Charles on… anything that comes along

I know that Sony has now completely (well sort of completely) reverse-ferreted on the ‘iTunes for movies’ quote of a couple of weeks ago. But it looks like Wippit, which does the legal P2P music downloads game, is going to do it for them.

My latest analysis at Netimperative looks at prices, formats, and why this matters - and why the film industry is letting this little British company do it now.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Punch-Drunk Love: at last, a really good Adam Sandler film (no, honest) (15 November 2004; score: 48.12%)
• Sony completely loses the plot with "Network Walkman" (4 August 2004; score: 44.7%)
• Music biz seeks digital price rises - but why? To keep the artists in line (18 November 2005; score: 44.08%)

I got asked to put up the browser summary here. Actually, I won’t, not in full. It’s really long. But here’s how it breaks down (by number of page requests):

Internet Explorer: 33% (of which IE6: 23%. IE5: 8%. IE4: 2%).
Mozilla 22% (which I assume includes Firefox, though it doesn’t seem to identify itself… unless that’s Mozilla/1, in which case it’s 17%. Or if it’s “Netscape (compatible)” then it’s 11%).
Safari: 21%.
Googlebot, MSNbot, Technoratibot: 6% total (about equal between Google and MSN).
Opera: 3%.
Nothing else above 1%; though “others” (90-odd) make up 27%. That’ll be comment spam, at a guess.

And here is what people are looking for when they come here. I guess putting this list here will make it more likely they’ll come…

reqs: search term
—-: ———–
25: charles arthur blog
21: charles arthur
10: spin bunny
6: ipod analysis
5: dashboard widgets
5: the apprentice tv
4: amphibious cars
4: powerreg.exe
4: stop the bid
4: g4 fan club
4: ntl hell
4: charlotte ricca smith
3: developing dashboard widgets
3: what will happen to hackney marshes
3: itunes gift certificate
3: fungible
3: the apprentice uk bittorrent
3: ebay phishing scam
3: g4 the x factor
3: pictures of jonathan ansell g4
3: dell a940 error 0502
3: paul.smith screensaver
3: get me email contacts addresses of travellers for the year 2005
3: dashboard widget
3: dell hardware error 0502
3: steve mcgann
3: the apprentice
3: the apprentice on tv
3: crosscountrybank
2: jim wightman

They’re all here - use the search field over on the right if you want to track them down. (Though I’ve no idea what the Dell hardware error thing is about, offhand.)

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Want to do a complex Smart Folder in Tiger? It's as easy as pi (9 May 2005; score: 38.25%)
• Google Search: a global product, a local launch (15 October 2004; score: 38.2%)
• How Yahoo takes good stuff, and makes it bad, from Flickr to music videos (16 September 2005; score: 33.69%)

OK, briefly.

First, John Siracusa has written another unbelievably in-depth review of Tiger over at Ars Technica. The man is a giant of geekdom but damn, when he does a review, the damn thing stays reviewed. Unlike some people I could mention.

It’s not trivial, it’s not short, and you may emerge realising that writing a Unix-based operating system with a pretty GUI actually takes real work by smart people. But that’s good, right?

Secondly, I’ve just downloaded and started using DEVONagent, having noted various people talking about it (try Tidbits, John Naughton, and the Mac downloads page, which quotes the publicity that it

overcomes all the shortcomings that make Google & Co. such a pain for serious research. More than 50 plug-ins for search engines, scientific databases and research tools, predefined search sets you can use right away and a clean, easy to use user interface make DEVONagent the #1 tool for finding information on the web for the Mac.

DEVONagent is much more than just an interface for web search engines. It helps you searching, collecting and organizing information with a powerful and flexible search architecture, a simple to use built-in archive and perfect integration with DEVONthink. DEVONagent creates perfectly tailored summaries, acts as a fast and lean web browser, supports news feeds like RSS and shows all items of interest in a separate drawer. It can’t be easier to look for information on the web.

The remarkable thing being that it’s right. I think I’ll be stumping up the licence fee on this one sharpish. Mac OSX only, I’m afraid (to steal from John Naughton).

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Reflective vs matte screens: not so simple as it's portrayed (21 May 2006; score: 53.27%)
• Get it while it's late: my exclusive review of Tiger (you know.. that new software thing) (2 May 2005; score: 42.41%)
• Widgets: an avenue for Apple malware? (9 May 2005; score: 40.05%)

According to this Register story, Firefox now has 10.28 per cent of the browser market on business web sites (from a survey of 168,000 - can anyone say if that’s statistically valid from a sample of tens of millions?).

IE, meanwhile, has fallen to an 83.7 per cent share.

What Firefox has done is remarkable. Though of course it can’t be finished yet, if it’s going to fit my first prediction for 2005. Although someone quoted in the story does think Firefox could hit a 25 per cent share next quarter.. Come on, come on, I need a good hit rate..

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Real-life Sopranos in the 'burbs (14 April 2008; score: 48.79%)
• Michael Malone thinks Microsoft is dying (13 February 2005; score: 47.73%)
• How the House of Commons made it harder to work out how much MPs have cost: by using PDFs (21 October 2004; score: 43.72%)