Monday, January 10, 2000

Other reports: News.Com, Dan Gillmor, Wired, WSJ, Eric Altman, Industry Standard, NY Times, Washington Post, Salon.

People are having fun with this story. CNN says "That's AOL Folks!" and News.Com says "You have Time Warner."

AOL is generating a lot of talk in the Weblog world.

O'Reilly has an interesting application that builds off the My.UserLand story flow.

Zope.Org: XML-RPC Client for MSIE5. A dividend!

Another possible dividend coming from Microsoft in the next version of MSIE. A wizzy text editor for any object on a page, interfacing thru JavaScript. This might make a whole new level of Manila possible.

SlashDot is giving away $100,000 to deserving developers. Another dividend!

PC WEEK toasts my mother's cousin, Hedy Lamarr. "The story of how a young actress came up with such an innovative idea is interesting in itself. Lamarr, when married to Fritz Mandl, an Austrian armament manufacturer, listened attentively to the conversations her husband had with arms developers. Later, divorced and living in the U.S., she translated that knowledge into something that would change the way we communicate."

DavosNewbies: "One of the reasons Davos works is its isolation." BTW, it's confirmed, Clinton is coming. I believe Steve Case will be there too. I've known Steve for many years. "He's a nice man." Once at Esther Dyson's conference I stood up and explained how AppleLink is scriptable. Later, Case cornered me and complained that we weren't supporting the AOL Mac client. I guess I'll have to apologize when I see him later this month!

One more thing. I think MacBird could be strategic for AOL. As far as I know they still don't have a designer's tool for creating AOL content.

New Manila Site: McCain's Navy.

John Marden, one of two mathematicians with ETP sites, claims he can prove that the new millenium did in fact start on January 1, proving Arthur C Clark (who is not an idiot) wrong. I am grateful for this, because I don't want to go through the whole cathartic experience again eleven months from now. I see!

NY Times: IBM to bet heavy on Linux. "For IBM, the move is an effort to rejuvenate demand for its servers -- larger machines that run computer networks -- and to undermine key rivals, notably Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, whose proprietary software is increasingly used in the Internet commerce market." Oh yah!

To the IBMers who have to learn Linux now -- check out LinuxNewbies, a recent addition to the calvacade of ingenious newbie sites hosted by UserLand. Oh geez!

WSJ: Microsoft a big name in acquisition game. "Its past deals seemed more focused on acquiring software technology that was needed to fill holes. The company’s recent deals appear to be designed to position the company to enter new markets, such as communications." Darned tootin!