Pavel and others have a working implementation and are slowly moving toward adding all of the 'bright and shiny' features that is in suspend2 to it (encryption, progress screens, abort by pressing a key, etc.) so that there is no loss of functionality." Nigel countered that only some of swsusp is being moved to userland, adding, "and there _is_ loss of functionality - uswsusp still doesn't support writing a full image of memory, writing to multiple swap devices (partitions or files), or writing to ordinary files. They're getting the low hanging fruit, but when it comes to these parts of the problem, they're going to require either smoke and very good mirrors (eg the swap prefetching trick), or simply refuse to implement them." Pavel Machek, maintainer of swsusp and uswsusp, replied item by item to Nigel's list of suspend2 advantages noting that uswsusp now has or soon will have the same capabilities. It was further noted that the submitted patches will need to be consolidated into logical pieces and resubmitted for proper review.

• Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Japan Division
  This all-Japanese site is slated for a mild content reorganization and 'engine swap', moving it to the ExpressionEngine platform for content management.
• Christ Memorial Church of Holland, MI
  This project - complete site makeover, also moving to the ExpressionEngine platform - is currently under development.
• Haven Church of Kalamazoo, MI
  Haven Church has engaged Boyink Interactive to perform some research and internet ministry strategy development to define goals for their presence on the web.

• Upgraded to ExpressionEngine 1.4.2
• Deleted the ability to phone stories in - no one had used it and it was costing me $5/mo.
• Reimplemented the navigation tabs to be bigger and centered
• Pulled the first 100 words or so of the latest story to the home page.
• Pulled recent comments to the home page and other 'non-story pages'
• Changed most of the list icons, and added other icons from the Silk Icons set
• Added a 'social bookmark this story' link that allows people to submit the story to different social bookmarking sites.

• FAQ/Help Section with guidance on what to write, how to write, etc
• Author 'badge' - a graphic for story authors to post on their own site (since most seem to be bloggers as well).
• Print style sheet

Looking at Alexa, we can definitely see a trend:

Alexa might be contested, however. And, speaking of trends, Google Trends tells us a similar thing, this time with respect to Google search volume:

slashdot    digg   

Remember the days when 'getting Slashdotted' was every sysadmin's worst nightmare? Referrals from the 'News for Nerds' website would send so much traffic to websites that many crashed. But for those that survived the flood, it was the online equivalent of a papal benediction. Today, the buzz has moved elsewhere. Slashdot's editor-driven story selection model is being supplanted by user-generated systems such as Digg. According to recent Alexa data, Digg already has more daily reach and generates more page views than Slashdot. Malda knows his subject, and he's a good editor, but in the end, he's just no match for the power of the multitudes.

To its credit, Slashdot ran this item, filing it in the 'ouch-that-hurts' department.
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If you like keeping an eye on how your site is doing in various areas you probably already use tools like the W3C's validator services and Alexa's Traffic Rankings, just to mention a few. But there are many other tools and services that let you study interesting trends, statistics, and technical facts for your site. In fact there are so many that it's hard to keep track of all of them, which is where The Scrutinizer comes in handy.

The Scrutinizer was created by Rosano Coutinho and is a service that allows you to analyze, assess and validate any link using various tools and testers on the web.

I spent some time having fun by feeding the URL of this site to most of the services The Scrutinizer links to. The actual value of several services is questionable, and a couple unfortunately seem to be defunct. Of the services that were new to me, my favourite is UrlTrends, which displays ranking and link popularity trends for a page.

Do you know of any other useful online tools or testers?

Add this to del.icio.us, Digg this, or Seed this. Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.

Posted in:

• Quicklinks
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Web Standards

This picture was taken on Saturday in Titusville, Florida. If you look closely, you'll see the space shuttle not taking off in the background as thousands of people watch with excited anticipation along the banks of the Indian River, 19 miles across the water from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center.

I'm standing in a field on U.S. 1 just south of the Miracle City Mall, which the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide recommends as one of the best places to not see the shuttle take off:

If you can't get a launch pass I suggest you come to Titusville. Go east on State Road 50 from I-95, to US-1. Go north on US-1 to the 'Miracle City Mall' at Harrison. Park somewhere north of this spot. Anywhere north along highway 1, or east (as far as you can) along highway 406 (402) is good (specifically Sand Point Park), just as long as you can see the VAB and don't have trees blocking the view.

Because another disaster would mean the end of the program, I dragged the kids on one of those 'memory of a lifetime' moments when parents force their children to enjoy something under protest, like the time in 1981 my siblings and I were subjected to a live performance of the Gatlin Brothers.

Traffic was horrible on Interstate 95 between the scheduled launch, the Pepsi 400 race in Daytona and July 4 weekend vacationers. After the shuttle was declared a no-go because of gathering storm clouds, the three-mile drive back out of Titusville took an hour.

The family will never forget the time we spent six hours in the car to stand spend 45 minutes in a weed-filled vacant lot.

On Sunday, we saw the launch from Butler Beach south of St. Augustine, which looked like a lot like this picture from Canova Beach to the south of the cape. This was a thrilling experience that left hundreds of beachgoers awestruck -- especially if miraculous feats of human engineering make you weepy.

But next time around, I'm going to get close enough for the launch to shake loose a few fillings.
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This phone has brought web access to a remote South Carolina campground and now the interstate highway system, leaving the bathroom as my last safe haven from total connectivity.

The SPH-A920 connects to the laptop's USB port and acts like a dial-up modem, requiring a call to one of my ISP's access numbers. The claimed speed of 230.4 Kbps seems like wishful thinking -- I'm getting one page load of web traffic per half-mile, and the connection dropped a few times as we zoomed through the Sumter National Forest. But the phone was fast enough for me to read the news and update the Drudge Retort.

When I first attempted to hook up the modem, Windows XP wouldn't install it without a driver. Sprint didn't include a CD and there weren't any A920 drivers available from the Sprint or Samsung support sites. The problem was fixed when I ran Connection Manager for Sprint PCS, a free download that installed the driver after a reboot while the phone was disconnected.

I routinely drop phones on hard surfaces, so without Sprint's blog-swag program I wouldn't have tried an expensive phone that offers live TV, music downloads, games, a camera and decent web access. After using this one on the road, I'm sweating the prospect of my free review period ending in a matter of days.

If I can't resist the urge to take the phone to the bathroom, I won't provide such a high-resolution photograph.
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