Sunday, January 09, 2005

Andy Affleck interviewed me on the origins of podcasting.  

iPodderSP is a podcast client for Microsoft smart phones. 

My best theory: Bill Gates didn't exactly call any of us communists, he said there are communists, and how could you argue with that? I don't personally know any communists who use music on the Internet, but maybe there are some. Anyway, the other day I bought a DVD for Adam Curry, a gift, a movie I loved that made a difference to me, and I wanted to be the one to give it to him. I paid retail at a big music store on 5th and Collins here in Miami Beach. It was about $30. I can't imagine this makes me a communist in the mind of Bill Gates. We ended up playing it on Adam's Mac laptop, but before it would play it presented a very strange dialog that made it sound like we were doing something illegal or communist-y, when we had just paid full price for the damned thing.  

My best guess is that Gates's comment was not off-the-cuff as Scoble said (doing the best he could to spin it for his boss) but rather calculated to show the music industry that he would happily sell out his users for a chance to take the market from Apple. 

John Palfrey explains the vision of the Harvard conference on blogging, journalism and credibility later this month. I think John's vision is good, I still may be missing something very basic about the conference. It seems we're skirting the real issues amongst us, if we are a convening of amateurs and pros. 

Listening to this week's Gillmor Gang on a final walk through South Beach, it was gratifying to hear that all the show's regulars appear to be over their objections to weblogs, RSS and podcasting, and even better, can sell the vision with confidence. Talking with Scoble earlier, as he and wife Maryam were driving to the snowy mountains east of Seattle, I said I was glad to hear that they got it. He was a guest on this week's show. He said it's time for something new. But maybe this time not so quick. Maybe this is a good place to pause for a while, dig in, and instead of doing something leading edge, do the new thing competently, properly, deeply.  

Markoff speculates: "Jobs will suddenly reverse ground and begin selling a new iPod peripheral - a cheap Mac desktop - to the legions of PC owners who have eagerly purchased iPods but so far have failed to switch to the more costly Mac computer world." 

Four years ago today: "A human being has integrity if he or she is what he or she appears to be. That's why integrity commands us to disclose conflicts, so that what we say, and who we appear to be, are in synch."