Rui CarmoMelo replies to my last post (and it is a very comprehensive reply, too), but I stick to my point - I don't think any sort of IM protocol is useful for notifications when you always need something else to solve any problems that may arise, and I would never think of doing remote (i.e., off-LAN) notifications in this age of mobile phones.
(I also quite honestly don't think building bots/agents and tying them together with XMPP or any other IM protocol will ever be more than a curiosity, and will be delighted if someone proves me wrong on this one - even more so if they use SIP, which is much better suited for that too.)
What I really want is a standard, open, LAN-based notification system that is simple and works across platforms Mac, Linux (preferably with a Gnome UI) and Windows, not a mess of finicky niche standards with off-beat namespaces that need umpteen flaky server packages to be installed. And if I want to be notified of something when I'm out, there's always e-mail (working fine since RFC:822) and SMS. Or MMS, if I want to receive a CPU graph.
As to Growl's shortcomings, well... Pretty much everything he mentioned is in their TODO, so I don't think we need to worry. :)
But on with the news:
- Microsoft pursues its "resistance is futile" approach, this time in blogging. It's been years now, and they still don't know how to use HTML and keep doing IE-only stuff, so it's they who end up looking futile.
- Someone bothered to tally the expenses of the Portuguese regulator and come up with some truly alarming figures (via pfig). I wonder if there's some sort of EU budget for telecomms regulation, and how these values (which I've not confirmed) rank?
- There's a preview of KDE 3.4 being slashdotted as I type this. KDE for the Mac never did give rise to all those ports I was hoping for, so it's not really that big a news topic for me.
- Ericsson does syncing. I'm curious, since I hadn't heard of this before (at least not without some chuckling, since their desktop software was so bad I stopped installing it a couple of years ago and made do with "Send to Bluetooth...").
- I missed out on DoCoMo's shun to Microsoft earlier, but it looks like this may be the unifying factor for Symbian handsets' evolution during the next year.
- Thunderbird has reached Release Candidate status.
- Todd has been updating the Flash slideshow I use as the site banner, which means I will probably update my (sorely hacked) version soon.
- A neat article on configuring natd under Mac OS X (one of the many truly Black Arts I have never mastered back in my BSD days, come back to haunt me).
- Sony launched a music player that actually plays MP3!. Hell has frozen over, indeed. They'll be making DivX players next...