Oh. My. God. I know I've used that title before, but, holy crap, man. I'm watching the Oscars and Counting Crows is singing the song they did in Shrek 2. And the singer, Adam Duritz, has exactly the same hair as Bob Terwilliger from The Simpsons. That's Sideshow freakin' Bob! Seriously. What in the hell is that?!? I'm all for having a, um, distinctive look. But, dude, man. That's hardcore.  ¶ 9:40 PM 0 comments

  And then Google gets into it... So, it looks like there's a new sheriff in town. And it might be as bad as the last one. Google, which prides itself on avoiding, in their words, "evil," is doing something that might just cross that line. Or does it? It appears that their new toolbar provides a feature called "AutoLink," which enables users to create links on a page automatically that will map addresses. Using Goolge's Maps feature, of course. So is this evil? I think that it's not. It provides a really cool service to users, and it only does so if the user explicitly requests that it do so. It is, much like Google itself, both cool and useful What it also is, though, is a damned slippery slope. Today, Google only inserts links for maps. Tomorrow, could it insert other things? For instance, links to photographs? That'd be OK. What about links to product reviews? That might be cool, too, from a consumer perspective. How about links to competing products? What if they got paid for it? Is that cool? Is it legal? While the jury may be out on this one for a while, I think it's definitely going to be worth watching...  ¶ 9:42 PM 0 comments

  Is Microsoft moving forward or back? I'm a little late on this one. Microsoft announced that they're going to release a new version of IE separate from the next Windows service pack. Or as the next Windows service pack. Or something like that. Which is a Good Thing. They've let IE run fallow the last couple of years, until Firefox gave them reason to reconsider. While I think that the Microsofties can be a bit much at times, when they really try to innovate, they usually do a pretty good job at it (see Internet Explorer 4.0, Excel, and Entourage for examples). So we should all be happy, right? Well, no. Because for every step that Microsoft takes towards the light, they find a parallel path that still leads to darkness. In this case, Microsoft is being very coy regarding whether IE 7 will address its poor support for a number of Web standards and whether they're going to make it available to the roughly 50% of Windows users who haven't switched to XP. So is this really an attempt by Microsoft to improve their product and compete in the marketplace, or is it an attempt to get people to buy more copies of Windows? I try to keep an open mind, but history isn't just a fancy name for where your browser's been. It's also something Microsoft needs to live down.  ¶ 9:21 PM 0 comments

  Competition is good. Seriously. Thank God for Firefox. Not only is it a better browser than Internet Explorer, but it's now forcing Microsoft to develop a better browser, too. I've never been a huge fan of Microsoft, but I'll give them credit. When they feel even a little bit of pressure, they can really get motivated to do some serious programming. Maybe IE 7.0 will be cool. Then again, it may just be a boondoggle to make it look like they're "innovating" to keep their customers from hightailing it up the Open-Source Express. Should be entertaining to watch, no?  ¶ 10:30 PM 0 comments

  To blog or not to blog... With all due apolgies to Big Will, now, there's a question. It seems that Google, who pride themselves on their "Do No Evil" philosophy, fired one of their employees for comments on his blog. I have no idea if they were right or wrong to do it (the specifics, so far, being fairly non-specific). I do think it raises some interesting problems for companies regarding their policies on blogging.

Personally, I avoid mixing the business where I work with my pleasure of doing this blog. While some bloggers feel it's their ethical responsibility to air their workplace's dirty laundry on the Internet to force changes in the environment, I feel it's my ethical responsibility to keep things "in the family." Employers hire employees to do a job. In my case, I was not hired to write publicly about the company or what I do there. That, and the fact that I have a better shot of making anyplace I work a better place if I actually get to work there makes it the right call for me. 'Nuff said.  ¶ 10:06 PM 0 comments

  Bye-bye Ma Bell. Hello Pa Gates? So, is it just me, or is it weird that right after AT&T (who were something of a monopoly, albeit a legal one, back in the day) gets gobbled up by SBC, Microsoft begins its most recent, and potentially most serious push into the phone business? Crazy, man. Clearly, Microsoft is a great bellwether of the future of computing. I think it's interesting that in the last handful of years they've begun to expand their focus from OS's and office suites in two seriously different directions: the corporate data center and the home. While the focus on the data center is obvious, the consumer products are particularly interesting to me. I know people have been preaching the coming convergence for years (including yours truly from time to time), Microsoft may be, ahem, telegraphing their bet for the client of the future. Or hedging it. Stay tuned...  ¶ 9:39 PM 0 comments

  iTunes vs. Napster So have you seen where Napster is promoting themselves as a really great alternative to iTunes? Except that you can't actually, y'know, keep the music. I'm not sure that's such a good deal, really. OK, truthfully, I think it sucks. Big time. Since when does the fair use clause of the Constitution focus on leasing for personal use instead of actually using for personal use? The music industry really needs to get the stick out of its heinie and artists really need to tell the major labels to go fly a kite. In the eighties I wanted my MTV. Now I want my MP3.  ¶ 12:03 AM 0 comments

  Sorry. I've been busy... As have the folks at MySQL, apparently. According to a recent report, MySQL may have one-quarter the bugs of commercial database applications such as Oracle or SQL Server. So, it looks like open source coding might, you know, actually work well. Huh. But I thought Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates said that their model is better than open source. You don't suppose that they were wrong, do you? Yeah. Me too.  ¶ 2:05 PM 0 comments