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Radioshift: likeTiVo for radio. Except unlike TiVo, there is no monthly fee. Radioshift comes with a guide containing 50,000 radio shows and stations. Tell it what you like and it records it (in the background, with multiple formats supported, and it can record multiple simultaneous streams.) Records internet radio, and standard AM/FM if you have something like the $50 Griffin Radio Shark. Mac OS X only. Nicely priced at $32.
I'm not real big into radio, but this is pretty amazing if you are.
Vaguely related to the last post and comments, Tim Bray has a six point plan for a cellular carrier to create an explosion in the mobile data space. It involves radically opening up the network though, so you can be sure no one is going to take his advice any time soon. I'm confident it would work though. Number 5 is especially smart:
Don't ask developers for any money. But sell the use of your billing system at a really attractive rate, so people can sign up for apps and have it billed to their phone plan. Do it at a scale that an app can charge a dime a month and still make money on scale.That would change everything. It could provide a real business model for (to use the overplayed and under defined term) Web 2.0.
People just don't want to pay (even small amounts) for content on the web. But for some reason I think they would pay small amounts for the same content from the same web if they are receiving it on their mobile and the billing is totally seamless. I think a lot of the friction we see now in terms of getting people to pay is just that people are reluctant to break out their credit card or to make yet another account somewhere like PayPal. But if your mobile device *was* your credit card I think the situation would change.
Long post from Wil Shipley exploring some of the seemingly greedy moves Apple has made of late. I've got a post like this one coming, but haven't had the time yet. John Gruber seems to agree, adding:
The best thing that could happen to Apple this year would be for Microsoft's Zune 2.0 to be a kick-ass product, both technologically and in terms of being designed to make customers happy, not entertainment conglomerates. Apple needs competition.And I think he's right. Except what are the chances Microsoft is going to make a kick-ass product designed to make customers happy? That's exactly why we've all been counting on Apple.
Anyway, I still think Apple is going to dominate with the iPhone (and successors like the iPod Touch.) Part of the reason why is precisely that these products aren't aimed at geeks like me (and Shipley and Gruber, not to put myself in their company) - they're aimed at the masses. Apple controls the whole stack - the portable device, the computer it syncs with, the OS and software that runs that computer, and the online store it all connects to. They don't care about interop with 3rd parties, they don't care about making geeks happy, and they don't have to (except for the cell carriers, but they'll get rid of them as soon as possible.) It's an interesting dynamic.
StorageMojo: CERN's data corruption research.
My system has 1 TB of data on it, so if the CERN numbers hold true for me I have 3 corrupt files. Not a big deal for most people today. But if the industry doesn't fix silent data corruption the problem will get worse.
From the comments at macosxhints.com comes an ingenious method for defeating hardware keystroke loggers:
The method above sounds adequate for techie types. I propose the following alternate method:Genius!
1. Buy a cat. This also necessitates cat food, litter box, etc., to meet said cat's needs. The cat must be installed at the same facility as the computer, and with access to the computer at will.
2. Spray the computer keyboard with catnip scent, and optionally decorate the keyboard and surrounding area with items likely to attract the kitty.
3. While away from your computer, switch to an application that can accept random input without harm to your system or files. Leave the keyboard out in the open.
While you are out, the kitty will play on your keyboard, filling up the memory buffer of any USB intercept device that may be present. Eventually the memory of the device will be full of complete nonsense keystrokes, thus rendering it useless to the perpetrator.
Jack Slocum and team are nearing release of Ext 2.0. There is a preview up on the Ext blog. I've been bouncing back and forth between MooTools and Ext 1.1 for a few projects I'm building. MooTools is small and a little easier for me to wrap my head around if I'm just trying to drop in a specific widget. Ext is much larger, and at least to my mind is a more all or nothing proposition. So you probably wouldn't want to get involved if you just need one little effect. But I'm strangely excited about Ext 2.0 and I have one project that has been waiting for it's release. The previews confirm what I expected - it looks amazing. For building a full blown web application with just HTML, javascript, and CSS (i.e., no Flash) there doesn't seem to be anything else that can touch it.
Big iPod Apple event today. So far Wall St. didn't like it, sending the stock down about 4%. Not sure what they are smoking down there in the financial district. To my mind Apple couldn't be executing better.
This was Palm CEO Ed Colligan in early November 2006:
Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company - including the wildly popular Apple Computer - could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.Now flash forward to July 2007 and behold, the IPhone outsells all other smartphones. In the meantime Palm announced the much ridiculed Foleo which they have just canceled before it ever hit the shelves.
"We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone," he said. "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
I have a Palm Treo and really like it. And Palm previously dominated the handheld organizer space. But they have lost just about everything at this point. Supposedly they are working on an all new linux powered software platform, and that sounds good to me, but at the same time it sounds like something you might try as a last ditch effort. I'm guessing it will be too little too late for Palm.
Pretty good Paul Graham coding essay: Holding a Program in One's Head. Nothing earth shattering, but it seems right to me.
A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Mathematicians don't answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. They do more in their heads: they try to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. At its best programming is the same. You hold the whole program in your head, and you can manipulate it at will.
Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2 introduces H.264 video playback. I'm not a huge Flash fan, but in general this should be a very good thing. Also, it should now play .m4a audio, and the bug with mp3 playback at certain sampling rates has been eliminated. These last two are good news for the music project. Now if only I could find someone to build my dream AIR audio player.