Short week = short post

I'll be attending the International Radio & Television Society Faculty/Industry conference in New York this week, so we'll meet on Monday but not Wednesday and Friday. Please use those free times to continue to work on your web sites. Remember, your site should reflect what you know about web standards, usability, accessibility, and must make use of an external CSS.

Now, for breaking news of note...

• Microsoft released a beta version of their search engine. Note the "near me" localization feature. I'm sure that Google is shaking in its boots! :-) BTW, yesterday Google announced that the number of pages that it indexes doubled to nearly 8 billion.
• The free, open-source Mozilla browser is now out of beta and available for download. Get Firefox here! According to Rebecca Leib, "Their community-generated Spread Firefox (SFX) campaign, launched less than two months ago, is already one of the watershed campaigns in interactive marketing history. It's helped generate over a million downloads per day since Firefox went out of beta on Tuesday; registered over 25,000 volunteer marketers; encouraged about 100,000 Web sites to display promotional buttons and banners; generated wall-to-wall coverage in the blogosphere and mainstream media; and raised a quarter of a million dollars for a full-page ad in The New York Times."
• Apple and U2 are teaming up to release a black iPod featuring U2's music. Buyers will be given a $50 discount towards the download of "The Complete U2" collection ($149 for 400 tunes). Don't worry, you'll still have room for another 4,600 songs!
• Halo 2 went on sale this week and racked up $125 million in its first day, "making it the biggest single-day debut in entertainment history, eclipsing even Hollywood's loftiest box-office premieres."