Monthly Archive for July, 2001
Published on
July 31, 2001 in
General.
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The Webification of TV is happening. Interesting to see that the new “digital” TV is learning from the web. Maybe that’s all it was: a big product prototype for the telly. 3:21:10 PM |
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Yahoo! Explorer ads the wave of the future? (via RRE) Taking over your browsing in the name of advertising. Dull. More televisual, I suppose. 3:19:41 PM |
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John Robb: “The total cost of ownership (TCO) of a Website is more than the purchase price of a content management system.” Response to feedback: “TCO is not a game most of these big players like to play. Cost is not a factor they want to address right now.” 3:18:42 PM |
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Stewart Alsop: “Real entrepreneurs never let money out the door for any reason that doesn’t strictly advance the business of the company.” Tatoo that on your forehead. 3:17:07 PM |
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AOL memo describing responses to XP. Just what you’d think, but interesting to see it written down. 3:16:04 PM |
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Curl. will deliver everything Java and HTML offer and more. Hmmm. They want to charge on a volume-based model. This makes absolutely no sense. Give the plugin away and charge for the dev kit, fine. A toll on all your web use. No. 3:11:23 PM |
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NY Times: Jail Time in the Digital Age. Another good Lessig article showing that the US’s DMCA blows apart traditional copyright legislation. 3:02:11 PM |
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Portugal Decriminalises Drug Use. The Guardian last week reported that Portugal recently decriminalized all drug use (not just cannabis). The Portugese have decided to treat drug use “as a social problem rather than a criminal one”. Quite amazing. Interesting to see how it pans out. 2:59:30 PM |
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New Laws: Thou Shalt Patch. Interesting thought: force companies by law to spend money based on unworkable software…maybe this will force MS, etc to release working software. 2:58:56 PM |
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Web Music Fight Plays Out in D.C.. “The final arguments over payments for streaming music are occurring in the U.S. Copyright Office, which will decide how much webcasters should pay the recording industry. Andrew Osterman reports from Washington.” I liked the potential acronyms in the article. 4c per listner sounds like quite a lot for net radio stations. As does 15% of revenue. Both of them will kill streaming media stone dead. 2:48:51 PM |
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Icons Cluttering up Windows Space. So MS’s backdown wasn’t that at all. If AOL there, MSN sure as hell ought to be. These are astonishingly large issues that everyone should be aware of – it’s pure inter-monopolistic power plays. 2:46:53 PM |
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Published on
July 27, 2001 in
General.
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Forbes: Isn’t It Cheaper To Give It Away? And while it has posted a per-article charge, Inside.com is doubtless hoping that users will opt for its $3.95 monthly subscription fee, or $39 annual fee instead. That’s because the cost of processing the single-article tab will eat up most, if not all, of the revenue. 12:53:42 PM |
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The Usability of Usability. Good interview with Jared Spool. Especially interesting (if not entirely believable) is the stuff on the link between valid categories and purchase. 12:21:14 PM |
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Sick of ringing cell phones?. “Then cheaply and effectively jam the signals with a device like the Wave-Shield pocket jammer. They’re illegal in the U.S., but that’s not stopping some people.” 12:15:42 PM |
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Dot-Biz: An Illegal Lottery?. It’s pretty important that we sort out the DNS system and soon. Silly amounts of money going to no-gooders. 12:06:57 PM |
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Published on
July 26, 2001 in
General.
Published on
July 24, 2001 in
General.
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“America Online is quietly rolling out a new unified sign-in service, similar to Microsoft’s Passport, across its properties and partner sites. Codenamed “Magic Carpet” and currently promoted as the “Screen Name Service,” visitors will be able to sign in with a single click and seamlessly browse sites supporting the new technology.” Interesting. A true competitor to MS. 4:51:13 PM |
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Great series of trials on how to avoid telemarketing. 3:33:44 PM |
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Dan Gillmor: “One of these days, it may be a crime to talk about anything that displeases the control freaks who run the entertainment and software industries.” ! 1:45:55 PM |
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Windows XP ‘Denial Of Operating System’ attack. So if a virus could remove the WPA files from your drive, you couldn’t do anything. Alternatively (as per the article) someone might hack your number and spread it over the net. One day your PC locks up saying: you’re a pirate! 1:38:23 PM |
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Bill Seitz: “Sometimes recent Microsoft behavior seems like a conspiracy to totally discredit the Dept of Justice by engaging in unbelievably outrageous behavior, daring them to take action. It’s like somebody actually raping Kitty Dukakis on camera, watching Mike to see what he would do.” Old but interesting. 1:36:55 PM |
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They rule.. Really fascinating look at the human links between corporations at the top level. 1:29:59 PM |
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The Fulifier turns any site “Ful” which means bloody awful in Swedish. I think. 1:29:09 PM |
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Run away! Run away!. The trebuchet is back in business, only this time with cows. To be honest, maybe they used to chuck rotting / dead meat into the siegees to spread disease? 1:28:14 PM |
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Low Brow. Cracking stuff. “My brother came back into an interview after visiting the toilet and he had toilet paper hanging out of his trousers.” Keep reloading. 1:27:03 PM |
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OpenFlow. “is a workflow engine created with python and Zope. With OpenFlow, you can define a map of the activities to be performed, conditional paths and parallel activities.” Interesting? I quite like Zope and this could help with online project planning. 1:26:03 PM |
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Argus ACIA: Q&A with Seth Gordon. How we’re now becoming stable revenue streams for some site, and a nice two-way usability test: frustration vs false completion. 1:25:10 PM |
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Published on
July 23, 2001 in
General.
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Great article from Amartya Sen re: globalisation / Genoa, etc. Inequality is the issue, not globalisation. Fix the inequality and you may or may not have globalisation – that depends on the solution. 5:55:52 PM |
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Wired: What if Napster was the answer? “Doubts are so strong about the future that some record industry bigwigs are wistfully longing for the good old days of Napster.” Damn right. Markets are conversations and all that – why didn’t the labels talk to users? Because the users know they’re being ripped off by the labels – they’d rather give their money straight to the artist. 5:46:44 PM |
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Interactive Week: Copyright Tug O’ War. Levies on recordable media to recover revenue for IP owners seem to legitimise the whole practice of copying. That can’t be right. 12:33:03 PM |
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Subscribing to a New Music Theory. Find a nice piece of hardware, load it with music, then sell it to the consumer. The new mantra of music companies is to sell subscriptions as part of a pre-packaged deal to consumers looking for a device on which to play their music. Quite neat to hook up online sites with hardware vendors. I’d probably use something like this. 12:29:41 PM |
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Fast Company: Don’t Shout, Listen. “A year ago, it was a stodgy, nondescript site where no one other than investors and job seekers had any reason to go. Today, when you log on to it, you see a consumer-friendly portal that proudly announces P&G’s responsibility for “more than 300 brands you know and trust.” Interesting article about using customers to self-create products. 12:28:43 PM |
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All class – the bad writing winners are in. As good as the Darwin awards. 11:47:35 AM |
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Great series on gambling (this is the last with links to the previous ones). 11:21:25 AM |
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Surely creative accounting like this should be made illegal. Big Blue has made pretty well no extra cash recently and is estimating a 10.5% return from its defined benefit pension scheme. It’s just rubbish, no? 10:12:12 AM |
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Published on
July 20, 2001 in
General.
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“In outlining the strategy for Office on the Mac and .NET, one has to wonder if users will see the Microsoft Office suite as a product that you purchase and install (for use on and offline) or a service. Personally I want my word processor to be a product, one that I can use over and over again, without having to tally up micro-payments in my head.” Damn straight. 1:45:50 PM |
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Terabyte File Server for $5,000. Not in itself interesting, but it’ll cost $1,000 in three years and this means that you’ll be able to have your entire Blockbuster video library in your front room. This plus last mile delivery means a new business model. 1:45:04 PM |
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Published on
July 18, 2001 in
General.
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Freenets: a good Wi-Fi piece. I should do this. 11:19:36 AM |
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Best thing since sliced Bread?. Researchers at Oklahoma State University have completed a formula for sliced peanut butter that will be packaged like sliced cheese. Only in America! 10:49:33 AM |
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So this has been created by the market: to keep it’s growth on track, Microsoft has to screw more money out of its customers. That’s why they’re changing their licensing terms. 9:39:30 AM |
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Interesting article about SAS. Not the swing through windows on ropes dressed in black lot. 9:18:35 AM |
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Published on
July 16, 2001 in
General.
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Rich People Are Lucky Bastards. Science and Finance magazine with an interesting article that suggests that the flows of money in an economy approximate a random walk. So we’re stuck with rich and poor, pretty well regardless. 11:13:55 AM |
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Published on
July 12, 2001 in
General.
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Text a cab in Dublin. “Sounds crap, but this is actually a really good idea”. I do like the Reg’s style. 7:11:04 PM |
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Published on
July 11, 2001 in
General.
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JavaScript Resources. Having trouble finding that last bit of JavaScript information you need to perfect your page, deliver your DHTML, or secure your syntax? Not a bad list of pages for that ever-necessary help with JavaScript. 2:56:06 PM |
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I bet you’ve never seen Star Wars quite like this. Bored? 12:27:38 PM |
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Good interview with Drucker, who’s still firing on most cylinders. Nails the dot-com crunch – mostly stock exchange gambles and greed. 10:37:55 AM |
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