I've playing with the nightly build of Songbird 0.6 pre today and am extremely impressed with how much faster it (finally) is with a large library on XP. And let me emphasize large library, as it exceeds 30k mp3s or the like.

Suddenly its running comparably with iTunes and WMP in XP and XULRunner plugins support the annoyances that iTunes lacks (a Now Playing list, anyone?!?). I realize that most of you reading are not first-adopters and would discourage you from testing the software, as it is still in early alpha status, but for my friends who are always playing with new software, please check it out.

For those of you Twitter users out there, I imagine that you've been having spotty network problems all night. Turns out that they know about it and posted a short blog post about it here:

For those of you who have spotted intermittent errors tonight, we're working on it. We restarted a database that normally restarts very quickly without resulting in any site degradation. Tonight, that routine changed—it's taking a long time to restart which is causing intermittent 500 errors for some web visitors. We're bringing it up to speed now.

The errors seem to pop up when you try to visit a profile page (ex. my Twitter profile) versus the main Twitter page.

And for those of you unfamiliar with what Twitter is, just know that it is a 140-character max way of constantly answering the question, "what are you doing right now?"

Did you know that today is RSS Day? Do you even know what that means?

For what it's worth, you should check out Google Reader if you haven't already. And for a better summary of what RSS Day means, you can visit RSSDay.org. Here's a quick snippet of what it is:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.

The main benefit of RSS is that it enables people to stay connected with their favorite websites without having to visit them. Once you subscribe to a particular RSS feed, you will automatically receive updates from the website that publishes the feed, whenever they release new content. The video below illustrates the process.

Do you RSS? If you do, how many websites do you have in your reader? I just checked in Google Reader, and there are 194 feeds. And that is after I cut it down a few months back.

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Have you ever bought something and then received a "complimentary [fill in the blank]" that you really didn't need, or even want? I understand when it's something that truly is helpful, like when you buy a can of paint and they give you stir sticks and maybe even a throw-a-way paint brush to go with it. But sometimes the "extras" are annoying as heck, like when you buy a computer and it comes with twenty-two trial versions of programs you'll never use. Which brings me to my primary issue:

I do not want or need any software pre-installed on a USB drive.

For whatever reason, this company's software is preinstalled on most USB drives out there today. For a while, you couldn't even uninstall the software until Best Buy's Geek Squad complained and forced them to make an uninstall script. Even today, even if you format the drive, the software still remains on a separate part of the drive. The fact that you have to dig up the Uninstall app, just to get rid of this "free with purchase" software, is about as annoying as it gets.

So to all of the companies/stores/whatevers out there, only give me extra when it's something I might want.

One of my favorite WDFN sports radio personalities, Bob "Wojo" Wojonowski, often yells "Gimmick!" at various headlines, celebrity news, and sports trades. I hope Bob yelled out when he heard that Apple released their web browser for Windows.

Frankly, my thoughts are that it is a lot of nothing. For many it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, simply because of the company name that developed it. For others (mindless Microsoft cronies) it is a spawn of Satan, never to be used. Then there is me, Mr. Cynical. I don't like Apple or Windows. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are on my LeBron James list. If I met them, I would treat them casually and coolly, not fawning over them or giving them undue respect. Simply a polite hello is all I would extend. But as I was saying...

The Safari-for-Windows experiment is a sham. It's not super fast. They claim it's much faster than Firefox and Opera, but I've yet to see it load pages any faster than any other browser on my machines. It's not super cool. If you like the iTunes style and format, you'll probably enjoy Safari. Personally I think iTunes is the biggest waste of space since Courtney Love so I'm not falling over everyone to download Safari.

A gimmick is when you release a device that will only use Web 2.0 applications to protect your slow-as-crap-EDGE-data-network iPhone. Boo that. Sure, Apple wants developers to build Web 2.0 applications, and in order to run them on the iPhone, they have to work in Safari. So they need it to test it.

Apple is touting that they had over 1 million downloads in two days. Great. I'm happy for you. It'd be nice to get a read in two months of how many people are using it. That will be the real test.

Safari on Windows. Yawn.

Yesterday I received two e-mails regarding Beta Releases.

Around 10:00 am, I received an e-mail from Microsoft welcoming me to the Beta Test program for Windows Home Server. This follows my request to join the program after seeing Colin's successful test and review of said product.

Around 4:00 pm, I received an e-mail from PDA Performance announcing the access to their public beta of their software for Palm called Saguaro. This looks absolutely fantastic. Also some comment was in the e-mail about "if you send us your comments, we'll give you the full version when it is done." Heck yeah.

I'm looking forward to Beta testing both of these products when McGiles and I come back from Atlanta on Sunday. If all goes well, I'll have some thoughts to share throughout the week.