jeff.hume.ca

Ben Goodger, the lead engineer for Mozilla's wildly successful Firefox web browser, has posted on his blog that he is now employeed by Google instead of the Mozilla Foundation. He further notes that while he is now an employee of Google, he will still carry on his role in the Firefox project.

This is a very interesting development, and will most likely lead to a great deal of speculation concerning Google's motivations. This, of course, will lead many to the conclusion that Google may produce their own browser based on Firefox.

Whatever Google might be doing, if anything, with the Firefox technology, this is a clear signal that they are supporting the Mozilla project.

Matt Good comments on the launch of the iTunes Music Store for Canada:

For those of you that have been waiting for the launch of the iTunes Canada store, it’s finally happened. And in true Canadian Music Industry fashion, it’s a total mess.

The launch of the store is what the industry refers to as ”a soft launch”, meaning that it’s a work in progress – or the CMRRA and Apple couldn’t get their shit together prior to it going online. Of course, Canadians have complete access to the same music that can already be found in other countries, they just have to keep checking back to see if those Canadian bands that they like have been added. I would say something witty, but when it comes to Canadian music, this sort of nonesense is just to be expected.

I have bought a couple of things from the store already, but I have found it to be quite lacking in selection. I purchased the exclusive Tragically Hip single, but found that there are only three other Tragically Hip albums on the store. (I believe the Hip have almost ten studio albums.) The greatest irony here is that there are more Hip albums available from the US store where hardly anyone cares about them.

I hope they figure things out and add more of the missing music.

Today Microsoft announced their new Blogging service MSN Spaces.

Frankly, it sucks.

Although it may be "great" for novice users who take whatever Microsoft shoves in their face, I really can't see why any informed user would want to use it. Besides choosing a few colour schemes you have no ability to change the layout/design of your... err... "space." It is also bordered on the top and the bottom by elements which would be present on any other MSN page - login, links to hotmail, shopping, chat, etc. I really don't know why anyone would choose to use this over either Blogger or Livejournal. (I hate Livejournal, but I'd recommend it over this to anyone.)

Not only does it suck, but there have been some interesting issues of censorship and ownership raised. Apparently, the title of your blog cannot contain any profanity. In the case noted, the title "A Corporate Whore" was rejected. Although this might be a little crude, this word is used all the time in all forms of media and it is silly for it to be rejected. In addition to this needless censorship, Microsoft claims ownership and copyright of everything you host on MSN Spaces.

Of course, despite MSN Spaces' inherent crappiness, I'm sure it will get a lot of users like most of their other products.

[Links via BoingBoing]

After the release of Firefox 1.0 yesterday Asa has reported that they are estimating that there were over 1 million downloads of Firefox yesterday alone. The grassroots campaign of spreading this software is a really encouraging change from the norm and shows that groups of dedicated people can change things without having the immense backing of a large corporation.

Anyone reading this who is still using the insecure and stagnating Internet Explorer should give Firefox a try. You will be protecting yourself against spyware, popups and a whole host of undesirable things on the Internet while also using a browser with some very useful features such as tabbed browsing, which IE has not adopted. There is no real reason to continue to use IE when it provides such a threat to your computer.

Well, Steve Ballmer has proven that he either has no idea what he's talking about or is a really bad spin doctor. In a Silicon.com article Ballmer is quoted as saying that:

"We’ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."

Excuse me?

Even if the most common format of music on an iPod is "stolen", I really don't see Ballmer's point. If that's the case, then it's also highly likely that the most common format of music on Windows is stolen as well. Microsoft doesn't even make a player like the iPod, so I really don't understand what exactly he's comparing. Regardless, the iPod allows you to play MP3s (be they ripped from CD, legally bought online or obtained from P2P networks) as do many other portable music players which support MP3s and Windows Media files.

Microsoft's own Windows Media Player software also plays all the "stolen" music that people have. What's the bloody difference, Ballmer?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Apple the first company to create a viable and successful DRM music store in the first place? I don't see what's different about Apple in terms of the DRM to stolen music ratio in this case. Everyone including Microsoft supports unDRMed music formats. In fact, I'd say that there's probably more purchased DRM music on iPods since the iTunes music store is by far the most successful of its kind.

Personally, I don't see how this kind of statement is going to hurt Apple. Apple doesn't want to come out themselves and say they are promoting freedom in music, but if Ballmer says it I'm sure they wont complain. In the eyes of the music industry Ballmer may be painting Apple as the bad guys, but in the eyes of consumers this statement makes Apple look like the freedom fighters, as it were, and Microsoft as the controlling bad guys.

So not only does Ballmer's statement make no sense as the amount of stolen music is the same on an iPod than on Windows, but it also makes Microsoft look bad in the eyes of their customers.

Brent Simmons has finally announced the public beta of NetNewsWire 2.0 and a new weblog editor application called MarsEdit Both look to be vast improvements over their predecessors (the now absent weblog editor within NetNewsWire in the case of MarsEdit.) Recently I've been trying out the incredibly slick and sexy NewsFire and have been quite impressed with its interface (and eye candy,) but this release of NetNewsWire might win me back with it's great features.

I'm writing and posting this with MarsEdit. We'll see if it works.

Ben Goodger rallies the troops:

Netscape had it by being first.
Microsoft has it by being everywhere.
Firefox will have it by being best.

We're coming.

Oh yeah.

Can somebody please tell me why finding Windows freeware/shareware is so annoying? I need an app for resizing a photo so I can upload it here, and I'm having a hard time finding something suitable such as Graphic Converter on OS X. Obviously I'm not really looking that hard, but from my short experience here it seems like sites like MacUpdate and Versiontracker are much better for finding good Mac software than Download.com.

And now I've just remembered I have a copy of Photoshop Elements sitting around somewhere which should install on Windows.

After a great deal of hinting and teasing, Erik has finally announced the latest product from Freshly Squeezed Software - PulpFiction. This app will compete against the juggernaut that is NetNewsWire in the field of XML syndication/news reading on OS X. PulpFiction brings many cool new features to the area such as persistant storage, labels, filters, search and a mail-like interface metaphor.

I love NetNewsWire and I am reluctant to stop using it - especially after paying for it. However, it looks like PulpFiction might have some features that push it over to top for me. Even if I don't switch to it in the end, competition is always a good thing and it will make both better. I eagerly await the release of PulpFiction and the upcomming NetNewsWire 1.1 update.

Dive Into Mark: "But there were definitely monkeys. Monkeys solving an infinite number of simultaneous equations, and then dying. They were mathematical martyrs. Mathematical martyr monkeys."

Thomas Jogin rants on Real Player with his article "Real Obnoxious". The critique is quite unflattering and true.

"Unfortunately, playing video streams is only a very small aspect of what Real Player does; Real Player, most prominently, is a small bastard with inferiority complex and delusions of grandeur, not too different from Napoleon."

Asa of the Mozilla Foundation has compiled an impressive list of weblog praise for Firefox. This is impressive, but of more importance is mainstream coverage like this ZDNet article (granted ZDNet is mainstream in the technology industry only). If you are reading a weblog, it is probably quite likely that you have heard of Firefox or one of the past names.

Of course, the point of Asa's list is to point out how many people who know about Firefox and have given it a chance are praising it. The tricky part for Firefox is figuring out how to get general IE users to know about the browser. Average users have shown they are willing to download third party software such as Kazaa, even if it's laced with spyware, if it gives them some benefit.

Now that Yahoo has dumped Google for searching capabilities I thought I would try searching for my name to see where I show up. On Google I have the number one position and two more links on the page out of ten possible first-page results. On Yahoo I have the top six results on the page and five more out of the rest of the results.

On Google I have 3/10 on the first page with one top result. On Yahoo I have 11/20 (7/10 to compare with Google) with the 6 top results. Three of these top results are from blogshares and are all essentially the same and irrelevant.

I have to question these results. Although all bloggers seem to love being number one for their name in search engines, this is just ridiculous. There are other Jeff Humes in the world, including an Olympic Skier. I do not deserve to have the six top results on Yahoo, especially when all but the first and maybe the third are useless. I like the ego-boosting factor, but clearly there is something wrong with these search results and the algorithim needs some tinkering.

I hope I deserve to be the number one Jeff Hume on the Internet due to links to my site, but there is no reason I should have a clear majority of the top results.

The other day Unsanity released ShapeShifter. It is a theme changing app for OS X. Previously I had not meddled in theme changing since I had heard some horror stories about system files being corrupted and problems subsequently occured. However, Unsanity advertises ShapeShifter as a safe solution and it seems to be true. They do not modify any system files while changing the theme and you just turn it off and you're back to normal.

I've been using it for a day now and it has been great. I'm using the 'Milk' Theme and it's pretty cool. I like the lightness of it, but I think I may want to get a darker theme in the future. There are some cool new themes available but they all seem to be Panther only. One of these days I'll get Panther.

Daring Fireball presents a highly effective break down of Microsoft's bad-mouthing of the iTunes Music Store on Windows. John Gruber points out the very 1984 Orwellian nature of the comments and how they have no purpose but to provide lies.

With the rumours that the iTunes Music Store for windows will be released tomorrow Alan Graham comments on the DRM issues surrounding it and the general attitude of the RIAA towards technology.

We are on a slippery slope each time we make a concession with the RIAA. You can't work with a bully whose idea of working with you is telling you what to do and if you disagree, they'll take you to court. These tactics damage innovation because it sucks up valuable capital on lawsuits, driving small technology companies into oblivion. And let's face it, they are a large part of the reason why their wasn't an effective and acceptable DRM in the first place. If they spent more time talking and less time suing, the piracy problem might not be so rampant.

Let us hope that iTunes for Windows brings the same freedoms of use as the Mac version. It will be interesting to see how they will implement it.

Let us also hope that they get these licensing issues in Canada sorted out so I can support them by using the store.

Typepad, the content publishing system by Six Apart, is officially out of beta staus today It's great to see this product launch. I haven't used it since I have a server with Movable Type, but from what I've seen the interface is really easy and powerful at the same time. Hopefully this will bring more people into weblogging with a very powerful and progessional tool.

Well, the time has come for me to take the side of Microsoft in a legal battle. Not because of what it will do to Microsoft, but the drastic effect it will have on the entire web. The suit has been filed and won by a company called Eolas. They claim that plugin technology in web browsers violate their patent (Flash, Java, Quicktime, other video formats, etc.) They have demanded that Microsoft pay large sums of money and remove plugin technology from Internet Explorer.

As Zeldman says this could have "chilling" effects on the web as a whole. A new system would have to be devised for serving rich content. This system would not be as convenient or accessible. If Eolas pursues this case further their demands could shut down other browsers such as Mozilla, Opera or even Safari. It would also cause huge compatibility problems and cost a lot of money, since web developers would have to change their entire site to fit the new technologies. Many web companies will go out of business.

Microsoft is appealing the ruling, but if they don't win be prepared for big changes.

This is a perfect example of why software patents suck. This company doesn't even produce a web browser, and their greedy tactics could screw up the web in many drastic ways!

In the words of Pink Floyd - "Tear down The Wall!"

John Gruber has posted an excellent new column on Daring Fireball concerning Macs, Computer Reliability and the incompetence and uselessness of corporate IT departments.

Imagine if the plumbing in corporate America worked with the same degree of reliability as their computer infrastructure. This would mean that individual sinks, urinals, and toilets would go out of order on a regular basis. Water from drinking fountains would turn brown, but, hey, that’s just how it is. Every few weeks, teenage pranksters from Hong Kong would overflow every toilet in the building, knocking them out of commission.

John really is a great writer and knows how to make his points. Now he has convinced me to dislike IT departments even more than I did before.

I'm sick and tired of trying to make my CSS layout look nice on IE. Currently the header is totally screwed up. It takes a lot of effort to get compatibility with standards compliant browsers such as Mozilla (or Mozilla based) or Safari and maintaint compatibility with IE. It's getting to the point that I think I'll just throw the towel in. IE users can view a screwed up layout and see how it is to have rendering mistakes.

Then again, I want my site to be presentable.

I just have a quick note here. I'm on dialup and I don't want to take to long. Tim Bray has a very good peice about IE, Longhorn and switching to other browsers. Go read it, it's good.

In my previous entry I made a comment saying that I'm skeptical about money-making strategies on web content in general. There are a few primary options of money-making that I have encountered.

• Ads (Banner, Popup, Text, etc.)
• Subscriptions
• Donations

Let's start with Ads. Everyone hates ads or at least doesn't like them. Banner ads, big ads, text ads or annoying ones such as popups and those damn hovering ones do not ad anything to a site all they can do is distract or annoy the user. Now this is pretty obvious, since it applies to almost every medium - radio, television, print. (Arguably some users may like ads in mediums such as some magazines which are essentially books of ads.) Yet, ads are the norm in media and likely the easiest method of making money.

However, I wonder if web advertising actually works. Can you remember the last time a web ad made an impression on you other than an annoying one. I certainly can't. I can't even remember ever clicking on an ad! Maybe I'm a special case though, since it must work or the advertisers wouldn't pay for it. Thus I can forsee web ads continuing. Some will get more obnoxious on commercial sites that don't give a crap about their readers and others becoming more friendly like Google for independent web sites who aren't just in it for the money.

Now on to another method - subscriptions. This isn't as commonly found on the web. The New York Times offers a subscription service for their archives which has proved to be controversial in the weblog community. Also indie news publisher Salon.com has a subscription service which doesn't seem to be working to well for them given their financial troubles, however I'm not fully informed in the matter.

Web users seem to dislike subscriptions services more than they dislike ads. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball states:

"You can charge a mandatory subscription fee, but that sucks, going completely against the nature of the web."

Why is this against the nature of the web? Subscription fees are commonplace in the publishing industry where advertisements are a supplement. It seems it sucks because of what users of the web are used to - easy access to information. This isn't going to change and I don't want to. When someone gives you a link you expect to be able to just read it and not have to subscribe or pay for it. Web publishing's low entry barrier lends itself to this idea.

Now, Donations are starting to become more common, especially on weblogs, independent sites and small software developers. This is, in a sense, the Holy Grail of money-making techniques. With this method you are asking your readers to help you out if they like what you are doing. It feels good to have people paying because they like what you doing, not paying for ads or a closed-system subscription.

The downside however, is that you need to have a site with a large enough readership and content worth paying for.

So, it seems that no form of money making as of yet is really great for writing on the web. Ads or donations seem like the best options, despite their inherent drawbacks.

There is a great long column at Daring Fireball. He talks about the Google AdSense program and why he decided on using it. This program is interesting, and I'm considering applying. It gives you text based ads that should be relevant to your content and pays you if they get clicks.

He also writes a great bit about Independent publishing on the web and why it does well compared to the corporate web publishers:

The web is where independents shine. Independent web sites tend to look better and are better produced. Their URLs are even more readable. This isn’t bluster about the future, this is a description of today. With a text editor and an Apache web server, you’re on equal footing with any web site in the world. Even if you can’t design worth a lick, the default templates for most major weblog packages are decidedly more readable and better designed than typical corporate media web sites. For short-form opinion and analysis, the web cannot be beaten as a writing and reading medium. The immediacy, linkability, lack of word count restraints (this works both ways, short and long) and direct connection between writer and reader puts the independent producer at a decided advantage over media corporations.

This is a great essay.

Is anyone else scared that this is the kind of person making decisions about copyrights online. This senator proposes that the computers of those who are downloading illegal music should be destroyed

He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

Talk about an over-reaction. As Eric Burke points out in this O'Reilly Net blog maybe after someone speeds in his car 3 times it should be blown up. Or maybe after someone does something illegal in your house, it should be destroyed.

These computers could have valuable information on them. You don't just go destroying computers because the record industry is out of touch! Is he out of his mind?

Who knows, maybe I'm wrong about all this, but it's so obvious to me and many people who I know that the RIAA and governments are going about this issue the wrong way. What is it that is stopping them from understanding?

Hopefully things will improve with the iTunes Music Store and the new service from Real Networks.

So, have I posted enough about IE's demise yet? Maybe I have, but I feel I should write some more. Asa (from Mozilla.org) wrote a little summary of the blog attention this issue has been getting wherin he linked to some suggestions for a large browser marketing campaign.

This is a very good point. I think that the key to success of alternate web browsers is awareness. People have to know about their options before they can pick one. The question is, how will people find out about Mozilla or Firebird? In the past, Mozilla has not taken the role of an end user's browser, but it seems that this might be force upon it. More and more people are using Mozilla and its derivatives and abandoning the commercial versions such as Netscape, which were intended for public use. In a sense, Netscape's worst enemy is Mozilla.

It doesn't seem like there are any other vendors wanting to step up to the plate and brand Mozilla. So who's going to do this marketing? The is an even bigger issue if Netscape drops out of the Mozilla project, as is rumored. If I were at Mozilla.org and found out Netscape was dropping out, I would push for Mozilla.org to produce a browser for the end user. They have the Mozilla name, which is already semi-established and well known. Also, as is shown, people (read: nerds) don't want to use Netscape or any other branded version of Mozilla when they can get a newer, better version of the real thing.

But, the issue isn't just marketing Mozilla. It is marketing all superior alternatives to IE. What kind of shape would this kind of marketing take? More importantly, how would it be funded?

Joel on Software writes about IE's lack of development and the good position this puts Mozilla Firebird in:

Now with a good code base to build upon, Firebird is likely to soar past IE in functionality and performance. With some real competition, perhaps Microsoft will again have an incentive to make improvements of their own.

They likely wont make improvements until Longhorn (as they have said), which is a double edged sword. On the good side, it gives Firebird and other browsers room to grow and get far ahead of IE. On the other hand, it will be hard to get these browsers into the awareness of the general windows using public. IE has nowhere to go but down from here.

So it has happened. According to a transcript of an interview with Internet Explorer team member at Microsoft, IE will no longer be developed as a standalone product:

Q: when / will there be the next version of IE?

A: As part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation.

Q: Why is this? the anti-trust? (no further standalone)

A: Although this is off topic, I will answer briefly: Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS.

Well, there you go. IE is dead, unless you give Microsoft more money for Longhorn. IE will probably be even more integrated in the future and essentially the web browser will become the OS. So if you're using Windows 95, 98, ME, or even XP you're not going to ever get a new version of IE. Great isn't it? Thanks Microsoft! So until Longhorn is released (could be a while), IE users are going to be stuck with an outdated browser. This is bad news for standards compliance and bad news for the users, even though they don't know it.

Tim Bray lays the blame in the big CSS debate where it should be:

The problem isn’t that CSS is too hard. The problem isn’t browser incompatibilities in general. The problem is specifically that Microsoft Internet Explorer is a mouldering, out-of-date, amateurish, out-of-date pile of dung. Did I say it’s out-of-date?

He also brings up a good optimistic point. The percentage of Internet Explorer users is probably not going to get any higher, and other browsers can only go up from here.

Slightly Bent: "Where are all the leaked screenshots and Information on the next version of Internet Explorer? Is there a next version?"

He brings up a good point that I've been think about a little recently. What is Microsoft going to do with IE? Actually, let's back up a bit. What has Microsoft done with IE in the last while? The answer is almost nothing. Their rendering engine still lacks a lot of CSS compliance and proper PNG support is laughable. Are they working on this? Will they ever? I think this is a real problem for the web. Microsoft has no incentive to develop IE further and come up with innovative features.

What does this mean for the web? Well, in the area of standards compliance it could be a really big issue. If 95% of the market can't render new cool things correctly because they are using an incompetent browser, then if you are a practical businessman you won't use that new technology. This could put a serious damper on development and adoption of new standards and technologies in the general public.

How do we get out of this rut? How can we give Microsoft a kick in the pants to develop more? I suppose alternative browser engines can gain adoption with the nerds, but how can the general public be informed? They don't care about their browsers, or CSS, or standards. All that a lot of them care about is checking their email and doing some surfing and IE provides that for them in as good a package as they know. They don't know that others might be better. This is the problem with everyone in the software industry competing with Microsoft (or Apple even) once they get a piece of software that works fine for them, they just don't care about anything else. They'll suffer through bugs and inconsistencies and other issues, and never even question if there are other alternatives.

Mark points out a major crashing bug in the latest version of Internet Explorer for Windows. When you visit a page like this test page it will crash IE and all other applications that embed the IE engine. The scary thing is how simple the code is:


<html>

<form>

<input type>

</form>

</html>



So now email virii only have to embed that HTML and it will bring down a bunch of windows applications. Fun!

Today, Six Apart, the creators of Movable Type announced a hosting service named TypePad. It will use MT as it's weblogging software. This really sounds great. Blogger was essentially the only choice for those without a server who wanted to set up a weblog up until this point. Now Blogger has competition from Movable Type, which is, in my opinion, a much more advanced piece of software. Then again, Blogger now has google's finances behind it and as Brent warns, hosting can be difficult and can cause problems for a company.

Despite that, I'm very interested in TypePad and optimistic for its future development.

Recently Dave Winer has been made some comments about CSS and his apparent dislike for it. He claims that it is broken and he has to support IE. Last time I checked, CSS works quite well in IE and it doesn't take that much work to figure it out. He's started complaining that designers are trying to get him to make a political statement by using CSS. Personally, I think he's already making a statement for Microsoft. He claims to be a XML guru, but he doesn't even understand the concept of seperating style from content. He's taken some heat from people around the web about these comments. some are more heated than others.

Mark Pilgrim brings up some good points in the form of a satire of Dave's original post. If someone said that RSS validation is a stupid idea and we should use any XML we wantk, Dave would likely disagree.

Daring Fireball has a great article on competition in the browser market and how it is getting much better. This is especially true on the Mac platform where Camino, Safari and Mozilla are all very competent browsers. He mentions that the OmniGroup is going to base Omniweb 4.5 off Webcore (the Safari rendering engine).

Builds of Minotaur, the new Mozilla mail client, have been released for OS X and Linux. I downloaded the windows build a few days ago. It seems pretty nice, but the OS X build is a little rough around the edges.

Today, Mozilla.org announced a new roadmap. It is a big change for the direction of the Mozilla project. They are promising to split up the current Mozilla Application Suite into various applications. They will use what is now Phoenix as their default Browser along with Minotaur as their mail client. This is great for Mozilla. It will give them apps with nice easy interfaces that are smaller and leaner.

They also mention that this means Phoenix will now be built daily for OS X! Another OS X browser! Note that Camino will continue to be developed as well.

I rarely praise boxy PC companies for their innovation and initiative to stand up to the big guys, but in this case I have to hand it to Gateway. They are launching a new advertising campaign that will educate consumers that they are allowed under "fair use" to rip their CDs to their computer and burn songs they own on other CDs for personal use. I have found that the RIAA is using the guise of piracy to try and stop any copying at all onto a computer, it's good that a computer company is standing up for the consumer's rights. From the article:

"Our concern is that some in the recording industry have created a real sense of ambiguity and confusion among consumers as a consequence of (the industry's) antipiracy efforts," said Gateway spokesman Brad Williams. "We agree that piracy is a major problem. But we're very concerned that consumers' fair use rights can be swept up and lost in the antipiracy debates."

Dave Winer writes:

"Later today Macromedia will announce a new product, one I've been wanting for seven years. I'll wait until the press release runs before explaining why it is so important, why it will be controversial, and why the controversy won't matter."

Sounds interesting. I wonder what it could be? Maybe something to do with Flash.

Erik over at NSLog has posted a great article with tips about starting up a weblog. It's a really great read and it is really useful. I used his tip about archive paths in Movable Type.

Mozilla.org's Mitchell Baker has posted an article about Browser innovation and their future. One part deals with Safari and Camino:

"In addition to the Mozilla-based browsers, Apple has recently launched its own browser for Mac OS X, known as Safari. It may be that the majority of Mac end users will end up using Safari because it comes with the OS, just as many people end up using IE because it comes with the Windows distribution. Some see this as traumatic or as a mark of doom. But the Mozilla project understands that almost everyone in the US market (and a substantial percentage of the international market) receives Internet Explorer when they acquire a computer, and our job is to provide an alternative. We would have preferred to have Apple use Gecko or collaborate with us on the development of the Camino browser, but providing an alternative to an OS-sponsored browser is nothing new to us. The key goal of the Mozilla project is to help keep content on the web open and help keep access to that content from being controlled by a single source. Apple's decision to ship a browser based on an open source rendering engine, with a focus on standards compliance, is a good thing for the big picture goal"

This is a good attitude they are taking. I've seen some people around the Mozillazine forums and even other developers taking a reall negative attitude about it (often because they are anti-apple trolls anyways). The big thing here is that both Safari and Camino are great browsers using great open source engines (kHTML and Gecko). IE will be eliminated on the Mac platform and the majority of people will start using open source rendering engines.

Dave Hyatt writes about tabbed browsing. Here's just the beginning:

"I've seen a lot of comments in various Mac forums where people have claimed that "Dave Hyatt said he doesn't like tabbed browsing!" or "Dave Hyatt hates tabbed browsing!" I find these posts perplexing, because I never said any such thing, and of course the opposite is true. I love tabbed browsing. I implemented tabbrowser in the Mozilla trunk. I implemented tabbed browsing in Chimera. I implemented the version used in Phoenix. Given how many times I've implemented it, I'm amazed that people would think that I am not a tabbed browsing devotee"

This is interesting. Its kind of a tip off about tabbed browsing in Safari. I'm sure Dave's opinions would have some influence or he wouldn't say an opinion like this on tabbed browsing then have it implemented a different way by the other Safari engineers. That would make itl ook like they don't have a common goal. Most of this has already come to pass with the cough hypothetical v62. One thing I really want in tabbed browsing is opening tabs from other apps such as Mail or NetNewsWire. I can't stand having a bunch of windows open when I open things from either of those programs. That is one of the reasons why I use the freshly re-named, Camino

There's a great article on Wired about how software patents suck. It's an interview with Ralph Nader. Here's a quote I really enjoyed:

Q: The system must be working for someone. Who benefits?

A: The system protects two groups: software companies with weak products who use patents to harass competitors, and patent lawyers. The ease of getting patents makes it economically attractive to abuse the system in a number of unpleasant ways. People obtain patents and then ask businesses to pay licensing fees that are cheaper than the cost of mounting a legal defense. Also, firms are wary of investing in new products for fear they will be ambushed by an infring

Very true. What kind of idiots work in the patent officies anyways? Do they have any clue about the patents they are granting? Or are they just corrupt?

diveintomark.org presents Magnetic Poetry in your browser! Time to waste some time.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

PerversionTracker reviews Opera.

Wired: Why Did Google Want Blogger?

Good insight.

Google has bought Pyra, the makers of Blogger. It will be interesting to see how this changes things for weblogs and personal publishing in general.

Mike Pinkerton confirms that Chimera 0.7 wont ship until it has a new name. There are legal issues with the Chimera name due to an old unix browser being called the same thing. I remember reading that it was Hyatt who named it. Did he not do a google search for the name before?

Anyways, Mike says that its hard to get a name that is cool and can get through the Netscape legal department. Their two names up for consideration right now are Camino and iVoyage. Personally they don't do anything for me, and Mike says he gets laughed at when saying the name might be Camino. I really hope they don't use iVoyage. We don't need people outside of Apple using the iNames more. It seems every second peice of software for OS X is an iSomething. Enough with the "i"! Even Apple is moving away from that naming convention with Safari. Surely something cool like that can get through the legal department.

Or they could just go with the suggestion in the minutes of a Mozilla.org meeting and name it "C******" (this would only be temporary so they could get a release out).

Whatever happens I just want a name that doesn't suck and some new releases!

The newest build of Chimera that I'm using has a bug displaying this page. All other browsers I try display it properly. This appears to be a new bug.

The BBC wants you! Cool idea.

This is another test. NetNewsWire doesn't seem to be picking up my new categories.

Update: After removing and adding the weblog it works again.

CNET has an article that Opera wants to abandon the Mac platform because of Safari. It sounds like they are just giving up here. A bunch of whiners if you ask me. Their product isn't very good on the mac and people don't use it now either. Maybe if they made a good mac app that is up to par with others (Chimera, Safari, Omniweb) they could compete. It seems like they are just using Apple as a scapegoat for their own problems.

The part that is really crazy is that they have given Apple the offer of their engine to replace kHTML in Safari. Why would Apple do that? They have just made kHTML good why would they switch now. Thats crazy. It seems like they are saying "Apple, pay us and use our product or we're leaving". What a bunch of sore losers.

I'm testing multiple categories from NetNewsWire Pro.

This interesting article talks about a new Apple word processor to challenge Microsoft Word. I really hope this happens, especially if they get get full .doc computability. They announced Keynote, their presentation software, at Macworld. It looks like a direct competitor to PowerPoint. I hope they compete with the others as well.

I'm testing a post from NetNewsWire Pro.

Update, it looks like it worked. I can edit all old posts and assign categories. Pretty cool. It works nicely with the RSS reader part as well.

Well Microsoft's marketing department sure is good. Remember Palladium - Microsoft's 'secure' computing initiative that would essentially give them control of our applications and files on our computer? Well for some reason they decided that name wasn't suitable for such an over-bearing and over-controlling technology that is a big over-reaction. No, they didn't call it something appropriate like "Operation Overlord" or "Operation Enduring Lack of Freedom" or maybe "1984". No, Microsoft isn't that clever. Instead of all the cool names they could have choose (hell, Palladium was even mildly cool) they choose a buzzword filled sentance. Yes thats right their new code name is... ready for it... this will blow you away... "next-generation secure computing base."

Whoa, I don't know about anyone else but that codename really knocked my socks off. Not only is it stylish, but its so darn catchy! Doesn't it just roll off your tongue! And look at that innovation! Microsoft has innovated with the first eleven syllable code name in computing history! Thank god they won their "right to innovate" in the case against the US Justice Department or else we wouldn't see such amazing nomenclature.

Lets go through the amazing words that make up this amazing name.

Next-Generation: Well, this is really two words hyphenated together, but its still pretty cool. I guess it is suppose to make people think that their technology is that of the future, kind of like people giving 110% effort. I just think of Star Trek.

Secure: Well thats what they want you to believe. All the little consumers will willingly pay their money and have their lives taken over by Microsoft and the RIAA for the sake of their security. In reality the only security Microsoft cares about is how secure their profit flow is.

Computing: Not much to say here. Obviously it is a computing thing. Microsoft makes computer products don't they?

Base: So Microsoft is going to be the base of my computer? This tells me that they are going to have control over anything that goes on top of the base.

OK, now that I've met my sarcasm quota for the night I can be serious. What are they thinking? Their marketing department should really be fired. Not to mention the fact that Palladium (I'm still going to call it that) is far from secure. In the CNET article there is a quote by an employee in "Microsoft's Windows Trusted Platform Technologies Group" (another great name!!!) where he says essentially that they wanted to change the name because it was tarnished by controversy. Well thats smart, except this name will still be tarnished by controversy since they haven't made any attempt to fix the problems.

Congratulations Microsoft on creating the worst code name ever!

In other news a worm that infects Microsoft's SQL server is still worming its way around the net wreaking havoc as it goes. Monopolies suck.

Wired: " Kasparov, the chess grandmaster beaten in a match by computer Deep Blue six years ago, said Thursday he is proud to represent humanity in the latest battle of man vs. machine."

Is chess really the best game in which to test artificial intelligence? It seems that if a computer is given enough time it could predict every possible situation and could thus win every time. A real test of intelligence and capabilities would be in a kind of real world scenerio where humans use their intuitions and simply react. In a real world situation the human brain doesn't go through all the available possibilities then pick the best one. Automatically we rule out a lot of them then decide on the best.

The New York Times reports that Hilary Rosen, the head of the RIAA is going to step down. I don't know if this is good or bad thing. Probably some one else like her will just take her place.

As Wired reports, The RIAA now wants to make ISPs accountable for their customers trading music. That's crazy.

One good point in the article comes from anonymous "industry official":

"It's horrible. Anything we can do that's effective will seriously annoy our customers," said one industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"I think we might need to stop fighting fire with fire and figure out something new to do, or we will end up with lots of ex-customers who swap files just out of spite."

At least someone in there has a brain.

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