Survival is on our mind this week, as Geoff Duncan relates how his broadband provider abruptly went dark, and how you can live through a similar event in today’s world of uncertain ISPs. Plus, Adam looks at why online grocer Webvan failed to spot its own rotted fruit before ceasing operations. In the news, we note the releases of Panorama 4.0 and Mailsmith 1.1.7, and celebrate Adam’s third place rank in the 2001 MDJ Power 25.
TidBITS Publisher Ranks Third in MDJ Power 25 -- In the now-annual survey of industry insiders coordinated by Macintosh publication MDJ, TidBITS publisher Adam C
ProVUE Ships Panorama 4.0 Database -- Longtime Macintosh developer ProVUE Development has released Panorama 4.0, the latest version of its RAM-based database application
Mailsmith 1.1.7 Available -- Bare Bones Software has released Mailsmith 1.1.7, a small update to its email client application. Version 1.1.7 improves support for SMTP AUTH (a protocol which enables validated users to send mail even if they aren't connecting to their server from a trusted address), the capability to change the ports Mailsmith uses for POP and SMTP (useful if you're trying to tunnel via SSH), as well as changes which let Mailsmith function better under Mac OS X's Classic environment
Last week's demise of Webvan came as absolutely no surprise to Tonya and me, since we'd been Webvan customers - for a while - after their acquisition of HomeGrocer a year ago
Since 1996, I've connected my home network to the Internet via an ISDN line, making me an early adopter of the "dedicated Internet access from home" concept