WebMink

Afterglow

Sarah McLachlan's new album 'Afterglow' has arrived [US | UK | CA] and it will come as no surprise to find I absolutely love it (and it's the #1 downloaded album on iTunes right now too). It's not copy-protected so it syncs with my iPod, and the extra content is browser-based so works on the Mac.

And the music? Well, the melodies are getting a little less goth-edgy and slightly more middle-of-the-road but the lyrics are as sharp and emotive as ever. Previous albums have provided a life-soundtrack and so does this, with tracks like 'Answer', 'Fallen' and 'Stupid' all providing food for thought (all the tracks can be previewed on sarahmclachlan.com - & the daring music video for 'fallen' is there too). While it's not as good as 'Surfacing' or 'Fumbling Towards Ecstasy', it's a totally delicious album & I have it on repeat. A welcome return to form after her seven year sabbatical.

(An aside: I also found free downloads of full MP3 versions of two tracks from 'Remixed').

posted at 5:19 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Friday, November 14

SurfControl Luddites

Alerted by Volker and Jon, I checked Webmink against the list at SurfControl and found, indeed, the site listed in a category that would result in it being blocked for their customers. I requested the removal of my site from their list and was told "it would be checked", with the ominous rider:
Please keep in mind that we do not include legitimate business appropriate sites in our list.
which, translated, means "we don't think weblogs are legitimate viewing for business users".

These people are Luddites. Yes, there are plenty of sites out there that could be considered ephemeral, but they are blocking the Seattle PI's Microsoft page and Dan Gillmor in the name of not being 'legitimate business sites'. Esther Dyson is blocked. San Ruby is blocked. Robert Scoble is blocked. Doubtless most of my list to the right is blocked. This is outrageous. It's like having a librarian who doesn't read books or understand the Dewey system categorising your reading and telling you what you can read based on their worthless biases.

I doubt SurfControl will listen to my bleating about this, but maybe we should help them by ensuring all weblogs are categorised correctly. Why not go over now and check a few and ask them to add the missing ones to their lists? The more their product blocks, the less credibility it will have. After all, a librarian who categorises all books as 100.00 won't be around for long...

posted at 11:59 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Busy season

My apologies for the paucity of posts (and all the other things I am forgetting to do, feel free to remind me...). Like Ray Ozzie, October-November is always the busy season for me and this year the addition of the OMA board has made things especially packed. This week I was at the OMA meeting in London (still away from home even if it only took a train journey to get there), next week it's on to ApacheCon and Comdex which has defied my skepticism and survived for another year.

posted at 3:14 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Tuesday, November 11

Patents on progress

Surfing tonight I've seen a couple of patents on what folk regard as obvious - Jon comments on XML pull parsers, and Gadgetopia on streaming media (and at least one other I can't find). How can we possibly carry on like this? Patents protecting innovation are one thing, and I can find space in my thoughts for them. Patents taxing standardisation are another. They stop the net effect from catalysing. They are surely anathema in a fast-paced, techno-centric culture?

I've commented before on this subject but I'd like to reiterate my personal position:
Once a technology has, through an open process, been incorporated into a ratified standard from a recognised body like W3C, it should be impossible to assert patent rights over it unless they were asserted during the standardisation process.
I think that provides a reasonable compromise, and though I can at this point only speak for me, I'd love to see a body of us articulating that position and getting it into the law in some places that matter like the EU. If we don't patents will have become a tax by the unethical on progress.

posted at 5:33 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Monday, November 10

Bringing your Java Application to Mac OS X

Daniel Steinberg has a great series of articles on java.sun.com about bringing your Java Application to Mac OS X (parts two and three strangely not linked) - they are recommended reading for Java developers.

By the way, I am looking for candidates for my occasional "cool tools" series, please send me e-mail if you have ideas. The tools in question need to be self-contained, broadly for the general user and written for the Java environment (extra credit for using something other than the Java language!)

Update: Volker suggests Zoë, which is cool but not really a client app, so more ideas still sought!

posted at 11:59 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |