Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

Doesn’t it seem like everything AOL touches dies? WinAmp is apparently the latest victim.

Thought it would be fun to spend a few minutes looking at what technology I’ve ‘experienced’ over my years. Considering I’m a college student, I’ve had a chance to play with some old toys:
First Computers
Well, my first computer to the surprise of most was a the IBM 5150. Yes, shocking isn’t it? [...]

After pestering AOL employees with the damn things for years, now they want to charge customers for the same pain in the butt.
I hate these stupid things. Keep them on your keychain, and you know it’s going to break, and your going to have login problems. Don’t keep it on your keychain, and [...]

Well, actually it’s well past time. Instant Messaging has all the earmarks to be the communications of the future, and it royally stinks.
Problems today:

Networks don’t communicate together, hence locking users in (MSN, AIM, Yahoo!)
Phones don’t Text Message (same as IM essentially) across networks. Barely from net to phone.
Each has proprietary ‘extras’ [...]

Well, somewhat…
CNET news is reporting that AOL is to announce IMAP access, as rumored a few months ago. This could greatly reopen the market on email. AOL has millions of customers, and has been fighting spam for sometime (Tbird has a spam filter). AOL customers
Also interesting is the announcement that [...]

It’s just wrong isn’t it?

From Netscape.com approx. 10:30 PM EST

In case the news hasn’t reached everyone yet, Netscape will update it’s release sometime early this summer, speculated to be based on Mozilla 1.7.
Personally, I wonder who will be actually coordinating this update? And secondly, why not wait until Firefox is released, and market it as Netscape 8.0 Light, and make a pro [...]

Just got this email from Netscape:

Coming Soon: All-New Netscape Internet Service!
As a Netscape Network user, we’d like to make you aware of a new Internet service Netscape will soon be releasing. With this new service you’ll enjoy unlimited internet access for a low price of $9.95 per month. Stay tuned for more details [...]

A report claims that AOL is planning to create Netscape 8.0. But it won’t be a browser. But an ISP. I’ve got some grief about this for several reasons:

Confusing to the end user. Netscape was a popular browser. Then Netscape died. “Mozilla is Netscape, just better” became the cry. [...]

This is just to great:
From page:
http://www.aim.com/help_faq/starting_out/screennames.adp?aolp=#deleteold
Q: Can I delete one of my old AIM screen names?
A: No, you cannot delete old AIM screen names at this time. However, you can prevent other users from finding one of your screen names by performing the following steps:
Windows: Select the My AIM menu, click My Options, and then [...]