Scripting News

Ten red pens

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:35:48 GMT

I ordered ten red pens but they sent ten dozen. Oy.

Today's links

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:23:21 GMT

Flickr: My election return desktop.

Brian Bailey: Bloomberg wins New Hampshire.

Newsgator's RSS products are free now.

Podcasting News: Podcasting comes to TiVo.

What if our political process became conscious?

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:44:19 GMT

I think something pretty amazing may be happening with our political process that mirrors what's happening on the Internet, in the blogosphere. I've been talking about it on and off since the Howard Dean candidacy in 2003, which I think most people misread or misunderstood, seeing it only in the existing context of how it can be used to make a candidate more competitive in raising money to buy ads to run on TV. Perhaps that's what was going on from the candidates' point of view, but it was not what was going on from our side of the tube. What was happening was we were flexing our political muscles using a new tool for organizing, the Internet. We were waking up, saying Hello World to the candidates. One of them heard us, Dean, although he misunderstood what we were saying.

It's as if we, collectively were tapping a microphone and tentatively asking "Is this thing on?"

Anyway...

Let's summarize what's happened so far in the 2008 political process.

1. We had a long run-up of a year or so, with candidate debates, lots of punditry, two front-runners, one in each party, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

2. The Democrats outraised the Republicans for the first time in a long time. Obama actually raised more money than Clinton did.

3. Huckabee, a candidate who raised little money, and who was never considered a front-runner, won the Iowa caucus on the Republican side. Money didn't choose the winner in Iowa for the Republicans.

4. McCain, a candidate who in the end spent very little money and had almost no organization, who had long since been forgotten as a front-runner, won the Republican primary in New Hampshire. Again, money didn't choose the winner in NH for the Republicans.

Now, in the aftermath of New Hampshire, the pundits on TV, most notoriously Chris Matthews on MSNBC, are quickly snapping back with new crazy theories on why what happened happened, but we shouldn't believe them or pay much attention, because they don't see what's happening in the electorate. Neither does Clinton, but the Republicans may be beginning to get a clue (and Clinton will soon too).

My belief: The electorate is waking up. Maybe it's just my hope speaking. Can't tell yet.

The electorate doesn't need messages, just as Doc says there is no demand for messages. What the electorate needs is to hire someone to lead us for the four years between elections. It needs someone who will ground our collective behavior in something resembling reality, so we deal with the problems that are collectively in front of us: 1. The honor and prestige of our country (the equivalent of goodwill for companies, settle the wars we started, accept that we have to protect against terrorism, stop hyping it in terms of conventional warfare, that's insulting). 2. The integrity of our homes (everything from disaster response to changing behavior on a global level to respond to global warming). 3. Caring for ourselves (health, education, protecting the Constitution).

We've gone crazy in the last seven years. The 2004 election was amazingly crazy. The candidates appeared to be running for President of Iraq, that's all they talked about, what was good for the people of Iraq. The lunacy of the electorate is that we didn't throw it back in their faces saying "Let us know when you have something to say about the USA."

We need to communicate with each other and with the pols and pundits without going through the polling process. When they quote blogs on TV they're quoting people who used to be print columnists who now publish on the Internet. That changes nothing.

I'm not expecting very much from people who live "Inside the Beltway." I don't live there, never have, don't even like visiting the place. To me it's much like the arrogance of Silicon Valley. You can't pop out every four years get us to vote for you and then go back into your nest. Politics belongs to all of us, in this country, the people are the government. We really lost our way, now it's time to come back. It's the change that's happening in everything, decentralization, disintermediation. Obama speaks of a plurality, his campaign isn't about a mere election, it's about changing the way we do things.

My advice to candidates going back to Dean was and is to start implementing the change you seek before the election, while you have the full attention of the electorate. Ask us to give money, not to buy ads, but to buy health insurance for 50,000 uninsured people in a particular state, so we can see how powerful we are collectively, how we can do good, starting right now. We yearn for this, to feel our muscles flex collectively, and individually to make a difference, not just in your hype, but in real terms. Hillary Clinton could have gotten up yesterday and said "There's no time to waste. We can't wait until January 2009 to solve the problems. Let's start right now."

Maybe she won't get elected, but getting us organized now would make it more likely.

JFK: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

See how that works??

Glued to the TV

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:01:27 GMT

For the last 24 hours or so I've been glued to the TV, watching MSNBC, Fox and CNN, listening to the pundits and campaign flacks, reading various articles on the web, and thinking a lot about what is happening. I'm glad I'm not at CES or in New Hampshire, I didn't want to miss this process, as I did in 2000 when I was in Europe during Iowa and New Hampshire, another period of a couple of weeks when things changed a lot.

At this point there's absolutely no doubt that the candidacy of Barack Obama is a movement. Whether it's like Martin Luther King or JFK, I can't say -- I am not old enough to remember those (I remember their deaths, but nothing else about them).

So if it's a movement, what is it about?

I think it's this -- there are a lot of Democrats and independents and even quite a few Republicans who feel that the Bush II presidency has been a disaster because of the war we started, the incompetent response to Katrina, the trampling of the Constitution, the cynicism, secrecy and arrogance of the government.

But it's not fair to just blame the Republicans, the Democrats must be punished too -- for their complicity. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards voted for the resolution authorizing the war. Neither of them spoke out against it as we were going to war. I do remember those times, and had they spoken out they would have been crucified, but when you're running for President that doesn't excuse you. While many of us didn't stand up and object either, we now have to choose someone to lead us, and we're not going with someone who compromised when it came to our national honor (the war), our homes (Katrina), and the integrity of our political system (the Constitution).

In a normal year, the Edwards plea to fight special interests would be welcome and enough, even radical, but in 2008 it is not radical enough. True, the war was started because both parties are owned by the defense industry, Edwards claims he doesn't receive their money, implying that Clinton does (and Obama?). The hypocrisy of Support the Troops really translates into Pay off the Defense Contractors. We must place part of the blame for the Iraq debacle on the defense contractors, who fund all our politicians, of both parties.

So Obama may not in fact be the leader we're looking for, but the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa have annointed him anyway. He may have waffled on whether he would have voted to support the war, but it may have been, as he says, not wanting to make trouble for Kerry and Edwards in 2004. He may have received money from the defense industry, if so, that had better stop right now.

Obama, like Carter in 1976, may be our pennance for having re-elected Bush in 2004. We're taking the medicine we deserve for having been crazy enough to re-elect someone who was so bad for us. The only president of the past even remotely in Bush's league was Nixon, who we followed with a smiling preacher who didn't accept the ways of Washington. We didn't like him either, it turns out.

Obama is also, apparently, the medicine that the 20-somethings are forcing the elders to take. I confessed to a friend that my discomfort with Obama comes not only from not trusting his record, but also what it says about me. If elected, he will be the first President who is younger than I am. Thus begins yet another step in the long decline. As I said the other day, our choice of president is someone who most closely validates our view of ourselves relative to the country and the world. Obama is dissonant to me, because in my mind, the President is older than me. Maybe not any more.

We could do worse, much. And maybe those who say that Obama is easy prey for Karl Rove and his brothers, lurking in the shadows, waiting for someone to work for, are right. Maybe for that reason those of us who will vote Democratic this time should hope for McCain over Romney or Giuliani. It's hard to imagine McCain using the tactics of the Swift Boaters, but hard to imagine the others not using them. Huckabee? Interestingly he says the Republicans shouldn't be so quick to attack Obama, because he represents something good about the people. That is a refreshing idea -- a political leader focusing on the wants of the people. I still think Huckabee may be the first DIY candidate, the first one who embraces the 21st Century VRM model for co-existing with your customers (pols call it their "base.") Even Obama isn't so eloquent about the people.

This week things are changing. Things were pretty bad before, so change must be good, right??

New FlickrFan feature

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:17:56 GMT

1. Be sure the OPML app is running.

2. Update to get version 0.40 of FlickrFan.

3. Now, when you upload a picture using the drop folder a web page will display with HTML text that you can copy/paste into a blog post or other web page. Screen shot.

4. You can disable this feature on the Drop Folder prefs page. Screen shot.

If you have any questions please post a comment here.

Why Yahoo should buy or merge with a TV network

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:26:02 GMT

As I said above I'm glued to the TV, but I'm also on Twitter, and blogging, and email, and IM and I'm subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds, and I've been noticing that slowly the TV news organizations are integrating new Internet services with their TV offerings. They're all getting started, and eventually I'm pretty sure they'll be where Yahoo is now. The thing is, it works. For example, newmediajim is a cameraman for NBC News and he's on Twitter and sometimes I'm watching the other side of his camera on MSNBC and twittering with him before and after. A guy named creepsleepy is a radio guy in Manchester, interviewing presidential candidates, wouldn't it be great if I could listen to his interviews while he twitters his progress? Well, there's no doubt that soon we'll be doing that.

We're finally really at the convergence so many have predicted for so long. With the help of a few members of the community Yahoo can get there first.

BTW, I read on the NY Times site that Yahoo is going to open up more to developers. Hmmm. If you want to impress end-users and shareholders run it in MSM. If you want to get through to developers, use the developer blogs. Let us have the story first, otherwise you don't seem very serious about it.

Why it's the last possible moment for Netflix to open up

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:31:25 GMT

Comcast announced a service at CES that sounds an awful lot like Netflix. I already pay Comcast over $100 a month for various services. I pay Netflix $20 per month, and what Comcast is proposing is even more useful and easier than what Netflix offers. If it actually is, it would be easier to turn off the Netflix service.

Netflix has a unique opportunity with X years of preference data for users that they still have active relationships with. Open the service up so that other websites can integrate their services with yours, the prototype being a dating site that matched people with others who like the same kinds of movies. Build a network of utility to lock users in with a feather instead of a deadbolt.

The uniqueness of Netflix is about to go poof. Time to build a new kind of uniqueness. It might be too late, but let's hope it's not. I don't really expect Comcast to share data with other service providers. It's not in their nature. Netflix -- zig while they match your (old) zag.

Jimmy Carter in 1976

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:16:17 GMT

Scott's next book

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:54:47 GMT

Berkeley neighbor Scott Rosenberg announced yesterday that he has a contract now for a book on the story of blogging. I've known he wanted to work in this area for a while, now I'm glad he's got a publisher and a contract. I have no doubts it will be a great book, and a foundation for future work.

Future-safe archives in the Guardian

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:46:05 GMT

Charles Arthur: "You can meet Major Olmsted in death as you could in life. The blog, and his site, is still there."

CESgram

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:41:14 GMT

Scoble checks in via Twittergram from CES.

Prefs for Flickr desktop upload drop folder

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:08:57 GMT

This morning a new feature for FlickrFan users.

When you drop a picture into the desktop "drop folder" it's automatically uploaded to your Flickr account. Now you can set preferences for tags, the default description, access controls and content categories.

Change Note #24: Upload defaults.

Two FlickrFan change notes

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:12:46 GMT

Two new bits of news for FlickrFan users.

1. Change Note #22. If FlickrFan is opening in the wrong browser, there's a new preference that tells it to open the desktop website in the default browser, and not to bother launching a browser. You should use this feature if you find it annoying that FlickrFan launches Firefox or Safari. Eventually, if everything goes well, we'll phase out the feature. Didn't want to do it all at once because it's a dangerous place for breakage. One step at a time.

2. Change Note #23. If for some reason your copy of FlickrFan isn't updating, you can always get the latest version, quickly, without losing any of your data or prefs or downloading any pictures again. (Key point.)

ABC News/Facebook debate fiasco

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:54:32 GMT

The Internet doesn't have time zones, and while my colleagues in the blogosphere who happen to be located in the Eastern or Central time zones were watching the debate live on TV, we in the western states were left to either wait three hours, or DIY a Ustream webcast of the debate, which we did. About half way through we figured out how to make the local New Hampshire ABC affiliate webcast work on a Mac, and it was a little easier to understand what was going on.

In 2008, sixteen years into the web, there's no excuse for not broadcasting a political event live to the world. If ABC News hasn't got the ability to do it, then ABC News shouldn't be running it. That Facebook lent its name and reputation to this fiasco is amazing. Why didn't they speak up?

BTW, otoh, Charles Gibson was a great moderator and the format was, in every way, fantastic. What a shame we all couldn't experience at the same time.

Open source hardware in the news

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:28:07 GMT

Bug Labs moves closer to shipping. Yesterday they announced pricing for their component, open source gadget hardware kit.

NY Times: "Neuros Technology International, creator of a new video recorder, has decided to go in a different direction. The company, based in Chicago, is providing full documentation of the hardware platform for its recorder, the Neuros OSD (for open source device), so that skilled users can customize or 'hack' the device -- and then pass along the improvements to others."

Phil Torrone, a longtime champion of open source hardware, must be happy.

Me, who's always looking for, and never finding the perfect podcast player, has more hope if the users get to develop the products.

Logitech Squeezebox

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:32:03 GMT

This product makes big claims, but it's hard to tell through the hype how it works or even what it actually does.

Here's what it sounds like to me. It's an iPod-like device with a built-in hard disk that somehow synchs with a desktop or laptop PC (or Mac?). It also has a transmitter of some kind (FM, wifi, ???) and proprietary receivers can be anywhere in the house, with speakers attached, and you can control any or all of the systems with the hand-held unit.

Screen shot of the back of the unit.

CNET Australia has a review (they seem to like it).

There is an Amazon page for the product ($299) and 11 user reviews. So this isn't a new product? Huh?

Update: There's a new version of the product that's apparently quite different from the previous version. The comments have the scoop, from users, who love the product.

Today's political schedule

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 20:47:06 GMT

You can do a pretty good job of following the politics leading up to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary from television in rain-soaked California.

CNN has an excellent program running all afternoon called The Ballot Bowl. The format is really simple. They have cameras following the candidates and they're broadcasting their town hall stump speeches. They're authentic, based on my experience in the campaign for the 2004 New Hampshire primary.

The NY Times has an excellent resource (no RSS feed apparently) that lists the candidates' schedules. It's also possible to import the schedule into Google Calendar as an overlay.

ABCNews is hosting two 90-minute debates, one for each party, tonight starting at 4PM Pacific. Tomorrow Fox News is hosting a controversial Republican debate, which the Republican Party has withdrawn from because they won't let Ron Paul participate. He's polling third among the Republican candidates in New Hampshire. For once the Republicans got it right.

Update: Apparently ABCNews isn't broadcasting the debate live to the west coast, delaying it three hours to 7PM. Grrrr.

In the very limited time betw Iowa and New Hampshire there's a lot of action and drama. Romney all of a sudden is shamlessly the candidate for change. There was an Ahmadinejad moment when I thought for sure he was doing parody, but he was serious. He's changed his attire, but his pitch is still the sleazy VP-Sales who got promoted to CEO. Change change change, I can change too, just watch. Please die now. I don't think anyone stands for Romney.

Giuliani and Thompson are still nowhere to be seen.

Edwards is doing a good job of keeping the game on.

McCain is earnest and honest, but he's old and small and tired.

Obama has the aura of a front-runner and Hillary seems to believe that if only Iraq were still the big issue she would be where Obama is. Even so, according to recent polls she's likely to win New Hampshire.

A lot of my friends on Twitter dismiss Huckabee, and to be clear, I could not vote for a Republican this year, no matter who their candidate is, but he is a fantastic American personality. Elections are all about feelings, not policies or positions or even records as the pundits insist. Who you vote for is a function of how you feel about the country and the world in relation to yourself. The candidate who comes closest to validating your feelings is the person you vote for. I think we'll tire of Obama quickly, and we're already tired of HIllary. I think the rational choice for each party, although many disagree, is Edwards and Huckabee because each of them tap into the well of frustration Americans feel about everything.

But my guess, which will ~~probably~~ certainly turn out wrong, is that the Dems will nominate Obama and the Reps will nominate Huckabee, and Huck will win.

PS: After writing this, I wonder if George Lakoff would agree. I think I've just used a very Lakoffish process, unwittingly.

PPS: I went to UW-Madison. Bucky Badger is the school mascot. Our favorite cheer and T-shirt said Fuck em Bucky! It occurred to me the same slogan would work for Huckabee.

How to open a web page in the user's default browser

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:32:32 GMT

On the Mac, in a Frontier or OPML Editor script.

sys.unixShellCommand("open http://scripting.com/")

I want to be able to find this tidbit later in Google. Please ignore.

Trade Secrets 2.0?

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:01:34 GMT

Just got off the phone with Scoble.

He told me about a blog post he just put up, entitled Erased.

He says something really simple. When Facebook had an issue with him, they erased his presence.

Seems they could have frozen his account leaving his presence as-is until they could figure out what to do about it.

Anyhooo...

We want to do a podcast from our phone conversations. I'd love to use Twittergram, but we're limited there to 30 seconds. I wanted to use BlogTalkRadio, but their service does so much more than we want, and you can't just call it when you have an idea you want to record. I'd like to try something other than Utterz, so if you know of something, please let either Scoble or myself know.

Think of it as Trade Secrets 2.0. It's the same idea that got me doing a podcast with Adam Curry in 2004. We were having interesting private phone conversations where we'd get around to saying sheez why the fuck aren't we recording this stuff. Scoble and I are at the same place now.

So if you know of some service we could use, or if you can convince the BTR guys to give us the service we want (that would be my first choice) please let me know.

Today's song

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:27:37 GMT

And I keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you're dead you can't
But I'd rather be a free man in my grave
Than living as a puppet or a slave

Jimmy Cliff, The Harder they Come.