Matt Alexander, writing for one37, in his piece entitled “That’s Enough, RIM”:

The Playbook is dead.

It’s taken a while for you to realize that, and I’m not convinced you’re fully aware, but you should really come to acknowledge it, RIM.

Bargain hunters are not going to pick up a Playbook and say, “Wow! I can’t believe everyone spoke so negatively about this!” They’re going to say, “Well it looks a lot like a Kindle Fire, but it has none of the functionality.” Considering the Kindle Fire came so long after the Playbook, but is already becoming such a household name, that’s just embarrassing.

Stop pushing a dead product. Cut your losses and leave it be.

Jim Dalrymple, writing for The Loop and commenting on Matt’s piece:

It seems to me the problems with RIM come from the top and until the co-CEOs are replaced, the company doesn’t stand a chance of making a comeback.

Further reading…

• What’s really wrong with BlackBerry (and what to do about it) by Michael Mace
• BlackBerry vs. iPhone by John Gruber

What’s happening to Netflix?

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, recently wrote a blog post to customers about some upcoming changes to the Netflix we know today:

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.

Translation: “We’re sorry that we did a poor job of telling you bad news, but the bad news was going to happen no matter what.”

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD, plus lots of TV series. We want to advertise the breadth of our incredible DVD offering so that as many people as possible know it still exists, and it is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection on DVD.

“We have a crap-ton of content available on DVD.”

DVD by mail may not last forever, but we want it to last as long as possible.

“DVDs by mail is a dying business.”

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We feel we need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolve, without having to maintain compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

“DVDs are old and busted. Streaming is the new hotness — the new shiny.”

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

“Blah, blah, internal corporate structure, blah.”

It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”.

“I’m retarded.”

A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated. So if you subscribe to both services, and if you need to change your credit card or email address, you would need to do it in two places. Similarly, if you rate or review a movie on Qwikster, it doesn’t show up on Netflix, and vice-versa.

“Nevermind that web services and data integration are commonplace across the web in this day and age. Bring back the 90′s!”

The additional streaming content we have coming in the next few months is substantial, and we are always working to improve our service further.

Let’s bookmark this.

The Reaction

The reaction is overwhelmingly negative, from tech industry insiders and non-techies alike.

When I first read Reed’s blog post on Sunday night, there were 245 comments. This morning, there were 11,237 comments. As I write this, there are 21,747 21,872 comments — nearly every single one of them is outraged by what this means for customers.

As usual, Twitter is aflutter with comments:

Deanna Raybourn:

So Netflix nearly doubles prices, and — by way of apology — makes doing business with them twice as time-consuming and inconvenient? Superb.

Paul Medico:

Announcing a new company/brand with an apology is not a great way to instill confidence in your investors. #qwikster #netflix

Ben Zibble:

Netflix: “we heard you don’t like paying more for dvd+streaming, so we’re also going to make them not work together anymore. You’re welcome.”

Matt Dudley:

Imagine if @Netflix and Qwikster combined services… unlimited DVD rentals and streaming. Now THAT would be awesome.

And here’s my personal favorite, from Wonderella:

I just got an email from Netflix’s CEO telling me to — and I’m paraphrasing — “Please start torrenting”.

(Bonus: The Oatmeal and The Joy of Tech chime in.)

Personally, I’ve not only been a Netflix customer for a long time (since 2005-ish), but I’ve also been a Netflix fan. I didn’t mind so much when they split up the DVD/streaming accounts and started charging a little more. Netflix + Hulu has completely replaced my cable package.

I suppose my concerns are mostly around the usability of everything. There are lots of third-party services trying to make it easier to watch what you want, regardless of the service. I look up movie/show descriptions on IMDb, movie posters from The Movie DB, stream content from Hulu or Netflix, download content from iTunes, or get a DVD by mail from Netflix (for titles that aren’t available digitally). I would love to see more integration, rather than fragmenting the services even more.

A Fundamental Change in the Product

Joshua Porter of Bokardo.com had this to say:

Netflix is taking a huge risk here. They’re changing the user experience of their web apps to model the new company structure, not a structure that is most friendly to people. This is an extremely common problem in user interface design. Netflix is in serious danger of breaking the user experience they are well-known for.

If you read through even a fraction of comments on the aforementioned Netflix blog post, a very large percentage of users agree with this analysis. Almost everybody has the same concern.

As one commenter complains there will now be two separate movie queues, one on Netflix for DVD and one on Qwikster for streaming. Hastings’ response is dismissive:

We already have two queues. The two “sites” are a click between each other, so we think not that much different than two tabs on one site.

Technically, Hastings is right about there already being two queues. But he’s dead wrong about it being much different. Obviously he’s never watched people use web applications before. Changing websites is not even close to the same thing as changing tabs. When you change websites you go somewhere different, you get a different UI, you’re using a different username, and you probably have to log in. You have a different payment system. Different family members to add. Different recommendations to look at. And that’s just for starters. [...]

This is a fundamental change in the product, and Hastings just dismisses the concern with a wave of his hand.

Clearly, the team at Netflix — known for its engineering prowess — has overlooked how its “not that much different” changes will affect the overall customer experience.

Also, people don’t think they’re buying two services right now…they’re simply buying Netflix. As another commenter points out:

You’re continuing to make a classic mistake: thinking you’re something different than what everyone believes you are. You’re not a DVD company and a streaming company: you’re where I go to watch movies. That’s it. The future clearly is streaming, but by separating and charging more for access, you’re wildly less valuable to me. I’ll likely cancel. You haven’t listened to customer feedback. You’re delusional and you’re lost.”

Railroad companies failed to understand that they were in the transportation business and were surpassed by the airlines. Newspaper companies failed to understand that they were in the information business and were surpassed by blogs. Record stores failed to understand that they were in the business of selling music and the were surpassed by the Napster Revolution. It’s a classic mistake.

Catalog Size, Deintegration and Price-Hikes — Oh My!

Netflix’ current streaming selection is, at best, abysmal. A couple of months ago, I was getting ready to move and decided to digitize my DVD collection so that I wouldn’t have to drag them along with me. I figured that most of my movies would be available for streaming, so that would save me the time of digitizing the DVDs that I didn’t need to.

As it turned out, I ended up having to digitize the majority of my DVDs because they weren’t available for streaming. I’m still working my way through the stack.

Earlier in the summer, Netflix decided to separate the DVD and streaming plans into separate offerings, with separate pricing for each. Despite Netflix’ best efforts to spin it positively, customers didn’t buy the explanation. Erick Schonfeld of Techcrunch said it best:

Raising prices for those of us who opt for both streaming and DVDs would have been fine if Netflix had a deeper streaming catalog. But the gap is still too big, and the price hike seemed premature. Your customers are extremely loyal. Don’t piss them off.

(Aside: Bill Gurley from Above the Crowd makes a very interesting case for why he believes Netflix was forced to raise their prices. I would likely end up quoting his entire piece here, so I’ll just link to “Understanding Why Netflix Changed Pricing” instead.)

A few months before that, Netflix removed the ability for customers to add movies to their DVD queues from non-computer devices. If you look up a movie on your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii or other non-computer device, and it isn’t available for streaming, you need to do the search all over again from your computer before you can add it to your queue.

Now Netflix is looking to make a move that is making customers even angrier: Not only are they separating the DVD and streaming queues into separate websites, but they’re also separating user accounts, credit card updates, ratings, reviews, recommendations, and everything else. Instead of the simplicity of one location for your movies, you now have to deal with two.

Whither Qwikster?

Back to Reed Hastings’ blog post:

Andy Rendich, who has been working on our DVD service for 12 years, and leading it for the last 4 years, will be the CEO of Qwikster. Andy and I made a short welcome video. (You’ll probably say we should avoid going into movie making after watching it.) We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready. It is merely a renamed version of the Netflix DVD website, but with the addition of video games. You won’t have to do anything special if you subscribe to our DVD by mail service. [...]

Some members will likely feel that we shouldn’t split the businesses, and that we shouldn’t rename our DVD by mail service. [...] But going forward, Qwikster will continue to run the best DVD by mail service ever, throughout the United States. Netflix will offer the best streaming service for TV shows and movies, hopefully on a global basis.

Streaming is the future. Everybody knows it. You know it, I know it, Reed Hastings knows it, and Andy Rendich sure as heck knows it. When was the last time you decided to add a movie to your DVD queue if it was already available for streaming? When is streaming ever not your first choice?

Erick Schonfeld of Techcrunch breaks down the numbers:

Still, it’s not enough to offset the drop-off in DVD subscribers. Of the 1 million fewer subscribers Netflix now expects, 800,000 will be from DVD-only subscribers. The remaining 200,000 decline will come from streaming-only subs, with the number who pay for both remaining steady. Out of Netflix’s expected 24 million subscribers this year, 21.8 million will have access to streaming in some form, and only 2.2 million will stick to DVD-only subscriptions.

That doesn’t sound like a very large business. As a matter of fact, that’s a business that’s shrinking. Surely Andy Rendich has seen these numbers, so why would he agree to become the new CEO of a born-to-fail business?

Crazy or Genius?

Looking at this series of events from the outside, I can only see two possible rationales that explain why they’re doing what they’re doing.

1. They’re bat-shit crazy.
2. They know something that we don’t, which will make all of this headache worth it.

Reed Hastings and Co. have always seemed like a sharp bunch. They started the company with the notion of putting the customer first and over time they have built a successful business around that premise.

Recently, Netflix and Starz decided to end their business relationship, yet Reed Hastings said:

The additional streaming content we have coming in the next few months is substantial, and we are always working to improve our service further.

I can’t help but compare present-day Netflix to Apple in 1985. The Macintosh was clearly the future of computing, but after a solid start, sales were starting to drop off. There weren’t enough applications and the hardware was considered too expensive. The Apple II, on the other hand, was a cash-cow with a large application library at its disposal. Steve Jobs ended up losing his job over the “failure” of the Macintosh. Fast-forward to today: Macs are selling like hotcakes — faster than the entire computer industry — and the Apple line of computers died out 25 years ago.

I think Netflix currently finds itself in a similar position. They know that streaming is the future, if not the now. They are working to grow their streaming content library every day. No, the amount of content comes nowhere near that of their DVDs-by-mail business, but it will.

Qwikster will eventually fade into a footnote in history — and I believe that this has been the plan all along. What better way to sunset the legacy product and grow the new product than to remove the distractions entirely? All of the built-up brand equity is staying with their newer product, streaming video, while the legacy product gets pushed out the back door with a stupid name and a $20-bill pinned to its collar. This isn’t an accident.

I hope that the team at Netflix continues to ride the fine line between crazy and genius for all it’s worth. That said, I can’t help but feel that in their rush to move into the future, they’re bungling the present. Hastings and Rendich need to take a moment to slow down, listen to what customers want (instead of just what they’re asking for), and make this transition from DVDs to streaming as smooth as possible.

What is a web browser?

Not sure what a web browser is? Check out WhatBrowser.org, watch the video, then come back here.

Ready? Good.

Let me tell you a story…

Let’s say you’re visit a new place, and you have this really cool cab driver driving you around so that you can go site-seeing. This cab driver has agreed to be like a tour guide, taking you wherever you want to go so that you can explore all of the interesting (web)sites. This driver — let’s call him Mr. Firefox — takes you all sorts of places that you want to go. He always knows the best routes to take, and always makes sure you get there safely. As your cab driver, you trust that he will get you there safely.

Following me so far?

But there’s something you don’t know about Mr. Firefox: He’s retarded. Like, completely and utterly retarded. Like, little yellow school bus retarded. If you told him to drive into the lake, he would. He’s that stupid.

On the up-shot, Mr. Firefox knows that he’s retarded, so to deal with this he surrounds himself with a bunch of really good people that he knows he can trust. These people — let’s call them the Authorities — look out for him, and teach him which places are safe and which are not. This way, if you were to ask Mr. Firefox to drive into a lake, he would know that this is a bad idea and won’t do it (or will at least tell you how bad of an idea it is).

A dirty cop

Now, what if it was discovered that one of these Authorities was a dirty cop? This dirty cop has been taking bribes from Iranian terrorists to tell Mr. Firefox that it’s perfectly safe to drive you into a lake. Or that the bridge that was under construction is finally ready to drive across, when really it would collapse. Even though you don’t have a gun being waved in your face, you’re still in danger even though you can’t see it.

You trust your cab driver, who trusts the Authorities — one of which is a lying douchebag.

It really happened!

Well, this is what has happened to the Internet over the past few weeks. You trust your web browser, your web browser trusts the Certificate Authorities, and two of these Certificate Authorities were hacked by Iranian terrorists. These terrorists generated security certificates so that they could impersonate and eavesdrop on sites you know and love: Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, Google, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Mozilla, and even the C.I.A. Over 250 511 sites in all are affected by this (and still counting).

To stay safe, browser makers (Mozilla, Microsoft, Google and Apple) have started issuing updates that revoke their trust for these hacked Certificate Authorities. As such, you need to make sure you’re running the very latest version of your web browser.

How do I stay safe?

The best way to stay safe is to update your browser to the very latest version. If you’re not sure what browser you’re running, check out WhatBrowser.org. It will tell you.

• If you have a computer running Microsoft Windows and/or are running the Internet Explorer web browser, make sure you run Microsoft Update (formerly Windows Update) and install all of the available updates — specifically Security Advisory 2607712.
• If you have a computer running Mac OS X and/or are running the Safari web browser, make sure you run Software Update and install all of the available updates — specifically Security Update 2011-005.
• If you’re running the Mozilla Firefox web browser, make sure you update to the latest version (6.0.2 at the time of this writing).
• If you’re running the Google Chrome web browser, you get automatic updates, so you probably don’t have a lot to worry about.

Where can I learn more?

Here are some links about what has happened. I’ll group them into two categories: less technical and more technical.

Less technical

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12847072
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20046340-281.html
• https://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/08/ssl-certificates-whats-left-to.php
• http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/comodo_hack/
• http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/3Vj5zxvMwGw/comodo-hacker-i-hacked-diginotar-too-other-cas-breached.ars
• https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/DigiNotar#Issuance_of_fraudulent_certificates
• https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comodo_Group#Breach_of_security

More technical

• https://blog.mozilla.com/security/2011/08/29/fraudulent-google-com-certificate/
• https://blog.mozilla.com/security/2011/09/02/diginotar-removal-follow-up/
• http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-on-attempted-man-in-middle.html
• https://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2011/08/29/microsoft-releases-security-advisory-2607712.aspx
• https://blog.torproject.org/blog/detecting-certificate-authority-compromises-and-web-browser-collusion
• http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002128.html
• http://pastebin.com/u/ComodoHacker

Update: Bankruptcy (2011-09-25)

DigiNotar has filed for bankruptcy:

This is unsurprising, since a report issued by security audit firm Fox-IT, who has been hired to investigate the now notorious DigiNotar breach, revealed that things were far worse than we were led to believe. [...]

All CA servers were members of one Windows domain and all accessible with one user/password combination. Moreover, the used password was simple and susceptible to brute-force attacks.

“Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

This quote in particular is one that Steve Jobs has brought up on numerous occasions, and is far more revealing about Apple’s internal culture than I think most of us realize. It is certainly the most salient explanation for Apple’s intense focus at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.

Mobile

Over the past couple of years, I’ve started paying an increasing amount of attention to Apple and it’s competition — mostly in the mobile space. Before 2008 when I bought my first iPhone, I really couldn’t have cared less about mobile. I’d had a couple of feature phones, then moved up to a BlackBerry Pearl in 2006.

When Steve Jobs got up on stage at the Moscone Center in January 2007 and introduced “[…] an iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator… these are NOT three separate devices!” I was stunned. I’d heard the rumors about an alleged phone from Apple, but this thing was simply astounding! Over the next 6 months, the blogosphere worked itself into an absolute frenzy over the iPhone. Ultimately, the iPhone has gone on to be a raging success — raking in two-thirds of all of the profits in the entire mobile industry.

Hardware and software

Since Apple makes both the hardware and the software for all of their products, when you buy an iPhone (or iPod, or iPad, or Mac) you know that the hardware and software work together seamlessly. With the exception of HP/Palm (up until recently) and RIM, Apple is the only company that does this. Even Google’s Nexus line of phones is actually made by third-party handset makers (HTC for the Nexus One and Samsung for the Nexus S).

In order to properly establish a baseline showing how Apple completely rocked the mobile industry in 2007, we need to break the competition down into hardware and software categories.

Hardware

Here’s what the competition shipped in late-2006/early-2007:

• 
  RIM BlackBerry 8800
• 
  Motorola Q
• 
  Nokia E70
• 
  HTC Excalibur
• 
  HTC Touch
• 
  Palm Treo 755p
• 
  Palm Treo 700wx

Software

Here’s what the competition shipped in late-2006/early-2007:

• Palm OS 5
• Windows Mobile 6
• Symbian OS
• Android

Queue the industry scramble

People in the mobile industry knew this was going to be big, huge, EPIC. Phone makers began scrambling to create products that could be the next iPhone-killer. Motorola, HTC, LG, Palm, Microsoft, Nokia and others were knocked completely sideways by the iPhone. It was so far ahead of anything at the time that nobody knew where to begin.

As the first touchphones started hitting the market, they all failed. Utter, complete failure. But why? Their phones had all of the same features, so why weren’t they selling? Arguably, the exact same discussions are happening now — especially since tablets are joining phones in the mobile space.

There is no tablet market — only an iPad market

Verne G. Kopytoff and Ian Austen of The New York Times note:

“Computer makers are expected to ship only about 4 percent more PCs this year than last year, according to IDC, a research firm. Tablets, in contrast, are flying off store shelves. Global sales are expected to more than double this year to 24.1 million, according to Forrester Research. More than two-thirds of those tablets, however, are sold by Apple. Sales of its iPad pulled in $9 billion in just the first half of the year, or 30 percent more than all of Dell’s consumer PC business in the same period. The joke in Silicon Valley is that there is no tablet market, only an iPad market. (That was also true of Apple and the iPod market.)

The other observation that is no joke: Apple is the only maker with strong PC growth. Spending on desktops and laptops grew 16 percent in the latest quarter, while Dell’s consumer product sales increased 1 percent.”

Here’s what John Gruber from Daring Fireball had to say:

“I’m not trying to cherry-pick data. I’m simply observing, based on Apple’s sales data and Google’s activation data, that the tablet market doesn’t today look anything like the smartphone market ever did. The iPad didn’t enter the tablet market. It created the tablet market. The iPad’s role in the tablet market much more closely resembles the iPod’s role in the digital music player market a decade ago than it does the iPhone’s role in the 2008 phone market.”

And Marco Arment:

“There’s an iPad market, and the iPad could be classified as a tablet, from a hardware-centric viewpoint. But the market for non-iPad tablets is about as big today as it was before the iPad, which isn’t nothing, but it’s close enough to nothing that Apple doesn’t need to worry about it.

How many people do you know who wanted or received an iPad for Christmas?

Alright, same question, but this time, for the Samsung Galaxy Tab or any other tablet that’s not the iPad. (Kindles are not tablets. The new Nook Color might be. You can count it if you’re arguing with me.)

Now, from both groups, exclude those who know what RSS is, because we don’t represent the bulk of the market. How big is that second group now?”

Others are saying the same thing. But why? Companies like Samsung, Acer, Motorola and others have been making consumer electronics for years. Microsoft has been kicking around the idea of the tablet computer since at least 2000. Why is the iPad (which debuted in the spring of 2010) eating everyone else’s lunch?

The reason is something so blindingly simple that you’re going to feel stupid for missing it. Ready?

It’s the ecosystem, stupid!

The fatal flaw of Android phones, TouchPads, XOOMs, Playbooks, Galaxy Tabs, and pretty much everything else on the market today is the lack of a cohesive ecosystem around the product. These handset and tablet makers — for all intents and purposes — seem to think that the experience stops at the phone or the tablet. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I bought an HP TouchPad during their firesale. When reviewing the product, I compared it to my iPad. I’d purchased it for my kids so that they’d have something to play with so they’d leave my iPad alone. What happened? They decided that they didn’t like the TouchPad. They wanted the games, the books, the movies, the music and everything else that my iPad has.

Now sure, the TouchPad can technically do those things… but its not a cohesive experience. It’s not simple. It’s not easy.

When you buy an Apple product — whether it be a Mac, an iPod, an iPhone, an iPad or an Apple TV — you get all of Apple’s ecosystem working together in harmony along beside you.

• Syncing your digital media from iTunes to your iPod, iPhone, iPad or first-generation Apple TV (which uses syncing; Apple TV 2 streams instead of syncs), it all happens very seamlessly with very little effort on your part.
• Industry-standard audio and video (MPEG-4/H.264/AAC) is fully supported at the hardware level for each of Apple’s devices which means that videos play smoother and battery life is much better than competing devices which don’t support these standards at the hardware level.
• The iTunes Store has over 18 million songs; thousands of movies, TV shows, videos, podcasts, and books; and over 100,000 virus-free apps — all of which are available in just a few clicks/taps. You can also rip your own CDs and DVDs, as well as convert your favorite content into ebooks if you want.
• iTunes Home Sharing allows you to share all of your content between all of your devices either by syncing or streaming.
• AirPlay (née AirTunes) allows you to stream your music to any speakers that are either connected to an AirPort Express or support the AirPlay protocol.
• You can stream your movies, YouTube videos and other video content to any TV connected to an AppleTV also using AirPlay.
• You can control what’s playing in iTunes or AppleTV using your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad as a remote control.
• Apple’s third-party cottage industry is second-to-none with tons of integration options for home audio, car stereos, device cases, sex toys, knick-knacks, doo-dads and the like.
• Apple devices are supported with updates for a very long time. It wasn’t until iOS 4.0 that the original iPhone was dropped, and the iPhone 3G wasn’t dropped until iOS 4.3. Everything that supports iOS 4.3 will also get iOS 5.
• Apps are targeted at OS versions, and sometimes by device (iPhone/iPod touch vs. iPad). iPads can run all iPhone apps (although non-optimized apps run at the iPhone’s resolution). For example, Netflix runs on all iOS devices running iOS 4.0 or newer (everything except the original iPhone and first-generation iPod touch).

Compare all of this to, say, Android.

• First of all, there is no Android-based equivalent to the iPod. Smaller form factors are (so far) all phones. Larger form factors are (so far) all tablets. There’s nothing small and cheap that you can plug headphones into and jam with it in your pocket.
• Some Android devices have hardware decoders for audio/video playback, some don’t. Burn battery, burn!
• There is no equivalent to the iTunes Store for Android devices. Yes, Google has Google Music, but it’s brand-new, untested, and it’s not a store where you can easily purchase whatever your heart desires in just a few taps.
• Android viruses, malware and fly-by-night operations are on the rise: “Android Malware Explodes, iOS Remains Safe”, “Android-targeted malware jumps 76% in Q2, McAfee says”, “Why Android Viruses Are Growing, and How To Stop Them”, and “Warning: Fake games in the Market today”.
• There is no equivalent to iTunes Home Sharing for Android devices. You have to sync everything from one device to the next. Can’t store your entire media collection? Too bad.
• There is no equivalent to AirPlay for Android devices. You can burn a CD and put it in your home CD player, or take your ripped movie and put it on your PS3 or Xbox 360 for playback, but that can be an awful lot of work.
• There is no equivalent for remote controlling playback of your media content for Android devices.
• What Android cottage industry?
• Updates? Good luck with that. Maybe the manufacturer will release an update, maybe they won’t. Who knows?
• Apps are targeted at whatever the easiest-to-support devices are. For example, Netflix only runs on a small subset of devices based entirely on that device’s capabilities.

Apple’s Strategy

Apple’s ecosystem strategy didn’t come out of nowhere. Apple didn’t just wake up one day and decide to make the iPhone or the iPad. These products have been several years in the making. In fact, Apple talking about the digital hub dates back to at least 2000 with the iMac and their Rip, Mix, Burn campaign. iTunes was just coming out for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X hadn’t launched yet and the iPod was still a couple of years away.

Over time they launched:

1. iTunes (2001)
2. Mac OS X (2001)
3. Apple Retail Stores (allowing people to walk in, play with stuff, ask questions and get help; 2001)
4. iPod (2001)
5. Bonjour (née Rendezvous; 2002)
6. iTunes Music Store (2003)
7. AirPort Express (2004)
8. iLife (2004)
9. Added video capabilities to iPods and added video to the iTunes Store (2005)
10. AppleTV (2007)
11. iPhone (2007)
12. iPhone Music Store (2007)
13. iPhone App Store (2008)
14. iPad (2010)
15. iCloud (2011)

All of these products work together in concert to provide a seamless experience across the board. It’s this ongoing seamlessness and support that has allowed Apple to earn my trust as a consumer — something that Samsung, Motorola, RIM or Google hasn’t yet earned.

Skating to where the puck has been

Right now, everyone in the entire industry is chasing Apple. Everyone.

• Microsoft was chasing Apple with Windows Vista and Windows 7 (although with Windows 8, they’ve decided to go to crazy-town).
• Google, RIM and Nokia are chasing Apple with Android, BlackBerry OS and Meego, respectively.
• Google, Acer, Samsung, Sony, Lenovo and others are chasing Apple in ultra-portable notebooks.
• Motorola, RIM, HP, Samsung and others are chasing Apple in tablets.

As technophiliacs, it’s easy for us to go down a rat hole about this tech or that tech (see: iOS v. Android flame wars).

Aside from Apple (and arguably HP/Palm), vendors have a bad habit of shipping second-rate products in a variety of (mostly incompatible) configurations using a marketing strategy that is equivalent to throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. For example, Samsung now offers 2.8, 3.2, 3.5, 3.7, 4, 4.3, 4.5, 5, 7, 7.7, 8.9, and 10.1-inch Android devices. Really Samsung?

In “Dear tablet makers: You’re doing it wrong“, Zach Epstein writes:

“Repeated cold and lukewarm launches will either push vendors out of the tablet space or open their eyes. Consumers don’t need oversized smartphones. I’ll type these all-too important words a second time: slapping Android on a slate and shoving it out to market simply isn’t an effective strategy. The real problem might be that OEMs are looking at Android wrong. What might happen if vendors stop rushing duds out to market and actually concentrate on using Android as a platform rather than a complete solution?”

These products are soulless knock-offs of the original. Apple put its heart and soul into the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and it shows.

Skating to where the puck is going to be

Robert S. Andersen recently tweeted:

“Every product is an opportunity to create joy in someone’s life. If you’re not doing that then you’re in it for the wrong reasons.”

Apple has invested in constantly growing and constantly improving its ecosystem of products so that they all work together in concert. The experience is delightful.

It’s not that Google, Samsung, Motorola, RIM and others aren’t competing — it’s that they’re not even playing Apple’s game. Apple’s game is one of putting the user’s experience first, eliminating as much frustration from the process as possible. If you put the customer first, the sales will come. If you put making the sale (or grabbing at market share) ahead of the customer experience, you’re no better than a used car salesman. How many used car salesmen are you excited to buy from again?

I’m going to end with a quote from one of my favorite shows, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:

Harriet: I got a laugh at the table read when I asked for the butter in the dinner sketch. I didn’t get it at the dress. What did I do wrong?

Matt: That’s one laugh out of thirty you’re going to get tonight.

Harriet: What did I do wrong?

Matt: You asked for the laugh.

Harriet: What did I do at the table read?

Matt: You asked for the butter.

If you’re a tech company, let me give you a piece of advice: Stop trying to be Apple. Nobody is Apple but Apple. Be yourself. If you suck, if you’re boring, then don’t expect your date to like you.

The only way to even come close to competing with Apple is to start working on your overall ecosystem of products. Make them seamless. Make them compatible. Make them Just Work™. Building knock-off hardware and slapping a second-rate OS on it won’t help you compete.

Yes, you might have enough checkboxes in the feature list to pick up a sale. Congratulations. But they’re not buying your product for you — they’re buying it because it’s close enough to an Apple product for what they need.

Think about that for a second and tell me how sad that makes you feel about yourself.

Update: HP Envy (2011-11-16)

If I forgot to add them before, let’s go ahead and add HP to the list of Apple wannabes. They just released the new HP Envy.

I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before…

Update: Fun with numbers! (2011-11-24)

In his piece entitled “Fun With Numbers”, John Gruber from Daring Fireball analyzes an NPD Group report about tablet sell-through numbers (i.e., real sales numbers to consumers, not the fake we-shipped-zillions-to-stores-but-don’t-know-who-actually-bought-them numbers).

That’s one way to put it. Another way is that 92 percent of U.S. tablet buyers considered an iPad, and 89 percent bought an iPad, which means 97 percent of tablet buyers who merely considered an iPad bought an iPad, and if not for the 8 percent of tablet buyers who for whatever reason did not consider an iPad, none of these companies would have sold even 100,000 tablets over the first nine months of 2011. […]

PC manufacturers are not dominant in the tablet space. Companies that provide a complete ecosystem — hardware, software, app stores, movies, TV shows, books and periodicals — are. PC manufacturers are utterly failing in the tablet market.

He finishes off his analysis with the following food for thought.

The only thing you can learn from NPD’s report is that tablet market share numbers sure do look different when you don’t count any of the tablets that people are actually buying.

Preface

I feel that I should start by saying that I’m an Apple guy; or more specifically that I’ve always been an Apple guy. I was converted to the Mac platform back in the early 90′s when my Junior High school’s library got a new shipment of Apple Macintosh LC IIs. I’ve never really looked back.

That said, this certainly isn’t a blind love for Apple. Over the years, Apple has earned my trust by providing high-quality products, software and support that puts the consumer first. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve liked every single decicion they’ve made, but all-in-all I have Apple’s back because I believe that Apple has mine.

Let’s look at the competition:

• RIM: RIM is dead. Sell your stock.
• Microsoft: Irrelevant in this day and age.
• Google:
  1. They’d screw me in a second if they could sell more data about me to advertisers.
  2. Google values engineering above all else. Unfortunately for Google, Design > Engineering.
  3. Andy Rubin has as much dumb stuff come out of his mouth as Steve Ballmer.
  4. Google recently kicked off a whine-fest because they lost a patent auction.
• Palm: CEO was a high-ranking lieutenant at Apple in charge of the iPod. Lots of former Apple engineers. Sweet new OS for mobile devices. Hmmm…

Piqued Interest

I have no interest in Android. I’m a bit of a quality snob, and an ease-of-use snob, and most of Google’s products are just not there. Android in particular (and Microsoft’s Windows CE, palm-sized PC, PocketPC, Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition, Windows Mobile, Windows Embedded Handheld, Windows Phone 7 Series, Windows Phone 7 devices) all suffer from what’s called The Paradox of Choice (TED video) (Wikipedia summary). The short version is that while people like Steve Ballmer and Andy Rubin are all touting how wonderful it is to have a plethora of devices available, it’s actually harmful to the customer experience.

So when Palm/HP announced the TouchPad, I was intrigued. I’d always thought that Palm’s webOS was a clear stand-out among mobile OSs, but the faulty Pre hardware and a poor at-launch partner (Sprint), and terrible marketing all worked in concert to kill Palm’s chances of making a dent in the marketplace. Palm also was in the poor position of needing a serious influx of cash if they were to continue operating. That kind of split focus is never good for a company.

Seeing some gorgeous screenshots of the OS and devices on Sebastiaan de With’s blog pretty much sealed the deal for me: I was a webOS fan. Unfortunately for Palm/HP, there was no way I was going to spend money on a TouchPad when I could get an iPad.

Comparing the TouchPad and the iPad 2

I ordered my iPad 2 at the end of July, so I’ve only had my iPad 2 for about 3 weeks. I also have an iPhone 4, so picking up and using an iPad was effortless. Because of this, the iPad has set an awfully high bar in my mind.

After spending a little less than 24 hours with my new 32GB HP TouchPad, here are my thoughts:

Pros

• Palm/HP definitely got the packaging right. It’s the most Apple-like experience for any non-Apple product I’ve ever seen.
• webOS is gorgeous, with an emphasis on black/charcoal colors, the Prelude system font, and high-quality iconography derived from the circle shape (Palm owns the circle). If you believe (as I do) that a software environment should look as good as it works, webOS is fantastic.
• The TouchPad hardware is nice to the eyes and the touch. It has a sturdy (although somewhat plastic-y) feel to it.
• Neither Netflix nor Hulu are filtering the TouchPad’s user-agent string. Hulu seems to maintain a black list for devices (Hulu has to pro-actively block devices), while Netflix seems to maintain a white list for devices (Netflix has to pro-actively allow devices). While I can watch Hulu content on my TouchPad (which comes with Flash), I can’t watch Netflix content (which requires Silverlight).
• The bezel/cards UI is awesome.
• Built-in support for several third-party accounts, including Skype and Dropbox. While iOS (and Mac OS X Lion) also has this, webOS’s integration seems to go a lot deeper — specifically in being able to do a decent job of merging contacts together across the various services.
• The Facebook app (developed by Palm) beats the pants off of the phone-only iOS Facebook app. The closest competitor available for the iPad is an app called MyPad+.
• The Last.fm app is also designed for the TouchPad, easily beating the phone-only iOS Last.fm app.
• The photo app has built-in support for Facebook photos and videos built right in.
• The on-screen keyboard has digits as part of its first screen. You don’t need to tap shift to get to them.

Cons

• It’s a lot heavier than my iPad 2.
• The screen and iPhone 3G-ish style back attract fingerprints like its their job.
• The UI doesn’t track finger movements as quickly as iOS, so the touch/scroll responsiveness feels laggy compared to the iPhone 4 and iPad 2.
• Actually, the whole OS is a bit laggy. It’s as if it takes a moment to “spin-up” after I launch an application or switch from one screen to another.
• The TouchPad uses a non-standard Mini-USB cable, so my cache of leftover cables from my BlackBerry Pearl days are still as useless to me as they’ve been since I upgraded to the iPhone.
• It doesn’t seem to charge when connected to my computer, so I need to disconnect it, climb down underneath my desk, and plug it in to get it to charge.
• Ever heard of BeatsAudio? It’s the technology that powers the Beats by Dre headphone that are so freaking awesome. Yeah, not feeling it here. The iPad 2 speakers are better.
• The app selection is downright awful. All of the apps that I take for granted on iOS (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, Twitter, Instapaper, Flipboard) are nowhere to be found on the HP App Catalog.
• While the photo app supports Facebook, it doesn’t support Flickr which is where I have a 6-year investment in photos.
• Although the webOS browser is based on WebKit (the same engine that powers Safari and Chrome on the desktop and the web browsers built into iOS, Android and Blackberry OS 6), it is much slower than those other devices. As a matter of fact, I’ve been trying to run through the Browserscope test suite for the past couple of hours and it’s still nowhere near complete.
• The UI doesn’t change between portrait and landscape modes. iOS understands that the portrait orientation is narrower than the landscape orientation, so it adjusts the UI accordingly (see Mail). In webOS, it simply takes the UI and squishes everything together in portrait orientation.
• Syncing sucks. Even with the HP Play software that you can download, it’s still a pretty awful syncing experience.

Conclusion

All-in-all, the TouchPad is a mixed bag.

I think that the core of the experience (i.e., webOS itself) is a good OS with lots of potential. Remember iPhone OS 1.0? Or even 2.0? webOS 3.0 is clearly a better user experience and I believe that with more resources, webOS could definitely be a contender in the mobile space.

Unfortunately, the rest of the experience is pretty poor. The hardware — while feeling and looking good — is too slow to be of any real use to anybody. The TouchPad doesn’t charge over USB from my computer (early 2011 MacBook Pro), and doesn’t support standard-sized Mini-USB cables. The selection of apps is so paltry that it only took me about 15 minutes to look through every single app in the entire store catalog.

Would I have paid $499 or $599 for one of these? Not a chance. How about at $100 off like they were last week? No way, José. But $150 for a 32 GB model still feels like a good deal. Maybe a touch high ($129 would feel like a more appropriate price), but I don’t really have any regrets about yesterday’s purchase.

A couple of years ago, the kids would play with mine and Sarah’s Nintendo DSs when we were all in the car. Unfortunately, we only had one copy of New Super Mario Bros. and they would constantly fight over who would get to play it. In the end, we decided to spend $40 on a second copy of the game. The result was the wonderful peace and quiet that came from two happy children playing video games in the back seat. Totally worth it.

Likewise, I bought the TouchPad primarily for the kids to play with so that they stop stealing my iPad from me. When we’re at home, one of them is typically playing video games in the living room while the other is playing with the iPad. I think it was money well-spent to have two movie/music/game-playing tablets available for trips and long car rides. My daughter, Julianna, is also getting to the age where a computer is starting to feel more appropriate, so I think that the TouchPad will be a great device for her.

If you’re looking for a tablet for yourself, though, I would definitely say to skip the TouchPad and every single Android Honeycomb device out there. Spend the $499 on an iPad instead. You’ll get a better value per dollar spent with an iPad than with anything else right now.

Epilogue: Side-by-side Photos

In this first photo, you can see their shapes. The TouchPad has a much larger border radius than the iPad. In both cases, the displays are nice and bright.

Here they are at a slightly different angle with the displays turned off.

Here is a comparison of their thicknesses. As you can see, the TouchPad is roughly twice as thick as the iPad 2.

(Photo credits: First photo by HP/Palm. Second and third photos by Sebastiaan de With. Fourth, fifth and sixth photos by Ryan Parman.)

Update: Micro-USB (2011-08-25)

Thanks to a comment below, I’ve learned that there is apparently a new USB port size du jour called Micro USB. The TouchPad uses the Micro-B flavor, which is why my Mini USB cables didn’t work. However, I would argue with the commenter’s assertion that Micro USB is “the primary standard for every single other device on the market.” I have plenty of other devices at my fingertips that don’t use Micro USB.

Update: Hulu (2011-08-25)

Over the past couple of days, Hulu has now added the TouchPad to their blacklist. Sorry, but no more Hulu for TouchPad users.

Update: Preware (2011-08-25)

Last night, while I was digging through webOS-related resources, I discovered Preware. Preware allows you to install homebrew apps, much like Cydia and Rock Your Phone for jailbroken iOS devices. The difference here is that because of the relaxed sandboxing that webOS uses, you don’t need to jailbreak anything to use it (Palm/HP is actually quite OK with this community).

As part of digging around, I found a write-up by Jeffrey Van Kamp of Digital Trends entitled “Got a slow HP TouchPad? Here are 3 easy ways to speed it up.” The first thing you learn is that webOS does a ton of logging in the background. While potentially useful for debugging, it also uses up a tremendous amount of system resources. The article discusses how to turn it off by enabling developer mode, installing Preware, and then installing a homebrew package that disables the logging. Also, if you’re interested in squeezing even more juice out of your TouchPad, the article also discusses how to overclock your TouchPad from 1.2 GHz to 1.5 GHz.

Another article by John Biehler entitled “How to install Preware onto your HP TouchPad on a Mac” suggests a few other packages you can install to improve the general responsiveness of webOS on the TouchPad. There are a few others you can install to just make life a little simpler as well. I chose to install the following patches:

• Advanced Reset Options
• Faster Card Animations HYPER Version
• Increase Touch Sensitivity and Smoothness 10
• Just Charge By Default
• Muffle System Logging
• Private Browsing
• Remove Tap Ripple
• Unthrottle Download Manager

That last one is interesting. I had wondered why downloads seemed so slow on the TouchPad compared to my iOS devices. As it turns out, webOS throttles download speeds down to 64 kbps. Applying the patch to unthrottle the download manager sped up my TouchPad downloads dramatically.

For starters, I’m an avid Mac user. I’ve spent many years on Mac and Windows systems, and I overwhelmingly prefer Mac. One of the biggest problems that I had as a Mac + BlackBerry user is that the syncing tools suck. PocketMac is a disaster, and the Mark/Space app (whatever it’s called) only works about one day per year. I ended up having to install the Google sync app on my BlackBerry and move my iCal calendars into Google Calendar, then re-import them with Google’s CalDAV support. A messy solution at best, and it still doesn’t solve the issue with my contacts.

iPhone 3G, however, syncs with my Mac flawlessly (as expected). Because I have a MobileMe account, my contacts and calendars sync within minutes (faster if I force a push). On top of that, I have all of my email accounts routed through Gmail, so the mail client’s IMAP support makes configuring and managing my email simple.

Beyond that, there are all of the custom apps that are available now that the iPhone OS 2.0 software went live. The apps I find myself using most (besides Contacts, Calendar, Phone, Safari, and iPod) are Brightkite, NetNewsWire, Things touch, Twitterrific, Apple Remote, Klick, TV Forecast, 1Password, Facebook, YPmobile, and nearly a dozen time-wasting games. I’ve even created a ringtone from the Dr. Horrible theme song.

All-in-all, I’m happy with the phone. The on-screen keyboard responds and auto-corrects as quickly as I can type, which makes typing MUCH faster than it was on my BlackBerry. The only irritation I have is that I can’t tether it to my MacBook Pro as a 3G modem without jail-breaking it. This is more due to AT&T’s policies than anything else. The only other thing is that I haven’t found the right setting yet in Handbrake or VisualHub to convert my DVDs into a format that works with both my Playstation 3 AND my iPhone at the same time. Let me know if you find the right combination of settings.

I give it five stars, over and over again.

I’m an information junkie with a limited attention span. Twitter has all of the interesting links and thoughts of a Digg, Newspond, del.icio.us, or Ma.gnolia, but is filtered by people I follow, giving me a much higher signal to noise ratio for links and services that require my attention (or that I may want to give my attention to).

I’m interested in what people are thinking about. Twitter is perfect for this. “Tell us what you’re doing, in 140 characters or less” is fantastic because it forces the short, to-the-point posts. As a “thought publisher” on Twitter, it’s less demanding than, say, writing a blog post.

I work on a couple of open-source projects, as well as a commercial project. We’ve configured our subversion post-commit hook to trigger a Twitter update containing the log message. As we all work on the project throughout the day, I’m able to have up-to-the-minute notifications that tell me where in the development process we are at any given time. My commercial project has protected updates, and my open-source project has public updates so that our technically-oriented end-users can follow progress.

Twitter has become an indispensable utility for me. Being a Mac user, Twitter is as critical of a utility to me as Mail, Address Book, QuickSilver, Growl, and Adium. I don’t have to put a lot of time and effort into it, it has a very specific purpose, and I can engage with it passively if I choose to (I receive Growl notifications via Twitterrific, for example).

Twitter is interesting, useful, and non-demanding (both as a “publisher” of tweets as well as a “consumer” of tweets).

My only half-hearted complaint is that the Flash widgets are ugly as sin, but that’s why we have RSS feeds and open-source tools such as SimplePie to parse them, right?

Cinemanow bills itself as “the #1 legal movie download store” and sells movies a-la-carte, but for the same price, if not higher, in some cases, than actual DVDs, killing part of the incentive for purchasing a digital download.

Why would anyone want to spend more on a movie in a format that is significantly less flexible than a DVD? Yeah, I’m not sure either.

I flew from San Jose to Omaha last month, with a layover in Minneapolis. All-together I was on a plane for roughly 5 hours. I had my Powerbook, PSP, and iPod 5G with me. I had some videos I’d purchased from the iTMS on my iPod, and a couple of DVD’s for my Powerbook. While I was waiting for my flight to leave, I went to go find a UMD video to watch on the plane, since the iPod gets about 2 hours of battery life when playing video, and my Powerbook (with a 2-year-old battery) gets about 45 minutes of juice.

I walked up to the counter, looked at the selection, and found a couple that I’d've liked to watch. Then I saw the price: $32. Excuse me? Thirty-what? With a DVD, I can watch it on my TV, watch it on my computer, I can rip it to my iPod or PSP and watch it from there. With a UMD disc, I can only watch it on my PSP. Why would I want to do that? Since the format is so limited (along with any sort of “legal” (read: DRM’d) movie downloads from an online store), how on earth does it make sense to charge more for it? It doesn’t, and that’s why the format is failing. It isn’t because it’s a bad idea — it’s actually a very good idea — but they need to drop the cost to 50% of the price of a DVD.

Seriously, if most DVD’s are around $17-$22, then they should sell the UMD’s at $8-$12. Paying $30 for a 10-year-old movie is completely out of the question.

Sony (and all other movie companies), if you’re not willing to drop your prices on your UMD movies, then it’s definitely time for the format to go the way of the Aibo, Mini-Disc, BetaMax, ImageStation, Connect Music Store, and all of the “iPod Killers” you guys have had in the past.

Lots of information can be found about IE7, specifically improved CSS compliance (hasn’t yet been updated with the current build information, but will). This build is supposed to be rendering engine complete, meaning that this build will render webpages the same way that the final release will.

I’m tempted to do a full install of IE7, and simply run IE6 standalone from now on…

Okay, so have I ever mentioned how cool my wife is? Yeah. I had my 26th birthday last week, and when I got home that night, I had one of these awesome little toys waiting for me. The 60GB model. Yeah.

But that one was broken.

So I exchanged it for a new one, and that one has been awesome. Combine that with Tivo, Tivo AutoPilot, and a few hours of patience, and I was watching Tivo’d episodes of Alias, Lost, Veronica Mars, and the Mind of Mencia on my iPod the next day (which came in handy because I had a lot of riding-in-a-car to do that day).

I seriously have the best wife ever.

This has actually been up for about a year, but was never made public. This is where the Standalone Internet Explorers, latest Firefox releases, and other bits of software will live too. Actually, part of my goal for this is to be an unofficial mirror for the Firefox 1.5 release.

There’s lots more to come in the coming weeks. Some of it will be old stuff with a fresh face, others will be new things all together. And I’ll finally have a place to showcase all of the Ajax demos I’ve worked on over the past few months.

At the moment, I have the latest copies of the Macromedia Studio 8 Trials, Nero 6.6 Ultra trials, OpenOffice 2.0, and more. Have fun!

I began ditching CD’s for MP3′s back in the [Real] Napster heyday. Back in 1999, I could see it all coming together — I could have all of my music on my computer, burn my own custom CD’s, and not have to carry around jewel cases or CD binders. I liked CD binders because they were nowhere near as bulky as jewel cases and I could organize my music better, but my CD’s always ended up getting scratched to heck.

So, I bought my first new computer (as opposed to using hand-me-down computers), downloaded Winamp and Napster 2.0b5, and in a matter of about a year or so, had filled up the entire 3GB’s on my hard drive. Windows actually told me that it didn’t have enough space to complete the download of a 3 minute song. I had 1.2 MB available on my drive. Whoops!

By the time I bought my first 15GB iPod, I had a whopping 7GB of music. I listened to music on my computer, but i still listened to my CD’s more — mostly because I didn’t feel like taking the time to rip my 250 CD’s to MP3. However, having an iPod radically changed my music habits. I could carry my entire music collection with me in an elegant, white, palm-sized device? Having MP3′s no longer meant that I was stuck sitting in front of my computer in order to listen to them. Well, from there it was all downhill.

I started ripping more and more of my CD’s to MP3. I borrowed friend’s collections and started ripping CD’s as well — mostly CD’s that I’d purchased previously, but were now all scratched up. Technically I already have a license for the music that I already purchased, right? It’s not my fault CD’s aren’t all that durable. Anyways, in 2 months, I’d doubled my music collection and maxed out the capacity on my iPod. Not long after that, my wife surprised me with a 17″ Powerbook G4, and since that had more capacity, I decided to move my music collection over to my Powerbook. From there, I was free to get more and more music. I hit up all the Kazaa’s, WinMX’s, Limewire’s, and IRC’s of the world to find new music… and it was great! Mostly, I had gotten tired of the radio with all of the repetition of songs, and knowing that there was lots and lots of great music out there that wasn’t getting airplay.

I found some good chatrooms on IRC where I could get some compilation/sampler CD’s that had really good Alternative/Rock from bands that I’d never heard of before. One of those bands has become a new favorite — Motion City Soundtrack — with the song “The future freaks me out”. Maybe you’ve heard it?

I’m on fire
And now I think I’m ready
To bust a move
Check it out, I’m rockin’ steady — go!

I would never have found out about them if I’d stuck to the “legal”, RIAA way of doing things, but because of that, I’ve purchased both of their albums online.

So anyway, over the last 18 months-ish, my post-iPod music collection has gone from 7GB to 36.31 GB, as opposed to my pre-iPod collection that took nearly 5 years to grow to 7GB.

Now, back to my original point, I spent the weekend finally going through all of my old CD’s, and ripping whatever could be salvaged from scratched-to-heck-ness. I made sure to download the album art for everything, so I’m really not missing anything but the liner notes. But even then, what do the liner notes typically consist of? Lyrics, band member names, and thank you’s. You can get lyrics and band member names online. And thank you’s? I mean, really, who cares? And if you do care, then keep the liner notes for that album.

Which gets me to my last point. I don’t normally advertise or recommend anything unless I think it’s really good. This is one of those times. Check out Last.fm. It has plugins for a number of music players (including iTunes and Winamp), that will upload the tracks you listen to into their system. From there, they can also find your “musical neighbors”, so you can see what people who listen to similar music to you are listening to. This can help you find new music that may or may not be playing on the RIAA-strangled radio. You can also create your own custom radio station that streams CD-quality music to the last.fm player. My wife and I were cleaning our apartment last weekend, and I had my custom radio station streaming to my stereo (via Airport Express and NiceCast), and we both commented that it was like the perfect radio station that only played good songs and didn’t have any commercials.

So now, I open it up to you. What are your musical habits like? How much do you listen to music? What kind of music is on your iPod/iTunes/whatever these days?

Most implementations typically involve clicking a button or link to go to the Edit page. From there, you typically have to go through some moderately unusable process for reordering links, changing descriptions or current links, or adding new links. This may or may not include several pages and several page refreshes to get it all done the way you want it to be. Quite frankly, that sucks.

So, I spent several hours over the weekend digging through the documentation for Prototype and Scriptaculous in order to build a much more usable, natural, intuitive system for making these kinds of customizations. It’s not quite the same as the lists used in Basecamp, Backpack, or Ta-Da lists, but these services were definitely an inspiration. Here’s a video of what I’ve got so far. The video is a little tall for standard 1024×768 monitors, so you may have to size it down a smidge to see it all. QuickTime 6 or 7 should be plenty new enough to watch the video.

I’m not quite ready to release the code yet, as it’s not completely done, but once I add the few more things to it that I plan to, you can download the code and do whatever you want with it. The backend is done in PHP with text files, and shouldn’t require anything special except for a relatively modern browser (released in 2001 or later).

While doing this, I utilized two services: FeedBurner and del.icio.us. I think that at this point, most bloggers know what del.icio.us is. It’s a way to bookmark things, and share them around. I’ve begun using this service in place of my normal bookmark functionality and it makes it infinitely easier to keep my bookmarks synced between multiple computers. I’ve actually got a fairly large dump of bookmarks that will be going into del.icio.us in a day or two. It took a while to get my old sidebar links into it, but now everything is peachy.

FeedBurner is a service that allows you to track how many people are reading your site, and also provides statistical analysis of things like user-agents (what application or service is being used to read your feed) as well as things like time-of-day pulls and such. There’s a free and a pay version. I’m using the free one right now, and at the moment, it’s all I need.

One thing that I absolutely hate is when someone changes the URL of their feed and either doesn’t say anything (really bad), or posts a message that says “hey, I changed my feed URL to this… update your bookmarks” or whatever (bad, but not as bad). I was guilty of this at one point long ago, but I never wanted to do this to anyone ever again because of how much it bothers me. So, Apache 301 redirects were the solution. If your service or feed reader supports 301 redirects, you’ll be in good shape whenever the old feed address finally goes away.

Of course it only bothers me, because I have to switch away from my feed reader to go login to Bloglines, then delete the old entry, and re-add the new entry. Then, I have to go into each feed reader I have (Feed Demon on 2 computers and NetNewsWire on 1), delete the old feed, then pull down the new feed. It’d be much easier if I could get 2-way syncronization across multiple products and services… but hey, what can I do?

So there you have it. Both of the above-mentioned services are good, so I’d recommend looking into them. Hopefully I’ll soon have all of my pictures loaded into Flickr, and my redesigned site will have images from there, as well as my iTunes listening habits. Ooh… integration…

I have tons of clippings from old Mac magazines like MacAddict (back when they were still edgy and cool) still plastered on walls and binders left over from high school. To name a few:

• [MacAddict] Fighting back for the Mac – 225 MHz! “Let’s kick Intel’s ass…”
• [Power Computing] We lost our license for speeding… (the last ad due to Apple’s purchase of Power Computing and subsequent revocation of the Mac Clone license)
• [Apple] Mac OS 8: An operating system so advanced, it could only come from Apple.
• [MacWeek] Have a look at Apple’s new system… Mac OS 8 (with screenshots of the ill-fated Copland project)
• [MacWorld] BeOS: Apple’s Next Operating System

When I heard the news that Apple really was switching to Intel — and not just Intel, but Intel x86 — I felt completely deflated… sick to my stomach even. PowerPC’s are awesome processors, and Apple has invested a ton time and energy into this architecture, but although the switch was a surprise to some (including me), it’s not all that far-fetched.

NeXTStep (including OPENSTEP, Rhapsody, and the Mach Microkernel) ran on multiple architectures including PowerPC, Intel x86, SPARC, and even the old Motorola 680×0. Although Apple “officially” discontinued the x86 development after Rhapsody DP2, we now know they didn’t. NeXTStep (which Mac OS X is a direct relative to) was built to be cross-platform after NeXT moved from PowerPC hardware to x86 back in the 1990′s.

Now, having the Mac OS run on an Intel chip has been long-rumored since the days of the Star Trek project, and since that project was abandoned then we know that running Classic on x86 isn’t going to happen. Although I’m a bit disappointed about Apple leaving the PowerPC (which is really Motorola and IBM’s fault), I must say how impressed I am that Mac OS X runs so well on a Pentium 4, and I think that it’ll be interesting to see how this transition plays out for Apple and all of us Mac users.

Actually, this isn’t even the first time we’ve seen the “little checkbox thingie” that Steve Jobs mentioned when discussing the compiling of applications for both architectures. We saw this feature in Rhapsody builds of Project Builder (left over from the NeXTStep days, and was later was renamed Xcode). See for yourself:

The only remaining questions I have (being the detail-oriented, organized person I am) is what on earth are they going to call the new systems? The G-series has always been a PowerPC nomenclature. G6? Gi686? Gx86? PowerMac²? We’ll have to wait and see.

Since the last time I talked about my Tiger experience, I’ve reinstalled Tiger using the “Archive and Install” option as opposed to the “Simple Install” option I used the first time. This cleared up my problem of the phantom ClamAV user account I’d mentioned before. As a bit of context, I have a 1.33 GHz 17-inch PowerBook G4 with 1GB RAM.

Tiger Features and Applications

Safari 2:

Super, super, super fast. Far and away the fastest browser I’ve ever worked with (Firefox Deer Park Alpha 1 for OSX is second fastest). It’s also standards-compliant so I never have to worry about how sites are going to look switching between Safari, and my Windows browser of choice, Firefox. I’m also running the current nightly build of Safari, thanks to the recent open-source release by Apple of the WebKit CVS repositories compiled with Xcode 2.1.

I’ve left Safari set as the default RSS reader on my system (so that clicking on the RSS icon will allow me to read selected feeds in Safari RSS), although in reality I still use NetNewsWire synced with Bloglines (which, in turn, syncs with FeedDemon on my Windows machine).

Tiger Mail (Mail 2):

Tiger Mail is not too shabby. I switched from Thunderbird to Panther Mail back in April in anticipation of a smooth transition to Tiger Mail. Everything has gone flawlessly since the move. Smart folders have made my email organization much more productive.

Now, for all of you complaining about the new UI in Tiger Mail, quit complaining. If your beef is with the violation of Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines, fine. But from an aesthetic point of view, Tiger Mail looks a lot better than earlier versions of Mail.

Spotlight:

I use this feature constantly. For any application that isn’t in my Dock, it’s just a command-space away. But the normal Spolight search, although useful, isn’t as helpful as the new Spotlight-powered Smart Folders.

Smart Folders:

I’m a neat, organized person, who likes to keep all of my applications and utilities organized away in intelligent groups and subfolders within the Applications folder. The main problem with this is using Software Update, as most Apple applications won’t update if they aren’t currently residing in their Apple-approved homes. In other words, Apple’s “application dump” style organization goes head-to-head with my neat-freak organization style.

So, I decided to do the next best thing: Create a “Smart Applications” folder where I run all of my apps from, that I can keep organized however I want. I dumped all of my apps into the Applications folder, and all of my utilities into /Applications/Utilities/. Then, I tagged the Spotlight comments of each item with a special code (@org-utilities-network, @org-graphics), appropriate for the group(s) I wanted the app to be associated with. From there, I created Smart Folders for each group of applications, telling them to only search in the Applications folder, rather than the whole drive. This speeds up performance considerably.

Automator

Organizing all of my apps this way by hand would have been a total pain, but Automator made it a piece of cake. After taking the time to build the appropriate Automator app, I was able to just drag-and-drop whole folders of applications and have all of the items set with the appropriate Spotlight comments.

I also have a bit of repetitive image manipulation that I do rather frequently. It used to take forever to do each image manually with Fireworks, but now, I just drop a folder of images onto my Automator app, go get a glass of milk, come back and it’s done! Brilliant!

The only thing missing for me is the Automator equivalent of Folder Actions from Mac OS 9. I want to be able to fire an Automator action on an item whenever that item gets dropped on a folder. Anyone know how to do that?

iChat 3:

Still haven’t used it much, but I’m planning to give it an honest go-round. Adium and Gaim don’t seem to write my buddy lists back to the server correctly, so my iChat buddy list is all messed up. I need to fix that.

Burnable Folders:

Finally, a better way to burn data CD’s. Instead of having the Finder copy all of the files I want to burn to a temporary folder, it simply creates aliases, then resolves them during the burn. This allows the whole CD burning process to go much faster on Tiger.

Due to this limitation in Panther, I began using a nifty little app called Burnz. Burnz was a lifesaver during the Panther days. Since my car stereo plays MP3 CD’s, I burn a lot of them, and Tiger just made it easier for me.

iCal 2:

I honestly have no idea what the difference is between iCal 1.5.5 and iCal 2.0, but hey, as long as it works. The only problem that I’ve had is that in Panther, I was able to sync my calendars with a PHPiCalendar installation. Now, it doesn’t work anymore. I can, however, sync with .Mac.

iSync 2:

Before I got my new Motorola v330 phone, I just used iSync to occasionally sync my contacts and calendars to my iPod.

After I got my phone, I found out that with a little hacking, iSync will support my new phone. I did the hackjob, and it worked. So, I synced all of the phone numbers between my computer and my phone. Problem was, I ended up with double numbers in my phone (as I already had many of my contacts in there), and nothing new in my Address Book.

So, I deleted all of the numbers in my phone and decided to start over fresh. Big mistake. Between the two devices, the most recent modified date was on my phone, so when I synced, I wiped out all of the phone numbers I had in my entire world. This was a sad, sad day. It toook me about 8 hours worth of phone calls and digging through my wife’s Palm to get all of my numbers back. I finally realized that I had a month-old backup on my iPod, so I was able to pull most numbers from there. iSync saving me from iSync.

Now, iSync and I are friends again. Couple that with BluePhoneElite, and I’m a happy camper.

.Mac:

I had an iTools account back in 1999 or 2000. That expired back when Apple changed iTools to .Mac and started charging a subscription fee. Nowadays, I use this about 95% for syncing and about 5% for using the iDisk to exchange data between my personal PowerBook and my work PC.

QuickTime 7:

The coolest thing about QuickTime 7 is the super-huge trailers available from the HD QuickTime Gallery. Beyond that, the improvements are completely lost on me. It’s awesome to see fantastic clarity when I play an HD trailer in full-screen without it looking like crap.

Address Book:

As with Panther, I use my Address Book constantly. It was a huge help when I wiped out all of my phone numbers (read the iSync section above). I created a set of Smart Groups that listed people in my Address Book that were (are) missing entries for phone number, address, IM name, etc., so I always know who I need to pester about getting information from.

Unified Theme:

I’m a big fan of OSX’s “Aqua” theme, paticularly Panther’s Aqua. On the other hand, I can’t stand “Brushed Metal”. I think it’s a horrible theme, and should be killed. So when Apple came up with the “Unified” theme (which I’ve referred to as “toolbar-in-titlebar” in the past), I was pleasantly surprised.

Unified is basically a “smooth metal” version of Aqua. It takes the toned-down pinstripes of Panther, the multicolored close/minimize/resize buttons and throbbing blue buttons of Aqua, and combines it with a sleek metallic toolbar-in-title bar look. I think it’s fantastic, and I’m a big fan.

I think that from here, Apple should add system-level theming — much like the feature of Copland that didn’t quite make it into Tempo, although all the architecture was already in place. The preference panel would allow users to choose whether they want Classic Aqua (Jaguar and older), New Aqua (Panther), Brushed Metal (iTunes and Safari), Pro (Apple’s Pro line of applications), or Unified (Tiger-style Aqua). This setting would persist across all applications in the OS, so that all apps would have a consistent look across the board (much like the UI consistency in Mac OS 9 or Windows XP).

A good overview of the “many faces of Mac OS X” can be found at Rob’s Observatory.

System Performance:

Tiger made my PowerBook feel snappier after the Simple Install I did, but it feels even faster after the Archive and Install I did two weeks ago. Beyond all Microsoftian comprehension, Tiger runs faster on the same hardware compared to Panther. How sweet is that?

Any Problems?

Just two. Sometimes my phone doesn’t sync right unless I turn it off then back on again. I think that has more to do with the fact that my phone isn’t officially supported by iSync yet.

The second is that I can’t browse to my Windows SMB shares without locking up the Finder. I can connect via IP, but not by browsing to the share. I’m hoping that this will be fixed in 10.4.2 coming up this week or next.

What has Tiger enabled me to do over Panther?

• Organize my apps and utilities more intelligently
• Launch (almost) any app, (almost) straight from the desktop
• Save myself from myself with iSync, .Mac, and Address Book
• Save time and stay organized better by automating several repetitive tasks
• Burn data CD’s faster
• Sync devices and data easily and automatically
• Watch full-screen trailers that actually look good full-screen
• Surf the web at blazing speeds with incredible response time
• Organize my email more intelligently
• More stuff that I just can’t think of right now.

At this point, I’d say that any “laggards” that haven’t yet upgraded to Tiger should do so ASAP. Once you figure out how to make features like Spotlight and Automator work for you, you’ll be amazed by what all you can accomplish.

After reading MacWorld articles about the new system back in 2000, I actually remember seeing these screenshots. Does this look familiar to you?

Heh… old skool. Just for copyright’s sake, these images are from Ars Technica. Follow the links below to read about the growth in each successive version of Mac OS X.

1. Rhapsody (Mac OS X Developer Preview 2)
2. Rhapsody (Mac OS X Developer Preview with Aqua)
3. Mac OS X Public Beta
4. Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)
5. Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma)
6. Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)
7. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
8. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

What do we need?

Before we get started, we need to make sure that we have everything we need:

1. Either a Windows 2000/XP PC or a Mac running OSX
2. A TV (which I think just about everyone has)
3. A Networked TiVo Series2 with system software 7.1 or better
4. iTunes
5. TiVo2Go Software (Mac or PC)
6. iSee iTunes software (Mac or PC)
7. Airport Express
8. Speakers of some sort that are connected to your Airport Expres

This next part is the initial setup that you’ll need for the method that I’m about to explain.

Prepping your TiVo

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to begin by connecting your TiVo to your home network. You can get started by going over the TiVo Network Setup Instructions. This will involve purchasing either a wired or wireless (11 Mbps; 802.11b) network adapter for your TiVo. If you’re going wireless, remember to allow 802.11b devices on your network, and understand that TiVo only understands WEP security — not the newer WPA. I was ready to rip my hair out over this before I figured out what the problem was.

Next you’ll need to get system software version 7.1 (or newer) installed. Assuming you know how to work a TiVo, go into the System Settings screen and check what software version you have. If it’s older than v7.1, you’ll have to request the update. It can take up to 3 days for your TiVo to receive the software update.

After you’ve got version 7.1 or newer installed, you have to enable a hidden mode called the HME mode (which I think stands for Home Media Entertainment, although I could be completely wrong). Instructions taken from this page are as follows:

You can tell that HME is activated if on the Main TiVo Screen the “Music & Photos” menu option is now called “Music, Photos & More”.

You will need to re-enable HME every time your TiVo Reboots.

If HME isn’t already enabled on your Tivo running Software verson 7.x or above go all the way into the System Infomation screen and enter CLEAR-CLEAR-0-0 on your remote (there will be no direct feedback that it did anything).

Return to the Main TiVo Screen and you should see “Music, Photos & More” listed.

Prepping your computer

Go ahead and connect the Airport Express to your home network, if you haven’t already. The instructions for that are outside the scope of this posting. Connect your speakers (home stereo or surround sound system, preferably) to your Airport Express.

Launch the iSee iTunes application and allow it to start up. On Mac OS X, I had to open a port to make it all work properly. Open up the “Sharing” System Preference, and go to the “Firewall” tab. Create a new entry called “iSee iTunes” (or whatever you want to name it), and set the port value to 7288. Hopefully it’s the same on your system. If not, you can run Rendezvous Browser (OSX-only) to find what port iSee iTunes is wanting to run on.

Bringing It All Home

Launch iTunes, and start playing the music through your Airport Express to your home stereo (or whatever you’re using to play the audio through). I assume that it will be in the same room as your TiVo’d TV (since that would make the most sense).

Turn on your TV, and bring up the TiVo main menu. Choose “Music, Photos & More”, and then “iSee iTunes on <server name>“. When the iSee iTunes menu comes up, choose the “Now Playing” option, and iSee iTunes will display the track name, artist, rating, and album art on your TV. The forward and back buttons work the Next/Previous track in iTunes. You can even pause as necessary.

There! You now have your music playing on your home stereo and a visual layout of the track info and album art all together. (Almost-)instant Home Media Center!

Alternate Method

An alternative method that I’ve tried out worked well since I have a PC and TiVo’d TV in my bedroom, and I have some 5.1 Surround speakers connected to my Windows XP machine. I launched iTunes, iSee iTunes, and Nicecast on my Powerbook. I broadcast a signal (via Nicecast) to iTunes on my PC, and had the audio play through my fancy speakers. Meanwhile, I used iSee iTunes to display the cool music info on my TV screen. Not quite as fancy, but still works well.

Although there are zero API changes in this release, there are lots and lots of web interface improvements for people administering Tarzan installations. I’ve also laid the groundwork for keyword searching, which will be the primary feature of the next release.

Beyond that, here’s a short list of what’s new:

• The Tarzan information page has become the Tarzan Control Panel. You’ve got access to more information, and have more control over what all is going on with your Tarzan system. It now requires a login, and has been localized into English, French, German, and Japanese.
• Automatic Update Detection for both the Tarzan software and your Tarzan Extensions. Color-coded notifiers in the Tarzan Control Panel allow you to know if updates are available just by glancing at them.
• The lifespan of the cache is now a configurable option.
• You can either use Tarzan’s built-in error messages, or enable error handling to handle your own Amazon errors.
• Tarzan can work configuration-free for people who just want to upload and go. Even better is the new Tarzan Setup Assistant, which will import your old configuration settings (if any), ask you a few questions, then create the new configuration file automatically.
• LOTS of other changes, tweaks, and improvements.

As always, you can see the demo, view a working implementation, read the release notes, ask a question, or just get to the point and download the software.

I just bought my wife a TiVo for Valentine’s Day (*giggles like a little girl*). No, she’s definitely not a geek like me, but I seem to have passed along the “Electronics and Gadgets Virus” to her. I am absolutely stunned by the coolness that is TiVo.

Pausing live TV? Record anything you want by saying “Record this show whenever it happens to be on.” It actually came in handy tonight when we were watching 24 tonight. A couple of friends of ours were going to come over to watch it with us, but were running about 10 minutes behind. Never fear, TiVo is here! We simply paused TV and waited for them to get there. Brilliant.

TiVo is better than a VCR for a number of reasons. First, tapes suck. And they get old and dusty. And they suck. But with the coolness that is TiVo, there is no tape—it’s all digital. TiVo can also record shows for you that it thinks you might be interested in. Right now it doesn’t seem to be guessing that well, but we’ve only had it for a couple of days. I’m sure it’ll get better.

We can record the entire seasons of 24, Alias, and American Idol with only a few button clicks. Granted it can’t hold three entire seasons of TV shows at once, but it can hold a few weeks at a time so that I don’t have to worry about getting home late from work or going on vacation.

Right now I’ve got it plugged into my phone line while I wait for my wireless adapter to get here. Actually, I’m waiting for a second TiVo (for our bedroom), a wired ethernet adapter (for the one in our bedroom), AND the wireless adapter to get here so that I can connect them to my home network. I’ve read that I can pull recorded shows from my TiVo onto my computer. Since I haven’t heard anything other than that about the networking abilities, I’ve got some questions:

1. What format/codec are the shows recorded in?
2. Since I’ve already got Nero 6.6 Ultra, do I really need to buy that other program listed on the TiVo website to burn them to DVD?
3. Is it true that there are traces of DRM in the recorded TV shows? Any way to strip it?
4. How easy is it to compress the video into a computer-friendly format like QuickTime, MPEG, DivX, or Windows Media?
5. How long does it typically take for a 1-hour show recorded on “Best” to transfer from one TiVo to another?
6. All I’ve seen are 802.11b wireless adapters. Any 802.11g adapters known to work?
7. Any other nifty-cool things I can do with TiVo with or without a network?

To be honest, I’m not really a TV person at all, with the exception of the 3 previously mentioned shows… I typically watch movies. But being able to sort through all the TV in the world and watch only the interesting things when I’m home is a fantastic opportunity. It’ll also allow me to watch shows that I like, but haven’t gotten into watching yet. I used to watch Veronica Mars before the holidays, but never got back into it. I also hear that J.J. Abrams other show LOST is really good too (J.J. is also the creator of Alias).

Although historically I’ve never really liked TV, I’m beginning to see some awesome possibilities here. Has anyone got any other TiVo-related thoughts or ideas to share?

Now, I feel like a bit of a bonehead for not figuring this out earlier considering how much networking I’ve done over the last few years, but I’m thrilled that I finally figured out how to print a document from my wireless Powerbook to the printer connected to my Windows XP desktop.

First off, here’s how everything was setup and configured, before I tweaked it all to do what I wanted it to:

1. The phone cord comes out of the wall, and into the DSL modem (well, duh). The modem has a built-in, non-configurable IP of 192.168.0.1.
2. The DSL modem plugs into my 4-port wired Linksys router, which then splits the internet signal. The router’s address is 192.168.0.2, and that keeps things simple.
3. From the router, slot 1 plugs into my desktop PC running Windows XP, and assigns an IP (range of 192.168.0.4 – 192.168.0.10) via DHCP.
4. Slot 2 is a loose wire that plugs into my laptop when I’m sitting at my desk. This also gets assigned an IP within the same range listed above (of course).
5. Slot 3 is connected to a cable that runs from my bedroom where my PC is into the living room where I keep my TV, video games, surround sound system, and namely my Airport Express, which allows me to listen to my music on my surround sound system, and gives me a better wireless signal when I’m in that part of the house. The Airport Express is manually assigned 192.168.0.3, and spits out IP addresses in the 192.168.1.x range.

Most things worked great. I could get on the internet all right, I could connect to my printer, as well as my PC’s share when I was plugged in with the loose cable from slot 2, but not when I was wireless. It’s been kind of a pain at times, but nothing too huge.

This weekend, I found myself needing to print something from the living room, but couldn’t, and didn’t feel like disconnecting my printer from the back of my PC and plugging it into my Mac. So I decided to do some fiddling.

To tell the truth, I’d've probably just left it alone had I not had an idea of what to do (you like my double-contraction there, don’t you? “I’d've.” You know you do…). I got tipped off by reading somewhere about iTunes playlist sharing, which I do at work regularly. <gloat>Well, really, most people share from me as I have the largest MP3 collection at work so far with over 5000 legit songs.</gloat> But what I read was that it used to work via any IP, but because some people were irresponsible with it (stealing music), Apple restricted this functionality to those network users on the same subnet.

Hmmm… now I know that it isn’t exactly the same as having subnet, but what if I changed the settings on my Airport Express to assign IP’s in the same range (192.168.0.x) as my wired router? I figured I’d give it a try, and sure enough, it worked. After setting my Airport Express to assign IP’s in the 192.168.0.200 – 192.168.0.254 range, I was (finally) able to see my PC’s shared resources without having to manually type in a specific IP address. I added the shared printer with no problems, and am finally able to print wirelessly from my Mac to my PC’s desk printer.

So kids, that’s the trick. If you’re at home with 254 or less IP-needing devices (I believe that 192.168.0.255 is reserved for something or another), you can tell your routers to assign certain ranges of IP’s all in the same happy little group.

I hope this can help at least one person out there someday.

Normally, I don’t post about the latest updates to the Mac operating system, but this time is special. This is the most special of all updates because it fixes the two major problems that I’ve had ever since I bought my Powerbook G4 over the summer.

1. “…a problem in which, on rare occasions, a PowerBook G4 would wake from sleep with a black screen and not respond to keyboard or mouse input” which I have been a victim of at least 50 times since June, and…
2. “…also deals with ‘jumping cursor’ issues that might occur while using one’s thumb or the side of one’s thumb to navigate on a laptop Mac”, which has also plagued me time and time again since I bought my Powerbook.

Apple’s “geniuses” haven’t ever been able to figure out why this has been happening to my Powerbook. Now it’s fixed! I’m so happy!

I resolved some localization issues that primarily affected France, Germany, and Japan. If you’re currently localized as an english-speaking country, you probably won’t notice anything new. However, setting the character encoding for your Tarzan-enabled pages to UTF-8 is highly recommended for US, UK, and Canadian installations, and required for French, German, and Japanese installations.

I also tweaked the get_rating() function to add /5 to the end of the rating (since it’s out of 5 anyways). If you’re currently adding /5 or “out of 5″ manually after using this function, you should remove it when you upgrade.

Lastly, I made some very minor, primarily subtle cosmetic changes to the Tarzan Information Page. Mostly just tweaking the margins and padding. I also added the quantity of cached files alongside the cache file size.

As always, you can check out a rough demo, ask a question, or see a real live implementation.

I’ve also written a custom extension for displaying my own wishlist. If you’re interested in checking it out to build off of for your own wishlists (or whatever else it might be useful for), you can get ryan_wishlist.tzx here.

And although I had wanted to add search capabilities to Tarzan by 1.0, I’ve decided to build an extension for that. I’m planning to have this extension ready by next week sometime.

Tips and Tricks

There are a couple of tips and tricks that can be used with Tarzan. I’ll post them over to the Tarzan Support Forum later on today.

Resizing images based on the size of a single side

For my wishlist, I’m more concerned about items being the same height, rather than the same width. How do I manage that? Setting either the width or height value to zero will allow image resizing of one sider to rely solely on the other. For example, if I wanted to set an item to a height of 90 pixels without caring how wide the image is, you could use this:

echo get_image($asin, 0, 0, 90);

The first is the ASIN/ISBN number of the item. The second parameter (set to zero) tells Tarzan that you want to resize the image. The third parameter (also set to zero) is the width. Since the width is set to zero, then resizing will depend entirely on the fourth parameter, height, which is set to 90 pixels.

PHP running out of memory?

Some webhosts have limits on how much memory a process can use (like the webhost for Skyzyx.com, iPowerWeb). In this case, the new clear_memory() function is helpful. This allows you to unset() the value of an array node, particularly the product that you just finished processing. You can read more about this function in the Tarzan Documentation.

All you UK’ers should now be set to go! I’ll be converting my wishlist over the next few days in an effort to flush out any remaining bugs before I declare this a 1.0 final.

Have at it!

Initially, I started digging around to start implementing support for the UK. After a while of digging, however, I found out that I’m using an older version of the Amazon Web Services API. Fantastic. The new version (AWS 4.0) supports full localization in all of Amazon’s countries (U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, and Japan).

If I’m going to be able to stay on top of this, I’m going to need to upgrade Tarzan’s core code to support and use the newer API. It sucks that I thought I was almost done and I’m not, but this should only take me a few hours to recode now that I have Tarzan’s implementation figured out. Re-writing the necessary parts of the documentation will take a bit, and re-writing the Sample page and Breakdown Tool will take a bit of time too.

The good news is that Tarzan 1.0 final will be compatible with all of Amazon’s countries, without any code changes on your end. Tarzan’s functions will continue to work seamlessly and upgrading to the next release candidate will not affect current installations, despite all of the code upheaval. The bad news is that parts of the extension model have changed a bit. If you’re a go-getter of a developer who has already started writing their own extensions for Tarzan, then I’m talking to you. Hold off until RC2.

If you’re not an extension developer, and you don’t care about support for countries other than America, then you can ignore this entire post. If you’ve been asking me about support for the UK, France or Germany, then RC2 will be something to look forward to. Overzealous developers, just sit tight.

So, a few years ago, I came up with the brilliant idea of making my wishlist available on my website somewhere. That way, when people asked what I wanted for Christmas or my birthday, I could just point them over to some big-ticket items on my list, and wouldn’t have to waste brain cycles on it. Great idea, huh?

Well, my website has certainly evolved over the last few years, and so has my wishlist. This past holiday saw my biggest wishlist ever with over 170 items (mostly old CD’s that are scratched and need to be re-bought). Updating and adding items was a real pain, and I figured that after the holidays I’d try to figure out a way to make it all easier.

Most of the items on my wishlist are pointing back to Amazon, and I’ve got my referral ID in there so that I also get credited on all of the purchases made from my site. I also know that Amazon makes their database information available through their Web Services program. Ideally, all I’d like to have to do is pass either the ISBN number (of a book), or the ASIN number (of most other items) to a function, and have that function figure it all out for me. How on earth can I make it all happen?

Introducing Tarzan, an easy-to-use set of functions for accessing all sorts of data from Amazon’s product database. It’s as simple to use as SimplePie (if not, simpler), and has a built-in extension model that allows developers to extend the functionality of Tarzan simply and easily.

Tarzan caches everything it can for 30 days (since Amazon’s data doesn’t change much, and as to not overload anyone’s server), supports resizing images using GD functions (all behind the scenes), and most functions will work as expected by just passing the ASIN/ISBN number as a parameter. For more information, documentation, a sample demo, tools for building your own extensions, and downloads, check out the Tarzan Project Page.

« Update » I make a minor tweak to the code and released Tarzan 1.0 RC1a. I added cache stats to the tarzaninfo() function (which can be seen in action by viewing your tarzan_info.php page.) This certainly isn’t critical, and you can definitely wait for RC2, but if you got Tarzan already and you want to see the new info, simply replace your current tarzan.inc file with the new one.

For those of you currently using SimplePie, this new version makes more strides towards improving support for sucky feeds, tested support for PHP 5, and other bits of fine-tuning.

You can download it, read the documentation for changes in this version, and report bugs and get support.

After scanning the file and finding no viruses, I ran the executable. How stupid. It immediately began installing adware and my antivirus app began showing warnings of a trojan being installed. I quarantined the files that were causing problems, and while I was doing that, a few more non-cancellable installers ran before I could stop them. I immediately pulled the power plug from the wall.

It took me about 2 hours to get everything worked out last night, but in the end I learned two things: (A) Don’t be a freakin’ moron, you freakin’ moron, and (B) there are some really good anti-adware tools out there that I didn’t know about. Here are a few useful tools/apps that I want to share with those that may not know about them:

1. How to fix mom’s computer. Sounds like what I did over the holidays. Use this guide to fix your parents (or your own) adware-infested computer.
2. Online Port Scan. This free online utility checks your computer for ports that may be open to attack.
3. Ad-Aware. Spyware scan and removal utility.
4. ZoneAlarm. A very good software firewall application and AntiVirus application. Free version available.
5. Spybot Search & Destroy. This application prevents bad software from being installed in the first place.
6. AntiVir. A free AntiVirus application for Windows, protecting against over 80,000 viruses. (I’ve already got Norton AntiVirus, and ZoneAlarm has their own AV app)
7. Hijack-This. This application tracks what processes are currently running. Great for detecting malware.

I’ve now learned that it doesn’t matter how good you are. If you’re willing to take a risk, you need to be willing to accept the consequences of that risk. Anyway, I hope this helps.

The only other thing that might be worth mentioning is that SimplePie still has a difficult time with non-encoded special characters in feeds and feeds in non-western-european/non-american/non-australian languages. Beyond that, it’s pretty solid so far.

Now, before I get to explaining, I’ll point to a del.icio.us demo with SimplePie in action. Now, here’s the code as a whole:

<?php
include_once("../simplepie.inc");

@ $rss = simplepie("http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/web", false, true, 0.02);

if ($rss != false) {
	print("<p>Reading from " . get_feed_url() . "</p>");
	print("<ul>");

	for ($x=0; $x < 15; $x++) {
		print('<li><a href="' . get_item_permalink($x, $rss) . '">' . get_item_title($x, $rss) . '</a></li>');
	}

	print("</ul>");
}
else {
	print("The del.icio.us feed is not currently available.");
}

print("Powered by " . sp_linkback());
?>

Let’s begin with the first part, include_once("../simplepie.inc");. This is an instance of including the SimplePie library. In my example, the simplepie.inc file is located in the subdirectory.

The next line is where we start processing the rss feed:

@ $rss = simplepie("http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/web", false, true, 0.02);

We start by passing the first parameter, which tells SimplePie where the feed is that we want to process. The second parameter asks whether or not to enable a mode called XMLDump, which we don’t need for this excersize. The third parameter asks whether we want to cache the feed that we’re reading. Since SimplePie currently doesn’t work if the feed isn’t cached (unless it’s a local file), this needs to be true. Lastly, we tell SimplePie how many hours before refreshing the cached feed. We then set the feed to the $rss variable.

Next, we check whether the feed actually exists and was processed. If the expression if ($rss != false) (if $rss is not false…) is true, then we begin displaying the del.icio.us feed.

If you so choose, you can display the URL of the feed you’re using with the get_feed_url() function. I also chose to have this display as an unordered list, since that’s really what it is.

Inside of that <ul></ul> code block, I’ve set up a for-loop. Using $x as my counter variable, I decided to display only the most recent 15 entries. If you want to display all entries in the feed, you can use the get_item_quantity($rss) function.

As a backup plan, I like to add a short message for when the feed isn’t working. In my case, I said that “The del.icio.us feed is not currently available.” Simple and to-the-point.

Next, you want to tell everybody how you made all of this really cool stuff happen by linking back to the SimplePie project page. The easiest way is with the sp_linkback() function.

There! You should now have a fully-functional del.icio.us sidebar right there in your website.

If you’d like to test out the current Beta build (2004.12.03), you can do so a couple of ways:

• Basic Online Feed Reader utilizing the latest version of SimplePie
• The SimplePie source file
• The documentation file for this particular build

Please take the time to test it with your feeds that you read. I’ve also enabled an option that allows you to see how the feed’s source code is modified by SimplePie. This is great for debugging and for helping test.

If you have any bug reports, please list them in the Bug Report forum. The same goes for feature requests and questions and comments.

Thanks for helping to make SimplePie great!

Introducing my new iSight. With the 15 minutes I’ve had to play with it, it’s very cool, and will make chatting my long distance friends even better. I called my best friend Eric to see if he was home and could come online so that I could see this thing in action, but he wasn’t home. Grrr… I want to play.

The only drawback I currently see is that it doesn’t work with Adium. But using iChat AV isn’t a big deal either. I just have to switch chat apps, that’s all.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it as I get more and more chances to play with it. If you’ve got an iSight, tell me what you think of it. Is there any cool stuff I should try? Maybe I could even get a chance to voice/video-chat with some of you out there (scary! — my wife says that I can’t talk to any naked hot females though. *frump*)

First an iPod, then a PowerBook, now an iSight. What’s next? I’m gonna shoot for a dual 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5 with 8GB RAM, 500GB of hard drive space, and an nVidia 6800 Ultra powering a new 30″ cinema display. Please excuse me while I wet myself.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I’m gonna leave now to go show my wife how cool I think she really is… *grin*

When used with AirPort Express the Express Remote provides a powerful way to locally control music being streamed from iTunes on a remote PC or Mac.

It’s due to be released in November sometime. I think I’m gonna get one. Let’s just hope that it’s everything it seems to be.

• Windows Installer
• Mac OS X Disk Image
• Linux Installer

This version is pretty much feature-complete. The only remaining pre-1.0 work will be testing and catching any remaining bugs. I might add a couple of minor features, but nothing too major. I’m open to feature requests for the 1.0 – 1.1 releases, so if SimplePie is missing something or if it should have something that other parsers don’t, let me know.

« Update » If you downloaded SimplePie within 60 minutes of this posting, you should re-download it. I fixed a glitch that affected feeds from East of GMT, and some related documentation.

There’s still a smidge of fine-tuning left to do. Although I fixed a very high number of feeds in this release, I broke a small handful of others. The newly broken feeds include Forever Geek’s RSS (not Atom) feed, Asa’s notblog*, News.com, and GameSpot feeds. Out of a list of approximately 334 test feeds (374 total – 30 duplicates – 10 no longer exist), only 9 aren’t working. Not too shabby, I’d say.

I’ll probably begin working on v0.95 on Saturday. Here is a list of things I plan to do in time for the 0.95 release:

• Finish fine-tuning the regular expressions I use for supporting bad feeds.
• Add the ability to display images in feeds, even though the server is set to block the display of images on other sites.
• Encode all tags used inside <code></code> tags.
• Get speed back to v0.93 levels.
• Improve the ability to display feed dates.
• Improve support for relative URL’s in feeds.

Keep watching this space. Hopefully it won’t take me another month to get the new version out. Come to think of it, have you all gone and bugged Señor Paul about getting SPG 1.1 done yet? If not, you should. He might forget to work on it otherwise. *grin*

The downside is that it slowed SimplePie down a bit. I think that it’s something I’ll let slide for this version, and try to tackle it for the next. I still need to go back through the list of 300+ feeds to make sure I haven’t broken something else, but assuming that all goes well, I’ll post SimplePie 0.94 sometime tonight or tomorrow.

I hope you all are using it, or are planning to use it. It’s good software, really… and no, I’m not trying to float my own boat. If you find any bugs or would like to see something added, let me know.

Dead Hard Drive: My 160 GB drive bit the dust last weekend. I’m still at a loss for why. The upshot is that it only took about 15 minutes to get a new 200 GB drive up and running in my system. The downside is that I’ve lost everything besides my boot drive, installed applications, and my music collection (which are all on other drives). The worse part is that any and all work I’ve done on my long-awaited redesign went up in smoke as well. Convenient excuse, I know. I just hope that my new code will be better than my old code.

sIFR: I’ve discovered how cool the Inman Flash Replacement technique is. Even cooler, I’ve discovered the Scalable Inman Flash Replacement Technique (or sIFR for short). This latest version of the groundbreaking technique really improves previous versions.

Firefox 1.0 PR: I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Firefox 1.0 Preview Release. The PR release date has been pushed back 9 days from when it was scheduled (according to Planet Mozilla), and I’m trying to keep from biting my nails from excitement. Thunderbird 0.8 is also right around the corner, although I don’t know how close around the corner.

SimplePie: I’ve hit a roadblock in my SimplePie project. I need to figure out a regular expression that will grab self-closing tags (<description />, <tagline />, etc.), without also grabbing normal open-close style tags. I’ve done some tremendous work for v0.94, but I insist on holding back this release until I get the bug worked out. I know that this bug (combined with other elements of the code) effects Ben Hammersley and GoogleBlog, among others. If anyone cares to help me out with this regular expression, please let me know.

A New Church: After several months of looking for a good, solid, scripturally-sound church, we’ve found one. We’ll continue to visit for the next several weeks to really get a feel for the church, but it seems like what we’ve been looking for. I’ve been wanting to get back involved in music and children’s ministries, and this looks like the place for that.

SPG 1.1: Vaporware? That’s the feeling I’m starting to get about the update to Paul Griffin’s outstanding Simple PHP Gallery software. Let’s all go and ask him about it, so that he’ll feel the pressure to finish it. =)

Some Leafs: I’m totally diggin’ the photography in this new Zen Garden design.

Quick-and-Dirty Weather: Using the raw XML (not RSS) feeds from the United States National Weather Service, I was able to hack together my own simple weather RSS feeds. If you’re interested, check out Quick-and-Dirty Weather.

My Daughter: She’s growing up so fast, I can hardly believe it. She gets to be more and more fun as each day goes by. She’s just finishing up her potty training, and we’re going through tic-tacs like crazy. It was really warm when we got home this evening, and we couldn’t find any of her nightgown jammies, she I put her to bed wearing one of my old T-shirts. She was absolutely adorable. She misses us, my wife and I, when we’re gone all day at work, and she’s become vocal about it. It breaks my heart to be away from her all day long (although I’d probably go nuts otherwise), so I’m trying to find reasonable ways to remedy that. *sigh*

Anyways, that’s what’s been going on with me. What all has been going on with you?

SimplePie takes a very Apple-esque approach to feed parsing. Coming from the use of MagpieRSS, I decided to create a “feed parser for the rest of us”. One that is easy, logical, and doesn’t require too much of a background in PHP to use it. My background is in JavaScript, so I believe that if you have a handle on JavaScript and can spend an hour learning about some of the nuances of basic PHP, you should be able to implement SimplePie with little or no fuss.

There are many feed parsers out there that only support one or two flavors of RSS. Most still don’t even have Atom support yet. They all go through and create this whole big array, and then just leave it all sitting there for you to figure out. Maybe they’ll even throw in some caching while they’re at it. Good for them.

When building SimplePie, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for someone to be able to use it. I looked at a variety of desktop and web-based feed readers to get a feel for the most used and most useful RSS tags, and then I created a collection of functions for those specific purposes. Going with a Firefox-like mentality, I made sure to support everything that most people would want/need while maintaining the ability to extend it as need be.

As Mac OS X is built upon a powerful Unix-based core, SimplePie is built upon a very powerful, yet easy-to-use XML parsing library called XMLize. XMLize takes a fantastic approach to parsing XML documents in a very simple, logical way. I was parsing XML documents within 10 minutes of having found it. This easy-to-use software makes it easy for anyone — even PHP newbies — to extend the power of SimplePie.

Switching from MagpieRSS to using XMLize at the core allows SimplePie to process RSS and Atom feeds at incredible speeds. SimplePie is also aware of some common problems in feeds and makes adjustments as necessary. Does your current feed reader leave you with visible entities or odd question marks? SimplePie automatically handles some of these common glitches, so that the end user doesn’t see anything too wierd when trying to view their favorite feeds.

If you’re looking for new feed parser software, or even if you’re not, give SimplePie a try. If you’re new to PHP, or even if you’re not, SimplePie can save you time and stress. If you’re looking for a feed parser that can be easily extended to do more than it currently does out-of-the-box, SimplePie is your answer.

Download Now! File servers are standing by.

What I need from you are your reading lists. Whatever sites you read or follow via RSS or Atom, I want to know about them. If you’ve got Feed Demon, SharpReader, RSS Bandit, NetNewsWire, Shrook, PulpFiction, or another feed reader, do me a favor and export your feed listings in OPML format (which would be the easiest thing for you) and upload them to your website somewhere. Then, leave a comment that contains the URL to that OPML file. I’ll then go through each and every site and find each and every RSS or Atom feed and test them one-by-one to make sure that SimplePie is as solid and production-ready as possible.

The higher the quantity of feeds I’m able to test, the better SimplePie will be. I know that most of the (standards-compliant) blogging world is pretty solid, but I’ve noticed that many development and programming-related sites have horrendous feeds. I’m also going through the Feed Demon forums and testing as many of those feeds as I can.

Your help would be tremendously appreciated!

For those who are skeptical of “yet another feed parser”, or are hesitant to switch to (or begin using) SimplePie, let me explain it this way. Most RSS parsers go through this process of breaking a feed down into this big array, which may be fine for some, but can be impossible for beginners and newbies. SimplePie takes an Apple-esque approach by providing thoughtfully-named, easy to use functions that do what one would expect them to do.

At the core, SimplePie relies on XMLize (as the easy-to-use Mac OS X relies on the more powerful Unix-based core), which is a very powerful, yet elegantly simple class for parsing XML documents with PHP. This means that if SimplePie doesn’t do all that you want it to out-of-the-box (which would be suprising, but possible), you can easily extend it to support whatever else you might want.

I’ve frozen the current function set where it’s at. This means that if you’ve been using SimplePie already, or if you’re wanting to start using it, you won’t need to change any of your code as new versions get released. You’ll simply need to replace the old SimplePie library with the new one to take advantage of new improvements. New functions may become available to use, but new versions of SimplePie will not break existing services and applications.

If you’ve been thinking about building your own web-based RSS/Atom reader, why not give SimplePie a try?

While working on SimplePie initially, I used copies of Dunstan’s Atom and RSS feeds because I felt that they’d be representative of most people’s decently well-formed feeds. I know that some people have worse feeds, and that Mark Pilgrim’s feeds are a bit too “academically” correct.

Dunstan has a problem with his feed. He uses the numeric entity for a “smart-apostrophe” in his feed’s <title> tag. This happens to be a UTF-8 character. For whatever reason, parsing his feed in every PHP-based feed reader I’ve ever used displays that smart-apostrophe as a question mark. In wanting to build a “feed parser for the rest of us”, I decided to be smart and wrap a CDATA section around the contents of the <title>, <link>, and <description> on the fly for those that don’t already have them. Dunstan’s question mark becomes the character that it’s supposed to be. No problem.

On the other hand, Andrei also has a problem with his feed. Well, not really… it’s just that the fix I put in place to fix Dunstan’s feed broke Andrei’s feed. Andrei does a fake-out with his CDATA sections. He closes the CDATA section in <description>, then has one last bit of content before closing the tag. This is just enough to get past SimplePie’s logic. Wonderful.

Since Dunstan’s issue is only in the feed’s <title> tag, I went ahead and changed how SimplePie handles the feeds by removing the code for wrapping CDATA sections around <link> and <description>. Both Dunstan and Andrei have working feeds again.

Then, I go and test it on Mark’s Feed Parser project feed. SimplePie breaks down again. Well, crap. Instead of using <title> like normal people, Mark has to be all cool by using <title type="text/plain">. Argh.

So, I’m off to find some code that can resolve this little quarrel. I’m thinking about going through and looking for UTF-8 entities (4-digit, typically begins with an 8: &#8217;) and wrapping CDATA sections around those entities alone, which will probably work. I don’t want to release this software as 1.0 until it performs satisfactorily with every single feed in my entire reading list.

Version 0.92 is on it’s way here folks. Andrew, how’s that WordPress plug-in coming along?

Also, for those using Panther, v10.3.5 is now available from Software Update. The only problem is that it doesn’t set the disk permissions properly. To fix this, go into Applications » Utilities » Disk Utility, and choose to repair permissions. Voila!

The only complaints that I got were mostly speed-related. Most people who sent me feedback thought that SimplePie was just too darn slow. Unfortunately, the speed issues were directly related to my use of Magpie RSS as the parsing engine.

So, I decided to re-write it completely from scratch. I did away with Magpie altogether, and built a brand-new feed parser based around Hans Anderson’s XMLize library for parsing XML documents with PHP. The results were astounding!

I removed all external dependencies. SimplePie is now completely self-contained. Also, I tweaked with the way that SimplePie parses RSS feeds. In doing so, I’ve got v0.9 running anywhere from 20 to 162 times faster than v0.8. Specifically, it’s a maximum speed increase of over 16215%. On average, however, it only runs around 100 times faster than the previous version. As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen v0.9 take longer than 0.35 seconds to process and render a RSS feed.

If you’re looking for some RSS parsing software for PHP, I hope that SimplePie will be your choice. Of course, I’m always open to feature requests and bug reports, so let me know if you have something to say…

You can download SimplePie 0.9 from the SimplePie Project Page.

My biggest issue is just wanting to play the music that I’ve purchased anywhere I want. Hymn is a very good DRE (digital rights enabler) for iTunes Music Store files.

The first is Gaim. Gaim is an IM client for Windows/Linux that can log into AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, and others. I know that a lot of people use Trillian, and it already does that. Two features that make me suggest Gaim over Trillian are: (1) You can give people real names (you can set aliases), rather than being stuck with screen names. (2) You can group multiple screen names together as a single person. This is very helpful if some of your buddies have multiple screen names, or are logged on to multiple services at once. Instead of listing your best friend 5 times, you only see them once in your buddy list. Very handy.

The next is Adium X. Adium X is an IM client for Mac OS X. It is very customizable, and the development team seems to want to create a fun product… which is what they’ve done. You can customize sound sets, smileys, IM message display, the Dock icon, and a few other things.

For RSS readers, I’d suggest Feed Demon for Windows and Pulp Fiction for Mac OS X. Both of them cost money, but they both seem to be worth it. I’ve been using Feed Demon since November, and absolutely love it. I just started using Pulp Fiction tonight, but it’s already better than Shrook and NetNewsWire Lite. There’s a 15 day trial for PF, so I’d recommend checking it out.

Flash FXP is a terrific FTP client for Windows. I used to use CuteFTP and FTP Voyager, and Flash FXP is far better than both. Transmit was recommended on Whitespace a couple of months back for Mac OS X. I gave it a try, and I love it.

That’s enough promoting for tonight. I’m going to bed. G’nite.

Personally, I’m still fairly new to PHP, but I have a solid understanding of scripting principles grasp of basic PHP syntax. Even still, I found Magpie a bit confusing sometimes as I was starting out with it. Because of this, I figured I’d try to make it easier for people like me to leverage Magpie’s power with a simpler command set.

I’d like you all to welcome SimplePie. SimplePie is short for “Simple API for Magpie”, and makes it very easy to create your own PHP-based feed readers on your own sites.

I’m sure it’s not flawless, so I’d like you all to download the latest copy of Magpie RSS and SimplePie, give it a try, and tell me how you like it and what I can do to make it better.