So long, Netscape

Netscape Navigator got the axe yesterday.

You can still download it, presumably forever. But AOL, the browser’s latest owner, announced it will no longer provide support or security patches after February.

It was a good run.

SL came up through Mosaic, Netscape’s predecessor. (After Tandy, Commodore, Microsoft DOS and Compuserve, a Web browser running on a Windows PC was a Big Deal.)

Netscape Navigator fought a good fight. The browser innovated so often it was said to run on “Internet time,” and its market share reached 70 percent.

Last week that stood at less than a point. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, meanwhile, had 78.

No one should forget the small but valiant part that Microsoft technical writers played in the victory: Shameless in Seattle.

Can Netflix live at the PO?

There’s trouble in DVD Land.

Consumers have recently enjoyed a “competition window,” during which Netflix innovation forced a measure of civility upon Blockbuster.

It was no small thing — the Giant gave up a big piece of its model, which was to build a business on late fees. (Talk about innovation — evil geniuses worked overtime on that one.)

But the window may be closing. Why? Netflix is in trouble with the PO. Turns out the Netflix return packaging jams the postal gears.

Merely a logistical hiccup, you say?

Those paper-thin red wrappers are close to the heart of the model. That’s why postal grumbles give Netflix investors big jitters.

Will the Netflix kingdom be lost for want of a horseshoe nail? Probably not. But however the mess finally monetizes, it helps the Giant.

SL suggests watching Blockbuster closely. A backslide on the late fees is unlikely, but they may have other innovations up their sleeve. Or bankruptcy.

BTW, don’t miss the great short story Why I Live at the PO, by Eudora Welty.

Google: Get onto my cloud!

Get ready for the cloud. Cloud computing, that is.

You’re on the cloud when you run applications on a remote server, rather than on your own computer. That’s what you’re doing when you use Web mail, or post to a blog, or run a payroll on NetSuite.

But what if you could dispense with Word, Excel, and a few other stalwarts? What if all you needed was a browser and a pipe to write your next letter or pixelate your dog pictures?

What else could you do on the cloud? Plenty, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He predicts computer users will perform 90 percent of their work on remote servers in the next decades.

Preposterous, says Microsoft. We don’t need no stinking clouds. MS earns its bread (or exacts its tribute) by the software installed on half a billion individual boxes.

And the Google choirboys are like, Well, dude (they like calling Gates dude), the cloud will free up all those schmucks from the head-banging insanity of “personal computing” and instead let them concentrate on what they’re doing.

That’s because the mechanics will take place on a faraway disk drive — remote and invisible to a user whose eyes glaze over at the word “interface.” That drive will work better than your miserable one. Why? Because an army of engineers will watch  it nonstop and fix problems. Can you do that on your machine? Do you want to?

The cloud, says Google, means fast, trouble-free, transparent computing. And they’re building data centers to prove it. (Did you like the War Room in Dr. Strangelove? You should see a data center.)

And Microsoft is like Dream on, kids.

And Google is like Ever hear of economies of scale?

Microsoft gets defensive. Nobody ever got fired for recommending Microsoft!

Meanwhile MS hedges its bets, with heavy investment in its own industrial-strength data centers. If clouds are gathering, you can bet Mr. Gates wants some.

Stay tuned.

Yumberry and Glowkitty

Gifting issues this year? Can’t find the right thing for Strong Language? Here are two suggestions:

Glowkitties

Seoul, South Korea. Dec. 13. The government today announced a successful cat-cloning experiment that many scientists believe holds promise for prevention and treatment of human genetic diseases.

In a side effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark.

True? GoogleNews “korea cats glow” and see.

Any glowkitties received at SL will be forwarded interoffice to Abby, our grammar hound.

Yumberries

Believe it: China has twice as many acres in yang-mei berries as the U.S. does in apples.

Charles Stenftenagel, a garden supplies importer from Indiana, named the little gems for the western market.

Fruit vendors like it. Quoth Terry Xanthos, president of Frützzo: “Yumberry is the best name in the history of fruit.”

Read the Times article.

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Which all goes to prove that, when it comes to language, there’s never a slow news day.

Cathode rays are dark

We’re not watching TV these days.

If you think it’s because of the writers’ strike . . . you’re wrong. We detest most of their inane product and we shun it year-round.

There are a few exceptions, e.g. The Sopranos. (Of course, in a showdown with The Man, we naturally solidarize with the poor writers (Don’t see a triple entendre every day, do you?).)

Yup, that closing puntuation is correct. Poor Lynn Truss.

Our TV-starved diet, however, has a different driver: We moved recently, and we haven’t gotten around to hooking up the beast. This denial-of-service is of our own making.

We confess to a weakness, probably inherited, for a highball and a half-hour of network news. But when it comes to television, it turns out no news is good news.

You can spend 30 minutes with ABC World News Tonight, but for a far better return, spend it with the NYT or WSJ. To see why, compare a network newscast transcript to a serious newspaper. The half-hour TV “news” takes about 5 or 10 minutes to read.

The downside is missing out on some graphics and video, but you can find anything important online.

Here’s one more upside: the sudden and complete absence from your life of ABC’s Martha Raddatz, the Most Concerned Person on Earth.

In any case, Holly wired the tube to the DVD player. Had I tried it, there would have been bumps and profanity (which is usually weak language). But the Hollster made it look easy.

There’s trouble in DVD Land, by the way.

Anyway, we’ll climb back on the TV grid eventually. We’re not anti-medium. Plus we like a little Entertainment Tonight now and then (the most watched entertainment news show in the world!).

Still, we can’t help recalling a comment by Bob Keeshan, better known as Captain Kangaroo: “One of the big secrets of finding time is to not watch television.”