Every Monday through Friday-ish, we post a new Monkey Bite on our frontdoor for your edification. This could be a little news item, a link to a useful site, a handy coding tip, or just some random piece of information we think might be of interest to Web developers. Expired Monkey Bites are stored right here, growing tastier and more sophisticated with each passing day.
This month's Monkey Bites:
10/30/01
Last week, we all reeled with enthusiasm over Apple's hip new iPod MP3 player. But
where's the hot new audio device for the PC? Introducing Imation's RipGO!, a mini CD-R burner and digital audio
player. The unit, which is already the subject of a fair amount of hype, plays MP3 and WMA files, and it records any
digital file, music or otherwise, onto teeny tiny 80mm CD-Rs. Cute!
10/25/01
Is it the end of DOS? It is if you ask Microsoftie Bill Gates, who
declared the death of the command
line at the launch for the company's new Windows XP
operating system. XP, which the industry hopes will
reinvigorate the sagging PC market, signals a new world
of digital music, streaming video and interactive Web applications for the
desktop masses. Thankfully, somewhere, Zork still
lives.
10/23/01
So Apple didn't go with "Apple Pi" or "Apple Sauce," as I so humbly suggested last week. (Whatever!) No, it christened its new hand-held MP3 player
"iPod" — now, how is that punny? It also chose the strangely ESL tagline, "1,000 songs in your pocket." (The "or are you just happy to see me?" part is silent.)
10/22/01
Rumor has it that next week Apple is releasing a "music-type" digital recorder
/player. Hm, wonder what they're going to call it? The "Apple Sauce"? "Apple Pie
"? Oooh, or maybe just "Apple 3.14"!
10/16/01
Webmonkey Jason loves
his new Tivo, but he
wishes it had a bigger hard drive. See, he wants to record all of the new Survivor Africa episodes and still have room
for the occasional Black Adder rerun. What's a Monkey to do? Hack that
puppy, of course.
10/15/01
The latest AIBO Entertainment Robots, Latte and Macaron, can
chat,
sing, and
hum thanks in most part to Japanese electronic musician Nobukazu Takemura, the man behind the bulk of the e-doggy dogs' sounds. Now there's a bark that's worth a bite! Sorry, that pun was a little ... ruff! (Please help us.)
10/07/01
The "Developers Beta" version of Winamp3 was
released this week. Download it today and play around with the newfangled, module-based "Wasabi" platform, which lets you spice up any component of the player.
10/04/01
So now you can turn that Handspring Visor into a mini-massager, simply by snapping a US$99 attachment into the Springboard slot! The perfect remedy for any tension, cramping, or strain caused by reading large bodies of text on that cute, little screen. Or making people think you're being paged. Or, you know, whatever!
10/02/01
DeskSwap, a screensaver program that trades screengrabs of your desktop with other users, offers voyeurs a titillating view of strangers' digital shenanigans and gives the rest of us an illuminating demonstration of the privacy-violating potential of file sharing.
10/01/01
Trillian is a multi-platform chat client that runs AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, and ICQ, all in one, skinnable interface. Download, install, and enjoy in under three minutes. Sorry Charlie (where "Charlie" = a Mac user), Trillian is for PC kids only — Charlies can feel the burn with Fire.
