Scripting News

Flash Leopard conference, Monday PM?

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:19:53 GMT

An idea I've been thinking about for a while and looking for an opportunity to do is a "flash conference" along the lines of the flash mobs that were so popular a few years ago.

Here's how it would work...

Some event happens that focuses the attention of bloggers, one where there's a lot of ground to cover and at least two or three different ways to view it, one where the combined expertise of 5 or 10 bloggers would make a big difference.

The event would last at most 3 hours, would be webcast live, and be edited into a 1 hour program within 24 hours.

As many of us are waiting for delivery of Leopard, the new Mac OS, it seems that this may be an opportunity for such a conference.

We'd have to find a facility in San Francisco that could house this. There would need to be room for 20 or 30 people, and it must also have decent networking.

Then the question of who would we turn to for expert opinions.

Some ideas...

1. A Mac software developer.

2. A gadget blogger (Engadget, Gizmodo, etc).

3. A creative artist (it is a Mac after all).

4. ???

5. ???

This is meant to be an instant idea. I have asked the question on Twitter and your comments are welcome here as well.

Update: Loic Le Meur has volunteered the offices of his SF startup to host the flash conference. Cooool.

Eric Callis wants to have a flash conference on Leopard in Chicago on Monday.

USB-DACs

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:27:05 GMT

A USB-DAC connects through the USB port to a Mac or PC, and to an amplifier and speakers. Apparently you can get much higher quality sound from your computer, for as little as $200 with the Stereo-Link 1200. I didn't know these products existed until I heard a report on the Tech Talk podcast, and read the article in today's NYT.

Seems like I'm going to have to buy one. Amazon doesn't carry them. Not sure where to buy.

Update from Kevin Newman: "If your audio receiver has optical digital inputs, and your computer has optical digital audio output, connecting the digitally allows the receiver to do the D-to-A conversion. If you have an expensive receiver, it already has nice converters. That would almost certainly sound better than taking the analog minijack output from your computer. I'm not sure how the sound would compare to one of the external DACs listed in the article, but a digital connection is less clutter and less expensive."

Why I bought AAPL on Oct 8

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:01:29 GMT

First, let me gloat.

I bought $49,761 of AAPL on Oct 8.

My investment is now worth $54,933.

That's 10.5 percent growth in less than a month.

Hah!

I bought the stock because I was going to buy everything Apple sold from now until forever. The last product I had yet to purchase was the company's stock. That was a mistake. The beauty of owning the stock is that you can use the increase in value to fund the hardware habit. So far so good.

My very dear friend Sylvia Paull bought an iPod a month ago. In a blog post today she calls it a gateway drug. Having read early reviews of the new operating system, she's ready to buy a 24 inch iMac.

I recognize the signs.

It's like a virus I tell you.

PS: I just checked on at the Apple store. My family pack of Leopard has shipped, and will arrive tomorrow by 10:30AM. Now that's cool! No penalty for ordering online vs visiting the store. Way to go.

A poem for Facebook

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:15:35 GMT

Now that Microsoft has invested in Facebook, I'm reminded of a poem an anonymous correspondent wrote when I was working with Microsoft in the late 90s.

There once was a lady from Niger who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They returned from the ride with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.

It didn't turn out that way then and might not turn out that way now, but it's still a cute poem.

From Jacob Harris: "There was a young lady from Ride, who ate a green apple and died. The apple fermented inside the lamented, making cider inside 'er insides."

Facebook app or Firefox plug-in?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:27:29 GMT

Which is a more interesting platform -- Facebook or Firefox?

This was a topic of conversation at the Web 2.0 Summit last week in SF, not on stage, but in a LobbyConversation between myself and venture capitalist Bijan Sabet.

Bijan Sabet: "I like that Firefox developers don't have to live in a world where they lie awake at night worried that the platform company is going to make life hard for them."

What do you think??

Your living room on the Internet?

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:38:28 GMT

Click To Play

New search tool

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:27:24 GMT

I replaced the Google-based search tool in the right margin with one from Lijit.

Screen shot.

I found the Google one took up too much space, and I couldn't easily configure it, I never used it, and I grimaced every time I saw it (it felt like an eyesore).

Let's see if this one works better, it sure looks better.

The regal Silicon Valley

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:28:55 GMT

Watching various people (on Twitter) get on an airplane to go to Hawaii to an insider invite-only Silicon Valley conference, and thinking about the various business ideas the valley is floating these days, advertising, and how valuations work, and how unaccustomed the insiders are at having their ideas challenged, I came to a few rapid-fire conclusions last night on Twitter. (One good reason to follow me on Twitter is I tend to blurt out things there that would get me in trouble here on my blog.)

Twit #1: "I have a theory that 'user generated content' is a last-gasp of the regal outlook of silicon valley, where we're all chumps or slaves." (Before UGC we were just supposed to be eyeballs, consuming their shovelware, buying stuff we see in ads. They had to adjust their thinking when it became apparent that we were also interested in creating, though we're positioned as generators not creators.)

Twit #2: "The role of the tech industry is to create tools and players. To enable creativity, not harness and control it." (I think this is when it all works best.)

Twit #3: "If you're scared to hear what people really think you're not prepared for the world you live in." (I finally figured this one out. The reason so many people in SV say I can't be trusted (it's observable) is because I'm equally likely to say your product sucks as I am to say it's great. This is a culture raised on Gee Whiz editorial coverage, the adulation of MSM. When blogs came along they had to hear that not everyone thinks they're so wonderful all the time. Who would you hate most but the guy who pushed the tools that made everyone with an opinion so audible. And would you expect such a person to keep his opinion to himself? Heh.)

Even though I think this, I know I'm actually full of shit...

Guy Kawasaki asked me once why so many people say I'm not a nice person, when in fact I am. If I saw you on the street I'd smile and say hello. I stop when someone is in the crosswalk. Nothing makes me happier than making a tool that people enjoy. I try to listen to everyone, and I don't care how much money you have. I never answered Guy's question, but here it is. If you asked me why some individual person thinks something, I'd say you'd have to ask them. That's basic respect. Let people speak for themselves. If you ask me why 100 people think something, I'm even more clueless.

BTW, Guy and I weren't friends for a long time after being good friends for a long time. I much prefer having him as a friend, I missed his company while we weren't talking. He doesn't suffer fools, and he's the first person to question his own thinking if someone says he's wrong. I've seen him do it, and I was totally impressed. People like that figure stuff out. People who don't want to learn about bugs in their thinking go through life with a lot of bugs. Today, and beyond, everyone has great tools for saying what they think. If you can't stand to hear it, you're not going to like the future very much, sorry to say.

Doing a new build of the OPML Editor

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:19:31 GMT

The next stop on my tour of development projects is to ship some new software that runs inside the OPML Editor. The software is designed to run on a Mac Mini that's attached to a big screen HD-TV. So the way the OPML Editor boots up now is inappropriate for this application. It presents a dialog and opens a weblog editing window. Instead this app interfaces through a web browser, and runs in the background.

So I need to come up with a way to not run the startup code for the weblog editor. I'll be taking my notes here, so that later when I want to do the same thing for another project I'll know how to do it. And since the OPML Editor is open source, the notes can apply to other people's projects if they want to do something similar.

1. How do you create a plain text file using the software Apple ships with the Mac OS? The TextEdit app doesn't have that option, amazingly. I found one very ugly way to do it. Open a .txt file. Then the options on the Save dialog give you a way to save as plain text. The real answer: It's a preference.

2. The OPML Editor will have an opmlStartupCommands.txt file in the application folder. The first line will set user.prefs.flStartupDotOpml to false. dotOpmlThread.script watches for this, and if it's present and set false, it won't start up.

3. Add this to the to-do list. I need to get Bonjour working inside the OPML Editor, with the minimum of fuss.

I never metadata I didn't like

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:17:29 GMT

Jacob Harris leads this piece about the metadata of the NY Times with the corniest tech quote I've ever heard.

I heart corny quotes.

Jim Forbes evacuated in San Diego

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:04:35 GMT

A retired reporter, Jim Forbes, was evacuated from his mountain home near San Diego, and tells the story on his blog.

Did TechCrunch screw a source?

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:16:53 GMT

Nelson Minar says he likes TechCrunch, but they're not journalists so be careful what you say to a TC reporter at a party. He cites two examples where he feels they acted unethically.

In one example, the reporter seems to use off the record comments exactly as they are supposed to. Most non-disclosures require that you keep the information confidential, but only until someone else discloses the information to you. If you get it from another source, on the record or off the record, the NDA is no longer enforceable. In this case they got confirmation from three off the record sources.

The other is just an example of a dumb story, not a violation of journalistic ethics. To say that a big company told a lie is hardly news. If it were about something material and not the age of one of the founders, then it would be newsworthy. But it's not an example of an integrity breach. (You can make a mistake and still have integrity. It's only a problem if you knew it was wrong when you wrote it.)

Imho, too much is made of whether someone is a journalist or not. You read reports like this one from a high reputation news organization, written by a journalist, that contain no information but leave a sensational impression for people who don't know technology well enough to know that the reporter is talking nonsense. I'd rather read the opinion of a non-journalist who knows the subject and can defend his or her position, and clearly discloses their interest in the subject. At least I'd learn something, and no one would be misled into believing they were getting "news."

However I do applaud what Nelson wrote because he had the guts to openly criticize TechCrunch. People from outside Silicon Valley must wonder why hardly anyone does, given that they are at or near the top of most lists ranking tech news sources. Why should they be immune to examination? Answer -- they shouldn't.

I wish TechMeme had an item-level opt-out

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:41:15 GMT

Of course people would like to have an item-level opt-in, to guarantee a post would earn a top position on TechMeme, but obviously that's impractical, so why not give us the power to say please don't include this story in TechMeme, it's too meta.

When I say a piece is too meta, it's not news, it's news about news, what the Big Media guys call a process story. For example, I would prefer to not have this piece, the one you're reading right now, on TechMeme. It's now meta-meta, because I'm talking about the meta-ness of the piece. You can see this could go on forever, now I'm in meta-meta-meta mode. For a brief moment I went into quadruple meta mode. (Sometimes I get so deep into a joke I wonder if people are still with me.)

Seriously, some pieces just shouldn't be on TechMeme. And I know which ones those are. So instead of making me turn off the TM spider for my whole site, why not give me a way to say "Stop TechMeme spider, this item is off-limits." We could come up with a TechMeme namespace for RSS 2.0. I'd be happy to help.

Namaste!

TechMeme for the NY Times?

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:51:01 GMT

A few notes on the NY Times outline...

1. I switched it back to the frequency sort, having tried it as an alphabetized list for about 18 hours. Now I want to see what happens with it flipped around so the most frequent keyword bins appear first.

2. Not sure, but I think it will empty out later this afternoon, as yesterday's stories expire, and before tomorrow's stories ship.

3. It seems that at least some people have bookmarked the site and are refreshing it. If so, I'm glad -- because that's the way these pages are most useful, they tell you something about what changed. Remember this is "news" not olds.

4. The outline view is something like TechMeme for the Times news flow. Not exactly because the keywords are assigned by people. Unseen news mavens. Where do they reside? Are they on the upper floors or in the basement of the NY Times skyscraper on 8th Ave, or somewhere inbetween? Maybe they work out of their homes. My mind wants to visualize these people, but I have nothing to cling to. It's not an algorithm that's determining where things sort out, it's people. Otherwise known as editors? Or are they librarians?

5. Do you bookmark the outline or the river? I'm a river guy for sure. I wonder about other people.

6. Francine Hardway twitted at me: "Times River is awesome on my iPhone! Was reading it while waiting for eye surgery and it was very distracting." Amen. That's the big secret. I wish there were a way to get everyone to look at the river on their cell phone. Eyes would open.

7. Thinking about integrating the two views, cross-relating them. Not sure exactly what I'll try first. That's why I wanted to let it settle in for a bit before moving in a other directions.

8. Of course, I know that if this ever becomes a "real" product, the user is going to control the view he or she wants to be the default. But for right now I'm experimenting. I want to see what people think. Enough people were asking for an alpha view that I wanted to see what would happen when I gave it to them, and if anyone would scream. Screaming isn't a bad thing, it's data.

Wii, day one

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:13:29 GMT

My new toy arrived late yesterday, too late for this weary boy to want to set it up. This morning I put it on my to-do list. Item #3. Set up Wii. So that's what I did.

I have a receiver that's connected to the other new toy, a Samsung 52-inch HDTV, and the Wii connected up to the receiver, and the receiver was already connected through component video to the TV, and when I cycled through the inputs on the TV's remote, voila, there's the Wii. Smooth as can be!

And that's where we got stuck. I installed everything according to the instructions or so I thought. A screen comes up saying you should press the middle key on the remote which I did, and it chirped kindly, and then presented a screen asking me to confirm that I speak English and no matter what key I press, nothing happens. Nada. It just sits there. I'm ready to bowl, play tennis, design Mii, whatever cooool things you can do with a Wii, but that's where we are.

Okay. We'll get past this. I hope. :-)

Update: I called the 800-number for support, and they had me go through a trouble-shooting procedure, that was actually fairly interesting. I explain it in this picture, which indicates that the sensor bar appears to be okay.

Update #2: I tried standing on a chair, moved 10 feet back, 15 feet, even 20 feet. Moved the receiver to the bottom of the screen. No cursor shows up. Rebooted a dozen times, resynched three or four. Something is screwy here, but I'm no closer to knowing what it is. :-(

Here's a movie that demos the situation.

Click To Play

Stop

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 01:25:09 GMT

Good morning!

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:42:01 GMT

After an intense week with the NY Times metadata, I'm going to put it down for a bit, take care of some other stuff, and put together some downloads of other software I've developed over the last few months so they can move to the next stage. I also want to set up the new toy today and see what that's like. And then I got an email from Jason Etheridge, who is listening to all the Morning Coffee Note podcasts, and finds that quite a few of them are missing. More in a minute.

Missing MCNs

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:02:14 GMT

Jason Etheridge has been working his way through the archive of Morning Coffee Notes podcasts, and has found a bunch are missing. I'm going through the list, using archive.org, local backups, Google, and whatever else I can think of, to try to find the missing MP3s. These are the ones I haven't found yet. (I'll update the list as I work through it, so hit refresh periodically.)

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/TS20041107.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnNov1.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/TS20041028.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnOct16.mp3 *

http://leoville.tv/tlr/KFIAdamCurry.mp3

http://static.scripting.com/blogs/gems/dnc/cnOct7.mp3 *

http://static.scripting.com/blogs/gems/dnc/cnSept27a.mp3 *

* Denotes a file archive.org says they have but can't access because of technical difficulties.

Of course, if you have any clues about rescuing these files, or have a copy of them on your local system, please let me know.

Rescued MCNs

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:58:40 GMT

Here's a list of Morning Coffee Notes podcasts that we have been able to rescue, so far.

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/niccoToothStory.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/gg.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/davewineraudiocomment.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/cnOct18.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/BillRiski200410201copy.mp3

http://static.podcatch.com/manila/gems/un/TS-2004-10-28.mp3

In-process MCNs

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:32:54 GMT

Lost podcasts that I've found, but haven't been able to upload yet.

http://www.komonews.com/radio/audio/herb_tip_111004.mp3

http://media.skybuilders.com/Lydon/Dean.Q&A.Aug.03.mp3