Month: October 2004

iPodder 1.0 is out! iPodder is a “podcast receiver”, which means if you subscribe it to the right kind of payloaded syndication feed, it will automatically download the audio and transfer it to your mp3 player. It’s got a built-in scheduler, so you can set up overnight downloads and have the audio waiting on your device when you lift it off the cradle to head out on the morning commute. There’s a growing list of podcasters eager for your subscription, and a number of mail lists devoted to various aspects of this new medium. All this stuff was inspired by Podfather Adam Curry. I contributed code and feature ideas. A monster team from Active8 B.V. — Erik de Jonge, Perica Zivkovic and Martijn Venrooy — wrote code, built installers, designed a great site and the app screens, contributed feature ideas and more that I’m forgetting. Ray Slakinski and Aaron Mitti contributed code and testing help. The gang at the ipodder-dev list contributed feature ideas. Now…time to listen to some podcasts!

Speaking of typos and security, I just realized that a spell checker wouldn’t have caught that goof. My old lab-mate Shawn would never touch a spell checker, because he said it bred a false sense of security. I feel the same way about spam filters. A carefully trained filter might catch most if not all of the spam, but eventually you’ll lose some false positives on a binge delete of those thousand odd dead messages that piled up while you were off doing more-fun things. As much as I dislike clearing spam, I dislike losing email even more.

One downside of trackback: you can’t fix typos! My last post pointed to Bruce Scheier. I goofed and dubbed him a “security export”. Now it’s up there on his page, typo and all. Quite embarrassing.

Security expert Bruce Schneier pens a poignant essay assessing the effectiveness of the US terror alert system: “Threat warnings can be a potent tool in the fight against terrorism–when there is a specific threat at a specific moment. There are times when people need to act, and act quickly, in order to increase security. But this is a tool that can easily be abused, and when it’s abused it loses its effectiveness.”