Scripting News

Maybe Flickr should have a Twitter?

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:42:39 GMT

Last summer, when I was exploring the edges of Twitter, and building a voicemail service that hooked into Twitter with BlogTalkRadio, and then hooking my digital camera up to Twitter through Flickr, it seemed inevitable that Twitter would eventually support "payloads" so that objects like pictures and MP3s could hitch a ride on a Twitter message without using up any of he 140 characters, and with a neat url-less display.

The idea just kind of sat there, we've been quietly using the services, accepting their awkwardness, but without direct support from Twitter, they probably won't become mainstream.

Along comes Twitxr, in a post by Mike Arrington on TechCrunch, and I go -- why? This doesn't seem right. Too many steps. I have it much easier, Twitter is hooked right up to my camera, I never have to get my desktop or laptop in the loop when I want to post a picture. To prove the point, I'll now take a picture of this post, and shoot it up to Twitter.

So now Twitxr basically says it's time to give up the wait for Twitter, and maybe they're right, but for this??? I don't really think this is what I want. If I have to use a whole new Twitter for photography, I probably want it to be Flickr, which I already use, whose API we've already mastered, whose scaling we trust, and even though Yahoo's future is in doubt, it's more certain than that of a startup.

Choice #1, if the Twitter guys are listening, is to go ahead and help us, your developers, create something seamless out of what you already have. No matter what it's easier for users to stay with what they're already using. It really isn't, it seems to me, in your interest to have users switch??

Twitxr throws down a challenge to both Flickr and Twitter.

To Twitter: Scale, scale, scale and add payloads to the API.

To Flickr: Go ahead and do an event streamer for pictures.

Alan Jones: "Twixtr seems to do a pretty fair job of guesstimating my location with each image I upload from my iPhone."

The Obama Express

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:38:45 GMT

Last night a bunch of us on Twitter watched the C-SPAN broadcast of the Democratic Party dinner in Milwaukee where both Clinton and Obama spoke.

Clinton was unusually good, but as Frank Rich says in today's excellent NY Times column, "It's hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama."

Obama was far from mediocre last night. His speech was of such high caliber, so motivational, even in anger Obama is the man, he keeps getting better and now he's in league with the best American political oratory. The man is only 46 years old.

Last night's speech is archived on the C-SPAN site. We're having trouble with it on Macs but it's reported to work well on Windows.

So many of us want to get on board the Obama Express. This is the America we want. This is the leadership we've been lacking. You have to go back to Kennedy's "Ask Not" plea to find a leader as inspiring as Obama.

And inspiration matters -- totally.

How else are we going to get past the wedge issue politics of the last N years. We need some good strong glue to connect us again.

The last eight years have been so terrible. The US government did more to help Iraqis than it did to help Americans. 49 percent of the electorate was held in contempt and then after the election the other 51 percent was held in contempt as well. No one but the cronies of the Bush family were given access to power. Iraqi politicians had more influence on our government than Democrats.

Yesterday I heard that 5 percent of the homes in Detroit are in some form of foreclosure. It's almost as bad in parts of the sunbelt, California, Arizona, Florida. And the mortgage crisis isn't over. There are more cliffs in the coming months, more junk mortgages whose payments balloon in the summer and fall, so there will be more foreclosures, more families going bankrupt. Those who think the government will bail them out should think about how effective government help has been in Louisiana and Mississippi, American states that are still economically under water, almost three years after Katrina.

Fred Wilson is concerned about the superdelegates thwarting the will of the electorate and ratifying the wrong candidate for President. I'm not worried. Read the Frank Rich article I linked to above. Obama is a freight train. The superdelegates aren't stupid, they can see, better than you and I, where the power is flowing. They want to be on the right side of history. And Obama is not naive, he's running a campaign on them now, just as he ran campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc.

Obama will sweep the remaining primaries, and by March 4 it will be apparent to everyone but perhaps Bill and Hillary that it's over. The superdelegates will adjust to get in line with reality.

New Gallup poll

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:06:04 GMT

For the first time Barack Obama has a statistically significant lead over Hillary Clinton, 49-42.

Draft Lessig

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:50:37 GMT

1-2-3 fix for boring conferences

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:05:23 GMT

Most conferences are brain-numbingly boring, right?

All the good stuff happens out in the lobby.

Right???

Want to fix conferences? Easy!

Just move the speakers out into the lobby.

You could put some mattresses in the meeting room for people with jetlag to catch up on their sleep.

It's just Scoble!

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:03:19 GMT

Talking on the phone with Steve Gillmor.

Another call comes in.

"Hold a sec Steve."

Pause.

"Never mind, it's just Scoble."

We had a good laugh.

I said it would be a good name for a Scoble TV show.

We both agreed. Even better, Scoble would probably like it.

I called Scoble back.

Sure enough, we were right!

Another application for RSS

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:10:58 GMT

On Monday, a new application for RSS.

Brilliant!

As far as I know, it's never been done before.

And no, I didn't invent it.

I heart EyeTV

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:13:15 GMT

One of the neatest gadgets I've bought in the last year is a high-def receiver to work with the EyeTV software. It plugs into a USB port on my Mac, and it receives digital high-def programming over the air.

I put it in my upstairs study where I've got a clear view of San Francisco Bay, and the reception is very very good. I get all the big networks this way, was able to record last night's episode of Lost in full HD fidelity, for example. Just for the cost of the disk space.

And the best thing is that I get a half-dozen different PBS broadcasts. I've recorded somegreat stuff. My favorite so far is a special from 1967 Monterey Pop festival. Wow. So many heroes of the rock revolution when they were young and dewy. I'm watching Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane singing one of their classics.

I forgot how optimistic those days were.

There's this moment where the camera moves to Mama Cass watching, studying -- in awe of Janis Joplin, performing Ball And Chain. There's art, and media, networks, and the future viewed through the lens of what's now relatively ancient history.

Scoble wrote the other day of technology so great that it made him weep. I know the feeling.

Why Valleywag doesn't work

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:33:05 GMT

Valleywag is mostly puff pieces. I guess they're writing about people who, for one reason or another, they don't want to offend.

Typical of business press. Don't screw your sources or else they'll dry up. Don't speak ill of Steve Jobs or else no cover picture for you.

So, it's reasonable to conclude -- if you read something unbelievably nice about someone in Valleywag, that person is a source.

Thing is, they're reduced to attacking about five people. And the flow is miniscule. A pointer from VW is worth about 20 hits.

In other words, hire a business reporter to do VW, and you get Infoworld, about 25 years too late.

Senate roll call on FISA renewal

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:43:23 GMT

President Bush is going all the way to get amnesty for the phone companies who assisted the government in what appear to be illegal wiretaps of American citizens.

The Senate, even though it's controlled by Democrats, went with this nonsense (roll call). The House acted as a firewall, and voted for FISA renewal without amnesty. Good for them.

Among the Presidential candidates, Obama voted against amnesty (thanks), McCain voted for, as did all other Republicans, and Clinton didn't vote, even though she was in DC and could have.

What if you were a criminal President?

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:08:03 GMT

President Bush wants to give the phone companies immunity.

Who would you like to give immunity to?

What crimes are you willing to excuse?

Putting outages to good use

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:16:42 GMT

If you're a regular user of Twitter you're probably quite familiar with this image.

They've tried lots of variants, making it funny, or cute, with pictures of LOL Cats, doing cute things with screw drivers, but the pictures aren't funny for long, the more you see them, the more tiresome they get.

Then I had an idea they could be used for a good cause.

Yeah that does it!

How to get Twitter to declare your love

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:44:39 GMT

Those little devils who keep the gears turning inside the Twitter machine added a toy that's got the community sending public love missives whizzing around. You can figure it out yourself, or you can cheat and read this howto.

@lovelyperson <3

Substitute the name of your lover in place of "lovelyperson" and you've just broadcast your love to all of TwitterLand.

While we're on the subject of Twitter, a couple of other items.

1. A must-read piece in today's NY Times, gives a clue why kids don't go for Twitter if their parents use it. No kid wants to be observed by his or her parents. Would they go for it if their parents weren't there? No one knows.

2. Conventional wisdom says you can't build a scalable distributed Twitter out of RSS. At first I accepted this, as a puzzle, then I remembered that's why we put the cloud element in there. I felt that for some applications polling would be too much. Since the cloud element has been largely ignored, most of the the apps of RSS couldn't scale to do what Twitter does. But if RSS desktop apps like NetNewsWire or FeedDemon were adapted to understand the cloud element, and if a proxy system was worked out to get through firewalls and NAT, it might just work.

3. Or you could use XMPP.

For the Twitter FAQ

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:26:29 GMT

This Meg Fowler post should be part of the Twitter FAQ.

"I even love the people that unfollow me because I won't shut up. I support your efficiency and realization of my inherent freakiness."

That pretty much sums up the mutual laissez-faire-ness of the culture that forms around a tool with the feature set of Twitter.

About my Seesmic investment

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:26:55 GMT

Today, Seesmic, the company founded by Loic Le Meur, announced their initial $6 million funding. Several people noticed that my name isn't on the list of investors.

I'll probably end up kicking myself when Seesmic becomes the next Google or YouTube. I remain a fan of the company and Loic and his team and will be rooting for them.

Why did I get cold feet? It has nothing to do with the product or the company, both of which appear to be outstanding. It's the stock market. I had to make the final Seesmic decision as I was getting out of stock, at a significant loss.

The only stock I hold now is AAPL, and sadly, it's way under the price I paid for it on October 8.

Like a lot of other investors, right now stocks give me the willies. I will likely get back in, slowly, a little bit every week to average out the price, hoping the market has found a bottom.

I don't care if Roger Clemens is lying

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:25:56 GMT

I'm a lifelong baseball fan, and I don't care if Roger Clemens took steroids, or if he is lying or if McNamee is lying.

News is stuff that's important. If it's national news, it's stuff that is important to everyone in the nation. Whether Clemens took steroids or not is a proper topic for a 60 Minutes, Fresh Air or Nightline segment. To take a whole day across all the cable channels the day after three pivotal primaries is very wrong. (And what if they do it again tomorrow? Oy.)

So it's ridiculous that all the cable news channels are broadcasting the full testimony of Roger Clemens and his accuser. Hours of repetitive questions and the same answers, over and over, while there is news happening in the world. I know because I'm subscribed to the MSNBC and AP feeds on Twitter. I have a Google Alert that shows me results of all the campaign conference calls. (There have been a couple this morning, from Obama and McCain, I'd love to get MP3s, and still looking for a feed.)

It's time for some serious routing-around, or for the cable news programmers to get back on the job.

Elisa Camahort: "Oh God, I so agree."

Cross-posted at Huffington.

The mind of Yahoo

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:11:55 GMT

Yesterday while we were waiting for returns from the Potomac Primaries, some disturbing things started showing up on the wire. Layoffs at Yahoo, long planned, were now happening. People we knew were leaving. This morning we have a better idea of how wide the layoffs were.

You have to wonder what they're thinking at Yahoo.

Odds are that Yahoo is going to be acquired, even though they rejected Microsoft's offer, it's not clear that there's another way forward. The possibility of going it alone seems even slimmer after the layoffs.

Why would Yahoo want to self-inflict more doubt about its future at this moment where doubt is its worst problem?

There's only one explanation. The layoffs were planned before Microsoft made its bid. "Business as usual" may be the order of the day, but this order should have been held until the Microsoft situation has cleared. If Microsoft is the new owner, let them decide who should go and stay, and whether Yahoo as a whole can operate with less profitabiity. As a division of a larger company they have less direct responsibility to shareholders. If they're going forward alone, then perhaps the layoffs still make sense, or maybe not. When tech companies are acquired the people are the primary asset.

You gotta wonder what Microsoft thinks about this. Maybe it's the ultimate poison pill. Let's get rid of the talent that Microsoft wants to acquire. Of course that's a poison pill that would surely kill the patient.

A hint in a postscript

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:30:23 GMT

Dare Obasanjo works at Microsoft.

In his blog post about the Yahoo layoffs, in a postscript, he indicates that Microsoft is interested in creating a Twitter clone.

I've said openly, on Twitter (and now here) that I would like to be part of a venture that aims to create a scalable Twitter. I've had several conversations with people who are attempting to do this. I haven't done a deal yet.

My bet: There will be a lot of growth in Twitter in the coming years, and it seems likely that the Twitter company will not be able to scale their systems to meet the demand. There are features that should have been in the product and in the API months ago that are on the back-burner, likely due to Twitter's constant battle to meet meet demand (scaling).

As a user, I'd like to view the product and the company as a black box, but that's impossible with the system glitches and outages. What users are doing now with Twitter is far more important, imho, than the servers, or the company. The company, understandably, thinks their issues are most important, but that's a matter of perspective. We don't own any stock in the company, so our perspective reflects that. To us, they're a utility.

All this is a verbose way of saying that Microsoft applying their resources and scaling knowhow to this problem woud be an interesting development.

Resolving the super-delegate issue

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:08:38 GMT

Michael Markman asked his rep to support Senator Obama, because his district went for him in the Washington caucus last Saturday. The response he got is one we've heard frequently. What about Kennedy and Kerry, will they vote for Clinton because Massachusetts went for her?

What I said: "They're independent questions. It's a rhetorical trick to try to invalidate your opinion or confuse you. You want your rep to support Obama. Period. Let's send emails to Kerry and Kennedy saying the same thing."

In any case...

I don't think it's going to be such a big issue.

The remaining primaries are a referendum on the two candidates. The voters of Virginia, Maryland, DC, Wisconsin, Vermont, Rhode Island, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, et al, will decide. Whoever they choose will be the nominee. The super-delegates who invalidate that decision do so at considerable risk. In the age of the Internet, we have excellent communication tools. There will be no way to hide such a decision. That's what makes 2008 different.

A possible Democratic ad for the fall

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:11:06 GMT