Steve Job demonstrates new version of iTunes with Podcatching function

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When Apple launches iTunes 4.9, you will see a mambo explosion in the Podcast audience. There are about 60 million iPods on the market and they are all going to start download podcasts very soon.

You can read Steve Jobs presentation here, transcription courtesy of sick little monkey Ryan Ozawa, certified podcasting/iPod freak, who transcribed the whole thing.

The good guys at Make magazine also recorded the session here so you can listen in. There’s also some great screenshots of the product and it looks really great!

Good example of business blogging

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OK, so blogging is cool and makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside, but can you really use it for business?

Here’s one REALLY good example I found on businessweekOnline, Ice.com, a jewerly manufacturer, that has created 3 different blog Web sites:

http://www.justaskleslie.com/ “just ask Leslie”, apparently some heavy-duty jewelry chick that gives people advice on what to buy.

http://blog.ice.com/ a “corporate” blog that tells the whole world about their great accomplishments

http://www.sparklelikethestars.com/ “Sparkle Like the Stars”, a blog that covers what kind of Jewelry the celebs are wearing.

Very cool, very simple ideas here. Both justaskleslie and sparklelikethestars of course link EACH product to Ice.com.

I think we have a pretty good example of a great blog business model here. WhatChuAllTink? Post your comments please!

The world is flipping: Apple goes to Intel while MS goes to IBM chips

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I’m reading this CNET article “Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips” and I get the big “whoa”.

Apple is possibly moving to an IBM chip. So what does this mean?

The open-source FreeBSD operating system, of which Mac OS X is a variant, already runs on x86 chips such as Intel’s Pentium. And Jobs has said Mac OS X could easily run on x86 chips.

Us ex-Apple lovers really got pissed off at Jobs back in the ’80s because his religion (against the PC) blinded him to the opportunity of running on the PC and Sculley followed his suit. We all know that Apple would have killed MS if they ported the Mac OS to the PC. Well, here’s their chance.

I still don’t quite understand why Apple hasn’t seriously bonded with the Linux gang. Macs make the ultimate desktop workstation while Linux makes the killer server. I can’t be the only guy seeing this, right?

And now for something completely different:

IBM loses cachet with the end of the Apple partnership, but it can take consolation in that it’s designing and manufacturing the Power family processors for future gaming consoles from Microsoft

What a weird world we live in. Microsoft switches to IBM’s Power PC chip to run their graphics console while Apple drops the PowerPC to run on Intel (Wintel?) machines.

Podcasts coming to a cell phone near you

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Many have said that cellphones are a natural mp3 player and I totally agree. Catch this Wired article about what Nokia is doing. Here’s what really struck me:

Nokia would sell 40 million phones with MP3 digital music players this year, compared with 10 million in 2004. By comparison, Apple said it sold 5.3 million iPods in the first three months of 2005.

So if you do the math, you see that Apple will sell 20M iPods this year while Nokia will sell 40M mp3 players (in their phones).

It’s pretty obvious to see that Apple is going to have to create an iPod phone!

Mozilla’s Thunderbird gets a podcatcher

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In this CNET article we find out about yet another client that’s including podcasting support. As I’ve mentioned previously about Media Player, and about the Apple iTunes, this is a total natural. Any client that current understands RSS will soon understand the RSS Enclosures, the technology behind podcasting.

I think the podcast curve is going to be a lot bigger than we previously thought.

What are REAL programmers really like?

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If you’ve ever had to hire, manage, motivate, or work with Real Programmers, you MUST listen to Paul Graham talk about “Great Hackers”. In his presentation, he uses the term Hackers to mean Programmers instead of what we typically think of Hackers people who break into computers. So just know that going in and you will love this presentation.

I’ve been in the tech industry since I was a young teen and have dealt with Hackers all my life. This presentation is, by far, the best I’ve ever heard. I had the great pleasure and honor to spend a little bit of time with Paul Graham. He’s a cool guy and I would definitely suggest you listen to this. If you’re really intersted, buy the book!

Watch out for administrator emails suspending your accounts

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I just caught this article on Infoworld about a variant on the Mytob worm.

This one poses as a system administrator warning you that your account will be cancelled. As with any other emails with attachments and directions to open the attachment, DON’T DO IT.

And of course, NEVER, EVER open ANY attachments (even if they are from your mother who just called you saying she’s sending you an attachment) if they end in .bat, .cmd, .exe, .pif or .scr. This little bugger might also come as a .zip file too which is normally OK but in this case it’s not.

Make sure your anti-virus definitions are up to date and be careful.

Microsoft Windows Media Player will have Podcatching functions built-in

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I just caught these posts on Scobelizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger and also Corante talking about how Microsoft is also (finally) working on integrating Podcatching functions in their Windows Media Player.

It was inevitable. Podcatching is such a lightweight application that integrating it into iTunes and Windows Media Player is a natural. They both already do the downloading, ripping, and synchronization functions, what’s the big deal in adding some simple XML consumption (junction, what’s your) functions?

This is fantastic news for podcasters everywhere. Within about 6 months, we’re all going to have a listener base in the many, many millions.

Mover and Shaker in Hawaii

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I just read this article in SB about Magdy F. Iskander. Now THIS is a mover and shaker for Hawaii’s tech industry, specializing in wireless communications. A few of his accomplishments:

  • He has attracted $3 million of hard-to-get research money, established a unique antenna lab, had nine published research articles and is working with industries, schools, state and national agencies to produce the “next-generation entrepreneurs in telecommunications.”

    • .

  • He has eight patents, including three since coming here for wireless components or software for Motorola, Raytheon and Kyocera Wireless.
  • Iskander also is working with the hospitality industry to bring international conferences here to contribute to the state economy. He was president of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society in 2002 and organized a conference here in 2003 on wireless communications. He’s planning a similar conference this year and is working up to a major event in 2007.

Now, mind you, this guy had a cushy job in Utah already:

Iskander had lived in Utah for 25 years and had the only endowed professorial chair at the university. He was comfortable and wasn’t thinking of leaving until visiting Hawaii in 2001, he said.

So what brought him here?

“Walking in Waikiki was just like home (Alexandria, Egypt).” he said. “It attracted me.”

(Same thing happened to me 20 yrs ago!)

It was nice to read an article like this and let me say “I’m glad you’re here”.

Fix for WordPress not recognizing RSS enclosures

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If you use WordPress and have found out that for some reason it is not automatically recognizing certain file extensions as enclosures (my personal experience was that it did not recognize .wmv files) it’s because your server doesn’t have the proper MIME-TYPE setting for that file extension.

The way WordPress automatically creates enclosures is that is queries the server with the URI of your linked file (e.g. an mp3 file) and then parses the server’s returned MIME-TYPE. If it discovers the MIME-TYPE is of either audio or video, it then creates the appropriate enclosure entry.

So, if you ain’t gettin’ your RSS enclosure automatically created, it’s because the MIME-TYPE is missing from the server. But how do you fix that? Every server is different so the fix below only applies to an Apache server with the .htaccess feature enabled.

Here’s the fix:

Just edit the .htaccess file on the local home directory of the Web server that is hosting the audio/video files and add the proper MIME-TYPE that corresponds to the file you’re trying to access. In my case I was adding a MIME-TYPE for WMV (Windows Media Video) files. I added the following line into my .htaccess file:

AddType video/x-ms-wmv .wmv

Here’s a table of other mimetypes. You can also of course Google around and find more.

CAUTION: you need to be careful/aware if you already have an .htaccess file and if so, make sure you edit that file and ADD the above line instead of OVERWRITING that file. Of course if you’re sure that file doesn’t exist then you should be able to create it.