Thursday, April 15, 2004

Jeff Sandquist: How Channel 9 Uses RSS. 

We have a bit of a crisis on our hands re the webcast. We have a full RealServer license that expired yesterday (praise Murphy) and now we're 1. Trying to get Real to re-up (it was a contribution, Berkman is a non-profit) or 2. Find someone with a RealServer who can reflect for us. If you can help, please post a note here. 

SaveDisney.Com supports RSS. 

Webcast for tonight's meeting. 

Greenspun: "This assignment frightens me for a number of reasons." 

Google "takes your privacy very seriously." Then they say that they care that we trust them. I gave this some thought and realized, as often is the case, the problem is the reverse. Why doesn't Google trust us? When I try to engage them in conversation, about important stuff, they offer all kinds of defenses, ranging from accusing me of playing the age card (Michael Gartenberg witnessed this), to saying "it's an engineering issue" (an insult, it's not) and in one case, just walking away mid-sentence. This company has a problem. The debacle over the privacy of Gmail, which isn't much of a technical issue (the other guys, even bigger companies, already do what Google is talking about), is self-inflicted. This is a company that used to know how to talk with people like myself. Now they have every defense up, and the insiders don't want to let them off the hook until they show an interest in communicating. I'm with them on that. It's not personal as my fellow fellow Andrew McLoughlin claimed it was (he's now an exec at Google). It a conversation. It's the Web. Get over yourselves and work with us, and these problems will melt away and maybe we can all win. 

John Heilemann: Rewiring the War Room. 

Andrew Grossman: Privacy Advocates Wrong About Regulating Gmail. 

Draft of the handout for Saturday. I'm sure there are mistakes and omissions. What are they? 

Change in the faculty for BloggerCon. Nick Denton had a personal emergency and couldn't come up from NYC, so I asked Philip Greenspun if he would lead the discussion on Shirky's Power Law, and he agreed to do it. Although he hardly needs an introduction, Greenspun is an MIT instructor, founder of Ars Digita, airplane pilot, world traveler and blogger.  

Make BloggerCon II announcements here. 

Sunday is a free-form day, meaning Berkman doesn't have a schedule for the day, but a lot of bloggers will stay in town overnight. The weather is supposed to be fantastic. I'll be having breakfast at the Charles on Sunday. There's a Dim Sum brunch being organized. On Sunday I'm a civillian, one of the random bloggers in Cambridge. Looking forward to that feeling. From there, I have to pack for Europe and then spend the rest of April and the first part of May as a tourist in lands where their native language is not English. Hope to build many new neural pathways.  

Jeff Sharlet will lead a discussion on weblogs and religion. 

Two generals on NPR's Morning Edition agree that the entire US military is already deployed in Iraq. They say it's the smallest US military since 1939. We still don't have a good explanation for why we're there. The generals agree we could declare victory. We came looking for WMDs. None found. Mission accomplished.  

News.Com: "IBM's Venture Capital Group has invested in more than 40 venture capital funds. It has a close working relationship with more than 80 VC firms, including as Accel Partners and Walden International." 

The weather forecast continues to improve. Tomorrow and Saturday will be sunny and (by Boston standards) warm, highs in the 50s, low 60s. If you're coming from a tropical climate, bring a sweater, and it couldn't hurt to bring an umbrella, just in case. But if you believe the forecast, we'll be eating lunch outside on Saturday, which is the day after tomorrow by the way. People coming from Europe are probably already on their way. The excitement builds! Monday is the Boston Marathon. The forecast calls for highs on Monday in the 80s.  

About tonight's meeting at Berkman, it's our last meeting before the conference. As always, everyone's welcome, but it's not like a cocktail party (as some thought last time), it's an intense work meeting among people who are trying to do something that's hard, with limited time, money and experience. So please, only come if you want to help.  

According to John Roberts, who works at CNET, the weird feed was a mistake, as I guessed yesterday, which they're correcting. In general the blogs showed restraint this time, instead of shooting first and asking questions later, which has been the norm. Mazel tov. Also, I hope this is not breaking news, but there can be new XML-based formats in the future, even proprietary ones. I saw some people assume that a new format was bad news. It's funny that these people also think Atom is a good idea! They might want to do a consistency check on that.