Misc Stuff

Ashleigh Banfield, one of my favorite people on MSNBC: This TV show that we just gave you was extraordinarily entertaining, and I really hope that the legacy that it leaves behind is not one that shows war as glorious, because there’s nothing more dangerous than a democracy that thinks this is a glorious thing to do.

Mosaic is ten years old, having been born in 1993. I feel really, really old. I’m one of the only people I know that been on the Internet since 1994. Sure, I didn’t have a browser, so got everything through FTP and Gopher, on the command line, using [shudder] VMS. I didn’t have a mail client, either. If I wanted to send an email, I typed “SMTP user@host.com” and then the message. If I made a typo in the message, I had to start all over. Oh, that was horrible. I connected at 2400bps on my Mac Classic. I was later upgraded to SunOS and we got access to Lynx, a text-based browser. That was in 1995. Then, in 1996, I subscribed to MindSpring (now Earthlink), and experienced the joy of a graphical web. Now, of course, I have a fulltime connection through the cable modem and my main tools for accessing content are Safari, NetNewsWire, and Frequency. How times change.

How A Bill Becomes A President

Wow, Bill not only blogs, but he’s also running for president. Go, Bill!

Mactopia: Why do you say “Oops!” after hitting send?

Fortune has a good article on Apple’s new music service. Ultimately Jobs hopes to offer millions of songs, including older music that hasn’t yet made it to CD. “This industry has been in such a funk,” sighs singer Sheryl Crow. “It really needs something like this to get it going again.” Here are some pictures from the Apple Event.

Sosumi

Apple has hit the nail on the head. I predict huge success for their new music service. They’ve managed to get to the sweet spot: a buck a song. I’ve been saying for five years that online music will be profitable when it reaches a buck a song.

The interface is great, and I like that you can buy an entire album for ten bucks, with cover art. Unlimited burning is sweet, too.

Why does it always take Apple to step in and show how things can be done?

Frequency Update

I’ve pretty much been taking a break from working on Frequency this weekend. I’ve been spending time with Gracie and, with help from my father-in-law, finishing up the plumbing. The copper is almost all gone; we’re almost all CPVC plumbing now. Not that there’s anything wrong with copper; but CPVC is sure a lot easier to work with and fix. No leaks yet!

Now I need to knuckle on the Windows build of Frequency. It’s about 95% there. The first release on Windows will be 1.1, and will coincide with the 1.1 release for Mac Classic and Mac OS X. From then on, I hope to keep the versions and feature sets in synch. I plan to have 1.1b2 (second beta) out to Windows testers this week. Kudos to Bill, by the way, who has not only taken to blogging like a fish to water, but is full of ideas about Frequency. Thanks, Bill. I knew there was a reason I picked you for my best man!

Been spending a lot of time reading the REALbasic lists this weekend. What a flamefest!