Sage is a nice Firefox extension for reading RSS and Atom feeds. I primarily use Bloglines as my newsreader, but I find Sage is more useful for high-volume feeds like Waxy links or Google News feeds, since I can quickly glance over the headlines and look for something interesting, rather than scroll through each post as Bloglines seems to require. When activated, Sage sits as a sidebar and initially loads a page in the main browser window listing each of the items.
Sage also allows you to customize the stylesheet it uses to render the posts. I like the two-column layout in the default feed, but I decided to create my own Sage stylesheet, which I’ve uploaded here. You’ll notice that its pallette is very similar to the one I use on this blog; it has lots of earth tones. I’ve used Futura as the primary font, which isn’t particularly Web-safe, but I’ve made this for myself, so I thought I would go crazy with the type.
To use the stylesheet, download it to your machine and put it in a folder that makes sense to you. I put it in my Firefox user profile folder. Then open the preferences for Sage, check “use custom stylesheet,” and browse for the appropriate file. From now on, Sage pages should render granola-style. You can also find more stylesheets on the Sage wiki.
Living in the capital of Texas, I’m often annoyed by the misuse of the word “capitol.” Were the folks at Capitol Chevrolet absent that day in third grade when the teacher informed them that “capitol” refers to buildings while “capital” refers to cities and money? I’m not in the market to buy a car, but their poor word choice hardly makes me want to shop with them.
I guess this mistake is easy to make. A group of five designers honored this year in the National Design Awards declined an invitation to a White House breakfast in their honor. They cited the Bush adminstration’s use of design and language to distort facts as a reason to skip the event. They asked fellow designer Chip Kidd to join them in their protest, who refused. Although he shared the opinions of the designers, he said that the event was about design, not politics, adding “We were invited to recognize the National Design Awards, in our nation’s capitol, in an extraordinary building that is a cornerstone of our history.” After reading this, I tried to imagine the White House stuffed inside our nation’s capitol, but it’s clear that Kidd — whom I respect and admire — really meant “capital.”
1 Comment As a quick local note, an entry on the technology gossip blog Valleywag reveals that the third most popular search term driving traffic to Flickr is “Tamara Hoover,” the suspended Austin High teacher I’ve blogged about before. Her name ranked after “Flickr” and “Flickr.com,” but I imagine most of the users are more interested in seeing the nude pictures that got her in trouble than in supporting her cause. It’s particularly telling that the fourth most common search is for “boobs.”
Valleywag has another post that relates to Austin and Flickr. In an item about the Flickr colouring contest, it uses the entry local blogger Prentiss Riddle, without crediting the source. At first, I thought Prentiss might have used a particularly liberal license for the image, but it’s marked “all rights reserved,” so the site is just engaging in copyright infringement. Come on, Valleywag, give Prentiss some credit!
Update: Prentiss says he emailed the folks at Valleywag, and they now credit his image. Good for them.
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