A couple of points for today...

* Dan Wahlin's XML for ASP.NET consistently impresses me as the most solid .NET site out there. Example code is good stuff with some comments,even, and it solves new problems instead of showing you fifty ways to customize a DataGrid. Wahlin's site often shows how to utilize web services and XML routines that were originally designed for Java (or another non-.NEt lang) in ASP.NET, which is exactly what people should be doing -- looking outside of the Microsoft box. He's also quite prompt about returning emails in my experience, even for relatively trite requests. Good site.

* Thomson Multimedia's royality scheme for mp3 applications has to have helped give mp3 it's "underground" status. You can't even write an mp3 player (we're not even talking an mp3 encoder; this is just for a player (though encoders have the same minimum)) without shelling out $15,000 a year in royalties. Is it any surprise people have been releasing mp3 apps for free and keeping them open source -- both so that Thomson has nobody to go after? I wanted to make a simple shareware mp3 player in REALbasic for Mac Classic and Windows that has smart playlists like iTunes 3 (it's just a few SQL statements and routines). Forget it. Might make it freeware, providing I still make one (probably not -- REALbasic with "Access-like" database support is an extra $200, though it strikes me that I could still do it for Windows in VB 6, but how many Windows users are upset they don't get iTunes 3? :^D).