Scripting News

The Sunday Gang

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:41:08 GMT

I've been a regular watcher of the Sunday morning political talk shows, and I've always in my heart wanted my own show. Then I started talking about it, people kept telling me just do it. So today I did.

http://sundaygang.com/001.mp3

My guests are Nicco Mele and Morra Aarons, a married couple, they live in Medford MA. Morra is a frequent guest on CNN and writes at BlogHer. I met Nicco when he was working on the Internet for the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Nicco was famous for switching to McCain a couple of years ago, but now he appears to have regained his senses. He still likes McCain and explains why in this 33 minute conversation which was cut short by the battery on my phone running out.

The next Sunday Gang show may actually come on Tuesday night, after the returns are in from Texas and Ohio. Hope you enjoy!

PS: I haven't got the RSS feed ready yet, I'll post a link here as soon as it is.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

How many blogging platforms are there?

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:49:25 GMT

My post yesterday about my excitement over innovation in the Pownce API, led to what, in retrospect, was a predictable backlash from users who don't want:

1. Twitter to get more complicated.

2. To switch to a service with less users.

3. To switch to another service.

And who do want:

1. Twitter to get more reliable.

I feel largely the same way, even so, I'm still going to:

1. Fill out the connective glue between my development environment and Pownce.

2. Revise my Flickr and podcasting tools to post to Pownce in addition to Twitter.

3. Possibly develop new services that can only work with Pownce because of their (new) API advantage over Twitter.

Now, what does this mean for the market? Hard to know for sure, but here's what it could mean:

1. Twitter might be inspired to match the features in the Pownce API, thus blunting the new edge Pownce has.

2. Pownce could become more popular and may prove to have the same or worse scaling problems than Twitter.

3. Pownce could retain its edge, allowing different kinds of apps to be built that run on their network, and both continue to grow and deal with scaling in their own ways.

4. Something else.

I'm pretty sure what won't happen is:

1. Pownce kills Twitter.

In blogging there are many platforms and related technologies. They all work differently and appeal to different groups of people. I suspect that's what's going to happen here.

Ouch

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:01:50 GMT

I looked up blogging to find the names of some more obscure ones, the first hit was the Wikipedia page, and out of curiosity I searched the page for my name. It's not there. All kinds of people get credit for building blogging as a practice and tools for blogging, but apparently, according to Wikipedia, I had nothing to do with it, nor did Scripting News or UserLand.

Anticipating some of the lectures I'm likely to get, no I can't fix it, for two reasons: 1. It would be like editing my own bio page (which I haven't looked at in ages, and don't want to). 2. It would certainly get reverted in seconds.

Of course it's likely this will be changed within minutes of my posting this. Check back later to see how it is after this has scrolled off. And that's why, btw, we need blogs, wikis are not enough. Otherwise we'd all have to accept the mass view of history, as filtered through trolls. Blogging lets you object to the democratic view, and may result in a more accurate story. I say may, and not will, because it seems people are willing to accept Wikipedia as authoritative.

Oh well. Sighh.

The verdict is in: The Pownce API kicks Twitter's ass

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 04:45:25 GMT

Sorry Ev and Biz and Jack, but they got your number over there at Pownce.

I've been asking Twitter to support payloads for months now, and now I have what I was asking for, but it came from Pownce, and it's beautifully implemented, far more than what I was asking Twitter for.

Let me state the problem.

I was at the Apple store in Palo Alto today, and I snap a picture on my iPhone and shoot it up to Flickr. I have an agent running on my server that watches for new pictures on Flickr. When it detects one, it posts a link to the picture on Twitter. Here's what that looks like.

http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/765476227

It's great because it works, not because it's pretty because it's not pretty. See the URL there. I'd much rather have it be an icon. That was the plan for the Payloads feature.

Earlier today I heard that Pownce has version 2 of their API that includes posting new messages. A message can have a link. So I wrote a script to test that out. After three tries it worked. Here's the equivalent to the Twitter post above, in Pownce.

http://pownce.com/davew/notes/1442724/

Look at how beautiful it is. Exceeded my wildest dreams. Oh man. It looks better than it does on Flickr!

Twitter was my first love, but now I'm seriously considering a fling with Pownce.

PS: If you can't read the Pownce post, here's a screen shot.

Fear bombs of 2008

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:30:31 GMT

The first time this year I heard Lakoff talk I asked how the Republics would attack Obama. Without hesitation he said three words: Barack Hussein Obama.

From his confidence I gathered that this was like asking if the 49ers would use a passing offense when Joe Montana was the quarterback. Or that the Oakland A's with Canseco and McGwire would depend on home run hitting. There's a certain logic to the Republic machine, Lakoff understands it.

In 2004, when they ran the Swift Boat ads, claiming that John Kerry, a war hero, lacked integrity and courage and was disloyal (ads run on behalf of a draft dodger and recovering drug addict), the candidate and his campaign said they hated the ads too, and the loophole in campaign finance laws that allowed them should be closed. But they did nothing to stop the ads or counteract them (they could have run opposing ads, for example, saying they want a campaign on real character issues, not lies). Of course they didn't do that because the Swift Boat ads were central to their strategy for winning.

2004 should have been a referendum on the war in Iraq, instead the focus was on the campaign itself. The swiftboat ads were run over and over, for free, on all the networks. They are so easily manipulated. You think this wasn't in a Republic Party plan from Day 1? If you said no, you need to go back to the school of hard knocks for a refresher course.

So now we have the H-bomb, Obama's middle name, and the Republics are starting early. Sure the candidate disavows it, even though the words were introduced at his campaign rally. No one interrupted the speaker. McCain waited to apologize until after the event was over and the audience had left (they might boo him, why take a chance). Karl Rove, meeting with Republic strategists cautions against using Obama's middle name. The national Republic Party slaps the wrist of the Tennesee Republic Party for using Obama's middle name in a press release. This is an exact replay of 2004.

Michelle Obama calls this the "obvious, ultimate fear bomb."

Josh Marshall says it's "channel conflict."

Like 2004, the Republics must be betting that the Democrats won't respond, because, as in 2004, their candidate is more vulnerable to this kind of mischief than Obama is. One could point out that there is a child from a Muslim country, Bangladesh, living in the McCain house, his adopted daughter. It's true isn't it? Obama himself would say he abhors this kind of politics, and no doubt he does. The child is Asian, but she's pretty dark-skinned. I wonder what that means? It's just a question. Can't we ask questions?

What I don't get is people who support Obama, old enough to remember swiftboating, and still willing to wait to "see what happens." There's no waiting. They're using exactly the same play that worked so well in 2004.

It is early, but it is almost too late to stop the escalation.

And it seems the power to stop the escalation belongs to McCain and him alone.

Look, he's the new leader of the Republic Party. Apologies don't cut it. Is that how he's going to deal with foreign leaders? Is he going to apologize at the first sign of trouble, or does he have the courage and will to solve the problem. Either he's the Republic's leader or he's a wimp. There's no inbetween. He is responsible for what his party does. No amount of double-talk will absolve him from that.

The correct answer, which he did not give, is threefold:

1. Apologize first to Obama and his family, at a personal level, for allowing his podium to be used to imply that he's anything but a patriotic and loyal son of America. You want some extra credit, say you're proud that he has a chance to be President, that it says to the world that the United States is diverse, and we practice our stated philosophy of being open and democratic. (There's nothing wrong with this. Do what the Dems have been doing, say no matter what the US is going to get an excellent leader this time around. It's time for Americans to unite as the Dems have united.)

2. Apologize to the American electorate, liberal and conservative, on behalf of some very nasty people who call themselves Republics, but don't come close to reflecting the values of the party of Lincoln. They are free to vote for whoever they want, but your campaign, which is an American campaign, will stick to the very real differences between the candidates, not lies or implicit lies, for example, that Obama is a Muslim (he's Christian).

3. The hardest part, but the one that really matters -- Take control of your party and commit to us that it won't happen again. Again, if you want extra credit, bring Obama on stage with you, and Hillary Clinton, and all three of you say that this isn't the America you want, and that swiftboating will not be part of this election.

It's rare that history presents one such an opportunity as the one being presented to McCain. He could be a rat and dishonest and might just win the election, but this way of winning is not winning at all. In the end he'll hate himself for what he has become. I believe that McCain is a good enough human being to understand this. He's at a crossroads now, and which way he goes has a lot to do with which way the country goes.

Update: Cross-posted on Huffington.

PS: A frequently asked question -- Why do you call McCain's party "The Republic Party?" It's my small way to remind members of his party that the correct name of their leading opposition is the Democratic Party. That so many Republicans trash the name of their opponent, esp ones like McCain who claim to be honorable people, says that well, they have no honor. I noticed that McCain started doing it shortly after he became the presumptive nominee. I think Democrats and their supporters (like myself) have to get used to balancing this out, even though it may be embarrassing to appear so illiterate.

PPS: For political news I read Memeorandum several times every day. It's great!

Spin

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:13:42 GMT

Links for 02/29/2008

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:00:45 GMT

RWW on XMPP as the foundation of collaboration.

Clinton aides threatened lawsuit over Texas caucuses, officials say.

Links for 02/28/2008

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:10:43 GMT

"They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb..."

"We're at that moment in the campaign that reminds me of a horror movie."

Guidelines for competing with Twitter

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:48:45 GMT

Every time Twitter goes down I think of how can we create something to use when Twitter is down.

There's a difference these days, because there's serious talk among developers about whether or how to compete. Earlier this week at lunch with one of them, I said I didn't know how great the opportunity was, given that Twitter has been staying up, through heavy use during the debates and primaries. Then, as if on call, it started going down. In the last 24 hours it's been down more than up, or so it seems.

And of course that has re-kindled the back-channel.

Some guidelines for potential Twitter-competitors.

1. I don't like names with the word "killer" in it -- even in private. It's the wrong idea. No one will kill anyone. And names you use in private have a way of leaking out in public.

2. Don't use the term crowdsourcing -- it betrays a perspective that's arrogant and wrong. I am not part of a crowd, I am a creative important person. Most Silicon Valley companies have this attitude. It's a good vector for competing. Our users are sentient human beings, individuals. Important not just as a collection of people.

3. Most important, any service meant to compete with Twitter must be 100 percent compatible with the Twitter API. Porting of apps that build on Twitter means making the domain an option, where you call twitter.com it must be possible to change it to mytwitterclone.com, for example.

4. It must be possible to use your clone when Twitter goes down and then switch back to Twitter when it comes back up with no loss of data. If you want smoothe entry into the market you must serve as a backup, earn your place with the users. Everyone will love you because it gives Twitter a very real concrete incentive to become more reliable.

5. To everyone, twitter.com included -- this is a utility like email or IM. Reliability is key. If it's going to be used in business (very powerful idea) then auditability is essential. To assume that users love the product is not a good idea, any emotional connection becomes a negative if you can't keep the system up.

Links for 02/27/2008

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:40:26 GMT

Bloomberg op-ed in tomorrow's NY Times.

Times they are a changing

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:49:59 GMT

Last night's debate really shifted things for me, esp after my talk on Monday with George Lakoff.

First, I'm going to help George and his thinktank, the Rockridge Institute, build their presence in the blogosphere. They're from a different world, they write books, something I'd like to do, but it isn't in my nature. In the same way when they look at communication they think big and longer-term. Instant communication, blogging and podcasting, is not their first impulse. But Lakoff and his associates understand politics in a way that Democrats don't get, but Republicans really do. That is, until Barack Obama. If you really want to understand why the Obama campaign is working and the Clinton campaign is fading, Lakoff understands it, and if you press him, he'll get out of professor mode, and tell you how it works in words anyone with a brain and an education can understand. That's his gift.

Lakoff tells a story about Dick Wirthlin, Reagan's chief strategist, in 1980. Lakoff met him at a conference after he had retired, and the two hit it off. He explained to George that when he started he did a poll, and found out that most people don't agree with Reagan, but they planned to vote for him anyway. I've seen the same thing with Obama. In a comment thread here, Phil Windley, who I like and respect (we have a technology bond) but whose politics and mine couldn't be more opposite, said he might vote for Obama. What! I asked why and he said that Obama seemed to him to have integrity. That's what Wirthlin uncovered. People don't vote on policy, they vote for leaders, for people whose values seem American to them, for people they feel they can trust.

I talked with Lakoff about how the word "liberal" had been destroyed by the right wing, and asked if that was going to be a problem for Obama. He said it wouldn't, because Obama had figured out how to say what many of us believe, that the values people label with the L-word are actually American values. When your neighbor's house is burning down, you don't lecture him on how incompetent he is (though there are Americans who would do that), you get out your fire hose and do everything you can do to help. After you call 911 to get taxpayer-funded fire department to come put out the fire.

We look forward to the coming election believing that this time the "tax and spend" label won't stick for a couple of reasons. Our candidate sees it coming this time, and understands that it's a frame, it's a way that Republicans get you to accept their point of view by letting them frame the discussion in their terms. Do Democrats tax and spend? Sure of course they do. So do Republicans. Nothing wrong with it. Imagine if we all had to hire our own fire departments. Instead we pool our resources and buy fire insurance, in the form of trucks and buildings, and brave men and women who protect our lives and property.

Our government provides the context, the legal system, the services, that make it possible for businesses to flourish. It's naive to think that government doesn't play that role, and the Republicans obviously believe it too. In the seven years Bush has been in office government spending has grown. Have taxes grown too? Maybe not, but borrowing surely has. The money to pay for the war came from somewhere. As it has for many Americans who borrowed against the equity in their homes, there must be a day of reckoning for our economy as a whole. We've been charging our collective lifestyle, this luxury of an occupation of Iraq which is a lousy investment for the American taxpayer (where's the return?) but a great investment for Bush, Cheney and friends in the oil and defense industries. We won't know how much money Bush gets after he leaves office and becomes a private citizen, but I bet he becomes a billionaire from kickbacks he gets from selling us out. This is a tax, and it's our future they have been spending.

While the Republicans have been in office America has become much less competitive in the world economy. Those jobs we lost while Republicans ran the show aren't coming back. And the inefficiency of our health care system, believe it or not, is an important reason industrial jobs are going across the border to Canada, where they have a no nonsense health care system that works like this -- if you get sick you get health care. Geez, does that seem fairly American to you? It does to me. It's kind of like the fire department. We all hope our houses don't catch fire, but when they do, we're damned happy we don't get an argument when we call 911. Why should cancer, diabetes and heart disease be any different? I don't get it.

All of this is part of the story Lakoff tells. You can get a taste of it starting midway through Monday's podcast. Listen to the last half hour if you're short on time. And I'm going to keep pestering him to do more, shorter podcasts with me, responding to current events, as they happen. We'll apply his model to the political system, and watch how Obama openly captures the best of the Republican playbook. It should be something to watch, something marvelous.

There was a grand moment in last night's debate; they played a clip of Hillary Clinton's sarcastic speech about the light shining down, the heavens opening, angels singing, etc. The camera goes to Obama -- he's beaming. He says it sounds pretty good. And it does. America works when we work together. Being American is simple, but people like Bush and Rove and Cheney made it complicated. Americans get shit done, and Americans don't argue when their neighbor's house is on fire. We roll up our sleeves and we can do great things. For better or worse now we need to do some great things. We're lucky that now we have the leadership we need to get started.

And there was the shift in thinking that came from last night's debate. We already have more leadership from this man who hasn't even won the Democratic nomination yet than we have from the actual President of the United States. Further, in the last two campaigns, I have exhorted the candidates to use the money they raise to solve important problems, and realize that Obama had done exactly that. He's uniting us as a country. There's nothing more important, once we remember that we're all Americans and that that means something, we can do so much more than when we're divided by the "wedge issues" of cynical political hacks. We always have had the option to take back our country, now we seem to be doing that.

When we put aside our differences, and I'm not talking about the heads of companies and lobbyists and government officials, but the people, they really can't stop us. We have the means to pass laws that they have to obey and we have police and military to enforce those laws. The founders of our country believed in this, and believed in us, we're not fools to agree with them, we're just using our power.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

IRC for tonight's debate

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:18:43 GMT

I started a chatroom for tonight's Democratic debate.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#ohioDebate

The debate starts at 6PM Pacific.

The Wire winds down

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:45:43 GMT

Warning: Spoilers follow...

The best TV show ever, imho, is The Wire on HBO.

I'm such a fan, I've bought all the DVDs and watched the series in its entirety three times. After the last season, the fifth one, which is winding down in the next couple of weeks, I'll probably go through the whole series again, because now we know how it turns out for many of the characters.

Unlike The Sopranos, there are several main characters in The Wire. In the early seasons there was Avon Barksdale, Frank Slobotka, McNulty of course, Omar and dozens of supporting characters. When Entourage winds down they won't have to kill off the main characters, but in violent shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, that is the main question. That, and who's left standing after all the killing is over. The Sopronos punted on this question, whether Tony dies or not was not clear. Not so in The Wire. They're killing their main characters decisively and unceremoniously, without rock classics playing in the background. One character dies with a shot to the head, which we see, no imagination needed, delivered by the most unlikely assassin (but if you were paying attention over the years, in retrospect, not so unlikely).

The big question in The Wire is who is going to be the next Marlo Stanfied, because Marlo is surely going down. And we're getting the answer, with just two episodes to go, it looks like it's Michael. I predict the last scene of The Wire is like the last scene of the first Godfather movie, with the door closing and a new Don holding court with the new lieutennants. Or maybe Michael is meeting with The Greek, like the closing scene in Casablanca, where Bogart says his famous line to the police captain played by Claude Raines after watching Ingrid Bergman leave on the last plane out of town.

Or maybe the final scene of The Wire will be a reprise of the first scene. McNulty chatting with one of the neighborhood kids, doing a eulogy of another kid, lying dead in the street. This image has been in the opening credits every year of The Wire. It's practically the symbol of the show. It seems fitting somehow that the opening scene would also be the closing scene.

We'll see, but it's great drama, stories woven together beautifully, wonderful acting, and what appears to be an honest wrap-up, coming in two weeks. I can't wait!

6/11/07: "In this age of blogs, podcasts, unconferences and level playing fields, it's sometimes nice to just be in the audience. Let someone else do the work. Relax and reach deep inside our emotional being, and yank out something beautiful or horrible, and have a look."

Interview with George Lakoff

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:40:13 GMT

I spent an hour this afternoon talking with George Lakoff, professor at UC-Berkeley, about the 2008 campaign and language.

http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/cn025Feb08.mp3

I'll write more about the interview tomorrow, but wanted to get the MP3 out right away.

Links for 02/25/2008

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:10:06 GMT

Karl Rove puts his opponents in jail.

SNL debate betw Obama and Clinton, with special appearance by The Obama Girl.

Quinnipiac poll shows Obama gaining on Clinton in Ohio.

Today's links

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:03:01 GMT

Bijan says content synching is a mess.

How to make plants talk... with Twitter!

Andrew Sullivan sings his goodbye song to the Clintons.

The Dems are playing hardball with McC! Lovin it.

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.