Scripting News

nytimesriver.com fix

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:11:58 GMT

The nytimesriver.com site is the perfect way to read news on a mobile web browser, on a Blackberry, iPhone or Nokia N95, as examples. The home page of the site is a stream of new stories, in reverse chronologic order, with titles, links and descriptions.

Until today the links went to printer-friendly versions of articles, now they point to mobile versions, with ads on them, so they make a bit of money for the Times. This was the first concrete result of my meeting with the Times tech guys on Thursday in New York.

http://nytimesriver.com/

Here's an example of a mobile Times story.

Bug fixed in Flickr-to-Twitter code?

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:54:18 GMT

There was definitely a bug in the code that processed Flickr categories in Twittergram. If you'd specify that a picture required a tag, and one of the pictures didn't have it, all the other new pictures would be ignored, whether they had the tag or not.

Some people who used the category tagging feature didn't notice this problem because they never uploaded pictures without the tags.

If you never used tags and had it set up to not require them, everything would work as planned (that's how I use it).

In any case, knock wood, the bug should now be fixed and all users should be happy whether they never use tags, always use tags, or sometimes do and sometimes don't.

Thanks to everyone who patiently and carefully reported bugs, esp MDY whose bug report helped me zero in on the errant code. If you want to report further problems, or just say that it's fixed, please post a comment here. Twitter is notoriously bad for bug reporting, since user's reports, even in the best circumstances, often leave out important information. With the 140 character limit, it's impossible to fully describe a problem. That's one thing Twitter is not good for.

Why Facebook sucks

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 03:25:35 GMT

Another topic Scoble and I talked about today was Facebook. I said I don't like Facebook, never have, and I finally figured out why.

It's another one of those user generated content things, only this time I'm building up an address book that I can look at, but can only do things with it that Facebook lets me do.

Why exactly do I need Facebook to get inbetween me and my address book?

I mean, I understand why they want me to tell them everyone I know, but how about letting me download a copy to my computer, so I can back it up, use it on my iPhone or Blackberry, bequeath it to my heirs, write a book about it, or give a copy to Google or Netflix or Yahoo, or you get the idea.

It's the last thing they don't want me to do, give a copy to a competitor of theirs. And they hope I won't notice that I'm doing all this work and not insisting on at least being their equal when it comes to my data.

Sometime in November Google is rumored to be revealing their answer to Facebook. Whatever it is it will surely have an API, and will allow Google apps to share the info, and it will, if it hopes to compete with Facebook, provide some access to this data to app developers. But the true measure of their gravitas will be whether they give full control of the user's data to the user. If they do that, no matter what's missing from their software, it won't suck.

PS: When I write about it, I do it crudely, saying they suck or don't. When Doc Searls writes about it he calls it Vendor Relationship Management. Doc writes so elegantly because he is a research fellow at Harvard University.

Twitter Pro?

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT

A thread was started by Scoble who suggested, in a phone talk yesterday, that he would pay $10 a month for a Twitter that didn't have the 140 character limit. Seemed like an excellent conversation starter, so I relayed the idea via email to Fred Wilson, cc'd to Scoble.

While I was at breakfast in Palo Alto the two went back and forth, and the idea that always creeps into conversations about Twitter crept into this one. What about SMS? I guess SMS users are limited to 140 characters? Don't know.

After I posted a pic of pumping gas on my way back to Berkeley, Scoble called me on my cell phone, which is beautifully integrated via Bluetooth with my car's sound system (to him it sounded like I was at home, not driving on the freeway), and we discussed many things including this conversation which led me to another sequence of ideas.

1. I wonder if anyone reads my twits on SMS. (I sort of doubt it, many of them have links which would be useless on SMS.)

2. If they do, I don't care if there are parts of my twits that don't translate (after all, they're already living with that).

3. And if I had to check a box saying that my twits wouldn't be available on SMS at all, I'd happily check it. I really only care about the web, and if your cell phone can't do the web, well, get another cell phone. I've always written software for the highest common denominator not the lowest, why should my micro-blogging platform be any different.

After hanging up I wanted to re-iterate -- give me payloads for Twitter so we can go where we need to go. Pictures are a very easy and vital way to express what you're doing right now. And lots of cell phones (like mine) can do nice lo-rez pics. I want payloads.

Update: Fred Wilson himself follows me in SMS. Rex Hammock too.

Now that I'm home

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:25:14 GMT

I have to tell Virgin America that I'm not going to be on the flight tomorrow morning. That's proving more difficult than you might imagine. I logged into my account on their website, and it seems to have forgotten about my reservation, even though I just got an email reminding me to check in. Okay, so I called their reservation line, navigated through voicemail, and received a message that due to heavy call volume they can't talk to me, and hung up! Oh man, that's not cool.

So what should I do now? I thought maybe I should call Xeni or Cory or Peter, since I know all of them and they're now spokespersons for the airline. Heh. Okay I'm not going to do that. But I thought about it for a second or two and decided to just blog it instead.

Now I have to talk to American Airlines to see about getting them to pay for the hotel in Dallas last night. Lotsa luck! (Predictably, they said I didn't read the fine print, so I paid for my hotel room and that's that. Now what to do with all the miles I have on this airline that I'm never going to use.)

One more stop -- Expedia, to see if I can get a refund for two nights in New York that I didn't use. What do you think?? Hmmm. Well, Expedia wins the prize! I'm getting the refund. I asked where she was -- the Philippines. I congratulated her for working for a good company, that made her quite happy. I make a point of thanking these poor people when they help me.

I'm pretty sure I'll get a credit from Virgin America when they actually decide to talk to me, or when the website recognizes me, whichever comes first.

Later: I did get through to Virgin America, they gave me a credit for the unused portion of the trip, which I can apply to a trip anytime in the next year. A good outcome.

The face of Uncov

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:55:21 GMT

Click the pic to read about the man behind Uncov.

Early morning twits

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:47:57 GMT

Someday every story in the NYT will be blogged thoroughly before it runs.

Lane Hartwell loves what she do. (32)

If Fred Wilson feels like chopped liver, I must be liver spots. (63)

Okay it was overly optimistic of me to set my computer's clock to pacific time. (79)

Scott Beale says the next disaster will be twittered. It was. (62)

Mike Arrington is at his best when angry. (41)

NYT OPML. (10)

American Airlines are mother fcukers. (37)

Techmeme is still a spam-filled cesspool. (41)

After twitting and blogging about chopped liver, now i have a jones for chopped liver, at 4:06AM. Oh the humanity. (114)

PS: All are less than 140 chars. (32)

Improvements to twittergram.com/picstream

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:41:56 GMT

While waiting for airport security to open at DFW, I made a few small improvements to the picstream page.

1. If a picture is wider than 500 pixels, scale it.

2. Only the 100 most recent pics are shown.

3. They have numbers next to them.

http://www.twittergram.com/picstream

Jack-in to CNN while eating breakfast

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:00:50 GMT

Visit at the NY Times

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:24:25 GMT

Today I had a visit at the NY Times with a couple of tech guys, got a tour of the newsroom and now have a fairly good idea of what's available on the Times site these days and got some pointers of places to look for interesting possibilities.

One of the intriguing spots was this blog...

http://open.nytimes.com/

http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/rss2.xml

"A blog about open source technology at The New York Times, written by and primarily for developers."

This is something new.

"All the code that's fit to printf."

I had noticed that the Times has some pretty rich metadata. Do a View Source on any story. Wouldn't it be cool if that data were included in their RSS 2.0 feed? The category element is designed for exactly that kind of data. And I wondered if there is a master taxonomy somewhere. I'd love to see it.

Anyway, this is just the beginning of a conversation. Derek and Jacob have their hearts in our world, and even though the Times still feels as if it's "over there." Perhaps someday it may not feel so far away.

American Airlines ripoff

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:23:52 GMT

No two ways about it, American Airlines ripped me off.

The facts. My flight from Newark to Dallas was delayed by bad weather.

We were 1/2 hour late getting into Dallas. I only had 45 minutes to make the connection if we were on time, so I just had 15 minutes. I got to the gate for my SF flight with five minutes to spare. But the doors were closed, and they had given my seat away.

Now, in their computer, they knew I was coming. Why did they give my seat away? I guess they were betting that I wouldn't make it. Seems they could have told me that before I pushed it to get there with 5 minutes to spare.

Then the guy behind the counter told me I could standby on the next flight, in three hours. No guarantee I'd get a seat. I have a lot of miles on American. I choose to fly American because they treat me well, probably because of all the miles. But it's at times like this, when they treat me like garbage, that I see how it really works. Rather than take the chance of flying with an empty seat, they gave my seat to someone else.

I went down to the Admirals Club and called their 800 number and was treated well, but I knew I couldn't make a seat appear tonight. I'm staying in Dallas tonight, paying for it myself (they wouldn't pay), they got me on the first flight to SFO tomorrow morning. Not standing by.

But it doesn't change the fact that they gave my seat away while they knew I was trying to get to the gate, and I was only late because their flight was late. Miles or no miles, I think my good feelings for American are finally gone (it's not the first time I was told to go to hell by the airline, btw).

New York's Finest (and friends)

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:22:13 GMT

Click on the pic for detail.

Today's links

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:06:12 GMT

Pizza, salad and spaghetti with Alan Levy of BlogTalkRadio at John's Pizzeria, 260 W 44th.

Adam Engst: "My initial reaction to Twitter was that it was utterly inane, but I was basing my opinion on the public timeline that show posts from all Twitter users and on the Twittervision service that plots messages from Twitter users on a map of the world."

Newsroom at CUNY

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:47:42 GMT

I've become fascinated by newsrooms, and they have an interesting setup at CUNY where the Networked Journalism conference took place.

So I got out the video camera and took a brief tour.

How to create an IRC backchannel?

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:49:10 GMT

Micah Sifry sent an email asking if I could create an IRC channel for this conference. Good idea, except I don't know how to do it. I've always depended on Kevin Marks to create them for my conferences.

But it can't be that hard, right? Let's see if we can figure it out. If you have a clue, please post a comment here.

Okay, here's a clue from the mirc faq: "A channel is automatically created as soon as the first person joins it. If you join a channel and you find your name as the only one there, you just created that channel. Channels on IRC are dynamic in the sense that anyone can create a new channel, and a channel disappears when the last person leaves it."

Okay, so I logged onto a channel whose name I made up.

It's called netjny at irc.freenode.net.

Come join me and let's see if we can chat.

How we're twisted, day 2

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:49:14 GMT

I am absolutely delighted to see a piece by Scoble on top of Techmeme, one which explains how flow works in the tech blogosphere. There's also a piece on Valleywag. My piece yesterday may have started a ball rolling. Everyone who's been pointed to by TechCrunch who tracks referrers knows that the site may be high-ranked, but it doesn't generate so many click-throughs. It used to be very different, a link from TechCrunch would deliver 2000 readers in the first hour. Yesterday, I was linked to by TechCrunch, and there were 33 click-throughs, total.

Techmeme, on the other hand, is steadily increasing. I never said, never implied, never thought otherwise, despite what The Guardian says. I don't know why people think that paper is so authoritative, they make a lot of (big) mistakes. For me a top link on Techmeme is worth 1000 hits. That's a lot of hits for me, and they're highly qualified, exactly the kind of people I want to communicate with.

BTW, the Guardian, which links to me from the piece, has delivered 12 hits in a few hours.

I am impressed with Techmeme's rise. I think it's because a fair number of people look to it for the news of the day in tech, a role TechCrunch used to play. I think the sites compete, and I think Techmeme is winning. It's one of the reasons why I suggested to TechCrunch that they try turning off Techmeme, to force people to at least skim their site.

I don't like the Leaderboard, because it perpetuates a myth, but since we've been writing about it, perhaps expectation is getting closer to reality. Being highly rated on that list (which my site is, btw) isn't saying very much about the power and influence of the site. Same is true for Technorati's list. Maybe now it's time to start a discussion about what makes a site powerful, or just go back to blogging, telling our story, and stop trying to be so important.

PS: Today will probably be a big blogging day, because I'm going to a blogging conference about networked journalism. I expect to take many pictures which will be posted to Twitter.

All the pics that's fit to twit

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:23:47 GMT

Last night while way too jetlagged I decided to add a feature that accumulates all the pictures that TwitterGram flows from Flickr to Twitter. Apparently I got away with it. Here they are...

http://www.twittergram.com/picstream

Obviously some more work is needed, but it's already a fun way to get an idea of who's using TwitterGram and what their lives are like.

Thanks to the Flickr API and the Twitter API.

Bing!

Today is Jaiku Day in TwitterLand

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:54:57 GMT

Congratulations to the folks at Jaiku for their deal to be acquired by Google.

I happened, by chance, to be at lunch today with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, the lead venture investor in Twitter, when we got the news (via Twitter, naturally). I called out to him at the counter, while he was ordering our food. "Fred, Google bought Jaiku."

The big win of course would be if Jaiku supported the Twitter API in a plug-compatible way. Then all our apps that work with Twitter would work with Google's new tool.

http://jaiku.com/api (Doesn't appear to be a clone of the Twitter API, but they do have an XML-RPC interface, which of course we like.)

Scoble called while we were at lunch, saying this isn't about Twitter, it's about Facebook. Probably so.

In any case, our world changed today, while we were in a cab on our way to lunch.

Here I am on Jaiku:

http://davewiner.jaiku.com/

How we're twisted by the top-100 lists

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:30:24 GMT

There are now two top 100 lists in the tech blogosphere, Technorati's and Techmeme's.

Mike Arrington's site, TechCrunch, appears high on both lists, it's #4 on Technorati and #1 on Techmeme.

Feedburner reports that 609K people subscribe to the TechCrunch feed.

When I got a prominent link from a TechCrunch piece on September 30, it generated 228 hits (according to Google Analytics). Now it could be there was some other reason less than 1 in 1000 of the readers clicked on the link, or it may be that these sources are over-reporting the influence of TechCrunch.

In other words, there may be some kind of bubble going on here.

It could be that the position it occupies on these lists is largely "game" because there are non-editorial incentives for blogs to point to TechCrunch, esp in the Techmeme cloud. Since Arrington's pieces tend to rise to the top of the page, pieces that link to them become more visible (they show up in the Discussion links), and the chances that another blogger is going to point to them go up. All it takes is one or two of those pointers to promote your piece to the top level, and that really boosts your visibility, and now that the Leaderboard is there, it could make that status semi-permanent, creating an even greater incentive to point. So people can and do, at least sometimes, point to TechCrunch not because they think one of their pieces is worthy of a comment for its own sake, rather because it gives them status and flow, and if they're running ads on their site, money.

The only way TechCrunch could be sure that this wasn't the reason people point is if they put a line in their robots.txt file that keeps Techmeme from crawling the site. Then we would know that when someone points it isn't for the Techmeme flow and status, because there would be none. Maybe they will do that. Honestly, I think it would be great for the tech blogosphere if they did. It would force more of those 609K people to use their subscriptions, rather than depend on Techmeme to find the important TechCrunch pieces. In other words it might actually have the effect of boosting the influence of TechCrunch. No matter, that's up to Mike and Heather, I'm just speculating.

And in case anyone accuses me of spamming Techmeme with this piece, I've added a line to my robots.txt file that tells Techmeme that it is not permitted to crawl my site. So you won't see this piece on Techmeme, nor any other stuff I may write today. And no one will point to this piece for the TM juice it provides, because it doesn't provide any. It might be a refreshing break!

PS: I turned off TechMeme, as an experiment, on January 24, and turned it back on on April 12.

PPS: At 2:43PM today's TechCrunch piece linking to this site generated 22 hits. I remember when a link from TechCrunch would deliver 2000 hits in the first hour.

PPPS: I turned TechMeme back on. No one accused me of spamming them. Happy.

I now hold APPL

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:57:22 GMT

Disclaimer...

I decided, after giving it much thought, to buy 300 shares of Apple. I think it's a good long-term investment. And I spend so much on Apple products, maybe this is a way to recoup some of that money, or maybe to spend even more. BTW, the share price is approx $165, so that's about $50K worth of stock.

Wish us luck!