About that Lindows Notebook

Slashdot is reporting that people who ordered the Lindows notebook I mentioned recently are getting this email:

Dear Customer,

Because of recent licensing issues with Lindows.com, our supplier is unable to ship us any Lindows Mobile PC's. Thus, we are unable to fulfill your order for this product. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We would, however, like to offer you the eNote Travel Lite notebook for purchase. The Travel Lite has similar specifications to the Lindows Mobile PC, and comes installed with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition for only $879. You can also purchase the eNote without an operating system installed for only $789. The $10.00 discount I emailed you earlier would also apply to this purchase as well.

We are receiving a shipment of the Travel Lites later this week, and will be shipping them out to customers next week. We will also have the Travel Lite product information up on our Web site on Tuesday, March 4. Please let us know if you would like to replace your Lindows Mobile PC order with an eNote Travel Lite. If you decide to cancel your original order, then please let us know and we will process your request immediately.

Once again, our sincere apologies. We look forward to hearing back from you regarding your order.'" [_Go_]

Damn!  This one I'd really like to understand more.  Since they're offering to sell it without Windows at all, it can't be a Microsoft pressure issue so it has to be Lindows specifically I'd think. 

Now wouldn't you think that Redhat would be calling them right NOW and saying "Use Us!!!".

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Net::Blogger

Via Jeremy.  You have to just love the Perl community.  If it exists in the world and its connected to the net, you'll probably find a Perl class / package / library to handle it.  Net::Blogger gives XML-RPC posting support to Perl.  [_Go_]

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More Radio Storage Space

I've been after UserLand to offer this for a while so I feel bad about not commenting about it for so long:

Those Radio users who upstream lots of pictures, PDFs or other large files to their weblog will be happy to learn that you can now purchase additional storage space on Radio.Weblogs.Com. This page on the Radio UserLand website explains how:

"Each Radio UserLand license comes with 40MB of storage space on Radio.Weblogs.Com. If you need more than 40MB of storage, you can purchase additional space in 50MB blocks for $39.95 at the UserLand store."

Storage space is a one-time purchase and does not change Radio's annual license fee. [_Go_]

Yeah its expensive but I'm seriously opposed to changing the location of my blog and that's probably why I'll sign up for it.

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Reasons for Bloggers to Use Mozilla over IE

Via Blogzilla.  Matthew has a really good article on why Mozilla is a good tool for bloggers.  [_Go_]

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Outstanding: Rich Text Areas in Mozilla !!!

This rates as a "FANTASTIC" for the blogging world, particularly the non-pc blogging world:

Interactivetools.com has released an alpha version of their free htmlArea product which is now Mozilla compatible.

If you're using Mozilla 1.3beta+, you can see a demo of it here. [_Go_]

Note: I haven't tried it yet myself but I have used their IE stuff and it works pretty damn well.

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Netscape 4

Netscape 4 is the absolute bane of web development -- it just plain sucks wind and the tendency is to drop support for it using CSS that it doesn't support.  Simon's got some very good thoughts about this and why you shouldn't do it.

A lot of CSS advocates (myself included) recomend "hiding" advanced stylesheets from Netscape 4, leaving it to render structural markup using its default styles or a ultra-basic stylesheet provided by the site. The site remains fully usable, all of the content is accessible, but you can garauntee that the site's credibility in the eyes of a potential customer is going to take a serious knock. If you're using leading edge, backwards compatible, structural and standards compliant markup with CSS while your competitors are using 3 year old table hacks and hundreds of font tags, Netscape 4 users will see theirs as a professional, credible site and yours as so much unimpressive looking text. [_Go_]

No flame wars please and I know it sucks big time.  Still you should really read Simon's whole post since I've left out a key element (deliberately to drive you over there).

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Ah Meckler ... Dumb Comment of the Day

Now you have to love this -- a company planning to put on a conference about weblogs is asking for help in how to contact people in the community???  Dude!  You're planning on making money from the conference.  Shouldn't you at least be able to do your own homework:

Anyone want to put me intouch with Evan so we can get him involved as well? And of course keep those cards and letters coming. [_Go_]

Note that we're not talking about how to contact some anonymous blogger here that no one has ever heard of, its Evan.

Oh and two suggestions:

1. Dump the FontBitch approach to your weblog. 
2. Move your permalinks into some sort of reasonably standard usage.  Don't hide them by making me have to click on your calendar to come up with one.  Embed them as part of the entry as do most other blogs.

Thanks to Scoble for tipping me off to the conference.

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Microsoft Infopath or Its All About Killing the Browser

<RANT>

Ha!  I predicted this back when it was still called Xdocs:

Web-based forms and many other in-house data-collection tools typically require software on a server to interact with a client. Microsoft hopes to use InfoPath as a means of bringing much of the power back to the desktop, where many Office documents are generated and stored. [_Go_]

And while InfoPath is of course all XML and standards based, you have to wonder about this:

Still, while supporting XML as an industry standard, Microsoft is taking its own approach to creating forms, choosing not to support the XForms standard adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium.

"It's obviously a big divergence from XForms," Schadler said. "That's one area where they're out of sync with the standards bodies." Still, "it's not surprising Microsoft would not go with the industry standard version, because they would want InfoPath to have some stickiness to customers."

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the company's position about XForms or InfoPath ahead of the Office 2003 Beta 2 launch. [_Go_]

And rather than treat you to a rant of my own about standards and Microsoft, I turn the floor over to Dave who said it well:

Anyway, no matter what I said, however begrudgingly, I think people will like and use the XML capabilities of the new suite. However, as a professional, I gotta say, it's not smart to do so. Microsoft's track record is really bad. It would be like booking a seat on an airline known for never making its schedule. Interop is not a feature you can sell if you don't honor past agreements. And Microsoft doesn't. And it's not the usual Evil Empire reasons. It's just corporate arrogance, the kind that plagued Apple in the late 80s and early 90s.  [_Go_]

</RANT>

 

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AntiSpam Task Force

Hm... This is positive:

An influential Internet standards-setting body has begun a close scrutiny of the mounting problem of e-mail spam, in an effort that could have broad-ranging implications for future e-mail use and security.

An official Anti-Spam Research Group has been convened under the auspices of the Internet Research Task Force, a loose organization affiliated with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The IETF has traditionally been responsible for standardizing basic Net technologies such as e-mail, data transfer protocols and Internet addresses, among a host of other issues. [_Go_]

I don't have tons of faith here --- the spam problem is so large these days that a research group may not make a huge difference.  Still this is a damn good thing overall.

Bias Note: I run a company that provides a product, Inbox Buddy, that has anti-spam features.

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