Sunday, April 24, 2005

Marc Canter points out that ourmedia.org has RSS feeds. But it's even better than that, it has podcast feeds. Only one thing is a little odd, they're version 0.92, not 2.0, which means they might not work with some podcast clients. They could change the version to 2.0 and then they would surely work with all clients. Anyway, after his skepticism about podcasting it's good to see Marc and his partners get into it.  

8:30PM Eastern: Arrived safely at the beach. 

Wow. I get to disagree with Scoble and say that Ballmer is right. Microsoft, as a corporation, should never take a stand on a political issue, as they have, and if it took pressure from a conservative preacher to get them to change their position, then so be it. I've had a chance to be on the other side of this, not being able to buy a product that I wanted to buy because (I thought incorrectly) that the company was supporting anti-abortion political groups. The company was Domino's Pizza, and in the midwest, it's the best pizza you can get, but I had to do without because the conventional wisdom was wrong. It was the owner of the company who was anti-abortion, which is his right, as it is Ballmer's right to support gay rights. But people should be able to use Microsoft products without having to support political causes they don't. It's especially important because Microsoft has monopolies, and has even been convicted of antitrust. In other words, people may not even have a realistic choice. They are about to close the doors on the airplane so I won't be able to edit this before I get home. Oh well, here goes! Saving... 

4:20PM Eastern: This is a first. I'm online on an airplane parked at gate A18 in Atlanta. The service is T-Mobile. Got my 40 minute hike in the airport, not the nicest place to walk, but it worked. 

7AM Pacific: Checking mail at Gate A14 at Sea-Tac. Excellent T-Mobile wifi. Drinking a Tully's ice coffee.  

Rogers Cadenhead: "I wasn't prepared to be famous for 24 hours, but now that my weblog traffic has subsided to normal levels, I can relate some of the experience." 

You think? 

Steve Gillmor: "I’m really suffering from Post Gillmor Gang Disorder."

Tell me something I didn't know.

Note to universe. Please get Steve and his pals back on the air. I'm suffering.

Travel day morning no-coffee notes 

Today's a travel day, starting now, at 4:45AM Pacific. My flight leaves Seattle in three hours, change planes in Atlanta, arrive in Jacksonville, then drive for 1.5 hours before arriving at the beach, assuming all goes well, knock wood, praise Murphy. Add three hours for time zones, and I should get home in time for Sixty Minutes. I'll get my daily walk in Atlanta.

I had a very stimulating visit with Microsoft, and decided to stay in the US for my 50th birthday, only eight days away. I'll go to England toward the end of the month. Reason --> I want to spend two or three weeks working on the outliner. It's overdue. It got the kernel changes it needed, thanks to Dave Luebbert. Of course it's still a bit rough, and it will be when the beta is made publicly available, but it works, it has the right window dressing, now the furniture needs to be brought in (not all of it) and then it's time to sweep the floors, before the occupants arrive and put dishes in the cabinets and pictures on the wall. I want to get back to working with users as a software developer. I miss it. A lot.

Dave Luebbert and I had a great visit too. He called last night to talk some about the outliner. He wanted to know if an item could be routed to more than one category. I said it could. He said he had listened to the podcast with my dad, and like everyone else who heard it, was charmed. IPSTIQ all the way. Kosso says that to me all the time. It turns out he's friends with Phil Toronne. Phil and Beth are really smart, really nice, charming, honest. But if you listened to yesterday's podcast you know that too.

Had dinner last night with Chris Pirillo and Ponzi. She's from North Carolina. That means she's from Cackalacky and a Tarheel. Forgot to say that to her. We talked about Julie Leung, and Gnomedex. I'm going to get a special deal for Scripting News readers. You gotta go, it's going to be a great show. I told Chris about the outliner. He did a little jumping up and down thing. It's good. I'm going to talk about the outliner here in June. And in England in May. And New York. Maybe elsewhere.

Okay now I have to shut this thing and get out of here, go to the airport and get on the plane.

Namaste y'all!