Your house, like mine, probably consists of entries, rooms, hallways, closets, and miscellaneous items to help us run our daily lives. When you open the bathroom door, you expect a toilet, not a wandering herd of donkeys in gorilla costumes.

I’d say a good 99% of us like our homes to be laid out in such a way as to enhance our everyday living – we expect and/or require them to have some modicum of functionality.

Web sites should be the same way. Even a visitor who’s never been to the site before should immediately get a feel for where they are, where they can go, and what information will be waiting for them when they navigate away from their current spot.

My question is: Why do so many architects have dysfunctional websites?

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Do you think you can get a robot on the moon for under 20 mil? Then you might want to try for the Lunar X Prize for First Robot on the Moon. The project is spearheaded by the X Prize Foundation and the prize money — 20 million bucks to the 1st place team, 30 million in total awards — will come out of Google’s pocket.

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Finally. The New York Times Online will no longer require readers to subscribe to most of its content.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve googled for some news story and clicked on a promising result from the NYT Online, only to have to have my way barred by “you must be registered to view this article” or some such similar nonsense.

Under the old system, readers had to pay roughly 50 bucks a year to get their dose of the NYT online. Now they will only charge for a selection of archives between 1923 and 1986.

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Some time ago a friend invited to Goodreads, another one of these social networking sites where you open an account, add your friends, blah blah blah. As the name implies, this site targets a pretty strictly defined audience: bibliophiles. It’s a tool for book lovers to share their passion with their bookwormy peers — you can rate and review books and read through your friends rants or recommendations.

At the time, I wasn’t interested in adding yet another social networking site to my repertoire. Now that Facebook has a Goodreads app, I’m coming around. The app’s actions within Facebook are somewhat limited (Facebook directs you back to the Goodreads site to do anything more than rating a book), but it keeps my virtual bookshelves handy, and I secretly hope it guilts my friends into joining it too.

Current known competitors: Shelfari (I’ve heard the navigation isn’t up to snuff), Revish (which looks to be more text and less visuals), and LibraryThing (still in beta but doesn’t look bad).

I’m planning on using it to stay in touch with book group members while we’re all off reading the book of the month.

“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” - Bertrand Russell

(Note to Austin — I think any one who reads Ulysses reads it for the latter reason…am I wrong? )

So you’ve bought the iPhone. Now you have to inform everyone your number has changed.

Or do you?

Not if you have a Grand Central phone number. The new web-based service will allow you to sign up for one number that you keep for life. It’s a pretty sweet service and as of this writing, it’s free, unless you have a gajillion phone numbers to unite. (more…)

“E-mail” and “email” have been duking it out over the past few years….and it looks like “email” is winning.You can read all about it at the Email Experience Council.

Looks like some people are pretty passionate about this subject. If you are part of this crowd, you can voice your displeasure about hyphen abuse and sign the anti-hyphen petition!

So long, “e-mail,” and thanks for all the spam!

(No disrespect to that venerable Minnesota meat product we all know and love)

Thanks for the reference, Annie.

My new addiction is Web Boggle.

I need to assuage my guilt by getting others to join my addiction.

Best time to play is early in the morning, when the competition isn’t so steep. I can get in the top ten if I play before 6 a.m. Apparently you can form teams that play on separate computers.

It’s good exercise for the brain and fingers, right??

April 22^nd marks the 35^th Anniversary of Earth Day. Raise your awareness and Get Your Green On:

#1) Calculate your ecological footprint at Earth Day Network to find out how many planets it would take to sustain 6.5 billion clones of yourself.

Apparently I’m not doing so well:

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 4.1 PLANETS.

#2) Learn about sustainability initiatives in the IT industry at the Green Grid:

“The Need for Datacenters to Go Green

Until recently, electiricy usage wasn’t a major IT concern. In fact, the electricity costs for running and cooling computers generally wasn’t even considered part of the IT budget. Servers didn’t draw much power and their density in datacenters wasn’t significant enough to create any concern. All that has changed with the nonstop growth of the Internet and the world’s businesses, governments, and other institutions filling up rack after rack with more powerful servers to keep up with the growth….”

Read the full article here (and watch out for typos).

#3) Stay current with green tech news and updates at the Green Technology Blog, like David Filo’s comments on Yahoo’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality.