Rough Drafts

According to a press release from research firm Evans Data, next year 63% of developers expect to be using Microsoft’s .Net, while 61% expect to use Java. Almost all of them will be using Web services in some form (87%, compared to 57% this year).

Winer has a short, simple explanation of what news aggregators are. Now all we need is a similarly clear and simple explanation of RSS. (All I could find were pretty technical pages for RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 (the latter link is not working this morning, however).

Pres. Bush got a court order yesterday to reopen West Coast ports, putting a temporary hold on the labor dispute that’s simmered there for more than a week. The thing that gets me about this is that, first, the Pacific Maritime Association (the shippers) lock out the workers. So it’s an owner-initia

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft today, in order to decide whether the 1998 extension of copyright (to the life of the author plus 70 years) is constitutional or not. Lawrence Lessig is representing the good guys. Transcripts should be available in 10 days; the Supreme Cou

Some researchers at the “Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab” have compiled ten useful tips for making your web site look respectable. (thanks, Tom Negrino)

Content Management Server 2002 will retail for $42,000 per processor. Companies running multi-processor servers could pay considerably more for the product. “

So long, Upside, we hardly knew ya.

Compromise legislation passed by the House yesterday sets Internet radio royalty rates at a reasonable level for small broadcasters. “The parties ultimately agreed to a deal that would let small Webcasters pay a percentage of their revenues to labels and artists, instead of a flat per-song fee.” Her

From Shava Nerad: If every person drew the phrase “War Makes Me Sick” on a piece of paper and taped it in their back window, or their bike basket, or put it in their front window, maybe it would be more clear what disgust we have for what’s going on. Read more, and if you […]

Small Pieces Loosely Joined, by David Weinberger (Perseus, 2002) Something about David Weinberger’s writing style really makes me want to use the word “avuncular.” I’m not sure why — his writing is not particularly uncle-like — but there is something about his friendly, down-to-earth, thoughtful-cha

Back in the late 1990s, a software salesman could look you in the eye and say with a straight face that his company’s enterprise system would cost you $1 million. Mercifully, those days are over, as my latest column for Business 2.0 reports.

Mrs. Bridge. by Evan S. Connell, Jr. (1959). I picked up this novel in the library on a whim, because it was near Joseph Conrad, and because it’s told entirely in short, disconnected episodes (anywhere from a paragraph or two up to three or four pages at the longest). It’s a fast read. But it’s […]