Jeff Makes Software

I tested my podcast recording setup tonight, and it all appears to work. I'll test and restest tomorrow before we actually record tomorrow night.

Kevin Rose busted open an iPod Nano in a new Systm episode...

http://revision3.com/systm/subsystm/ipodnano/

Come on, you know you're curious!

I've been watching with great interest the podcasts and IPTV projects of the various TechTV alumni. These folks are reaching hundreds of thousands of people every week without a traditional broadcast network, and that's incredibly awesome.

Yeah, that's quite the question. The forthcoming release of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 brings with it a change in the MSDN subscription program.

Kevin Rose says that the word on the street is that G4's chief exec got canned. We can only hope that's the case, because that idiot managed to kill off a giant audience. Although, quite by accident, I guess we can credit him with all of the great podcasts and IPTV that has come around from the TechTV alumni. How ironic.

POP Forums v8 is finally looking something like a functional application. I finally got around to prioritizing the work and feature list so I don't feel so overwhelmed. The plan now is to get it to a state similar to that of v7.x, and from there start working on the newer features. I'll probably put out a preview at that point.

I have to say that I'm not pleased with the render times using templated controls for topic and post lists, but I could be over-reacting. On one hand, I'm looking at .2 seconds, but for someone running a site without a ton of traffic, that shouldn't even matter. For my own sites I think I want it to be below .1, which is kind of the benchmark I use for everything else I have running right now, and I think to do that I'll need to resort to custom controls. So I might introduce two versions of the UI, one for tweak monkeys and one built for all-out performance that isn't as easy to hack.

I had a discussion about the importance of creating a Usenet-style UI for threads, and I wonder how important that really is. When you discuss it with geeks, they stand up and say, "oh yeah, I want that." When you discuss it with everyone else, they say, "Usewhat?" It's so weird how the Internet has been with us for such a relatively short period of time, yet the experience gap is enormous, especially from thirty-somethings to early twenty-somethings.

With the poor marketing and positioning of my book, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to live with the idea that it's never going to meet the sales target I hoped for. That's a real bummer. I should have retained the copyright. Now I know better.

So far the only thing I've heard that has come out of PDC that I really want to see is the Gates vs. Napoleon video that was shown.