Today's links 

Is Apple un-hacking user-enhanced AppleTVs?

If I'm not mistaken that's Mike Arrington, Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble in the latest JibJab.

Good question from The Dude Abides.

CBS5-TV report on Twitter with Scoble.

News.com: "Apparently, Facebook wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard before he had a chance to take any history classes."

How basic is Twitter? 

Like so many others in the tech blogging world, I've spent the last few weeks exploring Twitter. I understand that there were lots of people using it before me, and before that, the developers of Twitter envisioned something that all the rest of us didn't. So before going any further, let's pause for a moment and appreciate their innovation and contribution to the richness of the cyber-environment that we work in. Congrats on a great accomplishment.

Now the next step is to wonder what the next step is.

I've been following the digging work that Nik Cubrilovic and Steve Poland have been doing, with great interest, particularly the report yesterday on the upcoming Twitter API feature that will allow users to direct private messages at invidual users. Both Steve and Nik have observed that names in the Twitter space may become quite valuable in the future. And Nik observes that the Twitter folk may have made a mistake by not reserving some of the juiciest names for themselves, like GET, for example.

@get "berkeley weather"

If you play it out, the Twitter command line could evolve to be something much like the Unix command line, with an important difference, it's world-wide in scope. Before you lose your breath, this is hardly the first such command line, the address bar in the browser has a similar property as does the search box on Google (of course, any search engine). But Twitter's would be newly interesting because the thing it wires together, better than any environment before, is something we're all interested in -- people.

So inevitably, a query about the value of namespaces leads you to wonder if there will be TwitterClones, web-based services that emulate the Twitter API, that keep internal data structures similar to Twitter, and most important, peer with Twitter, the same way Twitter peers with IM and SMS systems.

This is as far as I got in my thinking when last night I decided to ask Les Orchard, a developer I know for quite a few years, and who I've worked with on a couple of projects, both of which use the kind of technology that would be required for such a project --

What if there were an open source implementation of Twitter?

Nik Cubrilovic happened to be online at the moment and he jumped in with an idea. Les confessed that he was thinking of doing such a project. I thought to myself that there must be a lot of developers thinking about this right about now. We agreed it was an interesting question, and I said I'd write it up on Scripting News, which is what I'm doing right now.

What do you think? Is Twitter important, like web servers, or blogging software, so important that we should have an open source implementation of something that works like Twitter and can connect up to Twitter? Where are the tough sub-projects, and how much does it depend on the willingness of the developers of Twitter #1 to support systems that connect to theirs?

If you have something to say about this, either post a comment here, or write a blog post, and point to this article and your piece will show up in this Technorati query.

Les Orchard: "Twitter is not just a technological thing." Amen.

Yahoo mail API 

Yahoo is announcing a new open API for mail. Interested to hear what people think. I was briefed on it earlier today.

A QuickTime screencast with Ryan Kennedy, Jeremy Zawodny and Matt McAlister from Yahoo, explaining the API and what they can do.

It sounded to me like the API allowed developers to create new user interfaces or "skins" for Yahoo's mail, through SOAP or JSON interfaces, but they said that it could do more than that.

I'd like to see another huge Internet infrastructure company provide what Amazon does with S3, and Yahoo certainly qualifies. This API is not that, but it's still a good thing that more of the user-level services on the net are being opened through APIs. And Yahoo is one of the leaders in that effort.

Wes Felter: "The standard API for email is IMAP."

Amateur justice 

Wikipedia: "Presumption of innocence is a legal right that the accused in criminal trials has in many modern nations. It states that no person shall be considered guilty until finally convicted by a court."

Doc Searls: "If Alan is right, everybody on this giant thread has been taken for one of the oldest rides in the park."

Next time -- think before you trash someone, no matter how much you dislike them, especially because you dislike them.

It takes courage to stand up to a mob, but that is the best of what it means to be an American.

Postscript: I agree we need a blogging code of conduct, but not the kind of code these people have in mind.

Mitch Ratcliffe: "Trolls created the impression of a crime and sat back to watch human nature show its worst side."

A hive of activity 

Scripting News has been a hive of activity this week, with lots of flow coming from the BBC and TechMeme. But it's worth noting that while these sites are massive flow-builders, another high-flow site that I'd bet not many of you are aware of, is also making a huge contribution. The pie chart below illustrates.

A link from Daring Fireball keeps everything moving. It's a gift from heaven. Thanks so much! I'm not worthy I'm not worthy.

All that is important, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out that the all-time authority champion for my site is, according to Technorati, TechCrunch. Mike, thanks so much for helping Scripting News stay on the map!

Dynamic duos 

I feel like I'm finally catching up with all the events of Russo & Hale that have loomed so large in my life for the last year or so. It's so funny, when I said on December 12, that I was keeping the site running because I needed an advantage in a fight that was coming up, a lot of people thought I was talking about Mike Arrington, including Mike himself. No way. I love Mike, even though sometimes we have our differences. Please note the smilley I'm putting right here:

Anyway, Russo & Hale made sure that they loom large in my world, now I'm showing them, hopefully, that I can loom large in theirs. I think some of their current clients will soon be asking them why they are suing one of their former clients without even trying to negotiate a settlement. Could it be that they're using the fact that they have free legal service, and the former client has to pay for his?

To me, I liken it to a programmer leaving a virus on a client's computer, and then coming back a few months later and asking to be paid to remove it. That would be highly unethical, and would get someone thrown out of the Programmer's Union, if there actually were such a thing.

But being who I am, I can't possibly get totally serious without throwing a little humor at it. So when I write about Russo & Hale, I try to find some pictures of pairs of people or things that somehow communicate about the issues swirling around Jack and Tim.

Anyway, next time they file a frivolous action against me, if they ever do (knock wood, maybe they won't) it'll all be out in the open, and y'all will understand what's up.

Yours in transparency,

Dave Winer