Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Interesting observations about a species called active multi-channel shoppers on CIO. These creatures do 24% of the online shopping yet "might be costing retailers money." (Generic link to article appears to have a limited lifespan, I will try to follow it into the archives.) 5:09:12 PM    comment []

HyperCard Forgotten, but Not Gone While we're busy discussing MacOS-for-intel on quotidian, Wired news is talking about Hypercard. A puzzling comment from the article: Phil Schiller, Apple's head of worldwide marketing, who reportedly ended up asking them, "But how do we sell it?" How does Apple sell Hypercard? The same way that it "sells" iPhoto and iTunes -- by giving it away with the computer! Talk about selling people a PC they can actually get something done with, Hypercard ranks as one of the easiest-to-use WIMPy application development systems ever. It's fun to use, too. Another concept: Hypercard as a website content management tool. Woulda been a good idea even up to a year or two ago. Nowadays we think, "Screw that, just blog!" It could still be useful as a way to make and manage interactive sites. However, it would need a page-on-demand scheme, since as far as I recall, Hypercard sent you a whole stack at once. * * UPDATE: In another Wired article, Bill Atkinson kicks himself over Hypercard's stack-as-a-unit architecture. But I suggest that a page-on-demand architecture would have evolved, had Hypercard been nurtured by Apple. UPDATE #2: Paul suggests releasing the HyperCard source code. 4:24:00 PM    comment []