Scripting2 took a big step today -- it got its second user.

And tomorrow it gets a third.

I'm starting with people who are regulars at the Thursday evening group at NYU. Rather than boot up through a mail list, I want to try booting up with people I see regularly face to face. Last time I did that was with employees of Living Videotext, and the product was MORE. It was both a long time ago, and a spectacularly successful product. Part of the reason it was so successful was the excellent communication with early users, with people who really cared about the product.

Scripting2 is a remote descendant of MORE. Both are outliners. Both are publishing tools. But Scripting2 is a networking tool and built inside its own programming language and database, with a deep runtime environment. MORE was a Mac app in the early days of Mac apps (the 80s).

Anyway, some of the next steps:

1. Get the Bookmarks menu working with Scripting2 stories. (Also write a post explaining how to activate the Bookmarks menu.)

2. Fix a bug with the Blogroll button. The buttons on the windows don't appear the first time you click.

3. Establish an updates process with the first users.

4. Crib the link bookmarklet from LifeLiner.

5. Window types so Cmd-S work properly.

6. Proper changes page.

7. Set up the AWS AMI.

 6/28/2010; 7:27:32 PM.   .

I don't always do my development work out in the open as I have been with the new version of my blogging software. I do it when I want to provide opportunities for people to build on what I'm doing.

For example, if you do a View Source on this article you'll see a bunch of <link> elements in the head section of the document. They point at the source doe for the page, the RSS feed for the site, the RSS feed for the live/link-blog, the OPML source for the blogroll. There may be other things linked in there in teh future.

I've also received proposals for the inclusion of other metadata in there and I'm probably going to pick up on some of those. Especially when I already ahve the data around.

What I'm interested in are: 1. Alternate renderings of the content and 2. Various kinds of syndication, including the ever-elusive loosely-coupled 140-character network.

So when you see me do something like add a new live feed to my blog, it's probably because I want other people to pick up on it, or at least to have it stimulate their thinking.

In a world where people are too chicken to be the egg, I want to be both the chicken and the egg. That's how you get things like blogging, RSS and podcasting off the ground. ">

 6/28/2010; 9:46:41 AM.   .

I've lived on all kinds of streets in all kinds of neighborhoods, but I've never lived on streets that get so much use, so much attention and so much maintenence as the streets of New York.

A few days ago, on the solstice, there were concerts in the parks and streets. Everywhere you went. Just walking around lower Manhattan I saw a half-dozen. But unless you were within earshot, you probably didn't even notice. That's how big this place is.

Yesterday a huge parade wound its way through the avenues and streets. There were festivals with booths and stages. Huge crowds everywhere and this is the time of year when everyone's gone!

Yesterday the streets were so filled with people and junk it's amazing to see this morning they're clean. An army of workers with all kinds of equipment and tools worked through the night to get the city ready for another work week.

Meanwhile the World Cup was happening on the other side of the world, but there were big screens, outdoors, all over the city with people of all nationalities fixed on the outcome.

I've lived on streets where you almost never see a city worker. They just sort of take care of themselves. But New York is so heavily used, it requires so many people just to keep running. It's a wonder it actually works at all.

There must be people whose whole careers are spent improving the way all these people work together, to make due with less as recessions and bankruptcies and acts of terrorism take their toll.

There was a time, when I was growing up here, when it seemed the city was spiraling into chaos. There were riots. Parts of the city were burning. The government was deliberately "renewing" whole sections of the city, with often disastrous results. But all that seems to be over. Nowadays this place seems to actually work.

 6/28/2010; 7:13:22 AM.   .