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March 15, 2001 +
Following the NCAA tourney today? Launch the Fastbreak Scoreboard. Man, this thing rocks.
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If you're anything like me, you miss Shamrock Shakes too.
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Debunking the myths of UI design, from IBM DeveloperWorks. Indeed. This needs a highlight sheet, though, so the lay client can follow along. (via Tomalak)
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True to its roots, even Linux's logo is open-source. (via Signal vs. Noise, who linked to the UI design article via Tomalak too)
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March 14, 2001 +
Today's fun New York City fact: just 4.5 percent of voters in the 1997 mayoral election were white Protestants.
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A Flash/DHTML discussion with our master programmer at work has led me to some wonderful examples of DHTML craftiness with dynamic API work on Richardinfo.
~ Las Meninas rendered in movable 3D.
~ Resizable, draggable interior windows.
~ Layered boxes that move via Javascript links.
This is all mildly beyond me from a development perspective, but the possibilities DHTML presents are phenomenal, and a compelling argument for me to ease my hard-core backward compatibility stance.
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March 13, 2001 +
The New York Times wonders, Does Primedia's anti-adult-material stance for its newly acquired About.com contradict its anything-goes policy for the racy ads in the back of its New York magazine?
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In what my brother calls "post-Napster syndrome," I bought three new CDs today, all of which I might have sampled with MP3s but blindly purchased anyway.
I am happy to report that Kozmo's still got it. Placed my order at 1:31 p.m. for a 2-to-3 delivery window, and the music arrived punctually at 2:29 in a happy orange bag. And Kozmo, in order to boost off-hour orders, lifted its delivery fees for orders placed before 3 p.m., so I didn't pay extra for the convenience.
I don't know how Kozmo made money off my transaction, but it's still a fun way to shop.
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Enron and Bluckbuster ended their video-on-demand partnership today. So much for my VOD beta-testing.
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March 12, 2001 +
I officially hate the ridiculous and impossible concept of "above the fold" on a computer screen.
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If it's Monday morning, I must be tired. Not because it's the start of the work week, but because I'm always up late Sunday nights reading the New York Times Magazine.
The Times covers such diverse and fascinating topics as a commentary on why Americans aren't happy yet, airlines' comfort solutions, Wolfgang Puck's favorite dishes, and a great essay on cutting-edge musicians selling their work to advertising agencies. And this was all in yesterday's issue.
Throw in the Ethicist column and a little William Safire, and the result is one of the best general-interest magazines around. And it's a newspaper supplement.
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I've been meaning for months now to post, deconstruct, and basically buy all the items on Elvis Costello's 500 Essential Albums list. Seems Elvis beat me to it, though. Take a look at a great piece by a true pop-music aficionado.
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March 9, 2001 +
Gotta love how hackers are exploiting the ignorance of less computer-savvy lawyers and corporate executives.
The DVD encryption hack DeCSS has been banned from distribution -- it can't even be printed on a T-shirt -- so two programmers boiled it down to seven lines of Perl code and started emailing it around. So much for squelching.
Meanwhile, the file-sharing folks at Aimster are "encoding" file names by throwing the first letter of a word to the end, a la Pig Latin; the end result is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the very law concocted to protect the entertainment industry from unauthorized copying.
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You should be reading Uncle Bob's Diary O' Chuckles regularly. Trust me on this one.
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March 8, 2001 +
The Things You Learn Dept.: 1800flowers.com cultivates its own flowers and ships them priority overnight to their destination. FTD.com dispatches local florists to assemble and deliver its orders.
Having ordered from each, I can report that both have flawless ordering processes and delivered beautiful fresh flowers right on time (although neither provides a useful excuse for when your loved one says, "These are so gorgeous! Where'd you get them?").
Flower delivery is ecommerce at its finest. Who'd'a thunk it?
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March 7, 2001 +
Web site screenshots, October 1995. This is how the Web looked when I learned HTML (on BBEdit Lite and Netscape 1.1, btw). Notice how little Yahoo's basic structure has changed.
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(this essay is part of the Auricle and cross-posted here)
An excellent, highly opinionated Metafilter discussion on Napster filtering raises the issue of looking at the situation objectively.
Hard facts exist behind the Recording Industry Association of America's heavy assualt on Napster's file-sharing liberties. And the facts say this:
1. Musicians, as all artists, are entitled to copyright their works. A copyright ensures that no one will copy said work without authorized permission from the rights holder. Napster, of course, obliterates that.
2. The RIAA, representing many copyright holders, views Napster as an infringement on copyright. This is a correct assumption, and this is why Napster is staring down a court injunction. Whatever counterarguments users and Napster can present, people swapping files are indeed breaking copyright law.
3. No one has proven that file-sharing is a detrimental practice. For all its bluster, the RIAA has only chosen to ignore the fact that sales of new compact discs rose significantly last year despite heavy Napster use. The RIAA claims singles sales have declined, but singles sales have been flat since the major labels phased out 45s.
What most Napster users and fans tend to ignore is that the RIAA is, under current law, correct. By swapping files they might otherwise have purchased, Napster users are getting something for nothing. This deprives the RIAA's constituents -- labels, songwriters and musicians all -- of the financial benefit they have come to expect. Regardless of the supposed benefits and advantages, Napster users are guilty as charged.
However, the RIAA, by attacking the most blatant symptom of its problem, is not solving the problem itself.
The RIAA is running scared -- rightly so -- and its chasing after Napster may ultimately prove futile. The proverbial cat is out of the bag, and if Napster disappears, plenty of other file-swapping programs will likely take its place.
Historically, distributors of creative property rebel against new technology that shifts their paradigms. Record labels once wanted reimbursement for allowing radio stations to broadcast their music. The film industry expected videocasette recorder sales to destroy movie-ticket sales. The same patterns apply to the music industry's view of Napster and its ilk: Why will consumers pay for something they can get for free?
The answer lies within the products themselves. Many Napster users find new music and ultimately buy the CD at retail. Fans want liner notes, cover art, hidden tracks, multimedia. They want to see and hear their bands perform live. They trade music because they want to share; swapping music exposes people to new sounds and only leads to increased musical awareness and consumerism.
The RIAA is missing a golden opportunity, and years may pass before it catches up to the system that is moving forward. All it may take is some creative thinking: How about a pay fan site, like paying for a fanzine produced by the band? How about the purchase of a retail CD giving an inside scoop or a discount to a live ticket? How about selling CDs at a discount to people who have sampled MP3s off the album, and tracking album sales?
None of these suggestions will solve the problem at hand, which, to the RIAA, is the unauthorized, unpaid distribution of its copyrighted project. But in winning its battle with Napster, the RIAA has done little to advance its troops in the digital market war. The end result won't be known for years, and don't be surprised if the major labels wind up on top. But the system will likely be changed for good.
The Napster legal affair is only the beginning of the battle for digital rights. The next few years should be even more fascinating.
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March 6, 2001 +
Arial: the USA Today of sans-serif fonts -- cheaper, lesser, ubiquitous. (via XBlog, which I am starting to love)
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Filepile is really nifty. 'nuff said. Try it. (via Metafilter)
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A Manhattan real estate broker in New York magazine's annual real-estate issue: "I'm not going to have (anything) to do come April. I think starting in May it's going to be rough, with a lot of layoffs. Psychologically, it's going to be a mess."
I think I'll revisit the multiple listing service in about six weeks.
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March 2, 2001 +
And now for a quick analysis of instant messaging services.
Yahoo Messenger tracks user preferences through its server-side login system. AOL Instant Messenger tracks them through local preferences files.
Yahoo's is a bit slower to take effect, but for an Internet-based communication applicaton, it's the far more effective method. When I switch between my Mac and PC at work, YM brings me the same lists and the same layouts. Tracking my stocks and headlines on one application is nice, too.
AIM forces me to re-enter my buddies on each computer (whose IDs I have to write down manually, because one AIM shuts down when I log in from a different one) and botches my buddy icon display. Today, I had to reinstall my PC's AIM, and I lost half my buddy list, which I then had to recompile from my Mac's list, instead of working off a central file.
As soon as the common messaging standard takes hold, I'll be ditching my AIM for good. Yahoo has cuter emoticons, anyway.
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So Anil tells me AIM is supposed to store buddy lists online. Which doesn't explain why mine doesn't, of course, or change my opinion. But color me corrected. Now it's time to investigate the glitch. (YM still has the cuter emoticons.)
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A new guy strutted into the Web Design Saloon this morning. His name is Adaptive Path, and he's a powerhouse consortium of developers and designers who specialize in "user experience."
I know and admire some of the folks in this company, who have been responsible for excellent work in the past. I wish them great success, especially if they can lay claim to some of the media yakkety-yak the Nielsen Norman Group currently possesses.
Objectively, though, I can only scratch my head and cross my fingers. Dotcom employment is a mess right now; job postings to the mailing lists I read have almost completely dried up. Usability consulting firm Creative Good laid off the bulk of its staff this week, and web writers are bracing for hard times.
Here's to hoping they shine brightly through the darkness.
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March 1, 2001 +
Tired: Wired's Tired/Wired list.
Wired: Tired/Wired special dot-com collapse edition. Perfect.
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I find the Silicon Alley Reporter and its sibling products to be among the worst professional-grade products around in terms of writing and editing skill. But they manage to come up with some excellent, thought-provoking articles. Today's feature wonders: What impact will dotcom cutbacks and layoffs have on New York's insane housing market?
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