...more recent posts
Six Apart to buy Live Journal? Wow. A lot of people are saying this isn't true, so I wouldn't count it as a done deal just yet. Six Apart is the company behind Movable Type blogging software and the TypePad blog hosting service. Live Journal is a *huge* blog community with 5,655,452 users (2,443,264 of whom actively post.) This would create a very large blog entity which could, as Om points out in the first link above, have "a very fighting chance against Google’s Blogger and Microsoft’s MSN Spaces."
Still, for all the wow factor of a big merger like this, I'm not sure what difference it will make to anyone. For instance, it is not at all clear that blog hosting is ever going to make anyone any money. And technorati already mines all the data, so having your own big stable of blogs doesn't get you any secret use data that might have value. Sort of seems like a big headache to me. MIght be a classic dot com era business play:
1. Get a lot of users
2. ???
3. Profit!
With some reservations, Om Malik likes the 3G Nokia 6630: "Clearly, this is the best 3G phone on the market..."
(3G is the general label for third generation cellular networks. These are just coming on line here in the U.S.. For AT&T this means UMTS, for Verizon and Sprint this means EV-DO. These networks are as fast as your DSL but with a little more latency.)
Russel Beattie has a bunch of links as well.
Almost there....
Flickr is one of the recent big web success stories. It's a photo sharing site with a great UI and great community tools. Antenna has some interesting thoughts on what makes it so popular:
I’ve been trying for a week or so to figure out what flickr is. I mean I know it’s a photo sharing site, but what makes it so damn interesting? Then, last night, I finally figured it out: flickr is a MMORPG.I'm not sure this idea works out perfectly, but that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. Thinking about web apps as games is very important. These things should be fun.
Really, it should have been obvious, since the site is literally a MMORPG (it’s built on the old Game Neverending code, which is why you’ll see files ending in .gne on flickr). And Ludicorp says as much on their homepage (“Groupware for Play. We’re building a better platform for real time interaction online.”), but for some reason I was tricked into thinking it was more like iPhoto crossed with Friendster than Ultima Online.
Seven pages of Sony Ericsson concept phones. A few gems, but most of these are truly hideous. Why are gadgets like this always so overdesigned? You'd think the iPod would have clued everyone in. As we add features, especially to small devices, we need the designs to be more simple, straightforward, and uncluttered. Not the opposite.
Short animation: What the hell is the Fibonacci Series?
Wired interview with BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen:
"You get so tired of having your work die," he says. "I just wanted to make something that people would actually use."With over 40 million downloads of his program, I think he has done it. I know I've posted a lot of links about BT, so maybe it has gotten a bit boring, but this program is *really* important.
Think Secret, a mac rumors website with a very good track record, is reporting that Apple will release a "bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display at Macworld Expo on January 11 that will retail for $499".
The fabled "headless iMac" is one of the longest running debates in the Mac community. Apple has always said they are not interested in pursuing this low margin (sub $800) category. But supposedly iPod sales (and extensive data from their retail stores,) have convinced them they can lure away a lot of windows users with a cheaper entry level machine, and that the economics of "growing the base" make sense in exchange for smaller per unit profits. Could be. I have to admit it doesn't sound like an Apple strategy to me. But I can think of several people to whom I would recommend this machine.
It will be fun to see how this turns out. So far Wall Street is not noticing (Wall St. has wanted Apple to "grow the base" for some time now,) but maybe they don't read the rumor sites. At least there is now some excitement around Macworld 2005. Things had been a little too quiet.
I mentioned this first back in august, and it looks like it is ready now. Tor: an anonymous Internet communication system.
For your Christmas day geek pleasure, a University of Washington video lecture by Urs Hölzle describing the Google Linux Cluster. Some amazing numbers.
The Graphing Calculator is a cool piece of software that shipped with the first PowerPC computer from Apple. "Just type an equation and it is drawn for you without complicated dialogs or commands." The story of it's creation is not so simple though.
I gave a twenty-minute demonstration, eliciting "oohs" and "ahhs." Afterward, they asked, "Who do you report to? What group are you in? Why haven't we seen this earlier?" I explained that I had been sneaking into the building and that the project didn't exist. They laughed, until they realized I was serious. Then they told me, "Don't repeat this story."