Thursday, November 03, 2005

Dave Luebbert on the reasons to clone. 

Todd Bishop shares two views of Microsoft Live.  

First pictures of my new Mac. I added some pictures of the screen saver. It's really something else to see an ordinary picture displayed on this 23 inch cinematic display. Not sure if "cinema" is a technical term or just a feeling. But it makes me want to watch a movie on it, so I guess that's cinema, eh?  

Frederico Oliveira: "We don't really need to wait for Microsoft or Yahoo." 

Steve Gillmor: Office Dead. 

This is the first post entered on my new Macintosh. It doesn't drop characters. The keyboard is a bit awkward, wish it were the same layout and size as the keyboard on the iBook. I imagine it might be difficult to use both. The screen is very nice. Haven't had a chance to experience the raw performance of the machine yet. Pictures to come shortly. 

Randy Charles Morin says that MSN already supports an interface for search through RSS. Yes, I knew that, of course. I lobbied hard for it, and they did what I asked them to do. But Postel's Law says we should be liberal in what we accept, and this is one of those times. Do we know for a fact that the RSS interface does everything that the Google API does? Further it should be possible to simply change the domain in a Google API app to something like api.microsoft.com, and have it "just work." This is not without prior art for Microsoft. It's how Excel competed with Lotus 1-2-3. And how Fox competed with dBASE, and if you want to go really far back, how MS-DOS competed with CP/M. Plug-compatibility is the way to make developers relax, and develop. Of course it's good that MSN supports RSS. But that's not enough. Google is the leader in search, just like Lotus was the leader in spreadsheets. Microsoft is the leader in many other things. If it really wants to challenge Google, first they have to acknowledge Google's leadership. That's the way this stuff works. 

Greg Yardley: "If you want to kneecap the market leader, you have to reduce switching costs to zero." Exactly! 

Jeff Jarvis: "Saving journalism isn't about saving jobs." 

Dion Hinchcliffe: 10 Issues Facing Web 2.0. 

NY Times: "57 percent of all teenagers between 12 and 17 who are active online - about 12 million - create digital content, from building Web pages to sharing original artwork, photos and stories to remixing content found elsewhere on the Web. Some 20 percent publish their own Web logs." 

Mike Arrington reviews the new Flash-based Yahoo Maps.  

RossCode says: Clone the Google API, Microsoft! 

Last year on this day: "Next time, be careful about nominating a guy who gives a great concession speech." 

In the discussion after Hurricane Katrina I heard a scientist talk about global warming and how the fate of New Orleans awaited coastal cities all over the world. He said something profoundly simple. It doesn't matter if your city is three feet below sea level, or if the sea rises three feet, the effect is the same.