A 40GB iPod? 
Just when I think I've made up my mind about buying an iPod, a curve ball gets thrown at me. Rumor has that Apple is cooking up a 40GB version, albeit with few (if any) additional bells or whistles. Not exactly sure what I'd do with 40GB, but I'm guessing that something would find it's way into that space.
Muse.net 1.0 is live
Muse.net came out of beta today, with version 1.0 being released with little fanfare outside of an e-mail from Ian Rogers to a select list and a website redesign (web standards free, I'm afraid). At any rate, if you haven't guessed by now, I'm pretty high on this service. I've been using it for months now and am not quite sure what I'd do if I couldn't listen to my music wherever I was as easily as Muse.net allows me to. It's the future, so I suggest you get there.
NewsMonster beta
NewsMonster.org has released a beta version of their NewsMonster RSS feed management software. The tool advertises support for offline browsing, content extraction from any website, standards compliance and cross-platform operability. NewsMonster is Mozilla-based, meaning that you need a copy of Mozilla 1.0 or Netscape 7.0.
The thing that got me interested is NewsMonster's PDA support - I've been toying with PDA RSS readers of late and haven't found one that really works for me. Maybe this is it?
The thing that got me interested is NewsMonster's PDA support - I've been toying with PDA RSS readers of late and haven't found one that really works for me. Maybe this is it?
More blogging tools than you can shake a stick at
Adrian Frost has returned to the Web and brought BlogWorks XML back with him. BlogWorks XML is an Microsoft ASP-based weblogging tool that provides (yet another) simple and easy way to publish your own blog. If you have access to an Microsoft IIS server, can't use/don't like PHP, don't like any of the other tools out there or just dare to be different, give this one a shot.
On the other hand, Dean Allen's PHP/mySQL-based TextPattern just entered beta testing and looks very promising. So promising that co][nz.org may be taking the plunge soon...
On the other hand, Dean Allen's PHP/mySQL-based TextPattern just entered beta testing and looks very promising. So promising that co][nz.org may be taking the plunge soon...
Let the Blogging Wars begin
Well, by now you know that Google has purchased Blogger (not soon enough - Blogger's Pro service has absolutely rotted in the last few days, wreaking havoc with this site). At any rate, what you may now know is that Microsoft has entered the blogging-tool space, unveiling a number of "sample" applications built on top of ASP.NET at VSLive! a week ago, one of them being a blogging tool. Let the Blogging Wars begin.
Web site optimization
A new book recently hit the shelves promising to help reduce the size and complexity of your website to maximize its overall speed. While I have yet to read it in it's entirety, Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization deals with with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, graphic and multimedia optimization. As such, it's more suited to those that are less technically inclined than those that are. At any rate, this book is not a bad reference to have around, although I still prefer Lynda Weinman's web design related books.
Is everything reversible?
Well, a new meme is off and running and I figured I'd better not miss a beat. reversible.org is a 'newish' website that captures and catalogs referer information from websites linking to it. Let's say that I'm a Boston Celtics fan (because I am) and I want to let reversible.org know. http://reversible.org/ilike/sports/basketball/bostonceltics. That's all it takes. One little link. Clicking through that link will cause reversible.org to link back to me and whomever else who likes the Boston Celtics (presuming that they link to the exact same URL).
Therein lies the catch - mental models that drive URL taxonomy, nomenclature and vocabulary vary between users. For instance, my brother likes the Celtics as well, but his link to reversible.org might be something like http://reversible.org/ilike/sports/bostonceltics or maybe http://reversible.org/sports/bostoncelticsrule. You get the picture.
So what are the chances that the folks at reversible.org are going to mine this data to begin providing some sort of context between these differring mental models, analyze trends, developing "interest clouds" and the like? This is a very cool idea and, for the most part, the data mining possibilities are boundless.
At any rate, back to propagating the meme:
http://reversible.org/winegard
http://reversible.org/coinz
http://reversible.org/weblogs/coinz
http://reversible.org/aifia
http://reversible.org/ilike/movies/apocalypsenow
http://reversible.org/ilike/music/radiohead
http://reversible.org/ihate/cats
http://reversible.org/ihate/pigeons
http://reversible.org/drugsarebadmkay
Therein lies the catch - mental models that drive URL taxonomy, nomenclature and vocabulary vary between users. For instance, my brother likes the Celtics as well, but his link to reversible.org might be something like http://reversible.org/ilike/sports/bostonceltics or maybe http://reversible.org/sports/bostoncelticsrule. You get the picture.
So what are the chances that the folks at reversible.org are going to mine this data to begin providing some sort of context between these differring mental models, analyze trends, developing "interest clouds" and the like? This is a very cool idea and, for the most part, the data mining possibilities are boundless.
At any rate, back to propagating the meme:
http://reversible.org/winegard
http://reversible.org/coinz
http://reversible.org/weblogs/coinz
http://reversible.org/aifia
http://reversible.org/ilike/movies/apocalypsenow
http://reversible.org/ilike/music/radiohead
http://reversible.org/ihate/cats
http://reversible.org/ihate/pigeons
http://reversible.org/drugsarebadmkay
Hi-powered broadband
A small outage last night with my service provider kept the site offline for 6 hours or so. Apologies on their behalf, but they have been excellent hosts to date
On the subject of service providers, I recently read that broadband internet access may soon be delivered from a power company near you. In a former life, I worked as a consultant for a large midwest utility on a work management/customer service application integration project. Given the hot topics of bundled ancillary services and single bill at the time, we hosted a brainstorming session with a few of the energy company executives. Broadband over power lines came up, and was basically scoffed at. That was in 1996 - funny how times have changed. Could it be that one of the slowest moving of the industry dinosaurs is finally awakening?
On the subject of service providers, I recently read that broadband internet access may soon be delivered from a power company near you. In a former life, I worked as a consultant for a large midwest utility on a work management/customer service application integration project. Given the hot topics of bundled ancillary services and single bill at the time, we hosted a brainstorming session with a few of the energy company executives. Broadband over power lines came up, and was basically scoffed at. That was in 1996 - funny how times have changed. Could it be that one of the slowest moving of the industry dinosaurs is finally awakening?
Mouse gestures
Since the 6.0 release of Opera and the more recent releases of Mozilla and Netcaptor, I've grown accustom to using mouse gestures while surfing. Unfortunately, Microsoft has yet to catch up with the trend despite my incessant right-click drag attempts to will Internet Explorer to understand them. Well, those days are over because I just stumbled upon, downloaded and installed StrokeIt today. Yeah - I know...
Despite the horrible name, it's a great utility that not only provides mouse gesture recognition within IE, but within many other apps as well. It comes bundled with 50 unique mouse gestures and can be 'taught' to understand more. Best thing about it is that it's free for individual or not-for-profit use. I've been using it since this morning and I have to say that it's already made a positive impact on my productivity.
Despite the horrible name, it's a great utility that not only provides mouse gesture recognition within IE, but within many other apps as well. It comes bundled with 50 unique mouse gestures and can be 'taught' to understand more. Best thing about it is that it's free for individual or not-for-profit use. I've been using it since this morning and I have to say that it's already made a positive impact on my productivity.
Of Muse and home buying
How fast a week goes buy when your heads-down. I've been busy developing a Windows client to access Muse.net. While Muse.net provides both a PHP and DHTML-based web client to access to your media, they've both been less than stable lately. At any rate, I'm about ready to ship it off to folks at Muse for consideration.
I've also begun looking for a place to buy in Chicago, which has meant spending a lot of time doing homework related to mortgages, real estate, insurance and taxes. Buying a place is definitely not the easiest thing in the world to do, and must be horrendous if you suck at math. At any rate, I don't suck at math thanks to 4 years of a math-ridden Computer Engineering curriculum. I'm looking at six or so places today - exciting stuff.
I've also begun looking for a place to buy in Chicago, which has meant spending a lot of time doing homework related to mortgages, real estate, insurance and taxes. Buying a place is definitely not the easiest thing in the world to do, and must be horrendous if you suck at math. At any rate, I don't suck at math thanks to 4 years of a math-ridden Computer Engineering curriculum. I'm looking at six or so places today - exciting stuff.
