Friday, December 17, 2004

12 new feeds from the US Dept of State. 

Sometime in the last few days Yahoo announced that they were working on a new RSS 2.0 namespace that relates, somehow, to their (new?) media search capability. There's a spec and a mail list. I received no advance notice of the work, although it appears that others did. There were some substantial errors in the initial draft that will be corrected soon, according to posts from Yahoo people on the mail list. It's good that they're doing their work in a namespace, as mandated by the RSS 2.0 roadmap. I'm not sure of the purpose, but am watching the mail list. Is it a good idea? No one knows. It doesn't look like the advance from podcasting that they claim it is, but it's really hard to tell.  

Sorry I missed this excellent February 12 rant that explains why users don't like being held hostage by tech companies. Read the whole thing. It's eloquent, angry and concise. I think what's changing, slowly, is that the tools now exist for users to express themselves, and they're starting to do that, about us, about how they don't like our attempts to control them.  

Five years ago: "Taking it personally would be predictable, but it almost certainly would be a fantasy. I'm sure it has nothing to do with me. The sweating man behind the counter is just having a rough day." 

Jason Calcanis is looking for a podcast producer.  

A friend of mine, I don't want to say who, is in bypass surgery right now, as I write this. If his experience is anything like mine was, the last few hours were like being on death row, but by now the sedatives have taken over, and he's under, and oblivious to it all. He'll reconnect with reality in a few hours in a strange dark place, and find a tiny ray of thought, an image, then a concept, then hear a voice, it gets louder, eyes flicker, there's another person here. When you wake up you can't speak because there's a tube down your throat, but you can signal with your hands, and they yank the tube out and start feeding you ice cubes and pain killers. After a few hours of this, it's time for breakfast, but get this, you have to get out of bed to eat it, and you do. This is the first step down a long road to recovery. It's risky surgery, but I think my friend will make it. I pray that he makes it. We have so much still to do, together.  

Lots of comments in response to Mary Hodder's post about problems with NetNewsWire. Most of them say Mary is wrong. In her defense, she tried to use the software for what it was designed to do. Hard to see how that makes her wrong. 

An interesting true story about BloggerCon. With users outnumbering vendors ten to one, I spotted two vendors going off to talk, with each other. It was an incredible environment for learning, vendors learning about the people who use and love their products. But it takes courage to listen, to really listen. When these conferences accomplish something, that's what is accomplished -- listening.