I have made the palettes available in both the .ACO (Adobe Photoshop Color File) and .ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) file formats. The .ASE format may be the most widely useful across various software. Photoshop can read the .ASE format, too, but it defaults to .ACO format, so I’ve just included both.

Each color is named using the standard color coding conventions of the day. Color codes were labeled using the codes R, B, and Y for magenta, cyan, and yellow (and sometimes K for black), plus a code representing the percent of the screen used. A 2 meant a 25% screen, a 3 meant a 50% screen, and a 4 meant either a 70% or a 75% screen, depending on the publisher. A code with no number meant a 100% screen, and colors with no screen at all were omitted. Thus, a screen of 25% yellow, 50% magenta, and 100% cyan would be Y2R3B. All of the palettes include white as the first swatch (that is, zero screen of any color or black).

Enjoy them, and let me know any feedback/corrections/omissions/etc.

My conclusions? For starters, they might not even look like mini-laptops for much longer.

Hardware vendors are naturally concerned that these low-margin devices could cut into the sales of their higher-end products, so they’re looking for ways to spin them as secondary systems and “companion devices.” Look for new chips under the hood, new form factors, and even new pricing models that could send the cost of netbooks down to nothing. Click over to InfoWorld to see what I mean, and be sure to leave feedback in the comments and forums.

Do you disagree? By all means, dive into the discussion by posting comments or striking up a conversation on InfoWorld’s new forums.

The new version of the site brings more than just a sleek, modern new look. Beneath the hood it’s a complete rebuild. Out went the earlier, proprietary content-management system, replaced by Drupal, an open source CMS platform. The Online Publishing Group at IDG, in tandem with an outside Web development firm, created a fully customized Drupal installation that — for once — means InfoWorld has a technology platform that matches its content. Better yet, while the competition is still nervously worrying about the future of the publishing industry, InfoWorld is moving forward, better than ever.

I encourage everybody to check out the new site — and, especially, to jump in and participate. There are dozens of online discussion forums just waiting for your input, questions, feedback, and casual chat. This is a great opportunity to build an unprecedented online community focused on enterprise IT. Do me a favor, register on the site, and kick off new discussion topics of your own. I and the other InfoWorld editors and contributors will be checking in and joining the discussion as often as we’re able.

Congratulations to everyone at InfoWorld on a successful relaunch, and I’m looking forward to all our collaborations in the new era.

I hope everybody has a happy and safe holiday season, and a prosperous New Year. I’ll give updates on what’s going on with me after the jump.

The first thing I noticed when I was doing some routine maintenance on this site are that the traffic numbers are up — way up. December was the biggest month ever for this site in terms of the number of unique visitors, gaining more than 50 percent since the previous month. (And that’s even with no new blog posts for December!)

A lot of that traffic is going to the artwork pages, as always (links from MySpace are popular), but I’m also seeing promising gains on the RSS feeds. Not to mention that overall traffic has been gaining steadily throughout the year. December’s traffic is almost double what it was in June, and more than five times what it was in January. So thanks to everybody who has enjoyed my work and who keeps dropping in to check up on me.

Speaking of RSS feeds, you’ll notice that one has gone missing from the righthand sidebar of the site. As it happens, PC World Business Center has rethought its blogs, and it’s no longer doing the three separate blogs that I announced earlier in the year. Instead, from now on all of the Business Center blog authors will be contributing to one new, amalgamated blog called BizFeed – and that includes me.

I’ve gotten off to a little bit of a slow start because of the season, but I expect to ramp up the pace of posts as the New Year breaks. Unfortunately, however, at present there’s no way to filter the blog or its RSS feed to get just my content, if that’s what you want. That also means I won’t be publishing the RSS feed for that content on this site, either. But keep tuning in at PC World’s site — you may like what you find.

As long as we’re promising things for the New Year, I also plan to get back on track with the book reviews on this site, because some of those have proven popular through links and Google searches (and I plan to keep on reading).

Expect, also, the usual mix of features, opinion, how-to’s, and review of all things technology — and I’m planning to broaden my markets in those areas and beyond, if I can. Without the burden of a full load of classes, I’ll be able to get right back into the swing of regular writing. You’ll hear about it here as it happens.

If you’re out there reading this, what would you like to see from me on this site or elsewhere in the New Year? And what are your own plans? Post a comment and share.

Naturally I’m pleased as punch with the attention. The so-called Slashdot effect is well known, and while visitors from Slashdot have yet to bring InfoWorld’s servers to their knees, the mention is always a surefire way to bring in a lot more traffic. It’s especially great in this case, because the Slashdot audience is pretty much exactly who I had in mind when I launched the blog. I’m a longtime Slashdot junkie myself — and in fact, long before you saw any of my editorials linked on the site, you’ve probably seen my posts in the comments.

Just how long have I been hanging around Slashdot? I can’t count the years. But to give you an idea, my logon is PCM2 and my user ID is 4486. (These days, new user IDs are up to seven digits in length.)

Now you’ll all go searching through the comments to find all the dumb things I’ve said over the years. That’s fine. Hey, what can I say? It’s not like I have some kind of agenda to push, or want to use it to set myself up as some kind of “expert.” I see Slashdot as a gang of folks with whom I check in regularly, who share my passion for all things geeky. As much as people like to knock it, I think it’s been a source of great conversations over the years. (So who cares if I might have posted just a little ol’ troll once in a while? Sue me.)

BTW, don’t go looking for me in the discussion threads related to my own articles. I do read them, but I seldom post. Something just doesn’t seem right about chiming in to bicker about my own work. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like that crosses the line between trying to be an interesting and engaging commentator and just being a blowhard.

Anyhoo, as I said before, I’m glad that some of my recent ramblings seem to have captured the attention of the Slashdot audience and I look forward to all you have to say about them. I’d just like to point out that this, my own site, is a good place to find out about all of the other writing I’m doing, for InfoWorld and elsewhere. As always, I’ve got a couple of new features on the burners that might appeal to you in the coming months.

And next time you see me on Slashdot, don’t hesitate to post and say hi.