TechMeme for the NY Times? 

A few notes on the NY Times outline...

1. I switched it back to the frequency sort, having tried it as an alphabetized list for about 18 hours. Now I want to see what happens with it flipped around so the most frequent keyword bins appear first.

2. Not sure, but I think it will empty out later this afternoon, as yesterday's stories expire, and before tomorrow's stories ship.

3. It seems that at least some people have bookmarked the site and are refreshing it. If so, I'm glad -- because that's the way these pages are most useful, they tell you something about what changed. Remember this is "news" not olds.

4. The outline view is something like TechMeme for the Times news flow. Not exactly because the keywords are assigned by people. Unseen news mavens. Where do they reside? Are they on the upper floors or in the basement of the NY Times skyscraper on 8th Ave, or somewhere inbetween? Maybe they work out of their homes. My mind wants to visualize these people, but I have nothing to cling to. It's not an algorithm that's determining where things sort out, it's people. Otherwise known as editors? Or are they librarians?

5. Do you bookmark the outline or the river? I'm a river guy for sure. I wonder about other people.

6. Francine Hardway twitted at me: "Times River is awesome on my iPhone! Was reading it while waiting for eye surgery and it was very distracting." Amen. That's the big secret. I wish there were a way to get everyone to look at the river on their cell phone. Eyes would open.

7. Thinking about integrating the two views, cross-relating them. Not sure exactly what I'll try first. That's why I wanted to let it settle in for a bit before moving in a other directions.

8. Of course, I know that if this ever becomes a "real" product, the user is going to control the view he or she wants to be the default. But for right now I'm experimenting. I want to see what people think. Enough people were asking for an alpha view that I wanted to see what would happen when I gave it to them, and if anyone would scream. Screaming isn't a bad thing, it's data.

Wii, day one 

My new toy arrived late yesterday, too late for this weary boy to want to set it up. This morning I put it on my to-do list. Item #3. Set up Wii. So that's what I did.

I have a receiver that's connected to the other new toy, a Samsung 52-inch HDTV, and the Wii connected up to the receiver, and the receiver was already connected through component video to the TV, and when I cycled through the inputs on the TV's remote, voila, there's the Wii. Smooth as can be!

And that's where we got stuck. I installed everything according to the instructions or so I thought. A screen comes up saying you should press the middle key on the remote which I did, and it chirped kindly, and then presented a screen asking me to confirm that I speak English and no matter what key I press, nothing happens. Nada. It just sits there. I'm ready to bowl, play tennis, design Mii, whatever cooool things you can do with a Wii, but that's where we are.

Okay. We'll get past this. I hope. :-)

Update: I called the 800-number for support, and they had me go through a trouble-shooting procedure, that was actually fairly interesting. I explain it in this picture, which indicates that the sensor bar appears to be okay.

Update #2: I tried standing on a chair, moved 10 feet back, 15 feet, even 20 feet. Moved the receiver to the bottom of the screen. No cursor shows up. Rebooted a dozen times, resynched three or four. Something is screwy here, but I'm no closer to knowing what it is. :-(

Here's a movie that demos the situation.

Click To Play

Stop 

Good morning! 

After an intense week with the NY Times metadata, I'm going to put it down for a bit, take care of some other stuff, and put together some downloads of other software I've developed over the last few months so they can move to the next stage. I also want to set up the new toy today and see what that's like. And then I got an email from Jason Etheridge, who is listening to all the Morning Coffee Note podcasts, and finds that quite a few of them are missing. More in a minute.

Missing MCNs 

Jason Etheridge has been working his way through the archive of Morning Coffee Notes podcasts, and has found a bunch are missing. I'm going through the list, using archive.org, local backups, Google, and whatever else I can think of, to try to find the missing MP3s. These are the ones I haven't found yet. (I'll update the list as I work through it, so hit refresh periodically.)

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnNov9.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/TS20041107.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnNov3.mp3 *

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnNov1.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/MusicoftheBlogospheres.mp3 *

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/TS20041028.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnOct21.mp3 *

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnOct16.mp3 *

http://mp3.podbat.com/base/tradesushi/050414_tsushi01_scoble.mp3

http://leoville.tv/tlr/KFIAdamCurry.mp3

http://static.scripting.com/blogs/gems/davetravel/cnOct24a.mp3 *

http://static.scripting.com/blogs/gems/dnc/cnOct7.mp3 *

http://static.scripting.com/blogs/gems/dnc/cnOct5.mp3 *

http://static.scripting.com/blogs/gems/dnc/cnSept27a.mp3 *

* Denotes a file archive.org says they have but can't access because of technical difficulties.

Of course, if you have any clues about rescuing these files, or have a copy of them on your local system, please let me know.

Rescued MCNs 

Here's a list of Morning Coffee Notes podcasts that we have been able to rescue, so far.

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/nothinginterestinghere.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/niccoToothStory.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/marcNozell.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/gg.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/eps.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/davewineraudiocomment.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnOct19.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnOct18.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/bing.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/BillRiski200410201copy.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/anotherTestAudioBlogPost.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/TS-2004-10-28.mp3

In-process MCNs 

Lost podcasts that I've found, but haven't been able to upload yet.

http://www.komonews.com/radio/audio/herb_tip_111004.mp3

http://media.skybuilders.com/Lydon/Dean.Q&A.Aug.03.mp3