Monday, December 15, 2003

Tomorrow UserLand will announce its new management team. Sales and marketing, a CTO. Seasoned veterans. Lots of experience. A phone that's answered. Updates coming for Manila and Radio. I'm chairman, founder, board member, user, developer, stock holder, friend, fan and cheerleader. Jake and Lawrence are psyched. I was going to send emails to people with a sneak preview, but decided that it was best to sneak it on the Web, because I'd forget to send an email to someone. So please join me in supporting the new team and wishing them the very best. Tomorrow is a big day for everyone in the community. We get a fresh start. Let's bring back the magic. Still diggin!  

Steve Gillmor: "Hi ho hi ho disruptively we go." 

Recalling that my weblog posts are just that, and not spec text, Steve Gillmor wonders if I insist on full text in RSS items. Not only do I, but if anyone cares what the spec says, it's pretty clear. An item can either represent a newspaper-like story, or it can contain the full text of the item. There's nothing inbetween. Steve says that enclosure is a Dave-authored extension. Not so. It's a core RSS 2.0 element. It was co-designed by Adam Curry. I still love you Steve, even though you asked if I was the Jack Valenti of RSS. For one thing, Valenti is a tiny little fella and I'm 6-2 and big. And when the guys in Prince Edward Island complained that my blog was in their way, I said I'd knock it down myself, and I did. Look at all that white space. I know you love it Steve, you think I'm evolving to be RSS-only. You never know, that day could come. Maybe sooner than you think. 

How to deal with slashes that appear in category names in RSS feeds? I had the problem myself, when I named a category Homilies/Mottos. Tim Bray agrees that slashes should be encoded.  

Lance Knobel comments on the Dean foreign policy team. 

Jason Lefkowitz is fighting back against Patriot Act expansion. 

Desktop Dean is a "free Dean for America mini-RSS aggregator." 

Suggestion: Include my Dean feed in the default subs. 

NY Times: "Baghdad is a place that feeds on rumors." 

Redhead: "I'm hoping my voice will reach South Carolina." 

Ed Cone: "If you don't need to fight a war, but you fight it anyway and win it and thus remove a really bad guy from power, have you done the right thing?" 

Scoble is right, if people were paying attention, they'd be concerned at how IBM and Google are throwing their weight around in syndication space. And if Microsoft were doing what they're doing, there would be a holy jihad. Technology companies have always acted this way, and I guess they always will. I remember well how IBM screwed up SOAP, and the pattern is totally repeating. The same thing will happen with RSS, unless users, content publishers and independent developers take an interest. RSS is definitely good enough and growing at a huge rate. There's still hope that the proponents of Atom will see the wisdom of not forking and building compatibly off the RSS base. And there's hope that users will act in their own interest.  

Boston Globe: "A wonderful mix of rain, snow, sleet, rain." 

NY Times: "When this project is successful," he said. "people will say, 'A bicycle with Internet access -- so what?'"