This blog is becoming a ChatGPT blog the same way when it started it was all about the web. I'd love to get pointers to other blogs whose content is largely about ChatGPT, so we can systematize learning about what we all are discovering. I think that blogs and ChatGPT are going to go together just like Google search and blogs did when search was booting up. Bloggers (not all of us, but some) provide good material for bootstraps. We just need to hook up blogs to social web, which is what I'm working on this year. #
Just tried perplexity.ai for the first time. Everyone's been raving about it. I asked it a question I asked ChatGPT in working on the RSS feeds for my current project. "Suppose I had an RSS feed for a WordPress blog, and I wanted to include the id's of the site and post in the <item> for each post. Is there a standard way to do this? If not, is there a namespace defined for WordPress blogs that might provide some prior art?" Both were able to get me all the info I wanted, and answered follow-up questions. Perplexity got there sooner. Here's the transcript. #
On Threads I posted this question to Frank X Shaw, a PR exec at Microsoft, who I've known for at least 30 years. "Wouldn't it be great if there was a social web toolkit with the basic building blocks so we could experiment with different UI and behaviors. Why, after so many years are we still so controlled. When did we give up?" I think you can do the design with words and dialogs, btw. Here's a great idea for keeping threads focused and civil on Facebook. You can limit comments to people who have a stake in being on good terms with the author. This keeps the hit and run turds from dropping.#
A few weeks ago I asked ChatGPT if it could transcribe an M4A audio file, the kind of file that Apple's voice memo app produces, and it said no, it couldn't do that. I gave it another try today and got a different answer. I uploaded the file, and it came close, it said it needed the file in WAV format. It gave me instructions for writing a desktop tool that would do the conversion. I expect in another couple of weeks they'll be able to deal with the M4A file directly. #
I think it would be really cool to have the voice interface for ChatGPT available on Amazon Echo. I kind of doubt that Amazon would want to do that. Alexa is nice, but really weak compared to ChatGPT.#
Do people understand the impact ChatGPT can have on how we control our software? No more hunting through menus among a thousand options to figure out how to do something. Just use natural human language. The UIs we've had to design and live with will be a thing of the past. Yet no one seems to be talking about this. An example. I've been trying to get transcripts of my voicemail, as easily as possible. In that example, it shows me how to do a variety of things. I kept asking if it could do it for me, all the way up to making a feature request of the developers at OpenAI. At some point they'll be able to add an item to my calendar, or make a feature request for me. That's the whole point of computers. They can do things for you. We call this paving cow paths. #
Most of the news stories about AI are bullshit by people who clearly have not attempted to understand what its capabilities are. This is the real thing folks. Amazing breakthroughs are happening every freaking day. So much improvement and so much potential. How do I know, because in comments on social media, people parrot the bullshit, like they always do. Journalism is still hugely influential, and they are dishonest, lazy, self-interested bordering on narcissism, and very very dangerous. We need to re-form journalism as if our continued existence depends on it. #
- TL;DR: For the 80,000th time -- the Knicks suck!#
All the funny farting didn't make a difference last night. The Knicks were blown out, again (sigh), by the Indiana team. My dear friend NakedJen texted me from Oklahoma of all places (I don't know how she got there, or why, she must be on her way to some other place, maybe Dallas?) that the Knicks are trying to kill her. Sums it up perfectly. I gave myself leave after the first few minutes of the fourth quarter, seeing where this thing was going. I went to bed, and knew that when I woke up there would be a Game 7 at the Garden on Sunday (3:30PM Eastern). I'm not sure how I feel about that. #- The odds are probably pretty good that the Knicks will win that game, but maybe they should just let it go, and we can pick this up again in October. By then all the injured players should be back, and maybe there will be an incredible new free agent signed over the summer, so we're not so dependent on one superstar, who is great, but has off nights, like last night. Why didn't he let any other Knicks try to fill in for him, when he's double teamed that means someone is open. I was screaming at the TV during the game, let someone someone else shoot dammit! Oh my gods. I hate game 7's when my team is in the game. I don't mind it if other people's teams are in a death match like that. #
- Oh well. Here we go.#