Well, I’ve finally gotten around to changing the base template for this blog to more closely match the rest of the site post-redesign.

Tweaks to come; it is vastly improved, I think…

[Couple of hours later]

Yeah, of course I hosed some settings during the republishing process, and had to redo a style sheet.

I don’t know, I really like CSS but it is limiting in some ways.

For example:

• Having worked with tables for years, I know all the ins and out there. DIVs just don’t work as well, in many cases. Example: Say you have a two-column display, and you want (short) column 1 to have a red background, and (longer) column 2 to have a white background. With a table that’s easy — the longer column pulls the short one down with it, and one set’s the background color (in whatever fashion you want: bgcolor= or CSS) in the TD tag. With a DIV, it behaves much like an image: The color ends in the short column when column 1’s contents are done, and then column 2 begins to wrap around the bottom of column 1. Yes, but messing with position you can fix the wrapping, but the color can only be handled by nesting the two divs in a parent div or setting a background color for page that will be column 1’s — the short column’s — color. Just very awkward.
• It’s probably [yeah…] my ignorance, but is there a way to extend IDs like classes for pseudo-ID’s. For example, the class “smallText” can have link properties by appending the class name to a new pseudo-class: A.smallText:hover blah blah… I can’t seem to get the same to work for IDs, and I don’t see anything about it.
• Style sheets are a lot like HTML: Very easy to learn, cool that it works, but very hard to master. There are very subtle things going on that, when one first begins, one invariable hoses. It’s a neat tool, however, don’t get me wrong.
• There is no equivalent. That hurts. Sure, one can do a DIV ALIGN=center, but that really doesn’t do the same thing in many cases. I think part of it is that I’m still in the old HTML mode (tables etc), so it’s not intuitive and all. But it seems like more work to, for example, to center a search box over a page, one has to used two DIVs: One to center the box, the other to create the box. With a table, you do an “align=center” in the table (which did not affect the table contents). That’s not the end of the world, but that means that — for every style sheet you write — you have to “build” a fake center tag (ID with width auto) so one can use it. Maybe I’m just missing something, but the CENTER tag is a good one that should be build in.
• And – needless to say – the differences in browsers makes CSS a pain in the ass. And I’m not even counting browsers like Netscape 4.x, which barfs on all this stuff. I’m talking about so-called “standards compliant” browsers. Fortunately, things are SO MUCH better than they used to be in this respect. Now it’s more of stabilizing the code instead of writing two/three sets of it.

All that said, I love CSS. It’s great to quickly update the look and feel of site with one file in most cases (sometimes have to add class/id info to links or whatever).

For example, I hosed my update up because I had link color issues (that’s another rant, but whatever….). But once I identified the problem, it was easy to just extend a couple of classes and I was in business. Very simple.

That’s powerful.

I fininshed up my comments (begun on Feb. 20, 2003) on blogging in that entry, rather than ending it up here and having a disjointed narrative.

Not that it’s going to be smooth reading either way…..

Actually, that’s a limitation to the format of blogs — since they are chronological (in reverse), reading them top-to-bottom is an often dizzying, Memento-like experience.

And it forces blogger to (hopefully) insert notes in:

1. Current blog, indicating change below
   
2. Blog edited (if it makes sense — if you change a quotation you can indicate in the current blog; if a section is continued — as I did — it’s professional to mark the demarcation point

OK, let’s expand on the brilliant teaser I left in the last entry:

OK, here’s the “blog about” way to explain it all:

• Blogs are highly overrated by blog authors/readers – I totally believe this is true in the majority of cases. Look at blogging – or any activity/construct – from the inside vs. outside: You have tunnel vision. If writing in ASP, yes, .NET will dominate the universe. If from the Java side, the Liberty Alliance will solve all our problems. Neither is true, both are limited in correctness, both have some degree of veracity. But what the hell does that mean? It means what you’re espousing is, basically, flawed. Uninformed. SUBJECTIVE, not OBJECTIVE. Blogs are no exception to this “self serving” rule: Who gives a rat’s ass (that’s in the dictionary, by the way…) if I know about/comment on “blah”? Damn near no one. I’m just spouting, and does anyone really care that I found this great little sushi place in [pick small city/suburb]? Maybe some, but this is not a great, earth-shattering discovery. Get over your importance bloggers!
• Blogs are highly underrated (not on radar for most) by non-blog authors/readers – At the same time, blogs serve a cause, even if it’s only cognitive dissonance (reaffirm what you already believe, valid or not…..). What if I were the resident expert – or one that has some veracity on the subject – on suburban [pick city] restaurants or sushi places? Hey, suddenly, my opinions matter. As a niche market (with exceptions), blogs rock. Somewhere — probably — there is a group of “battery collector” blogs. People that collect new and old batteries (9v, car batteries, I don’t know I’m making this up….). If I were looking for a pre-19xx 9v battery [one with the pentagonal plugs, not the current quadragenal ones…] I would check the blog [blah] to get info. Like a Web site — which the blog can entirely be (important; see Dave Winer’s site) — then that’s a good thing.

Blogs – in the same way as Web sites (except, with current tools, blogs are easier to maintain than other Web stuff) – do – or CAN change things.

It’s another environment/method to give the word out.

Remember: The Web was supposed to democrisize information. Remember that? Because anyone could do it (publish) for very little cost? (Yes, in the heady days, publication for NO cost. And today NetZero charges $9.95/mo for accesses….where is the ZERO???).

OK, that’s the short explanation. Long one? Hmmm.. value of a blogger! (?)

(NOTE: Continued on Friday, 02/21/20003)

While it’s hard to really hard to catagorize a group as broad as bloggers, I see the groups coming down to – for the most part – four catagories:

1. Naval gazers: I read somewhere – can’t recall where – that bloggers are, as a whole, a group of self-indulgent, self-important naval gazers. I think that this characterization – however harsh – is pretty accurate. I fall in the category. Hell, does anyone really need to read this blog? Will anything be lost in the world if it suddenly became a desktop blog instead of a Web-enabled one? Nope to both. What I say here really doesn’t matter to anyone but me for the most part, so there in lies the navel gazing. Which is fine – early Web “home pages” (does anyone call it that anymore?) – were much of the same. And now the “home page” nature of the Web is way minimalized, and – at the same time (I think it is a coincidence, but whatever) – blogs are filling this gap.
2. Niche publishers: This is one of the most compelling reasons for blogging: Much like Usenet groups (does anyone use those anymore?), they are a source for solid information for a very narrow interest. Like my example above about restaurant recommondations. I’m sure that, were I interested, I could find more than one blog that I could read occasionally for info on restaurants in my area. I’d probably find I could trust Blog A most of the time, unless it was Chinese cuisine, Blog B seldom but they find interesting places and so on. Dissemination of information that really doesn’t have a place anywhere else. I would put a lot of the blogs I read about technology (including blogs about blogs…how recursive!) in this catagory, although they are more prevalent, or at least easier to find, than other types of specialty blogs, due to the nature of the material and where it is published.
3. Notables: By this, I mean people like Moby (no, I’ve never read), who have a following and this another way to reach the masses. It also includes people like Dan Gillmor, who are in publication for a living (in this case, about technology). Blogs give individuals like Gillmor – or Tom Brokaw or whatever – an outlet to give more information back to reader, more than will fit below the fold in a newspaper or in a 30-second spot on the nightly news. This is powerful. For example, there is a trend for reporters to publish online the complete interviews they do, so one can see 1) how it differs from the published/broadcast version (and try to figure out they differ), 2) Gather info that just couldn’t fit in the original slot. Sure, for most people, who cares, right? But for people who are (for whatever reason) interested in the interview subject (person or topic), this is a gold mine. What’s the harm in publishing it? Before blogs, this just didn’t happen. Actually, I foresee newspapers and the like starting to pull this out of reporter’s blogs and into the online versions of the paper, for many reasons. (Ad revenue leaps to mind….). While I don’t know when the “cool” factor will burn off blogs for people like Moby and others, I can see it as a tool of continuing interest for reporters, such as Gillmor, and others. Especially as the technology gets better and publishing is easier. (Boy, here is an application for which voice recognition software would be ideally fitted: A blog is essentially a journal, not journalism, let’s say — it’s personal and less formal than traditional publishing. It’s like the author talking to you…interesting…)
4. Blog Notables (blogerati?): By this I mean the people who are essentially known for blogging only. Dave Winer leaps to mind, as does Clay Shirky. Sure, they have other jobs and so on, but they are primarily know — at least in BlogSpace — as Bloggers. One curious cross-over person here — to me — is Lawrence Lessig: While very well known as a blogger, he was one of the non-blogerati who embraced this tool and used it as a communication device, not just for the cool factor (as most Naval Gazers do). Obviously, Lessig has lots on his mind, but the blog is somehow a natural extension of his work it seems. Considering his work (copyright issues, Internet architecture and how it supports/suppresses information flow etc), the blog is a natural, but he’s a lawyer who has far greater issues than if his blog is up to date. But it somehow fits.

And – again – who cares what I say here? But that’s what I think, and I’m sticking to it.

OK, everyone in BlogSpace (hey, I think I just coined a new term!) will be discussing today’s revelation: Google has bought Pyra. (For the clueless — the publishers of blogger.com [from whence this entry comes] and blogspot.com.)

My two cents:

I don’t know what the financial benefit to Google will be — frankly, I don’t know (or care, really) if Pyra is profitable — either short- or long-term, but I do think that the acquistion is both interesting and a good fit. Here’s why:

• Good Fit: Google is, at base level of operation, in the business of collecting/indexing/pointing toward content. Pyra, while not the only publishers of blogs (MoveableType and Radio/Manilla are the other big players), is easily the biggest. According to Ev at Pyra, the company has approximately 1 million blogs, of which about 20 percent are active. While Google does a good job of crawling blogs, it takes time. How much easier would it be to just trawl the actual database that hosts the blogs? Way faster, get an idea of who is currently updating and so on. I see a separate section of Google News with recent headlines from blogs, as well as a search tool that will enable users to search blogs virtually as they are published. No wait for the nightly crawler. It becomes a “live” search. This is HUGE. I can’t underestimate how intriguing this is.
• Interesting: Yes, the sites on blogger.com and blogspot.com can be trawled via database access, not a spider. Yes, faster results. But what does this mean for the MoveableType | Radio/Manilla | homegrown-blog sites? WILL Google crawl via database — and index/post more quickly — the Pyra sites or will it continue to do the traditional spider crawl of these sites (even though they will be hosting the sites). Two views:

• Google is Evil: Sure, they can directly hit the database for the Pyra sites, so it can more quickly be posted. But Google is a search engine, and this gives an unfair advantage (time) to the sites that Google stands to make money off of. As blogging becomes even bigger (I think it will) and Google maintains its role as search engine of choice (I think it will), then there is a real incentive for people to host at the former Pyra properties instead of, say, using MoveableType. Somewhat akin to M$ leveraging their installed OS (Windoze) base to, uh, “promote” Internet Explorer.
• Google is Good: Sure, it does give an advantage to the Pyra sites. But Google’s goal is to get the stuff out there and as fast and cleanly as possible. This helps, and it does not affect the crawling (it had better not!) of those non-Pyra sites. Status Quo there.

• Interesting: If Google does go ahead and indexes off the database for Pyra sites, as opposed to spiders (except for fear of catching some flack, I can’t understand why it wouldn’t) this is a new paradigm: Much like a single site with search, Google will be searching off the database — but it’s not a single site, it’s many thousands of them. A little scary, but a new concept. Will other sites/users grant Google access to their databases (on a strictly limited basis, obviously) so there can be a faster dissemination of blog information? If so, will this database access go beyond Web sites? I see an optional XML feed (maybe just the RSS file) that is either fed to site of your choice (doubtful?) or sits out there and is available to all spiders — which then report it back and it becomes an hourly (for example) hit instead of every day/week.

Sorry, but this is interesting stuff. It’s not a simple buyout.

It may change things.

Actually, what I expect to happen is the following:

• Goolge will begin with keeping a spider crawl of Pyra sites, but this will change in short order as people get comfortable with it “controlling” all this content (they don’t control it; they just index it folks…)
• Either a “Web Log” tab on the search will appear, or it will be part of — but separate from — the News section (much like Sports is separate from Health).
• Google will do some interesting things with XML to make all bloggers more accessible via Google and other search engines that care to do the crawl/feed processing. They will keep the protocol/process open, but — since they will invent it — they will have the first-mover advantage.
• Google will 1) Make the Pyra sites more stable and scalable (after this purchase, people will begin to understand blogs because it’s now associated with Google, which they know). Move from Win2000 to *nix? (Actually, Win2000 is a nice, stable platform. No, not as good with memory management as *nix, but a good platform. Go ahead; flame me — this is not a troll) and 2) Introduce new tools to make the process easier, much along the lines of MoveableType. I think XML will play a big role, but what the hell do I know?

What I don’t expect to happen with Google buying out Pyra:

• Google will not — at least for a year — begin any sort of additional charges. Example: Blogger.com is free (Pro is a charge); this will be unaffected.
• Any other disturbance in The Force

Well, I haven’t been updating my blog recently, but I have managed to put some effort into a “redesign” of my geistlinger.com site.

I say “redesign” in quotation marks because the site really had no design before. It was mainly used as — and still is — a testing ground, a repostitory for different versions of my resume (both old versions, and different flavors of my current resume) and other non-Web functions. It was like a big file server with little apps here and there.

The index page had a rotating quotation, and there were a couple of links, and that’s about it. Not much. I have directories up the ying-yang that I’ve put out there for people to view at one time or another — freelance projects, demos, freebies and so on — but there was never a coherent design/theme to the site.

I’ve changed that. The new version went up sometime last week; I think about Feb. 3 or so, but I’m not certain, to be honest.

The new version contains the following:

• Coherent navigation: I should actually call this “any navigation” because — as mentioned — there really was never a coherent site before, with any real navigation scheme.
• Four distinct, color-coded areas: I have used the same motif in each of the four sections, but set a different palette for each. Was a good exercise. The four areas:
  

  1. Home
  2. Postcard Zone (with lots of additional code for error trapping; why I never had that?……)
  3. Resume — repackaged to match the site design; links to existing, alternate versions of my resume, including a newly coded “print version,” which should be more browser complient
  4. Word Me! — Quotation engine that I ported from SQL Server to Access for this site. I’ll keep the local SQL server as the master, and publish updates periodically.

The Word Me! section was tricky in that I had to — in the codebase — support two database types (MS SQL Server and Access) and the corresponding datasources. It’s dynamic, so the same codebase on my local server hits my local SQL Server; on geistlinger.com, it hits the Access datasource there (I don’t have a SQL Server on geistlinger.com; too expensive and not terribly necessary for now).

The downside of supporting the two databases is that the stored procedures I had written for this module can’t be used anymore (Access does not support stored procs). Well, I could use them still, but I’d have to conditionalize all the queries based on what server the codebase was on…no thanks. Was messy enough keeping the two datasources clear.

Is the new site perfect? Hell no. But it’s a lot better, and it’s build out using standards as much as I can. Very few tables — only for tabular material, not for layout. DIV and SPAN instead. And — of course — a healthy use of CSS.

I think it’s a decent-looking site now, at least for a non-designer.

And — whether or not it is a decent-looking site — it’s a hell of a lot better than what it replaced.

And I added the Quotes to it, so that’s a nice addition. Good demo of dynamic areas and so on — search, results, link to additional info and so on. Along with the Postcard gallery (needs more pictures! — and a data redesign….), some good examples of searching and other types of dynamic tools. Good to have out there, and if outsiders want to use them, hey, all the better.

One note on my previous entry — about the whole IP debate — before I continue.

The music industry (part of the content industry) blames Napster etc. for the drop in CD sales.

OK, that’s one conclusion.

How about another conclusion: When your buying audience is mainly younger, and younger people have less discretionary income, $18 for a mediocre CD is not going to cut it.

And what recently has been worth paying even $5 for? Where is the new Layla, the equivalent of Begger’s Banquet, the new U2 or REM?

Think about it.

Well, I have recently gone over to the “Dark Side.”

Yes, I have been coding in Microsoft technologies.

I had a job interview earlier this week — for a Cold Fusion position — and the head developer there mentioned that the company was not necessarily planning on staying with CF forever: It was, at least, examining the whole .Net framework.

When asked for my experience with ASP pages and other MS technologies, I had to say that my only experience with ASP pages was modifying and building some templates for IntelliChoice. I had done some VB that was actually used at work, though no one at work knew it (widgits). No C++, but a lot of MS SQL Server.

But the SQL Server was the most of it.

So I got the bug to learn ASP (after which I’ll delve into the .Net framework).

Installed IIS 5 on both my Win2000 boxes and began coding.

Some initial notes:

• I’m already way up on the curve for ASP coding. I went to the library to pick up a couple of ASP books, and one was “ASP for Dummies” (I like these books for intros; “SQL for Dummies” is the best SQL intro I’ve ever seen). With the little I was able to glean from the installation examples, some Web cruising and my background, I’ve basically covered about 250-300 pages of the ~350-page book. Hey, the first thing I did is hook it up to a database, output results, get result count and make the results list sortable. That’s my idea of a “hello world” file…
• While I’m “up on the curve,” I’m certain I missed a lot of stuff, such as the objects ASP supplies and all that. I’m not an expert, that’s for damn sure. But ramped up quickly, yes.
• ASP is more like PHP than Cold Fusion, at least to me. Cold Fusion’s biggest deal (to me) is the way it makes it SOOOO easy to connect to a database and output results. PHP and ASP are similar in the database connectivity fashion; not easy but not hard, either. Just have to learn the syntax (CF is too easy….CFQUERY then CFOUTPUT….whoo-hoo!)
• There is some clumsiness in ASP — as in other languages — that make one yearn for CF. For example, the whole concept of “current row” is absent in ASP (as far as I can tell); the “recordCount” feature is an extra step as part of the query, and none too intuitive.
• There are a lot of features that I’ve already run across in ASP that I just don’t see the real need for, though it’s always nice to have (cursors and so on). I have to delve more into the not-quite-stateless nature of ASP HTML.
• The markup is very similar to PHP. The text-manipulation tools don’t seem to be as robust, but I’m just learning now…
• One big question I have with ASP is what scripting language to use with it (for the conditionals, etc — you use a scripting language, not native “ASP code” as you do with CF). I assume that VBScript is the one that should be used (it’s the default, most like VB etc). But I’m more familiar with Javascript. And — and here is the interesting part — C# is touted as the new main language for .Net. And it’s a Java clone. So JS would make more sense….aughhhhhhhh! Ah well, I’ll survive.
• One of the things I still don’t understand is the lack of information about how to hook up to a MS SQL Server. Yes, ODBC and all that, but there is default user that is added as part of the IIS installation. THAT user has to be added to whatever database is used as, basically, a DBO. Took several hours to get this. The Access connection took about 3 seconds. Like UNIX, it all comes down to permissions….interesting
• ASP — like CF — has some sort of built-in database update/insert types of functionalities. As with CF, I’m going to avoid them like the plague: Use standard HTML and SQL. But what do other ASP programmers use? I just don’t know.

OK, there have been a lot of articles recently about the Internet and copyright law etc. This probably was prompted (in the mainstream press; geeks sites have been following this for some time) by the Supreme Court’s decison to let stay the Sono Bono Copyright Extension Act (Ashcroft vs. Eldred, I believe).

I’m still trying to makes heads or tails of all of this — both what was, what is now, and what the future will/could/should hold.

With the emphasis on looking down the road, obviously. Bear with me as I attempt to write my way through this; maybe I’ll have an epiphany.

Let’s begin with a few, let’s say, a basic postulate before we attempt to construct a forward-looking theorem:

Don’t get me wrong: Yes, there have been plenty of collisions between the pre-Internet world and the Internet in the past, as well as others that continue to take place: e-mail snooping; pornography; ISP’s culpability for users/sites hosted with them; hackers/virusus/encryption wars and so on.

But this is the first one that has really boiled over in a wide-ranging, orderly fashion that will have significant repercussions for a wide range of people/entities.

In other words, going after Kevin Mitnick was a big deal, took government work and court cases and so on, but how did it really affect the Average Joe?

Not at all. Some precedent was set; Kevin didn’t like it … but ask Average Joe about this, and Joe won’t know about it.

But the outcome of the copyright duels may well affect the Average Joe: He’ll for example, stick a CD that he purchased into his CD player and all will be well. He’ll stick the same CD in his computer in his home office, and it won’t play because of the protection built in (one scenario).

Suddenly, Joe understands something is happening.

And before I go any further, full disclosure:

• For my entire adult working life, I have been working in what could be considered intellectual property (IP) or content positions: Photographer, editor/writer; coder. Three careers, and no real physical objects that are unique (yes, my slides are unique, but posted slides can be swiped and I still have them, as well). It’s not like I build custom furniture for a living, where if someone steals a couch…it’s gone. I guess I should have some bias toward the content-providers concerns, but I don’t think I do. But worth disclosing.
• My bias is still on the side of the U.S. Constitution as envisioned by the creators of same — limited government monopoly for IP; then it’s public domain. And fair use is always permitted.

OK — as I’ve noted, I’m just trying to get a handle on this right now. I read so much vitriolic about this issue — from all sides (*sign* fanatics are necessary, but they are annoying at times…) — that’s it’s hard to really sit back and decide what seems right/wrong/sensible.

Because everyone is out for their own vested interest, which is the American Way, I guess.

Note: The government’s interest is difficult to divine: Should be to uphold the Constitution; the recent actions of the Supreme Court — which should not be biased by lobbying groups, let’s say — seems very non-constitutionally oriented in this area, but that may be my bias.

Let’s get some facts and so on down here and see if some insights can be drawn as I go along:

• The increasing sophistication of digital content makes perfect copies of existing material increasingly easier, cheaper and more accessible to more who want to make copies, legit or otherwise.
• The current Internet does make it simplier to distribute content, if for no other reason than it’s less steps: Rip/post or whatever. Don’t need floppy disks, sneaker net, Post Office and so on.
• One issue I have not seen mentioned in any copyright issue article I’ve read is the shadow of Internet2: With its unbelievably (today) fat pipes, a movie can be downloaded in the same amount of time it takes to download a single MP3 today (assuming high-bandwidth connection on each backbone). Today, downloading a pirated movie is totally possible, but time-consuming even with a broadband connection (cable, DSL, T-1). Again, the Average Joe Factor. I assume this future shock scares the shit out of the content industry. It should.
• People will always pirate material: photocopies, pictures of artwork, digital copies of movies/song and so on. Get over it. It will always happen. And often this “pirating” will actually be fair use (MP3’s for my computer off CD I purchased).
• Insight — Unless the content companies are total idiots (I doubt this, but some of their actions…..), their concern is not the Average Joe, but the “pirate shops” with stacks of burners that copy and sell “101 Dalmations” for $4.99 or post same for free. They are just trying to patch the holes in the dam before they get too big. I can appreciate that.
• At the same time, look at some the content companies’ actions — it does go to hurt the end user (CDs that can be used in CD player but not your computer’s CD player [huh? — both CD players…], regional DVDs etc — that hurts Average Joe)
• There is no system/series of systems that will completely halt piracy. While I firmly believe this, I don’t think the content providers do. They want to keep sticking layer after layer (software/hardware/key registration etc) of protection; someone is going to get through. Get over it. I don’t think they get this yet.
• Insight: Content companies should, at worst, attempt to curb piracy, not stamp it out. Doing the latter will trapple Average Joe (unintentionally or otherwise); why is that a good thing for the bottom line?
• The voice of the content providers — the artists, musicians and so on — are not either out there or not really being heard. Yes, Janis Ian has been vocal on the issue, but there are not a lot of photographers, writers and so on that you hear about. Is it because they agree with the content industry, or that they aren’t heard? Or are they simply not speaking, for one reason or another?
• This is not really a battle of IP, it is a battle for the money associated with IP. Big difference, but don’t lose sight of it.
• The content industry has overreacted to every new technology that posed a potential threat to their bottom line: VCRs, cassette tapes and so on. So this rant againt the Internet and file-swapping could be dimissed as more of the same. However, I happen to agree with the content providers on this point: I think the Internet, file-swapping — the whole digital stew — does pose a very real threat to the established content industry. Whether or not that threat will upset their apple cart remains to be seen, but I’m sure it’s going to change things. I just don’t agree with the method the content industry is taking to preserve their business model. They are, simply, attempting to preserve their business model. Dude, welcome to the 21st Century…

Well — fortunately for anyone foolish enough to be reading this — I’m logging off for now.

I guess what this all comes down to is the fight between business (content industry) and creativity (the actual content creators, as well as the tech-heads).

It’s not going to be pretty, especially with the conservative govenment in power right now. Thank some deity that music is not (yet) construed as part of “national security” — lockdown would be immediate…..

Note regarding 1/12/2003 entry about Apple’s iLife logo suspiciously like Microsoft’s Office’s: Dan Gillmor wrote back to me and said:

No mystery. Jobs said Apple was doing with the iApps what MS does with

Office.

I saw the demo on the Web; he was there. Mystery de-mystified….

One interesting note, however — and I’m sure it’s reading too much into something that does not need that much scrutiny: Microsoft’s puzzle piece are interlocking; Apple’s are outer tabbed (more coming, or will interlock/interface with other products).

Yes, over-analysis…but still….

Let’s discuss Apple.

In light of the recent MacWorld introductions — as well as the ill-timed(?) recommondation to “sell” Apple (Merrill Lynch, I think) — now is as good a time as any.

Let look at some facts:

• Apple recently introduced some new products; nothing revolutionary (like the iPod or iMac), but worth discussing.
• Apple was recently downgraded to “sell” by a major brokerage firm.
• Apple currently holds about 2-3% of the desktop market; this number is probably way lower in the server market.
• Apple may lose it’s No. 2 ranking this year for the desktop market, falling behind Linux.
• Apple continues to draw both attention (of tech in general) and high praise (from many respected tech individuals). It also is still “the cult of Mac” — it has the strongest (or most vocal) community of any tech product/area that I can think of.

All of this — to me — would usually point to a company that is either doomed or doomed to fade away to the fringes at best. Maybe it’s really cool, really ahead of the curve or what have you, but it doesn’t have a sustainable business model.

Yet I could have said the same thing last year, the year before and so on.

Probably could say it again next year.

Yet Apple keeps on chugging away. Not doing well, not really moving forward (business wise), but remainig a touchstone for innovation, fanaticism and portents of what may come in the rest of the market.

What — to me — was interesting about Reality Distortion Field Job’s keynote addess were the following:

• Hardware introductions: The smaller PowerBook was nice, but the big one — as sexy as it is — just doesn’t work for me. Too big for travel (“uh, can I borrow part of your [airline] seat tray to put my computer on??”), and if you’re at work, the iMac still works. But there is something compelling about Job’s statement that the desktop is going away, notebooks are going to take over. With the increasing capabilities of notebooks, this may soon come to pass. Two comments, however: 1) Does Mac have a docking station/port replicator? Sorry, big keyboard and monitor are essential for many, especially at the office. 2) Notebooks are a lot easier to rip off than desktops (especially the ones with CRTs). No mention of this phenomenon.
• Logos: Did you see the logo for the iLife product (suite of tools for movies, tunes etc)? Interlocking puzzle pieces….like the interlocking puzzle pieces in Microsoft’s Office suite? Apple is beginning an almost direct attack on MS. The intersting part — to me — is that while tech writers/bloggers have picked up on the “Apple is distancing itself from MS” concept, I’ve read no mention of the logos. This is very subtle but … telling. To me. Discuss.

    

• Keynote software: Looks slicker than PowerPoint, but….what’s the point? I’m sure all Mac users will begin to use this, but…do I really care about a slicker version of PowerPoint? No. PP is for getting a point across. I don’t care….BUT this is another example of Apple going after MS (other was logo).
• Browser/Safari: Actually, this one — while making no sense — makes sense. Huh? Browsers are bloated, and while I’m not a Mac user now, I’ve heard not good things about IE on the Mac. Why not have a new browser? Will not make Apple a fortune, but it will very quickly become the predominate Mac browser. Trust me. And it will, in a very indirect way, force MS to improve both its Mac and PC browsers, to get them faster and more standards compliant. The one thing I really like about Safari is that it runs like I have my IE customized: No fluff, few buttons, as much screen as possible. I wonder if this type of customization is available on the Mac version of IE; I would guess so… Also, what did this cost Apple? Very litte. Built on KHTML, some engineers/programmers and that’s it. New browser. EXCEPT for the lack of tabbed browsing (appaling for new browser intro, like debutting a word-processor without spell check), very promising. And — giving Apple’s tradition of improving/extending the UI intelligently, it bears watching. NOTE: The QuickTime interface, to me, is a nightmare (see askTog, it’s not just me) — I hope they don’t go this way with Safari. I doubt they will, but….

For no particular reason, I’ve been drawn to Perl recently.

It seems that if I have a task that is not explicitly set for Cold Fusion, PHP or what have you….Perl is just faster and easier.

Good.