Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Apple to charge for iTools services. The company now plans to charge about $100 for its formerly free collection of Web services, including the iDisk storage service and online greeting cards. [CNET News.com] 9:06:57 AM    comment []

Dennis fired up peercast and is streaming his MixFreaks mp3s. Totally 80's kickass stuff. Beauty is that I'm in Belgium receiving his broadcast from the Netherlands. Neither of us are communicating with a central server. I'm receiving his signal from another listener in the 'chain'. Big stuff here. Expect entertainment to come in 'network form', where you are a part of the physical network. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 9:06:10 AM    comment []

Amazon API. Cool, Amazon releases their a web service API! Interfaces to the Amazon API are an rpc/encoded SOAP endpoint described with WSDL and a raw XML over HTTP endpoint described using XML schemas & prose. Savvy move. There are already some quite interesting uses of the API: BookWatch combines RSS, the Google API and the Amazon API; and Similarities Graph creates diagrams of the similarities between books. For fun, check out the Similarities Graph for C# Essentials. When looking at the API one thing I noticed was both the WSDL and XSDs type everything as string even if a more specific schema type exists. For example, in the SOAP API /Details/ImageUrlSmall is typed as xs:string, I would have expected this to be xs:anyURI. Any thoughts on why they chose this route? [update: Sam posited interop as the reason and suggested adding anyURI tests to SOAPBuilders] [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog] 9:04:50 AM    comment []

Tools turn IM into query service for businesses. ActiveBuddy tours software that lets users mine data sources via IM [InfoWorld: Top News] 9:03:13 AM    comment []

Inflatable spacecraft is missing [New Scientist] 9:02:19 AM    comment []

Researchers show that a dangerous virus can be made in the laboratory. Paul Recer, Associated Press Experts can now download a genetic blueprint from the Internet and use mail-order materials to assemble a deadly virus, say researchers who made a synthetic polio virus in the lab to demonstrate the threat. Discussion at "Slashdot". Sounds a lot like The White Plague by Frank Herbert. (Bummer, it's out of print...) [Michael J. Hehir's Radio Weblog] 8:56:30 AM    comment []

What your doctor doesn't know could kill you. Chris Gaither Humans, [Dr. Lawrence L.] Weed argues, cannot consistently process all of the information needed to diagnose and treat a complicated problem. The more information the physician gets about a patient, the more complex the task becomes. A doctor working without software to augment the mind, he argues, is like a scientist working without a microscope to augment the eye. Fascinating article about Problem-Knowledge Couplers. Discussion at "Slashdot". [Michael J. Hehir's Radio Weblog] 8:55:47 AM    comment []

Amazon.com Gets Web Service. PyroVolley was nice enough to alert me to this article describing a new Web Services effort by Amazon.com. Thanks! Link   Discuss [The .NET Guy] 8:52:54 AM    comment []