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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Saturday, August 02, 2003Guy Kawasaki interviewShortly after I posted my little snit remark about Guy Kawasaki, I received a note from Apple Matters, noting that they were interviewing Guy this week. The interview is now available. For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Kawasaki, he was the first Evangelist at Apple, where he invented "guerilla marketing" and convinced developers to back the Macintosh. His book, The Macintosh Way is fascinating, specifically because he discusses how Apple created their new brand and marketed it to others; I've re-read it several times and highly recommend it. His subsequent books, like Selling the Dream and How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, had less to do with the Mac and more to do with marketing, and are, therefore, far less interesting (he tried a brief comeback with The Computer Curmudgeon, which is OK but out of print). Since leaving Apple, Guy has moved from uninteresting job to uninteresting job and has, therefore, in my mind, become ever less relevent. His comments about people not debating OS platforms anymore shows you how out of touch he's become. Hopefully his new gig at Versiontracker.com will get him closer to the people again. [ Posted at 3:32 PM | Permalink ] Building a silent PC I was one of the earliest proponents of silent PCs, and it's nice to see a wide range of resources finally starting to crop up. Here's a great guide to building a silent PC. [ Posted at 3:21 PM | Permalink ] Science fun: T-Rex a predator or scavenger? I've been a dinosaur fan since I could walk and this story about new theories on the Tyrannosaurus Rex is quite interesting. [ Posted at 2:57 PM | Permalink ] Red Hat: We have 15 percent of the OS market Red Hat claims to have 15 percent of the OS market, but since they cite Microsoft's share as 49 percent, I think it's fair to say they mean "server market share"; RH believes it will own about 27 percent of the market by 2006. It's interesting to compare this to Microsoft's figures. As I wrote in Windows & .NET Magazine UPDATE earlier this week, "Windows and Linux are the only server platforms that will grow market share over the next year. Currently, Windows Server owns 53.1 percent of the server market, compared with 16.7 percent for Linux. Next year, the mix will be roughly 53.7 percent to 19.2 percent--in Windows' favor. Windows Server sales grew 7.7 percent in fiscal year 2003, compared with 19.2 percent for Linux." [ Posted at 2:43 PM | Permalink ] Introduction to Thunderbird Kay Frode is writing an excellent introduction to Thunderbird, the Mozilla Foundation's standalone email application. So far, four parts are up. Worth reading. [ Posted at 2:19 PM | Permalink ]
Thursday, July 31, 2003Nomad Zen NX on the wayI think I may have finally found a PC-oriented replacement for my iPod. I ordered the 30 GB version of the Nomad Zen NX today. (Here is a handy printable version of its specs). We'll see how it goes. [ Posted at 7:47 PM | Permalink ] Apple: iTunes for Windows will have similar rights to Mac version In what could be Apple's best move, given that it won't have software ready for several months, the company revealed this week in Billboard magazine that its upcoming iTunes Music Store for Windows will hopefully give users the same broad content-usage rights as Mac users now get. I say "hopefully" because it's not a done deal; an Apple exec quoted in the story said the company is "striving" to make this happen. Elsewhere, he said the rights for Windows users will be "similar" to those of Mac users. If they're not identical, this service is dead in the water. In fact, it may already be too late. [ Posted at 7:47 PM | Permalink ] Sun's long-term prospects In my mind, Sun Microsystems is toast, thanks to Linux and a host of open source solutions that are Good Enough. Apparently, Scott McNealy doesn't agree. Scott is a smart guy, and his solution to the Microsoft antitrust dilemma was spot-on. But he's going down, sorry. [ Posted at 11:43 AM | Permalink ] Past his prime Remember when Guy Kawasaki still mattered? No, neither do I. But I looked it up. It was 1988. [ Posted at 11:40 AM | Permalink ] More on switching See, the mainstream tech press does get it occassionally. In the Mercury News, we get advice on when (or if) to switch to the Mac, and this actually does make sense. "I should admit a slight bias. I use a Mac at home. I'm not a Mac zealot, however," Jon Fortt writes. "Over the past three years I have recommended and configured two Dell computers for my parents, because for the money, a Mac didn't fit their needs." While noting that Macs handle managing music, video, photos and wireless networks with aplomb, Fortt honestly and correctly admits that Macs are very much specialty machines, and not good for running games or Windows applications. What I really like, because he's right and Mac pundits will hate him for it, is that Fortt says that you should consider a Mac only if style is very important to you, you don't mind spending a lot of money, and you're into digital media. Conversely, you should skip the Mac if you want to save money, run the latest 3D games, or have a collection of Windows software you want to run. Yep, it's common sense. Yep, the Mac community will rake him over the coals for it too. But you know what? He's a Mac guy. So there's no built-in bias. [ Posted at 11:39 AM | Permalink ] Why don't people switch? The Mac community is starting to wake up to the fact that Apple's "Switch" ad campaign is a colossal failure, with the company losing market share in the time since it launched the campaign. Over at Low End Mac, they're trying to come up with some positive way in which Apple can deal with this problem ("Marketing the Mac: The Myths Keep People from Switching"), but honestly, there's no easy answer. I dropped the author of that article a note that sort of summarizes my feelings on this topic: "I appreciate what you're saying, but I think it's really the "Mac realities" that keep people from switching. It's hard to drop a platform. It's impossible, inexpensive or slow to run your old applications, and that's a huge investment for many people. An even bigger investment, of course, is their data, and though there are certainly ways to get data from the PC to the Mac quickly and easily, this is the type of thing Apple might offer out of the box to make life easier. In the end, the reason people don't switch has nothing to do with the elegance of the Mac platform, the niceties of OS X, or anything else you might tout as a Mac advantage. It has to do with very real costs of time, money, and effort. It's just too difficult for most people to bother." [ Posted at 11:28 AM | Permalink ]
Wednesday, July 30, 2003OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC2 outOpenOffice.org moves its open source office productivity suite ever-closer to 1.1 with the release of version 1.1 RC2 this week. Here's what's new. [ Posted at 3:37 PM | Permalink ] Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 out The Mozilla Foundation released Firebird 0.6.1 this week. The biggest change, probably, is the new icon, which rocks. [ Posted at 3:35 PM | Permalink ] Sony VAIO kicking PowerBook butt and taking names The new Sony VAIO TR I'm lusting after just got reviewed by the Straits Times and it looks like a winner. "As its closest competitor is Apple's 12-inch PowerBook, the TR1 has been touted as the PowerBook killer. Does it deserve this accolade? In more ways than one. The Centrino LAN certainly has better coverage than Apple's Airport card ... And the Sony screen is by far the best I have seen on a laptop. It does not look like an ordinary LCD and seems more like a plasma screen ... Unlike the Apple 12-inch PowerBook, the drive tray is a non-slot loading type, offering the advantage of easy loading of the disc and, more importantly, removing it should it get stuck!" Oh yeah, I want one. [ Posted at 2:26 PM | Permalink ] Buy a piece of sci-fi TV/movie history Thanks David. There are some incredible miniatures, costumes, art, and other items from Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and other sci-fi related TV shows and movies up on eBay. Folks, this stuff is incredible. Check it out. [ Posted at 1:09 PM | Permalink ]
Monday, July 28, 2003Thunderbird 0.1 releasedMozilla.org just issued the first major milestone build of Thunderbird, its upcoming standalone Mail and News application. Thunderbird 0.1 features customizable toolbars and an Outlook-ripoff 3-pane view for mail, UI extensions, a Contacts Manager, junk mail detection, a new default theme similar to that in Firebird, a streamlined user interface and simplified Options UI, and an integrated spell checker. It looks solid, and like a good start. [ Posted at 4:00 PM | Permalink ] Scott Blum on Buymusic.com I finally spoke with Buymusic.com CEO Scott Blum Friday about the service and the problems I have with it. I'll have a longer write-up about this in Connected Home EXPRESS in about a week and a half, but the short version is, he wasn't much help. Scott is a ... controversial ... character and he was clearly pretty sick of getting the same questions over and over. But I wasn't interested in the marketing story behind Buymusic.com. Instead, what I wanted to know was, "When I upgrade my PC in x number of months, can I bring my purchased music with me?" The short answer is ... no, I cannot. The problem, he said, is the record companies. Steve Jobs was able to secure standard licensing deals for music from the five major record companies because the Mac market is so small. Now that services are opening up for Windows, they're scared, and it's an education process Scott says he's working on. In the meantime, his only advice (which I had already done) was to backup everything to CD and to backup your DRM licenses in WMP9 just in case you do have to reinstall. These solutions, shall we say, are less than acceptable. All this said, I have a lot more info about this which will have to wait for publication. But even with these licensing issues, it's clear that Buymusic.com is going to stomp all over the iTunes Music Store. WMA is the right technology, Windows is the right platform, and Buymusic.com supports a much wider range of PCs and devices than does Apple. And there is just no way for Apple to adequately address that problem. Meanwhile, the licensing issues will be worked out. I hope, as does Scott, that eventually Buymusic.com subscribers will be free to move their music from PC to PC as needed. [ Posted at 3:08 PM | Permalink ]
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