Tuesday, May 31, 2005

9:15PM Eastern: Arrived at the beach. Tired.  

The idea of using Netflix data to get a date is getting some play.  

5:45PM Eastern: Arrived safely in Orlando. Using the free wifi in the airport while waiting for baggage. Very civilized. Boston take note. 

Larry Lessig on amateurism. 

More on Deep Throat from Taegan Goddard. 

Good afternoon. I'm checked in at Boston's Logan Airport, gate B32, using their wifi service which costs $7.95 for the day.  

Reuters: Ex-FBI man claims to be Deep Throat. 

Today's a travel day, so light posting. See you in Florida.  

The discussion for last night's radio show. 

Just got a call from my insurance agent in Florida. No need to tell him I'm in Boston. Then the phone rings from someone in Boston. On my morning walk through Cambridge (temp 51F) I had the Billboard Top 100 from 1967, and let me say these are the songs that meant the most to me, programmed my brain about culture and love at the tender age of 12. Best song so far, Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry. 

It's hard to explain this post from Kosso, so please, just read it.  

Charlie Nesson is the guy who talked about Socrates, and by coincidence, John Palfrey sent a link to his blog shortly after I posted the link to Kosso's post, about Betsy Devine, The Balloon Man, and some guy who said I was like Socrates. 

Monday, May 30, 2005

WGBH at 7PM Eastern -- the inaugural airing of Chris Lydon's Open Source. 89.7 FM. Guests are David Weinberger, Doc Searls and yours truly. If you're not in the Boston area, please tune in to the webcast.  

Kosso recorded tonight's show. Best line: "Revenge of the sources." 

A breakfast podcast with Betsy Devine in Cambridge, we sing, and she enjoys being Mr Jennifer Lopez.  

Betsy explains, in a movie. why people at Google, now that they're a huge company, do things that are not consistent with the values of early Google. Same is true at every other big tech company, maybe all big companies in every industry. 

A brief conversation with John Palfrey and Jim Moore who are starting an investment fund for RSS-related ventures.  

A movie taken out the window of a speeding cab of the Charles River from Memorial Drive. 

I wonder if Netflix has ever thought of partnering with Match.com to connect people who like the same kind of movies? I suppose Barnes & Noble could do something similar. Maybe therein lies a business model for podcasting.  

To Steve Gillmor, the constant evangelist for "attention" -- Netflix is in your corner, they actually publish attention data, today, not at some time in the future. If Match.com wanted to provide a service such as the one I described above, they wouldn't need to actually do a deal with Netflix, they already publish the data on a per-user basis, and they do it in XML (your favorite format by the way). So Match could provide a place for you to enter your Netflix user id, and they could go get the data and use it in their matching algorithm. How about that! BTW, so much for Dave Sifry's plan to invent a new format here.  

Four years ago: " I thought my father was a weird guy, but it turns out he was just European." 

I've been playing around with Blogger on and and off, and was surprised to find out after all this time that they don't have an easy way to edit a blogroll. They recommend by-hand editing of HTML lists.  

Two years ago: What makes a weblog a weblog? 

I was flipping channels last night and caught a profile of R&B star Lionel Richie, talking about what it's like to write a song. He says sometimes he's searching for the line that ties all the elements of a song together, he could be searching for weeks, and then it hits him like a thunderbolt -- boom -- mind bomb, that's it, and he can move on to the next project. Then I wondered if he actually wrote the songs, was he describing what it's like to have an idea, or what he thought it would be like if he ever actually had one. I have no idea if Richie is a creative guy or if he pays people to be creative, or if he rips people off and says their creativity is his without paying.  

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Two buildings, one old and one new, are just a couple of blocks apart in Cambridge, MA. 

I took this movie holding the camera by my side while walking. Maybe it would be more colorful if there wasn't so much brick wall, more natural scenery? Hmmm. 

Rogers Cadenhead: "Mark Pursey has become the sixth member of the Creative Commons Choir, the asynchronous podcasting singing group that's now one-sixtieth as large as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir." 

CBC does podcasts. 

Central Florida podcast meetup in Gainesville? 

Time: "The wiki genie is out of the bottle." 

Mr. Gutman: "Once again a post on Halley Suitt's blog provides an opportunity for insightful social comment by Mr. Gutman." 

Amy Bellinger joins me in a Green Acres duet. You can do it too, you don't even have to be a woman. I have a nightmare dream that Madge Weinstein will do one. What about Dawn? Lisa Williams? Sylvia Paull? Halley Suitt? Burning Bird? The hits keep coming. Heh. 

Ted Turner to Dan Schorr, as recalled by Dan Schorr: "I forget, are you mad at me, or am I mad at you?" 

A BitTorrent search engine that supports RSS. Here's a feed that shows new downloads that have the word Billboard in their descriptions. 

I'm listening to Weekend Edition on WBUR. The soundbites don't change, and the memories come back. I had a good time here in Cambridge. The memories are good. 

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Good evening (7PM Eastern) from Cambridge, MA.  

Harold Gilchrist asks a good question. I wonder what the iPodder devs think? 

I just checked my email and then caught my breath and guess what, there's a thunderstorm brewing. Do I have the energy to do a podcast? Hmmm. Speaking of podcasts, I caught the first new Gillmor Gang in three months. Doc was great, so was Jon Udell and all the other gangsters were just perfect. Best line came at the end, Doc talking about ri ding up the roller coaster. Yeah. Looking forward to tuning in every week. BTW, the length was perfect for a flight from Pittsburgh to Boston. It finished shortly before they told us to turn off all electronics.  

Good afternoon (1PM Eastern) from Pittsburgh International Airport, where they also have very strong, free wifi. Yowowowowo. 

Mr Gutman: "Maybe there's a silver lining to this cloud." 

Good morning from Gate 54 in Terminal B at Orlando International Airport where they have a very strong, free, wifi signal. Most surprising, and most excellent! 

More thoughts on the Boston Globe article that came out on Thursday. When you look at the amount of space he had, how could he justify wasting any of it on being snarky? Does he imagine his readers have any interest in the subject? If not, why is he writing about it. If so, imagine how frustrated the reader is. The subject isn't exactly a household coversation, like the suspected murderer who was camped out atop a crane in Atlanta (a subject MSM holds in great reverence, apparently, based on the number of Very Serious reports and hourly status updates). Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the reporter has no passion for news, no respect for his readers, and certainly no respect for the subjects of his reportage. If I worked for the Boston Globe, I'd be embarassed, and would want to explain that most Globe reporters aren't like this. But then this is the second time I've been honked on by a Globe report. Another observation, even the snarkiest of bloggers would have more regard for his or her readers, yet this is totally typical for the pros who so hypocrtically claim that only they know how to report the news, that we bloggers can't possibly compete. Well, I hope I never am so space-constrained as they, and I hope I never develop the level of cynicism they've reached. 

Field test report on the new Sienna. It has great acceleration power for passing, and handles really smoothly on curves. The navigation system is a bit quirky, the route it chose for me to the Orlando Airport, through back roads and suburbania was surely slower than the freeway route, even if it was more direct. And it was bad for the driver's nerves, it was hard to tell if they were sending me to the correct airport (maybe Orlando has more than one). But I decided to trust it, I had loads of time to spare, and eased out a sigh of relief when I pulled onto a main drag, and saw signs for Terminal A and Terminal B. Whew. 

Toyota clearly has never heard of an iPod or an Archos. There's no damned way to play one that I've found. And I thought I was getting a satellite radio with the thing, but nope, apparently you don't get satellite if you get a navigation system. Now what kind of sense does that make! Geez Louise. Now I love my new car, but even an ideal lover has warts. I'll have to get my own satellite radio and dammit I keep wishing they put a mini-jack on the car. Maybe they want to hire me as a consultant for the next version of the car. Please, let's have some wifi support or how about Bluetooth? And btw, to Archos, you should really have a mini FM transmitter. Every high-end MP3 device should have a good one built in. Do the Belkin ones work worth a damn? I bought an El Cheapo brand transmitter at Target (it was all they had) and it didn't work. The signal was too weak. 

But like I said at the top of the report, Orlando Airport wifi rocks. Every airport should have free wifi. I'd choose Orlando over Jacksonville for this reason alone, and I do have a choice. One more thing, if you want to be sure to stay ahead in the power user race, be sure to have some electric outlets to recharge the batteries. You could even charge for that. (Honestly you could charge for the wifi too, but I really like that it's free.) 

Friday, May 27, 2005

A get-out-of-town pre-Memorial Day rambly Coffee Notes podcast. Music, massage, happiness, BloggerCon, Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, and a way of decentralizing the podcast community to find the good stuff. 

ABC News podcast page. Great to see these new casts, but we could really use a description saying what's covered in each installment.  

NY Times on 21st century museum tours, with the people as curators, via podcasting. Bing! Bing! Bing! 

Sadly, Eddie Albert, the star of one of the most surreal TV shows ever, Green Acres, died today. In celebration of his life, I recorded his part of the show's theme song. Don't worry, you'll know what to do.  

Tod Maffin switched to the Mac, Rex Hammock continues to break his vow of silence on the Mac, and I had a long interesting phone talk today with Ray Slakinski, lead developer of iPodderX, a podcast client for the Mac OS. Meanwhile both my PCs are suffering heavily, one from spyware (installed exactly one year ago today), and the other, well I'm not really sure what it's suffering from.  

Seattle P-I: "Producing a podcast is still far from a one-click operation." 

SEW: Last Week, Google Had A Strategy. This Week, It Doesn't. 

Dutch Uncle: "Daily Source Code gets less interesting the more it starts to resemble an IPO road show." 

A Seattle coffee shop turns off wifi on the weekend and sales go up. 

Rogers Cadenhead: "FeedBurner has begun adding web bugs to syndicated feeds that enable the service to track use of individual items." 

Dan Gillmor has been calling the Bay Area housing market a "bubble" for as long as I've been reading him (and that's a long time), but if it is one, it refuses to pop. Meanwhile Dan's older brother Steve has coined a new term with sure lasting value. The Scobleizer Bunny. What an image! I'm sure Scoble will love that. Not many people know that Steve worked with Scoble at Fawcette, and believe it or not was my editor when I wrote a column for XML Magazine. Me, I'm looking forward to a Scobleizer pinata. Maybe at Gnomedex?  

Paul Krugman: "Although the housing boom has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined, the economy would still be in big trouble if it came to an end." 

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Hey the Washington Post is podcasting. Yow.  

A 17-minute podcast with the missing bits on Trade Secrets and Adam Curry. We started a technology, business and artisitic partnership in public, and never explained why it fell apart. This is my story.  

Nick Bradbury of FeedDemon has started a thread on the River of News style of aggregators, and I join in.  

The PBS show NewsHour with Jim Lehrer supports RSS. 

The Make You Go Hmm thread got pretty interesting today. 

Jeff Veen: The Usability of Subscribing to Feeds. I'm glad that Jeff is writing about this. Now that Safari has made subscribing easier, it would be great if the other browser vendors followed suit, and then carefully upped the ante. There's an evolution that could take place here over the next year that would make subscribing really easy. I'll write more about this soon. 

At the beginning of today's podcast I said I'd talk about how I'd like to go on from here, but I finished before explaining. I really do think the air is clear now. I want to be able to talk about podcasting business models, where it was difficult before because I had undisclosed conflicts, now they're out in the open, so you know how to judge my opinion. 

Doc Searls: "The podosphere is the new conferencesphere." 

Rex Hammock begins a series of blog posts he has entitled "How Apple Will Change Everything About Podcasting." 

In the very next aggregator run after posting today's podcast, an article in the Boston Globe about the rift. I'm glad I got my side out there. I knew the Globe article was in process, I was interviewed for it on Tuesday. I was pretty sure it would be about as superficial as it turned out to be. Also on Tuesday I said podcasting can go deep, and today here's the proof. It's a new medium and a new world, I don't care how much they sniff in pro-jo land. You can't slime someone like the old days, nowadays we talk back. So there's a silver lining to all the michegas, we get to use the tools in new ways.  

Finally the cartoonists are starting to figure out blogs.  

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

This week's developments in podcasting by Apple, turning iTunes into a podcatcher, is enough for an entire 17-minute Morning Coffee Notes. 

I booked a three-day trip to Cambridge for the weekend. I'll be a guest on Chris Lydon's first broadcast on WGBH on Monday. Had an itch to go north. Looks like I'll be in Chapel Hill, NC the first weekend in June.  

August 2003: How to name a product. 

News.Com: ABC, NBC News launch news podcasts. 

Tod Maffin: "Canada’s major cellular providers have just joined forces to create a single Wi-Fi network across the country." 

Interesting outside perspective on the fallout between myself and Adam Curry. I haven't read it in detail, but I will, before commenting. 

The announcement, earlier this week, that Apple will support podcasting in iTunes will give them a commanding position to determine the (defacto) standard subscription mechanism for RSS because they will have control of the two key pieces of software on a single platform. They have already invested in a simple subscription mechanism in Safari, but with iTunes in the mix, they'll have huge market power that they didn't have before. And of course with podcasting, the centralized aggregator doesn't matter, so their coup is complete. I imagine they realize all this in Cupertino.  

Apple's position is so powerful because they will have content people are interested in, the podcasts people have been hearing so much about. They are rushing to fill the gap left by the weak iPodder software. Tim Jarrett's critique of Microsoft applies. In years past, they would have jumped on the opportunity. Now that role is left to Apple. A few weeks ago a venture capitalist said we're in the first inning of RSS. I said that's wishful thinking, the first inning was six years ago. He asked what inning are we in? I said it's the inning when the big guys swoop in and take markets from the little guys, with lightning speed. The VCs invested too late in this market. They could learn the lesson, you have to risk to earn the reward. The time to build is before the big dudes see it. Way before. 

Marc Hedlund says it's time to throw in the towel in the fight among techies over the perfect syndication format.  

Chad Dickerson: "Maybe the beauty of podcasts is that we are forced to step away from our hyper-efficient RSS news aggregator world and actually listen for once." 

On a lark, I thought about registering for the Supernova conference (I'll be on the west coast that week for Gnomedex) but gulped audibly when I saw the price. AlwaysOn, with a stellar speaker lineup, is a tiny bit cheaper, with a 25 percent discount until June 1. Gnomedex is a better deal than both, by a lot. What do all three conferences have in common? Marc Canter is speaking. Maybe he can tell us what they talk about. BTW, AlwaysOn offered to let me in for free, as a blogger. I don't think so. I have no time for conferences where I have to sit in the audience and keep my hands folded and my mouth shut until it's time to ask a question. That's why I like unconferences where no one is less important and the interesting stuff happens in the sessions as opposed to the hallway. 

Talk of the Nation: Blogging Poses New Workplace Issues. 

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

An essay on the economics of the developing podcast industry.  

WSJ: Gates Casts Cold Eye on Google. 

Le Monde supports RSS. Via JY. 

Om Malik: "Like a man in love, I just cannot get enough of Bit Torrent." 

Paolo: "I must admit I am still not completely sold on tags." 

Rick Segal: "One talk -- two perspectives." 

Scoble: "I spent some time today interviewing the Virtual Earth team. This is MSN's answer to Google Maps, coming in July 2005. As you see in the video MSN Virtual Earth goes noticeably further than Google Maps or other mapping services." 

Tim Jarrett: "The good news in this scenario is that customers are getting a choice, as Microsoft feels the sting of competition. The bad news -- for customers and for its investors -- is that the most highly capitalized software company in the world isn’t capable of turning all its resources into bringing products like this to the market faster." 

Business Week: "Yes, the pace is slow, much more suited to a long stretch of highway than a morning commute. At one point in the show I listened to, Winer got up, walked across the room, and poured himself a cup of coffee. You could hear his voice in the distance. His point: This is a relaxed conversation, not traditional radio." 

It's nice to see a review of podcast styles. Why not slow down and take a look at what makes this medium different from others. Maybe there's more to it than radio; maybe, like blogs, it has something to do with the telephone? Small scale instead of huge. Maybe it's silly to ask how many people listen to your podcast, as it would be silly to ask how many listen to your phone conversations? (Hopefully only one!) Also, podcasting is clearly not a conversation, even more than a blog, it's one-way. I've never bought into the idea that a blog is a conversation. I think that came from the always-more-influential Doc Searls's observation that markets are conversations. That doesn't mean everything is a conversation. Hehe. Okay, imho a podcast is less a conversation than a blog is because one listens to a podcast away from the computer, and you have to remember to respond. That doesn't mean I didn't hear what was said, quite the opposite. When I'm walking or driving, there's less to interfere, I hear better than I do when reading a blog or an email, where there is so much competing for my attention that I skim for comprehension. Podcasts can go deep. 

OhMyNews covers BlogNashville. 

Tod Maffin is looking for Canadian podcasters. 

News.Com: Your chance to meet Bill Gates. Doc Searls would love this. Microsoft has no taste, they love the junk created by users. Meanwhile Uncle Steve is "trying to help in some small way" by sending bloggers to jail. Doc called it, in 1997. "The influence of developers, even influential developers like you, will be minimal. The influence of customers and users will be held in even higher contempt." 

Monday, May 23, 2005

Analysis: Why Apple and Google should blog.  

Apparently the next version of iTunes will come with a podcatcher built in. I'm accumulating data and links in a post on my podcasting blog. If you have more info, please post a comment or trackback to it. Thanks! 

Steve Gillmor: "On Thursday, Google laid down a 60-day window for offering RSS support in their Fusion operating system/office suite hybrid. On Sunday night Steve Jobs laid down a 60-day window for RSS enclosure support inside iTunes. Today, as the smoke clears from these two cannon blasts across Microsoft’s bow, Bill Gates must surely realize he’s just been upgraded to the RSS revolution. Hoisted on his own petard." 

Via Wonkette: Kara Swisher asks Steve Jobs last night: "Would you have sued if the Wall Street Journal had done this?" Jobs: "We might have. But the WSJ has serious thought behind it. The thing is today is that everyone can be a journalist. We are in a gray area and we are trying to help in some small way." 

Okay John Battelle, get ready -- I'm going to ask you an interesting question, I hope. You say Steve Jobs sucks because he's shutting down three bloggers who are publishing his secrets on the Internet. He feels justified because the courts have backed him up (so far). Okay, fast forward two to three years, when Google is even bigger (they're already worth twice Apple, today). Imagine they have a browser in their quiver now, and it's getting pretty popular. That's a reasonable assumption, right, I mean it could happen? Okay, so Google doesn't like us sharing their secrets, and they're kind of touchy, some of the things they object to don't even seem to us like they're secrets. Well lucky for them, they own the throttle. They can just cut off our air supply. How could they do that. How how how? Well, remember we decided it was okay for them to modify our content way back in 2005. They didn't even have to ask our permission. Not only that, if we said no, they could ignore us. They're just giving the users what they want, and we believed them. But why John is it bad when Steve Jobs goes to court to get permission to modify three bloggers' content, but it's really coooool when Eric Schmidt calls it a feature? I guess the users wanted it, that's the difference. Yeah, they made the trains run on time too.  

Google is at $255 a share, with a market cap of $71 billion. Apple is at $40 per share, with a market cap of $33 billion. One has to adjust one's thinking doesn't one? Jobs looms so large, but his company is relatively small compared to Google.  

Oy I had a meltdown on one of my servers today, all of a sudden Frontier started consuming massive amounts of memory on startup. I mean huge amounts. The system had run out of disk space earlier, so I figured a restart would cure it, but nope -- still the same nasty behavior. I tried reconfiguring virtual memory, no change. So I made a fresh pot of coffee, and started moving sites one by one until things settled down. Luckily things seem to have settled down after moving the first one! Hey that's kind of lucky. (Praise Murphy, I'm not worthy, I am not a lawyer, My mother loves me, etc etc.) This kind of crappy behavior by a server reminds me how nice it is when everything behaves well.  

Press Release for GarageBand Podcast Studio. 

WSJ: "It's far too early to write Apple's digital-music epitaph." 

Rex Hammock joins the Dixie choir, making it a quintet. It's included as an enclosure in my RSS feed.  

New York Metro: "Lessig has cast aside his caution about a secret that haunts him still. And while his passion about his client’s cause is real and visceral, Hardwicke isn’t the only plaintiff here. Lessig is also litigating on behalf of the child he once was." 

Just curious, were there any bloggers at last week's Google Factory Tour, or did they just invite professionals? 

Tim Bray: "I guess they don’t need that kind of listening post." 

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Dramatic pre-storm beach pictures. 

Movie of a woman playing on beach with dog pre-storm.  

Steve Gillmor: "Schmidt says the battle is over and RSS has won." 

Rex Hammock discovered the truth about my new Sienna.  

Wow Frank Paynter sings like the Beach Boys!  

Dori Smith: "He won't read this, but it's kind of fun to needle someone when you know it's completely behind someone's back." 

Today's song: "On Deadman's Curve, I used to shut 'em down..." 

The Media Drop lists newspapers with RSS feeds. 

Potkast calls itself "The Google Of Podcasts." 

Interesting application of OPML by Wiley & Wrox. 

I plugged the OPML into my directory displayer, and it worked.  

Adding spice to Joi's online life 

Joi Ito is in a rut and is asking for... well I'm not sure what he's asking for. But I have some advice anyway. Heh. Here it is.

Try podcasting! It's fun and new, and people are happy when they're doing new things and growing. I'm having a great time, almost a year into it, still discovering new stuff every day.

And the flamers, well, they're part of the package. They're the web equivalent of people shooting at you. And if people are shooting at you, as some wise person once said, you must be doing something right. Really, I'm not kidding. I actually talked about this in yesterday's podcast.

You should listen to the flamers, up to a point. They are an indicator that lots of people are listening. Yes, they drown out the good people. It takes some time to get used to that. But the good guys figure out how to get through to you anyway.

I've been down the road you're going down, it's actually a loop.

New car 

I did the deed. I bought a new car yesterday. I spent more time shopping for this one than I ever had before. I shopped while driving cross-country, looking at cars parked in rest stops, reading reviews on Edmunds, Yahoo, MSN and others. Perhaps the best review I read was written by Philip Greenspun. When I had narrowed it down to two models, I used the excellent resources on the web to find out what others had paid for the same car in the last few months, and to find out what my trade-in was worth.

I got the car for two reasons: My old trusty Lexus RX-300 was six years old, and there's a lot of new technology in cars in the last six years; and I needed more space. Since I live without a permanent home, at least for now, my car has to be able to carry all I need to live. I couldn't get a bicycle, for example, because I had no way to move one. This new car, while not much bigger than the old one, is configured for cargo, I can get a bike now. That's an important innovation because I've been walking so much and losing weight that walking now no longer is very much exercise at all. If I want to get to the next level I have to upgrade.

I went with the Toyota Sienna over the Honda Odyssey largely on price and availablility. The local Toyota dealer had several cars that fit the bill, the Honda dealer had only one. So I was able to work out a better arrangement with Toyota. As both vendors say, both are excellent autos, full of features, fun to drive, really groomed for the market. I looked at Dodge and Chevy too, but the American cars just aren't in the same class as the Japanese.

I'll probably be reporting on the technology of the car as the weeks go by. I'm going back on the road in July, heading west, of course, because there is no more east (I'm looking out the window at the Atlantic Ocean as I write this). I also plan to spend much of August in Europe -- London, Switzerland, Italy and on trains.

Anyway, it's so exciting to have a new car! I really like this one. I think I'll take a couple of trips today.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Today's Morning Coffee Notes podcast is about my outliner, Windows, why flames aren't really such a problem, word processing, editing in the browser, how to do format and protocol work. 

3/4/01: "Text on rails." 

My mother is a Natural Born Blogger, in a league with Scoble and Doc Searls. On her blog today she says: "In the final analysis I'm talking to myself." Exactly right. It's good to know who one's audience is.  

News.Com: "Is Google following its rivals too closely?" 

I heard about Indigo today. Some at Microsoft think this is what Ballmer was referring to in the comments that came public yesterday.  

NY Times: "Can the kinder, gentler, tempered-by-the-trial Microsoft do to Google what it did to Netscape lo these many years ago?" 

According to O'Reilly, Google moved the announce date for their portal up from June 30 and promised "universal RSS support will follow." 

Rick Segal, a former Microsofter, says that Scoble and I over-reacted to the Ballmer quotes yesterday.  

I'm getting some beautiful responses to yesterday's thunderstorm podcast, and have asked for permission to run some of them. And Ryan Tate has a lengthy very interesting response to Thursday's beach podcast, where I recount asking Kleiner partner Randy Komisar to sponsor intellectually enriching podcasts about what's going on in Silicon Valley. Ryan says that in its early days Red Herring magazine did just that. Tate is a former reporter at Upside.  

Friday, May 20, 2005

There was a honkin thunderstorm brewing off the coast, and even though I was late for dinner, you know I had to do a podcast.  

Joseph Pulitzer: "Newspapers should have no friends." 

Jeff Jarvis: "I just quit my job at Advance.net." Congrats!! 

Discuss: Is Microsoft of two minds on RSS? 

Dan Conover: "Romance novel covers are pretty silly." 

Gary Turner: Long Time Lapse Folkography. Neat-o! 

Here's a nice movie taken during this morning's sunrise. 

Yeah, what Ed Cone said.  

Hal O'Brien, on the new NY Times web pricing model: "Fewer readers, less revenues, less prestige. Not often one sees a trifecta like that." 

Podbat Man: "This year's Gnomedex promises to be the one they'll talk about for years to come I think." 

Steffanie Muller reports that Swedish Public Radio is podcasting.  

OTN TechCasts are online audio interviews with Oracle technology experts, delivered via podcasting. 

Wow, I love what the Berkman Thursday group has done. They've got mini-BloggerCon type meetups planned through mid-June every Thursday. Very nice work. Now I know why I want to stop in Cambridge sometime this summer. This could get huuuuuge. What an excellent group of people. I knew they'd figure it out (even though I didn't forsee what "it" is). 

The debacle that was Apple 

7/8/97: "The key mistake Apple made was betting exclusively on its own people for new technology directions. Huge money was spent on researchers who were so inwardly directed they couldn't even see the worldwide web when it happened."

I had a longer piece here about Microsoft of 2005, but then I re-read this piece about Apple in 1997 and realized it was a much better description of this year's Microsoft. So inwardly focused that they missed RSS, for six years, they denied it existed. And now that it's grown so large that even they can't miss it, they reject it. Similarly, Apple management tried to reject the web. A total act of hubris and one that cost the people who made that call their jobs. (But don't worry they got new ones.)

History repeats itself in the software business. Watch it happen as Microsoft apparently tries to re-invent RSS.

And you can watch Google do it too. I suppose this has something to do with the fact that they hired so many people from Apple and Microsoft? Who knows. It's a losing strategy, for sure, for both of them. RSS is too strong, as HTML was too strong in 1997 for Apple to overcome it.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

A podcast from the beach with thoughts on what makes a good platform, an intellectual life for Silicon Valley, beach philosophy; a picture and a movie where today's cast was empodded.  

Sunrise over the Atlantic this morning.  

An Italian blog gets the scoop on today's announcement by Google that they're becoming another boring portal just like all the others. Follow-on report by Search Engine Watch. Now, the big question, when will a new aggressive startup with a laser-like focus on search come along to do to Google what they did to everyone else? That's obvious now, isn't it? 

If Santorum didn't just commit political suicide this country is a political disaster area.  

Zawodny is right, Google should embrace RSS already, it's getting late.  

eWeek: MSN Gets Ready for RSS Push. 

News.com: VeriSign sees business in blogs. 

Infoworld reports that Yahoo is getting into VOIP.  

audio.weblogs.com got a brain transplant today. Please let me know if there are any problems. 

Tod Maffin is a fantastic source for new podcasts. We ought to organize this better. Somehow we built a centralized system, and we already know that centralized systems suck the life out of communities. How can I ask this question. Tod, I have an hour to spare. What should I listen to? Or alternatively, let's say I want to give Tod my Tuesday walk-time. Every Tuesday he's got something good for me to hear. He had to make a gut-wrenching decision because there are really 18 things he knows I should hear, but I'm only giving him one hour per week. I have six other days. Who else should I give a day to? 

Apparently I am psychic. Maybe just intuitive? 

Dare is a nice guy, but I'm going to criticize the way he develops software anyway. (Ditto for Mike Torres.) Go study the competition guys. A few days of using software and thinking will save you years of figuring it out on your own. We did this investigation years ago, and you can skip all the way to the end of this exploration, and do the River of News, and be done with it. It's so painful watching you learn re-invent this stuff. "Only steal from the best," boys! 

Bram Cohen: "We've created a 'trackerless' method of publication." 

Om Malik: "BitTorrent’s new version is easier, better and well simpler." 

Steve Gillmor is back podcasting again. Yowza.  

A good movie is often worth seeing twice. 

Accordion Guy: "If you check the right-wing pundits, you'll see that a number of them have commented negatively about the unsubtle jabs that Revenge of the Sith takes at the Bush administration." 

Jason on Om 

Jason Calacanis is on a rampage, and I'm sure he means well, but he's wrong.

Please read on.

Om Malik possibly had the first word on the net about the deal between FeedDemon and Newsgator. But he surely wasn't the first to know. Many, including yours truly, were respecting an embargo, and waiting for the companies to announce. Well, once Chris Pirillo published his interview with Nick Bradbury, I felt safe in publishing my own thoughts, because I knew that Chris was also under embargo.

This embargo stuff is tricky business, but I agreed to it because I've come to respect Nick, and think he's a fair-minded person, and wouldn't give me a lot of grief in a situation like this, where I didn't particularly care about being first, but didn't want to be last, if you know what I mean.

So of course I pointed to Om's bit, when he was the only one out there with the news, but I didn't get the news from him, so I'm not under any obligation to credit him in my own writing, and neither is News.Com, assuming they had more than one source which seems reasonable since the Newsgator guys were being so free with the embargoed information.

Also, it gets ridiculous sometimes to link to the full chain that a story came to you through, and I often don't get that kind of credit, and while it pains me, I accept it, because really, most readers couldn't care less, and the readers are important, of course. Now, when I get something from someone I try to reciprocate. Again, back to Om, I subscribe to his feed and he gets great stuff, and I point to him regularly. I think I point to him more than vice versa and a link from me delivers more traffic, but who cares. I feel that once in a while I can take a link I got from him and point to it without attribution, because in balance I feel I've delievered more flow his way. Maybe it's like peering arrangements among backbones on the Internet. Who knows, but it's not so black and white, and basically I think News.Com didn't hurt anyone in this case.

More Adam 

For now, I'm not going to go deeper into the rift between myself and Adam Curry, only to acknowledge that now he's saying more things that are untrue in press interviews, punishing me for thinking he was ever a friend. My generosity with him is, in an ironic and unfair way, a gift that keeps on giving.

I guess it's not surprising that the mainstream press only talks with him, even when they acknowledge that there's another side to his story (as News.Com did). It's not surprising because if there was ever any doubt that he is one of them, there's no doubt anymore. He's a salary-man, working for a major broadcasting company, presumably trying to climb their ladder. They're paying Howard Stern $100 million a year. Presumably Adam would like that kind of compensation, or something approaching that kind of compensation. Lying about someone he probably once actually did think of as a friend (just guessing here) seems a small price, to Adam.

I believe the ladder is gone, it's like the Road Runner character in Warner Brothers cartoons, when he runs off a cliff, he keeps running for a while, until he looks down. Then, beep-beep, he goes into a nosedive. I think Elmer Fudd does this from time to time too. When there is a podcaster on every block, then one on every blog, who will have time to listen to Howard or Adam or Elmer Fudd? Hollywood's characters can't compete with the real characters in our lives. That's why Adam's trading us, the early podcasters, for the love of a big corp seems so utterly dumb. He had it, I was working for him for free, so were all of us, dammit. But this is what he wanted? Talk about snatching defeat from the mouth of victory.

Xeni Jardin is every bit as much a short-term mainstream animal as Adam and the reporter at News.Com. They've taken the blue pill, they're in the matrix, dumbing it down for job security and a chance for a career path, or at least another freelance job. We're on different sides. She calls me a dinosaur. I think that's a bit of wishful thinking. I'm one of the people, pretty defenseless against attacks from the press, but there are millions of me, eventually, if they trash us one by one, they'll run out of ink, and run out of advertisers to pay their salaries. We can't all be the flawed human beings they make me out to be.

I guess Adam will keep accelerating the lies, and the pro journos will keep reporting them. At some point it will be easy for me to say what Adam is afraid I might say. I tried recording a MCN about it yesterday, but decided not to run it. It didn't sound right, I was too angry. I have to wait for that to abate before telling the story.

Of course I could end up forgetting the story, but as long as he continues to say really nasty shit about me personally I don't think I will.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Don't forget there's a new PDA version of Scripting News. 

When accepting an offer to lead a discussion at a BloggerCon-style conference in the Deep South (Greensboro, NC; October 8), I responded, with tongue in cheek: "That's almost like asking the Boy Named Sue if he'd want to be reincarnated as a Boy Named Sue." 

Today's song: "I made me a vow to the moon and stars, that I'd search the honky-tonks and bars, and kill that man that give me that awful name." 

Tim Jarrett took notes at a recent speech by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. 

Scoble: "When I subscribe to an RSS feed that means I want a long-term relationship." 

Matt Haughey: "The first thought that came into my head after hearing The New York Times will be adding paid subscription walls to their content was that Dave Winer just totally sealed the win on his bet." 

Steve Ballmer: "The hottest company right now -- the one nobody thinks can do any wrong -- may just be a one-hit wonder." 

Iran Scan is an English-language blog covering the election in Iran.  

Tod Maffin is looking for someone who can write a script to turn an OPML file into HTML. Piece of cake for someone who knows how to write an outline renderer in Frontier (or Radio). Which reminds me, I should do a generic release of Frontier so people can download something for free to run random scripts. The current minimal install is pretty frightening. 

Thoughts on special feeds for bloggers, feed hosting services, podcast hosting services. 

Picture taken from my desk while skyping with Kosso. 

Okay, James Gosling isn't really this ignorant: "We hear very strongly that if this thing turned into an open source project -- where just any old person could check in stuff -- they’d all freak." Okay James, you don't want to open source Java, so just say it. I could respect that. But this is totally wrong, and I can't believe you don't know it. No open source project exists that way. It would be chaos. How do you think Apache and Linux work? There's a priesthood and a cathedral, just like any commercial project, just like Java. What's different is that it could fork, so if the priesthood isn't productive a new priesthood can form. Often this is enough to keep the main thread moving along.  

I'm playing around today with a directory of podcasting directories. Nothing earth-shaking, just a couple of experiments.  

It's official. Scripting News is now part of Blogger. (Just kidding. Hehe.) 

Yesterday I took a Larry Lessig speech with me on my daily walk, but a funny thing happened when he played a very short track from the gray album, which is a mix of the black album which is a mix of the Beatles' white album -- I stopped and switched to listening to the white album which I also had on my Archos. Many thanks to Larry for making the suggestion. And a reminder that it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't take your entire music collection with you where ever you go. Someday I'm going to meet someone who won't understand how we could live that way, but we did, didn't we? 

Doc Searls: "The Marriott Marquis has a central cylinder of new elevators that rise and fall like bubbles on the surface of a reactor core." 

Cory Doctorow found a picture of a trailer suspended on a tower that looks like it was separated at birth from the windmill on my uncle's hippie commune here in Florida. 

Wired: "Traditionally, bands toured cities and played dive bars to create buzz about their music. But with MySpace, bands can host demos of their songs, announce shows and connect with fans without spending weeks on the road." 

The Podcast Outlaws Network is "a central place to find some of the brightest, funniest and most underrated Podcasts on the internet!" 

Jupiter Research is now podcasting. You may have trouble getting to the site, but if you persist you will eventually get through. 

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Steve Gillmor may be back on the air as soon as tonight. Yehi! The Gang can't be far behind. Happy days are here again. 

A late afternoon Morning Coffee Notes podcast (better late than never) about advertising in RSS, a vignette about the twisty world of 21st century radio, and an apology for the delay of the conversation-starters.  

We guessed that the talks at the Syndicate conference would be filled with ads, and based on reports on the web, we weren't wrong. They didn't like being talked about on my blog, but all I was doing is what I always do, think out loud and involve everyone in my drama. That, by the way, is how you build interest in an event and keep people thinking. This afternoon I told myself I need to get my head examined for trying to help big companies get their ideas exposure in the weblog world. In the end, they just freak out and try to extert control and you end up at the beach while everyone else is at the conference. Maybe I made out okay, but I do miss my friends -- this is a conference I should have been at. Oh well, life goes on.  

PublicRadioFeeds.com is "the most comprehensive list of public radio podcasts on the Internet." 

Billboard: Limbaugh Joins Podcasting Crowd. 

SF Chronicle: "Podcasters took over a San Francisco radio station Monday, replacing traditional radio personalities like Don Imus with a homespun potpourri of shows featuring independent musicians, martini-making and mortality." 

Google announces the beta of "AdSense for Feeds." 

Sorry we're going to have to wait 24 hours for the conversation-starters to start the conversations. There's a bit more coordinating here than I would like, but I guess a few more hours won't hurt.  

Two conversation-starters for Team RSS today. The first is a suggestion for browser-makers: Microsoft, Firefox, Safari, Opera, et al, on how to simplify the subscription process in a powerful way. It's an answer to the hodgepodge of different one-offs that have emerged that don't really work. This one does work, and is complete, imho. The second is a design for turning outlines into feeds, or is it feeds into outlines? It's both and a dessert topping and a floor wax! Stay tuned folks, I'll have a podcast and a couple of docs, it should be an exciting day.  

Peter Day: In Pod We Trust. 

About Newsweek 

I'm vaguely aware that Newsweek stepped in something as nasty as the stuff CBS stepped in last year. I'm catching it out of the corner of my eye as I scroll through my River of News aggregator on a day when I'm busy creating news instead of reading news.

I have a suggestion. Why don't we immediately assume that all press reports are at least as thinly sourced as the Newsweek story, and not make a big deal of it when we discover that one is. Instead, let's applaud the pros when they show evidence of diligence, multiple sourcing, and respect for what actually happened instead of what they think their editors will buy and what their readers will understand.

It's a new regime. Set expectations super-low. That way we can only be surprised by good news instead of bad. Make lemonade!

PS: Here's some synchronicity. I went looking for a picture of a lemon, and tripped over a picture of Cynsa Bonorris, who I worked with on the SF strike paper website in 1994, which I discuss below. She's part of a singing duet called Lemon Ju Ju. More godcasting for y'all.

It worked! 

I got a call yesterday from a San Francisco reporter doing a story on KYOU on their debut day. It was a very interesting and lively talk, reminding me a lot of the talks we'd have in the Bay Area at the end of 1994, when the web was taking root in so many communities, including the newspaper writers, who went on strike and needed a way to get their words out to their readers. It turns out that was how SFGate was started, the website of the Chronicle. Anyway, my first experience with the web was working on the strike paper website, alongside Chris Gulker who was working on the management website, both of us competing to bootstrap something new. I was learning from the news writers who "got" the web better than any of us, the same way a radio guy today is excited by podcasting. Of course the really good ones are excited, because podcasting is the realization of the reason so many of them got into broadcasting in the first place. Radio people are an idealistic bunch, just as newspaper writers are, in general. What happened to the idealistic newspaper writers? I wish I knew. Did they all die in the last eleven years? Have they all become web people? Did they wake up one day and realize this idealism was interfering with their career path? It'd be interesting to hear people's theories.

Anyway, it turns out someone at KYOU has a sense of humor, or a sense of what's appropriate, because yesterday, during the drive time commute, they ran a podcaster who records his casts during his commute! Think about it. What a turnabout. Instead of being stuck in traffic listening to a predictable formulaic format, or at best Morning Edition on NPR, now the bored listeners are doing the programming. This struck me as amazing. The podcasting revolution has completed its mission in some sense, in a remarkably short period of time.

Let me tell you a story that explains why I feel this way. A couple of years ago stuck in Boston traffic listening to a yet another WBUR pledge drive and thinking about technology that could turn this crap off for people like me who pay their NPR bill like a utility bill, I finally figured something out when the station manager, Jane Cristo, came on and said something that would be often repeated in the days ahead (my guess is that their marketing people decided it would be the theme of the pledge drive). This is your station, she said. You're the owners. We depend on your to pay the bills, that way we are only responsible to you, and blah blah blah and on and on, in the usual repetitive pledge drive way of doing things.

This got me thinking. If I own this place, what can I do with it? So when I got into work I called the offices of WBUR and asked to speak with Ms Cristo. When asked who's calling, I gave my name, Dave Winer, and my role -- owner of the station. No one got the joke.

I did get to speak with a vice-president, and I asked the question, what can I do with my ownership, and seriously don't you think you should stop saying that since it's total bullshit? He sent me a station prospectus, kind of an annual report, with some nice pictures, glossy and puffy, and numbers that meant nothing to me.

Thinking more about it I realized that the role of an owner of a public radio station is twofold. You listen and you pay. Occasionally, if you don't mind waiting and getting totally nervous, you can call in and ask a question of an expert -- someone who is probably just saying politically correct bullshit, but you never get to speak, what you think isn't important, your job is to pay, and if you like, listen, while they lull you to sleep with their relaxing talk that's only intelligent when compared to the other crap that's on the radio.

So yesterday when I heard about the commuter musing about his mortality during drivetime while other San Franciscans were caught in the horrible traffic in the Bay Area, I let out a satisfied chuckle. I had lived long enough. I could now die a happy man. As they say in Apache Land when an install is successfully completed: It worked!

Monday, May 16, 2005

Chris Pirillo has an interview with Nick Bradbury about the deal with Newsgator. I guess it's official now. I was briefed on the deal by Nick Bradbury a couple of days ago. I understand that the motivation was to allow FeedDemon to tie into the subscription-sharing network Newsgator is building. It seems inevitable that they'll buy a Mac news reader product, they would probably like to buy NetNewsWire, and it would be hard to imagine Brent wouldn't take a reasonable offer (I have no inside knowledge). This is venture capital at work, not sales revenue. I imagine that Newsgator will roll up with Feedburner (they share an investor), and Technorati may become part of this deal too. The goal? Get large enough to go public or merge with something going public (SixApart) or get bought by Microsoft. 

Om Malik first has a rumor then confirmation that Newsgator is buying FeedDemon. "It's a cash-and-stock deal, and Nick will join Newsgator." 

For ten points, where was the picture taken? 

I get a yet another lecture from Boing Boing. I think they're even calling me names (kind of hard to tell). They say respect is not a loaf of bread, cool, but how long has it been since Boing Boing pointed to Scripting News with anything remotely approaching respect? I would absolutely plotz if they ever took a balanced view toward anything here. We share mostly the same politics, and many of the same friends, but boy the resentment is so damned thick. Anyway, Adam does take credit for work he didn't do. You might want to check on that Xeni, it might be more interesting than the cookie-cutter bullshit puff piece you just wrote.  

I've been hearing from people who love their Elements.  

The NY Times announces that they'll charge $49 a year for access to certain op-ed pieces and other stuff, including the archives. I don't get it. The op-ed stuff is well-competed with by blogs, which are free of course, and frankly there aren't any columnists that the Times has that I want to read, for pay or otherwise. I suppose others feel otherwise. Let's hope this doesn't affect their policy re the links in their RSS feeds.  

Scoble: "Will I start my own religion?" Personally, I think that's a little premature. But I have suggested that Scoble start the Scoble School of Scoble, where Scoble teaches people who come how to be a scoble. 

sco-ble, n, A person who blogs about an organization from the point of view of someone who works for the organization. Related verb: scobleize, to be influenced by a blog written by a scoble. Named after early 21st century blogger, Robert Scoble, whose disciples founded a religion, The Church of The Martyr Scoble, after he was violently murdered by Steven Ballmer, a destitute homeless person who was ruined by Scoble. 

CBS Marketwatch: Podcasts go broadcast. 

My mother thought buses in her neighborhood should turn off their engines while they're waiting at the depot, and she got what she wished for! 

A couple of notes. Some bloggers complain that we don't point to women often enough. First, we don't hesitate for a nanosecond to point to worthy posts by women. And second, how many bloggers, male or female, can boast that they've pointed to their mother! Fact is, my parents are extraordinary people. I hear that every day about my dad and his podcast about outliners and President Bush (who he calls a snake, people really seem to like that). Well, I have a mother too, and she kicks butt.  

Another disclaimer about KYOU, I did not "submit" my podcast through their form, and I never would, and I wouldn't recommend that others do. The legal agreement is too one-sided, it gives them all the protection, and gives you none. In the defense of the station, however, they are part of a media conglomerate, with very corporate lawyers, who need a serious education about how to relate to creative people with their own distribution system. In the past they could push us around because we had no voice, that's why we created this medium, so we could route around the lawyers and their bosses. The people running KYOU are the good guys, but they work for some people who seriously need a kick in the butt (with love). 

I guess they did play mine first. Thanks for the honor. 

Two signs that the world is either going crazy or getting saner, not sure which. There's blogging at the Gartner conference, by participants and by Gartner; and IBM is encouraging its employees to blog.  

A sure sign of sanity, a German blogger has banned Google from indexing his site in protest over their web accelerator. I'd love to ban Google from modifying the content on my site, however Google has not offered us a way to turn that off.  

It gets better. KYOU has an awful signup process, whether you want to submit (awful word) a podcast for broadcast, or just want to listen. Staci Kramer called it. "a process that almost dares people to listen." Also, to be clear, I am not being paid, and if they screw up, you'll hear about it here first. 

Political Wire: "8 in 10 journalists said they read blogs." 

I just figured something out. My view of podcasting really isn't that radical, it's just an application of the same philosophy that led to the Apple II, IBM PC and Macintosh. Computers are tools used by people to think, organize and communicate. Podcasting just follows naturally. Sure, the tools are also used by professionals, but our real market, the one that pays the bills, are the people. It seems the Young Steve Jobs would understand podcasting.  

Gnomedex is right around the corner. It seems everyone is going this year, me too. I'm giving one of the keynotes, it's going to be BloggerCon-style, so I'll talk for 10 minutes, maybe do a demo, then lead a discussion. Are you going? What should we talk about?  

PodNova is an interesting podcasting directory built on OPML and RSS. 

I'm playing around with some ideas this morning, and I needed to have an enclosure on an item in my RSS feed for an experiment. It won't be very long, so if your iPodder downloaded it automatically, please excuse the intrusion. Still diggin! 

Wired: "Inventive web developers are taking Google's online map service to a new level, layering in house sales and apartment rentals, real-time traffic stats and Flickr photo tags." 

IE blog: "IE7 has tabs." 

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Here's the Morning Coffee Notes podcast for May 15, the one that will be broadcast on KYOU at midnight 6AM Pacific and again at noon tomorrow. It's 46 minutes long, and it's a rambler, but I think it's a pretty good podcasting manifesto, as applied to the Bay Area and the mission of KYOU. I feel pretty good about this podcast. I was nervous, and it took me five tries to get started, which is very unusual for me. (Update: We're going to run the Pisa Podcast instead.) 

WFMU podcasts. 

Back in Mac scripting days, at WWDC or MacWorld Expo or after sushi dinner, I'd often go out for a smoke with Steve Michel. We were buddies, I remember once raising a toast to Steve and saying I was a Steve Michel fan. Well ten years ago today Steve quit smoking, an event he notes on his weblog. I haven't seen Steve in a while, but I'm glad he's still out there kicking butt. On June 14 it'll be three years since I quit. Notato fumare! 

Adam Hansen was inspired to a Duet with me too. Wow! It's viral. 

Okay, now here's the Dixie Quartet with Amy Bellinger. Amen y'all! 

The Philadelphia Inquirer now has a staff blogger, Dan Rubin, who also was part of the first soundseeing tour, at the DNC in Boston in July.  

Kosso the Podbat joins the Dixie Duet turning it into a trio. 

The guy on the left is an arse-ole. (Practicing my Bwitish accent.) 

8/22/95: "The author of an API is offering a challenge, saying 'blow my mind,' to everyone who might take a stab at implementing something on top of the API." 

NPR's Science Friday is podcasting. Bing! 

You can sing too 

Rogers Cadenhead did something creative with the part of my last podcast where I sing the old song of the South -- Dixie. He turned it into a duet, and then sent an email asking if he could license the result under the Creative Commons. Of course I said yes. Now you can turn it into a trio or quartet. It's a perfect demo of the CC, and we can have some fun while we're at it, and demo the principle I outlined in the Pisa Podcast last week. Everyone gets to be creative, everyone gets to sing, you don't have to be Frank Sinatra or Madonna to hit the airwaves with your creation. God knows I'm no Frank Sinatra and Rogers ain't no... never mind.

Honda 

BTW, I've included the picture of the Honda Element above because I test drove one yesterday and was absolutely charmed by it. What a neat car. You can almost extrapolate that next year's model will support wifi, so my Archos can connect up to the car over HTTP to play music over the sound system. You can see the path Honda is on. It's too bad they haven't quite got the car-as-platform thing ready to go yet.

Platforms 

Speaking of platforms, yesterday, on my daily walk, I took the IT Conversations podcast of the platform panel at Web 2.0.

It was a pretty interesting discussion, centering around SOAP, XML-RPC and REST (although they didn't name XML-RPC, I think it's more widely deployed than the other two).

It was both encouraging and discouraging. It was encouraging because now O'Reilly is including this vital topic in its conferences. I was pitching them on it for years, in the mid-late 90s. It should have been on the agenda of their open source convention, at least. It was discouraging, because with all due respect, they had the wrong people on stage. This is a technical topic, and I seriously doubt if any of the panelists were actually working on this stuff at their companies. We should be hearing from people who are actually coding, because only they know what the real problems are.

Still, it was an interesting listen. There's something relaxing about the idea of "attending" a conference while walking with your bare feet in the Atlantic Ocean on a beautiful sunny day.

PS: Tim O'Reilly asked Adam Bosworth to say what a platform is. I wrote a piece in 1995 that attempted to define it.

PPS: This is a continuation of the thread, started by Don Park, on conference-jacking. There's no reason we can't hijack a conference long after it happened. In fact, it's easier to do it then!

Saturday, May 14, 2005

More ideas for the first broadcast podcast. Maybe we should sing The Star Spangled Banner? Or run the podcast with my parents on my birthday. Huey Lewis's Hip To Be Square. Happy Together.  

On today's podcast I ponder the possibilities for tomorrow's broadcast podcast for KYOU-AM in San Francisco. More singing this time with the MIDI of Dixie. You'll have to wade through it to get to the talk. Also includes philosophy from Ed Cone and Rogers Cadenhead.  

I winced a half-dozen times reading this interview with Adam Curry. He didn't invent podcasting, he didn't figure out that RSS would be a good transport. And he didn't write the first iPodder. Here's what Adam actually did do. He figured out the last yard was important and worked tirelessly to get people to listen to him. I was the only one who did, and I turned that idea into RSS with enclosures, and wrote the first iPodder, in 2001, three years before Adam claims to have done all this stuff. I never denied him credit for his role in this work, quite the opposite, I praised him every way I could for his insight. I also did regular podcasts for a couple of months before he started. He was listening to them, calling me all the time, ecstatic at how I was reinventing radio. There are a couple of ideas in Daily Source Code that didn't come from me, and for that Adam deserves full credit and our thanks. But these lies have gone on and on, he just doesn't stop.  

Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Chris Lydon's interviews with bloggers were available as an RSS feed with enclosures, starting in August 2003. I'd love to hear Adam's explanation of why that's not a podcast. That was followed very shortly by Doug Kaye's IT Conversations. My first podcasts were inspired by The Gillmor Gang, which I openly credit in those podcasts. I'm totally fed up with Adam taking credit for our hard risk-taking work. In other words, it's time for Adam to sit down and do his stinkin broadcast with his stinkin transmitter.  

Thing is -- Adam's star is fading, again. At some point he's going to need some friends, and then I'm going to kick him in the ass, and then look him in the eye and say "Shouldn't have lied so much, dickhead." 

Friday, May 13, 2005

Julie Leung transcribed bits of yesterday's podcast. "It's an instant classic. It's a tune I'd be happy to play over and over until the ears ring. As all great hits do, it ends with the best part of the song, something to hum long after the music has ended." She's right. If you've never listened to a podcast of mine, this is the one. It explains it all. If you miss DaveNet, this podcast gets to a place no DaveNet ever did. If you want to know how it all ties together, how this story we're writing together ends, this is the one to listen to. You won't be sorry. Even my mother likes it. "I loved your podcast from Pisa," she wrote via email. It's only 25 minutes. Really, you can afford the time. Go listen now. 

A brief response to Chris Lydon's pilot for his Open Source radio program on Public Radio International. 

Best wishes and good luck to Adam Curry on his new Sirius satellite radio show, which debuts this evening at 6PM Eastern. Adam, please be sure people know they're tuned to a broadcast, not a podcast. Thanks. 

Scoble: "Bing, bing, bing! You win $10 million." Coooooooool. 

The WSJ has an RSS feed for its free articles, which is how I found this piece in today's paper about podcasting and big-city newspapers.  

Speaking of things I just found, there's what appears to be an excellent conference in NYC on Monday about politics and blogging. It's so weird I'm just finding out about this. Sigh. 

Ed Foster: It's Hard to Say Goodbye to AOL. 

Jeff Barr's apology for spamming Google for money. Jeff says he's never been the target of "a public attack" before, but he wasn't attacked, he did something that hurt the web, and that was made public, making it possible for him to fix it, which he did, apparently.  

In the meantime, yesterday Google took the Toolbar out of beta, and along with it released the AutoLink feature we were discussing in February and March. They made some minor mods, but still haven't allowed authors a way to opt-out on a feature that should be opt-in only. So, imho, Google is doing its own part to destroy the value of the searchable web, cashing our work out for a short-term benefit for their shareholders. That was my last attempt to try to coax Google back onto our side. We're now on their slippery slope, I fully expect that they will release more content-modifying technology soon. AutoLink was merely a precedent-setter for them, and for their competitors. I'm not going to do interviews on this, I've already said so much about it. It's time to move on. 

On the other hand, perhaps this is a good time for Google's competitors in toolbars, search and advertising to take a pledge to help build the integrity of the web instead of foreclosing on it. Yahoo? Microsoft? Anyone? 

Thursday, May 12, 2005

The podcast of today's talk in Pisa, Italy; unconferences, blogging, RSS, podcasting, making money on the Internet, and an end to monoculture. This is probably the podcast I'll give to KYOU for their inaugural broadcast, and it's the speech I would have given at the Syndicate conference. It's a pretty good explanation of the ideas that are making a difference in the blog, pod, syndo-spheres. Web services are in there too, but aren't really part of the user story. If you want to understand where I think we're going, please listen to this cast. It's only 25 minutes, and it's packed with ideas. 

Does podcasting make you a better writer? 

ReadWriteWeb: "Is there a Web-based RSS aggregator out there that will be a Bloglines killer?" 

Here's what the Pisa conference looked like from my point of view. 

Robert Cox, the host and organizer of BlogNashville, on the Respectful Disagreement discussion. 

Some people who were critical of BlogNashville probably weren't familiar with the unconference format, which was borrowed from BloggerCon. "The discussion leader is the editor, so if he or she feels that a point has been made they must move on to the next point quickly. No droning, no filibusters, no repeating an idea over and over." Notice the word "must" in that sentence. The obligation of the discussion leader is to the discussion, not to people who repeat themselves, or take the discussion off-topic. The leader is a reporter, the session is a weblog. For better or worse, the judgment of the discussion leader is what forms the session, as the judgment of the reporter forms the story. "The leader's job is to keep it moving. Sometimes this means cutting people off." 

New header graphic: Storm building outside Sacramento. 

Let's see, Jason Calacanis calling you a jerk, is that like the Pope saying you're pious?  

Art Mobs: "If a painting could speak, what would it say?" 

Broadcasting a podcast 

This week, while deflecting flames from Tennessee, I've also been talking with people about the podcast I'm going to do this weekend, the one that will be broadcast on KYOU-AM in San Francisco early on Monday morning (midnight) and again at noon on Monday. If you don't live in the Bay Area, the program will also be webcast.

I've gotten a lot of feedback already, and that's cool. Now I have to figure out what I want to do with the time. It's a bit tricky -- should I assume that most of the people listening will have heard about it on the web? I remember how hard people were on us when we blogged the DNC, they expected, somehow, that we would turn into amateur Wolf Blitzers or Dan Rathers, maybe Ted Koppel or Judy Woodruff.

Nahhh, we're still bloggers, and the style guide for blogging, imho, is "Come as you are, we're just folks." There's no James Earl Jones voiceover saying "This is CNN."

The reason you send bloggers to a place like the DNC is so they can tell you what they see. If you read the blog regularly, you now have some data you didn't have before. That's all we can do. But if you get enough known views of an event, you can figure out what happened. The problem with the mainstream media approach is that they strive for an inhuman sameness, after all, they're pleasing the same commercial sponsors, fighting for the same ad dollar, so how different could their programming be? But human reporters are different, we bring color, we make mistakes, we wear glasses, all different tints. That's why we want lots of bloggers and lots of podcasters. What we lack in polish we make up in numbers.

So what should a broadcast of a podcast be? How does the broadcasting shape the podcasting? I have some thoughts about that.

The broadcast nails the podcast down in two dimensions: 1. Time and 2. Geography. So it seems that the broadcasted podcast should reflect the specifics of the time and geography. This says that the KYOU broadcasted podcasts should somehow reflect the culture of the Bay Area, something I know about, luckily, having lived there for 22 years. Even better, I like the culture of the Bay Area, when compared to that of say, Nashville, which I am coming to detest. With a passion.

It seems the first Bay Area podcasts should include the figureheads of the Bay Area, those with large personalities who, for better or worse, shape the area's personality, make it seem an approachable place, defying its unapproachableness, the traffic, the cost of living, the inevitable Big One.

Scoop Nisker, Carlos Santana, George Coates, Huey Lewis, Willie Brown, Jerry Brown, George Lucas, Diane Feinstein, Louis Rosetto, Marc Canter, John Doerr, Phil Lesh, Steve Jobs, Jonathan Schwartz, Barry Bonds.

It seems The Gillmor Gang and IT Coversations were made for Bay Area broadcast. Give KQED a run for its money? Yes, a good Bay Area podcast broadcaster would put some heat on public radio, in a good way of course.

Sylvia Paull says it's time for me to head west. She might be right. Maybe Nashville is the clue. Or maybe, as Steve Gillmor says I could do the Bay Area scene from Florida or New York. Or maybe Nashville is really saying "Come home Dave." Maybe that would be the punishment they are asking for, the penalty they deserve? Heh.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

BBC: "Like sushi restaurant conveyor belts, RSS delivers content to people so they can easily pick what they want to read." 

Matt Deatherage: "Programmers from the early days like Dave are used to being told they can't do things, and then they sat down and did them anyway." 

Don Park: Conference-jacking. 

Dear Google. You're doing personalization now. Good idea. I'm signed in, and you've been recording my searches for the better part of a month now. Next, let me tell you where my weblog is. That should let you do even more personalization. Think of all the info you have about me because of that. (And by the way that goes a long way toward clueing in the people who want to put ads in RSS feeds. Maybe if I have a certain amount of flow you don't want to distract me with ads, just think how many hits I can deliver if I link to your story.) 

Infoworld: "Google is contemplating various improvements to its popular Blogger Web logging service, including native image uploading and deeper integration with the company's Gmail Web-mail service." 

Afternoon coffee notes: Tomorrow I'm giving a talk at an academic conference in Pisa, Italy; from the beach in Florida. We did a dry-run of the video conferencing tools on Monday, they work great. It's also been suggested that I do a podcast of the talk I would have done at the Syndicate conference next week, and I think that's exactly the right way to route around an outage, in this case the lack of trust of a conference promoter. There's still important business to be done among the leading users of RSS. So I've had two jarring experiences with conferences this month. Maybe it has something to do with turning 50. Trying to make lemonade best I can. And looking forward to tomorrow's talk. Ironically the politics of the coastal United States are closer to that of Italy than they are of the deep south. Go figure. BTW, in an email from Glenn Reynolds he says the aftermath of the Respectful Disagreement discussion is not political. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's only been listening to himself not the people he's been defending. If it's not political, Glenn I got a nice bridge you'd be interested in.  

Mark Glaser's report from BlogNashville. 

Pssst Charles, try IT Conversations. It's exactly what you're looking for.  

And Charles, here's some good advice. Pandering for links that way is un-cool. 

Geek News notes that we're talking more about Yahoo these days. 

Library Stuff reports on four new feeds from the US Copyright Office. 

backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's new developer network. 

Thank you Instapundit 

Glenn Reynolds's Instapundit weblog is quite a flow machine. In the last few days since BlogNashville, he's been sending his readers over here, always with a scolding message. My behavior isn't up to his standards, I am too rude for him, so he's now telling everyone who reads his blog that I'm not a nice person.

Okay, I'll survive. I'm not your typical shirking liberal, scared of a few nasty words from the Limbaugh crowd. Only it's a surprise to see Reynolds defending their right to control the conversation, especially since he didn't have anything to say at the session on Saturday. It's like the citizen who doesn't vote yet has the gall to complain about the outcome.

Over the objections of those who Reynolds defends, the mission actually was accomplished, we came up with a great list of shared values -- imho that's what we should be discussing. Right and Left did get together on Saturday, between the slurs and attacks, we managed to draft a pretty good list. It's not ratified by anyone, but at least it's the beginning of an important discussion.

Instead Reynolds wants the focus on my personality. I don't know why, but I can imagine. It's his worst nightmare that his conservative colleagues would work with my liberal friends to help our country. That's right Glenn, it's our country, and don't you forget it. People from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles go to war and die for America when our country needs us. Patriotism isn't exclusive to conservatives or Christians. The strength of our country is its diversity, intelligence, ambition, idealism, resources and our love of country.

At the beginning of the conference we sang America The Beautiful. At the time I wasn't sure if that was the right song, but after the fact I feel it was the perfect song.

So to Glenn Reynolds, you pointed to me when I was sarcastic and angry. How about pointing to me now? Sure I don't agree with your focus, but I will fight to the death for your right to speak, for your dignity as an American, for your right to disagree with me. Let's get back on the road to success in America. And to do that, we need everyone's help.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Today's song: "Freedom's just another word for nothin left to lose." 

Today's podcast includes lots of singing, one idea, not much more. A Windows reboot. A bunch of philosophy. Thirty minutes. Amazing. 

Yesterday I was invited to be the first podcaster to be broadcast on KYOU-AM. This raised some very interesting questions 

Gotta love O'Reilly, they always let everyone know about their open technology "summits," after they happen.  

Rogers: "At this point, he has enough Southern in him to order 'unsweet tea' by its proper name and is getting closer all the time to a convincing pronunciation of 'y'all."" 

Some more clues on Odeo in Fortune. "When Odeo goes live in early May, podcasters will log on and employ Odeo-crafted, simple-to-use tools to record anything from found sounds to near-professional shows." 

ResearchBuzz: "TimYang.com has a Google News scraper available called ScrappyGoo." 

Here's their feed for me, and one for podcasting. 

What is gather.com? 

Update: The people running the Syndicate conference say I am welcome to speak, but I can't have a sponsor. 

The fundamental theorem of calculus 

Yesterday on All Things Considered they had a segment on a famous professor and book author, Louis Leithold, who died on April 29. They explained how he taught high school calculus in his final years. On the big day, his favorite day of the course, when he unveiled the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to his students, he'd wear two shirts, an outer shirt and a t-shirt that had the theorem printed on it. At the big moment, when he was ready to reveal the secret, he'd ask "Is it hot in here?" and then rip off the shirt, like a mathematical Superman, and the students would laugh, and there it was, a truth for all to see, discovered by Newton and Leibniz, but written by God Almighty, the most advanced mathematics produced by man in their time.

I was a math major, but I had forgotten that there was a Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and once I remembered that there was one, I couldn't remember what it said (they didn't say on NPR). So I made a note to look it up when I got back to my computer, so here it is.

And here is the LA Times obituary for Dr Leithold.

More Nashville post-trip notes 

Sure, the Nashville blog conference had its share of Limbaugh-like dittoheads, but most of the people were very nice, and the part of Nashville the conference was held in, where the universities are, could be the college section of any city, but more stately and very pretty. I thought their university section was nicer than that of New Orleans, Madison or Cambridge. Maybe it looked so pretty because of the time of year, almost everywhere, early May is a nice time. I bet Mad-town looks pretty good this week too. And of course Palo Alto, where I lived for so long, is picture-post-card beautiful 365 days a year.

Three people stand out among my new Nashville aquaintances, two whose name I know; the other, I don't remember. The man without a name spoke with me after the Respectful Disagreement session to say he is politically a Christian conservative, but found my point of view interesting, and said that after the bashing I took in the session he felt he could spend two weeks talking with me and learn something through the whole time. I looked at him, a bit in disbelief, he was dressed very nicely, in the style of an artist. I told him if he were in San Francisco, I'd think he was a left-leaning Democrat. He told me he is an artist, but also is a conservative.

I said I felt the same way he does. Given the incongruence of his appearance and his politics, and the fact that he had the self and mutual respect to be generous with a stranger in his hometown, told me there's a grace to conservatives that you would never see if you let the louts speak for all of them. If I were in his shoes, I would have done the same. Make sure that the guest knows that the loudmouths don't speak for everyone. Maybe then that would appear in the stranger's blog a few days after the conference.

I also met Nick Bradbury, a Nashville native, and developer of the FeedDemon feed reader. He's a soft-spoken, gentle, thoughtful man. Can't tell what his politics are, and I didn't ask, possibly because we come from such a politically charged technologic place, the world of RSS. It's always good to have a face to put with a name.

My host for the trip was Rex Hammock, who is a very nice guy, and probably a Republican, something I teased him about endlessly (don't worry he found something to tease me with too). He's an interesting guy, one of the few people with a blog who I seem to always agree with. Even so, he's the blogger who met with President Bush a couple of years ago. How could it be that I always agree with someone who would be invited to such a meeting? (To be clear, I would have accepted the invite myself, had it been offered, but the Republicans don't even allow people like myself to cover their national convention.) I think friendships like this, that are in themselves conundrums, are more important in some ways that friendships between people whose politics are identical. Between Rex and myself there's a clue, some value, a fundamental theorum, that's more important than whether you vote Democratic or Republican.

Anyway, Rex was a fantastic, generous host. I hope someday to be able to return the favor. (But first I have to decide where I'm going to live!)

Monday, May 09, 2005

A podcast about the difference between broadcasting and podcasting, and a request for ideas about the first podcasts that will be broadcast. 

A place for comments on tonight's podcast. 

Pictures taken over drinks and nachos after BlogNashville. 

The same scene in a very funny movie. Don't miss the last frame!  

Some of Kosso's gadgets. 

Today's song: "Tennessee, Tennessee, there ain't no place I'd rather be. Baby won't you carry me, back to Tennessee." 

Press release: BMI Launches New Songwriter/Artist Podcast. 

We should return the favor and host an open blogging conference in a blue state, and import some of the south's most famous bloggers. Before the conference we should make sure that the most flamey left-wing bloggers are present, the people who posted in the comments on Dean For America, for example; and urge them to hurl insults at our southern brothers and sisters, while we sit back and enjoy the scene (and leave early because we have better things to do). Then, when they return to their red state homes, in Tennessee perhaps, they will feel properly chastised as we continue to slam them on our blogs, and they'll hate the north even more than they did before. Think how much better we'd feel about ourselves! (Sorry for the sarcasm.) 

The Huffington Post. "Delivering news and opinion since May 9, 2005." 

Oy you can tell Arianna has a political system designer. Their site only supports RSS 1.0 and Atom, and while many cool sites are included in her blogroll, this site isn't. This level of route-around can't be an accident. I sent her a note of congratulation and a heads up on the problem. And since I linked to the site before noticing these things, I left the link in place. I think her publication is a good thing, so let's help with the launch, and hope we can be part of her view of the blogosphere. When I met her last fall she certainly seemed pretty inclusive.  

I'm on the Blugg and Doctoe show again this week, calling in from the airport in Nashville, y'all. I wonder if the bits from Amsterdam's Schipol made it into the podcast? Attenzie austerleaf. 

Digital ID World starts today in San Francisco. 

Remember last week when I was seeking a sponsor for my trip to NY to speak at the Syndicate conference? Several volunteered to do partial sponsorships, but I was looking for one sponsor for the whole trip, and now have one, Perseus Development. I've gotten to know Jeffrey Henning, over the years, and I'm very happy to thelp build awareness for his company, and their products.  

Last week: "You can have a good format without the other guy being incompetent." 

Sunday, May 08, 2005

The Gallup Poll supports RSS. "News the moment we publish it." 

My own comments on the Respectful Disagreement discussion. 

Listening to a new podcast, The Nashville Nobody Knows. Good stuff.  

Kevin Howarth's notes from yesterday's Respectful Disagreement session at BlogNashville. 

Saturday, May 07, 2005

The answer we sought at the Respectful Disagreement session was yes and no. Most red state and blue state people can get along, even like each other, were it not for a very small number of people who won't let the conversation take place. Five people dominated, if they hadn't, I think we would have found lots of shared values. As it was, we found a few. But it was a hostile exchange, lots of the usual mindless crap you get on political TV shows. A lot was learned. We're going to have to work hard if we want to work together. 

Today's podcast discussion at a Nashville restaurant with Hoder and Brendan Greeley about podcasting, context, making money, including a run-in with a Channel 2 camera crew. An interesting discussion. 

Staci Kramer gave a speech at the Global Voices session. 

Rebecca just asked me if I "blogged that fact." No I haven't. I wll now. Aaron Brown was the last bastion of news on CNN. Last week he dedicated a whole show to The Runaway Bride story. That was the last straw. I don't watch CNN anymore. There is no more news on TV. That's the fact that RMac wanted me to blog. Check.  

Rebecca MacKinnon is leading the Global Voices session. 

Three-D walkthrough movie of RMac introducing the GV discussion. 

Photos from the Journalism session at BlogNashville. 

John Jay Hooker gave a brief talk during the Journalism session. 

My morning walk took me through Nashville's Music Row, which is (I guess) the headquarters of the country music industry. They're mostly small, nicely remodeled houses. The weather couldn't have been better. A little chill, bright blue sky and since it was early on a weekend morning, I had the streets to myself. Of course I brought the Archos with me and listened to the recent Engadget interview with Bill Gates. Highly recommended. Gates should do a regular podcast, he's good. I'd love to interview him about Scoble and blogging, and a bit of RSS, and talk about the media industry and technology. The Engadget interview was good for the hardware and how they're marketing it. Also caught the beginning of the TechNation interview of John Markoff. More on that later. 

Human Rights Watch feeds.  

Also: You can become a blogger for human rights. 

According to I Love Radio, Chris Lydon's new "Open Source" show on WGBH-FM in Boston (syndicated by PRI) will air on May 30 for an hour at 7PM and every Monday through Thursday thereafter. Congrats to Chris and Mary. I am honored to be a guest on the inaugural show.  

NY Times: "A federal appeals court handed a major setback to Hollywood and the television networks on Friday when it struck down an antipiracy regulation requiring computer and television makers to use new technology that would make it difficult for consumers to copy and distribute digital programs." 

Friday, May 06, 2005

Scoble reports that Microsoft has reversed its position on the anti-discrimination bill.  

I took my first trip on Southwest Airlines today, a direct flight from Jax to Nashville. All SW flights are open seating. I got to the airport late, so I got in the third group. The flight was full. I groaned, assuming that meant a middle seat for Uncle Davey. Well, as it turns out, not. As I'm walking on the plane, only four people after me, I spy a middle seat open between two skinny people, a man and a woman, with lots of stuff on the seat inbetween. They look like a husband and wife. I point to the middle seat and ask if it's open. They look at me unpleasantly (I'm big) the man slides over, takes the middle seat and I get the aisle. Lots of leg room, plenty of space for my shoulders. Happy.  

5PM Central: Arrived safely in Nashville, TN. 

I may have missed some of the punditry on the new Google Web Accelerator offering, but the paranoia seems to have a blind spot. People are justifiably worried about Sergey and Larry knowing where they've been. But what about the other side -- content modification. What if Google decides to change the content as it's accelerating it?  

I cancelled my Audible subscription this morning. I hadn't used it in a few months yet was still paying the monthly fee. I stopped using it because both the computer I used to download books and the iPod I used to listen to them developed difficulties. I've replaced both the computer and the iPod but the Audible service doesn't transfer because of the DRM limits. I think they assume that I'm "stealing" the books. This has always been the problem with copy protection and nothing has changed. The same thing happened with the app I used to digitize CDs, and to record my podcasts. I had to buy new licenses just because I had a hard disk crash. I don't know who to blame, but I'm tired of footting the bill. No point continuing to pay Audible because I can't use their service. They won't let me. However I'll give them credit for making it obvious and easy to opt out.  

The University of Calgary has a What is Podcasting page. 

A brief essay about advocacy of XML formats. 

NY Times: "If you can just give up a Saturday night, there's a very small chance at it being the biggest event in human history." 

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Apparently Google's new web accelerator is doing something evil. But I had the same thing happen with the toolbar, and the same evil behavior persisted after I uninstalled the toolbar. I even wrote about it here on this weblog. I'm still getting taken to Google every time I get a server failure. 

Mr Warren can block Google's irritating ads in NetNewsWire with CSS.  

I missed Dan Gillmor's comments on my 50th. Very nice. Thanks Dan!! 

I'm getting a bunch of good feedback on this line: "Basically it's bad economics to spoil a good thing for a couple of incremental bucks today, for zero total bucks later." 

Progress report on the offer for sponsorship of my trip to the Syndicate conference on May 17. So far I've only got a few partial offers. I'm still hoping some company goes for the whole trip. Should cost about $1500 when all is said and done. The conference organizers were a little surprised, but I think that's my job, to be surprising. I have to get people to see me more as a whore and less as utopian. And I want to jar them with an ad or two in a place they're not happy about having an ad, so they can empathize with their readers and users a little more than they might otherwise. RSS isn't going to be business as usual, but it certainly can be about business. So if your company wants to participate in a bit of social theater and help out the emerging RSS industry, consider sponsoring my trip to NYC. Thanks.  

Om Malik points out that today is 05-05-05. Glad I didn't miss that! 

Reminder to self: I still have to write the session description for Saturday's discussion at BlogNashville. I finally figured it out at dinner the other night. We need to find a way to discuss our disagreements without burning the bridges. It's not just a red-state blue-state thing, it happens in technology too. It's why some people aren't welcome at some conferences. Is it racism, sexism, or greed that causes some people to want to exclude others? But first I'm going to treat myself to a rainy day movie. The big debate is whether it should be the Interpreter or the Hitchhiker. Nice problem to have of course. (Postscript: Went to see the Interpreter. I really liked it. I think Nicole Kidman is hot.) 

An example of an ad in a feed.  

Notes on my talk later this month at the Syndicate conference, with a special limited time offer. Act now! 

To Michael Gartenberg's point, his feed and those of his colleagues at Jupiter Research are also ads, even though they include the full content of the posts in the feeds. Having a blog is a smart move for a consultancy like Jupiter. The blog itself is an ad that says "Here we are, we are Jupiter, and this is how we think." Implicit is "Maybe you'd like to buy our services?" It's an ad the same way Scripting News is an ad, for anything I happen to be selling at the moment, whether it's the software I've been developing, or will develop, or some format or protocol I'd like to see gain adoption. The other day I was asked how I make money from my blog, for the 18 millionth time. I turned it around and asked "How do you make money from your office?" You have an office, of course, as part of your livelihood, but how it makes money depends on what you do. I explained that my weblog is my place of business. If you want to find out what I'm selling, on any given day, the place to look is scripting.com. 

Here's some food for thought for "marketers" who say they need to put ads in RSS feeds to make them pay. By some calculations, in three years, 27 percent of the NY Times hits will originate from their RSS feeds. The BBC is aiming for 10 percent by the end of the year. Neither company puts ads in their feeds because: The feeds themselves are ads for the stories they link to, which are revenue-generators. Anything that keeps people from clicking, that confuses them, takes them off course, is going to drop the click-through rate. And it's a good deal for the users, because they get the headlines and summaries for articles they only have a superficial interest in, and can easily access the full stories for articles that they want more information on. The rare win-win. Of course for the marketers win-win isn't good enough, they aren't happy until everyone but them loses. I speak as a fan of the Times and BBC approach, which happens to be the approach of CSM, WSJ, MSNBC, AP, Reuters, and every other mainstream media supporter of RSS, by the way. I am making an issue of this because I don't want to see them swept up in this lunatic frenzy to spoil a really good thing by a few people who have no idea what they would be spoiling. Basically it's bad economics to spoil a good thing for a couple of incremental bucks today, for zero total bucks later. I get branded a "utopian" for this, which is the way it goes.  

Brian Russell needs $2695 to make PodcasterCon happen.  

I just heard about a wireless digital cities conference that took place this week in Philadelphia. It was a meeting for cities that are planning wifi infrastructure. There were some Scripting News readers at the conf. 

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Mini-editorial. I was going to go to the UK for the election, which is tomorrow, until I found out that Blair was a shoo-in for re-election. I didn't want to go then, because I found that so disheartening, especially after all the bullshit we got from Europeans about our election last November (which was second only to our bullshit about the election). Sure we led the war effort in Iraq, but Blair was right there providing political cover for Bush, the whole way. If he hadn't maybe Bush wouldn't have gotten re-elected. So why wasn't there (or was there?) an effective campaign to deny Blair re-election for what he did in the war, the lies he told? Or do the British think somehow that Bush was lying and Blair wasn't, because if you do, I got a bridge I want to tell you about.  

Steve Rubel sends word that Forbes is starting to podcast. 

Hats off to the Internet for bringing us the girl band from Afghanistan, they're hip, they're girls, and they wear Burkas! Wow. 

A guy named McDorDad thinks I'm a lously marketer.  

They're starting to cast Blog -- The Movie! 

Dawn & Drew and family have a very sweet birthday thread. Nice! I love the comment about my tech-savvy parents. The other day I described my mother as an "eBay hacker." It's true! 

Could Scoble's ego stand any more inflation?  

We'll find out, now that Bill Gates Himself wants to be interviewed on his Channel 9 video feed.

PBC Liberal posits that video blogging may displace podcasting in about (big radio pause) 5 seconds. I always dismiss that when asked, saying that podcasting is great because you can listen on a subway, while you're driving, or walking. But maybe he has a point.

Video is big with today's kids. I have gotten a whole new appreciation for it, carrying around the Archos. It's a kid magnet. They want to know what it is. I say it plays videos and music, and can run my own software. They think that part is really interesting. How do you get stuff on it, a seven year old asks. I connect it to my laptop. He nods knowingly. What interface? USB 2.0. Uh huh.

This is a new world ladies and gentlemen.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Folks, listen to what Papa Doc says about podcasting and radio.  

Podcasting News: "In a surprise move only tangentially related to podcasting, iconoclast and developer Dave Winer turned 50 today."  

Broadcast to podcast: "Every weekday you can download highlights from CHUM FM’s Morning Show with Roger Rick and Marilyn to your MP3 player." Bing! 

CNET: "We media types need to quit kowtowing to manufacturers who are trying in vain to hold on to the last shred of control they think they have. Those manufacturers need to wake up and smell the RSS feeds--the information's already out there." 

Kosso sent an email suggesting I do an image search on Google for "xml inventors." Please don't go there if you are easily frightened or are under a certain age, or prone to nightmares. 

WSJ: Corporate Marketers Try Out Blogs. 

Rogers Cadenhead has lost his mind. He's giving away free Radio UserLand books. 

I keep meaning to write an update of my Archos mini-computer. I take it everywhere with me and love it. It works really well. I keep discovering things it can do. The wifi hardly works at all. This isn't the review, btw, just the reminder that I owe you one. 

Leon Winer, PhD: "If you think fifty is nifty let me tell you that at seventy-five it's great to be alive." 

Armangil's podcatcher is a "podcast client for the command line." 

Sylvia's love letter to two Daves, one of whom is me!  

Now that the "marketing" folk have arrived in RSS-land, I've become a utopian. Isn't that funny. Hey remember, this an optional advertising place. Treat me with respect or your subscription goes into the bit-bucket. Marketing guys and their messages. I can think of a few choice words for them.  

I thought I would do a lot of podcasts last night, but nope -- too busy schmoozing and the place was so loud. Lots of good gossip. I think we're becoming an industry. And I'm seeing people for the third and fourth times at NY dinner events, so there's some continuity developing. Of course we don't all agree, but that's part of the fun. Lots of good data exchanged. And then we do it again, starting Friday, at a Southern blog meetup on a huge scale, in Nashville, y'all! 

What a birthday. My voice is gone. Good sign. Speaking with Jim Moore from a cab yesterday afternoon he thought I sounded like Bob Dylan. Heh. If he heard me now he'd think he was talking with Everett Dirksen.  

More comments on the Curry-Sirius deal 

Om Malik posits that the deal is really about broadcasting not podcasting.

When you combine yesterday's announcement with the weekend strategy-cast that becomes obvious. Some talent is leaving the podcastosphere, and joining the broadcastosphere, where the issues are different. They don't have to worry about podsafe music up in satellite-land because they've made their deal with the RIAA. That means that there will be new content created for the 4-hour broadcast that can't be played on the Internet.

The scaling issues that confront a popular podcast like DSC go away in the satellite system that already has its scaling worked out. But also gone is the breathless freedom, the DIYness of podcasting. As one of Om's commenters points out, the satellite people will want some control, the kind of control that isn't present in podcasts.

The BitTorrent corner-turn is nowhere near as hard as some think, but it is a corner-turn, and will require careful work with developers. Now that the air has cleared, and we can see that there are two distinct approaches, one which is a revisit of an old medium (radio), and the other a continuation of the new (podcasting), it could be time for the podcast community to get moving again.

But there's still another shoe out there,which has yet to drop. Odeo. In the spirit of "we do what we know how to do," it seems fair to assume that Ev and company will look at podcasting and see Blogger plus some of the community improvements of Flickr. I suspect that will further clear up what podcasting is, and isn't.

Comment here.

Monday, May 02, 2005

See you at 6PM at Grand Central Station! 

Search Engine Watch has a clue about some kind of feed reader from Google. 

Thanks everyone from the bottom of my heart for all the grrrreat birthday wishes. Tonight's geek dinner was so warm, so friendly, there were 60 geeks there all singing happy birthday. I haven't had such a nice birthday since the big 3-0. I especially appreciate the kind words from Dan Bricklin and Wes Felter. So many great messages. It's been a great thoroughly exhausting day, and one to remember, forever. Thank you so much!! 

On this day in 1997, Proof that You Exist. 

Much appreciated hat-tip from Matt Mullenweg.  

I just checked in at the Grand Hyatt in NY, and this is the first hotel I've been to that has T-Mobile wireless. I was able to use my ordinary account, just sign on, and go. I'd prefer free Internet, but if they have to make it for-pay this is the way to go.  

Very active discussion on the Podcasters mail list.  

Wow all the birthday links are pushing Scripting News toward the top of Blogdex. That's cool! 

Acid Planet is a podcasting community in Madison. 

DisneyLand turns 50 too, and has a podcast to celebrate.  

Highest praise: "When they scroll the credits of my life, Dave's is going to be one of the first names on the list." Wow. 

A birthday breakfast podcast at a noisy restaurant with my parents. We talk about idea processors, Macs, eBay, buying and selling online. 

10:30AM Eastern: Arrived safely in NYC. 

New header graphic. Sedona, Arizona. 

Thanks for all the great birthday wishes. To John Palfrey, actually your link counts as much as any other link in the Technorati list. They're not weighted (at least that's the way it looks). There are some other parables out there, some highly opinionated ones, in fact, but rather than point to them, I'll let you go digging for them. It seems that turning 50 (me? 50? no way) inspires parables. As Tim Bray pointed out there sure are lot of us old fuckers out there. Yeah I can sign up for the AARP now sonny, so listen up. It doesn't seem right that old people can do cool stuff, so I'll just stay young at heart. Hehe. Stop laughing.  

A parable from the West Wing 

President Bartlet is the president we all wish we could have but can't. He's a rich chocolate cake with ice cream and hot fudge topped with whipped cream and nuts and a cherry. A cookie on the side.

He sees a Republican consultant on a political show clean the clock of bright Sam Seaborn, one of the leading minds of his generation, and insists that Leo McGarry, the grizzled chief of staff with the big heart, hire her. Leo protests that he'll change his mind in the morning, but the President assures him he won't.

The Republican consultant gets the job, and becomes less snotty but not much. She's assigned to work on a case with her former nemesis Sam Seaborn, the bright guy who helps a hooker because he's got a big dumb streak in him (but we love him even more because of it). She's given the task of summarizing a memo that Sam wrote about helping small business people, but in doing so, changes Sam's opinion to something very Republican. At first Sam is pissed, but then he stops and says "Wait a minute she's right." So he presents her idea to Leo McGarry, at the end of a long day with the lights turned down low, he's sipping a cup of coffee, with a stack of work waiting for him, but he has time for Sam and his Republican consultant assistant.

"I thought we were going the other way," Leo says to Sam, lowering his eyeglasses so we can tell he's surprised, but thoughtful,. "Yes, we were but this spunky and sassy Republican consultant you hired convinced me to go the other way." Leo puts down his coffee, pauses for a moment, says Okay and signs the memo and moves it to his out box. Sam and his young consultant friend are whisked out of the room so Leo can resume dealing with other important affairs at the end of a long but satisfying day at the White House.

As they're walking away, the consultant is shrill. "But but you weren't supposed to do what I told you to do!" she shouts. You can tell she's panicked because she didn't think anything would come of her having a contrary opinion and being so sassy about it. Sam says "But you were right," and walks off stage.

She's left standing in the middle of the White House offices, with people whirring by purposefully, all doing important things that change our lives, because they work in the best place in the world and can do powerful things.

The point of this story, I feel like the Republican consultant. You guys weren't supposed to do what I told you to do! I was just having an opinion.

Adam's new gig 

NY Times: "Adam Curry will produce and be host of a four-hour program every weekday starting May 13 on Sirius Satellite Radio."

I guess we all do what we know how to do. He always wanted to compete with Howard Stern, now he gets to.

He's got a good lineup with Dawn & Drew, and the other podshow gods and goddesses. Hope they all got a good deal.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

A sweet story of France from Megnut. "I settled into my seat and watched the families and couples enjoy their dinner while I slurped my last briny oysters of my visit. And the feeling of being alone was forgotten." 

An interesting post from Tim Bray about a club I didn't know I was a member of!  

I've been getting nice email on the thunderstorm podcast. I listened to it a second time, and realized I should let you in on a secret. I got the sense of how long after a lightning bolt the thunder clap would come. Because you couldn't see the lightning, you didn't know when the thunder was coming, but I did, and was able to use it to good effect in the podcast. Another example of godcasting, a collaborative effort, with your humble servant, Uncle Davey.  

Raymond Poort sent me one of those nice emails about the thunderstorm podcast. It's great to hear from him. 

Podbat would like you to log in.  

I just listened to the podcasting panel from SXSW and it was excellent. I loved the idea of an RSS-enabled alarm clock. You know someday you'll have one, maybe pretty soon.  

The New York Geek Dinner tomorrow night is shaping up as an extra-va-ganza. Mary Jo Foley. Joel Spolsky. Scoble. Rubel.  

Laura Bush: "I was a librarian that spent 12 hours a day in the library. Yet somehow I met George." 

Dowbrigade: "...a white limousine, which had apparently exploded just as it was entering Johnson Gate, the main entrance to Harvard Yard off of Massachusetts Avenue, a mere 50 feet from the office of Harvard President Lawrence Summers." 

Britt Blaser has an imporant announcement to make.  

People sometimes ask why the header graphic on Scripting News doesn't usually reflect the place I'm at. As far as I know the only time that it did was when I was at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last summer. Anyway, the reason it's different is that I like the change of scenery. Where ever you are, after a while, seems less exotic than some other place. Nothing more than that. 

Morning coffee notes 

Good morning everybody!

Don't miss the thunderstorm podcast, I think it came out pretty good.

Today's the last day of my forties. I'm ready to make the transition. What does turning 50 mean? Well, if I make it, I lived longer than Douglas Adams. When he died at the tender age of 49 (which happens to be how old I am right now, but you knew that) it made me feel some very mortal feelings. That's how deaths of other people always are. You can try all you want to not make it about you, but that's all you know about.

What's it like to die? Some people believe they know, but that's just a belief. You won't know for sure until it happens to you. And that, my friends, is both the curse and the blessing of humanity. It's the curse because it haunts each of us from the age of seven or eight when it first hits us that we're going to die too. I remember very well lying in bed as a small child totally freaked out about this. It becomes the backdrop of all we do, it's where our sense of urgency comes from, if it weren't for this, why would we ever actually do anything?

It's also a blessing because we get rid of old ideas and old thinking. Every seventy or eighty years we do a complete refresh of the species. No idea gets to continue along without being examined by fresh minds, and this probably has led to a lot of the growth of our species. It's why the sense of "things have always been this way and always will" actually changes so often. If we didn't die, it probably wouldn't.

So one more birthday, one year closer to the end, whenever that will be. Ooops, ten years closer to the end. Maybe it will be a relief. Whew. Don't have to do this for another ten years. That was the feeling at 40, and it surprised me. I looked inside, after the fact, and wondered why I dreaded it so. Turns out it was because I thought at 40 I would turn into my father. I didn't, I was still me. Now as I turn 50, it seems it wouldn't be such a terrible thing to turn into my father. Not a small bit of progress for one man, in just ten years, wouldn't you say?

A birthday request 

If you want to wish me a happy birthday, first, let me say, thank you, mazel tov, a blessing back at ya, namaste and let's have fun. I have one request, which I get to make because it'll be my birthday tomorrow, and I'm getting in practice for one day of pure selfishness. Instead of sending an email, if you have a blog, how about posting your wishes on your blog with a link to mine? I could always use some more flow, and I'd love to climb a few notches on the Technorati list, truth be told.