Tuesday, November 19, 2002

AT&T/Comcast Consider Aussie-Style Bandwidth Caps [Slashdot] 9:33:43 PM    comment []

NetNewsWire and MovableType. I’ve been testing NetNewsWire‘s weblog editor with MovableType—and it’s working. Here’s my test site. One of the painful parts of weblog editors is configuration, as Daniel Berlinger points out in his RFC on discoverability. I had to send an XML-RPC request to get the blogID of my MovableType site. For Manila the URL of the site works as the blogID. I don’t know what I’ll find when I try other weblog publishing systems, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find them all slightly different. This needs to get much easier. Ideally all it would take to configure one’s editor is to know the URL of the home page of your site. (And of course you’d know your username and password also.) A user should never have to know or figure out the blogID, RPC URL, and supported API or APIs. [inessential.com] 9:23:29 PM    comment []

Speakeasy Networks offers its DSL customers Wi-Fi package for explicit sharing (follow link to new customer signup): Speakeasy Networks is offering a free SMC Networks 802.11a or 802.11b access point to new DSL and T-1 subscribers. Speakeasy is a national DSL/digital line provider, which in the spirit of full disclosure is my home and work DSL provider. Some telephone companies have offered limited discounts or promotions for equipment from Linksys and other vendors, but this is the first free promotion I've heard of. [80211b News] 9:17:01 PM    comment []

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - DMCA Open For Public Comment. plaxion writes "Beginning tomorrow (Nov 19), the U.S. Copyright Office will begin accepting suggestions for new exemptions to the DMCA. From what I've read, it appears they're seeking specific examples on how the law restricts research or inhibits the marketplace. In other words, they won't be considering issues of inconvenience or hypothetical problems. The comment period ends Dec 18." [Privacy Digest] 7:01:55 AM    comment []

Vote Early, Vote Often. Miss World Gets New Judge: Wireless Phone Users "The Miss World Organization today begins its first worldwide text vote, arguably the largest and most widespread campaign using wireless marketing. Audiences worldwide will be asked to text in their nominee for Miss World, a beauty pageant now in its 52nd year. The poll will count for half the votes in deciding the winner of the Miss World 2002 title, and the judging panel decides the rest. 'Only cell phone users will be able to vote, but global mobile penetration is now higher than global Internet penetration,' said Lars Becker, CEO of Flytxt, the wireless marketing agency on the account along with marketing agency Regenerator. The effort targets 2 billion people in 130 countries that Flytxt claims watch the contest. The event's final this year will be Dec. 7 in Nigeria.... Users in Britain, Italy, France, China, Spain and Germany have to pay a 40 cents premium rate for dialing the five-digit short code. Users in the rest of the world typically will pay 8 cents to 19 cents for texting in to a long number." [DM News] So it will cost most people outside of the U.S. more to vote, but they actually use their cell phones for this kind of thing whereas Americans don't (yet). I'll be interested to see the results of this campaign. [The Shifted Librarian] 7:00:41 AM    comment []