IE/Win doesn’t fully support the PNG graphics format, and Zeldman points to an online petition that is now just shy of 7,000 signatures. (Yours truly is #6977.) Every modern web browser with the exception of IE/Win has full PNG support built in, including beta browsers Safari and Camino. Please sign the petition and let’s hope Microsoft will listen; they’ve only been promising this since IE 4.
Tag: tech
Seems our parent company is going to be installing a “next-generation tandem soft switch” in Dallas as its first step in providing nationwide Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP. You may have already begun to see tv ads about this technology from Cisco, who is the leader in VOIP hardware.
Theoretically, because VOIP is faster and less expensive than conventional circuit-switched transmission, your long-distance phone bill should go down as well. VOIP works just like the various Internet applications you use daily, in that the packet-switching technology breaks down voice and data messages into many separate “packets” that can share the same line.
Plans call for these next-gen soft switches to be deployed in Chicago and Pittsburgh next, with VZ using all three to process VOIP calls.
Ben and Mena’s latest venture sounds intriguing, especially if the basic service is something that runs only $7 a month. I’d be interested in something more advanced, as I like putting up photo albums, which is an advanced feature/option. No firm pricing information just yet, and no other details, like how much space you get, how many email addys, etc.
Ben Hammersly got a sneak peek:
bq. The features are remarkable: there is a very powerful, but extremely simple, template builder. Users can redesign their weblogs and create fully compliant XHTML pages, with out knowing what that last phrase means. There is a built-in photo album, built-in server stats, so you can see who is coming to visit you and from where, built-in blogrolling (listing the sites you like to read), and built-in listing for your music, books and friends, producing a complete friend-of-a-friend file for every user.
Final judgment pending until full details are disclosed, but it sounds promising.
Can’t keep all of that techno-computer jargon straight in your head? Ever wonder what a PNG is? You need Jargonary, a shareware product for both Mac and Windows.
No affiliation with the product or author; just thought it was nice (though I think it’s overpriced at $20).
Yeah, I know everyone has read how the Apple Music Store has sold more than a million songs in its first week.
But Lee has broken down what that means, and the results are impressive. Better than one-and-a-half songs sold per second. I can’t wait to see Apple’s financials on this as the year progresses. My stock has already gone up about three bucks a share in the past week.
I wish I was making this up. From the idiot savants at Microsoft UK. (Note that the emphasis is not on “savants.”)
(Thanks, Ricky.)
My lovely bride pointed me to this Fortune article on the new iTunes Music Service. Obviously written for publication before the service was officially announced, it provides a great look at Jobs’ vision behind the service, and the inadequacy of the music industry in its previous and current efforts at online distribution.
A few items I’d like to address:
One thing’s for sure: If ever there was an industry in need of transformation, it’s the music business. U.S. music sales plunged 8.2% last year, largely because songs are being distributed free on the Internet through illicit file-sharing destinations like KaZaA.
I take issue with this statement, since it’s impossible to prove that illegal file sharing has had this much impact on the U.S. music biz. There is a ton of physical piracy (blanket CD copying) going on overseas, especially in Asia, that eats in to the music industry more than a bunch of geeks swapping songs online.
I have downloaded a lot of music from peer-to-peer networks, as well as some centralized sites I have access to. Some of it was digital copies of CDs and cassettes I already own. The rest was stuff I wanted to listen to before I went out and bought it. A lot of that got trashed when I realized it wasn’t for me.
I know I’m not the only one who probably spent more on music (albeit looking for sales and good prices online) because I was pulling music off the net.
Second, it seems as though hardly anyone in the music business thinks that the problem with falling sales may be attributed to the product itself. Elsewhere in the article:
For years they have been able to get away with releasing albums with two or three potential hits bundled with ho-hum filler cuts. That has been wonderful for the industry, but it has made a generation of consumers who pay $18.99 for CDs very cynical. “People are sick and tired of that,” says singer-songwriter Seal. “That’s why people are stealing music.”
Amen. That’s it right there. And we see further evidence of the music industry’s slow-to-catch-on attitude:
But MusicNet users still can’t download songs onto portable players. “These devices haven’t caught on yet,” insists MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade. Never mind that U.S. sales of portable MP3 players soared from 724,000 in 2001 to 1.6 million last year.
Hmmm. I would think a better-than-two-times annual growth, in a year, in any segment of the tech economy would be cause for consideration of said segment.
As for the service itself, I think it’s great. I haven’t actually bought and downloaded any music yet, but that’ll change any day. I’ve spent quite a bit of time searching through it and listening to samples. It’s going to change the way I buy music. It’s going to change the music business.
A year ago Vindigo 2.0 was launched. I’m a happy customer, with the software humming away on my Palm m505.
I don’t live in New York. Don’t work in New York. Plan to never, ever live or work in New York.
Yet I found this article by Joel Spolsky, on searching for office space in NYC, fascinating. (via Glenn)
Not sure what compelled me to suddenly share what my desktop looks like, but here it is:
Click on the above pic for a full-size image.
That’s Zane, atop one of his former favorite napping places: my 20″ CRT, now replaced by a 15″ Apple LCD. That shot is about two years old. The PowerBook has four partitions, appropriately named for an avowed Star Wars nut. iTunes is ripping The Elms’ latest to MP3.
The one thing I miss about that incredibly massive Radius CRT, was Zane plopping down on top when I was in the room.