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I just finished Chris Dawson’s piece, My anti-Mac bias rears its ugly head,  and it bought to mind a friendly discussion
I had with one of my colleagues just yesterday about my favorite ‘red
herring’ — the perpetual claim that the Mac mini is Apple’s answer to
entry-level computing.  Of course, this red herring is a circular
argument that goes something like this …

(First, let me freely admit that now that Apple uses
Intel processors, and has invested significant sums of money supporting
“Windows-on-a-Mac”, that Dell and HP price-points are nearly identical
to Apple’s when comparing hardware, ahem …  “apples-to-apples”.  {8^)

Windows guy: 

“I can buy a decent dual-core Dell system with Windows Home Premium on it for under $600.”

Mac guy: 

“You should buy a Mac mini for $599 instead.”

Windows guy: 

“If I want to add an Apple-branded display, mouse,
and keyboard, it’ll cost me more than for a new iMac — and the iMac is
more powerful.  Besides, for $600, the Dell comes with a 20″ monitor
and keyboard/mouse, just like the iMac.”

Mac guy:

But you can use the monitor and keyboard that you already have.

Windows guy:

I need new ones anyway — and they are included with the Dell.

Mac Guy: 

“But the Mac mini has better graphics.”

Windows guy: 

“Dell’s graphics card upgrade is only $50 and the Dell has twice the HD space.”

Mac guy:

“But the Mac mini has better multimedia software.”

Windows guy:

“I don’t need to do anything with multimedia except
tweak some photos and listen to music and watch videos.  Windows Home
Premium does everything I need.”

Mac guy:

“But, but but …”

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Technorati Tags: free, money, software

It’s nearly the middle of 2007 already and I’ve had occasion to sit
down and look at where Web 2.0 and SOA software models have evolved
lately. Partly it’s because we’re now seeing some of the bigger
software companies seriously embrace lightweight SOA recently, and it’s
also because we’re continuing to see more clearly that Web 2.0 and SOA
really are largely (but not 100%) the same concepts that merely lay on
different — if fairly different — parts of the software continuum.
Here’s the latest on this story. Read the rest of this entry »

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Technorati Tags: google, web, business, internet, design, software, blog, blogger, man, microsoft

Yahoo checked out Google’s ecommerce play Tuesday, Google stumbled
upon a roll of the dice Web site recommendation tool yesterday and
MySpace digs social news aggregation and voting today. 

Where is the innovation? Is Web 2.0 one big copycat playground now?

What is MySpace News? News Corp. does not even make it sound extraordinarily compelling:  

MySpace News aggregates news from around the web and provides
MySpace users with the ability to vote on what they think is most
interesting.

Just what Tom Anderson’s friends were clamoring for! 

How are the MySpacers adapting?

Page one “Top News” is “Fishing for Fellatio,” deemed “didn’t like
it,” following 18 votes. The MySpace News link which supposedly leads
to a news story, actually leads to a MySpace framed apparent hobby
fishing blog post, a very short and incongruous one:

Dear Bass Pro Shops:

I received your latest letter with great enthusiasm. Lord knows how
I ever got on your mailing list, but I’m so glad I did. I get your
catalogs once or twice a month, mixed in with a letter here and there.
Now you’re offering me a Bass Pro Shops credit card. This really makes
me wonder about your research department.

Via: Secondhand

The “Bass Pro Shops” leads to a Bass Pro Shop, perhaps a Pay Per Action affiliate deal. 

The entire MySpace News page one presents as an unappealing
conglomeration of advertisements of all varieties, sizes and modes,
rather than inspiring meaningful social interaction around the “news.”

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Technorati Tags: google, web, news, blog, myspace

In this article we will create an application that uses the concepts RSS reader. So let’s go straight to the coding.

The Application

The layout of the application is going to be very simple: A navigation bar on
the left and a display area in the center. The display area is were we are going
to display all the output of the code. I’ve not used any CSS in this
application. I’ve instead opted to use HTML formatting to keep things simple.

As for the actual functioning of the application, we are going to use only
one page to execute all the code. This is because it reduces the amount of
processing power required to run the application. As a result, it makes program
execution faster and reduces coding time. Read the rest of this entry »

PHP « tags « 

Technorati Tags: rss reader

confused by all of this talk of RSS, RSS feeds, aggregators and readers, and are
having trouble wrapping your brain around it, here’s a really simple explanation
of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and how to use it. A word of caution, once
learning how to receive the feeds on your favorite subjects, you may soon be
annoying your friends with all of your infinite wisdom on everything. You have
been warned.

What is RSS?

RSS is a
notification system used to alert subscribers to changes made to their favorite
web sites, blogs, music sites, etc. The favorite site must offer this free
service in order for people to add it to their lists. It is easy to discern that
the site is RSS-enabled because of the orange rectangular button that is labeled
with either RSS or XML somewhere on the page. Read the rest of this entry »

tags « Technology « 

Technorati Tags: google, free, web, money, internet, news, software, blog, man, microsoft

Firefox has garnered a reputation for being an enormously
customizable program, both through its add-on architecture and its
internal settings. In fact, many of Firefox’s settings aren’t exposed
through the Tools > Options menu; the only way to change them is to
edit them manually. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most
useful Firefox settings that you can change on your own, and that
aren’t normally available through the program’s graphical interface. Read the rest of this entry »

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Technorati Tags: man

Some may help you but how do you know which ones? So
that despite the technology and vast oceans of information on tap, more
time can be spent surfing than helping.

Don’t make that mistake. Read the rest of this entry »

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Technorati Tags: exam success, exam secrets, technology