I subscribed for a time to the Stumpers mailing list, hosted by the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Dominican University since 1992. I unsubscribed because the email provider I was using (Mailblocks) got bought by an evil company (AOL) who integrated its features into their email service and then threw it out. I’m happily using Gmail now, but that’s neither here nor there.

It took me awhile to resubscribe, and when I tried the other day I found out that Stumpers has become mysteriously defunct. There’s no explanation on their webpage as to what happened, which was frustrating, but eventually I found out from Phil Bradley that Stumpers still exists, if in a different incarnation.

Project Wombat is a much cooler name, in any case, and offers the same expertise for which Stumpers had long been known. Perhaps the best part, if you simply have a question that you need answered, is that you can post your question to the list without being a subscriber. But make sure you read their posting guidelines before you do. Think of it as helping them help you; and believe me, they are quite helpful.

There’s not a whole lot to say about Subversive Cross Stitch, really. I think the site pretty much speaks for itself. If you’re easily offended, you probably shouldn’t look at it. But I hope you’re not, because I think it’s one of the greatest things ever. (from dooce)

RSSPECT is a new offering from Ryan North, allowing anybody on any site to serve up warm, savory feeds for their devoted readers. Its tagline is “Syndication made simple.” and it certainly seems to offer up the goods. Ryan, who previously released Oh No Robot, a free search engine service for webcomics, focuses his attention mainly on projects for the webcomics community. Even so, the products themselves are solid, and RSSPECT particularly is useful for any site that would like to offer RSS services.

With RSSPECT, all you have to do is add some markup tags to your website, and you can be syndicating your content instantly. There’s no fees, no programming, and no hassle. You don’t have to install any software, and you can create as many feeds as you want. We take the sucky parts out of RSS.

We’ll check your website automatically, and when there’s new content, it’ll be added to your RSS feed. You control what gets added to the feed and what doesn’t. And you can always log in to add, update, or delete posts by hand, if you want. You have complete control.

It doesn’t stop there. We give you the tools to publicize your feed automatically, and the code that allows your readers add your feed to their Google homepages, to their MSN accounts, to AOL, to Yahoo - the list goes on. We’ve done the hard work so you won’t have to.

NYTimes.com, the online portal to the New York Times, wrote a letter to its readers on Sunday describing the redesign of their site. Among the new features are improved navigation and an up-to-the minute “most popular” section. Also added is a tab that takes you to articles as they appeared in the newspaper. In a word, their page has become more interactive, customizable, up-to-date, and functional. With all that function, I hope they don’t forget they have to keep posting news.

We also wanted to give our readers a greater voice and sprinkle a little more serendipity around the site by providing prominent links to a list of most e-mailed and blogged articles, most searched for information and popular movies. A new tab at the top of the page takes you directly to all our most popular features.

Apple has announced the Boot Camp Public Beta. Set to be included in the next OS X release: Leopard, Boot Camp allows Mac users to run Microsoft Windows on their Mac. Essentially, they’re offering Mac drivers for the Windows platform. Even so, they have to get in their anti-Windows quips:

EFI and BIOS

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.