There’s a well-substantiated rumor going around that Apple is about to release “low-end” iPods, for around $100 a piece. The devices will come in assorted designs and have a capacity of 2-4 Gigabytes. If this happens, there is no reason Apple’s roughly 30% market share in MP3 players shouldn’t approach 100% — except for folks who just looooove those spiffy WMA files. We’ll find out for sure what’s up at the January 6th Macworld Expo.
Filed under The Internet Biz
I’ve just launched my photo weblog (moBlog, phoBlog, whatever). The idea is this: I take pictures with my camera phone, click a few buttons, and they magically show up online, weblog-style.. It’s called Show/See — pronounced: “Chausse” 
There may be some bugs, so bear with me if it acts weird. I’ll be contributing over the weekend, but won’t be able to code, so hopefully it will cooperate. Once it’s stable, I’ll put up a permanent link somewhere on this page. Enjoy!
Filed under Projects
Winamp, that venerable audio player, has been going through quite a bit of turmoil lately. As Microsoft turned their simple Media Player into an ugly bloated mess, Winamp 2 arrived on the scene as a wonderfully small and streamlined piece of software for playing your MP3’s. However, it lacked certain functionality that came to be expected of a media player, such as CD ripping, CD burning, and cataloging/jukeboxing. So, developers Nullsoft embarked upon an ambitious project to build the Überplayer, entitled Winamp 3.0. Not content just to tack on the new features to Winamp 2, some enterprising developers decided to actually create a whole new programming language in which to build it (dubbed “Wasabi“). The end result was a bloated piece of software, which people liked none too much, including AOL (which bought out Nullsoft a while back). The primary “Wasabi” developers were recently canned.
Development on Winamp 2 continued even while the bow was being wrapped around the Winamp 3 package, hence the curious phrase on the Winamp homepage: “Winamp 3: Almost as new as Winamp 2.” Now, seemingly out of nowhere, with no mention on Winamp.com, except buried in their forums, Nullsoft pulled a Leisure Suit Larry and released Winamp 5 - in both free and paid(!) versions. It looks like a promising piece of software but, well, the recently released iTunes for Windows is going to be mighty tough opponent to beat. I think Winamp’s days are numbered, but it was great while it lasted and I’m sure Nullsoft will be around in some form or another to foment their trademark chaos.
Filed under The Internet Biz
Apparently, I can now run Linux on my digital camera. I’m not exactly sure why I’d want to do this but, well, some people have far too much free time, I think.
Filed under The Internet Biz
Well, the old MP3.com is now gone and, with it, an incredible archive of works by 250,000 artists. That’s two hundred and fifty THOUSAND artists (including my pals Heather Hates You). MP3.com’s founder, Michael Robertson offered to pay for the rights to the archive — or any other sort of arrangement to keep it intact, and Archive.org happily offered to host it. But C|Net, in its infinite wisdom, decided to just take the easy way out and pull the plug, instead. I wonder who got to actually hit the DELETE key…
Welcome to the wonders of the digital age.
*sigh*
Filed under The Internet Biz
It’s rare that I have a major gripe with the way Amazon.com does things, but here’s a letter I just sent to them regarding their seriously flawed feedback system for their “zShops” sellers:
I have a comment on your zShop feedback system. You use a 1 to 5 star system, much like your product reviews. In my experience, a four star product is a very good product. Therefore, I’m inclined to think that a four star seller is also a good seller.
However, having just had a bad experience with a “four star” seller, I realized that your rating system is terribly flawed. You’re simply assigning one star for every 20% of positive feedback. Well, this seller had about 25% negative feedback. Anyone who’s used eBay knows that a 25% negative feedback rate indicates a HORRIBLE seller!
You should seriously consider modifying your “star” algorithm to accurately reflect the actual quality of the seller. For example, I would consider someone with a 25% negative feedback rating no more than a 2 star seller.
Filed under The Internet Biz
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