eBay is branching out to provide auction services to other Web sites. I’m surprised they hadn’t done this already. I haven’t registered for the program, but the brief information on this page seems to indicate that they’re using some sort of XML-RPC protocol. It’s unknown whether this protocol is based on any written standard.

Tara “ResearchBuzz” Calishain sent me a link to this article about eroding support for UCITA, the large scale effort by software companies to get laws passed that allow them to stick it to their customers.

For more scoop on the problems with Netscape 6, check out the reader reports page at Macintouch. Brutal.

I was so depressed by the general lack of quality of Netscape 6 that I went and downloaded the latest daily build of Mozilla just to make sure that I wasn’t crazy in evangelizing their work for the past few years. Turns out I was right, the latest daily builds of Mozilla are much, much better than Netscape 6. I don’t know what AOL did to screw things up, but if you want to use Netscape, you’ll be much happier using whatever has washed over then transom from the Mozilla project than Netscape 6.

Jordan K. Hubbard’s review of Mac OS X is the one I’ve been waiting for.

(Speculation about the outcome of the Presidential election has been removed in light of new developments.)

Anyone messed around with OpenCOLA? It’s one of those utopian, pie in the sky concepts that venture capitalists dump money into even though chances are it will never really work at all. I’m not being cynical — when these sorts of projects do work out, they change the world. I find them fascinating.

Yahoo is considering charging its users for some services (the article doesn’t mention which ones, probably because Yahoo didn’t tell them). This would force me to make a tough decision. I use Yahoo Address Book and Messenger extensively, and Yahoo Calendar to a lesser extent. Would I be willing to pay for them? Probably, if the price were right. I use them because I can easily access my data from home or work or vacation, not because they’re free.

ICANN has agreeed to allow registrations in 7 new top level domains (out of 44 proposed TLDs). In my opinion, the choices are pretty lame. They put off a tough fight over the .web TLD by not accepting anyone’s bid to open it. In a typical big business versus the little guy fight, a consortium of sleazy companies operating under the moronic name Afilias tried to obtain .web, even though one of the other bidders, Image Online, has been registering domains in .web for the past few years without the support of ICANN, Network Solutions, or really anyone else. The money guys at Afilias did manage to snag .info. They’ll be allowing an early land rush for trademark holders before they open up the domain registry to the public.

I absolutely love the Daily Howler.