thanks in no small part to peter's tireless efforts the IETF OKs 'XMPP-Core' [ more ]. for the unitiated, xmpp is the protocol that powers jabber. considering the fact that jabber has recently posted some impressive stats, hopefully the 'ietf stamp of approval' will help it make a dent in IM marketshare numbers, at least in the enterprise market.

like i've said in the past, people don't like talking about face grease, but those clever entrepreneurs are busily creating a need to fill the niche. or something like that.

after months of rumor and innuendo, it's funny to see apple fess-up that that my frequent need for a new logic board wasn't not just an "abberation", as one of the apple techs tried to tell me when i asked if it was possible that i might have purchased a lemon instead of apple. i wonder how much of a difference the iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program, since most of us have presumably gone through multiple go-arounds with paid applecare support. in fact, if i was being conspiratorial, i might suspect that jobs and company were waiting until a significant portion of people paid to have their logic boards replaced before rolling out a free program, since it was obvious from the beginning that the issue was widespread.

01.30.04 update: a reader sent me an email asking if i realized that the iBook logic board repair extension program would reimburse customers for any repair costs suffered, which could "...sort of [shoot] holes in the above conspiracy theory." admittedly, there was a big unchecked assumption in my theory predicated on a number of conditions that i didn't make entirely clear.

i assumed that the reimbursement wouldn't include paying me back the money i paid for applecare support, which rightly or wrongly i only purchased when the ibook died the first time. i didn't buy applecare when i originally purchased the computer, but "decided" to get it when it failed after only having it for two months, because the cost of applecare was about the same [ perhaps less, i can't remember ] as just paying for a single repair.

i talked with apple today and while they are "researching" the issue, the answer seems to be that you will not be reimbursed if you bought applecare, even if the only reason you bought applecare was because your logic board went bad. so, had i decided to not get applecare and just pay the repair charges, i'd be getting reimbursed. but alas, i chose to fork over the $250 for the service plan that i otherwise wouldn't have needed, but won't get reimbursed. how lucky for them.

so my original conspiracy theory still stands, albeit slightly modified. it's possible that someone in apple probably ran the numbers and saw that 'x' percentage ( eveyone i know had the first failure within the first three months ) of the logic board failures were occuring within the first three months. of those that weren't "pre-emptively" covered by applecare, apple techs were told to to upsell people to applecare on the "it's less than the cost of the single repair" argument [ indeed, i was told by the apple tech at the time that he couldn't talk to me at all until i purchased applecare. and the other people that i know who had the problem all either had applcare already or decided to get it when the logic board failed ]. and now, apple gets the good p.r. of rolling out a reimbursement program, when most of the customers don't qualify for the reimbursement.

then again, maybe it's all just one big coincidence. uh, huh.

i guess there's something called the 50 book challenge that's been making the rounds. maybe i should use it as a way to add a little more discipline to my bookworming streak .

i'm only about half-way done with autumn of the moguls which has its high points, scattered throughout pages of tediousness. as the the observer observed , michael wolff is a quite the witty one, but he can alternate between a showy wittiness and flagrant self-loathing in a way that detracts from his astute observations of those with their hands on the controls of the "media establishment".

• View Apple Knowledge Base documents via RSS
• Panther for developers
• email conversion extravaganza
• Mac.Ars takes on the iPod Mini [ wherein they elaborately restate what jobs already stated ]
• Do women clasp infants to their left to boost bonding?
• munging atom into rss

• A survey of XML standards: Part 1

• Evolving a Stigmergic Self-Organized Data-Mining [ thanks v! ]

• IP Telephony Cookbook

i've had a few days to live with the danger hiptop/sidekick sidekick; while i'm generally happy with it, there are loads of issues that make it less than a homerun. i'm aware of t-mobile's terms of service issues , but i chose to live with them given the steep discounts i got on the device at the t-mobile store, and the fact that there is an upcoming release of a syncing application that makes the whole thing less of an issue for me.

size. it's clunky. i knew this before i bought it, but it still doesn't lessen the daily aggravation of having a phone/data device that doesn't conveniently slip into your pocket. of course, if they'd have made it any smaller, i'd be complaining about the keyboard and screen being to small. in the end, i guess they got the tradeoff almost right, but i just wish it could be slightly svelter, since it's a pain to try to constantly find a place to stash device the size of a largish bar of soap.

battery life. i hate talking on the phone so i'm not exactly what you'd call a power user. it looks like i might be able to go the day without charging with moderate data usage and a few phone calls, so it's basically in the "charge every night and maybe top it off during the day" category, which is not spectacular but not surprising given the tradeoffs that the engineers had to make.

converage and speed coverage is so-so in grand rapids, which i know is the fault of the radio in the device, since i haven't had any problems with other phones on the t-mobile network. it also seems fairly instable, in that the phone can move from 4 bars to 1 or none without moving anywhere. data coverage also seems adequate. i haven't done any speed tests, but the perceived download speeds are 56Kbps at best. general web browsing is painful, but instant messaging is quiet pleasant. a wifi replacement, this is not.

applications up until this point the device doesn't have a whole lot going for it, but it has a few applications that start to tilt things back in its favor. ssh client terminal monkey . great geegaws words can not explain how happy this makes me. there's no "pipe" key, but that's fixable . the latency sucks at times, but i don't care. the ability to ssh anytime, anywhere almost makes me want to cry.

IM it feels really responsive. and rightly or wrongly, aim if often "good enough". i wish that there was an ssl option for more secure communications. and here's to hoping that someday they'll turn on the rumoured support for jabber . in the meantime, i guess the support for ssh gives me some command line jabber options for those times when i might not want stuff going out insecure over aim.

synch o.k. it hasn't technically been released yet, but i am breathlessly awaiting missing synch . ssh, instant messaging and a good synch app, along with tmobile unlimited $20 data plan more than make up for all the other issues.

email the installed email client is a joke. i'm an IMAP guy. and the email client only does half-way imap. you can retrieve your email from an IMAP/SSL client, but it doesn't synch your folders - i.e. if you delete the email on the sidekick, it doesn't get deleted on the server, which largely defeats the purpose of IMAP. a quick check of the hiptop's forums reveals that many people just migrate to something like fusemail . i suspect i might be able to kludge something together with squirrelmail.

web browser ugh. it's mostly a painful affair. the browser has all sorts of css rendering issues, it doesn't do javascript, it seems to have issues with http auth and so on and so forth. add in the fact that the network does not in any way shape or form qualify as speedy, and you quickly realize to avoid the browser on sites that aren't specifically designed for small devices.

camera i didn't get one because i've heard they are laughable. i might break down and get one, but at this point it's not very high on my list.

phone and lastly, the phone. since i put this last you can see where it sits on my priority list. i was looking for a mobile data device with a wan interface first and a phone second. and that's exactly what i got. if you're a power phone user you'll definately want to pass this up. the sound quality is adequate, but nothing to brag about. the size makes it difficult, if not impossible, to do a one-handed "pick up the phone and answer it" move. you get the idea.

maybe . because what's better than a marathon in duluth minnesota in june?

• Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms
• 10 reasons why RSS is not ready for prime time
• The Laszlo SoundBlox
• wonkette
• social (software) entrepreneurs?...

• Mars Rover Stops Sending Data [ i.e. grist for the mars anomaly research mill ]

I got a new danger sidekick today. I needed a good wan device with an ssh client that was more portable than my laptop with a gprs card. I really wanted a treo 600, but it's not available on the tmobile network and I can't really lay down that kind of cake anyway. The deal maker came when a friendly tmobile rep in the chicago corporate store found some steep discounts, so I got it for supah, dupah cheap.

What happened to the lowfi blogger interface anyway?

the overview of mac os x server answered a bunch of "why" questions that had been gnawing at me:

"What is the point of Mac OS X Server? Mac OS X is Unix. I have Apache, bind, sendmail, (and whatever I want) already on here. My Mac OS X box is a server already, right? I have a home network with a half dozen Macs, and have a box that does some serving, and I want it do more. So, I set out to figure out what this Server thing is. "

is it just me or has slashdot become the worst kind of drug? the kind that stopped doing anything for you years and years ago - and yet you keep going back for more and more.

i'm trying to get more disciplined about reading books. i figure it's like most things, i just need to make the time and the time will magically appear. i'm already making progress this month, having finished small pieces loosely joined and the da vinci code .

i might start reviewing books by how long it takes for me to fall asleep after i start reading it. as much as i wanted to like small pieces loosely joined , i found that it made me fall asleep after about 20 minutes. as much as i might agree with many of basic points in the book, i found it covered a lot of the same ground that i covered in philosopy seminars at evergreen in the mid-nineties. of course, that's not david's fault, so i'd still recommend the book to the unitiated.

i'm almost embarrased to admit that i enjoyed the da vinci code and found it difficult to fall asleep after i picked it up. i imagine it's the sort of thing that robert anton wilson might have writtten had he decided to make the illuminatus trilogy a mainstream page-turner, without all the drugs and high wierdness. while it's a good guilty read, many parts of it feel like the author is trying a bit too hard to get someone to pick up the film rights. i guess it worked since the movie is, in fact, being made and directed by ron howard . no, i'm not making that up. opie is directing a movie with the premise that jesus christ had a child with mary magdalene. then again, maybe it's not so wierd, since ron's supposedly a freemason . who knows, maybe he really does know the da vinci code.

and now, i'm on to Autumn of the Moguls, which is looking like it's 52 minutes on the sleep scale.

anyone who insists that dogs don't have personalities has certainly not spent enough time with our malamute. and now it seems that a researcher is proving the obvious by developing a personality test for dogs :

"A test that can assess a dog's personality has helped to prove what pet owners know, but many psychologists deny: pooches have personality. The test, developed by Sam Gosling from the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues, may help researchers to unravel the biology of animal and human character."

• State of the Union Scorecard [ via dangerousmeta ] update: oops, fixed the link

• color photographs of Chicago from the Early 1940s

it's hard to believe that get yer war on is over two years old and as relevant as ever :

"You know what we should do? Send up a mars mission and once they're up in space, call them and say, "You guys can't reenter the atmosphere until you develop a cure for AIDS. Get crackin'."

• RSS in government
• iPod Sound Quality WebPage

brent would like to know, "...which, atom or rss, should netnewswire prefer when doing feed auto-discovery?"

at first glance TunesAtWork looks to be a nice alternative andromeda, complete with a web-based interface that looks and feels like itunes itself:

"TunesAtWork lets you listen to your personal iTunes music collection while at your office or lab, even though your iTunes collection resides at home."

• People rate shapeliness based on a girl's ratio of volume to height.

• Using Wikis for content management

• Panther: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Top Ten Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks

RDFBlogRoll is an attempt to reuse existing namespaces to produce a blogroll. it'd be nifty if aggregators such as netnewswire supported a richer set of export options, including something like RDFBlogRoll . as it stands brent is reluctant to preserve the "groups" attribute in the opml export for fear of reducing compatibility with existing newsreaders. i think he's missing a whole slew of features that could help push people to the pro version. i'd certainly pay to be able to select a variety of export options. [ RDFBlogRoll via laugingmeme mlp ]

it appears that tacoma, washington has earned the dubious distinction of being the most stressful U.S. city, purportedly due to a "...rare combination of suicide, unemployment, theft and gloomy weather." that might be part of it, but when i lived in olympia, i remember discovering the root cause of all that unhappiness - the tacoma aroma.

a friend recently told me that the reason why cartalk has had more than their fair share of reruns of late is because half of the radio duo, tom magliozzi, had a serious heart condition emerge over the summer, and although he was getting better slowly that he was "close to death at the time". i figured that surely this must surely be a public radio urban legend, since the news would be known far and wide with adoring masses showing their support. not so, the friend told me, since npr and cartalk wanted to keep things on the hush hush.

as it turns out, i don't know how close to death he was, but tom did get sick over the summer and if google is any indication, things were kept mighty quiet .

in any case, hopefully tom is recovering nicely, because i'm not sure i'm prepared for a life without cartalk .

"""You don't need a couple of Whoppers. You are too fat. Pull ahead."".

one for saturday morning coffee - Mapping weblog communities:

"Websites of a particular class form increasingly complex networks, and new tools are needed to map and understand them. A way of visualizing this complex network is by mapping it. A map highlights which members of the community have similar interests, and reveals the underlying social network. In this paper, we will map a network of websites using Kohonen's self-organizing map (SOM), a neural-net like method generally used for clustering and visualization of complex data sets. The set of websites considered has been the Blogalia weblog hosting site (based at this http URL), a thriving community of around 200 members, created in January 2002. In this paper we show how SOM discovers interesting community features, its relation with other community-discovering algorithms, and the way it highlights the set of communities formed over the network."

not that i'm condoning it or anything, but viceland tries to get to the bottom of that perennial generational question, acid versus schrooms?

"To settle the question and save you the $4 you might waste on acid if you're more of a shroom person, we sent two intrepid ne'er-do-wells into Brooklyn's Prospect Park on a recent Sunday."

"Why would one switch from Moveable Type to WordPress?" provides a nice list of reasons why wordpress might be the right tool for certain jobs. choice is good. i might have to give it a spin for an upcoming project.

who cares about those silly ipod minis? ars technica comes through with the real story behind the story:

"Also, Tony Hawk has a receding hair line and needs to factor that thing into the whole thrasher motif. "

and now for a few pessimistic perspectives on explicit approaches to defining social relationships. i was going to write a much longer post, but i don't have time, so if you're looking for something coherent you might want to look elsewhere:

david weinberger on "social bullshit" :

"Third, real social networks are always implicit. The ones constructed explicitly are always -- yes, always -- infected with a heavy dose of social bullshit. It's like thinking that the invitiation list for your wedding actually reflects your circle of friends and relatives."

Dr Ont's Semantic Spout" :

"TypePad produces the worst FOAF in the world. Take this typical example. Apparently this geezer 'knows' BBC News! I know that this particular foaf:Person is a British Member of Parliament but surely not even these super-humans can know 'things'. And Ross himself seems to know a lot of inanimate objects."

ross mayfield understates the obvious :

"Expect fast growth of this service within the explicit crowd, but not everyone wants to be so explicit, the absence of constraints and bad data will hamper its utility."

and quite related to all this, i'm going to have to agree with the assessment at startupskills :

"My point is that outside of perhaps a novel niche application here or there, the idea itself will never get beyond the early-adopters because (to my knowledge) no one has demonstrated a credible model in which an average person would willingly adopt it."

i don't think i'm mistaking intentions for actions either . rather, given the obvious facts that most people won't see the value of joining the network [ unlike music sharing ] and those that do see the value will be stymied by a signal-to-noise problem which will become more of a problem as the network grows, i see big problems for the adoption of decentralized "social software" as it's currently envisioned.

i'm guessing that it will be 3-5 years before any of this shakes out into anything that can be adopted by mainstream ISVs looking for new business opportunities - just look at how long the rss fiasco has be going on and rss is easy.

kris and i have spent most of the day engaged in a new year tradition - going through the house and getting rid of "clutter". yes, one man's trash is his wife's treasure, but we seem to do a fairly good job of agreeing on about 90 percent of what should be donated to goodwill, recycled or just thrown away. despite the fact that we do this consistently every year [mostly], we both hate shopping and we're not pack rats, it still never ceases to amaze me how much crap we can accumulate. i think part of the problem is the 5 or 10 percent of iffy stuff that makes it through a few rounds of the clean sweep. magazines are one of the usual suspects.

despite our willingness to donate all manner of clothing, public radio swag, "almost working" coffee makers, yards and yards of telephone cable and old answering machines [ just for starters ], we always seem to have a weak spot for saving months and months of harpers, the atlantic monthly, the nation, the christian science monitor and - yes, i'll admit it, even old wired magazines. i think the weakness comes from the guilt of knowing that we've only read a few of the articles from each issue and that someday we might possibly get around to reading the whole thing. this year, we both decided that the madness needed to stop, so we've cancelled everything except harpers, thinking that perhaps if we can get disciplined enough to read it from cover to cover on a regular basis, then we might be allowed to slowly resubscribe to the others.

maybe having less magazines around will help me focus on all the unread books laying around that i can't bring myself to take to the local used bookstore.

i guess there's always next year.

what with the holidays and everything i can be forgiven for almost missing philip greenspun's 10 year web anniversary. i can't remember the exact date i ran across his original photo.net/~philg site, although i think it might have been around mid-1994. of course i read and reread "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing".

anyway, phil was a huge influence in the early days [ i'm sure i'm not alone ] and it's nice to see him continuing that tradition with his new site.

at almost exactly the same time i'm reading om malik's plea for a a dencentralized friendster-style application , i noticed something called plink in my referer logs, which seems to be indexing foaf files:

"Welcome to PLINK, a new way to find friends, and friends of friends!

PLINK gets all its user data from 'FOAF' (Friend-of-a-Friend) files which anyone can add to their web site."

plink seems fairly rudimentary at this point and i'm sure we'll see much more of this type of thing in the coming months, since in the comments to om's post, it looks like marc canter is working on a foaf-based project call peopleaggregator . i'd also find it hard to believe that dave isn't working on something similar for technorati . perhaps foaf isn't destined to die on the vine afterall.

Modern Industrial Revolution, Exit, and the Failure of Internal Control Systems :

"Since 1973 technological, political, regulatory, and economic forces have been changing the worldwide economy in a fashion comparable to the changes experienced during the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution. As in the nineteenth century, we are experiencing declining costs, increaing average (but decreasing marginal) productivity of labor, reduced growth rates of labor income, excess capacity, and the requirement for downsizing and exit. The last two decades indicate corporate internal control systems have failed to deal effectively with these changes, especially slow growth and the requirement for exit. The next several decades pose a major challenge for Western firms and political systems as these forces continue to work their way through the worldwide economy."

[ via the comments in the john robb post on the scoble post on the slashdot post ]

i just noticed that the fine folks at jabber.org released the first stable 2.0 tarball. 2.0 is a complete rewrite of the 1.4 release so the transition on non-trivial, although thankfully the documentation looks fairly complete.