stuandgravy

Electronic Frontier Foundation wins Grokster

This is a good thing. A very good thing.

The EFF have won their case to allow suppliers of peer-to-peer file sharing software (spawn of Napster) to be legally separated from the use of their platform - in the same, obvious sense that VHS manufacturers cannot be held responsible for pirate videos.

The decision will cause yet more upheaval in the corporate worlds of music and film, some of it unfortunate. Undoubtedly, much popular media will continue to dramatise any unpleasantness, particularly inside the vested interests of Murdoch's empire. However, this decision will encourage creative innovation and continue the decentralised upgrade of the internet.

Gizmodo T-Mobile Rant

T-Mobile, the American cellphone company, don't operate in Australia; the quality of their customer service isn't something I care deeply about. However, this scathing rant by Joel Johnson, editor of Gizmodo, serves as a classic case study for any modern service company.

Gizmodo is a fairly popular site, attracting over 50,000 visitors per day. Significantly, it's a site that's read and respected by influencers and early adopters: T-Mobile's market for their premium products. Most importantly, Gizmodo's a site that gets a lot of GoogleLove: 7th in the Technorati Top 100, this article will get linked and will shoot up the Google rankings.

Clearly, one article from one gadget site is not going to destroy T-Mobile's business. It is going to cost them a whole lot more than it would have done to give decent service to several thousand potential Joel Johnsons though.

Recall Toolbar

Dan Grigsby's put together an IE toolbar that creates a local index of the sites you visit. Looks like an interesting approach to the Pages I've Read problem.

Two hurdles stop me using Dan's implementation, unfortunately: 80% of what I read is in Outlook, through RSS, plus I use Firefox for the little browsing I do. I'd love to see an implementation of his concept for a wider environment though.

A Firefox Eulogy

I've been meaning to direct a virtual hat-tip at Jonathon Delacour for supplying me with a Gmail invite, and now he also reminds me to 'do my bit' for Operation Firefox.

I switched back at Firebird, following Joel Spolsky's glowing critique. I was immediately sold on tabbed browsing, Ctrl+Wheelie text resizing and no more popups. Since then I've added the GoogleBar (which I prefer to Firefox search), BugMeNot (to avoid a thousand web registrations) and AdBlock (to hide advertising graphics). I've even written a little extension to integrate with NewsGator.

Right now, Firefox is several thousand internet-years ahead of Internet Explorer. With Microsoft reforming the IE development team it's looking like this open source effort may just have caused enough of a stir to get prompt some real action in the browser world. Whatever happens from here, having a strong alternative to Microsoft's offering can only be good for the web development platform.

Il Residente!

I've so far used this youthful blog as a simple journal of interesting links, for me and others, but a more personal event occured week that cannot go unrecorded: I've been granted Australian residency!

I've been living in Sydney for the past three years, arriving at the end of a long meander through various parts of Asia (more of which here). Completely skint and on the verge of returning to England, I scored a job and a temporary working visa. A couple of years of beachfront living has convinced me that I'd at least like the option of staying long term, so the convoluted process began. After many months of gathering paperwork from different corners of the world, I have a new orange sticker in my passport with that most important word: "indefinitely".

I'm more than a little chuffed.

PDFs: not quite unlinkable

Phil Ringnalda points to an interesting titbit: how to 'deep-link' into PDFs. I can see myself using this all the time at work.

Visual Basic Power Pack

There are a bunch of potentially handy new controls in the Visual Basic Power Pack on Got Dot Net. Best thing is that they're written in VB, and the source code is included. Perfect sample material for learning about user controls.

The Anatomy of a Late Bound Expression

An excellent explanation of what actually goes on in the mysterious depths of the VB compiler. No wonder it's such a performance hit...

Via Panopticon Central

Microsoft Office: 106 Tips & Tricks

Useful reference from PC Magazine. The printable pages save having to click through all 106 individual tips:

General Office, Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint.

Via Scobleizer.

Managing Product Development

If you have any involvement in shipping software and don't already read Johanna Rothman, I suggest you go over there right now and hunt down her RSS feed.

If you're just after a useful little intro, check out Selecting a Lifecycle and start turning your project spirals upward...