Category: Technology

Netscape end-of-lifed

Those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember Netscape’s birth will feel a little sad to hear that it’s finally reached the end of the line:

AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.

I first downloaded a copy of Netscape some time in 1995. What a long, strange trip it’s been since then.

At least we still have Firefox.

Google Knols – This Is Going To Be Ugly

Of all the feedback that’s hit the Internet today about the new Google ‘knols’, I haven’t seen much comment about this aspect yet, but to me it’s one of the most problematic parts of the whole idea:

Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

Unless Google puts some sort of gate-keeping into the process, they just opened the door to a cacophony of competing knols on high-value search phrases and highly contentious topics. Imagine the chaos when every pill-pusher on the Internet creates their own knol on various medical terms and conditions, for example, or when there are competing knols on highly-charged topics like abortion or the state of Israel. And as Jeremiah pointed out, I expect that SEO/SEM companies are already thinking about how they could sell knol creation services to their customers.

Even without the massive can of worms that is the conflict of interest issue here (although I think Tony is spot-on in his take in that aspect), I think this has the potential to be very, very ugly.

Why I Pay More for my DSL

We buy our DSL connectivity from a small local provider that we’ve been doing business with for years. We could pay a little less and go with one of the big companies, but when you read stories like this, you might understand why we’re happy with the status quo:

Canada’s largest provider of high-speed internet access is exploring a controversial data substitution technique that lets it add its own content to the webpages customers visit.

[snip]

This is what Net Neutrality is about — it’s not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it’s also that the data that’s sent is the data that you get — that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream.

UPDATE: Lauren Weinstein has an interesting solution to the problem: kiss http goodbye.

Flickr & Picnik First Impressions

So, after lighting the candles & enjoying some latkes tonight, I decided to give the new Flickr / Picnik web-based photo editing a spin.

I didn’t give Picnik a complete runthrough, but what’s there looks good and (if you’ve spent time editing photos before) everything is reasonably intuitive. The red-eye correction tool is particularly nice – better than Picasa’s – and I think overall this is a great addition to the site.

One big drawback, though — they REALLY need to do something about the load time. It’s very, VERY long. That might be because everyone’s giving it a test drive tonight, but still … it’s painful. And then the wait is almost as long again when you save an edited photo back to your Flickr account.

I need to upload an unedited photo or two and put Picnik thought a more thorough test, but for quick fixes Picnik looks good. I definitely don’t regret having re-upped my Flickr Pro account.

I Am Not Interested In The Kindle

Or in any e-book reader, for that matter. And here’s why: The quagmire of DRM and proprietary file formats.

I have quite a few books on my bookshelves that are more than 20 years old. Some are even older than that. A few were printed before I was even born. Five years from now, will any file formatted for the Kindle be readable anymore, on any system? Possibly, if the product does well enough.

But what about 7 years from now? Or 10? Or more? Not so likely.

I’ll pass.

Six Apart's Judo Move

I’ve migrated off of Movable Type, but it’s hard to stop paying attention to a company whose products I used for four years. Today, Six Apart launched what they’re calling the Movable Type Community Solution — a set of white-box social media tools built onto the Movable Type blogging platform.

It’s an interesting move that should help solidify their place as a provider of enterprise-class tools. And given the realities of the marketplace, it’s a smart one. The window of opportunity for unseating WordPress as the principal provider of blogging tools on the consumer end is very firmly shut right now. Rather than trying to fight a losing battle in WordPress’s face, they are instead choosing to go where WordPress is not and get firmly entrenched there.

A very judo-like move — flow to where the antagonist is not. Let’s see if the execution matches the strategy.