What a Web Service Should Be - Bit.ly

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/BitDOTly_Is_a_Big_Deal_URL_Shortener

http://bit.ly/docs

This is exactly what I have been talking about for years! The programmatic web. Send a get, get some data. No need to make it so complicated. This is a perfect example.

I send the url of my last post:

http://bit.ly/api?url=http://iponderus.com/2008/07/problems-with-ie7-on-apple-mobileme.html

I get back nothing but: http://bit.ly/1cyP69 in plain text!

I send the shortened version:
http://bit.ly/resolve?url=http://bit.ly/1cyP69
I get back my original url in plain text!

Plus you can get stats in xml or json:
http://bit.ly/feed.php?url=http://bit.ly/1cyP69
http://bit.ly/feed?url=http://bit.ly/1cyP69&format=json

Bravo!!!

Problems with IE7 on Apple MobileMe

Right from Apple's description of MobileMe on their web store -
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB611Z/A?cid=OAS%2DUS%2DKWG%2DMobileMe

"Internet Explorer 7 is not fully supported. Internet Explorer 7 has known compatibility issues with modern web standards which affect web 2.0 applications such as MobileMe. You can use Internet Explorer 7, but you will not have access to all MobileMe features and will experience slower performance."

Yikes! It's only the most popular browser by a wide margin ( http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2 )! Why would you bother to make sure your site works with it when when you are charging $100?

Alibaba

http://www.alibaba.com/
Just ran across mention of this site in Scoble's Friendfeed comments.. Global trade - perhaps would be helpful if you wanted to set up some kind of manufacturing operation from scratch. Pretty cool anyhow.

Zipit

http://www.zipitwireles.com/

Little handheld clamshell device with keyboard - wifi - used for texting and IM (also plays mp3s and shows pictures).

Currently marketed for tweens and teens, I could totally see the twitter crowd jumping on this thing.

Also is an amazing price for an unlimited tex plan ($10/mo) if you overlook the wifi only restricition.

I would love to have one for automated paging.

Pockt Solutions - wide range of accessories for i760

http://www.thepocketsolution.com/samsung_i760_accessories.html

It's amazing the list of good accessories Pocket Solutions has created or got a hold of for the Verizon Wireless Samsung i760. Wonder if they can trump Samsung, Verizon, and Microsoft and get us 6.1 ... http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/samsung-sch-i760/107305-windows-mobile-6-1-sch-i760-rumor-thread.html

Reminder - shared feeds

This is just a reminder, that if I have no value to add to an article I read in Google Reader, but I still want to pass it on, I just share it, so it won't show up in this feed. However there is an RSS feed for those items, which you can add to your news reader:

http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/04600384910697058887/state/com.google/broadcast

Thanks!

Missing Link - Web mail to Pop mail

http://v3.izymail.com/

This is absolutely genius! Surprised this didn't come up before. These guys intermediate between web-only email and pop/imap, so you can connect to Hotmail/Yahoo mail etc. Awesome for iPhones, Windows Mobile, or forwarding hotmail to gmail. Wow! Not free, but very cheap so far.

Open IE7 with a list of URLs each in its own tab

Well I had spent some time when IE7 first came out, and then again maybe 6 months after, trying to find a solution for this. I want IE7 to open with multiple web sites already up, each in its own tab. IE7 does not support this via command line. I looked into scripting it, but didn't find anything really stable or usable.

However some more time has gone by, and somebody has figured it out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tonyschr/archive/2007/01/19/ie-automation-amp-tabs.aspx

I had to do some playing, adding try-catch blocks to each URL line, and then changing the order of the URLs around quite a bit. It seems that problems with the target site really affects this script. But I did get it to work reliably. Thanks Tony!

New (to me) source of IT Podcasts

I'm a huge fan of Leo Laporte's "suite" of tech podcasts (http://twit.tv), which I learned about when Paul Thurrott (http://winsupersite.com) starting doing one, and now Joel Spolsky (http://joelonsoftware.com/) has pointed me to another network of tech podcasts I was unaware of - IT Conversations (http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org).

New Tax on Music and Internet

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/03/27/Warners-New-Web-Guru

(update - I'm going to remove my commentary on this, just to be prudent. You read the link, and I have no doubt you will be able to form your own opinion fast enough :)