Software, Digital Content, Geopolitics, Economics & More from of a Libertarian Serial Expat and Entrepreneur
In: software
18 Jun 2004John R. Durant points to an MSDN article on how to build Office research panes with offline access support. It’s good that Office is finally becoming a decent Intranet client. 06/18/04 update: Blinkx takes the idea behind these search panels and runs with it.
In: music
17 Jun 2004Wow, I just treated myself to two awesome albums. Tritonus by Corvus Corax is German music from the middle ages that sounds like tribal celtic rock, while Ver Tanzt by Black Ox Orkestar is Jewish music from Canada that sounds like traditional music from Central Europe and possibly Turkey. Both are strongly evocative and deeply [...]
Joel Spolsky is getting a lot of mileage for his essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War, and it’s deserved because there are a lot of good things in there. For instance, the fact that you (mostly) don’t have an install process to run web apps (or console games for that matter) is definitely something [...]
You know how every ad promoting camphones is a variation on this theme: those two supermodels you’ve just met last night want to hook up with you again, and surely from their inviting smiles (alternatively, their stupid giggle) this will surely lead to a torrid threesome within 10 minutes flat. And aren’t you lucky to [...]
In: music
8 Jun 2004Here’s the quote where Reuters loses all credibility: "The industry blames the extensive online trade of free music for contributing to a massive slide in recorded music sales. A year ago it launched a multi-pronged effort to promote sanctioned online music stores such as Apple Computer Corp’s iTunes while suing those who share their music [...]
In: fun
8 Jun 2004You think a meme is going to emerge, or some until-now obscure location or rock band is about to have a burst of popularity. Is there a site where you can bet on such predictions, say, if you think everyone is going to talk about deflation (a good bet to make 18 months ago), or, [...]
In an interview with Gary Price: "The beautiful thing about a relational database is that its structure tells you a lot about what is important. Database designers have been brilliant at optimizing databases (both the organization of the information as well as the algorithms) to best exploit this regularity. When you flatten out a database, [...]
In: music|web services
3 Jun 2004Webjay: "This is a draft of an API for client programs to manipulate Webjay. It has been implemented at a beta level. It is only a draft, and may change. Comments are requested."
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.