MCAndre

Access Firefox is very cool. The website is maintained by Ken Saunders, who is legally blind. He is able to enjoy the web thanks to wonderful accessibility support in Firefox.

The site links to large and high contrast themes, as well as extensions that can read text out loud, mouse gestures, and web developer tools that can customize web pages for super easy viewing.

Metal Lion 300 is a cool theme that can bundle with the Metal Lion HiViz Sidebar, a tool to tweak how text is displayed.

Screenshot:

There’s also the big ass theme Kempelton Large.

I just had to try it out. And that made me look for other large themes.

My friend Josh is an Economics major. In the course of a conversation about websites he suggested, “What if Google started charging for their services?” I’m imagine huge public outcry. There would be a drop in stock, or maybe a surge upwards; people would eventually agree to pay for the awesomely high quality service they are getting now. Google search is the best. Google Calendar is great. Google Docs has Microsoft scared silly. There may even be riots in the streets, but people would eventually settle down and pay $10 a month for Google Maps. Josh would, anyway.

That’s why the website of the day is again Google. Maybe you’ve read Scroogled, a sci-fi short story set in the rather near future about Google working for counter-terrorism. In the story, any deviation in a person’s Internet traffic is considered a sign that he is a terrorist. Google could freeze our accounts while an officer examined our trail. The Goog could also hold our Docs hostage until we ponied up. However, there are subtler ways of being evil. What if Google started offering “Pro” service plans like Yahoo? They could pull back storage space, POP3, and filters, saving them time and money. Gradually, all the new stuff (they’re rolling out Mail 2.0) would be in the pro accounts and the free ones could be left to die.

If Google choose, it could visually tear down its sponsored links and have them be the first ten results for every search. We really do depend on those PhD’s in Mountain View, California. New York. Michigan. Georgia. Colorado. Massachusetts. Hong Kong. Bangalore. Mumbai. Dublin. Milan. Tokyo. Seoul. Zurich. You get the idea. The world isn’t run by Jews, little gnomes, or the CIA. And it’s not run by Google. Yet. Instead of sounding the alarm for every Google user (200 million hits per day), I’m simply calling for the time-worn act of competing. Sometime, Google will be forced apart for being a monopoly. It shouldn’t be allowed to buy YouTube, Urchin, Feedburner, Jaiku, or Pyra (Blogger). YouTube and Pyra could have made money on their own. Urchin could have simply licensed its tracking services to other companies. Jaiku, I don’t want to talk right now. I’m rooting for Twitter anyway.

Google Documents added Presentations (the equivalent of PowerPoint). See mine.

“Cat macros for every occasion.” You can view Twitter updates, Facebook, Craigslist personals, and RSS or Atom feeds in Flickr Creative Commons licensed “cute cat” pictures.

View MCAndre through lolcats.

Zooomr is still chugging along to Mark III. In the mean time, Kristopher is broadcasting at Ustream.tv, called Zooomr-TV. All the lame, stupid, funny, informative, remixable wonder of YouTube, live. Lots of users are online: the founders Brad Hunstable and John Ham, nerds like Chris Pirillo and Leo Laporte, a Parrot Cam, and even US Senator Christopher Dodd. The AskANinja ninja doesn’t have a channel yet. Best to keep his black arts secret. Neither does George Bush. Best to keep his black arts secret.

Once again, I find myself with a multiplicity of exciting accounts. I’ve got cowbell registered on the Digital Paintball test system. Scribd. MIT’s The Restaurant Game Project. Twitter. Eventually, I will have some content to contribute. Then you’ll find me at MCAndre Live!