Saturday, March 06, 2004

TPM: "None of those 21,000 new jobs came from the private sector." 

What do you say the day after your server is off the air, and all the users are very nice about it, and the good lord smiles on you and makes the recovery go smoothly, even if it does take 12 hours most of which involves sitting on the edge of your chair imagining the headline in the Register. "A year of Harvard blogging down the drain. Winer does the honorable thing and kills himself." So here's what you say. Oh great lord. Praise Murphy. Please let us use our server one more day. We promise to be good. I'm not worthy. I'm your humble servant. It's even worse than it appears. 

Marc Canter wonders why TiVO hasn't taken off, Scoble offers an opinion. I talked with my parents about this last weekend when I was visiting NY. We were watching a movie, with commercials, if you can believe that. I kept telling them they were the only ones watching the commercials, everyone else was fast-forwarding over them (I know it's not true, but I was hyping). I said it many many times (basically every time I had to endure the insipid commercials). Like Marc, I couldn't understand why they don't get a TiVO. I offered to install it. But I don't think they understood what it does, or why they would want it. The idea is foreign. I can't get my dad to use an RSS aggregator even though he's a news junkie. No one there is scared of technology, which is Scoble's theory. It's something else. They don't see why they need it. It's funny, I've been having these talks with my parents for 25 years. First it was "Get an Apple II." My Dad, the ex-IBMer said he'd wait for IBM's. He eventually got an Apple II anyway. Then of course he got an IBM. Then Macs, laser printers, AOL, email, the Web, etc. Every time the same thing. They don't see why they need it. Then three years later they're evangelizing the tech they didn't think they needed. My mother, a psychologist, refused to accept interns who didn't use a word processor (in the mid-80s). She would arrogantly say "They're too stupid to work for me." There is an adoption curve. TiVO hasn't reached the masses yet. It surely will. The technology is just too rational for it not to. 

BTW, last year when my Dad was sick I installed 802.11 without asking anyone. Saved a bit of trouble there.  

Ethan Zuckerman: "I am, of course, not advocating electronic trespass or any other illegal activity." 

Dowbrigade: "As soon as we are told we cannot do something we want to do it." 

The weather in Boston is notable for its mildness. Read that twice. I went for a walk early this morning, and there was the unmistakeable smell of New England summer. It's weird. Last year at this time I was still in California, getting ready for the movers, and then to drive across the country. When I got here there was still a month or so of bitter cold. So winter isn't over yet, unless this year is very strange. But it feels like it is.  

David Galbraith is quick to find fault with RSS.  

Richard MacManus: "There is no End User." 

Phil Ringnalda: "Reading in an aggregator isn't the only use for RSS." This sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure it's true (in a pragmatic sense, of course). Initially in 1999, there were two ways to use RSS, Netscape's and ours, and the two were quite different, but both were aggregators. It's true that the word syndication originally comes form the idea of including the content of a syndicated news source in another publication. But that really has fallen off. That's the "dark side" of syndication, as explained in this essay from 1999. People make fun of Jakob Nielsen, but he's really a very smart guy. He figured out the dark-side-light-side thing. I know a lot of people feel the same way about me, they would rather figure this stuff out for themselves, so if you're like that, more power to you. But if you like shortcuts, check it out.