Dan Kantor - AOL Music
Front-facing camera! Big Bambu rooftop exhibit at The Met.
Sun, 06/27/2010 - 20:37Front-facing camera! Big Bambu rooftop exhibit at The Met.
Categories: Music Rec
RT @Caterina: Signal becomes data becomes information becomes knowledge becomes wisdom
Sun, 06/27/2010 - 04:46RT @Caterina: Signal becomes data becomes information becomes knowledge becomes wisdom
Categories: Music Rec
Just watched the new Futurama episodes. Sooooo funny
Sat, 06/26/2010 - 07:56Just watched the new Futurama episodes. Sooooo funny
Categories: Music Rec
3rd anniversary dinner with Isabel. (@ Esca w/ @isabelkantor) http://4sq.com/7zIanC
Fri, 06/25/2010 - 15:163rd anniversary dinner with Isabel. (@ Esca w/ @isabelkantor) http://4sq.com/7zIanC
Categories: Music Rec
RT @leemathews: Using Chromium on Windows, Mac, or Linux? Here’s how to get MP3 decoding so...
Fri, 06/25/2010 - 15:16RT @leemathews: Using Chromium on Windows, Mac, or Linux? Here’s how to get MP3 decoding so you can use ExtensionFM: http://is.gd/d28dS
Categories: Music Rec
I wish there was an undo button in elevators.
Fri, 06/25/2010 - 15:16I wish there was an undo button in elevators.
Categories: Music Rec
RT @ajaxian: ExtensionFM: A case study on a sexy app, turn extension: Editor’s note: Dan Kantor is...
Fri, 06/25/2010 - 15:16RT @ajaxian: ExtensionFM: A case study on a sexy app, turn extension: Editor’s note: Dan Kantor is the CEO behind the awesome E… http: …
Categories: Music Rec
HTML5 and the Write-Once, Run Anywhere Dream
Thu, 06/24/2010 - 19:39Thanks Andrew. I read this article about a speech Lars Rasmussen gave in 2005 and it always stuck with me. Lars created Google Maps and now Wave. This piece of advice is right on - The only way to transform the Web into the desktop platform of the future is to fully embrace bleeding edge features in browser software.
Dan Kantor wrote a piece for Ajaxian about the “write once, run anywhere” dream and how HTML5 is a big step along that path.
Dan’s execution on Extension.fm feels like he reached two years into the future, and pulled an app back in time to show us all what the future of web development could be. In doing so, the tradeoff Dan made was to restrict compatibility to Chrome-only until other browsers become more standards-compliant.
The article is a great case study on the state of modern browsers, and you can see visions of the future peeking out. Read Dan’s piece first, and then revisit a true classic: Joel on Software’s “Strategy Letter IV” from September 2007. Go read the whole thing, but for people with no attention span, here’s the best part (long excerpt I know, but necessary — and funny):
Imagine, for example, that you’re Google with GMail, and you’re feeling rather smug. But then somebody you’ve never heard of, some bratty Y Combinator startup, maybe, is gaining ridiculous traction selling NewSDK, which combines a great portable programming language that compiles to JavaScript, and even better, a huge Ajaxy library that includes all kinds of clever interop features. Not just cut ‘n’ paste: cool mashup features like synchronization and single-point identity management (so you don’t have to tell Facebook and Twitter what you’re doing, you can just enter it in one place). And you laugh at them, for their NewSDK is a honking 232 megabytes … 232 megabytes! … of JavaScript, and it takes 76 seconds to load a page. And your app, GMail, doesn’t lose any customers.
But then, while you’re sitting on your googlechair in the googleplex sipping googleccinos and feeling smuggy smug smug smug, new versions of the browsers come out that support cached, compiled JavaScript. And suddenly NewSDK is really fast. And Paul Graham gives them another 6000 boxes of instant noodles to eat, so they stay in business another three years perfecting things.
And your programmers are like, jeez louise, GMail is huge, we can’t port GMail to this stupid NewSDK. We’d have to change every line of code. Heck it’d be a complete rewrite; the whole programming model is upside down and recursive and the portable programming language has more parentheses than even Google can buy. The last line of almost every function consists of a string of 3,296 right parentheses. You have to buy a special editor to count them.
And the NewSDK people ship a pretty decent word processor and a pretty decent email app and a killer Facebook/Twitter event publisher that synchronizes with everything, so people start using it.
Dan’s not building an SDK obviously, but he is building a killer app that is an example of what’s possible on the HTML5 platform with a few browser hooks from Chrome. Dan’s case study exemplifying the power of HTML5 is, for me, a clear look at the future of app development and a great example of where Joel’s NewSDK revolution will come from.
Funny enough, in 2007 Joel assumed that NewSDK would be a private company (like the Win32 API of the 90s) but in its seems that the outcome may be a open standards body, the W3C, with the HTML5 development largely led by Ian Hickson of Google. So, Joel nailed the evolution (jury’s still out technically, but I think Joel nailed it), but he missed on the players.
Categories: Music Rec
Nice to have an HD camera in your pocket at all times. Randomly walked by Grownups premiere....
Thu, 06/24/2010 - 01:06Nice to have an HD camera in your pocket at all times. Randomly walked by Grownups premiere. http://yfrog.us/jmxxoz
Categories: Music Rec
Haven’t figured out how to upload in HD yet. Youtube and Twitter compress before upload....
Thu, 06/24/2010 - 01:06Haven’t figured out how to upload in HD yet. Youtube and Twitter compress before upload. Don’t make me have to sync video off first. Ugh!
Categories: Music Rec
Been seeing some CDLP ads show up in SAI’s RSS feed. Very nice to see. CDLP is still amazing....
Wed, 06/23/2010 - 07:52Been seeing some CDLP ads show up in SAI’s RSS feed. Very nice to see. CDLP is still amazing. www.spinner.com/new-releases
Categories: Music Rec
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-6-20)
Tue, 06/22/2010 - 20:54My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-6-20):
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Categories: Music Rec
Awesome night of wine and conversation. Thanks @EdGrapeNutZimm!
Tue, 06/22/2010 - 04:34Awesome night of wine and conversation. Thanks @EdGrapeNutZimm!
Categories: Music Rec
Mandatory FIOS installation in my building. Had to empty all my closets. Guys drilling holes like...
Mon, 06/21/2010 - 23:12Mandatory FIOS installation in my building. Had to empty all my closets. Guys drilling holes like crazy. Psyched for 25mb up/down!
Categories: Music Rec
RT @extensionfm: New Release: Library Search http://bit.ly/9a7erd
Mon, 06/21/2010 - 23:12RT @extensionfm: New Release: Library Search http://bit.ly/9a7erd
Categories: Music Rec
New Release: Library Search
Mon, 06/21/2010 - 22:36We just released 1.4.7 to the extension gallery. This new release adds the ability to search within your library.
When you are in the Library tab, a new search box on the top right will show up. The search works as you type. You can search for song name, artist, album or site. The search works in both List view and Grid view.
In addition, we just opened a UserVoice account to more efficiently gather your feedback. You can find it at support.extension.fm. Please don’t be shy about leaving feature requests as well as bugs. Most of what we do is based on your feedback. The more, the better!
Categories: Music Rec
Only my close friends call me editDan!
Mon, 06/21/2010 - 19:05Only my close friends call me editDan!
Categories: Music Rec
Extension.fm turns us into smart spiders
Sat, 06/19/2010 - 16:43Whitney posted this as a comment to an earlier post I had the other day about comments funny enough. I thought it deserved it’s own attention.
It’s a wonderful description of the power and potential of our portfolio company ExFM.
In one sense, ExFM turns us into smart spiders. Each of us is going out there and actively crawling the web in search of music that interests us. Just by sitting back and watching what its users do, ExFM is searching out the incredibly odd musical corners of the Web: who’s posting psychedelic Swedish drone folk tracks? ExFM knows, and it knows who reblogged that track and who listened to it, too.
But because we’re *smart* spiders, ExFM can start to assign significance to the fact that you and I share some sites but not others. They can assign significance to the fact that a particular song is posted by ten of the sources in your library when normally there’s very little overlap. They can take this huge web of music being posted online and use [in the best possible sense of the word] you, me, and the rest of the user community as guides for understanding what’s happening and why.
Categories: Music Rec
Music off, TV sound on for the fourth quarter. I guess I’m rooting for the Celtics. Not sure.
Fri, 06/18/2010 - 05:54Music off, TV sound on for the fourth quarter. I guess I’m rooting for the Celtics. Not sure.
Categories: Music Rec
