Scripting News: My manifesto for web writing.#

Today's background image is a Boulder bike trail. #

This thought was buried in a comment on Facebook. #

There is a good reason new social platforms don't have APIs. If they had one, no one would use their UI. It's like a protective tariff. #

Also it's powerless to ask another developer to do something out of the kindness of their hearts for users. Mostly they don't work that way. They want to make something big happen. If they undermine it now, they feel it won't get big. #

I know what it's like because I've been there, and I have friends who have been there. That's almost certainly why Google-Plus didn't have an API, for example. It's also why a service like Facebook can have such an open API. They've already gained traction. It's not something they have to worry about. #

The best people to ask for an API are users, who unfortunately don't understand the issues in those terms. The experience it as the awkwardness of a new user interface, and an inability to share with people who aren't on their network. It's as if you couldn't call someone on T-Mobile if they happen to use Verizon. #

What we really need, and I hope to help make happen, is a network based on open syndication of content. Then there is no one to ask for an API, because there's no one in charge. Just like the web. #

I know some people don't believe it still exists, but I do, and I know others who do as well. #

Scripting News: Cuban cottages in Jamaica.#

I'm in Boulder today, and happened to meet the developers of ello.co. A total chance thing. I asked them to support RSS of course. They seemed really smart, and understood the issues. I'll help them if I can, because it would help blow out the other silos if they did it. If that happened we'd see the web re-emerge in new ways.#

Cross-posted: Facebook, ello.co, as a demo of why we need better syndication technology.#

Scripting News: 20-year milestone coming soon.#

Scripting News: When do you have enough money?#

Jeffrey Kishner: Running River4 Locally with Dropbox.#

Interesting thread going on under a post by Andrew Baron about ello. #

Andrew thinks Ello is going in the "right direction." I think not. It's VC-funded, no feeds, no API, it's buggy, it's more like Twitter in 2006 without the API. There's no appeal in that, at least not for me. I suppose it could catch on. Lots of things catch on. #

Ultimately the killer idea would be for Facebook to federate. Let me put my content on my server, to be part of whatever networks I want it to be part of, and at the same time also be on Facebook. That combination imho would create an infinite number of competitors to Facebook. Funny thing is I think they're actually doing this. Why? Where do you think the kickass new ideas for networking will come from? From a service operating at Facebook's scale or from something new that gets a chance to iterate, to start small, and get to some new place. If you know how technology develops, you know that only the latter approach has a chance of working. I've been waiting for a platform vendor to get to the stage Facebook is at now, and realize that they'll do better if they plant the seeds for successors of their current product, and make sure they have a good seat from which to observe. Then keep the checkbook out, and make investments and acquisitions, and help distribute the products that achieve critical mass (in this day, distribution means operating huge data centers).#

Update: Cross-posted on Facebook.#

Interesting TechCrunch piece about Steve Ballmer and the Clippers throwing out iPads in favor of Microsoft-compliant tablets.#

That got me thinking about all the other tech industry execs who now own NBA teams.#

1. Of course there's Mark Cuban at Dallas.#

2. And Ted Leonsis, a former top exec at AOL at Washington.#

3. Robert Pera at Memphis.#

4. Vivek Ranadive at Sacramento.#

5. Joe Lacob, a Kleiner VC at Golden State.#

6. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, at Portland.#

River4 blog: Bare bones River4 howto.#

River4 blog: River4 and the local filesystem.#

Today's background image is a bridge over a river.#

The net effect of making River4 work with the local filesystem is that it's simpler to set up. Originally I made it work with S3 because we were deploying on Heroku, and since it runs in the Amazon cloud, it made S3 an economical choice (and Heroku apps don't have a persistent filesystem). But now we want to branch out, and setting up the S3 connection was tripping up a lot of people who set up their own rivers outside of Heroku. Now it should be easier. And we'll make easier still. #

We know that it can get very easy, because the first Radio had the aggregator running on the end-user's machine, in the background. The users were running a web server on their desktop, though not many knew that. Proving that it can be made so easy that it just melts into invisibility.#

One more thing, River4 is designed to plug into the new RiverBrowser software. All this stuff I'm working on that may seem so diverse and possibly random is part of a grand scheme to get more content flowing over the net with open formats and protocols, without being locked into any silos. The trick is to make it easy. We're getting there. #

The formats we're using are: RSS, OPML and RiverJs.#

This post appeared originally on Facebook.#

They don't have feeds in or out. That means whatever you put in there, starting right now, is theirs. They won't even share your stuff with you. That's not a good deal. You shouldn't accept that.#

So Ello isn't answering any question I can think of. #

If they were open, then I would be interested. Because that means I could use my tools with it. At least with Facebook, there's a lot of openness, I'm writing this using my software, and if I weren't I could easily get it out (though honestly I haven't tested that yet). Here's a screen shot.#

This is the same problem I have with people pouring love into Medium. I don't care if they pay you to write there, then it's just like Vox or Huffington Post or Quartz, Buzzfeed or any of a thousand other sites that employ writers. But if you do it thinking this is some cool way to publish, it's the most uncool way! Really seriously wrong that people do this thinking they might be doing themselves some good. It's the bad bargain tech companies always try to make with users. And users still fall for it. #

Anyway, I'll watch it, but I won't invest in it. At least not yet. If you guys make them the new boss, then I guess I'll have to. I hope you all get wise, instead. #

Scripting News: What will a linkblog look like in 2015?#

Today's background image is the scoreboard at Shea Stadium in 1964. Of course the Mets are down 6-0 to the Phillies. #

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Disclaimer: I hate the Yankees. Always will. They are the enemy. #

Scripting News: Now there's an image in my river!#

Scripting News: The NYT has a pulse! (Sort of).#

Radio3: What to do if you lose your posts.#

Today's background image is Eleanor Roosevelt.#

From the last episode of The Roosevelts, a friend explains that when Eleanor Roosevelt was touring, when she'd meet someone who wanted to tell her how she had helped them, she didn't show interest, she just rushed on to the next thing. Why? She didn't have time for that. She's busy doing stuff. #

I feel the same way when people say they respect me for work I did ten or twenty years ago. I only care about that to the extent that it means it might be a little easier for me to do the next thing I want to do. Ironically, it works exactly the opposite way. The more people feel your accomplishments are in the past, the less they let you do now. (My philosophy is to do it anyway.)#

The same thing happened to her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt. He left office at 50, desperately wanted to stay involved, but couldn't find a way to do it. This is the guy who built the Panama Canal. When the US finally got into WWI, he tried to enlist, but the president wouldn't let him. Instead he sent his four sons off to fight in the war, while he stayed home. To him this must have been torture. He died at 60, I assume because there was nothing for him to do. #

ER said the same thing, as long as there were still things to do, as long as her life had a purpose, she wanted to keep living. As soon as their stopped being a purpose, she wanted to die, and she did.#

My stuff is coming together in ways I only dreamed about in the past. I have no time to think about what happened in the past, except insofar as it makes me wiser about things I do now and in the future, and that it makes people more open to the idea that I might be doing something of significance. #

Scripting News: The lost art of software testing.#

Today's background image was taken at the climate march in NYC.#

Enlargement of the section of the photo with the people in the window.#

I got to march the last few blocks with this great marching drum band. It's the only way to go!#

Scripting News: New iPhone observations.#

Scripting News: Facebook is not for news, yet.#

Scripting News: It wouldn't kill Twitter to do text.#

Today's background image is a photo taken with the new iPhone 6.#

Far West#

Alaska#

California#

Hawaii#

Nevada#

Reno#

Las Vegas#

Ely#

Gerlach#

Oregon#

Washington#

Great Plains#

Kansas#

Nebraska#

North Dakota#

Oklahoma#

South Dakota#

Mid-Atlantic#

Delaware#

Maryland#

New Jersey#

New York#

Pennsylvania#

Midwest#

Illinois#

Indiana#

Iowa#

Kentucky#

Michigan#

Minnesota#

Missouri#

Ohio#

West Virginia#

Wisconsin#

Mountains#

Colorado#

Idaho#

Montana#

Utah#

Wyoming#

New England#

Connecticut#

Maine#

Massachusetts#

New Hampshire#

Rhode Island#

Vermont#

South#

Alabama#

Arkansas#

Florida#

Georgia#

Louisiana#

Mississippi#

North Carolina#

South Carolina#

Tennessee#

Virginia#

Southwest#

Arizona#

New Mexico#

Texas#

Flickr: Hudson River as summer fades.#

Scripting News: Why we give it up for Apple.#

Simple: When you think of something funny when reading someone else's message, ask yourself if they'll get it. If not, don't send it.#

About six million people will receive new iPhones tomorrow.#

What will we all be doing, on Friday night?#

Unboxing of course! And swapping out the SIM from our "old" phone into our new phone. And hopefully having it work. #

Backing up the old phone, and restoring it into the new phone.#

It seems that there is an opportunity for one of the news channels to have some kind of news show with the experiences the six million people, all around the world, will be sharing at the same time.#

Video: Riding south on the Hudson path.#

Yesterday I finally got so fed up with breakage in the clipboard and debugger in Chrome that I went public with that frustration. I guess it was possible that it was "just me," but it was confirmed by other users. These crucial features, one for programmers, and the other for everyone, are broken. Sometimes you can clear the problem by restarting the browser. Other times, even that won't do. #

There apparently is a workaround for the debugger problem. #

Remember when Chrome launched? We were told it was an inherently more reliable design because each tab was in its own thread, so you could have one thread go down and it wouldn't take the browser with it (an infuriating feature of Safari on iOS, btw, it's the crashiest browser I've ever used). #

As with many products, they devoted the resources to make it work when they wanted to take the market. Their best programmers, with lots of focus -- in this case, Firefox, I guess. They win, and then we, the users, deal with the same old breakage, and no one home to fix it. (Firefox was no better, their disregard for stability was the reason I split.)#

This is a lot like what Comcast et al do with connectivity. They have a monopoly, so why should they care. Or how Microsoft blew it with Internet Explorer. #

Computer users tend to think crashes are their fault, they're doing something wrong, so they live with broken tools. It would be great if the people at Google had enough pride to keep their browser functioning anyway. I can't imagine they accept that features like the clipboard and debugger are broken. Are they broken in the versions they use?#

Also it has been suggested that I switch to Canary, the "bleeding-edge" (Google's term) version of Chrome. That seems like very bad advice. If the "stable" version is this badly broken, why would you expect users of a browser named after a dead bird, one that died in an experiment, to fare any better. #

One more thing: The horde of reporters is around for the launch, with universal praise for the new king of the hill. They're almost never around to report the messes that are left behind after a product achieves market dominance. #

You gotta love the ingenuity of this keyboard for the new iOS. You type words, and out the other end come Emojis. A product totally in tune with the time. It's grunting and snorting with style. First we got reduced to 140 chars. With Apple Watch it's gone the next step -- a heart beat. By definition, everyone who's alive can express themselves that way. No need for words or punctuation. Soon there will be a watch for your cat. They have heartbeats too. Now Twitter seems opulently verbose. What's next? The real breakthrough will come when we have a device that the dead can use to express themselves. #

Scripting News: What should TAG Heuer do?#

Scripting News: One way I keep the trolls at bay.#

I now write all my important Facebook posts with Little Facebook Editor for this reason -- the History menu. I have an easy way to get back to any of the messages I post this way. #

So for example when I asked about places to donate a car, a post that got me a lot of good advice, I can quickly get back to it by choosing it from the History menu.#

This is one of the things Facebook is not great at -- finding old posts. Now I have that problem solved. #

Now, if they had linking and styles, I'd be really happy. #

If I were a musician that competed with U2, I would be pissed that Apple just gave them $100 million and a historic distribution deal. After all, in an instant, U2 is the most distributed music of all time. More than the Beatles, Beethoven, anyone. And was it based on some kind of merit? Is Tim Cook really a judge of what's the best music? Doesn't U2 already have billions of dollars? Couldn't they find a better use for the money? #

For a company that makes products that are supposedly about personal creativity, they seem to focus on elite creativity a bit too much. I suspect in their minds, the people who run Apple, and the people who run U2, our function is to admire them, and accept our own mediocrity. This is one reason I find it so galling that the press takes it up the ass so thoroughly for Apple. I would like there to be categories of products with competition. There must be something good about Android watches. But so far the message is the sold-out one. Apple Apple Apple. It's all about Apple. Why should anyone else bother to compete? You lost before you started.#

The NBA has 30 teams. Any one of them can win the championship in any season. If there was only one team that could win, I doubt if there would be much interest in basketball. For some reason tech has always been like this. There was IBM, then Microsoft, now it's Apple. We'll do better when we can accept our technology from a wide variety of sources, including god forbid, ordinary people who just happen to have a lot of talent.#

Scripting News: I'm a Narrate Your Work guy.#

Scripting News: What do nice Internet users do?#

One thing people who don't do development don't understand is that the grind of doing something repetitively is how you figure out how it works.#

So when users ask for a new feature that's obviously needed very early in the life of a product, for example, where Radio3 is now, while I recognize there's a need to simplify and automate a repetitive process for the users, for me as a designer, the repetition, the drill of it, is how I will figure out how to address the issue.#

I can't tell you how many times I didn't resist the temptation for an easy quick fix, and then had to live with a foolish newbie decision for the whole life of the product. Two years later when people ask why it works that foolish way, after *they* have experience with the grind, I have to say it's because I moved too quickly. #

I'm now working on something I've already done a dozen times. This time, I see how to organize it. The other 12 times I was fumbling around in the dark. How long did this take? In this case -- 2 years. #

But I did wait. So now I'm fairly confident I have the right answer.#

It's an act of desperation to say someone is wrong because they're too old. I usually try to get out of the person's way at that point, or have a good laugh, and hope they get the joke. #

One thing you can't do, with any hope of success, is argue with them.#

Scripting News: Like screaming into a big barrel.#

Scripting News: 9/11/2001. I was up, and blogging, in Calif, when the first plane hit the WTC. Scripting News was a focal point that day. There weren't many blogs, and the journalists in NY were off the air. My father, who worked a few blocks from Ground Zero, was missing (he walked home to Queens, and was safe). It was a day of big change, and in retrospect, huge growth. We learned a lot, our fears were newly exposed. We were living on a big house of cards, and part of the foundation, the assumption that we were safe from attack, had been knocked out. Even the United States was not safe. #

Radio3 0.52 does podcasts.#

Radio3 0.53 has a simple API.#

Scripting News: Which Markdown do you use?#

Radio3 v0.51 release notes.#

Scripting News: Thanks MacWorld!#

Scripting News: Apple Pay is the big deal.#

Joe Moreno: The Failure of Technology.#

Scripting News: Knight library challenge.#

That's former Vice-President Dick Cheney in the background. Urging us on to yet another war in Iraq. More money for his buds in the defense industry from the US Treasury. #

Little Card: Will we get fooled again?#

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Scripting News: Another level of spam.#

Fargo blog: Fargo and OPML, Evernote, Radio3.#

Little Card: David Byrne might like the Apple Watch.#

Henrik Carlsson is joining the crusade to breathe life back into the web!#

Radio3 v0.49 works with WordPress.#

Scripting News: So I'm siding with Gruber.#

40 years ago today, President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon. Today's background image is Ford doing that. #

"Hilarity ensues" is the proper punchline to every Internet story.#

The perfect comment. #

There's been a problem using Fargo with Dropbox for the last few days.#

Everything would seem okay until I had to reload Fargo (which doesn't happen often). Then I'd see an old version of the file. When I looked in the Fargo app folder in Dropbox, I'd see a huge number of conflicted copies. One of those copies contained the latest version. A bit of poking around, and renaming of files, and I was back in business. Until the next reload.#

Users started reporting the problem yesterday. I can't imagine what they must have thought. It's pretty distressing when the filesystem doesn't behave like a filesystem.#

I reported it this afternoon on the Dropbox developer bulletin board, and Greg got back to me right away. They're always very responsive when there are problems. It appears as if it was the same problem other apps that use the API were reporting. When they fixed the problem for the other developers, it seems to have fixed it for Fargo. That's why I'm writing this post now. To see if it's behaving rationally once again. Looks good. The most recent version of this file is the one without "Conflicted Copy" in its name. Whew. #

It really is the kind of problem that makes your gut hurt. You want to not have to think about your filesystem, it's one of those things that should "just work."#

Tomorrow 2000 reporters and bloggers will visit Apple in Cupertino, watch a stage performance with Apple's top execs, and write in gushing terms, the exact same story, every one of them, exactly as dictated by Apple Computer, Inc.#

Meanwhile, there's been a rebellion in Markdown-land, a real story, not a press release rewrite, but there has been, as far as I can tell, not one story by any tech reporter. Confirming the belief that they only write stories that are sanctioned by big companies. Or news about their stock prices. Or rumblings from competitors about eating their lunch.#

It's not as if there aren't some famous companies involved in this would-be takeover. But I'm not a reporter, and I'm not going to try to do their jobs. Suffice it to say, if you do a teeny bit of digging (hint: read my blog and follow the links) you'll find out who they are (GitHub and Stack Exchange) and you'll find one side of the controversy very thoroughly explored, with pointers included (as is fair) to the other side.#

I know reporters don't like it when non-reporters are critical of them. But this is the normal business of tech news. It just comes to an incredibly lunatic head when Apple has a press conference. They forget entirely who they are and what their jobs are. It's a good time for The Rest Of Us (thanks Steve) to use our critical judgement to decide whether we need real tech reporting or if this ersatz kind is sufficient. #

Philosophically, these rituals, esp when they're about Apple, are echoes of a great event that took place in 1984. There wasn't any news at that event either. But at least we had a great showman putting on the show of his life. It was theater of the first order. When the Mac came out of the bag, it was truly fantastic, even though I personally had already been playing with (couldn't really say "using") a Mac for several months at the time. He was Carl Sagan and PT Barnum wrapped up in one very smug arrogant package. And he did it so well. #

Recent Radio3 tweets.#

Radio3 v0.48. In this release, as an experiment, we send full links to Twitter, instead of shortened ones. Seems to work just fine. #

Best. Tweet. Ever: "Nice people are assholes."#

Since everyone is telling Twitter what to do these days, I thought I'd offer a few ideas. They fall into two categories. Things you can do for power users. And things they should do to make it work better for the masses. The needs are very different. Trying to make one user interface work for all of them is making Twitter less workable for both. #

1. There are lots of quick fixes that could be done for power users. For example, unfollow someone for one day. This takes care of people you want to stay in touch with but who are liveblogging some conference you're not interested in. That one feature would earn you a year of love from power users. BTW, the mute command was very welcome. I decided you were listening, at least a little, based on that alone.#

2. Buy Flipboard, or quickly get a Flipb0ard-like product ready. That's what you should be offering newbies. Give them an easy and obvious way to "graduate" into the boiler room, the algorithm-less timeline the power users use (and say it's w/o algorithms, clearly and unambiguously). #

3. Evolve the two user experiences to fit the different needs of both. You need the power users to create content for the newbies. It pays to make an investment in their happiness and productivity. We're working for you for free, I bet that's where a lot of your P/E ratio comes from, btw. #

Radio3 v0.47 expands the text box if there's more than 140.#

Radio3 v0.46 invests in robustness. Bugs shake. Techie stuff.#

Little Facebook Editor 0.43 has a glossary.#

Scripting News: I write apps in JavaScript that run in the browser.#

Scripting News: Email to Gruber.#

Little Card: Blooper #1 in a multi-bloop Presidency.#

Scripting News: RSS ties all my stuff together.#

Scripting News: Why I love programming.#

Little Card: This is an Uber car.#

Today's background image was taken by Eve Winer, my mother, at the NY Botanical Garden on Monday. Striking picture! #

Little Card: The basic idea of Radio3.#

Startup message on the Radio3 mail list.#

Scripting News: Meryl Streep's anthem.#

Scripting News: Facebook's algorithm isn't news.#

Scripting News: Another bike movie in Hyperlapse.#

Today's background image is Elvis Costello, great musician and entertainer, who just turned 60, believe it or not.#

I started a mail list for Radio3 users.#

© 1994-2014 Dave Winer.
Last update: Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 10:28 AM.
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