Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

Browse by Tags

• Apple
• Audio
• Gadgets
• Music
• Podcast
• Software Development
• Technology
• Things that amuse me
• Web 2.0

• The Case for Freeing the WSJ Online

  An interesting article in Business Week about opening up the Wall Street Journal Online in the wake of the sale to Murdoch. For The Wall Street Journal Online, going free will come at a high cost. The daily financial newspaper is one of the few major publications to successfully charge for access to most of its online content, earning roughly $79 a year from each of its nearly 1 million Web subscribers. Once incentives and other free offers are taken into account, some analysts estimate that the paper will bring in more than $65 million this year from WSJ Online subscriptions alone. But soon-to-be owner Rupert Murdoch seems willing to sacrifice that revenue in return for the possibility of earning many millions more from online advertising. In an Aug. 8 earnings call for News Corp. ( NWS ), which plans to acquire Journal publisher Dow Jones ( DJ ) for $5.6 billion, Murdoch said both companies are debating making WSJ.com free, though there are no concrete plans yet. "I think it would... Posted Aug 25 2007, 06:44 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Rants, Web 2.0, Blogging

• Podcast support in Windows Media Player 11

  There is one other issue I need to deal with before I can totally switch to Windows Media Player 11 - podcast support. Microsoft made the head-scratching decision not to include native podcast support - one area where iTunes really excelled. Someone wrote a plugin over the summer , but it doesn't work in WMP 11 and Vista and he's not maintaining it right now . There are countless other third party aggregators (Doppler is an old favorite), but I need to spend some time figuring it all out. My key requirements are: Automatic downloads (no manual intervention) Synchronization to the device (at most 1 click, preferably none) Removal of old podcasts (preferably removed from the device after they've been listened to, but I'll accept support for the last, say, 3 episodes - as long as Steve Gillmor doesn't break CalacanisCast into 17 parts). For those of you not using iTunes, how are you managing your subscriptions? Note: I'll update this post over time as I refine the strategy. Posted Dec 28 2006, 02:56 PM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Software Development, Rants, Gadgets, Music, Blogging, Apple, Audio, Podcast

• PodShow gets funding... but forgets to renew DNS?

  Maybe that really was the last Gillmor Gang . My downloads of the latest show kept failing, and now I know why - PodShow.com expired on Oct 4th and is now parked. Ooops! I don't know what's more ironic - their domain expires and they forget to renew just after they get funding, or that GoDaddy sponsors the Gillmor Gang. Posted Oct 09 2006, 06:18 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Rants, Things that amuse me, Web 2.0, Blogging