A report on the Google Operating System blog saying that Google is planning to connect Blogger with Google-Plus.

Makes an enormous amount of sense. Google-Plus is basically a blogging platform. And of course Blogger is one of the original blogging platforms.

What's interesting about this, what makes it worthy of a mention on Scripting News, is that Blogger has a fairly complete API, and Google-Plus doesn't have much of one.

There's lots of software out there that supports the Blogger API.

So if they connected the two, if a Blogger post can become a Google-Plus post, then there's now a gateway for content to enter Google-Plus from other environments.

 10/24/2011; 1:57:21 PM.   .

I got the Steve Jobs book last night on Kindle. I'm reading it on my iPad of course. Great way to read books. Thanks Jeff and Steve.

I wish every product had a spokesperson and ego behind it like the Kindle and iPad do. Take Flickr for example. It's way ahead of all the other Internet photo apps. But its egos, Stewart and Caterina, left years ago. Since then it's drifted on with a little of the momentum they left with it. And even so, it's way ahead of all the other photo apps, as a platform. And that's proving to be really important.

My photos need an entrypoint onto the net. A gateway. Back in the minicomputer days we used to call this a TIP. I forget what it stands for. But think of the net as a fast and powerful processing and storage unit. And "out there" are billions of nodes that generate stuff you want to move around this big unit in every way possible. They need a way to get onto the net. If your service has the ability to flow stuff out of it, then it can be that spot. For pictures, Flickr is the best.

But there is no ego. It's owned by Yahoo and as we know, Yahoo has been adrift for the better part of a decade. Carol Bartz had no idea about Flickr beyond its use as a photo storage service. She had probably been told it was a platform, and either didn't understand, or wasn't curious to find out what that meant.

Steve Jobs serves as the prime example we have now of a product with an ego. If you look at all the other big products, you can identify an ego that you connect it with. Linus and Linux. Ballmer and Windows, Larry/Sergey and Google. Zuck and Facebook. Drew and Dropbox. Chad/Steve and Youtube. Costolo and Twitter. In previous generations: Bill/Excel, Mitch/Lotus, Dan, Dan and Bob/Visicalc.

They aren't always people you like, actually maybe they're always people you don't like. That isn't what it's about. What matters is does the product know what it is and isn't, and does it act accordingly? Only a product mover like Jobs and Bezos can do that for you.

They're something like the people in Apple's famous commercial (but that's a commercialization). I don't think "changing the world" is the same thing as being the ego of a product. But the former is easier to explain.

At this point, I wish Flickr had an ego. We could sure use a driving force behind the flow of photos on the net.

See my previous piece about Flickr as a platform.

 10/24/2011; 12:03:35 PM.   .

I just heard a segment on the BBC World Service on WNYC about WikiLeaks.

They had a WikiLeaks spokesman explaining how Visa, MasterCard and Paypal had all shut off donations to WikiLeaks. With close to 100 percent market share, that leaves them without a way to raise money in the United States. This was done without due process, without any charges, and has been in place since December last year. A lot of people who look at this situation, myself included, don't see a line separating the role WikiLeaks plays from that played by the New York Times or the Guardian, two news organizations that ask for our respect and presumably don't have any problems with Visa, MasterCard or Paypal.

Then they had a reporter from the Guardian come on and make the usual personal attacks against Julian Assange. The ones that make them look dishonest and sold out, because as reporters, they surely know that they're leaving some salient facts out of their analysis. As the WikiLeaks spokesperson starts to respond, they cut him off and go to the next segment. I could see how someone might think that, based on this reporting, that the BBC is very much in bed with the US government in trying to put WikiLeaks out of business. Probably because they undermine the business model of the BBC, by doing what they do, more honestly and completely. (Should I let the BBC have space to respond? Of course. Because I care about the truth.)

I'm fed up with this situation. There are many ways for people to give money to organizations that many of us don't like. But that's part of living in a democracy. If I want to give $100 to WikiLeaks, and if I want to use my credit card to do so, who are they to say I can't? One might have an argument if there was some recourse, some other way to give money. But they have WikiLeaks blockaded.

Think about this -- if the banks have the power to cut off funding to an organization they don't like, and there's no protest, of course they can do it to you too. And when you think of our nice young President out there pretending to be fighting for us, remember, he's the guy that put them up to this. Could they do it to the New York Times? Of course.

I'd like to see one of the banks break ranks and offer us a way to get money to WikiLeaks with a credit card. Or I'd like to see one of the supposedly reputable news organizations break ranks and tell the story of how the government got the banks and other news organizations to abandon their honor and integrity. And how they don't mind if the part of the public that wants a free press knows they did it. (And to the reporters, how long before they cut you off too?)

To the BBC World Service and the Guardian, shame on you. Especially the Guardian which has repeatedly thrown unjustified mud at Assange and WikiLeaks.

 10/24/2011; 10:10:08 AM.   .