Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Really Simple Syndication: "Dave, how I can explain to my large media corporation higher-ups why it's not a bad thing that they lose traffic if their readers are using our RSS feeds instead of visiting the site?" 

A milestone, the first NY Times article about RSS. It's not the greatest or most insightful piece. They spell it funny, with periods after each of the letters. But it's the paper of record, so I guess now we can say it's officially happened. Funny that they didn't mention their own feeds.  

Gizmodo: "There's an ethical dissonance between trying to support the artists you like and the industry you hate (and who hates you)." 

Six Flags has the greatest TV commercial on the air. It's hauntingly good. When it came on during one of my TiVO-recorded programs I watched it repeatedly, and then watched it in slow motion to see how they did it. Debunks the theory that people skip commercials with DVR's, quite the opposite, if your ad is good enough I'll watch it over and over. And this is one smart company. I went to their website, and there in big spot in the middle of the page it says "Click to see our new commercial." And so I did. Happily, it's the same one that was so mesmerizing on TV, and it's just as amazing on the Web. 

Now wouldn't it be great if Taco Bell put all their dog commercials on the Web. Yo quiero Taco Bell commercials! 

Hey thanks to Yahoo for the great link to the site! 

Scoble is hosting a blogger's dinner in NYC on June 16.  

Louisville doctors are considering face transplants.  

Adam Curry reviews the Nucleus BitTorrent aggregator. 

Ben Sinclair: "In response to Dave Winer's RSS-specific weblog for users, I've created my own Syndication for Users weblog." 

Christopher Allen is working on an Edit This Page capability for PHP.  

The Guardian and proper disclosure 

We're getting nowhere with The Guardian on the lack of proper disclosure in Ben Hammersley's story about the supposed "wars" in the RSS community. The editors take weeks to respond, when they do they say the same thing over and over, they think his conflicts were adequately disclosed, but they don't explain why.

I asked two people who were not subjects of the Guardian article to look into it, Rogers Cadenhead and Lance Knobel. Both concluded that The Guardian had not properly disclosed Hammersley's conflict, in violation of the standards of the publication. Lance's and Rogers' pieces were posted publicly, weeks ago, and have yet to get a response from The Guardian.

This is the arrogance of big media. They are not accountable to their readers, or to the subjects of their coverage. We're supposed to accept whatever they pass off as journalism. A software developer that worked this way, on receipt of a bug report from a user, would simply blame the user for the bug, and when that didn't work, say it's not a bug at all. Now certainly some developers do this, but we are harshly critical of them. It's time to apply the same standards to journalists. They often claim their thorough research sets them apart from bloggers, but when it clearly doesn't, they don't respond.

It's an op-ed piece that's not labeled as such, and no opportunity was provided for an opposing point of view. An even more thorough investigation would show that the points Hammersley made are straight from the hype on the mailing lists, but this time they appear under the banner of a respected publication. This not only gives a black eye to the technologists, but it also discredits The Guardian.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion only.