AOL updated its AOL Journals service today. News.com has a report. Members will be able to add to their journals by sending instant messages or text messages from a mobile phone. AOL claims over 33 million subscribers, but only 220,000 journal creations. 0.7% of all subscribers start a journal? Seems discouraging, but maybe AOL is not marketing the service well enough….
Category Archives: Software
Chris Pratley on the history of Word
Chris Pratley writes a history of Microsoft Word from his point of view. Details like great design were not critical to most customers, so that didn’t really make it into the products, except where it mattered to the customer. Understand the market, and the customers, and then go pedal to the metal, with release after release focused on what the customers need, incorporating their feedback. That puts the competition into reaction mode….
Opera 7.5 supports RSS newsfeeds
Opera 7.50 beta 1 is now available. Opera Mail now supports RSS newsfeeds. Integrates with Opera address book so you can see custom avatars for weblog publishers and even their IRC nicks. You can also add the blog publisher as a contact direct from the RSS reader. Supports CSS Level 2 revision 1 with few exceptions. “Newsfeeds” added as access point in the e-mail panel RSS 0.9x, 1.0 and 2.0 are supported Clicking RSS links automatically adds newsfeed to Opera Mail Auto-detection of RSS file (link rel=”alternate”) displayed in navigation bar…
NetStumbler 0.4.0
NetStumbler 0.4.0 is now available. Adds support for new devices and new scripting features….
OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 Preview
Microsoft released the OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 Preview today. Chris Pratley is a much better source for the intricacies. SP1 includes an API and SP1 will be the new OneNote baseline. OneNote now has real-time note sharing. It would be great if we were able to discover available documents similar to SubEthaEdit instead of negotiating IP addresses. At least they did not require Passport logons. You can also take video notes. My favorite feature of OneNote is the ability to synchronize your notes to a point in an audio recording. That ability is now expanded to video….
Sony Music RSS
Sony Music has artist RSS feeds for artists such as Beyonce Knowles, Five For Fighting, Jessica Simpson, and Nas….
Pearl Jam video creation with Apple
Pearl Jam creates its own live concert DVDs using Apple software and hardware. Apple profiles Pearl Jam’s content production process. I don’t know that there would be three Pearl Jam DVDs if not for this type of technology. It allows people to do on their own what they were previously forced to hire from experts….
BitTorrent 3.4.2
Bram Cohen released BitTorrent 3.4.2 yesterday. Trackers can now send non-fatal human readable messages to clients. See Rerequester for details. New array-based bitfield for memory efficiency….
NY Times: Photo sharing, desktop to desktop
David Pogue has an article in today’s New York Times about peer-to-peer photo sharing, free of charge. ShareALot and OurPictures, are designed to shoot your photo files directly to the desktops of designated friends and family members, completely bypassing e-mail and Web sites. ShareALot appears to be the better product since it is free and supports Windows, Mac, and soon Linux….
European Commission finds Microsoft guilty, imposes conduct remedies and a fine
The European Commission has concluded, after a five-year investigation, that Microsoft Corporation broke European Union competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players. Fine of € 497.2 million. Jupiter Research has a first take on the decision. Microsoft must provide a version of Windows XP without Windows Media Player. They must also provide interface documentation for server interfaces. What does this mean for Longhorn? Pushed back another year?…