Software, Digital Content, Geopolitics, Economics & More from of a Libertarian Serial Expat and Entrepreneur
Marc Canter: "Macromedia got lots of negative feedback on the performance of their new home page. Kudos go out to Al Ramadan, the VP of Marketing – for listening to their users and immediately reacting by putting up an alternative design. He even put up an excellent recount of the process and where they’re going. [...]
In: web services
12 Mar 2003Ben Hammersley: "Scoop! Scoop! Amazon.co.uk is opening up its own Webservices API either today or tomorrow, mirroring what they already have with Amazon.com." Interesting. I’ve always wondered why Amazon’s European sites lagged so much their parent site feature-wise. That they don’t roll out the same product lines makes sense, but why not keep features such [...]
In: software
12 Mar 2003Gamespot: "[Head of Microsoft's Windows Graphics and Gaming division Dean] Lester also said [Longhorn] would include a special "My Games" view that would centralize all the matchmaking, control panel settings, patching tools, and game lists and make such tasks much simpler. Microsoft is working on streamlining a number of current technical trouble areas, like the [...]
In: software
9 Mar 2003Kevin Lynch: "I’ve been brainstorming with some teams here at Macromedia about how we might help with software for the blog world, and I’m interested in what you all think. Are there things you wish were easier to do? Are there things you can’t do but wish you could? Is everything just fine as is?" [...]
In: search engines
6 Mar 2003Sterling Hughes: "Google is a company, and an excellent company from what I can see. Sometimes they have clairvoyant ideas, such as using large clusters based on commodity hardware (which, btw, FAST has always done as well). I believe, however, the geek community has created Google as a Golden Calf, and no corporation can be [...]
In: people
5 Mar 2003It’s nice to see Alan listen and take notice. Many bloggers – including me – rant and vent at will, so that’s not really the issue here. The point is, you’ve claimed leadership in using weblogs to promote your business, while your first attempt might have looked like a blog (from afar, in the fog), [...]
In: fun
5 Mar 2003Jeremy Zawodny has the scoop: here’s Apple’s latest Switch ad, stolen from their ad agency because it seems they have second thoughts about it.
In: search engines
3 Mar 2003They now provide "FAST Facts" about the sites in their index. Today they also announced: "Distracting banner ads have been removed."
In: search engines
3 Mar 2003Lately, I get lots of 404 traffic to SciFan from AOL Search. Seems they mess with the "?" and "=" in links to my dynamic pages. I’m tuning my custom 404 page to redirect these users to the proper pages, but I’m wondering, is anyone else noticing that problem? 03/06/03 update: well, not only AOL [...]
I'm CEO of an online trade publishing firm in the marketing and defense verticals. We try to make news and data digestible and useful in an environment that is more noisy each day. This personal blog mixes my thoughts and interests on politics, business, software, and more, based on my business and personal experiences. Over the years I have posted items that turned out spectacularly wrong, and a few posts that stood the test of times better. Personal views only.