Category Archives: Software

New York Times on the impact of Microsoft Office

Steve Lohr of The New York Times takes a look at Microsoft’s Office unit and its future. As a stand-alone business, Office – which on average sells for about $275 – would be slightly larger than the second-largest software company, Oracle, and far more profitable. Only the Windows operating system, the other pillar of Microsoft, is slightly larger….

Movable Type 3.1 pings Technorati

Movable Type 3.1 adds Technorati to a list of selectable pings. Currently Movable Type weblogs can ping weblogs.com and blo.gs if the option is selected in their configuration space. My configuration screen does not currently show the Technorati ping option, but the hooks are in the code and database. [Update 8/17: The Technorati checkbox appears in the configuration space starting with version 3.1b2]…

NeroSoft TimeTrax: Record XM Radio to MP3

NeroSoft TimeTrax is an application for XM Satellite Radio subscribers with XM PCR hardware that allows users to convert the XM Satellite Radio stream into individual MP3 (with complete ID3 information) or WAV files per song. You can also limit your recordings by artist. See the documentation pages for more details. (via Gizmodo)…

Whatever happened to the Six Apart Professional Network?

When Movable Type 3.0 was released on May 15 a professional network was planned and better communication with developers promised. The Plug In to Movable Type 3.0 Developer’s Contest came and went and to developers not attending the BlogOn awards ceremony it seems the network remains silent. The contest page has not even been updated with the list of winners. Two months later and Six Apart may have succeeded at getting developers out of the woodwork. Designers, consultants, IT/IS managers, and enthusiasts are still untapped areas of the idealized network. Movable Type 3.1 highlights the ability of independent developers through…

Microsoft announces Windows XP Starter Edition

Microsoft announced a five-country pilot program for Windows XP Starter edition, a cheaper version of Windows tweaked for beginning users. Users can have up to three programs and three windows per program running concurrently. The display is set to 800×600 maximum and there is no home networking support. 128MB of maximum RAM. Seems like Windows XP Starter edition would also be a good candidate for Wal-Mart….

Salon on Six Apart

Farhad Manjoo wrote an article about the history Six Apart for Salon. I never realized that the events of September 11, 2001 made Mena think that blogging was a bit trivial. I feel the opposite is true. When a major event happens people are looking for an outlet. Craig’s List was full of postings from people coping with what just happened. My relatives in Ireland wanted to know how we were reacting and what changed. Everyone was watching and listening for the latest news. If the entire point of creating a blog is to talk about yourself, or to get…

Atom Publishing Protocol and Movable Type

Ben Hammersley published the first draft of a chapter from his upcoming book, “Hacking Movable Type,” dealing with the Atom Publishing Protocol and Movable Type. I never noticed my Atom authentication token in Movable Type until I read Ben’s chapter. It provides an interesting overview of the Atom Publishing Protocol implemented in Perl….