Some news you might not have caught
Microsoft is attempting to open up and share its technical documentation with the world, free of licensing stipulations:
Microsoft to Share More Technical Secrets - New York Times
This bears watching because if they really follow through on what they're talking about here, the whole idea of "web services" could take another leap forward. Imagine your desktop becoming indistinguishable from the browser (yes, I realize that's been discussed many times) because everything on your desktop is accessing both local storage and "the cloud". This could be a huge turning point.
The new Yahoo! Media Player beta is actually super powerful and makes a ton of sense. If I can figure out how to implement it on my blog in the next few weeks, you'll see what I mean, but feel free to go check it out in action on Ian Rogers' blog, where he's showing it off regularly.
Princeton is working on a plan that will enable admitted students to go abroad before starting their college careers. I've often thought that I would have benefited from a year off before starting college and apparently, more and more students are of the same opinion. If this were to catch on, it'd be a large shift in the way we view higher education.
Amidst all the Microsoft - Yahoo! turmoil, Yahoo! announced OneConnect at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week. It's unclear what's really going to launch, as the announcement didn't come with a product release, but it looks promising. I certainly will be watching to see what comes out when the team's ready to share.
Apparently the specs for these file formats are insanely complicated. Joel Spolsky had an interesting article on the subject:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html
Posted by: Benjamin Hoyt | February 23, 2008 at 12:48 PM