Category Archives: Software

Mozilla Foundation looking for product managers

Yesterday Joi introduced me to Mitchell Baker, President of Mozilla. We talked about the Mozilla community, gathering feedback, and planning new products that build upon or extend existing features. Mozilla’s two main products are Firefox and Thunderbird, used by millions to interface with the Web, e-mail, and RSS. Sunbird currently a community project but not a Mozilla product. The Mozilla Foundation has been very successful gathering the technical talent it needs to develop its open-source software. It is currently in need of good product managers to identify critical features and keep everyone on track to release a competitive and innovative…

Apple iTunes Store offering preorders

Apple is offering pre-orders for upcoming albums such as Coldplay’s X&Y (planned release is June 7). You cannot preview any of the tracks on the album through the store even though the first single, Speed of Sound, is currently available for purchase. Apple is trying to get people to order digital music files for future delivery. The iTunes album includes a two exclusive pre-oder tracks, a digital booklet — liner notes? — and a video file. I presume iTunes will download the album the first time the application is launched on or after the full availability of the release. I…

Customizing default ping options in Movable Type

Movable Type allows you to easily publicize your blog by pinging Weblogs.com, blo.gs, and Technorati with each post. Movable Type administrators should view these three built-in services as default options that can be easily changed for each Movable Type installation. Think of the three checkboxes above as three variables: BlogsPingURL, WeblogsPingURL, and TechnoratiPingURL. These variables can be overridden in your Movable Type configuration file (mt.cfg) by adding a line with the variable name and value. Each replacement server must be a valid XML-RPC ping beacon similar to Weblogs.com. BlogsPingURL http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ Adding the line above to your mt.cfg file will send…

Layoffs at Friendster

I was just informed by a source within Friendster that employees were called into a conference room this morning and pink slips handed out. I will post more information as the details emerge about the size and the scope of the layoffs since early reports vary the number from five people to one third of the company. [Update 19:30] Seven or eight people were laid off due “headcount adjustments” I am told. Friendster has about 20 total employees and is based in Mountain View.Technorati Tags: friendster…

NewsGator purchases Bradbury Software

NewsGator Technologies has purchased Bradbury Software in a cash and stock deal. Bradbury Software is develops FeedDemon, a feed aggregator, and TopStyle, a website editor, for the Windows operating system. Nick Bradbury lives in Franklin, Tennessee and is the sole developer and runs his entire business from the top floor of his house. Nick develops in Delphi. I used FeedDemon from its first beta until I moved to Mac last May. NewsGator develops free feed aggregators for Windows Media Center, and online as well as a paid aggregator for Microsoft Outlook. NewsGator is currently developing an enterprise server (“Dino”) for…

One year since Movable Type 3.0

A year ago today Six Apart launched Movable Type 3.0 and introduced their new pricing structure and rebranded as a publishing platform. The announcement resulted in over 800 TrackBack links. Each Movable Type download had yielded $0.38 and the company decided it was time for a new pricing structure. Six Apart underestimated the community’s reaction to the change. The commercial license pricing remains unchanged a year later while the personal licenses are a lot cheaper than originally announced. Six Apart has since introduced educational, non-profit, developer, and single author personal use licenses for their software….

Blogger enterprise edition?

IDG reports on some possible future product direction for Blogger. Nothing terribly exciting we could not have guessed on our own, but Google does confirm they are dedicating resources to a possibly entry into Blogger for corporations. Google is also weighing whether to develop an enterprise version of Blogger that would be tailored for workplace use, as opposed to individual consumer use, Stone said. It’s something we’re always thinking about, something we have a few people thinking about and looking into. It’s definitely being researched he said.Technorati Tags: blogger…

FeedBurner introduces paid statistics package

FeedBurner announced Total Stats PRO, its premium statistics package, offering per-item statistics and referrer reports among other features. The new service is an up-sell from the company’s standard statistics offering starting at $5 a month. I do not use FeedBurner but I signed up for a trial account so I could review their new features. FeedBurner tracks the each item through the use of a web bug. The web bug is the URL of the feed with a parameter of g with a numeric value equal to what I am guessing is the post identifier in the FeedBurner database. Example:…