Scripting News

iPhone as photo gallery

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:51:16 GMT

Kevin Tofel explains how to use an iPhone as a portable handheld photo gallery using the beautiful AP wire photos and FlickrFan.

I did a Qik video demo using my Nokia N95. Lots of computers involved, the quality ain't great but the idea is pretty neat.

The UGC limb, day 2

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:29:47 GMT

Following up on yesterday's piece on UGC as a business model.

Lots of commenters, including John Furrier, who asked what I meant by: "We could and should be cutting more fair deals with the people who create the value on the net."

Here's what I meant...

We should be sharing more than kudos with the creative people and more than revenue too. That's the next bubble that bursts, imho, it'll soon be possible for people to set up their own server systems and route around the scams that get people to write stuff that's worth $100 and get paid $10 (and often $0).

It always works that way throughout history with technology. What's difficult and mysterious in 2002 is commodotized in 2008.

I think Amazon S3 and SimpleDB and EC2 etc point in that direction. Scalable apps are quickly becoming commodities. The priesthood of developers who can make scalable apps is about to burst into flames.

I've been around this loop too many times to not recognize it.

I could just have easily made this piece about any one of a number of different people who have set up boundaries that I'm not supposed to cross. I don't have any upside in not talking about them, other than some anonymous cowards will post comment spam here if I cross the lines. Big (expletive) deal, I say.

Now, what would be more fair deals?

1. First and foremost -- equity. If I'm going to pour my creativity into your business, I want the same upside you give a key engineer, or the massage guy or cook at Google. There's an invisible line that Silicon Valley hasn't figured out how to cross, yet. Some startup will figure it out, they'll give equity to their key users and community members, and their business will get all the good content.

2. Control of my own data. The clearest sign that a company thinks I'm a sharecropper and they're the bossman is that they won't let me move my data where I want it to go. If you give me the power, that doesn't mean I'll use it, btw. It might mean quite the opposite -- empowered to use my data in more meaningful ways, I might be happy to leave it where it is. Imagine if Fidelity wouldn't let you move money to Schwab. I don't imagine too many people would put their money there. Great writing and art work the same way.

Now what are the key trends to watch for?

1. As I said above, the key elements of scalable systems are being commoditized. It's amazing how many apps are migrating to S3. Why Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, to name just a few, aren't getting into this business is a mystery. It can't be much longer before one or more of them do.

2. The next step after that will be packaged applications that deploy through Amazon that you can buy for shrinkwrap prices. Yesterday I downloaded a Jabber server from Jive Software. Nice, but it would be so much nicer if, instead of installing as an app that runs on one of my machines, it deployed to run on one of Amazon's. If would take care of backing itself up, controllable through a web interface of course, to S3. Give me a small, simple desktop app that burns a DVD of my data, so I can have something local to put in the safe deposit box, guarding against the possibility that Amazon goes away or S3 loses data. This is so rational, we have to be going in this direction. When we do, it'll mean that the magic of the backroom scaling expert will become a commodity you can buy cheap. Another priesthood goes poof.

And here's the key point, all that will be left will be the creativity. The users won't need you. So you'd be better off investing in users instead of priests. Or hedge, and invest in both.

Out on the UGC limb

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:52:35 GMT

About the business with Jason Calacanis last summer.

Let's be clear about what happened there, because it happens so often.

He's a vendor with a product.

I reviewed the product unfavorably.

His response was not about the product, it was about me personally. At the time I said "I've never seen an entrepreneur with a product he's supposedly proud of try so desperately to change the subject away from the product."

I still feel now, as I did then, that Mahalo is a bad product, and that its stated premise is a lie. It's not a search engine, it doesn't compete with Google, and his claims that Google is clogged with spam are a smokescreen, because his actual target is Wikipedia. It's obvious to anyone who gives it a moment's thought, but it's not said publicly on the blogs of people in Silicon Valley. Why? Because criticizing Jason is a messy business. It's easier to say nothing.

It happens so often in discourse on the net, there are so many subjects that are taboo, people you can't talk about without provoking personal attacks. The net is just as good at distributing personal attacks as it is at distributing accurate information. I guess it's not a big surprise, given the course of every other medium, that as the blogging world matures, there are more attacks and less accurate information.

But when we don't say anything we give up a bit of our future. And when you factor in that there are many products, people and companies who are poison in this way, what you end up with is another bubble, created out of the things we don't want to talk about.

I think it's better to take the hits in little increments than continue to build flawed businesses, built on incorrect premises.

Consider this a preamble for more to come, because I think we've gone way too far out on the UGC limb, we could and should be cutting more fair deals with the people who create the value on the net, and we're not doing it. That Mahalo continues to be unchallenged with its nonsense plan is just an indication of how bad discourse is in this medium that was supposed to clean up these kinds of messes. Instead, it perpetuates them.

And, by the way, I've said nothing here that deserves a personal attack. But my guess is that they'll come anyway.

NYT: For Old Rhythm-and-Blues, Respect and Reparations.

XMPP as the basis for interop in TwitterLand?

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:11:12 GMT

Matt Terenzio: "Why we wouldn't use XMPP as the basis for a decentralized microblogging platform?"

Good question. I'd like to play with some simple systems on XMPP. I tried to get started with some scripts connecting to Google's Jabber server over the weekend but wasn't able to get a conversation going. I'll try again soon.

Update: Joe Beda from Google on GTalk & Twitter interop.

Tracking FlickrFan updates

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:31:56 GMT

A long-standing loose-end.

A feed that tracks changes to FlickrFan.

If you're running the software you'll get the updates automatically, this feed is for the documentation of the changes.

Almost ready to back Obama

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:38:05 GMT

After listening to Meet The Press today I'm almost ready to support Barak Obama for President in 2008. Here's why.

FlickrFan events navigator extended

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:11:02 GMT

In previous versions of FlickrFan you could only see today's picture downloads and code updates on the Events page.

A feature request came in saying it would be nice to be able to go back in time, and I totally agreed. That's the way it works in version 0.43, released this morning.

Details, screen shot.

Update on NYTimes on iPhone

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:53:07 GMT

Here's something coool -- I was able to give the NYTimesRiver an icon on the iPhone desktop.

Russell Beattie explains how it works.

Pretty simple. You just put a file named apple-touch-icon.png in the top level of the website. It must be a 57-by-57 png image.

If you added the icon before this update, you might want to do it again to get the graphic version.

NYTimes on iPhone

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:14:25 GMT

With the new version of the iPhone software, v1.1.3, you can put web pages on the home page of the phone.

This is good news for NYTimes news junkies, because you can now put a river of NY Times headlines one click away at all times. It's that easy to find out what's going on in the world, just as easily as you check your email.

1. Click on the Safari icon

2. Visit http://nytimesriver.com/

3. Click on the plus sign at the bottom of the screen.

That's it! Now the NYT headlines are always right there. It's really killer, imho.

PS: Phil Torrone is a NYTRiver/iPhone user.

Thanks to Yahoo!

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:12:42 GMT

Thanks to everyone at Yahoo who helped make the first public demo of FlickrFan a success on Thursday night. The meetup was well-attended. There was only one glitch in the demo, otherwise every feature showed off well. There was a lively discussion. Got some great feature suggestions, met some cool new people and reconnected with some old friends.

Yahoo had a video camera there, not sure when they'll publish it, but there will be a link here as soon as it is online.

Thanks to Chad Dickerson, Salim Ismail, Bradley Horowitz and all the Brickhouse people for helping make this happen.

No one asked this question

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:16:35 GMT

Amazingly no one asked this question at the meetup, but it just came up in an email from a journalist who works at a gadget site you've heard of and probably read.

The question goes like this.

Now that Apple is reading Flickr feeds in AppleTV, maybe there's no point continuing to develop FlickrFan.

I always wonder what's behind this question. Does the person think that people who use FlickrFan will stop using it because AppleTV can read the RSS feeds that Flickr produces? How would that work? I don't understand.

I bought an AppleTV, I tried fitting it into my lifestyle, but it didn't. Apple's vision of how the Internet connects to the living room is a very controlling one. They attain a certain ease of use, true -- but the trade-off is too great. I like all the special effects, but I like to be in control of my own experience. I want to be the programmer. And I despise DRM as much as my customers hated copy protected software in the 80s. It does nothing positive for me, as a user, and I don't think it works for the vendors, but then that isn't my problem, it's theirs.

I much prefer the Mac Mini to AppleTV, and to everything else. But this question has always been the stinkbomb lurking over the whole Mac market. The reporters don't stand up for the vendors. What does this guy want me to do? Would he prefer if I stopped developing FlickrFan? Will he say I'm stupid if I do. Maybe I am. Hey, I don't ask for any money for it. Basically I do it because I want to help create a DRM-less environment for us to enjoy networked living rooms.

FlickrFan is one of the things I'm working on. Sure it's crazy to think that I could actually contribute a little to the Mac platform. Apple surely is going to crush me tomorrow, maybe they already have. But why do users care? Why do reporters? It seems to me that we all benefit from choice. When it's a single-party system things stagnate. When there's competition, new ideas can gain traction even if it doesn't fit into the Apple vision for its users. (Which is fairly limited, read this Doc Searls piece written in 1997, it's every bit as true today as it was then.)

Hey if you think building on Flickr is crazy, think about this. My next product competes with iTunes as a podcatcher! I must be out of my mind, eh?

Finally, I could ask this guy, who I respect enormously and whose work I read practically every day, a similar question. Hey Apple writes about gadgets on apple.com. What does that say about YourGadgetSite? Got any plans for a new job? Perhaps a new career? Now that would be just rude, wouldn't?

How about some respect for developers?

Can't believe we're still having this discussion in 2008. Can't we get past this?

What is Coral8?

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 03:48:40 GMT

Continuing the thread on decentralized Twitter...

I read this story on DBMS2, as part of the initial discussion, that explained there is commercial-grade software used by the financial industry that they believe can handle, reliably, much greater traffic than Twitter is handling now.

The category is called CEP, an acronym for Complex Event Processing.

This evening, a comment from Mark Tsimelzon, the CTO of Coral8, one of the leading companies in this area. He offers a pointer to their developer site, a download of the software, and help when needed.

An interesting turn!

FAQ: Is decentralized Twitter just IRC?

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:30:44 GMT

In the recent vigorous discussion about decentralizing Twitter, a frequently asked question was What's the diff betw that and IRC.

Now I could be missing something, if so, I apologize in advance, but I think the answer is No.

Something that's fascinating about Twitter is that everyone's experience is different. Some people subscribe to 100 people, others 5000, I've even seen people who follow 0 people. No one subscribes to exactly the same people you do. And just because you listen to someone doesn't mean they listen to you, and vice versa. There's a tremendous variety of different experiences. Yet each of us feels as if we're in a chatroom. That's the paradox of Twitter. It kind of feels like IRC while it is nothing like IRC.

What Twitter is most like, imho, is an RSS aggregator. The people who work on Twitter call it a micro-blogging system, because to them, that's what it's like, even if the users don't see it that way. I understand what they're saying, as I think through the possible ways to decentralize it, invariably I'm led down paths I've already walked in implementing blogging software and RSS software.

But IRC is very symmetric -- if I listen to you, then you listen to me. And vice versa. There are ways to block someone in IRC, but it's an opt-out, where in Twitter listening to someone is by default off, and you have to opt-in. Very different experience. In IRC it would be considered a drastic measure to block someone. In Twitter, there's nothing offensive about not subscribing to someone.

Further, you rarely see trolls or flaming in Twitter, because it doesn't work, just as it doesn't work in blogging. Unless you flame someone in an interesting or funny way, you're not going to get many followers. So guys like Loren Feldman, who is funny, gets a lot of followers on Twitter. And the normal grouchy and anonymous trolls who dominate mail lists rarely gain followers on Twitter (or blogs).

Twitter is fascinating, it's like the elephant and we're all blind men feeling our way around unaware that other people see it completely differently.

FlickrFan for iPhone?

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:58:12 GMT

I was talking with Bijan Sabet, an early user of FlickrFan, and he asked a question that I didn't know the answer to.

Bijan: "I'd love a way to have FlickrFan photos on my iPhone."

Early-on, I turned off synching for my iPhone, but it should be possible to synch one or all of the FlickrFan folders with the iPhone. I'll investigate, but I'm interested in knowing what other people think.

A blog post in a comment

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:32:25 GMT

Doc Searls: "My main long-term concern is with The Environment."

Decentralized Twitter, day 2

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:15:56 GMT

Interesting comments continue to appear in the thread we started yesterday.

http://www.tribler.org/ sure sounds interesting!

How are you feeling?

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:23:37 GMT

Okay, if the mind is powerful, how is your mind making you feel today? It's worth thinking about -- with the stock market down this year, every day worse than the last, many of us are losing lots of money, I know I am, and it's not a good feeling.

I keep arguing with myself, even though I'm losing money at a huge rate, I'm still in good shape financially, I have a nice house, I can pay the bills. But it doesn't help. Inside I feel unsettled, poor, I'm having trouble concentrating.

Does it help that I've been through this before? The crash of 1987 was much worse than this downturn, and then I had no cushion, nothing to fall back on, I wasn't even employed when it happened. I was a lot closer to being broke around the turn of the century, even though the market was doing very well. But it doesn't help. No matter how many times I've been through it, I've always known that it's cyclic, that the outlook will likely improve, but knowing isn't the same as feeling. The feeling is much stronger, it can't be counteracted with logic. I can't reason with the feeling, you might say it's un-reasonable.

Then I heard that a friend of mine, much younger, with a lot less at stake in the market, is having trouble sleeping because of this feeling. I realize I'm not alone, probably millions of people have a heightened sense of insecurity right now. Does that make it better? Not really...

Anyway, I thought, let's post something and find out how others feel about the economy and how much of an impact is it having on our state of mind.

The power of the mind

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:01:23 GMT

I heard a report on NPR a couple of weeks ago, and thought it was very interesting.

A study of a group hotel maids found that even though they lead active lives, get lots of exercise, their health isn't good. High blood pressure, overweight, body-mass index, the usual signs of a sedentary life.

They interviewed them, asking if they were active -- no. Did they get exercise? No. (The correct answer was yes to both.)

So they formed two groups, with one group they did nothing, with the other they had a series of classes where they showed them how doing maid work compared to other forms of exercise. The kept going until they understood that they were active and living a healhty lifestyle.

A few months later they checked blood pressure, weight, BMI and amazingly the group they had educated had become healthy!

FAQ: Why only 20 pics?

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:11:39 GMT

When you first subscribe to a feed in FlickrFan you generally will get 20 pictures in the folder for the feed. People wonder why this is and how they can get more.

The reason for this is that Flickr keeps the 20 most recent pictures in the feed for each account. So when I post a new picture to my Flickr account, it replaces the oldest picture in my feed. Then, anyone who has subscribed my feed, will get the new picture next time they scan. It works the same way RSS works for blogging or a newspaper -- you only get the last few posts or stories, not all of them, in the feed.

I think this is the right way to do it. You might feel that 20 is too small, but people would probably also want more if they just got 100 pictures.

So the answer is over time you will get more pictures, if the person posts more pictures.

Library of Congress Flickr feed

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:50:10 GMT

Wow, this is really really coooooool.

The Library of Congress is partnering with Flickr, releasing pictures that it believes are not copyrighted, through Flickr.

One of the fantastic side-effects of that is that there's an RSS 2.0 feed of those pictures that connects perfectly to FlickrFan.

If you click on this link on the machine that FlickrFan is running on, you'll automatically subcribe to the Library of Congress feed on Flickr.

This is one of those moments when the standards are working, really well.

PS: If for some reason it doesn't work, try clicking on this link to get the latest update (v0.42), then click on the link above again.