Travelmedia is about ready to unveil a new product called World Vibrations—which they label as a "radio station-in-a-box.".
There's almost nothing on Travelmedia's website about this product—and at the moment the World Vibrations website just contains a page with the domain name on it. However, there's a good video on ZDNet's site about the product.
For about $2200 dollars, you're going to get everything you need to run a private radio station. If you can get an FCC license, they say you can buy a transmitter for it, but by default it comes with everything you need to stream the audio over the 'net. The playlist features look pretty cool—it'll allow you to do anything a regular radio station would: program playlist in advance, play things at a certain time, pre-record announcements, do live broadcasts etc.
Here's a good article with the author of Designing With Web Standards. I haven't read the book, but the article's worth reading—even though it is fairly long. The author discuss a lot of good points about browsers and developing for the large array of browsers out there.
I recently blogged an entry about Microsoft phasing out the standalone version of Internet Explorer. Well, it now appears now that Microsoft is rapidly trying to recant that statement. That doesn't surprise me at all and I even alluded to the fact that they'd probably backpedal away from this announcement in my blog.
"We don't know what's happening," said the [Microsoft] representative. "There are a lot of different options, and it's too early to talk about any of them...Nothing has been decided yet."
Anyway, I'm sure this isn't the last we'll hear about the issue.
Microsoft just made an interesting announcement in regards to Internet Explorer. Apparently, Microsoft has decided to drop the standalone version of Internet Explorer.
I found this quote quite ludicrous:
While IE does conform to most of the W3C's specs, there are still a number of areas where it needs improvement and updating—which don't have anything to do w/the underlying OS."Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1," Countryman said. "Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS."
I've got to admit, IE has been my preferred browser over the past 5-6 years or so—basically since IE3 was released. Over the past few years I've felt IE has the best browser on the market, but Gecko's made very good ground over the past year or so. I think the latest Gecko-based browser is a great product and with this announcement, I'm sure I'll find myself using it more and more. I'll probably stick with using Mozilla over NS, just because I find it's a little less bloated. Anyway, if MS sticks to this decision, I think it's probably the death of IE.
Users of file sharing programs such as Kazaa and iMesh are urged to install a security patch after a serious bug was discovered in their underlying network.
A security researcher recently found a potentially critical vulnerability in the program which drives the FastTrack network. FastTrack is used by peer-to-peer software service including Kazaa and iMesh. Joltid, the maker of FastTrack, initially said the flaw was not serious, but has since done an about-face and plans to plug the loophole.
The makers of Kazaa released a patch Tuesday and are urging customers to install it as soon as possible.
As perhaps the clearest evidence yet of the computing power of sophisticated but inexpensive video-game consoles, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has assembled a supercomputer from an army of Sony PlayStation 2's.
The resulting system, with components purchased at retail prices, cost a little more than $50,000. The center's researchers believe the system may be capable of a half trillion operations a second, well within the definition of supercomputer, although it may not rank among the world's 500 fastest supercomputers.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be wearing this during a rain storm. :)
Dubbed "exo-electric armor," the No-Contact Jacket looks like an ordinary fashionable women's coat. But an inner layer of conductive fiber carries a low-amp charge that delivers a nasty but non-lethal shock to anyone who messes with its wearer.
Claus Wahlers has just released a public beta of his "Deng" browser. The "Deng" browser is a Flash MX-based browser. Here's a quote about what it is from Claus' website:
If you are on a machine with Windows OS, you can now download an early beta version of The DENG Browser! The DENG Browser basically is the DENG Modular XBrowser Flash MX Component wrapped into a Screenweaver C++ Shell. The final release version is going to support CSS2, CSS3 Namespaces, SVG Mobile Profile, XHTML Tiny, XForms, XFrames and much more. All of these technologies are already ready to use in this Beta (with limited functionality yet though.. Also note that this is not supposed to replace your Mozilla or IE6). The Browser also comes together with a set of sample XHTML, SVG and XForms documents.
This is a couple of days late, but the W3C released a few new "Working Drafts" on May 2nd. These include drafts for XSLT v2.0, XQuery v1.0 and XPath v2.0—as well as several documents on how the specifications interact with each other. Anyway, if you're looking for some reading to put you to sleep or you just have an interest in where the future of XML documents are going, then you out to check out the new drafts.
A more advanced test version of Windows XP's successor has leaked onto the Web, and analysts say it indicates that Microsoft has stepped up work to deliver the new operating system.
The operating system, code-named Longhorn, is expected to debut late next year or early in 2005. But analysts who examined the latest test release, dubbed "Milestone 5," which leaked onto the Web last week, said Microsoft appears to be slightly ahead of schedule.
There's a lot of debate in the media about Longhorn. Many of the new "features" are being highly scrutinized by *nix users. I've also read a lot of misinformation from anti-MS people. Anyway, if you haven't heard anything about the next version of Windows, this touches on most of the new features.
The iTunes Music Store is launching with a library of 200,000 tracks, with participation from all five of the major record labels. In addition, the store will list exclusive tracks from 20 artists, including Bob Dylan and U2.
The songs cost 99 cents each to download, with no subscription fee, and include the most liberal copying rights of any online service to date. Jobs has been an outspoken opponent of so-called digital rights management (DRM) in the past, arguing that limitations on digital music will undermine the market for legitimate content.
Apple released it's much anticipated "iTunes Music Store" today. I've thought for a long time the record companies should be actively trying to sell music online. There's lots of music out there I'm willing to pay for, but I'm not a fan of paying $13-20 for one song on a CD. However, I'm more than willing to pay $1-3 for a song really like (depending on the length of the song.)
While I've yet to had a chance to check out the Music Store (as I don't have a Mac—which is required to run iTunes,) all the reviews have been very postive. It seems like the model is fairly decent and even with the DRM attached to the file, the restrictions on what you can do with the files are fairly loose (3 PCs, unlimited burns, max of 10 burns per playlist.) Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how well this works out. Hopefully the PC version will be coming before December—the projected release date—because the majority of people out there have PCs, so they're limited their target audience at the moment.
"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."
Boy, I bet the RIAA and MPAA are pretty steamed about this judgment. You can bet this isn't the last time we'll hear about this issue.