Bikeshed. An old one and a good one, and just a reminder of how boring life could be without bikeshed discussions.

Slice the cheese. More choices mean more freedom and more quality. Except when people are involved. Barry Schwartz on The Paradox of Choice. Well worth your 20 minutes.

(Slice the cheese is what I say when people start debating possibilities instead of taking some action. You can spend an hour debating which cheese will go with your salty cracker and wine. Or you can just pick one and cut yourself a slice. If you could really tell the difference, you would be slicing it now. If you can’t tell the difference, it doesn’t matter which one you slice.)

Microsoft locking out its customers? In its quest to embrace and extend all things Web, Microsoft is working on a new feature. When the networks goes down, Windows stops working. They call it “Genuine Advantage”, but really we all know Apple is paying Microsoft employees to secretly develop this features.

Gliffy. Wow. I only played with it for a few minutes, not enough to write a full review, but it impressed me out of my socks. I expected Gliffy to prove that you just can’t do serious desktop apps with AJAX. What I found is a slick service that requires no learning, has all the diagramming features I need, and produces cool looking graphics. And, get this, it has revision history!

It’s not Visio, but then I can’t justify paying for Visio, and so do most people who diagram with PowerPoint or Word clipart. Enough said. So if you want diagrams that look better than pre-school finger paintings, check it out.

(One downsize. You just can’t do this in JavaScript, it’s all Flash. So it’s still a desktop app of sorts, one that loads in a browser, but without the usefulness of a Web app)

The most fucked up language … is PHP.