oreillynet has started hosting blogs – tim’s looks sparse but promising, for example he writes about visiting mp3.com :
” They are deep into xml, think of their site as having an API (and in fact already have partners using that API to build services that use their site). They aren’t quite ready to have it documented, but they are definitely thinking ahead to the kind of next generation object web that Jon Udell talks about. And of course they are exactly the kind of company I’ve been looking for to study in terms of heavy scalability issues. At peak, they are moving massive, massive amounts of data, and have multi-terabits of data on file. High reliability, high speed networking, etc. All of this is their bread and butter. This would be a great company to spend time with.
They are also totally into what it means to be a next generation web company: try stuff, measure it, move quickly. They have built a lot of perl tools for understanding what people are really doing on their site, and they do a lot of experimentation. They try to release new features every day. Their original goal was 1 new feature a day; now they say they are up to 15 or 20. ”
it didn’t take long to figure out how to crack open stephen king’s ‘e.book’. if a horrible interface wasn’t going to slow down adoption of e.books, this will.
in case it hasn’t become painfully apparent – i’ll reveal the extreme nature of my superdorkiness by proclaiming loudly and proudly that i find this interview with jeeves very funny. it also reminds me that alan turing would probably be quit impressed with the current state of the art. don’t forget to stop by and get some tips from mr. clean – of course only after you talk with him about your cleaning habits and sundry personal issues.
actually, there are some interesting chatterbots out there, but mr. clean doesn’t seem to be one of them.
despite the hyperbolic intro on the pbs website, code rush seems like it could compete well for the ‘what-to-do-tonight’ award. unfortunately, none of the pbs stations in the greaterchicago or milwaukee areas appear to be interested in picking up the show.
salon is talking about napster and the ways that it may or may not change the music industry:
“Over time, though, I think that a growing number of artists will question their own participation in a system that really doesn’t serve the great majority of them. They’ll begin to experiment with more direct sell-more-T-shirts approach mocked by artists in our article last week, but serious new ideas for generating revenue for musicians: ideas like annual fan subscriptions, charges for early access to
new music or special deals on collector’s items, using online networking to boost attendance at shows and no doubt many others that I can’t yet imagine.”
i agree that in the long term this might happen to a certain degree – napster will ‘prevail’, but undoubtably the industry will eventually figure out how to deal with it and resume business as usual. just look at electronic book market for a lessons.
ouch. The Motley Fool is discussing red hat’s earnings and it looks like redhat’s valuation may be due for a correction:
“Red Hat may be the leader among Linux providers, but it remains far from clear that the company can increase revenues substantially enough to justify its price. The company sports a $8.6 billion market cap — and that’s after dipping 63% from its high-water mark. Even if Red Hat stays at its present valuation, after five years of 100% revenue growth, its price-to-sales ratio would stand at 6.4, which is higher than Computer Associates (NYSE: CA) or IBM (NYSE: IBM) .
The market has priced extremely high expectations into Red Hat. We’ll have to see much better performances in the future than we saw this year.”
to beat a dead cliche in the mouth – i resemble that comment!
i’m on the fence about online bookmarks – the idea sounded useful, but apparently salon is not impressed with the current services. it’s interesting that the article states that savvy internet users have an average of 84 bookmarks. i guess i must be super-savvy, since i had 84 bookmarks in 1994 and they have grown out of control. my problem is that after a certain number of bookmarks my meager attempt at a hierarchical categorization breaks down and i’m left looking for a new organization method.