Thursday, February 12, 2004

PC World: "Microsoft is investigating rumors that the secret code underlying its Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems has leaked out and is available on the Internet, a company spokesperson confirms." 

Notes from tonight's Berkman meeting. 

Dinner tonight is at the Cambridge Commons, 8:45PM. 

blog is the OED's word of the day. 

Steven Vore reports that Pepsi Blue has been cancelled. In a way that's bad news, but I liked the bottle more than the drink, and since this is the Web, the bottle is still here.  

Andrew Grumet: "I can't believe that Google is letting Mark Pilgrim do their talking for them." 

Don Hopkins pulls quotes from my talk at Microsoft on Monday. 

After I appeared on stage with then Apple CEO Gil Amelio in 1997 one of the Apple people in the audience asked if hell had frozen over too. So when I saw that Shelley Powers planned to comment on a probably very sexist picture that Marc Canter had posted on his blog and then pulled, I figured she was going to trash Marc. There was a predictable chorus saying Marc did bad and offended lots of people, and even though I haven't seen the picture, I can believe it would be offensive, knowing Marc. But even more offensive, vastly more offensive, are the niggly comments from supposed blogging thought leaders like Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow (and others I don't know). Don't you get it that the power to offend is just as sacred as the power to please? In fact, even more so, because people are always trying to shout down the person with an original idea, because they're easy to shout at (they're usually alone). One of my best friends asks if I am scared of something and when I say yes, she says "Okay, cool, that's what we'll do." If you're scared of Marc's picture, or more likely, scared of the disapproval of an alpha male or female, you become the subject of discussion, and that's right, and mazel tov to Shelley for pointing there instead of the predictable place (a misbehaving male). She goes on to say that the best thing that could happen to many bloggers is to be cut off from their communities. I completely agree. Now I get to ask, has hell frozen over too?  

Here's the picture that offended so many of the leading bloggers. Man these people are seriously uptight. Marc says he never pulled it. Right on. 

NY Times: "As long as Senator John Kerry faces even nominal competition, President Bush's advisers will have a harder time getting equal attention for their political message." 

Paul Boutin mourns the passing of WebMonkey. 

Guardian story about Chris Lydon and audible weblogs. 

My talk at Microsoft Research on Monday is now available on the Web. 

At the end of my talk, Shira Silberman, a Waggenerette, came up and asked for a feature. She said -- "You know how, when you're looking at a book on Amazon, they say 'People who read this book also read these books.' How about doing that for RSS?" I thought about it for a second and realized we could do it with the data we're accumulating on Share Your OPML. So I dialed up Andrew on my cell, passed the phone to Shira, and asked her to tell him what she wanted. Today, we have the feature. Demo: People who subscribe to Scobleizer also subscribe to.  

News.Com ran a perfectly awful food fight about RSS, again. I wish they'd give a damn about users, and stop putting so much energy into Mark Pilgrim. What has he done for anyone lately? Anyway, here's the only question that matters. Dear wheel reinventers. Please explain exactly what your format does that RSS doesn't and why it matters to users? If the answer is nothing, then just support RSS and let's compete at delighting users.