July 26, 2007
Regardless of what language you use to build your web applications, there are a couple common tenants and tools that I feel are useful.
First, I strongly believe in the idea of permanent URLs. I agree with pretty much everything this W3C article says. All your URLs should be permanent, obvious, and technology agnostic. While this isn’t strictly a tool, I think it is important for everyone building public websites to at least consider and realize the trade-offs they are making by breaking these guidelines.
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July 23, 2007
For the second time iTunes Export has been featured on LifeHacker. The first story drove a bit of traffic this second (and more in-depth) mention drove about 60% of my normal monthly page view traffic in a single day.
In fact, when I first looked at the traffic graph I was pretty sure something was wrong because the spike yesterday made the entire rest of the month look like it had no traffic! It was only after I looked at the referrer traffic that I saw the LifeHacker post.
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July 23, 2007
ESPN certainly made a spectacle of Beckham’s first game. They started with the MLS AllStar game against Celtic FC where they had Beckham as the half time guest and talked quite a bit about his arrival.
Then, on Saturday, they had the friendly game between the L.A. Galaxy and Chelsea. Beckham is just coming off of an ankle injury would not have played at all if it were not for the hype that was built up around the event. As it was, he just stepped on the field for about 10 minutes and was fairly obviously still hurting.
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July 17, 2007
So I’ve been waffling on what phone to buy for a while, and it is time to make a decision. I’m looking for a PDA/SmartPhone, so the major players are Treo 755 (Palm/Sprint), Treo 750 (WM/AT&T), Treo 700wx (WM/Sprint), Mogul (WM/Sprint), and the iPhone.
I have a Sprint Treo 650 now, which I’ve been very happy with.
I’ve had some hands on time with the iPhone, and I have to admit it is the best web browsing experience I’ve ever had on a phone. The zoom and scrolling is great, even if the network is S L O W (if you are not on WI-FI). However, I’m just not sold at this point. The lack of 3rd party apps, the ability to tether (use it as a modem for your laptop), and the weak syncing (no Notes, TODO) are not enough. The media features seem cool, but I’m just not the target audience for that. So while my next phone may very well be an iPhone, this one won’t be.
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July 13, 2007
An interesting story came out recently that Apple has ‘purchased’ CUPS.org. Since CUPS is an Open Source project, this may seem slightly surprising.
It appears that Apple has hired the primary developer and he has reassigned the copyright for the code to Apple.
From the commentary I’ve read, it appears that this is a purely defensive move by Apple to prohibit CUPS from moving to the GPLv3 license (it is GPLv2 now). Apple uses CUPS in OS X to configure print sharing. There are some significant changes in GPLv3 regarding treatment of patents, and as I commented in my previous post, this is causing headaches for several companies. I have not dug into all the implications of GPLv3 yet, but this is a space to watch.
July 13, 2007
So I’ve personally sworn off of Software Patents. The stated goal of a patent system is to foster innovation. The concept being that if a person or entity can be guaranteed a limited monopoly on their innovations, they are more likely to invest the time/money to innovate.
I get this, and I think it makes sense, or at least it does for certain markets. However, the online world is one where interoperability is key. In fact, the major feature of the internet is a common set of standards that are used to communicate between different operating systems, clients, and tools. One reason we can’t ‘fix’ email SPAM is that the world has agreed on a standard (SMTP) and implemented it over and over again. HTTP, FTP, etc. These have been around forever, have been implemented tons of times, and these open and agreed upon standards have enabled the amazing growth we’ve seen.
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July 10, 2007
A friend of mine asked me this weekend why people have such different opinions of Microsoft and Google. After all, both are near monopolies, and both have a lot of information about YOU.
It is a good question to examine, and while Google has received some criticisms, the overall attitude towards them seems to be much more positive than Microsoft.
While I’m sure there are a lot of reasons that can be cited, I personally find two very compelling reasons:
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July 9, 2007
Google announced their acquisition of Postini today. I won’t rehash the deal here, but I thought Bill Burnham had a good writeup.
Bottom line: Google is moving forward with its attacks on the current business solutions (primarily Microsoft). If they do a good job incorporating Postini they can offer an more credible option for larger companies to outsource to Google Apps.
Two major points from Bill’s post I want to focus on. First, Google has a propensity to offer an acquired company’s products for free. This earns them good will and propels the (usually) already popular service even farther. I’ll talk about this more in an upcoming post.
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June 27, 2007
As we count down to the iPhone launch, the hype is reaching a feverish pitch. There are even people discussing the people who are already in line.
As I posted earlier, I’m a long time Treo user and seriously considering the 755p. I’ve held off to date so far because my Treo 650 still manages to do everything I need it to, and I’m hesitant to jump on the last Treo model before the new Linux based OS debuts this fall/winter.
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June 11, 2007
As Bart Simpson said… ‘meh’.
While I didn’t like it at first, I have to admit that I’m not sure it wasn’t the best choice available. Short of actually killing Tony, there is no real resolution to the show. This ending will be talked about, probably more so than any other choice.
The high point of the episode was Tony’s musical selection of course, Journey. I always find that the music in a show or movie can have a huge impact on my lasting interest. Some of my favorite (and most watchable movies) are as much for the music and immersion as for the actual content. This also holds true for the greatest series finale ever…. Six Feet Under
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