Friday, October 15, 1999

MacInTouch report on Mac OS 9. "It is now possible to control another Macintosh via AppleScript over the Internet."

Matt Neuburg: Running Frontier behind a Web server. (Mac.)

There aren't enough ads like this on the Internet.

News.Com: SOAP Could Slip Up Microsoft Rivals. "SOAP is not the only answer, but it's the right approach. The world wants more interoperability," Smith said. "We've never solved it. And we haven't heard from any other vendors what the alternative is." Well, there is XML-RPC. I guess the key word there is "heard".

Another quote: "SOAP doesn't require any Microsoft software. Instead, Microsoft sees it as effectively leveling the playing field between Windows and development strategies based on Java. Instead of being forced to chose one model, companies will be free to select whichever is best suited to solving the problem at hand, Microsoft reasons." Key point.

One more thing, Developmentor is pretty far along with a Java implementation of SOAP. Stay tuned.

SF Chronicle: Ten Years After. "The country thought it was tuning into a baseball game. What it got was history's first prime-time, on-the-air disaster movie."

AP: Mets lose to Braves, down 3-0 in NL title series.

Gartner Group: Will Linux Be Viable Competition for Windows Desktops? "To displace Windows, Linux would have to offer some compelling feature or 'killer application' that is so overwhelming that it justifies a migration. The problem is that any application that can be created under Linux can easily be ported to Windows, thus obviating any advantage." Old old thinking.

My Opinion Only: Linux changes the economic model for OSes as well as for developers of killer apps. Microsoft hasn't offered me, a developer, the chance to bake my software into their operating system. Linux, the OS without the OS vendor, has no opinion about whether I do a bake-off or not.

Question for Gartner: How would you do a Cobalt Qube with NT? How much would it cost?

7/7/99: Linux Don't Blink. "If Microsoft won't give us the server platform we need, it's sitting right here on Linux, ready to go, for a very reasonable price, without any lock-in. (None of the analysts include that in their reasoning, how many dollars is the lack of lock-in worth?)"

Talk about XML-RPC on the Jabber developer mail list.

Reuters: 'Snortal' proves the Net stinks. "Think this has the slight reek of a hoax about it? Well, guess again. Smith and his partner, Joel Bellenson, are proven high-tech entrepreneurs, having founded Pangea Systems Inc., an industry leader in providing software and technology to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies."

BTW, the DigiScents site is done with Frontier. Marc Canter is leading the creative team, with "Seth Dillingham" leading on the technical side. I haven't used the product myself, so I don't know if it's real or not, but Marc says it is, and while Marc is nutty and creative, he's also quite astute. We'll certainly find out soon if it's real or not, for the time being, why *not* believe? (I signed up for their beta program.)

Unrelated to anything, we mothballed a site we did with Apple in March 1997. Our ISP is retiring the server, so we gave this old site a permanent home on UserLand.Com.