Monday, March 18, 2002

[John Robb's Radio Weblog] The Economist.  World-wide population growth will soon turn into a decline. "...in the past decade, it has become increasingly clear that countries whose reproductive zeal had fallen below the 2.1 magic number were not isolated cases."  For industrialized nations,1.85 is the new magic number.  The unexpected news was that developing nations are slowing their growth to the industrial "magic number" faster than earlier estimates. 10:14:59 PM

[Slashdot] It's Not About Lines of Code This is the challenge of all knowledge based work... Especially true of software developer's though... How do you measure productivity? How will an economy based on knowledge work judge performance? 10:11:21 PM

[Scripting News] Important pages: Pricing, FAQ, Download.  10:08:31 PM

[Scripting News] It is my honor to present: Radio Community Server 1.0.  10:08:23 PM

[diveintomark] The ins and outs of price discrimination. First Monday: Self-selection strategies for information goods [via Peter Suber, March 18, 2002] "The era of electronic processing, storage and distribution of information goods has reduced the marginal costs of duplication and distribution of information goods. Nevertheless, information industries still have to cover large fixed costs needed to pay their managers, writers and the fixed costs of acquiring information. This means that the cost of creating the first copy of an information good remains very high, while the costs of making additional copies of the original document is nearly zero." 10:04:41 PM

[bOing bOing] Dan Bricklin on the Treo  Programming whiz Dan Bricklin reviews the Handspring Treo 180, a mobile phone that uses the Palm OS. "Bottom line: A tiny keyboard and clever programming increase the usability of a PDA by a noticeable amount." Link Discuss posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:29 10:02:53 PM

[New York Times: Science] High in Andes, a Place That May Have Been Incas' Last Refuge. A team of explorers and archaeologists in Peru says it has found extensive ruins of a large Inca settlement 22 miles southwest of Machu Picchu. 10:01:22 PM

[Joel on Software] From the Flogging of Dead Horses department Rick Chapman interviewed me again... no, I still don't think you should rewrite large software products from the ground up. Not even Outlook.   Interesting on two counts -- Rick Chapman is thinking about rewriting Outlook.  Doug? 9:57:08 PM

[Hack the Planet] Wired News: Europe Gives Go-Ahead to Galileo. Can't have a positioning gap! 9:53:39 PM

[ZDNet Tech News] Sun pulls in cluster tool for iPlanet. Looking to catch up with application-server rivals, Sun buys Clustra Systems and lays plans to use the database maker's clustering tech in its iPlanet e-commerce software. 9:52:46 PM

[ZDNet Tech News] eBay--your new IM buddy?. The auction site tries to win friends and influence people on AOL Instant Messenger by sending out an interactive agent--dubbed My eBay Buddy--to pitch its services to AIM users. 9:52:30 PM

[kuro5hin.org] Rejection Makes You Dumb. The NewScientist.com has a story about how rejection massively reduces IQ. Now most techies think that wearing a tie reduces the amount of blood flow to the brain but this presents evidence that getting laid off can make you more aggressive and dumber. 9:46:30 PM

[diveintomark] A real location manager for Mac OS X. Location X. "Location X brings the wildly popular Location Manager functionality from Mac OS 9 to Apple's latest and greatest operating system, Mac OS X. Location X allows you to, with a single click, change network, time zone, email settings and more all at once." The problem that this $10 shareware app is attempting to solve is that Mac OS X's concept of a "Location" only affects network settings (which network ports are enabled, how you get an IP address, and so forth). If anything else changes between locations (like time zone), you would ordinarily have to manage it yourself. A student in my last class asked about this, and here it is. 9:34:32 PM

[bOing bOing] Spiders on drugs  The web on the left was spun by a normal spider; the one on the right was spun by a spider who'd been dosed with caffeine. This page has webs spun by spiders on LSD, hashish and mescaline, too. Where do arachnologists get LSD?LinkDiscuss(via MeFi) Ok, I find it a little disturbing that the worst of the webs is the one by the spider on caffeine.... 9:32:11 PM

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]  Where's the Beef in Web Services?  You're reading it.  It's personal publishing.  Web Services are being used to reinvent the world of personal publishing.  What is personal publishing good for?  Knowledge management, small business, news publishing, and much more.  A combination of markets worth a boatload of money (personal Web publishing can even take a bite out of the $8 b a year Microsoft makes from Word sales).  In addition to the potential opportunity, personal publishing is a sexy use of Web Services that provides immediate, tangible results.  What does the personal Web publishing market get in terms of coverage?  Stories about weblogs that equate them with CB Radios.  Essentially crap.  No stories about the innovations made, the lives changed, the businesses launched, and the fun experienced using these new products.  There is a whole new layer of the Web being built today that will change the lives of half a billion Web users in the next decade.  Personal publishing deserves respect.  It deserves decent coverage.  Here's the beef in Web Services. 7:21:17 AM

[CNET News.com] Tech VCs toughen up on funding terms. When the market was hot, agreeing to strict stipulations as a condition of getting venture capital was all but unheard of. Now it's all the rage. 7:08:15 AM