Sunday, July 16, 2006

Target Stores has an RSS feed for for early alerts on its weekly ads. Thanks to Staci Kramer for the link.  

Heads up to people who use the OPML Editor as a blogging tool. I've been working on static rendering of weblog content, which would allow blogs to be hosted anywhere, via any upload mechanism. That's part of the reason why I did the fileSynch builtin (and its connection to Amazon S3), to give people lots of options on where to host their blogs. I'll offer the tool for testing, probably within the next week. I'm doing it slowly and carefully, with lots of testing along the way.  

Mike Arrington: "How do their shareholders feel about side projects like Twttr when their primary product line is, besides the excellent design, a total snoozer?" 

Sylvia Paull: "Blowing up townhouses and wars don't interest me." 

I followed Rex Hammock's advice and saw Superman on iMax, and I'm afraid I wasn't blown away as Rex was. Boring movie. Yet another remake of Star Wars, basically the only movie Hollywood knows how to make these days, with the usual Superman characters, and the teeniest bit of Finding Neverland (which is an awesome movie, a real tear-jerker). The only funny lines are from Lex Luthor, and those are only outstanding because they're the only funny lines, they wouldn't stand out in a normal Superman movie. There's nothing politically significant in the plot (wonder what Rex was thinking), it has absolutely no suspense value, and given the hype around 3D, I expected at least a little Spiderman-like vertigo, but got nothing. And the new Superman has absolutely nothing going for him. He doesn't even make a good goody goody.  

Four years ago: "If there is such a thing as journalism, it must be possible to practice it in a weblog." 

Don Park: "Who do I have to kill to require a pain-in-the-ass F2F procedure to transer 5+ digit fund out of my banking and brokerage accounts?" Amen. 

Your decision about Foo Camp 

The back-channel discussion about Foo Camp has already started. This year's event is at the end of August, not exactly sure of the dates. Those who are invited, even people who are almost religious about open events, say they're going. Those who aren't invited, including people who have never been invited, are either secretly or openly pissed.

I suggest the secret this year is to not care whether or not you were invited. If you were, don't gloat, and don't go. This is an event where they claim to do open standards work, but it's invite-only. It's bad for trust in our little world. If you weren't invited, don't do your own camp and say it's great because it's open. Instead go to the movies or the beach. Call your mother and say hi. Have a play date with your kids.

For background, the best piece about Foo Camp was written by Om Malik, which includes this comment from Tim O'Reilly where he explains the whys and wherefores.

An idea is to have a badge that says I don't support exclusive events where open work supposedly takes place. Of course I'd put one here on Scripting News, and I'd ask my friends to do the same, and you could ask your friends. Then in a week or so we'd see who didn't put one up, and ask them nicely to please do so.