So the IETF has decided to use Google/Doubleclick's SPDY as the basis of HTTP 2.0. The rationale for this change is that increased network speeds are now limited by network latency. One of the interesting comments to the discussion was from Facebook, which admitted they've reworked their content delivery infrastructure and practices to gain any value from SPDY/HTTP 2.0.

Why would they have to rework their infrastructure? Because the best practices for web development have been developed to deliver content to desktop browsers. These best practices are to minimize HTTP requests via asset concatenation ...

So I actually snuck a new version of Songbird for Mac OSX PPC up to the server about a month ago. The dmg includes both Songbird and some of the extensions, including a working version of the Shoutcast plugin. At times I've had some instability with this version, so as always be sure to backup your configuration inside ~/Library/Application Support/Songbird2. (This directory is from memory, since I've mothballed my PPC Mac for the moment.)

Songbird_1.10.0a_macosx-ppc.dmg

Give me some feedback, if you use it. I'll probably turn on the Mac once in a ...

I haven't given up on updating the Songbird for Mac PPC. Holiday season is extended on this side of the planet to include Chinese New Year, which is more about family dinners and visiting relatives than it is about fireworks and lion dances. It's also been chilly, so I haven't been sitting in the unheated computer room working at my Mac. (On the plus side, the server's CPUs were reporting temps under 20C with no special cooling or air con.)

I've been testing some recent nightly builds and the best news is that the Shoutcast ...

One major problem with tech journalism is that most of it is based on regurgitating marketing materials and press releases. Microsoft for decades has spent huge truckloads of cash on marketing campaigns to burnish their image, from traditional advertising to astroturf comment campaigns across tech journalism boards. Being a prime source of tech advertising dollars, it was rare to find a PC magazine that was willing to bite the hand that fed it and independent commentary was flooded with astroturf. (The Natalie Portman/grits trolls weren't the only reason Slashdot introduced its moderation system.)

So as expected the comments ...

As promised here's the nightly snapshot of Songbird. Remember to copy or duplicate ~/Library/Application Support/Songbird2 to backup your old preferences in case you want to downgrade to the 1.4 version later.

Songbird_1.9.0a-0_macosx-ppc.dmg
md5 checksum for Songbird_1.9.0a-0_macosx-ppc.dmg
zipped set of base extensions for this version of Songbird

My apologies for going dark on Songbird PPC builds. I had to rehack the qtwrapper for gstreamer to make it work again and then I was having major failures with the move from the 1.9.0 to 1.9.2 xulrunner. But I've got a mostly working build up and running, which I'll release to the world shortly. I just have to zip up the extensions built for this version and load it up to the server.

I haven't gotten the Shoutcast Extension to actually play music, though it loads the station lists. I haven't ...

So the Songbird project released a new version based on the 1.7 branch. That means I'll have to download that branch and do some testing of compatability between the trunk support libraries and the 1.7.x Songbird code before I can release a new PPC Songbird to the world.

I currently have a mostly working trunk build (1.9alpha), but it's really not quite ready for prime time due to some issues with importing songs in to the library. I also have to do some work on the gstreamer qtwrapper audio decoders. By default the code ...

So I haven't booted back in to Tiger to test 10.4 compatability yet, but it runs fine on my 10.5.8 box. This will require a G4 or G5 as I've enabled altivec optimizations during the build.

The build reports itself as 1.4.3, which just means it comes from the 1.4 branch sometime after the 1.4.2 release was made. There may be a later build that is an official 1.4.3 and we'll get to that when and if it happens.

Download it, test it and let me know ...

So like every good Mac fanboi, I follow MacUpdate/Versiontracker for the latest software updates. So when I saw an update for Livestation (a peer-to-peer TV app for watching live broadcasts from various stations) I was ready to download. But according to MacUpdate the 3.0 version of LiveTracker was Intel only. Lots of software producers have gone this way as they drop support for PPC, but I decided to trudge over to livestation.com and check out the situation for myself.

Loh and behold there is a new 3.0 version of the software available. This normally wouldn't ...

So I've spent a couple of painful days booted in to 10.4 to rebuild the flac, ogg, vorbis, theora, neon, shout2, gstreamer, gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good, gst-plugins-bad, and gst-plugins-ugly and hoped they would produce a 10.4 safe backend. I must have been a good boy, because they do work on my version of Tiger. While the rest of the world is bravely moving forward with Snow Leopard *evil eye for the Transmission project*, I'm letting y'all squeeze a few more days from these PPC boxes of ours.

There is one huge bug that I haven't gotten ...