In case you missed it, Wal-Mart has launched a video download service, the first service to provide content from all 6 major movie studios. Reuters even goes as leading with the headline that the service is a “game changer”. They are right, but for the wrong reason. It’s a game changer because it doesn’t work with Firefox, and one would presume other non IE browsers such as Opera, Safari and Konquerer as well, it only works with Internet Explorer:

Valleywag and Techcrunch have also picked up on this, but questions still remain: why would Wal-Mart launch as service that only works in IE? how could a company as big as Wal-Mart overlook Firefox, particularly given they’ve previously been the leading distributor of the Linux distro Linspire…which doesn’t run IE?

I’ve never believed in accidents. People who crash their cars don’t have accidents, it’s usually driver error, there’s always an equatable cause or reason for the so-called accident, and I find it hard to believe that Wal-Mart accidently forgot standards/ Firefox support with their new offering. Is some sort of tie in with Microsoft behind it? Is it something to do with DRM and the intention to not support open source browsers because of some sort of potential risk? There’s got to be something to it, after all, what web designer worth his grain of salt doesn’t use Firefox, or at least has a copy of Firefox handy for site testing? Food for thought.

Tags: Wal-Mart

Originally posted on February 6, 2007 @ 5:53 pm

Google Reader is a great webware RSS feed aggregator, but it isn’t without its fair share of flaws.

1. Search: ability to search through your feeds like you can in Gmail. The fact there are two methods currently available to add a search feature to Google Reader should be justification enough for the demand for such a feature.
2. Same Story Consolidation: Google News does this, it would be a natural addition to Google Reader in order to root out redundancy amongst your RSS feeds.
3. New Story Notifications: Many software based RSS aggregators allow for pop-up notifications to alert their user to news that was just published. Why couldn’t Google Reader do the same thing with their webware based RSS aggregator much in the way they do in Gmail with Gtalk IM notifications (though this would certainly require the ability of user customization). Furthermore many users want to see the integration of the Gmail and Google Reader services, as there are also two methods created to combine these two great services together. It would also seem a logical enough of a move for Google to create standalone Greader software application that does the same thing, but has the benefits that come with a software application.
4. Aggregation Speed Increase: Google Reader has issues with speed when it comes to delivering your content to you via RSS. Often there can be a regular 1 to 2 hour delay in receiving your content via RSS, from when it is actually published.
5. Solve Overflow Memory Leak Problems: The ability to auto-refresh or just manually refresh your RSS feeds in Google Reader is a great feature, but the downside is you will find all those feeds build up in your session, and if your running Firefox, this can cause some serious memory leaks, if you use it frequently.

The application of these 5 features and fixes for Google Reader could make it formidable contender in the RSS reader market.

Originally posted on February 7, 2007 @ 8:26 pm

The big boys are scared is really the summary of the whole deal.

Video Source:1938 Media

Originally posted on February 7, 2007 @ 2:22 pm

Chris Pearson, our in house design guru, and artistic editorial consultant has launched a new celebrity site where he’s giving away gadgets every week. Pardon me while I head over to waste my days.

Muhammad Saleem our in house Social News expert has joined the Pronet Advertising Team so that’s keeping him nice and busy. He’s had a few really great pieces over there.

Thord Hedengren has been busy doing some design work for Syntagma Media and also has a nice interview up on Blogger Talks with Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising.

We welcomed Duncan Riley and Matt Craven to 901am and I’m pleased to have them onboard. They’ve been making some nice contributions already.

Another new comer this week and largely to fill in here and there is Curtiss Thompson. He runs the hilarious site Colbert on Demand.

As for me I took 3 days off and headed into the backwoods of Pennsylvania. I’m gearing up for some development work behind the scenes on a few projects as well as some face time on another. So there might be some sporadic posting over here by me as the weeks go on. But these guys sure have been rocking it out. I’m super impressed.

Seriously check out their personal projects and have a good rest of the week.

Originally posted on February 8, 2007 @ 6:42 am

I’m no fan of these introvert awards, but hey when good sport Jim Kukral was awarded Best Blogger I got curious. Amazon was awarded Exceptional Merchant for the Associates program, and a bunch of industry people got awards too.

Check out the Awards page, the Amazon Associates blog post, and Jim Kukral’s photo of the big price.

Congratulations!

Originally posted on February 7, 2007 @ 5:35 am