Skip to content

Index

  • 1 min read

Can we charge for an open source BlogBridge

As you know we are developing BlogBridge, "a new kind of blog reader." As you may know, BlogBridge is open source (see https://sourceforge.net/projects/blogbridge/.)

With all our recent progress, I feel that pretty soon BlogBridge will be functional enough that it will actually be usable , and suitable for a beta. And after a successful beta, we plan to start charging for it, in some form or another.

The $64,000 question is: " How does it make sense to charge for a product, when all the source code is available for anyone to download for free?" Our theory right now, is that people who would be willing to pay for an application like this, are paying not just for the source code, but it's maintenance, enhancement, packaging, and evolution. And more likely than not, most of those people wouldn't know what to do with the source code, how to build and run it or deal with problems.

So the bet is that there will not be significant canibalization , at least initially. Over time, depending on how things go, it might make sense to have a different, non-open-source, commercial version of BlogBridge.

  • 1 min read

Moving from Radio to Movable Type

I've seen some discussion on the issues related to changing blog infrastructure from one system to another. In my case, I moved from Radio to Movable Type.

My experience is that is was pretty easy to move the data (no data lock in) but the problem was the urls. Even if you take steps to make sure that the root url doesn't change, the individual post and archive urls will probably change which means that anyone linked to your blog before will stay linked to your old blog and so you will experience a disruption in your traffic.

  • 1 min read

Still can learn more,,,

If you are doing Java programming, check out Hardcore Java by Robert Simmon Jr. It's a idiosyncratic tour through many very interesting advanced Java topics.

My wife who sees another Java book sprout on my table every week wonders why it's taking me so long to learn this "Java" thing 🙂

  • 1 min read

BlogBridge – coming along!

It's been quiet but we've been busy. We are getting ready to put up a major new revision of BlogBridge with goodies such as drag and drop of Channels, Collapse/Expand groups of articles, based on age, Next Unread processing, a bunch of new User Preferences. Also we are doing a bit of a reorganization of this site. The 'Tasks' page has become a nuisance to maintain and really not that useful, so it's gone. And the Specs page is being totally revised to be more useful. Expect lots of additions to the Specs page as we move into another phase of development.

Keep those cards and letters coming in!

  • 1 min read

Best leather cases for Treo 600 and others

Scott Kirsner turned me on to Vaja Leather Products. This outfit supplies what look to be the coolest possible leather cases for Treo 600s, other PDAs, Digital Cameras, Cellphones or what not, that you'd like to attach to your hip. Very cool for the jet-set. Take a look.

  • 1 min read

BlogBridge – Quiet but Busy!

It's been quiet but we've been busy. We are getting ready to put up a major new revision of BlogBridge with goodies such as drag and drop of Channels, Collapse/Expand groups of articles, based on age, Next Unread processing, a bunch of new User Preferences. Also we are doing a bit of a reorganization of this site. The 'Tasks' page has become a nuisance to maintain and really not that useful, so it's gone. And the Specs page is being totally revised to be more useful. Expect lots of additions to the Specs page as we move into another phase of development.

  • 1 min read

Had enough yet?

Hard to believe what we are hearing these days, isn't it? The link is to an summary about the Prison scandal, with lots of links to other reputable publications, putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

  • 1 min read

Decentralization, again…

Remember when the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union ended up breaking up? People talked about the power of decentralizaiton , about how simple faxes were used by individual Soviet citizens to tell the world what was going on and topple the ultimate centralized power?

Or the impact of the television coverage of the Vietnam war had such an effect on the way things turned out? Or Tiananmen Square? Or the impact of consumer camcorders on the impact of the Rodney King trial and subsequent riots in L.A.?

The shameful and shocking scandal of prisoner abuse and torture follows the same pattern. Who can imagine what was going through the minds of these people as they were committing these acts? Who, further can imagine what they were thinking as they were taking snapshots of this?

But see where it's leading: who would have thought that these people wandering around with their pocket Canon 's and Nikons will have had a profound, long-term, global impact on this country and this war. Ultimate decentralization, again.