Thursday, September 30, 2004

Ed Cone's description for the political discussion at BloggerCon.  

Welcome to the real-time Trade Secrets debate spin-room! 

7PM Pacific: No doubt, Kerry is cleaning Dubya's clock.  

After tonight's debate, if the US re-elects Bush, we totally deserve whatever happens to us. Kerry will make an excellent President.  

Russell Beattie: "I donated another $50 today to the DNC (and I'm unemployed) and volunteered to work a phone bank for Kerry." 

Dowbrigade: "That Dowbrigade slug hasn't posted in over two weeks!" 

The USGS is blogging Mt St Helens. (Sort of.) 

Mt St Helens webcam. 

The open source release of Frontier didn't shake the world, or boil the ocean, but it is steadily climbing the Daypop Top 40, indicating there is some interest. 

Nelson Minar takes a contrary position on XML as a wire format.  

I bought the new laptop. Over 7 hour battery life. Easy to carry. 

Howard Dean: "Somebody has to take responsibility for being on the school board, on the city council." 

Lance Knobel, in London, will be up at 2AM to watch tonight's 90-minute debate, at 7PM Eastern, 4PM Pacific. Adam Curry and I will do a live Trade Secrets, with Adam in Belgium, watching and commenting on the debate, blow by blow (we hope). Unfortunately the candidates are not allowed to talk to each other. Supposedly the cameras have to stay on the person speaking, but thankfully they say No Way.  

It's great to see collaboration among people I really admire, working to make Frontier a better HTTP server. Dave Luebbert was a developer at Microsoft, for years, working on Word. He's roughly my age. Being a good developer is more than knowing how the computer works, it's also about knowing how to get the best work out of yourself and others on the team. 

News.Com: IE--embraced, extended, extinct? 

Rebecca MacKinnon: "The American School in Shanghai turned a bunch of North Korean asylum-seekers over to the Chinese police, who will send them back to North Korea and thus to jail/torture. The media is totally not reporting this. It would be great if the blogosphere raised a stink over the questionable actions of our fellow Americans overseas." 

NY Times: New Company Starts Up a Challenge to Google. 

Clusty is the search engine in the Times article. 

Mary Hodder: "This is an RSS love letter." 

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

A philosophy note about BloggerCon. In recruiting discussion leaders I look for people who seem to have a sense of blogging, they were born knowing how to do it, they have something to say, it came naturally to them. I don't look for big names, I look for people who will make good discussion leaders. People who have a passion for the subject, and (more important) have a passion for the story. It's the kind of humility that makes a successful moderator. I tell them "you're a reporter" and the sources are in the room. They are not an audience, they are your panel. The goal is for the conversation to stay in the room, that people who have something to contribute feel welcome to do so. 

Another thing BloggerCon gives you that the others don't: diversity. Other conferences are invitation only, how they can claim to be part of the Web is a mystery to me (the Web is inclusive, by design, it routes around exclusivity). Other conferences charge thousands of dollars for a chance to rub elbows with the rich and super-rich. Not BloggerCon. We don't charge people anything to participate. We will ask for donations (soon), if you can afford to kick in some money, we'll have lunch, and be able to pay for Wifi and webcasting. I always contribute my time at no charge, and I give $1000 in cash. Adam has also given $1000 each time. But you don't have to pay to participate, and everyone is invited. Why is that good? Because you don't just get one point of view, or just hear from people I like. No footsie here. I once said to someone who held an exclusive a-list-only event at BloggerCon that you know it's an open event, because if it weren't, you wouldn't be here. We encourage people to be open to others, no matter how famous they are, no matter who they're friends with. It's transparent. It's a user's conference. No speakers, no panels, no audience. 

Robert Scoble will lead a discussion on Information Overload. The idea is not to avoid it, but to embrace it and thrive in overload mode.  

The BloggerCon announcements will become more frequent as we head into the final month of preparation. We have a new discussion leader for the main political session, it's Ed Cone, who has been blogging from North Carolina, which may be the leader in state-level political blogging. It's long been my belief that this is where political blogging will first achieve real significance, I think in two, four or six years the entire House of Representatives will be blogging. It's too good a medium for local politics. I learned at the DNC that at least one of the two major parties sees it the same way. Ed has been with the political blogging story all the way, he led the journalism discussion at BloggerCon I. He also planned and ran a successful unconference in August in Greensboro. He'll be great in this very key role for the Fall 2004 con. His session description should be up shortly.  

CBS: Bush's Top Ten Flip-Flops. ! 

Ted Leung: "I'm curious to see the internals of Frontier. The integration of a scripting language and an object database is exactly what we're building at OSAF." 

John Edwards: "[Cheney] was against getting bogged down in Iraq before he was for it." Hah! 

Susan Kitchens blogged today's space flight from Mojave. 

Dave Luebbert describes a substantial performance enhancement to the kernel that can be achived in 15 lines of code.  

Steve Rubel: "Microsoft is thinking about RSS, but it's thinking bigger than where the market is now." 

On Nov 12 I'll be on a panel with Arianna Huffington, Mickey Kaus and Joe Trippi at the Online News Association conf in Hollywood.  

Craig Cline will lead the BloggerCon discussion of Mobile Blogging. 

Donald Katz, the founder of Audible.com, is blogging at PaidContent.org. 

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had a great headline about Dick Cheney. 

Real Software has an office in easy walking distance from my apartment. 

Today's movie: Musicians performing in front of the world's first Starbucks at Pike Place Market, Seattle. 

Places that viruses and trojans hide on start up. 

Yesterday a friend showed me Replay Radio. He also had a super-cool new laptop. I almost bought the laptop on the Web yesterday, but instead went for RR. I told it to record two programs from KQED, the NPR affiliate in San Francisco. At midnight it started recording All Things Considered. If all goes well, at 1AM there will be an MP3 in its output folder containing the show. And get this, it has an iPodder built in. It can tell iTunes to load the MP3 and copy it onto the hard disk of my iPod. Pretty cool. I'll let you know if it works. [Postscript: There was a 25MB file, but when I played it, it was all dead air. Something obviously didn't work. Time to RTFM. I then installed the Enhanced Audio Driver per Jeff Sandquist's recommendation. Testing it now.] 

Google weblog: "For users inside the People's Republic of China, we have chosen not to include sources that are inaccessible from within that country." 

Wired: "Ever wonder why Google News has been in beta for three years? Possibly because it hasn't figured out a way to make money without enraging publishers." 

I got a response to this post from Rafe Needleman. He chastised me for: 1. Criticizing his article in public. 2. Causing him trouble if he corrects his mistake and 3. Not realizing that he personally had not written that part of the article. My response is public because his article is public. Had he, or a CNET researcher, asked me about this in private, then it would have stayed private. Further, the article has his name on it, so I'd be really concerned if I were him about what other misinformation it might contain, rather than somehow blaming me for CNET's incompetence. Finally, the arrogance of these reporters! Somehow one article in CNET makes him the boss of RSS-Land. The proper response would be first to apologize for giving credit for my work to others, and skip the exuses, then do some research, correct the errors, and go on.  

Seattle P-I: "Seismologists had a few words of advice: Don't hold your breath. No cataclysm. Keep paying the bills." 

Last night I talked with Julie Leung about her BloggerCon session, about the emotional component of weblogs. Then I read this on Seth Dillingham's blog post about the open source release of Frontier. "When Dave announced that the source would be released, I was determined not to let it affect me. I wouldn't let this thing I loved hurt me again. ;-) Imagine my surprise, then, when reading about the release and listening to Dave's audio commentary almost brought tears to my eyes." It never occurred to me that my audio blog post would have that effect, but now that I read Seth's comment, I can see why it would. Frontier has had a huge human cost to it. It's an obession. It should have a warning label. Warning, could cost you years of your life. Many. Beware. Like Seth I'm determined not to get dragged into its vortex again. So when Wes Felter (another former devotee) posted a message challenging the one in charge to decide this or that, I just flipped the cover of the laptop, and lay down to read a political novel I borrowed from the library. "It's a young man's thing," I said to no one at all, "I gave my youth to this passion, and now both are gone." 

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Today's Morning Coffee Notes explains the open source release of Frontier. Jeff Sandquist previewed the audio and said he had never understood what Frontier was before. It's good that this event which is probably one of the largest releases of open source code ever, may mean that more people appreciate this interesting and unique piece of software. Or it may be a time capsule, a message in a bottle, or a bridge to the future, and that would be fine too. One thing it's not is an attempt to boil the ocean, or a threat to your favorite scripting language, Web content system or HTTP server. Just trying to preserve a life's work of programming, so it doesn't end up lost or forgotten. Peace brother.  

An audio blog post about the Bloglines API, the commons, fair compensation for centralized services, what's not fair. 

Paolo Valdemarin comments on the Frontier open source release. It's an interesting perspective, however mainResponder will be released under the same license as the kernel. We wanted to get the main kernel stuff released first before looking at mainResponder. 

Rasterweb: "Excuse me while I dig through my backups from the late 1990's for all my UserTalk code!" 

Doc Searls: DIY radio with Podcasting.  

Technorati cosmos for the Frontier open source release.  

Mary Hodder will lead a discussion on the Core Values of the Web. 

Jeremy Zawodny boasts that Yahoo now has an open content model. I think that means you can subscribe to whatever you want to. Funny thing is the RSS content model was open long before Yahoo showed up. Should we thank them for giving back to us what we already had? This is what big companies do so well. Give back to us stuff that we already had.  

A new Trade Secrets is up. In it Adam and I discuss the merits of Mac vs Windows. Now of course I'm getting (friendly) email from people suggesting that I get a Mac. I'll make a deal. If John Kerry wins I'll get a Mac.  

According to CNET, O'Reilly Associates is one of the core developers of RSS, along with Netscape and Harvard. I guess BigCo's only recognize BigCo's, or BigU's. CNET did the same with SOAP, taking UserLand off the list of originators. Rafe, I take pride in my work, why did you take me out of the story? I wonder how Rafe would feel if CNET took his name off his article, or put someone else's name on it. Rafe, please explain. 

Actually, Allawi is the Secretary of Iraq.  

Comments on Adam's daily audio blog post 

1. I really liked yesterday's Daily Source Code. You're reaching another level, esp with all the excellent content you're playing, and the connect with WGBH. It's weird, I listened to that part as I turned a corner and was surprised to find the offices of Real Networks. It's a ten minute walk from my apartment.

2. A little guy who's into soliloquy? Hmmm.

3. However, I totally disagree with the conclusion that Kerry and Bush are cut from the same cloth. The reason Kerry is behind is because he is having trouble choosing from a vast field of true issues with Bush. On the other side, Bush has to make up stuff to attack Kerry with. A rational voter would go for Kerry in a second.

4. IMHO.

5. Keep up the good work!

Monday, September 27, 2004

Adam Curry will lead a BloggerCon discussion on Podcasting. 

I was interviewed today by a reporter on Yahoo's efforts in RSS. I gave them a pretty negative review. I didn't want to be misunderstood, so I did an audio recording of what I said to the reporter, so you can get an idea of the thinking behind the soundbites that may be in the news article.  

Seattle P-I: Microsoft 'Search Champs.' 

Ethan Zuckerman on systematic biases in Wikipedia. 

Scott Rosenberg: "The Bush team has cemented its message: Kerry is a wimp." 

BBC: "King Abdullah of Jordan says it will be impossible to hold elections in Iraq in the current state of chaos there." 

I was looking for the Frontier stress testing suite amid some very old stuff on my hard disk and came across this wonderful WAV file of Pinky and the Brain talking about Gilligan's Island.  

AP: "A 108-year-old man has taken up smoking again, encouraged by gifts of cigars from as far away as London." 

Steve Gillmor: "And before you get too irate, I want more data, not less." 

Snappy the Clam: "See how many gladhanding, namedropping shoutouts you can find in this latest conflict-ridden (now with no disclosure!) advertorial puffball from RSS cheerleader and 'tech journalist' Steve Gillmor." 

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Take a walk on the campus of the University of Washington. 

Twenty years later, ThinkTank still gets fan mail. 

A mostly negative story by the NY Times' Bob Tedeschi about Philadelphia's courageous plan to cover the city with wireless Internet access. I'm glad that Philadelphia is doing this, even if it isn't universally used. I want to Internet access to become ubiquitous and free as soon as possible. A few years ago Tedeschi was saying blogs wouldn't amount to anything.  

Talked with Scoble today, he told me about DotNetRocks which is an audio blogcast he loves. Got to check it out. 

One year ago today: "As long as the music industry labels all use of music on the Internet as piracy, and as long as pubs like the NY Times go along with this, the 'problem' will never be solved." 

On this day in 1998, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire hit their 66th home runs, in doing so setting the all-time record for the most home runs in a season. McGwire would finish the year with 70, only to be topped by Barry Bonds three years later, with 73. Roger Maris still holds the American League record with 61, supporting the widely-held belief that the AL is not a "real" baseball league. 

Electoral Vote Predictor: Kerry 207, Bush 311. 

An interesting discussion on the NetNewsWire mail list. A user asks if Apple's foray into RSS utilities will have a negative impact on Ranchero. Brent responds the way developers usually do, saying it's good news, Apple will grow the market, creating more users, etc. I've been there myself, in the struggle to co-exist with AppleScript in the early 90s. If I had it to do over again I would have been direct and honest when answering these questions. Basically, I don't know, it's really up to the users. If you want us to continue developing the software, you have to be sure we get enough money to do so. If you think Apple is capable of satisfying all your needs, then you have nothing to worry about. If you'd like insurance, help us stay in business. The power has always been with the users, not the platform vendor, no matter how much spin there is that says otherwise. You can have your cake and eat it too. Developers can do something that platform vendors don't do well -- listen to users. Consider that when you decide whether or not to buy the software.  

Talking with Adam this morning, not in Trade Secrets mode, I said that I buy servers the way women buy shoes. I thought that was worth getting on the record not because I understand myself better, but rather because I think I understand women's relationship with shoes better.  

Elizabeth Edwards on blogging. 

I hate to interfere in British politics, but it seems if they drive Tony Blair from office, we'll be more likely to send Dubya back to Texas.  

This Netflix feed updates once a week early on Sunday morning with the list of new movies. 

Barry Bowen has started an OPML-based directory site. 

Saturday, September 25, 2004

Projected landfall for Hurricane Jeanne is Vero Beach. 

Movie. Hurricane coverage on CNN mostly consists of reporters standing outside in the storm reporting on what it feels like to be outside when no sane human being would be outside. Is that journalism? Have to ask Jay Rosen about that.  

NY Times: Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail. 

Business 2.0: The new road to riches. 

Adam Curry: "Looks like podcasting is getting popular." 

Geek News Central explains why centralized directories are evil. The right way to do it is decentralized, using a convenient XML format for representing and editing directories. We happen to have one, it's quite popular and has a lot more power than is being used. Please see the Googlish way to do directories, which could easily be the MSN-way to do directories, or what Yahoo can do when they're ready to give up the centralized model. It's really simple. Teach your search engine to look inside OPML files, and index them using the same page-ranking method you use for HTML. When the searcher wants to go into a directory, display it like Yahoo or DMOZ. Voila, let a thousand directories bloom. If someone tries to "own" a category, route around them. The Web doesn't have a single home page, why should directories? Competition is the way of the Web.  

More on Google, directories and OPML. 

A new episode of Trade Secrets Radio, lots of laughing, very little work got done. Got caught in configuration hell.  

We're getting close to the open source release of Frontier. I'm running the software on my desktop. Decided on the license. We may do special licenses for commercial developers who want to make private enhancements (not shared). The GPL offers the most flexibility.  

As part of the release I had to come up with a positioning statement. "High performance Web content management, object database, system-level and Internet scripting environment, including source code editing and debugging." 

8/31/04: Progress report on the open source release. 

In May, I explained why I wanted to do this release. 

Esther Dyson invests in Flickr. 

We're going to do a Trade Secrets during the first Presidential debate.  

Help compile a list of Netflix and Blockbuster shipping centers. 

NY Times: "CBS News said yesterday that it had postponed a 60 Minutes segment that questioned Bush administration rationales for going to war in Iraq." 

Three years ago today, the BBC said that Bush was lining up with the doves. Wolfowitz was urging an immediate response to 9-11, bombing Afghanistan and invading Iraq, while Colin Powell wanted to build a coalition. 

Former President Bush I on the beach with a cute young gal. Meanwhile his son, Former President Bush II, relaxes, thinking about his upcoming retirement. 

Friday, September 24, 2004

Can you spot the volcano in this picture of Puget Sound? 

Jeanne aims at Florida. The National Hurricane Center has an RSS 2.0 feed tracking the hurricane. 

Dan Farber interviews Guy Kawasaki. Hey it's been years since I'd seen Kawasaki, who was a friend a long time ago. It's cool to be able to catch up this way. He hasn't changed. Still a smart guy. Excellent 

7/29/95: Evangelism as God Intended. 

BTW, October 7 marks the tenth anniversary of this little network of mine. There haven't been many days since 10/7/94 that I haven't put some kind of foolish idea on the Web. I often forget this anniversary, but I'm determined not to do so this year.  

I've been lurking on the ipodder-dev list, and have been totally impressed with how productive this community of users and developers has been. At the core is an activity they call podcasting, a really simple idea with powerful implications. Think of an iPod that can subscribe to audio feeds the same way a desktop aggregator subscribes to text feeds. Adam Curry, who's been feeding this community with his Daily Source Code programs, is a natural born community leader. He knows just enough technology to be dangerous, and doesn't mind asking questions. The community is on the cusp of shipping a polished and revolutionary product. This work will be visible at BloggerCon III, Adam is leading a discussion, and with any luck at least some of our sessions will flow out through the podcast network.  

News Hounds: "Even Fox News' own poll can't find George Bush's convention bounce anymore." 

Mobile Blogging 

We've got a discussion leader, and we're side-stepping the controversy over what moblogging is or isn't.

Our interest is blogging away-from-the-desktop. Pictures, audio, words, what else? How well supported are we in this activity? How safe are we? What tools, what devices do we need to make it really work?

To our discussion leader, who I will introduce later, let's discuss positive things we can do to direct vendors who are interested in this stuff, to create the products we want. Imho, that's an important function of blogging, to generate ideas that provide direction to vendors.

To people who feel they own the term moblogging, I can recognize an argument I don't want to have. So we're going to call this session Mobile Blogging and leave it at that.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Taegan Goddard: "Tom Goldstein got permission to post the must-read October 2004 Vanity Fair article on the 2000 Bush v Gore election litigation including 'never-before-reported details about what happened inside the Supreme Court.'" 

Larry Lessig debates the merits of the Edwards candidacy. He will also lead the law-blogging discussion at BloggerCon III on Nov 6 at Stanford. 

"thinkusaalignright"Kottke: "I want to compile a short list of essential resources for people who need to register to vote, vote via absentee ballot, and, you know, vote normally." This is a good idea. I registered by mail to vote in Washington, but haven't received any kind of confirmation. The deadline is rapidly approaching. Should I register again? How can I find out if I'm registered? 

Audio of today's Bush press conference, with comments by yours truly. This is a format I want to play with, I first heard Rush Limbaugh do it, artfully, with a speech by John Kerry.  

Bush says he gets the truth from the Iraqi Prime Minister. He appointed him. Geez Louise, call Central Casting. Who do we have to blow to to get a little truth around here? 

Paolo dreams of a Google browser.  

JD Lasica: "Google News uses computer algorithms to identify top stories while Yahoo News favors old-fashioned human editors. But do Google's automated search results display a conservative bias?" 

From Joey de Villa, Picking Up Girls Made Easy. But don't tell President Bush about this, he'll probably say it's a Theater In The War On Terror. "We must not allow the actions of a few to determine the fate of these good people as well as the security of the United States." So go out and pick up some girls, and do your part to combat global terrorism. "It is tough work, everyone in America knows that. 

Geek News Central approves of AOL's more secure sign-on, and so do I. It would be great for example if a brokerage firm offered a more secure login, and some rules about when and in what amounts transfers could be made. Some in the blogosphere have criticized AOL for this, but identity theft is a big problem, and any attempt to build more secure identity systems is worth considering. 

Bush still lies, saying the war in Iraq is a war on terror. "It's the central front in the war on terror," he says. This is the fatal flaw of his government, it's built on a lie.  

I had dinner last night with Joe Beda, the Microsoft guy who jumped to Google last week. We walked all the way across the University of Washington (pronounced U-Dub) campus to get Thai food, but the restaurant was jammed so we had Gyros instead. I liked the way the campus looked, even after dark, and Joe is a nice guy. Our walk was almost two hours round trip, which was really cool because I had skipped my walk yesterday, wasn't feeling too good yesterday afternoon. This morning, I feel great, didn't eat too much and walked a lot with Joe. I also took his picture wearing his new Google beanie, above and to the right. 

BBC tea-leave-read about Google's rumored browser. 

Julie: "When Ben & Jerry's names an ice cream after Dave -- or after bloggers in general! -- then we'll know blogging has finally caught fire."  

Jerry: "I know the rent is in arrears, the dog has not been fed in years, it's even worse than it appears." 

Wired reviews the Sims 2. I still haven't been able to run it here. I used a patched version to get past the problem with it not liking its own key disk, but then it crashed, repeatedly, a few minutes into the game. It took the whole system down with it, something about my graphic card. I got enough play in to realize I was going to like it, but I just can't afford the time and the risk. It's paranoid buggy software.  

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Seatte Times: Blogging guru stops, for a while, in Seattle. 

A new Trade Secrets is up, recorded this morning.  

News.Com: "Sony confirmed on Wednesday that it is working to add native MP3 support to its portable music players -- a major strategy reversal." 

JD Lasica: "How do we get Mark an RSS feed?" 

Feedster now supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures. Bing! 

Lunch today was at Etta's Seafood, 2020 Western Ave. Very good.  

Kevin Gossett: "I hate Dave Winer because he's in Seattle and I'm not." 

Taegan Goddard summarizes the latest national poll. 

Andrew Sullivan: "Not bad for a bunch of slackers in their nightclothes." 

Juan Cole: "What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll." 

Paul Krugman: "America's overstretched armed forces are gradually getting chewed up in a losing struggle." 

Scripting News is once again officially a Pacific Time Zone weblog. 

BloggerCon session announcements 

Session: Bloggers and Journalists -- Border Crossings.

The next BloggerCon is November 6 at Stanford Law School. Late last week I started working with the discussion leaders, one-to-one, talking about how BloggerCon sessions work, and to get started on the session descriptions.

I like to present the sessions one at a time, on the BloggerCon site, and here on Scripting News. Starting today we'll be introducing sessions on a fairly regular basis until the grid is filled in, which will probably be the day before the conference, if memory serves me.

Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon, will lead our discussion on journalism and blogging. He's an ideal person to lead this discussion because he's a skilled reporter, and both a journalist and a blogger. All three BC's have had sessions about journalism. The first discussion was led by Ed Cone, the second by Jay Rosen, and now we turn to Scott Rosenberg.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Frank Leahy: "The theoreticians throw around RDF notation like it’s fairy dust, certain to charm everyone if they just sprinkle enough of it." 

Tell Tim O'Reilly what to ask Jeff Bezos or John Doerr.  

BloggerCon I: "One of the fundamental ideas of the Web is the link." 

Finally, I have an opinion in the evolving CBS story. When the producer called Joe Lockhart in the Kerry campaign she crossed a very important line. At first I wasn't sure, but then I asked myself how I would feel if the Republicans had called Fox News and suggested they talk with a source, especially one who was pushing forgeries. I wouldn't like it. On the other hand, I'm absolutely sure that Fox is in the loop on the daily Republican talking points, you can see the coordination in their news programs, and I'm very angry that they do that. It's time to do a cross-party, cross-network cleanup. I think the Republicans have played much looser here than the Democrats. 

I wonder if the UN would let Kerry give a speech? 

96 days ago, I posted a transition plan for weblogs.com-hosted sites. Rogers Cadenhead offered to host the sites for free for 90 days, and I would redirect to the new sites from their old addresses. I'm extending the redirects to Oct 1, at which time we will no longer do the redirects. Note, this has nothing to do with radio.weblogs.com sites, they are unaffected by these changes. 

Just for fun, 830 days since I quit smoking.  

David Davies: "I had a moblog before any of you." 

Robert Palmer: "You like to think that you're immune to the stuff, oh yeah. It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough. You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love." 

What if every coalition member in Iraq wore one of these GPS bracelets? Then, when Zarqawi threatens to behead you, the special ops guys swoop in and behead him first. I suppose they would just take the bracelet off your body before they take you to their secret hideout, but maybe we can come up with a GPS implant that's harder to detect. I'd really enjoy hearing that there was a video of Zarqawi begging for his mommy as they sawed his head off, slowly. 

Dowbrigade: "As a teacher and a blogger, the Dowbrigade dreams of the day when he will discover a blogger in one of his classes." 

Morning coffee notes 

I haven't really settled in until I figure out The Daily Walk.

In Newton, where I lived last, I'd walk up one street, across another, then across a field, past a school, hang a right, walk a few blocks, right again for a bit then left, then right, and back to my front step. Once I settled on it I no longer had to watch the time, I knew it was 50 minutes, plus or minus; and it was good in the snow (the field part was fun when the snow was deep), and I didn't have to think. I listened to all of Chris Lydon's interviews in that mode. And NPR news. It was on that walk that I heard about Ronald Reagan's passing (I rarely took the walk in reverse, but on that day for some reason I did). I also heard about the passing of Robert Palmer there too, and spent lots of time thinking about Uncle Vava who died shortly after I started taking that walk.

So now I'm in a new city, and trying to figure out the new walk. The first day I went toward the central library. No good, too many hills and too many stops for traffic lights. Then I tried heading over to the ballparks, pretty good -- it's flat, the traffic's not too bad, you can do a loop (always better than turning around) but it's a little on the noisy side (highway 99) and yesterday I think I found a better one, and it may be the one.

Here's how it works. Walk to the waterfront, go north on Alaskan Way (instead of south, as I had before). The cool thing that happens is that it separates from 99, so it gets quiet, and then even better, there's a sidewalk on the harbor side of the street that has no traffic lights (because all the streets end at the water, duh). You can walk for a long way without a stop. After about 20 minutes you hit a park, and if you want to catch your breath, there are benches looking out at the harbor. It was on one of those benches yesterday that I heard Adam Curry play one of my favorite old Alice Cooper songs. Loop around, and come up Western Ave, through Pike Place Market, and grab some fruit and head back home. The whole loop, just about an hour. No noise, very little traffic. Yes, it's very promising.

Monday, September 20, 2004

Seattle Times article on the RSS "blog jam." 

NY Times: "At a time when the violent insurgency in Iraq is vexing the Bush administration and stirring worries among Americans, events may be propelling the United States into yet another confrontation, this time with Iran." 

A walk in pictures today on the Seattle waterfront. 

AP: "Subscribers get a matchbook-size device from RSA Security Inc displaying a six-digit code that changes every minute. The code is necessary to log on, so a scammer who guesses or steals a password cannot access the account without the device in hand." 

Jay Rosen: "Today's announcement is just one part of a massive institutional failure at CBS, much of it still to be uncovered." 

Dan Gillmor: "Now it's time for CBS to tell us what happened." 

Scott Rosenberg: "Dan Rather and his colleagues have now stuck a fork in the tattered remnants of the blue-chip brand name they inherited from Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite." 

Request for help. We need a moderate-size conference room in Seattle that we can use every Thursday evening between now and the November 2 election to hold round-table discussions among Washington bloggers who are covering the 2004 election. The room should hold 20-30 people, have WiFi, and a projector. The Seattle library would be perfect, as some have suggested, but they won't have meeting rooms available until early 2005. If you can offer us space for these meetings, please send an email asap. 

CBS: Bush Memo Story A Mistake. 

AP: "Chief anchor Dan Rather apologized for 'a mistake in judgment.'"  

A bulletin from CBS says they can't authenticate the memos. 

CBS: Now comes the Blog backlash. 

MediaDailyNews: "I want my MP3." 

Don Park asks if Firefox Live Bookmarks is the same thing as Internet Explorer's CDF support? Today's IE still supports the Push Technology of the mid-90s.  

Russell Beattie will speak about mobile technology at the Web 2.0 conference in October in SF. 

Okay, I bought the Sims 2 yesterday, on a whim, and just installed it. Now it says I should insert the correct DVD. There are only two DVDs, I tried them both, no luck. $49 is a lot for something that does so little!  

Most people seem to like yesterday's attempt to define Moblogging, but some don't. The most common complaint is that Moblogging is much less than what I say it is, they say it's just snapping pictures of people on your cell phone and having them automatically uploaded via the MetaWeblog API. It could be there's more to Moblogging than some realize, or it could be that there's no such thing as Moblogging, or it could be they're right, and we need a new term to describe the very real activity I wrote about yesterday. Anyway I hope we can all get along with each other. Maybe we'll just call the session Mobile Blogging, and sidestep the controversy. It's amazing how readily people flame when there's such an obvious compromise available. 

EVP: "While the election is 6 weeks away, the deadline for registering as a voter is almost upon us. In most states it is in less than two weeks." 

Okay, I have to admit that I hate Andy Rooney. It's a bias that I cultivate. In a world where it's not politically correct to hate almost anything, I allow myself this one excess. I hate his homilies. I don't think he's cute. I wish he'd trim those eyebrows and clean out his desk. But, even I have to admit he told a good joke last night. He said his friend wants people to declare their political intentions so everyone knows how they're going to vote. So people who are going to vote for Kerry should drive with their headlights on during the day and (can you see it coming now) people who are going to vote for Bush should drive with their headlights off at night.  

NY Times: "CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night." 

Pandia: "Your site may be banned because someone else has copied it!" 

Versioning and extensibility in XML formats 

On the Atom-Syntax list they're talking about versioning and extensibility, two problems that are very easily solved in XML.

For versioning, define a required version attribute on the feed element, a string in the form x.y, where x and y are two numbers. X is the major version, and y is the minor version. So a version 0.3 feed would have a version attribute whose value is "0.3". A version 1.0 feed would have a version attribute of "1.0".

For extensibility, allow the format to be extended through namespaces and trust the W3C, who is the owner of the namespaces spec to tell you how to do it. Build on the works of others.

For extra credit, the format should evolve by adding new elements. A processor can tell whether it should expect the new elements or not by checking the top-level version attribute.

I honestly don't think there's another way to do it, so all the arguing and fussing is just going to end up there, so you might as well just do it. Of course this is just my opinion, I have no position re the Atom working group, or the RSS advisory board.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

It had been a couple of years since I bought a wireless router, and I was having troubles that were traceable to my old Linksys router, so I bought a new Netgear router at Best Buy in Northgate. First the good news, it works. Now, more good news, all I had to do to configure it was click three times. It was able to figure out what kind of net connection I had, and automatically configured itself. The only small complaint I have about the setup is that the instructions are labored and complicated. Why not just say: First try it the simple way, it usually works, and that's all you have to do. I guess someone in marketing didn't trust the engineering? Anyway, nice work! 

Hey there was actually some sun today in Seattle. 

Oy I had a server meltdown. I have it mostly put back together now. Time for a walk, with Adam's latest Daily Source Code on my iPod. He says he's got his content studio all working, the scoop is on the MP3.  

Scoble: How your blog will get discovered. 

NY Times survey of spyware and adware. "...a program that creeps onto a computer's hard drive unannounced, is wrecking the Internet." 

What is Moblogging? 

I spent much of yesterday with Scoble, we went to the ballgame, then Pike Place Market, where he bought flowers for his wife Maryam, and then on to a Tully's coffee shop where we figured out what Moblogging is.

First, why is it important that I of all people know what Moblogging is? Okay, as Zero Mostel says, I'll tell you. (Sorry.) Blame Rebecca MacKinnon, my former Harvard colleague, and former Tokyo bureau chief for CNN, and friend of Joi Ito. Rebecca keeps telling me that I must have a session about Moblogging at BloggerCon. At the closing session of the last BC, I asked the room if they felt we should have one, and everyone said yes we should. However, unless we know what Moblogging is, if we were to have a discussion about it, it seems we would spend all our time debating what it is and whether or not it belongs at a BloggerCon. Those are exactly the kinds of meta-discussions that I like to avoid. At all costs. So I want to know what it is, and if it's worth discussing.

So Scoble and I sat down for coffee with this mission in mind. To figure it out. To figure out what Moblogging is. And we did. We nailed it. We know. And now I'm going to tell you.

Moblogging is any activity that occurs away from your normal blog-writing place whose purpose is to create content for your blog.

So, when I took pictures of the coffee shop, that was moblogging.

When I wrote this explanation that was not moblogging, since I did it at my desk, fully supported by my normal high-speed net connection, laptop, multi-gigabyte external hard disk, second monitor, USB hub, mouse, etc etc. There were no distractions that come from being in the real world, no toll booths, gas gauges, semi-trailers, weather reports, ticket takers, hot dog vendors, fish throwers, jelly tasters that demand attention above and beyond the blogging I'm doing.

I was moblogging when I crossed the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota, where it's just a slow-flowing creek. If I hadn't taken the pictures and later uploaded them, I still would have been delighted and impressed, but I wouldn't have been moblogging.

When I'm driving through the corn fields of Saskatchewan recording an audio blog post, I am moblogging. Here's a 15-second Quicktime movie that illustrates what it feels like to moblog while driving, from my point of view.

I am also moblogging when I almost drive off the road trying to hit pause on the recording. (In other words moblogging requires new hardware that is designed specifically for moblogging.)

In the future I will be moblogging when I hit the big red Record button on my iPod and talk into it for a half-hour while driving across the wheat fields of Alberta and then hit the big red button again to pause the recording and save it to the internal disk of the iPod. (A low battery also causes it to be saved.) I will be moblogging when I don't drive off the road into one of the wheat fields.

Before we came up with this definition, we were fumbling around trying to figure out if moblogging was more than taking pictures of things with cell phones and having them uploaded to some central server so we could point to them from our blogs. Yes yes, moblogging is more than that, it's a way of blogging, perhaps even a way of living. It's important and fully capable of supporting a 1.5 hour discussion at Bloggercon.

Comment here.

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Pictures: Safeco Field, Pike Place Market, Tully's Coffee. 

Lisa Rein has video of Ben Barnes on 60 Minutes. 

Electoral Vote Predictor explains how opinion polling works. 

I just heard about this weblog called Mini-Microsoft. "Let's slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine! Mini-Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft, lean-and-mean!" 

Barry Bonds hit his 700th career home run last night. "The homer made Bonds only the third player in major league history -- after Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron -- to reach that milestone." 

Jay Rosen: "Bringing devastating memos into a campaign's final sprint is like bringing pistols on stage." 

A directory of French language RSS feeds. 

Meanwhile Republicans try to change the subject just when the campaign gets interesting. Finally, finally, we're getting the discussion of the Bush presidency that he deserves. Now, if you still want to vote for Bush, go for it, but do it with your eyes open. This is a guy who will never help the American people. He'll probably never do anything good for Republicans either. He's one selfish mofo, a blame-anyone-but-me machine. Please go read the biography of Harry Truman, that's what we should be aspiring to. Not this figment of a President. Let's make a deal with Kerry, that he'll agree to hire Clinton's advisors, and listen to them, and give him the job and send Dubya off to Baghdad, to complete his military service. 

Scoble: "They have blogs for everything nowadays." 

Friday, September 17, 2004

Today's Morning Coffee Notes, about BloggerCon, a great audiobook, a pioneering TV show from the 60's, and a cameo appearance by Robert Scoble, via cell phone. 

Richard Nixon did appear as a guest on Laugh-In, on 9/16/68. He had one line: "Sock it to me." Other Laugh-In standards: Here come da judge (with Sammy Davis, Jr), Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls, and Bet your bippy. I know it sounds silly, but the Laugh-In gags used to crack us up. I guess you had to be there.  

Librarian.Net: Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library. 

I've been having trouble with email. Some of my mail isn't getting through, or vice versa. Hard to tell. If I haven't responded, please try this method, which seems to be reliable. Thanks.  

Tim Jarrett moved to Boston as I was moving to Seattle. Heh. I guess in the coastal dimension Tim is my inverse and vice versa. 

The text of an email I've sent to BloggerCon discussion leaders. 

Rafe Colburn: "The grim realities of war really sink in when your RSS reader lets you know that a few more Americans have lost their lives several times a day." 

News.Com: "Electronic Arts on Friday began shipping the long-awaited sequel to its hit PC game The Sims. 

Three Iraqi brothers, living in Baghdad, have a weblog. 

Talking Points: "The president is willing to keep burning through the US Army and the Marine Corps to avoid admitting the failure of his policies." 

Twelve days before CBS ran the story about Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, we had it here, as the top item on August 27. The CBS piece ran on September 8. Why did they wait so long? 

Wired: "The broadcasting industry, surprised by the debut of Microsoft's Radio Plus service, hasn't reached full freak-out mode yet." 

Electoral Vote Predictor: "Breslin claims that pollsters do not call the 168 million cell phones in the country." 

Yesterday was an amazingly productive day. Did the first Trade Secrets show with Adam. Mailed in my voter registration, got a library card, visited the central Seattle library (a modern marvel), took out a book that's out of print that I've wanted to read for several months. Walking by a housewares store on Fourth Ave, saw they were selling 20 wood hangers for $10. How did they know my apartment came without hangers? Finally, I walked through the Pike Place Market for the first time. What an interesting place. It's a little bit like the waterfront in New Orleans, but the fish! Oh man. I gotta eat there. So many choices. Which are the good ones? 

Speaking of Pike, before Radio was called Radio it was called Pike. We had to change the name because there already was something called Pike. Too bad, it was a good name.  

New header graphic, the Alps in Davos. The previous graphic, Shea Stadium from a plane taking off at LaGuardia Airport, was really bad luck for the Mets, who lost 21 of their last 25 games. Ouch. 

Don Park: "Words like crappy and useless come to mind." 

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Another thing Steve asked is when my new show is going on the air. He's good at reading tea leaves. Here's the announcement... 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, announcing a new Web radio show, using only the latest technology and the freshest drugs. The name of the show is Trade Secrets. It's an integrated app, a collaboration between myself and Adam Curry. We're using AIM to do a weekly, and perhaps daily or as-necessary radio talk show with music clips and politics and software and guests and more, ranging far and wide. Live from two continents, it's Trade Secrets Radio. Yah man.  

And here's the initial Trade Secrets show. And away we go! 

And by popular demand, here's a Trade Secrets site, and a RSS 2.0 with enclosures feed you can subscribe to. "This is a bad site for fans of George W Bush." Sorry.  

Check this out. Yet another idiotic story that says that bloggers don't make money. Geez Louise. That's not news. What a bunch of morons.  

Just got off the phone with Steve Gillmor. He asked about yesterday's post about publisher-opt-out for RSS. I wrote up a proposal approx two years ago. Yesterday Adam had an interesting idea of how to do it. If a feed has a very large ttl value, then go ahead and unsub. I like that approach. Nothing new has to be invented or documented.  

Washington is a battleground state. How can you tell? Because the Swift Boat vets are running ads here. The latest has a young baby-faced Kerry talking about how he tossed his medals. He was such a kid. Of course he did silly things. And those were weird times. Meanwhile real Americans are dying in Iraq. This is all in such bad taste. I watched the two party chairmen on CNN today. The Republican chairman was laughing at everything. As he was laughing, Americans are dying in Iraq. Laughing while Americans are dying. Think about it. I wonder if these guys have any shame at all. Bush started the war. It was optional. He should take responsibility for it. If he were a real man, it wouldn't matter what Kerry voted for or didn't. It's his war. Every death is on his hands. It would have been different had we been attacked, but we weren't attacked.  

Britt Blaser: "I had an interesting spilling-of-the-beans last night." 

Judy Woodruff: "Let's tune into some of what the President.. er.. Senator Kerry is saying." 

This is not an official Morning Coffee Notes, it's just a test. 

They say iTunes is prescient at choosing the next song, and I don't disagree. Immediately after playing the above test, it faded into Nowhere Man by the Beatles. "He's as blind as he can be, just sees what he wants to see, isn't he a bit like you and me?" 

Just had a brief phone converation with Adam Curry. He said it sounded like I was in a good mood. I said yes, I am. I explained why. CNN was finally reporting on the mess in Iraq. On the screen at that moment, the President was climbing the stairs on Air Force One, his shoulders slumped. As he turned to wave, he looked tired and befuddled, like his father. A headline appeared. The Future of Iraq. I laughed. Maybe his plane will land in Baghdad. He can be President of Iraq (they have lots of oil) and Kerry can be President of the United States and help dig us out of the mess. 

Danny Sullivan's new search blog, with RSS. Subscribed. 

Today's song: "I want to bake my cake and eat it too." 

Davos Newbies: "When the ridiculous Batman climbed onto Buckingham Palace this week, he wasn't shot." 

Jason Kottke reports that Firefox is having trouble with his RSS feed; and since he patterned his feed after mine, he checked it out and that's not working either. Can anyone who's using Firefox shed light on why this is happening? 

Time: Why Iraq's Not Getting Better. 

Watching the coverage of Hurricane Ivan on CNN, it struck me that the reporters who are standing outside enduring the wind and the rain are kind of acting like bloggers.  

Went to a blogger meetup today on 4th Avenue in Seattle tonight. I walked there, listening to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code. I learned that buses in downtown Seattle are free, and that there's a tunnel system that the buses connect through. I also learned that there's a blogger running for Secretary of State in the Libertarian Party. I also think it's a good time for a roundtable-type weekly blogger meeting here, to find out who's blogging the political life of the state of Washington. I'm going to try to network into one of the universities here, maybe University of Washington, to get a weekly meeting room. As with all other blogging meetups, tonight's was full of buzz, and it was at a really neat grocery store. Having a great time so far here in Seattle. 

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Hacking Netflix: What is RSS & Why is it Important? 

I'm now an off-road vehicle, moved-in to my new 1-bedroom apartment on the Seattle waterfront. I'm a city boy now, totally off the road. My car is parked in the garage downstairs, I can walk to almost everything, or so it seems. No more hunting for a net connection, I've got my own. Just a few more touches and I'll be fully civilized.  

Scott Rosenberg: "Russia's brief trajectory from glasnost to perestroika to democracy has now boomeranged straight back to dictatorship." 

Kos is puzzled by my view of weblog comments. Mark accurately quoted me in his article, but didn't (understandably) quote everything I said. I'll write more about this, today is move-in day, the day that I give up my migrant status and become a resident of the great state of Washington. 

A perennial problem with RSS is how does the publisher force an unsubscribe? Shouldn't the publisher have the right to opt-out? Right now there is no mechanism that's broadly supported by aggregators. This has come up many times but always gets mired in the usual hand-wringing and second-guessing of the XML mail lists. If you were looking for a use-case, consider the NY Times Olympics feed. Here's a screen shot of their latest entry. Now the Times presumably can configure their server in a couple of weeks to tell aggregators that the resource is gone. Even so, many aggregators won't notice and will keep polling indefinitely. And many content people can't change their server in this way. I'm no longer on the RSS advisory board, so I won't be playing a role in solving the problem, but it needs to be solved.  

Scott Rosenberg uses MusicMatch, and wants Yahoo to fix it (now that they own it). 

Scoble reports on the Friends Of O'Reilly Camp, which was held this weekend in Sebastapol. Of course, I'm not a member of the club, so I wasn't invited. Boo-hoo, I'm so sad, because it's exactly the kind of environment I thrive in. Anyway I won't do the obvious thing and start the inverse of FOO, where everyone but Friends Of O'Reilly are welcome, although I do have a great name for it -- BOO-FOO, which you have to say out loud, and if you still don't get it, listen to the Zappa's Valley Girl. It would be great if O'Reilly gave it up. I invited Tim to BloggerCon. Esther used to welcome Stewart and vice versa. After the election I bet Kerry and Bush shake hands. It's a big world, there's plenty of room for a book publisher and a random gadfly. Next time, make it inclusive. You'll square the result.  

Wired: "Radical librarians are standing up against the government to protect free speech and fight censorship. 

Just when you thought SUVs couldn't get any larger. 

Yesterday I had time to rewrite the ping handler for weblogs.com, and it seems to be responding better now, knock wood, Praise Murphy. I have another rewrite planned, after we get the open source release of Frontier out. I want to recode the whole thing in C.  

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Aaron Brown introduced Kitty Kelley, author of scandalous unauthorized biographies. Brown said that to call her biographies unauthorized is like saying that Willie Sutton made unauthorized bank withdrawals. Anyway her new book sounds very interesting as does Seymour Hersh's. Something for everyone. I'll read both. Can't wait to hear what Rush Limbaugh says about Kelley! That'll be fun for sure.  

With Hurricane Ivan aiming for the Gulf Coast, a couple of peeves. Biloxi is not pronounced phonetically. The "lox" part is actually pronounced "lux." And the syllable that's emphasized in the name Mobile is the second one, not the first. So it's Mobile, not Mobile. For the most they're pronouncing New Orleans acceptably, either New Or-lee-unz, or N'awlins (the "ew" after the initial N is audible, but just barely). What you don't want to say is New Orleeeenz. Bad bad. 

NY Times: "Amazon.com, the e-commerce giant, plans to take aim at the Internet search king Google with an advanced technology that the company says will take searches beyond mere retrieval of Web pages to let users more fully manage the information they find." 

Three years ago: "I want a telephone number that I can call that records a message, stores it as an MP3 on a static server, and emails me the URL." 

Question for President Bush: Would we have gone to war in Iraq if 9-11 hadn't happened? 

Bob Stepno, a Berkman Thursday regular who relocated to Knoxville, is looking for RSS local to his new hometown. 

There's a Seattle weblog meetup tomorrow night.  

I heard of a briefing to be held at a second-tier search company, and they're inviting bloggers in for an early look. This is a company that I've written about, a mixture of positive and negative; but I think always realistic. I didn't get an invite to the briefing. Now, this is the way tech companies controlled the tech press, and created the need for tech blogs (like this one). I'm not going to change. You won't see air-brushed pictures of what I see, for better or worse. But it's sad when companies that really need help (remember, this is a second-tier search provider) only choose cheerleaders to roll out their offerings through.  

Megnut: "Follow your heart." Amen. 

Scott Koon: "We don’t hate all the other cities around us. Just Tacoma and the Eastside." 

Seven Years Ago: Fractional Horsepower HTTP Servers. 

Michael Schuermann reviews Mozilla's new RSS features.  

Mozilla.Org: What are live bookmarks? 

A friend asked what Osama bin Laden wants. He's pretty much told us. First and foremost he wants westerners out of Saudi Arabia. Presumably when that happens the Saudi government will fall and he'll take over. Fundamentalists already control Iran, and are maneuvering to take control in Iraq. So, just a guess, in a year, maybe two, maybe five, they will control the three largest proven oil reserves in the world. At that point they won't need bombs and airplanes to strangle the US economy, just cut off the credit, no more loans, no more financing the trillion dollar deficit. Sad thing is there's nothing anyone can do about this, that's what Scott Rosenberg said yesterday. Bush has dug the hole so deep that there's no hope. So when he asks what Kerry's plan is, well, basically we'll make the best of a very bad situation, which you created, Mr President. As voters, the most expedient way to tell the world we know we fucked up is to get rid of Bush, now that we have a chance to. Rush Limbaugh and his dittoheads won't like this, but a vote for Bush is a vote for the Islamic Revolution. He's their best guy (hey he gave them Iraq).  

From the strange bedfellows department. Iraqi interim Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih visited Tehran saying the new Iraq wants peace with Iran. A couple of weeks later, the AP reports that "Hundreds of thousands of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards began military maneuvers Sunday near the border with Iraq."  

Don Park says the techniques of 3D games can replace the desktop metaphor. I agree. I remember thinking the same thing the first time I played a 3D game. 

Correction. Yesterday I said that the Wall Street Journal credited Upside for breaking the story about AOL's Napster work-alike. Ryan Tate, the author of the Upside article says my memory is flawed, and the WSJ credited me, not Upside (and not Scripting News). 

Monday, September 13, 2004

A brief audio blog post in response to Adam's Daily Source Code. 

Who do I talk with at the Seattle Times and/or Post-Intelligencer about getting some RSS feeds going? In Boston, I didn't feel like I was part of the community until the Boston Globe had feeds.  

Ooops, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has feeds.  

P-I: "Fallujah offers a stark example of what's gone wrong in Iraq." 

Josh Marshall: "The president's campaign has managed to take Iraq out of the election debate." 

Scott Rosenberg: "Bush has managed to distract the nation from the essential rudderlessness of his leadership." 

The Election Protection coalition "needs you to stand up and defend voting rights on November 2." 

Today at breakfast I shared a table with a Republican from Alaska named Dave. We agreed that we have to work together after the election, no matter who wins. I'd like to hear from other Americans who feel that way.  

David Appell: "Should the storm reach landfall in New Orleans, that city could be in for a world of hurt unlike anything it’s seen in modern times." 

Finally, the Democrats are insisting that the Republicans explain how the war in Iraq is related to the "War On Terrorism." This is a much bigger deal than whether Bush served in Vietnam. It's also far more serious than the lie Clinton got impeached for. This is like shooting ducks in a barrel. 

Hacking Netflix on the new-releases-at-Netflix feed. 

Adam Curry looks at doing a VOIP-based radio show.  

Yesterday I heard a really interesting segment of the NPR show American Routes on the founding of Atlantic Records. 

Scott Koon offers a Seattle survival guide. "God hates the eastside." 

Bloggers rake CBS 

I've gotten a fair number of questions of what I think about the bloggers digging into CBS with evidence and conjecture about the authenticity of the memos about George Bush's national guard service. I wanted to figure out what I had to say first, before saying it. So here goes.

1. That bloggers are great and powerful news breakers and fact-checkers is no news to me, or to readers of this blog. Reminds me of the time, four years ago, when it was discovered that AOL Time-Warner was running an MP3 search engine that was even easier to use than Napster, at the same time as suing Napster along with the other RIAA companies. I had to virtually beat Ryan Tate at Upside over the head to get him to pick up the story and run with it. The day after he did, the Wall Street Journal picked it up, with full credit to Ryan, and none to us. I took several deep breaths and muttered "it doesn't matter" about 18 dozen times.

1a. And then there was Trent Lott. Remember him?

2. It also reminds me of the time Chris Lydon said at a Berkman Thursday meeting, that because Dick Morris, a sleazebag Democrat operator, had recognized the power of blogs, that we had won, game over, throw a party, etc. I said to Chris, I'm not doing what I do to get approval from scum like Dick Morris. In fact, if anything, I'm doing it to get rid of scum like Dick Morris, or at least develop a political process that empowers everyone but scum like Dick Morris.

3. Even blogs aren't as important as choosing the best president in 2004. If that's the only thing we accomplish with all our work over all these years, it would have been worth it. If blogs correctly tell the story of the end of the world, we didn't win.

4. The latest we-fact-check-your-ass story was about an irrelevant detail of an irrelevant issue. Come on guys and gals, there's a real story out there. Which one of these losers should we bet our future on? Hint: It's even worse than it appears.

Switch back to Pacific time? 

In the upper right corner of this page there's a pretty important piece of text that says what time the blog was last updated.

Right now it says: "Monday, September 13, 2004 at 4:22 AM Eastern," which is accurate, but it doesn't give you much of an idea of the temporal environment at the point of entry.

In fact, in Seattle, where I am now as I write this, and as I will be for much of the remainder of 2004, it's now 1:29 AM Pacific."

So the question is: Should I switch the message?

We deal in the weighty issues of the day, and the minute issues of the day too. Service with a smile.

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Today I rented an apartment in downtown Seattle, near Pike Place market, museums, restaurants, ferries. It's a short-term lease, puts me in Seattle at least through the end of November. It's the first time I've lived in the center of a city. I move in on Wednesday. Exciting!! 

Movie of the entrance to the Seattle Art Museum.  

Ben Adida: When is a lie really a lie? 

BBC: "70 people die in widespread fighting across Iraq between militants and US-led forces." 

Grand Forks Herald: "Bloggers now are responding to events not as opinion writers but as fact-checkers and skilled reporters." 

Copenhagen is having a blogger's dinner honoring Dan Gillmor. 

Two years ago: "Why be Semantic when you can be Romantic?" 

Scoble kicks RSS ass? 

Yesterday I wrote about how Seattle is kicking my ass, now it's time to debunk Scoble's gross condemnation of RSS.

On Wednesay he posted that MSDN was limiting its RSS feed, dropping full text, because they were serving terabytes through RSS, and weren't happy with the economics.

Either Scoble didn't explain or I wasn't paying attention, because they were doing something very strange: aggregating all their blogs into one feed. They have thousands of blogs. In any hour the chances that one or more blogs changed is near 100 percent. And the feed is huge, every time you load it, you're downloading a lot of blog posts you don't care about.

The solution is simple, and it follows the grain of the Web, follows the intent of micro-publishing, and it's the way every other blogging community works -- simply offer a feed for every blog. That takes care of everything. It's just wrong to turn a community of weblogs into one giant Usenet group or Yahoo mail list.

So why does Scoble blame RSS? He's got the journalist's impulse for sensationalism and he can't say Microsoft is broken or they'd fire him.

Microsoft's Tommy Williams responds 

Via email...

"blogs.msdn.com does offer individual feeds for each blog and they continue to be full text. But, for some reason, a lot of people subscribe to the main feed and that's what was killing the team paying for the bandwidth.

"So the entries in the main aggregated feed were cut short, but the individual feeds remain full text.

"I personally never understood why anyone would want to subscribe to the aggregated feed. There's way too much stuff there for me to look at. I would rather subscribe to individual bloggers.

"But it seems there are a lot of people who disagree with me, hence the gigantic bandwidth bill."

Saturday, September 11, 2004

Morning Coffee Notes for 9/11/04, on driving in Seattle, and US politics.  

Dan Gillmor on CBS's credibility. He says the issue about CBS is interesting, but if you asked the bigger question, did the Bush family pull strings to keep him from having to go to Vietnam, the answer is clearly yes. But everyone was doing it. The Republicans could defuse the issue, and direct the debate in a productive direction, by saying just that. Of course it would raise questions about whether young people have a right to evade military service when asked to die in a pointless war, like the one in Vietnam, like the one in Iraq.  

Just took my daily walk with Adam Curry's Daily Source Code. Today he reviews Jon Stewart's audio book about America. He picked a couple of the best parts to excerpt. Adam's radio act is really getting polished, and he's building a good network of users and developers. He'll lead a discussion on this stuff at BloggerCon, November 6, at Stanford Law School.  

Sloane Crosley is a "writer living in New York. She likes to keep her ass out of trouble as much as possible." 

Seattle kicks my ass 

I know it's the anniversary of 9-11, and Hurricane Ivan is pounding Jamaica, gearing up for Cuba, and destined for Florida; but...

Last night driving back from a dinner party in Green Lake, I got my first taste of heavy Seattle rain. It was especially demoralizing, because 8 times out of 10 when I'm driving here, I'm lost.

The other day I set out for an eastside Barnes & Noble hoping to buy a detailed map of the Seattle area so I could study it. I ended up 20 miles from my target, or so it seemed, until I turned a corner and found I was at the intersection of 522 and 405, which is where I started the search. Ouch.

No city has kicked my butt as thoroughly as Seattle has. I expected to get lost in Boston when I was a newbie, but Seattle? Come on, the streets are a grid. Hah. No they're not, it just seems that way.

Anyway, it really rained last night. I sobbed as the traffic on I-5 passed me at high speed while I was going 40 MPH, gripping the steering wheel for dear life as my car almost hydroplaned 18 times. I made it back okay, glad to be in bed as the the rain came down.

So far Seattle kicks my ass. Mostly in a good way, but on its own terms, no matter what.

Friday, September 10, 2004

A 20MB driving movie taken in Brandon, Manitoba on August 31, entering the Trans-Canada Highway for the first time. It's funky, and musical, and the semi trucks do a coool dance. I have a balancing movie that I'll upload later, getting on I-5 in Bellingham, WA. It's also a musical. 

A question for the President and his supporters. How's the search for Osama bin Laden going? When should we expect him to be captured and put on trial? Is that still the plan? In what way is the war in Iraq helping or hurting the attempt to disable al Qaeda? 

Another question for George Bush: How many times have you been arrested? Usually you wouldn't ask a sitting President a shameful question like this. But then a sitting President wouldn't challenge the honor of an opponent who risked his life for his country, while he used his daddy's influence to save his. As I've said before, during Vietnam, getting out of the draft was one of the things people were doing, it's not something to be ashamed of (that's why it's wrong for the Democrats to use this as a negative against Bush). But it's much worse to take shots at people who fought in Vietnam. This was one of the shames of the Vietnam era, that we didn't separate the failed war from the honor of the soldiers who did their duty. They came home to face a shame that wasn't theirs, it belonged to LBJ and Nixon, and the other leaders who got us into the quagmire. Today, Bush and his cronies perpetuate that shame. So he deserves to be asked shameful questions, and if he doesn't want to be asked then, he should be more careful about shaming Kerry. 

BTW, the basic reason to vote against Bush: His is a failed Presidency. That's going to become painfully obvious when they try to hold elections in Iraq in January. The people holding the elections will control none of the country. Meanwhile, the US deficit grows to fund this miserable no-win war, jobs move overseas, the US economy is serving the upper class more and more, and the people who voted for Bush on the ridiculous promise that they too could be part of the upper class, will feel like they screwed themselves. They will have screwed the rest of us too. Never has a ticket had so little to offer as George Bush and Dick Cheney do. They're the shame of this country, and if we re-elect them we totally deserve what we get. IMHO. 

Another one. Bush disavows any connection with the Swift Boat guys, even though Karl Rove's friends put it together. But how does he explain that Zell Miller made a campaign appearance with the President in West Virginia today. Hard to disavow that. 

Netflix RSS feeds. Excellent.  

Here's the feed for my recent rentals. Can you subscribe to it? 

NY Times editorial: "It is now obvious that the administration does not intend to hold any high-ranking official accountable for the nightmare at Abu Ghraib." 

Brian Buck's latest round of chemo didn't work.  

Accordion Guy: "There's enough truth to nail the Bush administration..." 

Guardian: Tom's Little Black Blog. 

Taegan Goddard rounds up opinion on the CBS memos.  

Thursday, September 09, 2004

BBC: "Osama Bin Laden's deputy claims US troops are in a no-win situation in Iraq and Afghanistan." 

Steve Gillmor: "Jim Allchin, the toughest customer in the technology business, has just dropped in to Blog Central to fill developers in on the latest exciting news about the disemboweling of Bill Gates' 10-year dream for unification of the file and operating systems." 

Scoble does the math of the bandwidth cost of RSS. My experience has been similar to Microsoft's. In the last few months I've been paying steadily increasing bandwidth surcharges due to exploding use of my RSS feed. HTML access is also increasing at substantial rates. 

Korby Parnell: Redmond to Consider Providing Citywide Wi-Fi. 

Engadget: Song Airlines’ Linux-based distributed media system. 

I'm listening to the American RadioWorks special Witnesses to Terror which is fascinating.  

NY Times: "It seems safe to say that even if Mr Cheney did not mean to say it the way he did, this was precisely the message he intended to convey." 

Bill Clinton's heart 

On the news, they're saying Bill Clinton will be fully recovered in two-three months. Not true. My doctors told me that full recovery would actually never come, that you never get as good as new, but that's okay, because the bypass surgery saved my life, as it saved his.

The rule my doctors told me, which proved to be right in my case, is that after one month you're halfway back, then after two months, three-quarters, and so on. Every month you split the distance to the goal. A year after the surgery you're functioning pretty well, in fact probably better than you were before the surgery, because your heart wasn't working very well beforehand.

Another thing that seems to be true for all bypass survivors is that they put off seeing the heart doctor long after they know they have a problem. I explained this to a friend this way. Up to that point in your life you had worked through every physical problem through exercise, diet and rest, and it worked; esp muscle ills (the heart is a muscle). But this is the first time for many people (it was for me, and probably for Clinton too) that you couldn't exercise your way back to health. I think a lot of people die because of ths mistake. If you feel chest pain, go to the doctor, asap. It used to be a death sentence, a couple of generations ago, but now, it's a pretty normal procedure to fix the clogged coronary arteries.

That Clinton was striken with this, of course is not good news for him, but it is good news for everyone else (and maybe it will be good for him too). I didn't know that Henry Kissinger had bypass 20 years ago, as did Dick Cheney. They're still walking around. Now what my cardiologist said makes more sense. He said I should think of my lifespan in decades, not years. I didn't really believe it, but now I do. Knock wood, praise Murphy, I am not a lawyer, etc.

Anyway, getting a good look at your mortality, up close and personal, can make for great transformations. I was able to visualize my own death so clearly, I decided to accept it, and act as if I had died. I did what my heirs would have done with my belongings, I filled four dumpsters and sold the house, but I kept the money. I went to Harvard, a great move, and then after 1.5 years, went on the road. No regrets.

One thing you learn after visualizing your own death, is that if people cared a bit about what you think while you're alive, you can be absolutely sure they won't care what you thought (past tense) after you're dead. So why bother caring what you think while you're alive. So much time is wasted trying to prove you're right. You're not right, neither am I.

On my travels I met a couple struggling in their marriage. They told me their story. It was pretty personal. Afterwards, processing the conversation, I realized one thing. How much happier they would be if they stopped caring about being right. Having a lover who wants to be with you can be a totally joyous thing, but people make it so complicated. Do yourself a favor, write off the idea of being right, and just seek pleasure and helping other people, esp the person you love, and by all means help yourself. You may have decades, but they'll pass pretty quickly, might as well have some fun?

Now back to Bill Clinton. Having bypass unlocked all this energy for me, and look what I've done with the new chance I got. Now imagine the power that Bill Clinton has, one of a handfull of living ex-presidents, a rich man, with nothing but possibilities. He could really make a difference. I remember hearing him speak at Davos in 2000, he was an inspiration. Find a shared vision, he said. Indeed. A man of Clinton's power, freed of any idea that what he thinks means anything, could really make a difference, and I think he will. But give him a year to work through all the michegas, emotional and physical, before he's ready to resume his place in the world, fully.

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Apparently Ben Barnes, the former Texas lieutenant governor who helped Bush get out of Vietnam service, will be on 60 Minutes tonight.  

Editor & Publisher: "The Associated Press, after being told by the White House in February that it had released all of the President's military records, inexplicably got a new batch of documents from the Pentagon on Tuesday." 

Kerry says Bush took us to war at the wrong time for the wrong reason. Bush responds by saying Kerry flip-flopped. As a voter, I'd prefer if Bush responded to the substance of what Kerry said. I know that the Iraq war isn't with the people responsible for 9-11. The Republicans had better hope this little secret doesn't get out. I think that's why Bush does his little dance around the question, sneering at Kerry, while not answering the question. 

I heard a report on NPR today from a reporter who went looking for US soldiers who had been wounded, not killed, and found that while the war supporters like to say they support the troops, they're mostly alone. She told the story of a soldier who was blinded by shrapnel and lost an arm, living by himself in a trailer in West Virginia. The man can't see.  

To all the people who are disappointed in Kerry's campaign (I am one of them) I think we need to start seeing this as our campaign. If you love this country, we can't let Bush have four more years. I don't care if Kerry flip-flops, we'll deal with him once he's in office. We just can't afford four more years of Bush. To pretend this is Kerry's problem is to shirk our responsibility. 

Scoble: "Terrabytes of bandwidth were being used up by RSS." 

Adam says BitTorrent could help. Maybe so. Aggregators could also be gentler and limit polling to once an hour.  

Live from the Formosa Tea House. "Three bloggers having lunch and talking about stuff." 

PC Mag reviews my camera. They're not impressed. I like it fine.  

Time: "After the GOP assault, Kerry has a right to exaggerate." 

Google is starting to advertise Picasa at the bottom of image searches.  

Adam Curry found a Torrent file for The Daily Show on the closing night of the RNC. I clicked the link, and got the whole show. Great stuff. 

Photos: Kelowna to Seattle. 

Ed Cone reports on John Kerry in Greensboro. "W stands for Wrong." Amen. I'm willing to give him the letter, as long as we remember that little association. W stands for Wrong. Excellent.  

I've gotten a bunch of email from people wanting me to come to Vancouver for a spicy noodles type dinner. Twist my arm. ;-> I plan to be in Seattle through the November election, and Vancouver is just a hop over the border, I can even take a ferry, so let's plan a dinner, a couple of weeks from now, and I'll be there!  

On this day in 2002 I discovered the joy of Julie Andrews playing Victoria playing Victor playing Victoria. She's totally a fox, esp in this role. Who'd-a-thought.  

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Dowbrigade: "US forces have withdrawn from city after city across the center of Iraq. Faluja, Karbala, Ramadi, Najaf and large sections of Baghdad are in the hands of militants whose entire existence is based on a desire to kill Americans and drive us from their lands." A must-read. 

Dick Cheney: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States." Hmmm. How does he know? 

Arrived safely. I feel like I'm home. Canada treated me really fine.  

As soon as I got back into the US, my cell phone worked again, it said I had a voicemail from Steve Gillmor. Coool. I called him back, and he said he liked (for some unknown reason) the driving movies. So I dedicate this driving movie to Steve. It's really plain, but the music is good. It's almost like ballet. Can you tell I'm back in the good ole U-S-of-A?  

I've heard that Proxomitron is just the thing for blocking popups.  

Today's drive: Kelowna to Seattle.  

JustVote.Org helps people register to vote, and more.  

Yesterday I almost posted a note that I hadn't seen a popup since installing SP2. Today, the first popup that circumvents Microsoft's anti-popup code popped up. Screen shot. Arrrgh. The race goes on. 

Monday, September 06, 2004

You can send a get-well message to President Clinton. 

Gizmodo reports on a potential deal between TiVO and Netflix. 

NPR reports that the Clinton bypass surgery is complete, a success, and he is "resting comfortably." 

Two years ago today: The Road to RSS 2.0. 

Today: The road to Seattle will have to wait yet another day. I have a flat tire, and the tread is so low on all four, I decided to get new tires, and stick around one more day in Kelowna to charge my batteries and avoid holiday traffic. This is a very sweet place, lots of parks, trails, rivers, a huge deep lake, and it's not a small city, but it's very easy to work with (and much less expensive than Banff).  

Canadian humor. Yah your tire only looks flat on the bottom. The other parts look oh kay. 

BBC: "Seven US marines and three Iraqi soldiers are killed by a car bomb near the flashpoint town of Falluja." 

Interview with Bill Gates on Microsoft's iPod/iTunes competitor. 

BBC: "Doctors begin a heart bypass operation on former US President Bill Clinton at a New York hospital." 

NY Times: "Among the better-known former Clinton aides who are expected to play an increasingly prominent role are James Carville, Paul Begala and Stanley Greenberg, campaign aides said." 

Sunday, September 05, 2004

For your consideration: Why isn't the USA Patriot Act being discussed in this election? Are we supposed to assume that if Kerry is elected he will withdraw executive branch support? Who will be Kerry's attorney general? We know it won't be Ashcroft. Why don't they say who their key people will be? 

Pictures: Banff to Kelowna. 

I didn't stop to take many pics today, but let me say this, British Columbia, is every bit as beautiful as they say it is, it's so stunning, so dramatic. This pic gives you some idea of the visualness of this place. 

Today's audioblogpost features Dire Straits, Doris Day and explains why it's worth it for Microsoft to invest in MSIE, even while they "boil the ocean" with Longhorn. (Also, the name of today's hurricane is Frances.)  

And we have a nice movie of a beautiful British Columbia river, probably a tributary of the Columbia.  

You can see all the pictures from the current trip on this page. 

Ed Cone, Jeff Jarvis and Douglas Rushkoff on weblog ads. Me, I don't want anyone messing with what I'm communicating on my weblog. There are already too many distractions. The money I could make by putting other people's messages here just isn't worth it. And by the way, I'm a signatory of the Cluetrain Manifesto. I don't believe there's a market for messages. I know they put ads on TV. But I'd rather watch videos about products that I'm interested in. And I think that would be a better use of the "advertiser" dollar. 

Chris Lydon interviews William F Buckley. 

Washington Post: "Last September, I wrote that RSS (short for Really Simple Syndication, a way for your computer to check for updates to your favorite sites), deserved more attention, and for once my timing was right. Within months, such mass-market sites as The Post and the New York Times came out with their own RSS feeds."  

Bzzzt. Fact check. The NY Times has had RSS since 3/20/02.  

Sadly, I seem to be running out of continent, again. I could keep truckin in this mode for a few more weeks, easily. I'm going to stop in Seattle for a few weeks, at least, and do some writing, programming, phone-calling, lunch-dinner-grabbing, sleeping, and who-knows-what. Last year I tried out a new east coast city, now it's time to try one in the west. I plan to stay at least long enough to vote in the November election, and to do my best to help Washington, a state that's in play, do the right thing, and vote out the most dangerous and unprincipled President we've had in my lifetime (and that's saying a lot).  

Saturday, September 04, 2004

Photos: Banff scenery and traffic. 

Today's movie: A British Columbia waterfall. 

Back from a long day touristing around Banff. Also listened to the latest Adam Curry source code, and Jon Stewart's history of America, an inexpensive and entertaining audiobook. Highly recommended. Be careful listening to it while driving, there's one joke in there, about the Senator from Kentucky, that's so funny you might not be able to stay on the road. Adam bought the book too, on an impulse. $7.95 is a good price for an audiobook. He also recommends (via Eric Rice) getting Snowcrash, so I will. And Jim Armstrong reminds me that I should look for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence (which I have read, about 30 years ago). Audio books are here to stay.  

I'm about half-way through the latest Gillmor Gang. Longhorn is the topic. I have a couple of questions for next week's show. 1. Whatever became of MSIE? It's a great client. How about adding a few programmers to the team to work on enhancements in MSIE to make it a better weblog tool and aggregator. Call it MSIE/Pro and charge a few bucks for it. The next great billion dollar user interface keeps slipping further and further out, yet so many people use MSIE now, why not put the religion aside and make MSIE better? This is something the GG could help with. 2. In this one Steve says Jon asked that he not talk about RSS. Why? 

Jon Udell: MP3 Sound Bites. 

1/29/03: How to support enclosures in aggregators. 

Photos: Prairie to Calgary to Banff. 

Philadelphia Inquirer: Ghost towns await Frances. 

Glenn Reynolds: "The Kerry campaign counted on Big Media to help it win. Oops." 

Thank heaven for good drugs 

Bill Clinton called into the special Larry King roundup on his bypass surgery. He sounded great. Of course I projected my own experience onto his. I sounded great too, at that point in the process. They're pumping relaxing drugs into your system. I don't think you could feel anxious, no matter what. Good drugs.

It didn't really come home what was going to happen until the guy came in to shave my chest the morning of the surgery. He didn't stop there. Basically every single square inch of my body was shaved, except for the top of my head. I tried to make light conversation, but my mind was on what was about to happen.

Before they carted me away I had to go into the lavatory and wash everything I could reach. That's when I fell apart. Sobbing, crying, wanting to get out of there. I looked at my chest and realized this was the last time I was going to see it. I had a pretty good idea of what they do in bypass surgery, and I had a visual image there and then of my vital organs coming out through a big hole there. I collapsed, got up and put myself in the rolling bed they had brought in, and let them roll me into the surgery part of the heart clinic.

Somewhere along the line they must have hooked up something intravenously, because while I was waiting in the corridor for someone to come get me, I got really high. Cracking jokes, and sort of observing all the preparations for the surgery. I'm not sure if I was actually in the operating room, but let me tell you, I sure didn't mind. Next thing I knew I was crawling my way through some weird weird ideas into a strange reality, the recovery room. There was an attendent there, reading a magazine, giving me ice cubes to suck on (I was really thirsty) and giving me more opiates to keep me from freaking out. When morning came (24 hours since the beginning of the surgery) they brought me breakfast, and made me get out of bed to eat it. I did.

They don't let you lie in bed for any long period after the surgery, if they did you'd get even sicker, gotta get moving asap. The amazing thing is that your body can do it. I remember the first walks I took around the cardiac ward were the most gratifying of my life. But I wasn't out of the emotional hole yet. Maybe I'll write more about that after Bill Clinton has his surgery.

Yesterday he cracked a great joke, "Like the Republicans, I want four more years." Here's lookin at you kid. Murphy-willing, knock wood, I am not a doctor (or a Republican), it should be a lot more than four more years.

Friday, September 03, 2004

Arrived in Banff. Another great drive, but man this place is like a city. Feels like Tahoe, Taos or Park City, I liked Medicine Hat better, more laid back. I'm no longer in the middle of nowhere, and that's a little sad. But the scenery here is famous, and deservedly so. Here's a picture I just took out of the window of my hotel room. On the drive across I heard about President Clinton's bypass surgery. I have some idea what he's going through, that's the surgery I had in the summer of 2002. These days it's a very well-practiced procedure, I'm sure his prognosis is good. I hope he talks to people who have had the experience, that was super-important for me. If you haven't had your chest ripped open you can't imagine what it feels like, not just physically, but psychologically.  

BTW, I don't leave Banff until Sunday morning. I'm taking a day here to check out the scenery, catch up on sleep, etc. 

In Calgary, where I took my daily walk (great place for walking, btw) I learned about busking. 

Zell Miller: "My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend." 

Today's drive: Medicine Hat to Banff, via Calgary. 

Microsoft's new music service supports RSS with feeds for the top 100 songs, albums and artists. Nice job. The top songs feed even has enclosures with an excerpts of the song. Excellent. 

Paolo notes that Microsoft is using RSS compatibly with Apple. This is super-important, we usually think it's cool when a tech company does something new. That's actually more common than doing something compatibly. There's so much unnecessary incompatibility. 

RSS from Down Under: The Sydney Morning-Herald and The Age.  

Adam has a special site for his audioblogposts. He could use some help from a good template designer. Hint: Today is Adam's 40th birthday.  

While recording one of my audioblogposts from the Trans-Canada Highway, I got out the camera, and did a little video.  

Billings Gazette: "It bothers [Swift boat veteran Bob Anderson] that Sen John Kerry's swift boat history has become such a political hot potato. But he's even more irritated that his name was included -- without his permission -- on a letter used to discredit Kerry." 

I'm glad Kerry responded to the Republicans. Maybe it's time, though, to consider a new format, where they do a Democratic talk show, with Mario Cuomo, Wesley Clark and James Carville reviewing the Republicans. They require serious rebuttal. Don't pretend they're going to roll over and let the Dems win. Fight fire with fire. It's good that Kerry has shown his anger. It's not good that he trailed off into his standard incoherent stump speech.  

Scott Rosenberg: "Republicans who applauded [Zell Miller] need a remedial civics class." 

Video of Chris Matthews interchange with Zell Miller. 

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Arrived in Medicine Hat, Alberta.  

Today's audioblogpost features music by Ludwig van Beethoven. 

RSS feeds from Brazil from Folha Online. 

Lawrence Lee summarizes the recording options on Windows and Mac.  

Command Post: "Karl Rove has to be the one bringing out all these double agents. He has to be the one who booked Miller and Ron Silver and Arnold. It had to be his idea to attack Kerry almost from within, using people liberals like and respect. A Democrat Senator and two movie stars, one of them a Jew. If they can feel good about backing George Bush, anyone can. It’s too brilliant not to be Rove. Unless it was Bush himself. He’s smart enough, whether he mispronounces things or not." 

Dowbrigade: "Bush may be a Master Poker player, but we are far from sure we want him playing our hand when all of our chips are on the table." 

The Republicans talk about Kerry flip-flops, okay, but can we look at their flip-flops? The big glaring one I keep thinking of was the Bush promise of No Nation Building, as if to imply that his administration, if elected, would only act at home, something lot of novice Presidents promise, before they get sucked into Middle East politics, as they all do. What about that great 60 Minutes interview when he didn't know the name of the President of Pakistan? Maybe we should ask that question again? Come on Dems, let's nail this bastard. He almost had me going with the cute daughters and stoic wife. The Zell Miller speech was a wakeup call. That wasn't an election speech, that was incitement to a lynch mob. Guess who's the guest of honor? Think about it. Why was the Miller speech so scary? Answer -- you're next. That's what Miller was saying. After this election we put on the brown shirts. I saw John McCain interviewed on NBC after the Miller speech. You could tell he was scared. They asked if he thought Kerry would make a good commander in chief, he said yes he would. That's the kind of candidate the Reps should nominate. Then after the election, win or lose, we won't have to have a civil war.  

Jeff Sharlet: "Just as it took a Republican like Nixon to go to China, it took a Democrat like Miller to declare that God likes America best." 

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

The state of Missouri supports RSS. 

Listening to Cheney speak now. More of the same lies. I love that the text behinds him says Land of Opportunity, while he trashes Kerry. Before him, Zell Miller talks about the "Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief." Yes, that's right, it's called an election. Geez Louise. Let me know when these guys get serious.  

Glenn Reynolds: "With accredited bloggers at both conventions, this can fairly be called the first presidential election to be blogged. And that just might matter -- though if it does, it will be as much because of big-media vices as it is of bloggers' virtues." 

"thinkUsaAlignRight"According to News.Com, Philadelphia is considering a city-wide wireless network. Wow. That would instantly make Philly the place to be. I never thought I could possibly say that. Here's another thought for Republicans to consider. Imagine if the trillion dollars we're pouring into Iraq infrastructure had been put into providing across-the-board wireless in every major US city. I bet it wouldn't even cost a trillion. And think about the economic gain. It's the difference between pouring money down a hole, and investing. 

Here's what a trillion looks like: $1,000,000,000,000.  

Josh Marshall says that Ben Barnes, the former Texas attorney general who pulled the strings necessary to keep President Bush out of Vietnam, will tell his story on 60 Minutes.  

CBS: Microsoft unveils music download service. 

Command Post compares the RNC with the DNC. Not sure what he means, I was able to work alongside the "real" reporters on the floor-level at the DNC. I have pictures to prove it. In some ways it was better than the official blogger space, not due to any failure of the DNC, rather the greed of people who wanted to siphon our wifi access (rumor was we had the only wifi in the Fleet Center). I think the DNC also deserves credit for going first. I doubt if the RNC would have let Alan and his colleagues in if the DNC hadn't raised the bar. And finally, I was unable to apply to go to the RNC. They chose Alan presumably because his politics matched theirs. So right off the bat Alan your participation is tainted. What would happen if you ran a piece critical of the Republicans?  

Apparently Adam has found the perfect audioblogging software for his Mac. It hooks into the flow of bits to the speakers and turns that flow into an MP3. This means you can use any software you like to play the tunes and effects you want. I'm envious. I want that for Windows. 

Audio blog post from the Trans-Canada Highway in Saskatchewan. Lots of random bits with very little premeditation. About 45 minutes.  

Arrived in Regina around 2:30PM Central, in time for a nap then a brief exploration. I like this pace better. Anyway, I caught up on Adam's audio blog posts (here's the feed) and did one of my own.  

Today's drive: Brandon to Regina.  

CNN this morning reports rumors of change in the Kerry campaign, but news of the change is public, on the Kerry weblog. Puzzling. 

BOP News: On TV It's All Republicans All the Time. 

NY Times: "A trio of newly discovered worlds are much smaller than any other planets previously discovered outside of the solar system." 

Taking out the garbage 

Scoble was fascinated how news of the Longhorn recalc propogated, but he missed the most fascinating aspect of the announcement. Microsoft shipped the story on a Friday night, I even got a detailed email from a Waggenerette, but the blogosphere waited until Monday to carry the story.

It wasn't that we were on vacation or weren't checking email over the weekend, it's just that by announcing it on Friday, Microsoft was clearly taking out the garbage (a term I learned from The West Wing, basically announce all your bad news on a Friday, no one reads the political news on Saturday).

The blogosphere didn't play along. Blog flow over weekends, esp a late summer weekend, is miniscule compared to the flow on a Monday morning. Can the story wait till Monday? No problemmo.

Apple critiques 

Microsoft gets something of a raw deal from the blogosphere, they're considered fair game for ridicule, when few other companies are. This should change, and I'm glad to see it is. Russ Beattie, for example, had a succinct, practical and negative review of Apple's new desktop computer. Bravo!

And when Adam Curry calls the iPod a platform, he's overlooking one important thing that users and developers like to see in a platform: choice of vendor. It's laughable to think that iTunes will ever work with another vendor's hardware, it's not very likely to happen, in our lifetimes, even if we live to a ripe old age. I literally did laugh when I considered the idea. That's not the way Apple works.

Postscript: Of course then I immediately realized that HP is making an iPod, just to confuse matters. Oy. There goes my theory. Does the hPod work with iTunes?

Curry catchup 

I resolved today to catch up with Adam Curry's audio blog posts. I didn't have one of my own last night it turns out. Generally I'm too wiped out after a day of exploring the northland to have much energy left for creativity before falling asleep. But not so in the morning. Even without coffee, I'm rarin to go!

I hope to write more here so I can copy-paste a picture of a Heinz ketchup bottle here.