![\"Permalink.\"](\"http://scripting.com/images/leftArrow.gif\")
Lots of new posts over on the threads site.
\n9/29/12: Twitter is a tragic tale
\n9/28/12: Developing in 2012
\n9/28/12: This is another test
\n9/28/12: Sites should have a \"readable\" button
\n9/28/12: Romney as human being
\n9/28/12: Twitter may need a Plan B
\n9/27/12: Romney's 47 percent
\n9/27/12: The Angry Birds platform?
\n9/26/12: I want a Galaxy S3 but..
\n9/26/12: I thought \"stench\" was real
\n9/26/12: 47% was not a gaffe
\n9/26/12: Why Obama didn't meet at UN
\n9/25/12: Problem posting to Twitter
\n9/24/12: Today's podcast
\n9/24/12: Open fields for discourse
\n9/23/12: Why didn't Apple ease into maps?
\n9/23/12: As a renewed Knicks fan
\n9/23/12: Humanity doesn't scale
\n9/22/12: Favorite movie reviews feeds?
\n9/22/12: Comments on Costolo talk
\n9/21/12: A comment *and* a blog post
\n9/21/12: An open note to Doc
\n9/20/12: A new feature sneak
\n9/20/12: Maps, Tweetie and dBASE
\n9/20/12: A day of construction
\n9/19/12: Un-Web 2.0
\n9/19/12: MP3 of Romney's fund-raiser
\n9/18/12: Question about SoundCloud
\n9/18/12: Dear Green Button People
\n9/18/12: Jury duty, voting and Romney
\n9/17/12: I feel a little like a kid
\n9/17/12: River with JSON-encoded OPML
\n9/17/12: OWS on its anniversary
\n9/17/12: Tech discussion of comments feed
\n9/16/12: Newspapers and blogging
\n9/15/12: To OWS -- please use the web
\n9/15/12: Why Google is OK
\n9/15/12: Whole post to Scripting feed
\n9/15/12: Dear @diveintomark
\n9/14/12: I don't think this is Kansas
\n9/14/12: An idea for reporters conducting live interviews
\n9/14/12: A question about class warfare
\n9/14/12: YouTube in the developing world
\n9/13/12: Blogging in transition
\n9/12/12: A message to Republicans: Enough
\n9/11/12: Do you see a green button on this page?
\n9/11/12: Witting with Greenwald
\n9/10/12: Dead people on voting rolls
\n9/10/12: A test of outline comments
\n9/8/12: To TechCrunch hackathoners
\n9/7/12: app.net's impressive start
\n9/6/12: Breakdown of feed formats
\n9/6/12: Life outside Twitter
\n9/5/12: About Twitter's changes
\n9/5/12: scripting.com in transition
\n9/5/12: Why a second term for Obama?
\n9/4/12: Repubs lie and obstruct, but Obama does not lead
\n9/3/12: The real liars are the press
\n9/3/12: Embedded registration form
\n9/2/12: Odd pic of two Presidents
\n9/1/12: Obama gets 1/2 of it
", "pubDate": "Sat, 29 Sep 2012 21:50:55 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/29/threadSummary.opml" } , { "title": "A roadmap-y podcast", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/24/aRoadmapyPodcast.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/24/aRoadmapyPodcast.html", "description": "The purpose of this podcast is to help orient new people, and suggest how we might work together on servers, and to explain how your participation in the OPML Comments process is needed in order for it to work.
If you have comments please post them here.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:35:38 GMT", "enclosure": { "length": "12974786", "type": "audio/x-m4a", "url": "http://static.scripting.com/myReallySimple/2012/09/24/davecast2012sep24.m4a", "#value": "" }, "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/24/aRoadmapyPodcast.opml" } , { "title": "Comments website", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/21/commentsWebsite.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/21/commentsWebsite.html", "description": "More and more the action is over on the threads site.
\nThis is because I'm switching all my content management over the worldoutline.
\nEventually this site will migrate too, but it's still a way's off.
\nI try to get the important new posts into the Scripting News feed, so if you're following via RSS, you might not even notice the switchover.
\nAnyway, this week's work is the comments website, and the ability to view a comment as a post with its own comments.
\nThis illustrates an important concept. The words only have to exist in one place, but there can be as many renderings as you like and many different ways to organize and relate them. In one context my writing is a comment. In another it's a post.
\nSo there's never a technical reason for a content platform to silo-ize our data. The goal is to provide lots of opportunities to create content flows and communities without trapping any creativity.
\nYou'll find all the links for the comment site in this threads post.
", "pubDate": "Fri, 21 Sep 2012 22:20:58 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/21/commentsWebsite.opml" } , { "title": "It's Manifesto Time!", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/19/itsManifestoTime.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/19/itsManifestoTime.html", "description": "Un-Web 2.0: \"Un-Web 2.0 is to Web 2.0 as BloggerCon was to RegularOldCon. And as blogging is to journalism. The source and the destination become one. ![\":-)\"](\"http://scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif\")
\"
In which I tell a story of how I came to the same place as William Kristol.
The punchline of the joke is one word: Really?
\nEnjoy!
", "pubDate": "Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:02:41 GMT", "enclosure": { "length": "6638870", "type": "audio/x-m4a", "url": "http://static.scripting.com/myReallySimple/2012/09/18/davecast12sep18.m4a", "#value": "" }, "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/18/aPrettyGoodPodcast.opml" } , { "title": "What's new in OPML Comments", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/17/opmlCommentsWeek2.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/17/opmlCommentsWeek2.html", "description": "With an active community, the first thing you need to know is What's New?
\nThat's why the next new thing is, of course, an RSS 2.0 feed of all the new stuff posted on all the threads on my site.
\nWhat's new is what's new!
But there's more...
\n1. The JSON and JSONP versions.
\n2. The microblog namespace, which is used by the feed.
\n3. The roadmap post that shows where we're going.
\n4. A screen shot of a permalink on comments, a necessary feature for the feed.
\n5. My personal river, which subscribes to the feed, so it's an easy place to find the latest comments on the threads site (along with news from quite a few other sources).
\n6. A post on the threads site, ready to accept OPML or Disqus comments, to answer questions and share observations on the new features. If you poke around the feeds, you may find some things that raise questions or possibilities.
\n7. What's next? There's a full CMS behind the comments, with a templating system for designers. Lots of formats and protocols for developers. The only part that's visible is the writing tool. And that's as it should be, because the people we are doing this for are writers and readers.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:14:27 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/17/opmlCommentsWeek2.opml" } , { "title": "A relatively quiet revolution", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/11/aRelativelyQuietRevolution.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/11/aRelativelyQuietRevolution.html", "description": "In a speech at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference yesterday, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey urged developers to join a revolution. This speech for me was a punch in the gut. Because I had been saying things like that about Twitter myself, hoping that the founders wouldn't do the obvious thing and factor all the revolution in the service to squeeze as much money as possible out of the coral reef that had sprouted up around it. As they have. I don't think Jack Dorsey has any credibility left in the revolution department. He went for even more riches and sold out all the revolution-potential in Twitter, as far as I'm concerned.
\nCoincidentally, it was also the day when we reached the top of one of the peaks of our little mountain range of post-Web 2.0 software. In a simple announcement on the Frontier-user list, I asked people to try out a new feature -- OPML comments. They did, and it worked. Pretty flawlessly! And it is in every way the revolution that today's Twitter is not.
\nYou can try it too. Here's a thread that explains how in five fairly easy steps.
\nWhere is this going? Well, all the places I've been writing about here on Scripting News for the last two-three years, when I decided to no longer build my software on Twitter's platform.
\nWhat works here?
\n1. Users creating content which is published on my site, but they retain the original content on their hard drive. So if they write something they want to refer to later and my system is down, or gone, they will still have it.
\nThere's more coming.
\n2. A DNS-based identity system that's as easy to create an account on as Twitter or Facebook and gives you the flexibility to move your presence to some other server without any help from a vendor who may not be cooperative, or may not even exist. The robustness of DNS is something the Web 2.0 vendors don't want to give to their users because without it they wouldn't be trapped.
\n3. A gateway to a truly revolutionary web content management system that makes it easy for individuals to manage huge websites easily and naturally.
\n4. A design environment that makes CSS work in new exciting ways.
\n5. A way to build web apps that's also pretty new (I'm running out of adjectives).
\nBut first let's start simply. Everyone can comment on my threads using an outliner. That's a pretty good first step.
", "pubDate": "Tue, 11 Sep 2012 12:02:13 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/11/aRelativelyQuietRevolution.opml" } , { "title": "RSS in JSON, for real?", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/10/rssInJsonForReal.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/10/rssInJsonForReal.html", "description": "![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/09/10/glueAll.gif\")
A short while ago Twitter said they were going to move to JSON over XML, without much explanation other than they like JSON and not XML, so much, these days, etc. I'm a big believer that everyone has the right to support whatever they want when they want for whatver reason, whether they say the truth or not. Because of that belief, I take with a grain of salt every bit of support for every format and protocol. I assume that just because someone supports it today doesn't tell you for sure that they will support it tomorrow. Though the penalty is usually pretty high for removing support for interfaces people depend on. They tend to remember it next time you ask for their trust. All that is fair game too.
So anyway this got me thinking again about the possibility that JSON might take over from XML. What then? Should we give up all the interop we get from RSS just because it uses XML and not JSON? And it's because of all that interop that that day will never come. A transition may happen over a long period of time, and before it's complete there will be something after JSON. Because smart people see that, they tend to be conservative about switching just for the sake of switching. It's why the web, which is entirely an XML application, will keep XML support everywhere for the forseeable future.
\nIn other words, I'd bet with virtual 100 percent certainty that it's safe to keep producing XML-based RSS feeds.
\nBut people like JSON, there's no denying that. And a JSONified RSS can totally co-exist with the original XML. So let's have RSS in JSON? That's a question that seems worth asking about, at this time.
\nTurns out it is a very straightforward thing to do. I of course have an RSS feed for Scripting News, the blog you're reading right now. I wrote a script that maintains JSON and JSONP versions of the same content, automatically. When the RSS is built so are the JSON formats.
\nhttp://scripting.com/rss.json and http://scripting.com/rss.js
\nI learned a long time ago to embrace change. It's why there is a RSS today that is derived from the RSS that Netscape shipped in 1999 and has features of my scriptingNews format shipped in 1997. If the world wants to go to JSON, help it get there in a way that benefits from all we learned in the evolution of RSS from 1997 through 2002. It's stood up pretty well over the years. And there's wide support for it, and lots of understanding of how it works. If there is to be a JSON-based syndication standard, we can cut years off the development process by simply accomodating it.
\nSo I put together an invitation to discuss this.
\n\nIf you find this interesting, give it some thought, and if you have something to say, write a blog post of your own, or write a comment on that page. Obviously there's no moderation for what goes on your blog, but there will be moderation of the comments. Be aware of that. One feature of the past are personal attacks which are totally pointless and subtract from the discourse, and we should not carry that practice forward. That's why the moderation.
Otherwise, I totally look forward to hearing what people think.
\nThanks...
", "pubDate": "Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:49:47 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/10/rssInJsonForReal.opml" } , { "title": "Nation-building at home", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/08/nationbuildingAtHome.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/08/nationbuildingAtHome.html", "description": "![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/09/08/bugh.jpg\")
All through the Bush II presidency, political discourse in the US got more and more bizarre. At times, the debate was over who could do the most good for Iraq. Or what the people of Iraq wanted from a US president. Were these people even listening to themselves. It was as if the voters and taxpayers of the United States only cared about one thing -- how well are the people of Iraq doing? And of course that was the cruel joke. We weren't nation-building in Iraq, we were destroying their nation. All based on a shameful lie that somehow Iraq was connected with the 9/11 attacks. There was no evidence of it, and if you listened to the arguments, none was actually presented. It was like the campaign the same people run about whether or not President Obama is an American citizen, which is of course very similar to the idea that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda. They never actually say he wasn't born here. They just joke about it, repeat what other people say, suggest it in a million different ways.
The same people are still here, and are still running the show. Nowadays they're working on suppressing the vote in the United States so they can win elections that they aren't entitled to win, by disenfranchising voters. This should be a felony, they should go to jail for a long time. But they won't of course. It's a tactic for dealing with the fact that the demographics of the United States is changing to become less favorable to them. Their answer -- the new people won't vote. Like the birther nonsense, they wll never actually prevent anyone from voting, but by making them jump through more hoops, they reduce the numbers. None of this will happen in NY or California where most of the TV cameras are (and which aren't swing states anyway) rather in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, etc, where elections are often decided by just a few votes.
\nAmidst all that, almost forgotten in all the ideas promoted at the excellent Democratic National Convention, was the idea put forward by the President that we do some nation-building at home. This is the kind of idea that can take root with people of both parties. It might be so good that the Republicans will have to say they invented it. And there can be little doubt what \"nation building\" means. Schools, roads, better Internet access, public transit, hospitals and health clinics, fire departments and police stations, and maybe even god forbid some institutions to inform and inspire the electorate -- libraries, museums, parks, bike trails.
\nI think more than anything we are exhausted, tired of the messes our government has created, the wars we didn't need, the lies that we never really believed. The broken trust. Naive we were to believe Colin Powell when he went before the United Nations to explain why Iraq was such a threat we had to tear them apart. We're not so naive any more. Tired, wasted, so depressed we forgot why were are so depressed.
\nWhat we need desperately to hear in this election is what you are going to do to help us. Not just by lowering taxes and getting us jobs, but also to inspire us, to give us a sense of purpose. We just spent a few decades meandering all over the map. The last time this country had any idea of what it was doing was the moon mission of the sixties. Before that there was World War II. Everything else has been pretty much bullshit. Expensive and deadly bullshit. Planet-wasting bullshit.
\nThe idea of making America work better, in ways we can see, in ways that make a difference in our lives, that's the next thing to do. I recently took three auto trips, to Toronto, through the South, and to Madison. In all directions I saw a country that's falling apart. It's really gotten bad. It's opposite to the way it used to be. New York City, when I was young, was falling apart, and the rest of the country was clean and functioned smoothly. Now New York is a marvel of efficiency, a rich city with busy people. But there are huge problems everywhere else. We can't wait for the mythical trickle-down to not work, again, for another collapse before we turn our attention to fixing things.
\nEven if jobs returned, the depression won't end until we start working on making this place work.
", "pubDate": "Sat, 08 Sep 2012 08:48:02 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/08/nationbuildingAtHome.opml" } , { "title": "river.js is a format", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/06/riverjsIsAFormat.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/06/riverjsIsAFormat.html", "description": "If you're a regular reader of this blog you know that I am a big proponent of River of News feed readers.
\nI've also been promoting a JSON-based format that serves to communicate between aggregators and browser-based apps that display the rivers. Until now the format was undocumented and unnamed.
\nMedia Hackers is an example of such an app.
\nThere are enough other developers using the format now that it seems possible that it will become a standard alongside RSS and OPML. Obviously that can't happen without some docs and a name.
\nI considered a lot of possible names, and then hit on river.js. The domains I needed for that were available and there were no hits for the name in Google, so I went with it. And wrote the first pass at the docs.
\n\nWelcome!
A note that for a while I'll be doing more posting on the Threads site.
\nSoon, I think, scripting and threads will merge. The threads site will become scripting.com. Not quite sure how to manage that transition yet.
\nThere's more collaborative writing stuff coming, hopefully soon, and that's how I plan to stage it.
\nBTW, here's a tip. Always look to the menubar at the top of the page to see where the related sites are. That's going to remain a fixture through all the transitions.
\nThe set is a bit of a mess right now. The hope is that it'll settle down to be a very nice concert hall. As they used to say somewhere..
\nStill diggin!
Yesterday at a party I was talking with a guy who works for IBM doing \"agile\" development. It was the first time I had a chance to talk with someone who actually does this, for a length of time, so I could play Q&A to figure out how it maps onto how I do software development. I was pretty sure it did.
\nI think what I called We Make Shitty Software is in other words the same thing as the agile process. Whatever it's called, we all acknowledge that our software is imperfect, it's a process, but we're working to make it better, and more responsive to users.
\nI may have other concepts to contribute, such as Narrate Your Work, and Instant Outlining, which have made big differences in the development process for me and the people I have worked with. We developed Radio UserLand in 2001 and 2002 with instant outlining. And I've been doing Narrate Your Work, which is an individual thing, for well over a year. It gets better all the time. I can't do any development work these days without telling the story in my worknotes site.
\nFor me, the development process itself is really the work I do. Because that's where my tools have the greatest impact. Not just for software development imho, but in other project-oriented activities. I think all kinds of production are better managed with NYW and I/O. And someday there may be movies or paintings that are iterative, so will benefit from the agile process. Perhaps there already are?
\nAnother thing that works is the idea of code as a weblog. At the top of each part there's a section where each change is explained. The important thing is that with elision (expand/collapse) comments don't take up visual space so there's no penalty for fully explaining the work. Without this ability there's an impossible tradeoff between comments and the clarity of comment-free code. No manager wants to penalize developers for commenting their work. With this change, with outlining, that now works.
\nHere's an example of a piece of code that's been developed iteratively over a couple of years. Look in the Changes section near the top, you'll see that it tells a story. This is real code that's very much deployed, in fact the text you're reading now was rendered with it (as was the code listing). You might see it more easily in a screen shot of the same bit of code in the outliner-based code editor we use.
\nWe did this at UserLand, starting in the early 90s. There's code in our system with over 15 years of mods to it made by different developers, and you can, if they were careful about it, know what they were thinking as they changed the code. The code tells its story. I have never seen any other devteam do this. If there are other examples, I'd love to compare experiences.
\nThese days I include links to my worknotes in my code, because there is a level of detail I will go into on the website that I won't go into in the code. One of the reasons is that the project is not the same thing as the code modifications. The reasons for making the changes may apply to several objects in the code. So it makes more sense to explain it outside the code. In other words there's a level above the code. That's where my worknotes tie things together.
\nAnd an example of day's work in the worknotes site.
\nUpdate: Another principle -- when you're developing something new, where you don't have much prior art, get something usable as quickly as possible. Your thikning becomes much more concrete once you have something that you're actually using. Answers come more quickly and you end up throwing out less work, the blind alleys aren't as deep. That also works for the code too. You work much more quickly as soon as you can start regression testing each iteration. The longer you write code without using it, the harder it's going to be to debug it.
\nAnother one -- prior art as a design method. That's a big one. Always see if someone has done this before. If so, why not leverage all they learned. And you get to use something before you have to write any code. This led to one of my mottos: Only steal from the best.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 03 Sep 2012 16:26:23 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/03/agileProgrammingWmss.opml" } , { "title": "Voting matters", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/02/votingMatters.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/02/votingMatters.html", "description": "Yes, I've started writing about politics again, and the cynics are weighing in also, as usual. Don't you know it's all theater, and there's no difference between the candidates. The world is run by a few rich people, and they don't care what we think.
\nI've never really addressed this, and thought now was a good time to do so.
\nMy answer is this -- bullshit. That's not the way it works. You wish it worked that well, but it's actually chaotic, nonsenical, Dilbertesque, crazy, dysfunctional, self-destructive, suicidal, nutso, etc. Can you think of any more adjectives for we, as a species, net-net, have lost our minds? Go ahead and add them.
\n![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/09/02/bozo.gif\")
The problem is evolution. Up until a few generations ago, there was no possibility of a global consciousness, and luckily for us, no need for one. Humans simply weren't powerful enough to matter. So what if we were run by crazy kings and popes and political bosses, worst that could happen is we could spoil a small piece of land and kill ourselves, and we surely did a lot of that! But now the stakes are much higher. We've cured disease enough to fuel a population explosion. And while we seem to be able to feed ourselves, the planet just can't support that many people in many other ways. The problem is that we don't have a collective consciousness that can change things so they work. We're still arguing about the crazy stuff we used to argue about before we became the problem for the planet. You could even see that wise-ass Mitt Romney joking about it in his speech. He says Fuck you if you think the President's job is to worry about the level of the oceans. Well it's not just his job, it's all our jobs. Every damned one of us. And thanks so much for setting us back, just a bit, Mr Republican Presidential Candidate for 2012, a title which already holds some sway. God help us if this bozo gets more responsibility.
If the world were ruled by a secret cabal of rich people and their muses, I would know about it, because I know some of the people who would either be in Category 1 or Category 2. Sure they fly around and go to important conferences and they're quoted and talked about in the Economist and the Times, but they don't really run things. They fly around a lot. Look busy. They play a Captain of the Universe on TV, but they're just people and they don't have any idea about what to do. They work at making more money, and that's fine, but it doesn't really accomplish much, one way or the other.
\nThe people we talk to with our vote is ourselves.
\nA vote for Mitt Romney communicates this: I'm exhausted trying to keep up with everything. I want it all to be simple. Like when I was a kid and my father made all the decisions.
\nAnd a vote for Barack Obama means the same damned thing.
\nThat's where the cynicism is correct. But where it's not correct is in the assumption that that's all it can mean. And in that they suffer from a lack of imagination.
\nEven with a ridiculous choice, just a larger-than-normal number of people voting would make a difference. And then you have to judge for yourself how possible it is for us to change one of these guys to doing more of our work. For that, you have to understand that they are people too. When Obama makes a decision in term 2 he may be thinking about how the election went and what he feels he has the mandate to do. That might change things. Listen to the guy and judge for yourself.
\nIf we, collectively, as if it were a Kickstarter project, decided to fund our election, and, as a political demonstration we all voted, that would be felt. Not by some mythical powers-that-be, but by us, by you and me and everyone else. It would be shocking. And if you're cynical you will be surprised by how much things will change in government.
\nEverything that happens now is premised on the fact that you're dumb and you don't vote. If you change one of those perceptions and you have the power to do that, the other one will change too. Think about it.
\nVoting does make a difference. The more people do it, the more power we will have as we go forward.
\nThe most effective voter suppression is the lie that your vote doesn't matter. Don't give in to cynicism.
\nBTW, today's random header graphic influenced this piece.
", "pubDate": "Sun, 02 Sep 2012 12:34:25 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/02/votingMatters.opml" } , { "title": "Tabbed River 3", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/02/tabbedRiver3.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/09/02/tabbedRiver3.html", "description": "What's new: The World news tab.
\nI started with the international feeds from major news outlets such as the ABC from Australia, Ria Novosti from Russia, Al Jazeera, Ha'aretz, The Hindu, NYT international feed, etc.
\nThen I asked people who read the site for other feeds. English-language. Covers news for their geography, as well as world news, but not be too focused on the United States. We already have lots of American news in other tabs. It was a community project which was wonderful, that's why we have such a rich set of feeds, and such an interesting tab.
\nThe NOLA tab was fascinating as Hurricane Isaac swept through Louisiana. And in this version, the Berkman tab moves off the front page.
\nLots of other stuff in the pipe, as well as a tab for the US election, as it heats up.
\nKeep the cards and letters coming and keep spreading the word. Especially people who work at news organizations and bloggers. I want them all to do rivers for their communities. They don't have to be as fancy as this one. And we can help. It's important to have these streams running all over the web, not just on Twitter and Facebook.
\nOnward!
![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/08/31/wileECoyote.gif\")
I watched the Republican convention last night. I've watched many of them, dating back to Nixon. I've voted Republican, always holding my nose, because I found the Democratic alternative so abhorrent. But last night was over the top. Here's a guy who presents himself as a honest and honorable man who helps people, but the lies he tells, oh man. I just don't know. His campaign is like a wish list. I wish the current President had gone on an \"apology tour\" so I'll just say he did. I'll say we lost jobs under his watch, when actually under any reasonable view of things he created jobs, a lot of them. He failed to lead, he says, without saying that the Republicans were willing to be led. They weren't. Openly.
Our credit rating suffered a downgrade under this President because, unfortunately, the Republicans, who control one chamber of Congress openly toyed with the possibility of the United States not paying creditors. We had the money. Of course our credit rating went down. They must have had a meeting where they came up with the line they would use now, in the campaign, to make it sound like this was President Obama's idea! These are seriously depraved non-America-loving people, who choose their words very carefully and know that most people aren't listening carefully enough to understand what they're saying, if there's any truth to it, which lately there hasn't. Why bother, these are just stories. Why not say Obama started World War III with our closest allies, Poland, Israel and England. Threw them under the bus! Great line Mitt.
\nIt is so disgusting. To think the purpose of Republican obstructionism of the last three years was only to give this guy a better chance of winning. It's such a bad punchline. How much suffering there was for this end. It tells us that net-net the United States can't find its ass with both hands. All the grand talk about how great we are is belied by the evidence, starting us in the face, in the being of Mitt Romney. Is this the best we can do? Is this it? A venture capitalist is to be our new leader? I've worked at companies that were run by people like Mitt Romney. I've seen many more of them flushed down the toilet, dying a premature death, because the people at the top were tone-deaf to the actual people who made up the businesses they somehow accidentally ended up running. Usually into the ground. Fast.
\nOn Twitter last night I said some things that, if I were a Republican, would sound horrible, and probably would cause me to unfollow. So be it. I should say them here too. I hate Romney. I want to see that stupid grin wiped off his face. I think he's a condescending superior sumbitch, to steal a line from the Republican presidential candidate played by James Brolin in The West Wing television show. And, as on the West Wing, I seriously hope our current President mops up his ass in the debates. An America run by Mitt Romney is a disaster. And we just can't afford any more disasters.
\nTo Republicans who follow me, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't use my communication channel to say what I think about an election in my country. Some years I have totally pissed off Democrats. If you have to go, I'm sorry to see that. But I'm not going to sacrifice my principles and become an equivocating floppy noodle like Mitt Romney. That doesn't mean the technology I create is only useful to one political persuasion. It is agnostic. I wish there were a way to create tech that Karl Rove or the Koch brothers couldn't profit from, but I haven't figured out how to do that and be open at the same time. If you figure that one out let me know.
I watched the Republican speeches last night. There were lots of repeating themes, but one that caught my ear that I haven't heard anyone else comment on is that President Obama should not blame President Bush for his problems. He should accept responsibility for the economy as it is.
\nIt's a trick. And maybe it might work against the Democrats, but there's no reason that voters shouldn't be realistic about how we got into the deep hole that we're in. I don't take orders from the Republican Party, or the Democrats. I know how it happened, and can't forget just because the Repubs want us to.
\nIt would be stupid for voters to elect Republicans, esp when they're in denial about how the mess got created. They're going to keep doing the same things they were doing before the collapse of 2008. And they think the result would be any different? It won't.
\nWhat we need to do is as it was before.
\n1. Reform the banking system, break up the huge banks so that they aren't too big to fail. Don't accept the current situation where they privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
\n2. Invest in stimulating economic activity, taking advantage of the low interest rates, to repair infrastructure, invest in education, and start building an economy around much lower energy consumption.
\n3. Encourage people to have fewer children, not just in the United States but around the world. The biggest problem we have is overpopulation. It's unfortunately not a long-term problem, the problem is immediate. We have too many people. Catholics may not like it, but this isn't a Catholic country, or even a Christian country. We were founded on a strong separation of church and state, for good reasons. Freedom to worship includes a freedom not to worship, and a freedom to think and be smart rather than blindly accept the orders of someone else's church.
\n4. Double-down on health reform. The Affordable Care Act was a decent start. But we're still paying too much for health care. There's much to learn from the way other economies do it. Let's be smart and steal the best ideas from them.
\n5. We need to amend the Constitution to undo the Citizens United mess created by the Supreme Court.
\n6. The next war won't be fought with traditional armies, guns, or even nukes. Our infrastructure is heavily computerized and networked. We don't need to spend so much money on bullets, guns, tanks and battleships. They're this generation's Maginot Line. Beyond that I don't know what to do about this, and I'm a computer expert.
\nThose are just some beginning ideas. Neither party is going to talk about any of it. But it's still what we need to do, to have a fighting chance to be prosperous in the future.
", "pubDate": "Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:37:48 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/30/theRepublicanFallacy.opml" } , { "title": "Where Apple and Twitter are headed", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/29/whereAppleAndTwitterAreHea.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/29/whereAppleAndTwitterAreHea.html", "description": "Sometimes it helps to draw a picture to summarize where these big companies are going. Because you can't evaluate them as static things. They're in motion.
\n![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/08/29/futureTv.gif\")
Note that of course a lot of other companies are going there too. But I don't have a good feeling for how they get there. Twitter and Apple, that's kind of obvious. Apple has their hooks in distribution of entertainment. And Twitter has interactivity. But you shouldn't forget that the TV networks are already, in a sense, there. They are the incumbents. They could respond like Nokia and Blackberry, and by the time they realize their products have no future, they could already be losing huge business to the upstarts. Or they could prepare by starting to build their own interactive networks to hook into their television programming.
\nFor more, see my previous post.
\nCheckbox news is an obvious idea, so don't try to patent it.
\nHypercamp is on the path too.
", "pubDate": "Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:36:11 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/29/whereAppleAndTwitterAreHea.opml" } , { "title": "Dear news orgs, re Twitter", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/28/dearNewsOrgsReTwitter.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/28/dearNewsOrgsReTwitter.html", "description": "Some thoughts about Twitter in late summer 2012, re the news industry.
\n![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/08/28/ships.gif\")
Twitter is starting to get aggressive and territorial with news organizations the same way it's been with developers. We're all in the same boat re Twitter. They just started earlier with developers and they're further along. I think this is because they understood development better, and other media companies have more to give them than developers did. They've done some big partnering with TV networks. And you see their logos on every bus in New York, and on every TV screen on every cable system in America, and probably by now all over the world.
And they have a big partnership with Apple that gets Twitter a lot of user interface presence on Apple's mobile devices and on the Mac.
\nI think Twitter and Apple are headed to the same place -- halfway between TV networks and the Internet. More video, more programming, users pressing Like buttons, making wheels spin, watching celebrities and of course commercials.
\nTwitter has to make what's flowing over their network more appealing, and somehow figure out some more interesting interactivity than they have now. The innovation has been with the users, but Twitter hasn't given users any new tools in a long time. That's where, imho, the competition is going to be. This is still very undeveloped. And Twitter has a problem here because the talent on their network doesn't work for them. But they have so much cash, they can change that.
\n![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/08/28/bluff.gif\")
They'll likely keep partnering with TV networks, as long as none of them have a realtime distribution system that can compete with theirs. Once that happens, it'll be like Iran getting nuclear weapons. If CNN had their own Twitter, and had some good media hackers working for them, they might get a leg up on Twitter. It would be pretty easy to go to another website. I do it, with my tabbed river, and a bunch of other people are using it too. I'm looking for more ways to take this idea on the road. I'd like to fill the channel with these things. I don't care if I do them all. This is the kind of crazy cacaphony that will make Twitter look like old news, give them a reason to start adding new features. That's going to happen pretty soon. If not here, elsewhere. Because Twitter is making themselves smaller and less interesting. Deliberately. I wonder if that's the right move. They're playing as if they have a pretty good hand. Might be bluffing.
The thing is rivers don't take a lot of CPU. They work really well on Amazon S3, and the content software can maintain a bunch of rivers with lots of feeds on a micro instance on Amazon EC2. That makes rivers realllly cheap relative to the systems Twitter is running. And the feeds are everywhere. Think about that. There's no adoption curve to climb here. Love it.
\nAnyway it's a fluid time because now Twitter is coming out and asserting their rights to content that flows through their servers. I don't think they have a leg to stand on. But that's waking up the news people. I'm sure Twitter knows it will do that.
\nMore later...
\nDave
", "pubDate": "Tue, 28 Aug 2012 22:21:59 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/28/dearNewsOrgsReTwitter.opml" } , { "title": "What I wanted, part II", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/28/whatIWantedPartIi.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/28/whatIWantedPartIi.html", "description": "There's more to what I wanted from blogging when it was starting up in the 90s.
\nI envisioned user communities that would figure out where products needed to go by pooling their experiences. I got this idea from my own experience as a product developer, and one event that I'll never forget.
\nGuy Kawasaki came to a Living Videotext party at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Probably in 1987. He gave me a slip of paper with a list of feature requests from an Apple exec, his new boss, Jean-Louis Gassee.
\nI read over the list, handed it back to him, and said I wanted to meet Mr. Gassee. Why? I recognized the items. They were the top feature requests from users of the product. From that list I could tell that Gassee was using it, and was using it well and often.
\n![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/08/28/newAccordionGuyBig.gif\")
Moral of the story: You only learn where a product needs improvement through serious long-term use. Users gain that kind of experience, but reviewers and pundits generally do not. Their observations tend to be superficial. That's why reviews written after a few days using a product often miss the mark. The real greatness or lack of greatness in a product doesn't show up for a few weeks or months. Sometimes even longer.
This was a secret of mine, because most of my competitors not only didn't listen to their users, but they didn't even use their own products. If you want to make great products, never mind the degree in finance or marketing, though those skills are certainly important to running a business. Be both a user and a developer. That way you understand users, and you can make their dreams come true, because they are your dreams too. The reward for that is success.
\nOnce when I was giving this schpiel a very wise and smart man, Yochai Benkler, asked if a doctor had to have the disease to be able to treat a patient. He got me. Sort of. Comparing the use of a wonderful software product to a terrible disease misses the point. Of course the doctor doesn't have to have the disease. On the other hand, why should you make a product that you don't love? Find something you really care about. Can you imagine loving a movie from a director who didn't love it first? (Yes, I just watched a documentary about the career of Woody Allen. He hated Manhattan, one of the greatest movies of all time. But he didn't stop making movies, and if you asked him if he loved movies, if he said he didn't, well, I think he'd be lying. Regardless, we love his movies, even if he doesn't.)
\nSo my hope for blogging was this. That users would write up their experiences with products, and good developers would study what they wrote. And if they didn't some users would learn how to develop, and they would take over the markets, because user-driven products generally win out over ones that are not user-driven.
\nIt's why Twitter, for example, is in trouble -- imho. Their execs are not serious users of the product. And they don't do a great job of listening to users. That's why they are drifting. Facebook, on the other hand, has a strength that Twitter doesn't. Zuckerberg, whether you like him or not, does use his own product.
\nAlso, I never liked the term \"eating your own dogfood.\" Yuck. What does that say about the users! So many of the ways businesses talk about their users are degrading and condescending. This goes back to Respect, which I wrote about yesterday. Respect comes from listening. A developer who does not listen to their users doesn't have much of a future. And if you're a user yourself, you're the most powerful kind of developer there is.
", "pubDate": "Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:32:43 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/28/whatIWantedPartIi.opml" } , { "title": "Levity vs racism", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/levityVsRacism.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/levityVsRacism.html", "description": "The Romney \"joke\" about his birth certificate was no accident.
\nIt got birtherism back into the conversation about the election. It had dropped out, and had been replaced with the abortion discussion around Congressman Akin. No doubt Romney felt it was unfair to tag him with that (arguable, he did pick Ryan as his VP). So he hit back with birtherism.
\nDemocrats treat it as a moral issue. An appeal to Republican reasonableness, which does not exist. The best response is to not take the bait. Accept it as a joke. No more discussion. Change the subject.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:26:47 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/levityVsRacism.opml" } , { "title": "What I wanted", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/whatIWanted.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/whatIWanted.html", "description": "I wonder if they recorded the talk I gave in Madison because I think it might make a good podcast.
\nA question came up -- what did I hope to accomplish with blogging. I gave an answer that I would like to amend.
\nI said Democracy. That by giving people their own platforms to speak on that there would be more listening and better government. By implication, I was saying that it had failed. But that's not all I hoped to accompish.
\nI wanted to disintermediate journalists. I had learned that the journalism system we had required intermediaries who I felt were not trustworthy. They created the stories based on their own filters, instead of finding out what was actually happening.
\nOf course this is an illusion. Because my view of what was actually happening was just as wrong as theirs.
\nWhat I really wanted, and knew it, was to arm creative people with tools to communicate with people who wanted to know what they think. I wanted to hear from the software developer what he wanted to accomplish with his software. I knew this was needed because I was having trouble communicating about my own software. I was reduced to the ideas that I could convince reporters to pass on. I learned lots of tricks, and as a result my products were successful. But I wanted to eliminate the trickery and talk directly to users.
\nAnd where I was a user, someone who read a book, or watched a movie, bought a car, went for a trip, needed medical care, I wanted to hear directly from people who knew what was going on.
\nHowever, I did not want to forgo what the journalists add. I want to emphasize that point. I just wanted to give them more sources and honestly, some competition from people who know what they're talking about, to encourage them to be better at learning and really listening.
\nAnyway, that's what I would like to have said when answering that question.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 27 Aug 2012 15:25:43 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/whatIWanted.opml" } , { "title": "Respect", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/respect.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/27/respect.html", "description": "![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/08/27/newAccordionGuyBig.gif\")
I started this thread called Scripting News back in the mid-90s with the theme of Respect. It wasn't the only topic, but it was at the core of everything. I had just been through a collapse of an industry because it didn't do enough listening. I wanted to share what I had learned in the hope that we wouldn't have to repeat the lessons again. Back then I tried to say what respect means to me. And I wanted to learn to practice it.
To me, respect means listening to what someone is really saying. It's hard to do. It requires you to quiet your mind, and accept that the world looks different from every point of view. You can do exercises in listening. Sit across from someone, they talk, you don't lean in, or tune out. No hugs, nods or head-shakes. No interruptions. Hear them out. Completely.
\nI find that when I get stuck it's because I don't listen.
\nThere are lots of corollaries that fall out from this view. People don't listen to people who work at BigCo's any more than they listen to independent developers. People who have the guts to make their own software and put their name on it. This is a mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make. I've seen them do it over and over. A random guy at a big company has no more sway than you do. But you do what they tell you to do in the hope that their company will help you be successful. It does happen sometimes, but not very often. Only in special times.
\nAnother one is that you can do much better at listening to others if you learn to listen to yourself. At all levels. First the gripes, then underneath that, what are you really trying to accomplish. What do you want to do with your time. Who do you want to co-create with, and on what terms?
\nThat's why long trips by yourself are good for respect.
\nIn software what I respect more than anything is this.
\nI respect people who ship software that's open to competition, and then write specs to show people how to compete with them.
\nIt's just like the web. People come back to places that send them away.
\nThe last decade has been one of people not pointing outward with their code. Or even worse, pointing out and then when people build on it, pulling the rug out from under them. From this must come a better appreciation for trust. Don't be blind with it. Don't give your trust without thinking it through, without really listening.
\nWe're back in the mid-90s again. Will we do any better this time? I hope!
I spoke at a conference in Madison last week about venture capital, among other topics. The panel that was up before I spoke were talking about how to get VCs to love you and respect you and treat you well (by giving you money to begin with of course).
\nI thought most of it was bullshit, and said so (in a nicer way of course). People treat you well when you have power. Otherwise, don't count on it. It's a hard lesson to learn, but it's mostly true. When you have power, you can decide to change the rules. But my guess is that people won't like you or respect you for doing it. That's why the people who show people how to compete with them are so incredibly gutsy and special. It probably won't profit them immediately or directly. It might lead to their downfall. But it will make the world greater. And if that's what you're into, then I want to work with you, because I'm into it too.
\nThese are not easy ideas to understand. I know that.
Here's one.
\nWhy is it during elections that two people are allowed to speak.
\nWe need to broaden that. Everyone should speak. And I don't mean regurgitating talking points from Fox News and MSNBC, because that's just more of the two people talking.
", "pubDate": "Sat, 25 Aug 2012 21:59:08 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/25/longDrivesAreGoodForGestal.opml" } , { "title": "Protocols don't mean much", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/22/protocolsDontMeanMuch.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/22/protocolsDontMeanMuch.html", "description": "Three people have asked me to \"weigh in\" on a new protocol called tent.io. I looked over the site, and I don't understand what I'm supposed to weigh in on. Anyone can write a spec. What matters is what software is supporting the protocol, what content is available through it and how compelling is the content.
\nRSS won not because of its great design, but because there was a significant amount of valuable content flowing through it. Formats and protocols by themselves are meaningless. That's what I say about specs. Show me content I can get at through the protocol, and I'll say something.
\nSometimes a protocol can be so bad that it kills any chance of it catching on, but that's usually because the proponents are too scared to let people at the content behind the protocol. That's probably what happened with SOAP.
\nThink of a protocol like a road. You could have a wonderful road. Well paved. Wide lanes. Great rest areas. But if it goes from nowhere to nowhere, it's not going to be very popular, no matter how nice it is.
", "pubDate": "Thu, 23 Aug 2012 02:16:14 GMT", "opmlSource": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/22/protocolsDontMeanMuch.opml" } , { "title": "Thursday by Lake Mendota", "link": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/22/thursdayByLakeMendota.html", "guid": "http://scripting.com/stories/2012/08/22/thursdayByLakeMendota.html", "description": "If you're in Madison tomorrow with a little time to kill, come hang out on the patio at the Memorial Union at 3PM. I'll be there with Andrew Shell, drinking beer and telling wild stories. Hope you can make it!
\nHere's a picture I took this evening of sunset on the lake from the patio.
\n![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/08/22/sunset.jpg\")
In school they taught us to outline the term paper first, then write from the outline. It's an ideal no one achieves, to have the product arrive in finished form in our mind before we start exploring.
\nInstead we wrote the paper first, then the outline.
\nAnd that was correct, because it was the only way that worked. But it didn't get us much more than a slide show presentation of our work. It's different when you have a structure editor, an outliner. Because you can revise both the text and its organization after the initial burst of writing.
\nHere's how I do it today, in my outliner. I write from top to bottom. Then I review. If I find structure, I add it.
\nThen I have a structure to work with, I add more ideas become apparent, more things I have to record, to tell the reader. The order might change. The process of each little project is to iterate both the work product and the narration until I feel I'm ready to move on to the next thing.
\nOf course I might start two or more things at the same time. For example I have two worknotes open now, and this blog post.
\nIn a blog post I play with order more than structure. They are meant to be read from top to bottom, as a story.
\nBut worknotes offer different things to different people. I write them for today's users and hopefully tomorrow's too. But I also write them for developers, including myself, who will continue to work on the code behind the notes. I find it very useful to be able to open my notes from a previous project, while working on something related, and find it all neatly organized, so I can skip right to the part that's relevent to me.
\nI thought it would be interesting to take a screen shot of my worknotes outline so you can see what projects in various states of completion look like. At the same time here's one of my blog outline. See how they're different?
\nOutlining works on a computer, as long as you revise. It doesn't work on paper because revision, especially of structure, is hard.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:55:21 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "A funny thing about outliners", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/aFunnyThingAboutOutliners/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/aFunnyThingAboutOutliners/", "description": "An idea that might be foreign to people who write in text editors.
\nYou can use an outliner to write multiple documents.
\nTry creating a headline called My Diary.
\nThen every day, add a subhead with the day's date.
\nAnd under that write a paragraph about something you learned or did that day.
\nDo it for a few days until the strangeness wears off.
\nDoes this make sense?
\nHere's a screen shot of my \"worknotes\" diary, which is one level deeper.
\nYou can think of every major head under a day as a separate document.
\nIn fact the CMS sees it that way. So I have one document which in turn contains many documents. Actually thousands!
\nFor many people this will be a new way of thinking about writing.
", "pubDate": "Sat, 06 Oct 2012 13:03:12 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Compromising Obama", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/compromisingObama/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/compromisingObama/", "description": "I hated watching last night's debate. Not because \"Obama Lost\" but rather than being inspired, as some political discourse can leave you (e.g. Bill Clinton's speeches at the last three DNCs for example), it left me the opposite of inspired -- without hope. Hopeless.
\nI imagine that the Republicans who had fought with the President behind closed doors know something about him that the rest of us don't. That when cornered, he turns into a bowl of jello. The hemming and hawing increase, and he starts saying idiotic things like \"I suspect the Governor and I agree on this.\" While his mortal enemy is lying, he nods and smiles. Inside something bad is happening with the President, and it's visible on the outside.
\nSo they paint him as an apologist. At first we think it's just talk for the Repub base, but they know that come the debate they are going to be able to get the President to appear to apologize. All that being so agreeable, maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome. And the Republicans are going to keep pushing him. Romney is not inept like McCain, who Obama aced. Nor is he Hillary Clinton, with whom Obama managed pouty sort of dominance.
\nRomney is going to bully the President, and it's up to the President to grow a pair and bully back. We learned something I didn't want to know last night. And we'll learn something else at the next debate, whether the President has friends who will kick his butt.
\nAnd btw, maybe John Kerry wasn't the best person to use as a stand-in for Romney. I wish Coach Walsh was alive to help out here (though I suspect he was a Republican). Maybe Bill Clinton would be a good coach for Obama? Just throwing things out there.
", "pubDate": "Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:11:35 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Scripting.com redesign", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/scriptingcomRedesign/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/scriptingcomRedesign/", "description": "![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/10/01/tenTons.gif\")
I've been working up to this for a few months, now it's time to flip the switch and replace the old Scripting News home page with the new simplified and enriched version. Yes, it's got more features, but it's even cleaner than before.
Here's a snapshot of the Scripting News home page taken just before the transition.
\nThat's about it for now. Time for me to take a break, and when I come back, I'll fill in the links here and then flip the switch. Maybe tonight or early tomorrow.
", "pubDate": "Wed, 03 Oct 2012 00:33:04 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: First October thought.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/firstOctoberThought/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/october/firstOctoberThought/", "description": "A simple first thought for the tech industry at the beginning of October.
\nIf your users are always looking for the catch -- waiting for the shoe to drop, the 10-ton weight, or waiting for the trap door to open -- you've got a problem. If they don't understand your business, how can they understand your product. How can they understand you? And if they can't understand you -- how can they trust you?
How naive. To think you might need to have the trust of users to build a company.
\nIt's not so naive. I think it's actually pretty naive to think that you can go on indefinitely without nailing that one down.
\nNow, back up a few feet and realize that it's not a single company, but much of an industry that has this vagueness at its core. Even some of the most prosperous companies are built on a foundation of mistrust with the people they depend on for their existence.
\nFeels like the kind of thing you look back on after a bubble-burst and say \"Geez, of course that wouldn't work. How could we not have seen that.\"
", "pubDate": "Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:16:46 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: Twitter is a tragic tale.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/twittersEpitaph/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/twittersEpitaph/", "description": "I've known Chuck Shotton since 1995, early days of the Mac web community. I was doing Frontier, an editing and database environment that turned out to be an almost perfect match for web programming. Chuck was doing WebStar, the leading HTTP server for the Mac. Our products complemented each other well, and we've been friends ever since.
\nI wrote a piece yesterday about Twitter needing a plan B for developers, and Chuck left a comment which I think is worth quoting in full:
\nWhat Chuck says is true.
\nAnd we still need to create the layer that Twitter could have created.
", "pubDate": "Sat, 29 Sep 2012 11:41:35 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: Sites should have a \"readable\" button.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/sitesShouldHaveAReadableButton/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/sitesShouldHaveAReadableButton/", "description": "![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/09/28/bug.gif\")
I'm finding myself using Readability to link to stories that for whatever reason are not imho readable. If I can't read it without using Readability (my eyes are not young anymore, and need a bit larger type, and I will not send out links to interstitial-limited sites) then I send out a Readability-processed link instead. It in turn points back to the original, if you want to see the ads, or squint at the tiny type. I'm calling on all site designers to spend 2013 working on making their sites work for readers. We're the reason you make your sites in the first place. Otherwise, why bother being in the writing business. It's not very profitable, I hear.
Sometimes the products of acquired companies fade away, but that's not happening with Instagram, bought by Facebook for $1 billion last summer. \"Instagram has a greater pull than Twitter on mobile devices\" says the latest Comscore report, according to Fast Company.
\nProblem for Twitter, with their current developer program, they're shutting down Instagram's photo sharing competitors. Which means there will be little opportunity for a challenger to rise, giving Twitter something to acquire -- assuming their own photo sharing service fails to topple Instagram. Which clearly is not what's happening.
", "pubDate": "Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:00:43 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: I've never seen a more powerful political ad.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/obamaAdOn47Percent/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/obamaAdOn47Percent/", "description": "\nI've never seen a more powerful political ad.
\nAlso note it was not necessary to quote Romney out of context.
", "pubDate": "Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:36:43 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: The Angry Birds platform?", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/isRovioLost/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/isRovioLost/", "description": "![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/09/27/pig.gif\")
I bought Angry Alex, and really tried to like it, but got bored and gave up. I ended up going through all the old Angry Birds scenarios dating back to the beginning, instead.
Angry Birds is relaxing. I spend my days writing code and prose, communicating and creating. Playing Angry Birds is not about creating (obviously) it's about destroying. It's a perfect game.
\nI'm sure that Rovio wants to grow, make more money, hire more people -- but maybe that wasn't meant to be. Maybe they should be happy with the success of Angry Birds, and try to do things to make their fans happy. No one would begrudge them some more money if they're helping make our downtime more relaxing.
\nAnyway, I seriously think that Angry Birds could be a platform, and that's what they're trying to create with these other products -- including the new Bad Piggies, out today, which I admit I don't even want to try, because the idea seems like another Angry Alex, but this time with an element of the Angry Birds franchise.
\nInstead, why not release the design tools they use to create Angry Birds scenarios, and open a store of their own, to sell these. Let creativity rule. Even if the scenarios were just ripoffs of the ones done by Rovio designers, so what. Let's see what people come up with.
\nAn idea -- give the pigs and birds recognizable faces. Of movie stars, baseball players, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony. Or Republicans and Democrats! There could have been a special scenario around the death of Neil Armstrong that had him and Buzz as birds fighting off lunar pigs (whatever they might look like).
\nI think there's still room for a lot of creativity with Angry Birds. Stick with what works Rovio! :-)
", "pubDate": "Thu, 27 Sep 2012 14:29:55 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: I want a Galaxy S3 but..", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/iWantAGalaxyS3But/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/iWantAGalaxyS3But/", "description": "![\"A](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/09/26/galaxyS3.gif\")
I've been reading the reviews on Amazon for the Samsung Galaxy S3 and I want to buy one, but I don't know which one to get.
Here's are the constraints.
\n1. I don't want a plan or a contract, therefore it must be unlocked.
\n2. It should work with T-Mobile in the US.
\n3. Would be nice if I could use it internationally.
\nI don't want to buy a phone only to find it doesn't work with T-Mobile. I know I should learn what all the different terms mean. Right now it's easier to write a post and ask you guys to tell me what to get. :-)
", "pubDate": "Thu, 27 Sep 2012 03:57:07 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "47% was not a gaffe", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/47WasNotAGaffe/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/47WasNotAGaffe/", "description": "There are silly mis-statements that should have no bearing on the outcome of the election. To call them out amounts to \"neener neener\" and Americans who are undecided or could change their vote are not influenced by them. Who cares if Romney says windows on planes should open? People who are voting for him will forgive it. People who aren't voting for him think it's significant. But no votes change.
\nBut the 47% line was not like that. It was an unusually clear statement of something very obvious about the Republican philosophy. Actually unprecedented. So important that it could not just bring down Romney, but it should also cause people who vote Republican to take another look at whether that's wise.
\nI used to vote Republican, for the reason I think a lot of people still do. I want a strong country, one that doesn't waffle. I thought the Democrats were nominating people who, as Romney suggests about Obama, were asking for forgiveness. It started with Carter, again, as he says. I see his election as a response to Watergate and Vietnam. We had just spent a decade doing horrible things, and when the truth was out, we didn't trust ourselves. So we elected someone who would never commit the sins of Johnson and Nixon. It was the right choice for 1976. But then we forgot, and we elected a series of Presidents who in the end were much worse than either Johnson or Nixon. How much worse? Well the 47% idea really spells it out.
\nWhat we need is to find a balance between the horrible governments of the Republicans and the anemic governments of the Democrats. That's why Clinton is so popular now. Even his Oval Office blowjobs look good. We don't want a saint. But we don't want Cheney or Romney either (don't kid yourself about who we elected in 2000 and 2004, it wasn't Bush, it was Cheney, Bush is a campaigner, a very good one, Cheney is governance).
\nIt would be nice if we Americans could talk to each other about this, instead of talking through the assholes we keep nominating. That said, Obama is not a terrible compromise, despite the atrocities Greenwald keeps reporting. That will change when we change. He's wrong to blame the government. As long as the Democrats have to run in the Republican environment, they're going to have to keep doing the shit they do to keep the bankers, oil industry, pharma, defense industry etc happy. If we ever decide to use our power, even for a moment, that might change.
", "pubDate": "Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:23:43 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Why Obama didn't meet at UN", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/whyObamaDidntMeetAtUn/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/whyObamaDidntMeetAtUn/", "description": "I'm not a political reporter, or a partisan (really, I know Repubs think I am, but I'm not), so I can have opinions about these things, and express them, and you don't like it, that's okay.
\nAnyway...
\nThis is why President Obama didn't meet with any heads-of-state at the United Nations meeting yesterday.
\n1. If he met with any of them he would have had to meet with Netanyahu. He certainly couldn't have met with any other leader from the Middle East or North Aftrica without meeting with Netanyahu. The noise from Repubs and the press would have been deafening.
\n2. He knows this, better than anyone else -- there is no light between Netanyahu and the neocon part of the Republican Party in the US. They coordinate. Share the same goals. It's as if the Republicans here were of the same government as Netanyahu, much more so than they are of the same government at Obama. The disloyalty to America is disgusting, but it's there nonetheless.
\n3. If he met with Netanyahu, it would be scripted by Karl Rove, they would all know what to say. Netanyahu, masquerading as the head-of-state of a foreign government, as someone independent from the Republicans, would say something that could be spun by the Republicans as showing that Obama was weak. They would have worked this out before-hand. Karl Rove approved this message™. :-)
\n4. Obama figured the cost of meeting with no one would be less than the cost of going through this charade. He's ahead in the polls. He wants basically nothing more than to run the clock on the election. Give the Repubs nothing to latch on to. A meeting with Netanyahu would give them the opportunity to push him into a corner.
\nThe press, I suppose, has to pretend that there's no coordination between the Republican neocons here and the Israeli neocons there, but Obama actually isn't weak, and certainly isn't stupid. There's no reason he should give them ammo. Stay the course. Whatever negative publicity comes from this will pass quickly, because he didn't give the neocons any soundbites or photo-ops to grab onto.
\nPS: My link shortener chose this URL for this post. http://0bb.r2.ly/. I swear I didn't choose it.
", "pubDate": "Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:23:35 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: Open fields for discourse.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/levelPlayingFieldsForDiscourse/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/levelPlayingFieldsForDiscourse/", "description": "Interesting post by Josh Miller on Medium about open discussions, in reply to a post by Fred Wilson. It's interesting because Josh is the lead developer of Branch, a discussion system -- and Fred is the backer, and public face for Disqus, the discussion software we use here.
\nFred argues that his blog is open to anyone to participate, but I've noticed what Josh has. While Fred, admirably responds to every comment on his system -- we're not getting much engagement beyond -- hey I'm here. To which you can reply and I'm here, and so am I, etc etc.
\nThese aren't really discussions, not in any sense that peoples' minds come open to being changed. People come to recite their beliefs, they skim the posts and comments for key words, and then choose from a set of schpiels they memorized, and type them in.
\nOnline discussions can be a lot like those on CNN or MSNBC, which to me seem like concerts. People are invited to sing their songs, in harmony with other songsters. The songs never vary. The volume does, and each has their own style, but there are rarely any new ideas.
\nTo me, a good discussion is where a new perspective or fact can surface, and everyone has the possibility come away from the discussion changed. Smarter, better informed, with a possibly shifted point of view. Oh that's what they mean when they say...
\nMiller may be on to something. Branch allows discussion among a pre-set group of people. The moderator, the person who started the discussion can add new people. And new discussions can fork off from previous ones, exactly as it worked on my LBBS system in the early-mid 80s, only prettier (that was in the day of 300 baud modems, and scrolling \"glass teletype\" displays).
\nI still like the idea behind the H20 system developed at Berkman Center about ten years ago. It also had the concept of invited participants. To start, each would post positions on a moderator-supplied topic, privately. Then at a previously announced time, all the positions are revealed. There's a commenting period where each participant can write a rebuttal, again in private. They're revealed all at once. And that's it. The goal is to cover all sides of a topic, intelligently and not personally. Not surprising this was developed at a law school, by lawyers. It's a very legal approach to discourse.
\nWhat we really need are experimental platforms for non-programmers to invent new methods of discourse. We've relied too much on programmers, who have a definite style of arguing. But there are other professions that are fairly far ahead of us in understanding how humans communicate and share ideas. We are not that good at it, and so far most discussion systems have been limited by the imaginations of programmers.
\nBTW, a final note -- in case it isn't obvious -- I am also working on discussion software. There is a place to comment in Disqus, that's open to anyone. There's another way to participate here, by installing the OPML Editor and clicking on the green button you will see when you reload the page with the software installed on your computer. Instructions are on this page.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:35:45 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: Favorite movie reviews feeds?", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/doesSlateReallyOnlyHaveOneFeed/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/doesSlateReallyOnlyHaveOneFeed/", "description": "I'm putting together movie reviews panel for Media Hackers.
\nHere's the list of feeds so far.
\nIf you have any suggestions of movie review feeds, please post a link here as a comment. Thanks!
", "pubDate": "Sun, 23 Sep 2012 04:38:52 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: Comments on Costolo talk.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/commentsOnCostoloTalk/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/commentsOnCostoloTalk/", "description": "I didn't catch the whole of Dick Costolo's talk with Emily Bell at ONA, but I did get to hear the part about developers and APIs. I think this part also relates indirectly to journalists who use Twitter.
\n1. Twitter will provide a way for users to download their history of posts to Twitter.
\n2. Think of 140 characters as a caption. This is consistent with what they're doing. People who argue that 140 characters is some kind of sacred limit are wrong. They should listen to what Costolo says.
\n3. Emily Bell did a great interview. The audience questions were also right on.
", "pubDate": "Sun, 23 Sep 2012 04:37:19 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Manifesto: Un-Web 2.0.", "link": "http://unweb2.blorkmark.com/", "guid": "http://unweb2.blorkmark.com/", "description": "You've heard of unconferences. They take the idea of a conference and flip it around. Instead of having speakers on stage, the speakers are in what used to be called the audience.
\nSo Web 2.0 was nice, as training wheels for the next steps in the future web. A two-way medium. The people who pioneered Web 2.0 are to be congratulated and thanked. But now it's time to Un it. :-)
\nBecause Web 2.0, while it started out as a freedom-inspiring thing, has been coalescing to being a dangerous form of locking-in the user's data so it can be applied to a corporate business model. We all know the dangers of this. It robs platforms of their openness. It makes moving data around impossible. And it makes creating hybrid systems impossible. It's not a very web-like direction for something that's inspired by the web.
\nIf the Web is Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Web 2.0 is Small Pieces Trapped In A Silo.
\nIn Un-Web 2.0 you get full control of your data, and the services just get pointers to it, or copies of it. The originals live with you. Pointers are much preferable to copies because then you can keep updating the content after it has been incorporated in someone else's content tree.
\nFood for thought. :-)
", "pubDate": "Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:22:36 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: MP3 of Romney's fund-raiser.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/mp3sOfRomneysFundraiser/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/mp3sOfRomneysFundraiser/", "description": "Yesterday I posted a question about the availability of MP3s via SoundCloud.
\nI just wanted to listen to this on my walk yesterday. But I think the MP3s of this should be available outside of SoundCloud's server. So I created an MP3 and uploaded it to my Dropbox account. It's mirrored in my S3 archive.
\n\nBTW, I listened to the full recording as I prepared the MP3 and some of what he says is reasonable. But it doesn't seem consistent that one person would say all these things. For example he talks about what a blessing it is to be born in America. 95 percent of it is taken care of for you. Where did that come from? Not my family, although they made a big difference too, with their emphasis on education and my grandparents did very well financially and were able to create security for all of us. If you started life as an American citizen you were better-off right from the start than most of the other babies born that day, elsewhere in the world.
\nSo how can you at the same time feel that America is great and think that 47 percent of us are losers. It doesn't make sense. At least part of what makes us great is that we have some greatness in our people. Or the system that we live in. It's not just a piece of paper, Mitt.
\nA note about SoundCloud. By now we should all see the danger of trapping our content inside a Web 2.0 company's servers. People say that it was Mother Jones' decision to not allow this to be downlaoded, but there were limits on free accounts, so even if they wanted to let everyone download it, they couldn't as long as they used SC. There are other free services that don't have such limits. For example, Dropbox. We should all be working together to be sure that valuble historic documents like this are adequately preserved. It's not good enough to upload a recording to a commercial service that doesn't allow downloads.
", "pubDate": "Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:18:16 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: Question about SoundCloud.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/questionAboutSoundcloud/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/questionAboutSoundcloud/", "description": "Earlier this afternoon I was looking for an MP3 of the Romney video.
\nI noted that Mother Jones had SoundCloud versions of the MP3 on the Mother Jones site. But I couldn't find an MP3 download, or a link to an RSS feed for their podcast.
\nIt's quite possible that I missed it. And that's the question. Is there a link on this page for either the MP3 or the RSS feed?
\nI don't want to jump to any conclusions without clearly asking this question first.
", "pubDate": "Tue, 18 Sep 2012 23:58:10 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: Jury duty, voting and Romney.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/juryDutyVotingAndRomney/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/juryDutyVotingAndRomney/", "description": "1. Jury duty is amazing. Especially if you go all the way to a verdict. You learn how the architecture of our democracy places its faith in the people. You might think, if you listened to some of our political leaders, that this would be a bad idea. Because most of us are takers not makers. But it works, because people are a lot smarter, honest and hard-working than we give ourselves credit for. And when you trust people, when you really make that point, and the legal process does that, over and over, everyone comes through. Some people accept trust faster than others, but in the end, all twelve jurors accept their responsibility. When we passed judgement I was sure we had arrived at the correct decision.
\n2. Voting is the same idea. You have to look and look at the people who are asking for your vote. Sure they're lying. So was the defendent in the trial. Everyone lies, even if they took the oath saying they wouldn't. Dirty little secret is that if you're on trial, everyone understands that you can lie to defend yourself. And so do politicians. But if you really think about it, you know who they are and what they're really saying, behind the lies.
\n3. So nothing was actually revealed about Mitt Romney in yesterday's tapes. If you had been watching this guy, like a juror watches every actor in the courtroom, you recognized the pattern. He might have been the guy who runs a company you once worked for. The principal of your school. Your friend's grandfather. To me, he was a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was the kind of guy who doesn't know what it means to speak the truth. His existence has nothing to do with the truth. He's a goal-oriented person. He's trying to get something from you. He doesn't care what he has to say to get it. Since he's running for President, a lot of the times that means he's out of his element and you can tell. He's not comfortable with teachers, with working people. But speaking to the rich donors in that dining room, that was his element. He was comfortable. The same way the defendent in our DUI case would have been comfortable in a bar slamming down a few whiskies before going for a drive. No juror would have been fooled by Mitt Romney before the tape, but what we saw confirmed what we already knew.
\nI believe in the American system, and totally reject the idea that your vote doesn't matter. You think it doesn't matter because you haven't discovered what it means. If you had a little faith in it, if 25 percent more people had more faith, it would work a lot better than you have imagined. Because given enough time, no matter how much they lie, we figure it out. Change will come slowly but it will come. But don't tell me it can't change if you haven't even tried.
", "pubDate": "Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:00:43 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: River with JSON-encoded OPML.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/riverWithJsonencodedOpml/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/riverWithJsonencodedOpml/", "description": "This is a very bizarre animal.
\nhttp://dropbox.scripting.com/dave/misc/riverWithJsonEncodedOPML.js
\nIt's a river.js file that has an item that contains the OPML source encoded as JSON.
\nThis means that a jQuery app that loaded this file would find the OPML structure already there in the DOM.
\nWe're a short step from having Media Hackers be able to do something much richer with content.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:51:40 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } , { "title": "Thread: New features in OPML comments to start the week.", "link": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/techDiscussionOfCommentsFeed/", "guid": "http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/september/techDiscussionOfCommentsFeed/", "description": "Today I released a new feature for OPML Comments, which is explained with links, on this Scripting News post.
\nThe core feature is of course the new RSS feed for comments.
\nIf you poke around the feeds, you may find some things that raise questions or possibilities.
\n1. The JSON and JSONP versions.
\n2. The microblog namespace, which is used by the feed.
\n3. The roadmap post that shows where we're going.
\n4. A screen shot of a permalink on comments, a necessary feature for the feed.
\n5. My personal river, which subscribes to the feed, so it's an easy place to find the latest comments on the threads site (along with news from quite a few other sources).
\n6. What's next? There's a full CMS behind the comments, with a templating system for designers. Lots of formats and protocols for developers. The only part that's visible is the writing tool. And that's as it should be, because the people we are doing this for are writers and readers.
\nPlease post comments here, either in OPML or Disqus.
", "pubDate": "Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:37:10 GMT", "category": { "domain": "http://categories.scripting.com/", "#value": "worknote" } } ] } } }![permalink](\"http://scripting.com/images/2012/09/17/permalink.gif\"){kind=link}
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