It wasn't that long ago that having a blog was hip, trendy, wicked cool. Now it's more like "You don't have a blog? What's *wrong* with you?". Well, maybe not, but it seems to me that the best way for a blogger to be on the cutting edge anymore is to have a certified 'Guest Blogger'. Or is it? Let's say that a guest blogger is, for all intents and purposes, the same as a guest star on a television show - a good sign that a show is about to jump the shark. You know, Nancy Reagan on Diff'rent Strokes, Estelle Getty on Empty Nest, Bill Gates on Frasier, Don Knotts on Scooby Do. They were all brought in to help save the show, inject it with some life and increase the overall hipness/celebrity factor. Well, maybe not Don Knotts. At any rate, I think that all of the guest blogging going on nowadays is nothing more than the 21st century version of the guest star. You've been warned.

My point is nothing more than a pledge to you, avid reader. A pledge that you will never have to endure the ramblings of a Guest Blogger on coinz.org. Ever.

I've been a fan and devoted user of tabbed browsing for the last four years, thanks to NetCaptor - the first to provide a tabbed browsing feature. While I still use NetCaptor, I am glad to see that browsing experience enhancements such as tabbed browsing and mouse gesturing have found their way into the base feature-set of many of today's hottest browsers (Firebird, Opera, Safari, etc.). While some view Microsoft's announcement that they will not be providing general upgrades to Internet Explorer 6.01 and it's abandonment of the Mac platform altogether as the death knoll for web development progress, I feel that now is the time for the aforementioned browsers to really hone in on user needs, enhance their base feature sets (in the form of RSS reading capabilities, client-side XML/XSL processing, etc.) and work with web standards organizations to continue progress and innovation.

Looking for something creative and fun to work on in July? Well, here are 26 Things to keep you busy.

No doubt you've heard about the promising, "can't live without it" future of radio frequency identification tags (RFID) - streamlined shopping experiences, instantaneous checkouts, interactive payment transactions, etc. For those that haven't, RFID tags (also known as smart tags) are disposable microchips that are set to replace bar codes on most, if not all, product packaging. The official party-line is that the widespread depoyment of RFIDs will result in a number of productivity enhancements to corporate supply and demand chains and an enhanced customer experience. Manufacturers win, suppliers win, customers win, everyone wins... right?

Not likely. What if I told you that there is a chance that RFID tags could make the prices we pay for certain items go up? That is apparently going to be the case with electronics that have replaceable accessories. Since RFIDs can be read wirelessly, electronic equipment can interrogate them to find out a number of interesting tidbits about the host product - manufacturer included. Lexmark, maker of home and office printers and accessories, is currently placing RFID tags on toner cartridges to require consumers to purchase Lexmark-branded replacement toners.

Lexmark recently won a lawsuit against a generic toner manufacturer, riding the coattails of the much despised DMCA, involving the unauthorized reproduction of Lexmark RFID tag stamps. Lawsuits of this magnitude typically elicit trends. As such, Kodak's next generation cameras will only function properly using Kodak RFID-tagged film. the list is sure to grow... And we all know what happens to prices when a single manufacturer dictates what supporting products are used. Is anyone else smelling antitrust?