Scripting News

Today's links

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:03:01 GMT

New Gallup national poll, Obama 47, Clinton 46.

More test posts coming, adding new features to my new toy.

Just made a few changes so this is just a test. Please ignore.

Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) on This Week, making a lot of sense about Cuba.

Frank Rich's scathing postmortem of the Clinton campaign.

What am I up to?

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:47:33 GMT

I have a neat little app that runs in the OPML Editor that, every five minutes, gathers all the new twits from people I'm following, and runs them over a set of "callback" scripts, that can do whatever they want to with them. The first one I wrote looks for an exclamation point at the beginning of one of the ones I wrote and routes it to a special place on Scripting News.

This is quite visible because 4700 people follow me on Twitter, and they all see the exclams at the beginning of some of my twits, and some have asked for the script. Not much point in that, because it only works with my one-off CMS. It could be made to work with blogs that use the OPML Editor outliner, but there aren't many of those. If someone in that community asks, I'll upload the app, and keep it updated, that's easy, but without support (not easy).

I may add the ability to put callbacks in a folder outside the OPML Editor, written in AppleScript, if there's enough interest. But that's not a promise.

I wrote this for myself -- not to solve a problem for others.

I think the right way to deal with this, btw, is for the developers of Wordpress, Movable Type, Blogger, etc to do the polling of Twitter on behalf of their users. I think Twitter makes a decent linkblogging user interface. People with blogs are using it that way -- I am. Now I don't have to feel so guilty because the links make their way back to Scripting News, where they started.

Today's links

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Where my Twits that begin with exclams end up.

Obama lets his confidence show.

Today's song: El Paso by Marty Robbins.

Random questions for the day

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:17:21 GMT

My mind is buzzing with lots of interesting little projects/ideas.

1. I want to find a way to flow some of my Twitter updates to Scripting News, into a Today's Links section, or Random Questions for the day (like the post you're reading right now). Here's an example. I'm using the exclamation point to delimit an update that I want to appear over here. Maybe that's not the right special character. Equal sign? Slash? Backslash?

Update: Sol Young has been thinking about this too.

2. Do people use AppleScript these days? I honestly don't know. I'm thinking of making a tool to run in the OPML Editor that calls one of your scripts when a new Twit from someone you follow comes in. The script would be in a special folder on your desktop and could be written in AppleScript. It seems to me people want to script Twitter, and I know how to make it easy. Not sure if AppleScript is the way to go in 2008.

3. Scoble is really into the BlogTalkRadio zero-config podcast tool. That's so cool. Scoble is a useful guy to have around. Want to know what a user thinks or likes? Ask Scoble.

4. I went to see There Will Be Blood today. I had to see it cause everyone says it's going to win a boatload of Oscars on Sunday. I liked it. Great acting. Not exactly a feel-good movie, but that's okay. Adults like movies that aren't necessarily feel good. (But I still think Juno is the best movie of 2007, and I'm a big fan of Michael Clayton.)

5. The talking heads on cable news don't get the point in yesterday's USA 2.0 post. The Dems should be aiming at running the table, taking solid majorities in both houses and a mandate-level plurality for President Obama, an LBJ-level landslide. We need a government, not more bullshit. The Republics need to move over for four to eight years so we can resume our position of leadership in the world, the new world, not the old one. The one where our workers have to compete for the business. We used to get all the business by default. That's not the world we live in anymore folks. The Republics don't get that.

6. Most people seem to be missing the substance in NY Times story about McCain and the lobbyist. It's not really a scandal, what happened is that the lobbyist was going around telling people she had special access to McCain, which seemed to be substantiated because she was seen around town with McCain a lot. Whether they were having sex or not is a distraction. That his aides met with her and told her to stop saying she had access was perfectly natural and appropriate. It happens in Silicon Valley too.

United States 2.0

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:00:14 GMT

During the debate my friend Lance Knobel wrote a post wondering if perhaps Hillary Clinton was conceding the nomination to Barack Obama.

By the end of the debate, I too thought that's what had happened.

Maybe we can see our way to something wonderful, instead of a continued struggle. She gets to be a major figure in the US Senate supporting a Democratic President. Not bad. Maybe she's the new Majority Leader.

Maybe the goal isn't just to win the White House but to get a strong majority in both houses.

A woman Speaker and a woman Majority Leader.

And a black President. What a way to roll out USA 2.0.

PS: I'd like to see Obama pick Senator Jim Webb of Virginia for vice-president.

PPS: Webb gave the Democratic response to the 2007 State of the Union.

Campaign conference call MP3s, day 2

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:17:17 GMT

Lots of leads for the MP3s of campaign conference calls after yesterday's piece, but so far not one actual MP3 has been squeezed out of MSM or the campaigns.

I made official inquiries through the Obama and Clinton websites, no response yet. At least the Obama website seemed to understand that I wasn't offering to stuff envelopes or drive people to the polls.

Hillary explained, in an email response, that she gets a lot of email and can't respond to each one individually. Then she listed all the ways I could help her campaign, including giving her money. That's a pretty incompetent way to respond to a press inquiry.

One professional reporter explained that they don't publish press releases so why should they make the MP3s of the conference calls available. Oy. They clearly don't understand that as voters we might have an interest in unfiltered access to the actual words of the campaign. It never occurs to them, apparently, that not every voter sees their spin as a total value-add.

Four years from now we'll look back at this in amazement that there was a day when campaigns hid their words and ideas behind the filters of the press.

Anyway, until we have a regularly updating feed with MP3s of the campaign conference calls, I won't stop beating the drum.

Steven Mays: "I'd love to hear these calls, raw and unedited."

Where did the 35 years come from?

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:15:38 GMT

William King asks how Hillary Clinton justifies her claim that she has 35 years experience in government. It boggles my mind how Hillary came up with a grand total of 35 years of political experience. I know she has seven years of being a senator. Now she has never served in a political position, or a public office, prior to that. Neither has she had a high profile job in the government: she wasn't a secretary of any department. So where has she gotten the other 28 years from? That I would truly like to know.
Good question. Looks like a real stretch.

Where did Dave go?

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:58:34 GMT

Over time, I'm using Twitter more and more, and posting less to the weblog. I'm still posting lots of links, but you have to follow me on Twitter to get them. I'm looking at ways to cross-post some of them here.

I'm also considering ways to centralize communication in the FlickrFan community, which is growing nicely. I'm concerned because mail lists almost always turn into platforms for people who don't use the product to sneer at it. So I'm looking for some way to strike a balance. I like hearing from users, but I don't have the time to deal with others.

If you have questions about the podcatcher, for now, please post them here:

http://codecasting.org/podcatcher/00001.html

Thanks!

AppleScript to add a podcast

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:48:57 GMT

I had dinner on Sunday night with an old friend, Andrew Grumet, who now works at PodShow. I met Andrew when we were both in Cambridge, MA. He was one of the people who showed up at Berkman when we started the bloggers group that meets every Thursday night (and still does as far as I know).

Andrew went on to lead the development of iPodder, which became Juice, the open source podcatcher written in Python that Adam Curry started. I told him about my efforts to create an AppleScript that would copy an MP3 to a (possibly new) playlist in iTunes. Andrew pointed me to the code they developed for Juice.

I had a few minutes to try it out today, it took a little clumsy tweaking and fiddling to get it to work (I don't really "get" AppleScript), but it works! I just copied a new episode of Face The Nation to my New Podcasts playlist in iTunes.

Here's the code.

Screen shot.

Onward!

MP3s of candidate conference calls?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:25:53 GMT

They talk about them all the time on the news shows, every day the major Presidential candidates have conference calls with reporters.

It seems much of the real action in the campaign happens here, but we (voters, taxpayers, citizens) have no access.

I listened to an MP3 of one of the calls, with the chief strategist and communications director of the Clinton campaign. It was fascinating, gave me a picture of how the press and the candidates relate that I had never seen before.

Now I want more -- I want it all!

I've been asking around, where can I get MP3s of all the conference calls, the day they happen, in full, not spun through the reporters, and so far have come up with nothing. So I'm bringing this issue to as many people as I can think of who might either know how I can get them, or apply pressure to one or more news organizations to make them public.

I'd of course like to see them made available as an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures, so it will be accessible to everyone with a podcast client. I would help create this, even host the feed if necessary.

Anyone at a major media organization would have access to this content. I'm pretty sure it's all on the record. Any help would be much appreciated.

Podcatcher for FlickrFan users

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:01:18 GMT

If you're using FlickrFan, you should have a copy of podcatcher.root in your Tool folder. If not now, at the top of the next hour (launch the OPML app so it can do the update).

I want to get started with a small group of people, develop features, and then figure out how to broaden it, if that turns out to be the right thing to do. For now, I just want a testbed to develop, and a group of interested users.

I've put together a brief cheat sheet for FlickrFan users.

http://codecasting.org/podcatcher/00001.html

If you have a question please post it there and we'll try to get you the answer.

Hope it works, and hope you like it.

Busy day

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:46:53 GMT

I'm working today on getting the first release of podcatcher.root out to FlickrFan users.

In the meantime, the BlogTalkRadio people are responding to support questions and updating the service in response to feedback in the comments on yesterday's post.

I think people are beginning to get the idea that this is an API, not an end-user service, although if you don't mind reading XML, it can be a pretty handy way to create a podcast when you're caught in Bay Bridge traffic or riding on a bus, or happen to have an idea while you're talking with a friend on your iPhone (it's really easy to turn a call into a conference call with the iPhone).

I hope people build apps for end-users with this back-end. I plan to use it to facilitate communication between people who use my podcatcher. And of course any other app that can read RSS 2.0 feeds with MP3 enclosures.

It's not meant to be a replacement for high quality studio-created podcasts, rather it's very good for instant note-taking type casts. I want to use this with Scoble to talk about some of the media hackery we hash out when we have brainstorming talks.

Not revolutionary, or earth-shaking, but easy, and a nice thing to have.

Anyway, if you use FlickrFan watch your Tools folder for podcatcher.root.

The simplest podcast API ever

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:37:10 GMT

A new service from BlogTalkRadio...

Call their special phone number: 646-200-0000. It records the call. When you're done it creates an RSS 2.0 feed with an enclosure that's an MP3 of the call.

The address of the feed is a function of the phone number you called from. I just called in a podcast from my Nokia N95, which they added to this feed:

http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/8583429663

That's all there is to it! No registration. They have a web page for it, but it's completely unnecessary.

It's the new application of RSS that I wrote about on Saturday. It's brilliant because of it's so simple.

Some people think innovation in technology is about how hard it is to implement, or how long it took, or how complex it is, or convoluted. They see innovation as wizardry. I see it differently. I'm impressed by the ratio of functionality to complexity. I like that number to be as big as possible, because the less complex it is, the fewer moving parts, the less likely it is to break, and the easier it will be for others to build on the idea.

Hats off to the BTR guys, they've come up with something truly useful that's also very simple.

Could it be simpler? I don't see how.

Ain't too proud to beg

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:59:22 GMT

The Obama Express. My latest piece on Huffington.

If you like it, please feel free to pass it on.

"cheesecake"

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!