kerneljack's diary

A superb blogging app written in Java, and it also allows you to save your state so you can pick up where you left off on a computer other than your regular one. Just try it using the supplied Webstart link; you don’t need to create an account the default list of supplied feeds is excellent.

Some cool stuff on the Ars Technica Holiday Gift Buying Guide. Mmm.. iPaq

Superb commentary and speculation from Russ on the iPhone This sounds plausible, but a lot of the comments against it also make sense. Apple will have to compete in the market that is already swamped really badly, and they will also have to deal with the mobile phone operators. In short, a lot of work in a lot of new territory for them, if they take up the challenge.

Finally, music artists have come up with a way to earn money and circumvent the music industry through weedshare, and online service that allows artists to put up their own songs and charge as much as they want for them, but usually up to a dollar for a song. I think it’s a great idea, if it takes off that is. At least artists now seem to be starting to move towards a model where they make their own rules and earn their own keep on their own terms. Also, the more you share and other people share the better. This is better explained in this section in the FAQ:

The concept is pretty basic: Weed rewards people who share files and respect artists’ rights.

You can play a Weed file three times for free on any PC. After three free plays, you’re asked to pay for the file. You can use any current Windows Media-compatible player software to play the file. The Weed software, which keeps track of your account information, is used to purchase files.

Once you purchase a Weed file, you’re free to play it all you want on up to three PCs. You also can burn the file to CD and play it on your stereo system, or transfer it to a portable device like the Creative Labs Nomad, the Rio S10, or any current Windows CE PDA.

Best of all, you can share Weed files with anyone you like, as long as the files remain in their original form as Windows Media files. And if someone you share a file with purchases that file, you’ll earn a payment for helping to distribute it.

Specifically, the artist always receives 50% of each sale, and the rest goes to those who helped distribute the file. You get 20%, the person who shared the file with you gets 10%, and the person who shared the file with that person gets 5% of the sale price. Weed receives the final 15% for service and software maintenance costs.

All purchases and distributor payments are made into your Weed account through PayPal. Deposits and withdrawals from your Weed account cost 50 cents, but all other transactions are free. You must have a PayPal account to make deposits to your Weed account.

Some friends were over and I took some pictures of their baby daugher which they loved. My Olympus camera is over 3 years old right now and this got me thinking about what new stuff is available. I bought my 3 megapixel Olympus camera for about 300 pounds and now the superb Canon IXUS 5 Megapixel is only 239 pounds! It’s quite an amazing camera, more than good enough for a lot of things. A great recommendation.

Great guide at Ars Technica here about the best tools for removing Spyware from your computer. I already use Ad-Aware SE 6 and it gets a really good score so I’m happy.

Never heard of the SqueezeBox before. Very interesting.

I completely forgot to post about the Regent Street Apple Store opening in London last weekend. I wish i could have gone, but I would have had to queue all night in order to ensure I got a goody bag (worth £700). I will go soon anyway, and here’sa good summary of what went on there

I finally upgraded to MoveableType 3.212. I really wanted to upgrade, if just to get the Comment Moderation feature as comment spammers are bombarding my site pretty badly right now. Everyday I get about 20 pieces of new comment spam. This feature allows me to approve comments from unregistered users before they appear on the site. That doesn’t cut down the work for me, but at least it defeats the spammers’ purpose: free web advertising through search engines like Google.

I haven’t been reading blogs regularly these days and I just found out that Russell has started working for Yahoo!. Wow! Way to go! I have always enjoyed reading Russ’ posts (sometimes not completing them as they tend to be really long and I’m looking forward to any changes at Yahoo! that he will influence. Good luck, Russ. On another note, this image he has put together of the phones available in the US this Christmas is awesome.

I’ve got to check this out on my own printouts, it’s interesting: Color Laser Printers Tracking Everything You Print.

It’s not new, but it’s getting noticed: Jordan writes “Yahoo! News is
reporting that several printer manufacturers are now and have been for
some time embedding (nearly) invisible serial numbers in every document
you print with their color laser printers, allowing law enforcement to
track any such document back to the printer which printed it. The
technology, ostensibly created to track down money counterfeiters, was
created by Xerox about 20 years ago. A Xerox researcher says that the
number-embedding chip lies ‘way in the machine, right near the laser’
and that ’standard mischief won’t get you around it.’”

I have suddenly gotten a surge of mobile mania in the past few days. I bought a Sony Ericsson T610 a few days ago and though I really like the phone (it’s my first GPRS phone) I really wish I could have gotten something better. I will soon try and switch from pay-as-you-go to a contract with either T-Mobile or Orange, which will allow me to get much better, newer phones, plus an option to pay a fixed amount for a certain amount of GPRS usage. As it is right now, I’ve tried to use GPRS on it a bit and it really eats up money like no tomorrow. I wish we had unlimited GPRS here in the UK at a cheap rate like in the US and elsewhere

I’m thinking about getting a iPaq handheld and a WiFi access point so that I can surf wireless on the PDA. I used to do a little blog reading on my older Clie, so I think it may be OK reading websites on it, but I’m not sure. It will certainly be useful when out and about though, I can use my bluetooth phone’s GPRS connection if I can’t get WiFi access.