A long-time friend just called to wish me a happy New Year — literally. He’s in Sydney and said he just saw the most spectacular fireworks display; this was happening in the background as we spoke.

I hope you, too, have a good New Year’s as well — and may you and I avoid the banned words and phrases of 2004. (The official list has now been announced.)

You can call him Sir: the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee gets knighted (via Tom Gilder).

Stumbled across this while reading an item in Whitespace: “A Survey of System Development Process Models.” The report explains different ways to develop software (or Web-based) projects. Some I recognize all to well…

Because my day job is at a financial site, I am constantly working with tables to layout out the reams of data produced. Properly marked-up, though, tables can be surprisingly stylish.

Tom Dell’Aringa details his troubles with dashed borders, proving once again standards only work when everyone agrees what to do.