E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

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Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

A Django site.
(Finally!)

Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Songbird, open source competition for iTunes

songbird Songbird, an open source would-be iTunes killer, was made available to the public for the first time today. Version 0.1.0. It builds on well-tested open source projects such as VLC and Firefox.

Since iTunes is free, and most consumers don't particularly care one way or the other about open source, the success of Songbird will hinge on the things it can offer that Apple can't or won't. The most promising one is easy access to, and integration with, non-iTunes online music retailers like eMusic.com and CDBaby.com -- and free sources like archive.org.

The servers at songbirdnest.com are slammed, so to help them out use the Coral cache to download if you want to try it.

There's an interesting interview posted at BoingBoing.

I installed it on my PowerBook via Virtual PC, but MSVCP71.DLL couldn't be found. Darn you, MSVCP71.DLL!

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
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1 comment

Some related posts: Steve Jobs to Music Industry: Drop DRM • Songbird almost-0.2 • Xiph, Ogg, FLAC, et al. • Wozniak pro-open-source comments • About.com starting to move to WordPress • Sony gets spanked • "Open Source" spreading, blurring • The fall of Sony • A modest proposal for the recording industry • Burn all JPEGs?
• Comment from Jeremy, 1 day later

Same problem on my PC running XP, hmmm.

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