New RealPlayer Instantly Downloads Online Video — www.RealPlayer.com
The new RealPlayer has sparked all kinds of deep copyright discussions, but the irony I note in this launch is the similarity of this new capability with that of the StreamBox Ripper. StreamBox Ripper was a product that allowed for the saving of – among others – RealAudio streams. Real threatened Streambox and Streambox backed down, in an early application of DMCA.
That said, RealPlayer was due for an overhaul.
Safari 3 for Windows – Engadget
Apple has decided to take allow Windows user to join the Safari, but this also opens .Mac (dotmac) to Windows users, complete with 60-day trial. It doesn’t, however, make .Mac more compelling (you can get it all, without the eye candy, from Google for free). This was already guessed at earlier this year.
Apple’s iTunes launch of DRM-free purchases has bee rightly heralded as a happy jingle. However, Apple still misses the mark and a golden opportunity with international purchases.
As the holder of a US-based iTunes account, I can visit, but not purchase from, the iTunes store in France. I understand that, with different prices and agreements across the ocean, Apple wants to prevent cross-country arbitrage, but it’s beyond me why I can’t buy a tune from iTunes France when it’s not offered at all in the US.
Apple, give us an “Export” option! Make money in the process.
Link to Msn Messenger status detector. We will tell you who blocked your msn account
This questionable service – finding out who has blocked and deleted you in MSN is either:
Don’t trust it!
Link to Windows Live Mail: Announcing the Upcoming Windows Live Mail!
Microsoft has cleaned up its free mail client approach and is merging the best of Outlook Express, Windows Mail and the Windows Live Mail Desktop.
and: no ads! (at least no banner ads)
The good folks at Juice Analytics maintain a blog rich with analytical hints and tips.
See for instance the “Top Resources for Analysts: Excel, Data Analysis and Business Intelligence, and Charting, Visualization and Presentation“
Any analyst who doesn’t know about Pivot Tables in Excel is either wasting time or charging their customer for useless time. Pivot tables are essential to quickly summarize data in Excel. They are the reporting equivalent of “back-of-the-envelope” calculations, but can also be used for long-term reports. Microsoft offers various tutorials on Pivot Tables, I recommend this one.
Don Norman’s address yesterday redeemed a slow day. He delivered an entertaining list of challenges along the lines of his pre-released chapter on “Cautions Cars & Cantankerous Kitchens”. In typical college professor style, he offered more questions than answers, but he won the crowd over.
(this is a review of just one of many sessions of User Experience 2006 in Seattle)
As Smorgasbord-design noted, “with NN/g you have to pay for the privilege of dealing with the (experts)”. After almost a day with John Boyd of Yahoo!, there’s no doubt he is an expert, but he seems constrained by how he interpreted his topic. Boyd followed his outline faithfully, even contributed a last-minute “application” addendum to the handout, but nevertheless failed to practically tie social pyschology experiments with Web experiments. There was a glimpse of hope from 11.45 to noon when he really had the audience engaged, but the momentum was lost after lunch and never regained. The handout itself was a dissapointment, never reflecting the richness of the talk. It lacked sentences and verbs and made few lasting points beyond the referenced outline.
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In December of last year, I predicted a unified approach to RSS subscriptions for Google. Although that hasn’t happened yet, the underlying issue of a lack of focus has been acknowledged by Google.