It’s pretty rare that books make the news anyway (this doesn’t count): the last time a book there was this level of popular interest in a literary character was (this doesn’t count either) probably when Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in 1903. So it’s great to live through something that probably won’t be repeated for quite some time.

So here’s to Harry and the Gang, and thank you to Jo Rowling for bringing them to us! (the picture above has been tested by independent experts and guaranteed to make you go “awww”)

And oh, some wicked Muggles have even put up pre-embargo reviews of Deathly Hallows (no major spoilers in there). I took the opportunity to put down some of my predictions for Book 7 as well.

• Digg Direct - links directly to the stories, instead of wasting your time with Digg’s comments page (Python source).
• BBC’s 10 Things We Didn’t Know Last Week - they have their own feed, but it isn’t full-text. This one is (’source’).
• Archie Comic of the Day (Python source)
• The Joy of Tech Comic - they have an RSS feed, but it doesn’t have images (Python source).

Update: added links to source code.

Now, the thing is lots of other phones have decent browsers — many phones run Opera, for example, or at least the Opera Mini. And with reasonable data plans becoming increasingly common, it definitely makes sense to get your site ready for mobile browsing.

I used a media="handheld" stylesheet declaration on this site, but that wasn’t very well supported. So here’s a better solution that requires very little work, if you run Wordpress:

1. Get the Wordpress Mobile Edition plugin and install it. This will create a wp-mobile.php file in your Wordpress plugins folder, and a wp-mobile folder in your Wordpress themes folder.
2. Open wp-mobile.php in a text editor and search for the word 'iPhone'.
3. If you don’t find it (I’m sure it’ll be added as soon as the user-agent string is confirmed) add this text exactly as shown (without double quotes) somewhere in the middle of the list of browser user-agents:  " ,'iPhone' " (search for the text 'small_browsers' to find this list). When you’re done, save the file.
4. Optional — you can also tweak your site’s mobile appearance by going into the wp-mobile folder (under your Wordpress themes folder) and editing the files there (mainly index.php). Some knowledge of PHP is required, but you can avoid the PHP and modify only the HTML inside the file.
5. Test your mobile site using the Opera Mini applet, iPhoney (if you’re on a Mac) or even a real iPhone ;-). Emulators for most other phone browsers are also available.

The other advantage of a mobile-ready version of your blog is that mobile versions tend to very accessible and compact. Most accessible browsers already support disabling stylesheets, images, etc, but they still have to load other text, such as blogrolls, sidebars, etc. You could use the wp-mobile theme along with a theme switcher that would allow users to switch to a compact, accessible version if they wish.

The stories, (mostly?) all written before the novel, foreshadow the excellent intermingling of dry wit – and surrealism and darkness – that made Strange so popular. Strongly recommended to Strange fans and to all those curious about all the fuss but unwilling to pick up an 800-page tome.

And to give you some idea of what you’re getting into, here are some examples. Clarke’s writing tends to combine finely crafted prose with droll humour, and these extracts demonstrate both.

This extract is from On Lickerish Hill (a retelling of the Tom Tit Tot/Rumpelstiltskin folktale), where the narrator is crying because she has to spin five skeins of flax every night for a month for her husband, on pain of death; and a Pharisee (fairy) appears to ask her why.

So I told him my historie, beginning with the pies (which were so curiouslie small) and ending with the five skeines of flax. “For the truth is, Pharisee,” sayz I, “that my naturall Genius inclines not at all to brewing or baking cakes or spinning or anie of those things, but to Latin, Greeke and the study of Antiquities and I can no more spinne than flie.”

The Pharisee consider’d my Dilemma. “This is what I’ll doe,” it sayz at last. “I’ll come to your windowe ev’ry morning an’ take the flax an’ bring it back spun at night.”

“Oh, a hundred thousand thankes!” sayz I. “’Tis a very generous turne you doe me. But then, you know, I have alwaies heard that Pharisees doe wonderful kind thinges and never ask for pay of anie sorte or anie thinge in returne.”

“You heerd that, did you?” sayz the little black thinge, a-scritch-scritch-scratching of his armpit. “Well, woman, you heerd wrong.”

“Oh!” sayz I.

The Pharisee look’t at me out of the corners of its little blacke eyes and sayz, “I’ll give you three guesses ev’ry night to guess my name an’ if you ain’t guessed it afore the month’s up, Woman, you shall be mine!”

“Well then”, sayz I, “I thinke I shall discover it in a month.”

“You thinke so, doe you?” sayz the Pharisee and laugh’t and twirl’d its taile. “What be the names o’ they old dogges?”

“Oh!” sayz I. “That I doe know. Those dogges are called Plato, Socrates and Euclid. Sir John told me.”

“Noo, they ain’t,” sayz the Pharisee, “One on ’em’s called Wicked. The other un’s Worse an’ the third’s Worst-of-all. They told me themselves.”

“Oh!” sayz I.

“Happen,” sayz the Pharisee with great satisfaction, “you don’t know yer own name.”

“’Tis Miranda Sloper,” sayz I. “. . . I meane Sowreston.”

“Woman,” sayz the Pharisee laughing, “You shall be mine.”

This extract is from Tom Brightwind or How the Fairy Bridge Was Built at Thoresby, where Jewish physician David Montefiore is riding to Lincolnshire with his friend, the powerful Fairy Prince Tom Brightwind, who has several grandchildren. And Clarke’s fairies are not quite your cuddly, lovable Peter-Pan-style fairies.

So the horses were fetched from the stables, and David and Tom got on them. They had not gone far before David began.

“Who?” asked Tom, not much interested.

“The Princesses Igraine, Nimue, Elaine and Morgana.”

“Oh! Yes, I sent them to live in . . . What do you call that wood on the far side of Pity-Me? What is the name that you put upon it? No, it escapes me. Anyway, there.”

“But eternal banishment!” cried David in horror. “Those poor girls! How can you bear the thought of them in such torment?”

“I bear it very well, as you see,” said Tom. “But thank you for your concern. To own the truth, I am thankful for any measure that reduces the number of women in my house. David, I tell you, those girls talk constantly. Obviously, I talk a great deal too. But then I am always doing things … So naturally I have a great deal to say. But those girls do nothing. Absolutely nothing! A little embroidery, a few music lessons. Oh! and they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married.”

First, this is not applicable to LCDs — the backlighting on LCD displays uses energy no matter what colors you use on the screen. The good news is that LCD displays use far less energy than CRTs do, completely eliminating the need for display hacks. LCD monitors are still not ubiquitous in India, so if you wish to save energy you should probably buy one.

Second, Blackle wasn’t launched by Google. A quick look at its About Page would have told IBN that. Or a whois check. Apparently a “Google Custom Search” logo is enough to confuse IBN’s tech reporters. Good to see that India’s mainstream media continues to remain cheerfully clueless about technology reporting.

(Update: IBN has now corrected the story. See the screen-grab if you want to see the original.)

… Google Reader, which will add a green download button to the user interface. When you click the button, Reader will download the last 2,000 messages to your computer, preparing your computer to work offline or under a spotty internet connection.

As I’ve written before, offline capabilities are an important step towards making the Web a truly ubiquitous platform. Wifi is still not everywhere, and it’d be great if browsers were useful when you are away from an IP tone.

The next logical step would be for browser vendors to get their act together and bake this into the browser. The last thing I need is a bunch of different “lite” SQL databases and replication engines consuming cycles in the background.

PS. Windows users take note — Arial looks a lot like Helvetica, but isn’t.