I wrote yesterday on Twitter that journalism does not cover the 2.8 billion people who use Facebook. Imagine a country with that many people with no journalism. A blind spot, imho. A potentially costly one for all of us, our journalism should be facing in that direction more, imho. Taylor Lorenz, NYT reporter who covers Facebook and Instagram and other online media (I think it's all commercial services, no open platforms) responded with classic reporter reasoning, the same line I've been hearing since I took an interest in journalism in the mid-90s. After a few back and forths, I sent a DM saying I'd be happy to continue in a voice chat, was surprised when she sent back her number. I called and we talked for about an hour. It was a fast and interesting conversation with a talented and observant young (from my pov of course) person. She got her start as a Tumblr blogger believe it or not. She might be the only person in the world actually covering those 2.8 billion people. We talked about the NYT today, I talked a bit about tech reporting at the Times in the past, told stories of the old days in the Valley, it was refreshing. Memorable. I'm going to read her more carefully now. BTW, I dropped Markoff's name a couple of times, later I wondered if she knew who he is (NYT star tech reporter as the web was starting up). I realize we are deep into the next generations of tech journalism, now. Also imho TL should have a podcast, I said a couple of times. A book first, then a podcast. I think she'd be great. 💥 #

I had another conversation a few days ago, on Twitter Spaces, with Clemens Vasters who works on standards at Microsoft. It was like the conversation with Taylor Lorenz, above. There was a brief period when I was involved with the standards groups, but mostly it turns out, it was to either transfer the power to evolve the formats and protocols without my further involvement with SOAP, or to fail to convince them to go with RSS. Instead they tried to overtake RSS with another format, it failed, as I tried to tell them it would. Many years later, I hear there's a kind of reverence for RSS, its strength is amazing to them. But why should it be any less resilient than say HTML? Both are proof that the market creates these things, not the big tech companies. Honesly most of what they do in my experience is destructive to standards. Anyway if we're into interop now, maybe there's something more to be done here. I have three formats I am caring for -- OPML, XML-RPC and of course RSS. #

I've had Olive Kitteridge on my re-watch list for a couple of years, finally got to it, and it was as good as I remembered. It's the kind of story HBO excels at, they have a deep library of shows like this, many of which I've never seen. Unfortunately HBO's owners decided that this unique library doesn't deserve to stand alone. They used its name to host a cheap Netflix clone called HBO Max, and filled it with crap, among which the HBO gems are buried. Sorry I know some people like superhero movies, I used to, but there's a glut and they're all the same, I can't watch any of them. I just want a simple interface for the HBO library. I guess the message is that HBO had no future, so let's just use what goodwill remains to throw a Hail Mary pass at Netflix. Meanwhile Apple seems to be aiming for the position HBO used to own., #

But. The NYT has the TV-watching UI that I've wanted all along. A set of lists of the top 50 movies and shows on each of the major streaming services, with a paragraph about each summarizing what the NYT reviewer said, with a link to both the review and the show. That's all I ever needed. An example#

I love that there are so many fan art accounts on Twitter. Basically someone takes responsibility for a famous artist, and uploads scans of their paintings and drawings to Twitter. Seems to be catching on. My Node app reads those accounts periodically and downloads the images into a local folder, which I then point my Mac screen saver at. I have it running on a Mac Mini hooked up to my 65 inch screen in the living room. The result? Art show! I love this stuff. I'm going to hook the app up to a GitHub repo, so people can sync to that. We have such a wealth of art, and huge numbers of screens and good networks. Why not use them this way? The art is sooo beautful. Makes me happy. #