Inspirational Technology

Pathan 2.0 alpha provides XPath 2.0 implementation

DecisionSoft has released an alpha version of Pathan 2.0 that implements XPath 2.0.

At the same time they also released Pathan 1.2 release 2 that updates it to use Xerces 2.3 and fixes a few bugs. This release is important to users of Berkeley DB XML.

Tommy Lee Jones spoke to me in a dream and told me not to buy this CD

Tommy Lee Jones spoke to me in a dream and told me not to buy this CD
Letters Universal's price cuts universally laughed at [The Register]

Panther Developer Notes

Panther developer notes: Ink Services, Perl, more
Scriptable Printing: Panther's printing system supports an enhanced Apple Event for printing that enables script creators to define settings like page range, number of copies, and more. - Perl 5.8.1: - Apple is introducing a new Ink Services API in Panther so that developers can take advantage of Ink input for their applications and integrate Ink further into their software. - vImage: Apple has publicly demonstrated Panther's image editing capabilities, such as the ability to set up a folder action that automatically processes images, resizing or converting them as they are dropped in - QuickTime: In preliminary documentation for Panther's installation of QuickTime, Apple playfully dubs it "QuickTime Reloaded." Panther's version has a number of new APIs -- over 50 new documented APIs for Panther. - GCC 3.3: As Apple has announced, Panther's Xcode development suite includes GCC 3.3 as the default OS X compiler for C, C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++. [Studio Log]

Java 1.4.1 Update

Apple has released an update to the 1.4.1 JDK for Mac OS X, hopefully this will fix the majority of my complaints about it and enable it to run jEdit without any problems. I hope they at least fixed the crasher that would take down the entire window system.

I've been running jEdit with the 1.3.1 VM for a couple weeks and it works fairly well, but the lack of scroll mouse support is really annoying.

Cocoa Literature List

Cocoa Literature List
is page of Cocoa articles broken down by topic. Lot's of good stuff listed there.

Powermac G5 Pictures

Here's a really nice photo essay of the Powermac G5 internals. The G5 may just be a computer, but it seems that Apple's attention to detail is getting even better, the thing is a work of industrial art.

Ah, now it makes sense

I recently posted about how Sonic Software was challenging vendors to remove their license restrictions against posting benchmark findings. Now I just read this article about how Sonic Software is being sued by Tibco for publishing benchmarks. Hmm, OK, guess Sonic hasn't actually seen the light at all.

Universal Music to reduce CD prices

Looks like Universal is finally starting to get that maybe extreme prices had a little something to do with the reduction in CD sales. All I can say is it's about time. $12.98 is a start, but is it enough?

If other labels also follow suit this will make the pricing of online services like the iTunes Music Store seem even more outrageous. There's still a very large gap between what the labels consider fair pricing and what is really fair pricing. I guess we have to take baby steps at first.

Is NeoCore Dead

I've been tracking various native XML database companies for a while and one that I was watching was NeoCore. A couple weeks ago their site abruptly disappeared, at first I figured it was just a glitch, but now it seems they may have died a rather silent death. So anyone know what happened to NeoCore? I didn't see any news about an acquisition or name change so I can only conclude they're dead.

Excelsior

Michael Tsai has posted a pointer to Excelsior!, an XML data binding tool for Cocoa apps. It looks pretty decent and includes a mechanism that uses XPath style accessors to retrieve pieces of data (it's not actually XPath, just looks similar). This is a much needed tool for Cocoa applications.

Mac OS X Panther: Approaching First Candidate

MacRumors is reporting that Apple seeded Panther and XCode 7B53 versions today. Other news around is saying that they're nearing release candidate status. For me Panther isn't really all that exciting, except Expose that is. That's something I'm really looking forward to.

Porsche designs new line of LaCie drives

LaCie on Tuesday announced plans to begin shipping a new line of DVD drives designed by Porsche Design GmbH this month. The drives will offer DVD-RW and DVD+RW technologies in one device and sport FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connectivity. The company is also offering a Porsche-designed CD-RW drive and external hard drives. [MacCentral]

Wow, it's amazing how companies so incredibly misstep like this. I have one of the Lacie d2 design hard drives and I think it looks very cool. These new drives by F.A. Porsche are just ugly and considering the comments on the MacCentral article that seems to be the prevailing opinion.

Lacie made a huge mistake with this change, slapping the Porsche name on it isn't going to save it. I'm going to guess this company must have new management or something, nothing else can explain such a serious screw up.

You might wonder why anyone would care what an external harddrive looks like, well...yeah it's kind of silly, but oh well.