Blog Business Summit

Here's the event that I've refered to a couple of times as "that content aggregation and blogging event in Seattle". It's called the Blog Business Summit and it's held January 24-25 next year. Are you going? Let me know.

Thanksgiving Day

I'll take a break from posting over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

IM Smarter

It's been a while since I posted anything on IM. I haven't become less passionate about it, it's just that there hasn't been anything worth writing about.

Until now that is. IM Smarter (love the name) is a venture from Stanford Alumnus David Weekly. The web service is designed to sit between the IM client* and the user, adding features as conversation searches, reminders and blogging.

It's currently in Beta 6 and I'll give it a try shortly.

*IM Smart supports AOL/AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, iChat and several others.

HP Dev blogs

Developers at HP's software dev group started blogging on November 8. Take a look.

My November 19 post on blogging at Google

Epic 2014

Intriguing and fascinating. Where is online media and participatory journalism heading? In Epic 2004 Robin Sloan looks back to 2004 and beyond from the year 2014. Google has aquired Amazon, launched Google Grid and Microsoft now owns Friendster and the NYT is no longer online. (Via SiliconBeat)

Release 1.0 re-designed

Esther Dyson's excellent Release 1.0 has been re-designed courtesy of it's new owners CNET Network. It's also the new home of Rafe Needleman's column.

Release 1.0

Apple Store opens in London

It was cold and rainy but wild horses couldn't keep me away!

A few hours ago Apple's first European store opened on Regent Street here in London. According to a policewoman about 7 000 people were lining up across three city blocks to get in to the store. Update at 9:13 PM: it now looks like it was closer to 3 000 people.

The atmosphere was truly electric and when Apple staff came running towards the store just before it opened at 10 am cheers worthy of rockstars erupted!

Read my posting from the event at Roger's excellent Macfeber blog later today for more info and more pictures.

Google's corporate blogging

An insight in to blogging at Google from the IDG News Service.

"Google deployed an internal blog for its employees shortly after acquiring the blogging service Blogger in early 2003, and since then Google staffers have found many useful and creative ways for the internal blog, said Jason Goldman, Blogger product manager at Google."

Mac Expo London

London's very own Mac Expo kicked off today at the Business Design Center in Islington.

My notes:

• Taking a peek at OS X 10.4 was the day's high light.
  
• The ‘FileMaker Business Solutions Village’ housed a number of FM related tools and developers. Very good idea.
  
• To many retailers selling anything even remotly Mac-related. It made the whole affair feel more like a fair than an expo.
• Andy Ihnatko is lined up as a speaker in the Macworld Expo part of the event. Brilliant!
  

It's unfair to compare the UK Mac Expo with Macworld Expo in San Francisco, I know. But I was still hoping for something better, more interesting than just the big names (of whom many were missing), magazine stalls and retailers. Where were all the small developers, the sessions on RSS, the buzz, the excitement?

Despite this, it's a very exciting Mac week here in London as Saturday sees the launch of Apple's first European store.


Photo copyright © 2004 Jaan Orvet

VAIO | type U

...and at the top of my Xmas wish list is the Sony Vaio type U.

Firefox brings in the cash

A good story from CNET on how several new businesses have entered the marketplace to make $ on Mozilla-based applications.

Adobe is doing everything right

It's great to see that Adobe are making big improvements to Acrobat in v7.0. I was also impressed with the recent announcement from Adobe and Yahoo! on their future plans.

Despite liking Acrobat, when it comes to simply viewing PDF's my money is still on Apple's lightning fast Preview. It's superb, especially in the OS X 10.3 version.

How ever, Adobe is doing everything right at the moment and it will be interesting to follow them, and the PDF format, in 2005.

The week in numbers

2.0 - The new and improved Bluetooth Core Specification Version + Enhanced Data Rate
10 - This years Top Ten Tech Trends as discussed at my favorite, the Churchill Club.
51 - Part of the name of China's successfull job search site, 51Job, this past week a popular conversation topic in Silicon Valley.
19 - Years Microsoft waited to register the trademark for Excel.
8 - The number of billion pages in Google's index.
2.5 - ...million Firefox 1.0 downloads in the first 48 hours. Not that anyone expected anything less than BIG numbers.
2.38 - Millions of copies of Halo 2 sold in 24 hours. Congratulations to Microsoft.

RSS from Apple Developer Connection

Apple Developer Connection are now offering RSS feeds. There's one for ADC Headlines and one for the reference library. Very handy.

Apple Developer Connection

Bluetooth 2.0

The top two improvements in "Bluetooth Core Specification Version 2.0 + EDR" are lower power consumption and three times faster transmission speed.

Official press release.

LinkedIn goes premium

I'm a LinkedIn fan (thank you Per). It's fast, fairly easy to use (yes, the interface needs improvement) and it doesn't come with useless extras or add-ons like bulletinboards or event calendars. LinkedIn is straight to the point. And I wouldn't mind paying for it.

The next question is... how much? It depends on what I get in return. If LinkedIn did a better job of displaying my network, enabling connections and maybe even stuck a couple of RSS feeds in there I'd be happy to send them $ every month for a "premium" package.

It's not unlikely that the money will instead be paid by hiring firms and, well, firms that are hiring. According to the story from CNET News, improved search capabilities and recommendations for positions are on the cards.

It sounds like a good idea, but in addition to that I am curious about how LinkedIn will add to the professional life of myself and the network of people that I am connected to.

LinkedIn looks to premium services for profit

4GB PDA

"Sharp to ship world's first HDD-based PDA"

This week Sharp start shipping the 4GB Sl-C3000 PDA.