We need a badge!

And... I'm not good at drawing pictures so I didn't even try.

I put this badge in the right margin of scripting.com, and linked it to the river.

http://river.scripting.com/

If your site is part of the river, you can add it to your blog too.

And if you're a creative drawing-type person, feel free to give the badge a try!

 11/27/2011; 4:28:25 PM.   .

When I deleted my Facebook account, they said it would take them 2 weeks to actually delete it.

That was approximately 18 days ago.

I don't want to try to log in to find out what happened for fear that that would do something to resurrect my presence there.

But when I went to my URL, or at least what I remember my URL to be:

http://www.facebook.com/dave.winer

I got a message saying "This content is currently unavailable."

Not quite the definitive statement I was hoping for, but it'll do.

Looks like the account is gone. Thanks!

 11/27/2011; 11:09:11 AM.   .

We now have a community river on Scripting News.

http://river.scripting.com/

The feeds in this river are from people who read this site. It's self-selecting, at least so far.

I've also included my worknotes feed, a feed that lists code updates for the OPML Editor user community, and feeds for a couple of our community mail lists (all are low-traffic).

I asked in a blog post yesterday if people are part of the community, and if they have an RSS feed, and if so to either send it to me via email or post a link to it as a comment. We got over forty feeds! Pretty amazing for the first day. But then is it surprising that people who are reading this site on the Saturday after Thanksgiving are pretty hard-core about RSS?

I deliberately did not send pointers to that post to Twitter and other social places, because I want the feeds of people who are readers of the blog, who can find their way to a post here without much prompting.

Even better -- there are some excellent posts in the river. I found out about a new blogging service I didn't know about and learned that Blogger had made some serious improvements that I need to check out.

So far having a community river is much better than having comments!

I am of course also maintaining the OPML subscription list for the river (it's done automatically by the River2 software). If you use an aggregator that allows you to subscribe to OPML lists, you can just plug it in and kick back and you'll be getting a steady flow of news from and about this community.

Thanks everyone, and keep up the good work!!

 11/27/2011; 10:50:44 AM.   .

When I got my hands on a Kindle Fire, I wrote a piece -- with clear disclaimers that I might not feel this way after some time -- that I absolutely loved it. That piece was a little over a week ago. Now it's time to write a follow-up. With the disclaimer that there might be more follow-ups to come.

1. I still don't see the Fire and iPad as comparable, even though they do many of the same things. When I got my iPad, when it was new, I tried not to compare it to the Mac or netbooks, both of which I used, even though it did many of the same things.

2. There are a lot of things the Fire doesn't do today that I'm pretty sure it will do in the future. Lots of apps are missing. But I suspect they will show up. Installed bases attract developers, and Amazon is likely to build a big one here.

3. It has the kinds of bugs only version 1.0 products have. For example, when I buy a book on Amazon, nothing I do can get the Fire to recognize it, even if if I specifically tell the Amazon website to send it to that Kindle (I have many). However, when I reboot the Fire, it shows up right away.

3a. It's annoying that the controls don't allow you to decrease brightness to a comfortable level when reading in the dark. And the sound control doesn't allow it to get loud enough to hear some movies with soft dialog. (The iPad has the same problem. There are some movies you have to watch with headphones on to actually be able to understand the dialog.)

4. The small form factor is a big win. I choose to read books on the Fire, and when possible, watch movies on it, over my iPad, because it's so much easier to hold while lying down. It's the size of a paperback. A little heavier, but quite a bit lighter than an iPad. And the rubber body is easy to grip. Where the iPad slips out of your hands, and is cold to the touch, the Fire is warm, and it grips easily.

5. I use the iPad for email, for Words With Friends and for browsing the web. I do not use the Fire for any of those things, even though I know it can be used for those things. Not sure why.

6. I still love it, one week in. I would keep it even if I didn't use it because I want to see where Amazon takes it. I think it's a bargain at $200. I wouldn't yet recommend it to non-technical users, though I think it would be fine for kids to play games on, as long as there's a mom or dad nearby to get things working again when needed.

7. It is an Android, but there are strange things that work on Android that don't work on the Fire. I tried to install a piece of software that AC recommended, but it wouldn't work on the Fire. I was able to install it on my Android phone, a Nexus/S.

8. Another reason I use the Kindle Fire is competition. I would probably use any tablet that looked like it had a chance of attaining market share. When Apple has competition, they will have reason to give users more of what they want. There will be less of the kind of nonsense with them deprecating Flash. Companies shouldn't have that kind of power. I know Amazon is no better, but they are different. More choice is good for us all, even people who bleed in six colors.

 11/27/2011; 10:24:12 AM.   .