After years of sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom, Apple Computer and Apple Corps are finally working together. Rumors abound that a deal is close to completion allowing iTunes to be the exclusive online distributor of Beatles music. 

Dear Santa -

You know that quad core 64-bit Pentium with 8 gigs of RAM and a 400G hard drive I asked for? Yeah, with the quad firewire interface and twin 27 inch monitors. That's the one.

Nevermind... Could I have one of these instead?

I've been thinking about how to do this for ages. Finally did it. You'll find some new stuff in the menus called 'Sharing'. No, it isn't about that half of a ham sandwich you're having for lunch. 

Over the past few months you've gained the ability to subscribe to various information sources and recently to configure what features you desire from the website. I mentioned this ability months ago in my grand vision - kinda' like myspace on acid. Well I finally finished the thing which takes that vision and turns it into reality. When you create these private views of the website, it's like having your own private Content Management System (CMS). In fact that's the way I like to describe it to people. There are lots of folks peddling multi-user community CMS's. Yada, yada. But nobody that I'm aware of is selling or even working on a 'personal CMS as part of a multi-user community'.

So what's this 'Sharing' all about? It's simple. You spend the effort to configure your personal content system whatever way you want. Then you can turn around and let other people use it. 

See with MySpace, you get a page that's all yours to mess with. Some of the other community sites give you a few more things. But this let's you build your own complete community site from within a broader community platform. You can make this look like an auto racing site and when people visit your shared page, and then any other page on the site, that's what they'll see. You're in total control until they go elsewhere or turn it off. You control the menus, you control the skin, and you control all of the information sources for your space. They can be your info sources, they can be my info sources, or pull in whatever feeds you want from anywhere. Want your audience to have mail? Chat? And discuss the Confederate War? Two minutes. Photo dating website? Two minutes.  

Rule #45:

Don't be the last one left at the table for company dinners. That means you're the one who is going to pick up the bill. In this case, it was arguably one of the most expensive Italian restaurants in Santa Monica. 35 people, ordering dozens of bottles of nice wine at about $300 a pop. Filet mignon was the budget entree, and you can always tell the price structure because it is inversely proportional to the amount of food you actually get; and directly proportional to the amount of colored squiggles the chef decorates each plate with. I made certain to exit before the tab came due. I've been on the losing side of that battle more than I care to discuss...

So I'm looking through the latest Rolling Stone and they've got an article on the new Silicon Valley billionaires. Mark Zuckerberg is one of them. Started a company called 'Facebook'. I remember him. Came in to my music store one day after the n'th round of VC funding and decided it was time to buy a guitar. Nothing fancy, and nothing so cheap it's pathetic. Just something decent for learning guitar at home. I ended up selling him a $300 guitar and a $100 amp. We talked a bit about instant riches and dot-com wealth. Been there, done that.

Anyway, in the Rolling Stone article, he's mentioning that he doesn't really care that his company might be worth billions. He mentioned that upon becoming somewhat important, he made the outlandish purchase of  a $100 amp...

So there you go. I know it's weak, but it counts for something.

This scrolled by the other day on a slashdot link. I highly recommend having a look...

http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/