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Personal News
Today we say good bye to Netscape
Feb 1st
It was announced back in December that Netscape would be officially no longer supported as of February 1st 2008, for many they see it as just another forgotten software program but for many others it was much more than that. For me, Netscape is part of the events that got me hooked on the Internet and that eventually led to the start of Applied Innovations (it seems fitting that in the same month Netscape retires, AppliedI turns 9).
In 1994, I was just starting a career in Electrical Engineering at Motorola and had been using the Internet via gopher, FTP and USENET for a while already. I had been using NCSA’s Mosaic browser and HTTP Daemon running on SunOS and already building webpages and applications around it. NCSA’s tools were nice but simply unpolished. Then I read this USENET posting:
Mosaic Communications Corporation is a making a public version of Mosaic Netscape 0.9 Beta available for anonymous FTP. Mosaic Netscape is a built-from-scratch Internet navigator featuring performance optimized for 14.4 modems, native JPEG support, and more.
You can FTP Mosaic Netscape 0.9 Beta from the following locations:
ftp.mcom.com in /netscape
gatekeeper.dec.com in /pub/net/infosys/Mosaic-Comm
lark.cc.ukans.edu in /Netscape
ftp.meer.net in /Netscape
doc.ic.ac.uk in /packages/Netscape
archie.au in /pub/misc/netscape
ftp.cica.indiana.edu in /pub/pc/win3/winsock/nscape09.zip (PC only)
mac.archive.umich.edu in /mac (Mac only)Please make sure to read the README and LICENSE files.
An up-to-date listing of mirror sites can be obtained at any time
by sending email to rele…@mcom.com.Subject to the timing and results of this beta cycle, Mosaic Communications will release Mosaic Netscape 1.0, also available free for personal use via the Internet. It will be subject to license terms; please review them when and if you obtain Mosaic Netscape 1.0.
A commercial version of Mosaic Netscape 1.0, including technical support from Mosaic Communications, will be available upon completion of the beta cycle. Contact us at i…@mcom.com for more information.
Have fun!
Marc and the gang
i…@mcom.com, http://mosaic.mcom.com/
That post was dated October 13th 1994, 8:51am and the archived message pulled from google groups.
I quickly downloaded, installed and was AMAZED by this new web browser and I wasn’t alone. Here’s a few of the follow up posts from USENET that give you an idea of just how the Internet community accepted the Netscape Beta back then:
As blown away as you may have been by seeing the original Mosaic
for the first time, Netscape is even more impressive.Besides being faster, easier to use and more rubust than Mosaic,
it elegantly handles news and mail.It’s terribly, terrible impressive.
Looks great so far! (Windows version.)
- Transparent GIFs are nice!
- Delayed inline-image loading a-la MacMosaic.
- Scrollbars on TextAreas
- Copy to clipboard from text.
- Multiple windows a-la XMosaic.
- THREADED news!- AND…I’m POSTING this from Netscape!
Cool!
Let’s think of some of the things Netscape did that helped change the Internet:
- 1. They created a web server application with a easy to use management interface (no need to edit nasty .conf files)
- 2. They said F-U to the man time and time again and set their own standards for HTML and extended the Hypertext Markup Language.
- 3. They created the first commercial web browser (then free, then commercial, then free … )
- 4. IPO! Here’s a company that when it IPO’d it signaled the start of the DOT COM bubble!
- 5. It simply made the Internet more accessible to all, it went from a tool used only by scientists and geeks to a key component of everyone’s daily life. You no longer needed to know secret geek-speak like GOPHER, FTP, USENET or TCPIP you could just point and click your way around the web.
For many the passing of Netscape is just another antiquated piece of software taking it’s place in history but it’s much more than that and because of all it’s done and changed for myself, my company, and society as a whole, I say raise your cup of coffee this morning and give thanks to Andreessen and the guys that started Mosaic Communications Corporation and released that very first beta version of Netscape, they truly changed our world!
(image from Peter Coffee’s 24 Killer Apps of All Time).
My New SuperRig (AKA the gaming/media beast)
Oct 11th
At home I’ve had a homebuilt P4 3.2GHz desktop for a while now, it’s done me well but new video cards, faster multi-core processors and ofcourse Vista… it was time to build a new box.
Recently Scott Hanselman posted about his new Ultimate Gaming Machine he had built up and I was inspired to build my own super quiet super-rig but couldn’t bring myself to drop the $2500 it was going to cost to build a box just for fun… So what does a cheapskate do?
So enters SlickDeals.net.
One of my favorite websites on the Internet is slickdeals.net, here you can find all the best ‘slick deals’ everything from super cheap promotions to amazing coupons and rebates. Everyone that knows me teases me because I check this site 3-4 times a day for that slick deal.
Last week, the need for a new machine hit me again and slickdeals delivered this little morsel:
HP Home has a new $400 off $1000+ coupon DT4115 valid customized HP Pavillion Desktops. Thanks Selma
A well-equipped HP Pavillion m8100y Media Center/PVR desktop PC for a base price of $899
- Click here
- Click "Customize"
- Select the following options (or choose any other upgrades for $100 or more):
- Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q6600 (2.4GHz) [add $150]
- FREE UPGRADE! 2GB DDR2-667MHz dual channel SDRAM [add $0]
- FREE UPGRADE! From Xtreme Audio to Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer or FREE UPGRADE! From integrated to Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio [add $0]
- Checkout, apply $400 off $1000 coupon DT4115
- Your total will be $650 + applicable taxes with free shipping
Specs:
- Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
- Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q6600 (2.4GHz)
- 2GB DDR2-667MHz dual channel SDRAM (2×1024)
- 64MB NVIDIA GeForce 7500LE, DVI-I, TV-out, VGA adapter
- 250GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
- LightScribe 16X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
- 15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, 1394, video
- ATSC-NTSC TV tuner with PVR, FM tuner, remote
- Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer or Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
- Norton Internet Security 2007 – 15 Months
- HP keyboard and HP scroller mouse
- No Monitor (unless additionally selected)
Alternative upgrade options (choose one)
- Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor E6850 (3.0GHz) [$50 less, $600 total]
Now how anyone object to: A Quad Core CPU, 2GB memory, a 250GB SATA drive, a sound blaster sound card and a TV tuner with PVR, FM and remote control and to top it off Windows Vista Home Premium (which includes Windows Media Center) for $650!!. It was simply a score, So I went for it.
Unfortunately it did have a couple shortcomings that kept it from being a super-rig:
- Only 1 SATA drive (and only 7200RPM), ideally RAID 0 or RAID 10 – fortunately the motherboard supports this.
- The video card options were weak.
- The 350W power supply was no doubt going to have to be replaced with something else.
Certainly not showstoppers and nothing that couldn’t be resolved.
Bring Forth the Video & Power
The box arrived yesterday and upon looking in it, it was questionable if a large video card would fit in there. A quick trip to the local CompUSA and $450 later we have a 8800GTS Video card and a 600W PCI-E ready powersupply. Those others wondering if the 8800GTS series video card will fit in a HP m8100y can be happy to know it’ll fit, you may never be able to get it out, but it will fit!
Here’s The Numbers…
Before the video card and power supply swap we had this:
After the video card swap out:
We went to 5.9 across all the video scores with only RAM & Disk I/O keeping us from a perfect 5.9.
What’s next?
Getting 5.9′s across the board ofcourse!
The RAM and Drive upgrades will come in a couple weeks as I’m also still debating if I should make the jump to Vista 64bit or stick it out with 32bit and will have to decide that first. Ofcourse, many wll argue it’s not a super-rig until it’s the ideal super-rig (Like Scott’s) with two video cards with SLI for video and dual monitors but I don’t have space in the new box for a second video card and the current card can support 2 DVI monitors as well as HD output.
My super-rig will be used as a media pc / gaming pc more than anything else so giving up the second video card for a TV-tuner/PVR card is acceptable.
But thanks to slickdeals.net I managed to build an almost-complete super-rig for about half of what I would have spent building the entire machine myself and probably 1/3rd what I would have spent if I spec’d out a similar machine through Dell, etc.
Now I just need to find a slickdeal on a 30" LCD monitor!
The final outcome
And here’s a little screen shot of what was going on last night:
Easy Panoramic Pictures with Panavue
Jun 27th
One of the greatest things and worst things I ever did was purchase a digital camera. In the past 4 years, I’ve built an online photo gallery of over 4GB and close to 8000 images. I’m certainly no expert at digital photography and don’t really have the patience to become one, but I love “the cool stuff” and this blog post is about The Cool Stuff.
Like everyone else with a digital camera I love to stand in a spot and take a series of pictures in hopes of firing up Photoshop and stitching them together. Then when I get back home to the computer and decide to fire up photoshop, the reality that I know absolutely nothing about Photoshop or how to stitch a series of pictures together cleanly enough that they don’t look like a bunch of pictures just glued together hits home and I soon realized no only did I look like a dork spinning around trying to get a series of pictures but now I’m dork with a bunch of pictures from standing there spinning around!
I asked a friend of mine (who is a digital camera and photoshop guru) what’s a great, easy to use (and ideally cheap) application for creating panoramic photos from a series of separate shots. The application he recommended as easy to use (and affordable) was Panavue image assembler from panavue.com (at $64 it’s moderately affordable).
So as they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words and here’s a few of the pictures created with Panavue using default setting and pretty much just clicking “NEXT, NEXT, NEXT, FINISH”. I’m sure as I spend more time creating more panoramic shots I’ll learn how to use it and how to create better pictures.
Chicago February 05
This picture was created from two different shots pasted together. I found creating shots from 2 pictures really gave the best results.
The above picture was created from these two pictures:
Greece 2006
Which started out as these two pictures
Buckingham Palace 2006
This is actually pretty interesting. Look at the lady with the white blouse and gray hair walking towards me and then at the lady smoking to the right of me. It’s the same person!
These are the pictures that created this great view:
Washington DC Spring 2007
This was taken from our hotel at the Mandarin Oriental in DC. It’s overlooking the Treasury (that’s the money factory on the left) and was composed from two separate photos.
At the base of the Washington Monument.
In the Mall by the Smithsonian.
Key West Summer 2007
I know with a little effort and tweaking the settings of the application these images could come out even better. Now in a couple of them you can see where the images blend together (especially in Buckingham Palace and the Key West daytime picture above. However, I think the pictures really show just how powerful this type of application can be and just what kind of great pictures even an amateur like myself can take with a digital camera and a little digital photo cleanup.
AT&T offering DSL at $10/month for new subscribers
Jun 18th
It’s not really hosting related but if you’re like me, you probably have half a dozen friends that haven’t jumped on the broadband train just yet because of the price. Well thanks to the AT&T, Bellsouth merger you’ll now be able to get DSL for $10/month in all of AT&T’s 22 states they service.
What’s even more exciting than this is that they’re to offer an option to get DSL without requiring phone service. I know today many people that don’t have home phone service as cell phones are far more convenient these days. In fact if it wasn’t for my alarm system, I’d be among those people as I never use my home phone number.
You can find more information about it here. What’s most surprising are the reports that they have quietly introduced this without a press release or any sort of acknowledgement of it on their website.
I saw the Secret Service Bomb Robot
May 15th
On May 6th my wife and I were visiting Washington DC prior to going to the SWsoft conference. While walking through DC we saw the white house was closed off and they weren’t letting anyone close to it. Thinking we’d get to see the President or the Queen (She was visiting that weekend) we waited around. Well we didn’t get to see either but we did get to see the US Secret Service Bomb Robot in action. Definately not something you get to see everyday. Ofcourse it was a false alarm but still quite interesting to see. I’ll post more DC photos and details about what’s new and upcoming from SWsoft. They demo’d Virtuozzo 4.0 and it’s new management tools and it’s very impressive.
