13 steps

Today’s random bits which are of interest to me;

First up is one of the best examples of ajax put to good use, AjaxAMP. It’s a plugin for my favourite music player, Winamp. When activated you get a full winamp interface running in your browser, playlist, drag and drop and everything else included. It’s fun to play with and useful too. (we use it at work to listen to internet radio and not having to bother eachother every time to switch channel or change the volume whenever someone needs to make a call). Version 2.0 has just been released with several bugfixes and support for the media library.

Today’s fun with Apple link is someone who built his own mini server network using 3 Mini’s. It looks damn sjweet to say the least (although I think I’d hang them against the wall, mmm) but the way he set it up is also excellent.

New webservice of the day is cocomment. It’s flashy, it’s beta version, it’s invite only, so you know it’s Web 2.0 (le hype). But unlike the dozens of other new services each day this one actually makes sense, to me anyway. Seeing as I leave comments on quite a few sites and blogs all over the place it’s hard to keep track of everything, especially seeing as a lot of blogs don’t use a subscribe to comments feature so you at least get a mail when there’s a reply. And that’s exactly what cocomment adresses; keeping track of comments and conversations and letting you know when there have been updates.
Unfortunately I can’t make a comment (no pun intended) about the actual working of the service seeing as I don’t have an invite. Le sigh.

The last bit of news could be simply summarized as ‘drool‘.
Either that or ‘look out OsX, here we come’, in terms of fancy desktop graphics on the linux desktop anyway. Check out some of the videos at that link. Go Novell!

everyone, including me, seems to busy again. It’s quiet on the forums.
Ah well.

Random bits of news;
Zimbra has been ported to Debian. Hooray, maybe this will finally make me test it.
GPL 3 will kick DRM butt. Amen. I’m still surprised how few non-techies understand the implications of how DRM can fuck up our privacy. Read it.
Web 3.0, interesting read because it not only manages to explain the 2.0 ‘phenomenon’ in plain english but also raises a few points about the whole new bubble I’ve also been getting sick off. It would be so much nicer if everyone could just get back to having fun.

Right… back to being busy.

In the category ‘what will they think of next?’ the 7891324th accessory for the iPod, fresh on the heels of Levi’s announcement that they’re going to make iPod ‘compatible’ jeans…. the TuneBuckle.
Sadly enough, I like it.

The MacBook Pro is to replace the PowerBook and is apparently 4 times as fast with an Intel CoreDuo up to 1.83GHz, built in iSight, remote and Front Row looks very yummy.
Or if that’s not your cup of tea how about an Intel based iMac with a Core Duo processor up to 2.0Ghz. I’d go for the MacBook if I had the money, sounds like a very sweet deal.
Can’t wait to see the first benchmarks for these puppies.

It’s a bit of a bummer that they didn’t start with the budget line as people initially expected but with these claimed performance boosts it’s not much of a surprise, the budget models would have smoked the pro models.

Check out the pics

Very very nice, Konfabulator put to good use.
Looks like it’s going to be an interesting year for the battle of the web in terms of Yahoo vs. Google with Google starting to feel a bit like Microsoft to some in terms of becoming too powerful and with Yahoo taking an obvious cue from Apple, which shows from their recent purchases and direction.
Meanwhile Google is supposedly going to launch a pack of software aaaaany time now.

Edit: make that now.

Ana what? Anaglyphs. Or… how to make old school blurry 3D images you need to watch through those red & blue glasses. Pretty fun to see it’s still around, with some freeware programs listed to get you started.

Read more

» Top 10 things Apple could announce at Macworld Expo

Personally I’m really hoping the first MacIntels will see the light of day, with either the Mini or the iBook being first in line to go the X86 route, but it _would_ be so soon. Still, guessing’s fun, let the rumours continue!

Firefox 1.5 is trickling down the mirrors, so it should hit the main page at mozilla.org any minute now. I’ve steered clear of all the betas and RCs for once so I’m looking forward to grabbing this one, hoping the bump in numbering is a sign of good things.

I’ve also signed up at Technorati which is sort of the blog grapevine. At first I went meh to see the rank for X111.com was 231236. Only later I read that they track over 22 million blogs, so hey, not bad at all. And I’ve only just begun.

For those commenting here I’ve added another plugin which enables you to receive a mail when an entry where you added a comment gets another reply. Should make it easier to track things and keep a discussion going.

This looks very interesting. Especially seeing as it’s the language I’m most familiar with, I’d love to be able to fiddle around with PHP to make the odd app now and again.

After a week of rumours about Apple starting to launch the new Intel based systems as early as January now even Apple Insider jumps aboard the rumour train with more details. A new PowerBook with built in iSight? Mmm. Me likes.

AppleInsider