Monday, October 25, 2004

Eric Rice is exploring using Skype for podcasts. 

It was great to see Bill Clinton campaigning for John Kerry today. For so many reasons. First, he's the most skillful political speaker we have, in either party. Watching him at work is like watching a skilled artist, when we've had to tolerate such second-stringers, in Bush and Cheney and yes, Kerry and Edwards. Second, it's great to see him look so well! I have some idea what he's been through. This particular disease and its treatment help deepen people and bring on a sense of purpose and impatience. Let's get it done, now. Third, he will help the cause and raise the level of the debate. It's good to see him standing up for and behind John Kerry. In the early days of the Edwards partnership, Kerry was awkward, but you can see how he has grown as a leader. And Clinton's frailty, his vulnerability, works. Kerry, who actually is older than Clinton, can be seen as relying on and at the same time supporting the weaker but more experienced man. I like it because it works. Finally, so many years after Clinton's scandal, it's time to forgive the man. Enough time has passed, he's suffered enough, he's good enough. As they say, when Clinton lied no one died. Those were simpler times. It feels good to see Clinton doing so well because it feels so good to forgive. 

The world's oldest man is a Red Sox fan.  

If your desktop aggregator supports enclosures, you can subscribe to this feed to get a pretty healthy percentage of the new podcasts. And if you're a thick-headed PC columnist, you might try the HTML version as a fairly idiot-proof user interface for finding the new MP3s. You can even copy them to your iPod or iPod-alike using the Windows file system. One more thing, it's not just for Mac users, I only use Windows machines, but if Kerry wins the election I'll get a nice new Mac.  

Computerworld: "The biggest challenge for the open-source community is that there are too few open-source developers, according to Michael Tiemann, vice president of open-source affairs at Red Hat Inc." 

CBC is doing a podcast of Tod Maffin's radio show. Here's an episode he did explaining RSS.  

A podcast feed for Air America's Morning Sedition show. AA doesn't have very broad distribution in the US, but this feed solves the problem for people in cities that don't have a local station. Coooool.  

NY Times: Clinton Gets Rock Star's Welcome in Philadelphia. 

Adam Curry sends a screen shot of the OPML directory from iPodder.org integrated with the new iPodderX app.  

SF Chronicle article about RSS. Apparently RSS was a big topic at the Web 2.0 conference earlier this month. "At Web 2.0, a recent Internet conference in San Francisco, the acronym was omnipresent, referred to countless times on the stage and in the hallways." I think perhaps it's time for an open conference about the future of RSS. The Web 2.0 conference was exclusive. You had to be friends with a few rich and powerful people to be on stage there. This is not a good way to run an open standard, I think every reasonable person would agree with that.  

Scoble comments on yesterday's podcast in a blog post.  

ABC: "A gaunt former President Clinton does not think he is taking a risk by hitting the campaign trail for Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry so soon after undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery." 

AP: "A smiling, energetic former President Clinton campaigned for Democratic Sen. John Kerry on Monday just seven weeks after undergoing heart surgery, telling a cheering crowd of thousands that Kerry 'is going to make America the comeback country.'" 

Eight days before the election, who would you vote for? 

Want a podcast with bite-size enclosures? Pete Prodoehl fills the bill. 

I'm doing some work on audio.weblogs.com this morning. This post has an enclosure attached, which you can see in the RSS feed.