Wednesday, July 3, 2002

Collaborative Web Business Model Collaboration Can Be Profitable - Can't It? Rusty at K5 pioneers the non-profit model for collaborative Websites. Not a bad way to make a salary to do something you love to do. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 2:55:45 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Googling in a Blog Googling in a Blog Pretty interesting stuff. This has been available for a while, but until now, I haven't taken time to catch up with some fo the newer features in Radio. You can now virtually automagically set things up so your Web Log readers can do a Google search using the contents of your item title as the search term. Way cool! 2:48:49 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Neighborhoods as ISPs: A Cool Idea! Alternative Wireless Broadband for your Neighborhood [Slashdot] points to a discussion surrounding some new Motorola wireless transceivers that could allow neighborhoods and apartment buildings to become their own ISPs. My old buddy Laurence Rozier has some good ideas along the lines of neighborhood-based ISPs and my wife Carolyn has long maintained that one of the biggest future sources of Web revenue and success will be linking people who are in neighborhoods electronically. 1:46:08 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Marquis de Vauvenargues. "When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, simply drop it." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] 1:42:09 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

You Might Find This Spam Map Intriguing How One Spam Leads to Another. Once your e-mail gets on a spam list, you're basically doomed. Now there's a 'map' that illustrates that doomsday path. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] The page also contains links to some other fascinating reading about spam, spammers, anti-spammers, and other email marketing stuff. 1:41:11 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Yeah, I Yahoo! And I'm Not Impressed Yahoo relaunches with streamlined look. The Internet portal introduces a new home page that sports a cleaner layout with more potential real estate for advertisers. [CNET News.com] I have had Yahoo! as my sort of detault home base for a while. It was fast, efficient, easy to use and free. Frankly, I'd have paid a subscription fee if they'd asked. They didn't. Instead, they've started garbaging up this previously clean, easy-to-navigate site with popups, popunders, pop-throughs and pop culture. Their new site redesign is cleaner looking and removes some stuff they've killed, but the basic problem that they've decided to pander to advertisers to a degree that flat pisses off long-time users like yours truly bothers them not a whit. Prediction: this attitude will sink the Yahoo! ship in time. Idea to avoid prediction coming true: Offer a premium sub that removes all ads and see how much people will pay to have the old efficiency back. My hand is poised over the send button on my order form, Yahooligans! 1:38:04 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Damn Yankees, Damn Steinbrenner There Are Yankees, `Damn Yankees,' and Losers. George Steinbrenner has the best team and the highest payroll, and he does not care if others get tired of watching the Yankees. By Jack Curry. [New York Times: Sports] Not a surprise, of course, but here's a team that can afford to make a "mistake" that costs them $5.5 million and not even bat an eyelash simply on the chance that picking up troublesome and broken-down Roaul Mondesi will give them an edge and win another game or two. Money talks. We know what walks. 1:30:39 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

The Infinite Hypocrite Selected President of the United States George W. Bush heads a party that spent tens of millions of dollars trying to catch the previous occupant of the White House with his hand in a tiny cookie jar. But King George II has filthy hands and his new protestations about "corporate integrity" are so tainted with his past criminal behavior that the amazing thing is he actually believes that we will actuallyl believe him. this story is getting some national play but not nearly as much as Whitewater and it is ,b>soooo much more deserving of our scorn and concern. ""But long before that ruling [~] though only a few weeks before bad news that could not be concealed caused Harken's shares to tumble [~] Mr. Bush sold off two-thirds of his stake, for $848,000. Just for the record, that's about four times bigger than the..." [Daypop Top 40] 1:26:19 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

This comes under the "stating the obvious" heading... Study: Shoddy software steams users. And their desire for revenge is strong. When it comes to how soon a security bug should be revealed, those hurt most by a vulnerability want detailed information fast. [CNET News.com] 1:22:51 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

EU Warns MS on Palladium but Time is Already Running EU Warns Microsoft About Palladium. Incoming European Union (EU) Competition Directorate-General Philip Lowe on Monday warned Microsoft that its upcoming security plan, Trustworthy Computing (code-named Palladium) shouldn't exclude the company's competitors. [Windows Informant] I guess I'm on a Palladium tear this morning for some reason. This "warning" by the EU will probably have more teeth than the U.S. Department of Justice, which has crammed its dentures securely into Bill Gates' pocket for safe-keeping leaving the agency toothless. But it's specious. Palladium is designed to lock out comopetitors. If you write a piece of software that can read or write a Microsoft proprietary file format, you will be found out and you will be prosecuted or persecuted or both. If you install such a piece of Software, Microsot will find out about it and will stop you in your tracks one way or another. A little-known fact about Palladium: it requires a central clock to support its ability to provide time-expiring content to user desktops. Those desktops can't use their own clocks because those are not secure and can be modified. The only way to enforce this, then, is to have a central server (controlled by gues who) which can periodically check your system for expired documents. What else do you suppose Bad Billy will do while he's got you rmachine in his clutches, hmmmmmm? Bad stuff, people. Very bad stuff. 11:51:18 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Palladium is Dangerous and Evil Microsoft Palladium is the most dangerous idea this dangerous company has conjured up since it used blitzkrieg tactics to commandeer your desktop. Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury-News, one of Microsoft's most vocal foes, says, "Microsoft's upcoming operating system, dubbed Palladium (Newsweek), is nothing less than a betrayal of users' rights. The sheer gall would take your breath away, except that it's so totally in keeping with Microsoft's track record." Is there any way to stop these guys? The courts can't do it. The Feds are afraid of them. They can buy anything in their way and will destroy it if they can't buy it. We need some new ideas here! 11:20:07 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Apple Still Doesn't Get Some Key Things Apple Computer bought Emagic, the German software company that makes what many people think is the best sound editing tool for the Mac. Financial terms were not disclosed, but surely the price tag was in the millions. (See what Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Merc, a friend of Apple's, had to say. With OS X seeing a tiny adoption rate due, in part at least, to the dearth of applications and the failure or refusal of many leading vendors (notably Macromedia) to jump on the bandwagon, Apple could have spent a tiny fraction of what they spent to drive a bunch of other great companies to the Windows platform by funding software conversion efforts to get more stuff running on OS X. This has been a perennial problem for Apple. The solution is lying-around-the-ground obvious. But they won't do it. Instead, they buy up key players, thereby forcing those companies' competitors to compete with the very platform vendor to which they've been loyal. It's stupid. It's unadulterated bullshit. And it's anti-competitive. Come on, Apple! Write a bunch of smaller checks to people with software that doesn't yet run on OS X but your customers want or need to be there. And while you're at it, why don't you try to act a little less like Microsoft and see how that works? 11:08:22 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

© Copyright 2002 Dan Shafer.