What is it with perpetual betas? Thunderbird just offered a new release: 0.4. Zero-point-four? This is a full-featured, functional mail client. How does it just get to be 0.4?
Before you answer that, consider that Google News — a service used for the last year by millions of people every day — still has a “Beta” tag on its logo.
Why do development teams do this? Is it so they can blow off bugs by saying, “Yeah, well, that’s still in beta” or “Well, it’s not even a 1.0 release yet.” I don’t get it.
For Some Technology Companies, 'Beta' Becomes a Long-Term Label: Here's an article about the perpetual beta periods surrounding new services these days. Few people would fly on an airline that advertised its planes had untested engines, or swallow a pill from a drug company that admitted the side effects…
Google takes 'beta' off desktop search: What? A Google tool coming out of beta? How unlike them. The SDK sounds very, very promising. Google on Monday plans to introduce a full version of its desktop-search software, with a developer's kit and support for Firefox and Netscape Web browsers. The Mountain View,…
Yahoo! Search Web Services Launch!: Yahoo! has released their Web services API, and Zawodny has a great collection of links. I was reading somewhere else too that pointed out the fact that Google's Web service API has stagnated horribly since it was released, which is true — what have they done…
MSN Search — More Useful Everyday: You can try out the results of MSN's search crawler here. It's still in beta, but what isn't?
About Google Print (BETA): Google is not screwing around these days. They're doing about a new feature a week. On Google Print pages, we provide links to some popular book sellers that may offer the full versions of these publications for sale. Book seller links are not paid for by…
FeedDemon IS golden!: Here something in complete opposition to what I wrote yesterday about perpetual betas. Yep, it's midnight, and I've locked the FeedDemon 1.0 code. Expect to see it for sale early next week! So, if Nick Bradbury is willing to slap a 1.0 label on FeedDemon after several months work,…
"1.0" means the product has a fixed API and that other people can start writing products that use it. "Beta" and "pre-release" products don't guarentee compatibility from one day to the next.
For example, for Thunderbird, it means that skins can expect to break as new features are added.
