David Emery OnlineFriday Links XXXXV
11 January 2008
How Windows Users are Conditioned
Number 143 in the ‘Most people don’t understand computers’ series.
Porn, Ning, and the Internet
Interesting points on both how you shouldn’t trust external web statistics (as they really are just made up) and how hard it is to balance free speech vs being a porn paradise.
Two years on, here’s another rant about the state of blogging
I firmly believe in posting whatever the hell you like; blogging should be about writing for yourself, not for some mythical audience.
IE7.js version 2.0 (beta)
Looks useful for keeping the IE6 stragglers up with everyone else.
The Overdub Tampering Committee: Please Allow Us To Introduce Ourselves
Utterly brilliant. I’m sure it’s not true, but the concept is amazing.
Sony BMG Confirms DRM Free Music, But Will Force Customers to Visit A Store To Buy It
I wonder who thought these things were a good idea…
Seth Godin: Music lessons
A must read, as always with Seth.
Amazon Goes (Stealth) Social
Amazon are going in a very interesting direction here, although it still seems to be quite rough at the moment.
Yahoo Is Clearly Up To Something Big Around Music
I agree – Yahoo are up to something, but what? And will it by any good?
Flickr to Authenticate OpenID – Is This The Yahoo! CES Announcement?
The more OpenID usage the better.
Chyrp
Looks very interesting – tumbleblogging is gaining momentum at the moment, so this is coming along at exactly the right time.
How Ruby on Rails Could Be Much Better
Pretty much exactly why I’m not using RoR – it’s just to difficult to deploy when you don’t have absolute control in your hosting.
Shelf – Context for MacOS
Well this is pretty interesting – feels though that instead of an always visible window something that you call up (maybe a Quicksilver plugin?) to get the current ‘person’ would be more useful.
UK wants to make CD rips legal (at last)
Progress!
2000/2008
I’ve known this for a while – it’s the big record sellers that are really suffering, whereas you’re smaller indie labels are doing just fine.
Why It Won’t Work
“Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.
Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can’t trace my IP number.
Kid #1: Also, what’s with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?
Sony BMG dude: They appeal to the sort of mainstream consumer who will see the convenience of our revolutionary music cards!”
Blame
No, it’s not your fault.
7Digital’s 2007 Top Selling Albums and Tracks
It strikes me that if an album that comes out on the 31st of December, and hence only has 1 days worth of sales, comes in at #11, none of the other releases can have sold that much.
NetNewsWire 3.1 is free
Well that’s mighty interesting – a big win for RSS as a whole.
Ask 37signals: Why did you restart Highrise?
Sometimes you just have to stop and start again.
ClearType rendering forthcoming for Safari on Windows?
Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing – we lose the pixel perfect rendering across the platforms, but may gain some Safari market share. Hopefully it’s not on by default.
The deal with shared hosts
I find this a very arrogant attitude to take, quite frankly.
The real untold story of the iPhone
Interesting if (and it’s a big if) true.
What A Free NetNewsWire Means
Yes, this is bad for other RSS readers on the surface but could well have a big enough impact on RSS as a whole to make the whole market significantly bigger.
What To Expect at Macworld 2008 and Why We Think It Will Be Bigger than Usual
I’m trying not to get too excited.
Top Ten Best Ever
Spot on.
Reading the runes for Apple
Nice set of question answered by some pretty interesting people (other then the guy that thinks Apple should buy Tivo…).