$5.03 later I have 17 DRM-free tracks thanks to the new iTunes update today.

Hope this is a sign of things to come.

Having been a listener to podcasts since Adam Curry released his initial version of the podcatcher AppleScripts with Dave Weiner, it has been amazing to watch the content explode.

Lately though, some podcasts have lost their appeal, like This Week in Tech and MacBreak Weekly with Leo Laporte.

Today, another MacBreak Weekly rambled on for an hour, with little to talk about other than arguing over last weeks Apple Stock saga and droning on about over-hype of the iPhone.

Leo stated for the second week in a row that there just wasn’t anything to talk about.

Nothing to talk about? Hmm, nothing happened in two weeks?

How about..

• New MacBooks
• Road testing Adobe CS3
• Apple and AT&T’s preparations for the launch of the iPhone
• Falling journalistic standards in the online Mac new community
• Unmasking of Fake Steve or Not?
• WWDC and Leopard’s imminent beta release
• Apple’s new One-on-One training program
• Announcement of Starcraft 2 for Mac by Blizzard!
• John Gruber’s excellent commentary on the stocks, security, and all thing Mac.
• Apple stretching 10.4 to 10.4.10

Those are off the top of my head. A few minutes on Google, PRWeb and other sites and I would find another 10-12 topics for discussion in the last two weeks.

Let me say, I LOVE listening to Leo, Merlin and company every week. Have done so for two years in one form or another.

It just feels like they show up with little preparation lately, and today for the first time I deleted the podcast before the end.

Perhaps these guys have a few too many irons in the fire to produce the quality they once did.

I can only hope they refocus on quality.

For more than a year a project has rolled around in the back of my mind. It is a simple online commerce tool with a deeply pragmatic attitude.

A little over 2 weeks ago, the last pieces fell into place mentally, so I dedicated some precious weekend time to working on it.

The results are nearing completion, but I wanted to post some thoughts on the fundamental pieces of online commerce.

Today, Sale Tax, or how I learned to give up.

The internet knows no boundaries, well except for the great firewall of China, and possibly some middle eastern countries.

Yet, in this century, why is there not a publicly available web service that provides the sale tax calculations for businesses?

Not, some fee-based for-pofit business that charges small businesses prior to them ever making a single sale.

But, the online equivalent to the sale tax charts handed out by every tax authority.

If governments wants businesses to charge sales tax online, they need to modernize their processes and keep up with online commerce.

The same can be said of shipping companies, but that is another post.

This type of move could get me to buy from Dell. I would love to have an decently supported linux laptop, but haven’t been thrilled with any existing offerings.

This is an interesting move by Dell and speaks to the strides that open source is making in the OS space. This morning on the Direct2Dell blog, the company announced a partnership with Canonical to offer the Ubuntu distro of Linux on select machines. (Via jkOnTheRun.)

Unfortunately, nothing is available today. Companies need to capitalize on the speed of blog news by having products available when they make these announcements. Its guaranteed to drive sales when they do.