Debunking Popular Net Myths

Well its time to finally burst the bubble of some popular Net myths. There were a number of good examples, including this one: "Myth-There are millions of dot-com companies. There are only about 2,500 online start-ups backed by venture capital."

Napster

Napster is not hurting record sales, contrary to record industry statements.

Happy Thanksgiving

Anime serials

I gotta' say that I am hooked on online animation serials. I've been an animation freak for years, but just got into the online anime serials. My friend Natalie got me hooked on one that she has been working on for the last few months— Inferno, by Frank Katz

Happy Birthday Dad.

Ahhh, the smell of late night baking....yum.

You know the holidays are here when you can smell apple and pumpkin pie being baked in the oven late @ nite.

Survivor in Space???

<rant>
What is it with these reality shows? I mean, haven't we all seen this stuff before in a bad episode of MTV's The Real World four years ago? Well, NBC wants to jump on the bandwagon and create its own version set in space aboard the decrepid Mir space station. Wait a minute...aren't the Russians going to deorbit Mir soon? So if NBC get's its way will we have Survivor on a time limit?
</rant>

There is a lot potential

There is a lot potential for Apple and the Mac with a truly open-source operating system. This really makes a Mac die-hard ponder "When is a Mac not a Mac?"

An organizer for your organizer

It has gotten to the point where I have so many devices to keep my life organized that I need an organizer to keep all my organizers up-to-date. Fusion One has come up with something that will help me keep my sanity. In one web site I can synchronize all my gadgets' calendars, address books, bookmarks, e-mail, and my MP3 files. I can fire my therapist now. :)

Throw your CDs away

You can forget about the rio 600 and all those other also-ran MP3 players. Creative Labs has come up with something even better. They have developed a MP3 Jukebox, called the Nomad Jukebox, which can hold 100 hours of music and is the size of a Sony Discman. The device is completely networkable and will connect to a car stereo or home entertainment system. I want this for Christmas.

Feeling a little crispy

Talk about being a little fried, crisp around the edges, in dire need of a Starbucks transfusion... I pulled a 13 hour day @ work working on a project that had to get done and then went home to work on stuff for siteSatellite.

We have been working to add services to siteSatellite's hosting capabilities. I managed to get our Streaming QuickTime server running last night. I have been trying to use the open-source version of QTSS for MacOS 9 of QTSS. The port is not quite ready for prime time, but stable enough to serve small scale web broadcasts without having to move to Mac OS X Server.

Something is fishy in Florida

I hate to jump on the political bandwagon by saying that there was widespread voting fraud in Tuesday's election, but something is not quite right down there. Maybe it's the hype that has got me going. You know, the fact that the media declared that Gore had won the state, then Bush, then too close to call, is a little too much to stomach.

The thing about being on the web is that I too got into the act of looking at the polling numbers from all the counties in Florida and noticed strange voting patterns. People can claim voter fraud, voter confusion, or whatever. No matter how you slice it the whole thing stinks. Thinking back to my early days as an International Relations major in college, this brings all sorts of thoughts of bad political karma to mind.

Sock Puppet put to sleep

Well, the dot com shake-out continues. San Francisco's Pets.com has put the well known Sock Puppet to sleep. They have been struggling for a while now, but the last nail in the coffin was hammered in place with the announcement that they will be shutting down. The company will continue to take orders until Thursday.

I got my talking Sock Puppet today. Did you get yours?

Sign of the times

They have stock tickers, sports updaters, weather trackers, and now a dot com layoff tracker. Its scary to see so many dot coms shrink or shut down altogether. I know people at some of these firms. A few of them have gone back into the interactive groups of some established old media companys. In the end this contraction is a good thing, but it is still a reality check.

It's email not e-mail

It looks like the corporate copy editors have finally invaded the last protected bastion of the old Wired. In an article Wired has reversed itself and gone against its own style guide for writing for the web. Terms such as bleeding edge, burn rate have been dropped. However, the most shocking change of them all is the concept that email is really e-mail (with a hyphen).

They have proclaimed that the Digital Revolution is over. If it's really over then I had better bone up on my Public Relations skills from my days in PR and look for a new job in old media.

This is very sad to see what was the leading edge of all things wired succumb to mediocrity and the Chicago manual of style.

Say it ain't so

Well they went ahead and did it. Napster signed a deal with BMG to develop a fee based music service allowing users to browse their music catalog. This deal doesn't end the company's legal troubles, but people are hoping that this brings the other labels to their senses. Unfortunately it looks like the only ones getting the fees will be the labels and not the artists— which is a major issue.

I hope that in this process to get the labels off their backs that they don't kill the service by overcharging. People naturally gravitate to the next free service when a pioneer begins to charge.