Blog, the tool I use to edit and manage this weblog, recently graduated to version 6.0. Without evangelizing too much, this version now does everything Blogger can do, with new features allowing multiple and/or remote authors (community blog, blog from work, etc). One thing it has that Blogger doesn’t: in-line spell check that works. A few things it lacks: load times, downtime, deluged developers — in fact, all but one of the suggestions or wishes I’ve ever made to Fahim, the developer, has ended up in a release version. The one is because I only fired off the suggestion this morning. Another thing it currently lacks, sadly, is platform portability. But if you’re on Windows and are looking for an alternative, you really should at least try it out. Thus endeth the pledge drive.

Something interesting popped out at me while reading a story on the Florida governor’s primary. At the top of the fifth paragraph, when referring to a Florida state senator, Yahoo News offers links to searches on that individual, as they have done for quite some time. Afterward, however, they now also offer a link to his complete voting record, as provided by a partner site. I cannot gush enough to do justice to this insanely great idea. This simple notion is in one stroke why hypertext was invented, why I hope it prevails as the primary news medium, and even has the potential to improve our society by creating that many more informed citizens.

With a firm </gush>, I have only one comment on Yahoo News’ redesign, aside from ‘fixing what wasn’t broken:’ Arial is evil, and must be destroyed. I count the little non-living typographical beastie among my few enemies, and yes, that makes me weird, and no, I don’t care.