I like TypePad, but wow it is expensive! $50 a year is about what I paid for Blogger Pro and BlogSpot. Blogger Pro is supposed to have a lot of new features and I am supposed to be lucky to have gotten in at the price I did. It has Google magic now as well. I like being able to edit the HTML of my template. This feature allows me to put in things like AIM Remote and Yahoo!’s button. To do the same I would have to use TypePad Pro and pay $150 a year. Domain mapping would be very good as I currently have a URL redirect on niallkennedy.com to my blog. Trackback is great because I always feel like no one is reading this. Tom Bridge is offering 20% off codes. $72 for a year. Tempting, but I already have my Blogger investment. Six Apart might have a good marketing campaign on its hands if it offers a competitive upgrade. I might try the trial plan tomorrow.

Can’t afford it. My current company has no idea what makes Yukon better than database XYZ from 1991. PDC would be an investment in my personal future in the software and database development industry. Will I still be working at my company in 2005? Probably not. I will still be affected by the 800 pound gorilla’s new toolsets that change the software development landscape. I could drive the 400 miles to the show and take vacation days from work ($80 + 5 vacation days). I could sleep on a friend’s couch ($0). I could pay $10 a day for parking at the convention center ($30). The networking is priceless. The DVDs will eventually surface. I am sure I will learn a lot and be hyped to develop in the Microsoft sharecropping universe. I just cannot place the actual hard cash ROI.

Last weekend Phish headlined the It Festival in Maine. They set up a 100,000-watt radio station and hooked up their fans with a CD-R and a selection of 150 live tracks to choose from. Now that Pearl Jam has left Epic, I wonder if they will do something similar? Very cool. “In addition to performing, the band set up a tent where fans could make their own free custom mix CD of live Phish tracks with iTunes. The tent ran at full capacity, with lines outside until 4AM each night.”

CNN has a full transcript of last night’s Larry King interview with Howard Dean online. I think King was inappropriately dragged on the gay marriage issue. Dean stated marriage is a religious ceremony, and Vermont had enacted equal rights for gays, but not termed it marriage. Favorite quote : “That’s how you beat a president who can get as many $2,000 checks as he wants, is to bring three or four million new people into the process, give them a reason to vote, and then you can beat George Bush.”

Howl is an implementation of Zeroconf (popularized as Apple’s Rendezvous) for Windows and Linux platforms.

Bentley College has a marketing class focused on Tablet PCs, profiled in today’s Boston Globe. “Because it lacks the capability to show DVDs, the introductory version of the Tablet failed to ”match student lifestyles outside the classroom,” in the words of the Bentley project’s first research report. Subsequent versions of the Tablet are being designed to accommodate DVDs.” Will slate models ever contain DVDs or is the added weight not worth it? It makes sense for a Tablet similar to the Toshiba, which is essentially a regular notebook computer with a swivel screen. I do not want a desktop replacement. I want a desktop complement. It should have sufficient speed running one or two applications: such as Windows Media Player playing an MP3 or streaming a radio feed and typing in Microsoft Word or scrolling PDFs in Adobe Reader. Battery life matters, especially as the proliferation of WiFi and my hunger to use it cuts my normal usage battery life in half. Weight matters most to me. There are a lot of feature packed notebooks out there weighing in at around 10 pounds. Compare that to a 12″ Ti PowerBook at 4.6 pounds or my Tablet at 3 pounds. Adding DVD functionality is simple at the docking station, where power is not an issue. Too bad my docking station costs $300 and is proprietary.

AP : “A 15-year-old boy foiled an apparent abduction attempt when he pulled out his cell phone camera and snapped photos of a man trying to lure him into a car.”

The Seattle Times has an article today about Tablet PCs used in the luxury suites of Mariners‘ games for food ordering, updated score charts, and on-demand instant replay. “The laptoplike Tablet PCs can be loaded before each game with special messages for clients, PowerPoint slide presentations and contracts that are ready to sign with a stylus.” Cursivecode is leading the initiative.

Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota has released an interesting paper on the discriminatory pricing and the privacy implications. From railroads to Amazon.com, the history of the concept is well covered.

I want to learn C# so I can create some really awesome applications for Longhorn. I have a good knowledge of SQL which should give me a pretty good head start. How do you plan for a platform that is years away when you do not know what tools we be already available and where will there be a niche to fill. I cannot afford to attend PDC, so I will already be behind in the tool development. Regardless of Longhorn, learning some C# seems like a good idea. I am a Java guy, so it should not be too tough. So far Scoble has not been able to convince me why I should start planning something big for this product launch. I would rather use the best of what’s out there now, and wait until the Longhorn vapors start to solidify before acting on anything.