Scripting News

Morning coffee notes

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:22:16 GMT

It's going to be another scorcher here in Berkeley and the rest of the Bay Area. You can just feel it. Everything is still hot from yesterday, no time for things to cool off, and while the low humidity means that the outside temp is in the 60s, as soon as the sun rises it's going to get hot again. No buffer.

BTW, to people from Austin and Florida, even the northeast, who say this is nothing, they deal with much worse -- you have air conditioning. Almost no one does in the Bay Area. So when it gets hot, it just gets hot. Indoors and out.

Yesterday the AP-blogger crisis ended. I still think the blogosphere over-reacted, I don't think there was ever a chance that the AP would pursue the case, but it's right to be concerned that it's not over yet. It seems the AP wants to protect their headline and lead paragraphs (why do they call it "lede" -- makes no sense to me). If you take a step back and think of them instead of you for a moment (hard to do, I know) -- this is the most expensive copy they have, the most crafted. As a writer myself (Jay Rosen says so) I respect the quality of writing in heds and ledes. As a blogger and a user of sites that aggregate them, though, I see the other side.

It also seems that fair use is on their side, btw. The headline and lead paragraph summarize what's in the body of the article. If you're reacting to the whole article then just link to it, as I link to Saul Hansell's article in the previous paragraph. On the other hand, in most cases the pubs want you to link to their article enough to give up a bit of their rights. It's like companies don't object if you publish their commercials on YouTube, the more exposure the better. But the AP is a bit of an albatross, they make nothing on flow, they are in the licensing business. So this battle may just be about AP and Reuters, not USA Today and the NY Times, which use a different business model.

What would be great is to have a discussion, even an argument, without the posturing and breast-beating. It's all bluffing, a play for more attention, page-reads, flow, money.

Anyway...

The AP issue is fertile ground for a blogger shitstorm, but there are other issues worth looking at. However if technology is at issue, most users (and most bloggers are users not developers) say "You fix it" -- never stopping to realize that developers have interests too, and my interests might be different from that of a big company or a company that wants to be big. The BigCos take advantage of that confusion. Very often it's the users who get screwed in the process.

I was forwarded an email yesterday posted by a Twitter employee to their developer mailing list that suggests that once Twitter is healthy the terms will change, requiring developers to get a license from the company to use data that previously was available without a license. This is exactly what developers hate, because Twitter gets to decide how much competition they want, they can reserve markets for themselves, even ones they're not serving. No one should have this power, it's not a healthy situation for anyone, not even Twitter, imho. Can't help but think they're killing the goose that laid the golden egg here. Also feels a bit screwy that we helped them build their network, for free (isn't it funny people only look at how they give stuff away) -- only to find that now they want to take back what was open about it.

Twitter lost a lot of momentum with users in the last months. Now is not the time, as the service appears to be coming back on line, to introduce doubt about its future. It has lots of that. We need more certainty.

Newsweek poll results

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:26:44 GMT

I don't generally report polls here, but this one is too stunning not to report. The link came to us via Pollster.com, it's currently the top item on NewsJunk, but it hasn't been reported yet on CNN or MSNBC.

The Newsweek numbers: Obama 51%, McCain 36%.

As they say on Newsweek -- he got his bounce.

A note to Obama supporters, of whom I am one, it isn't over until there's an election and that won't happen until November. But this could be the big turning point.

Update from Doc Searls

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:41:15 GMT

Doc says he's not being courageous, just fighting for his life in a Boston hospital and blogging the whole thing, trusting the universe that everything's going to work out. Good news, it is! He's sucking ice chips and may get out as soon as Sunday. Keep on truckin big dude.

Heat wave

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:26:49 GMT

It's not usually this hot in Berkeley.

Four or five days like this a year. Whew. Hard to stay cool. Not used to this.

DNC plan B -- It worked!

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:09:06 GMT

I want to go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August -- where they will nominate Barack Obama. It was only four years ago when Obama addressed the blogger's breakfast and we all wondered who is this guy, and then he gave the keynote, a rousing speech that served as the platform for the 2008 campaign (he probably knew exactly what he was doing, even then). Now he's the leader of the party, and I really hope on his way to being the next President of the United States.

So I applied to be a blogger at this instance of the DNC, after having done exactly that at the 2004 convention in Boston. I was turned down. No matter, I bounced back and asked if I could still participate in the convention as press, and guess what -- they said okay. So I'm going to Denver. Yehi!

BTW, I still have conventionbloggers.com. Even though I'm not a blogger, I could still pretend.

Hat's off to Doc

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:53:48 GMT

Doc Searls has been fighting to regain his health in a Boston-area hospital. You can read all about it on his blog. I admire his courage in exposing so much of his struggle publicly. I've never been exactly where he is, when I had my one-week hospital stay six years ago (in exactly this period of June) when I got out of surgery I was seriously weak, but already in much better health than I was before the surgery. I was relatively young and fit, so the recovery was more or less a straight line, with few setbacks. As you get older it becomes more of a struggle. If you're not in good shape it's more of a struggle. Eventually, no matter how well you care for yourself, you'll lose the battle, and gravity pulls you into the ground. That's what Doc is fighting. A sequence of events that could kill him. It seems he's gaining. A mutual friend has visited him and says he's going to survive this, but it's not a pretty picture.

I admire that Doc has the courage to document the experience, for everyone. I fought for privacy in 2002, only sharing what was happening with close family and friends. A few readers figured out what hospital I was at and called, I really resented the intrusion. For me the lines between personal and public life are sacred, and never crossed. As a friend of Doc's I appreciate the information, I would much rather be in the loop than guess his condition. But I could certainly understand if he didn't want to share the data with the world, esp if it interfered with his recovery.

He's not the first to document such a struggle, but he is the first of my friends to do it. Bravo Doc, and best wishes for a speedy recovery. Seriously.

When Twitter is down...

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:49:18 GMT

You can go to the beach, take a walk or climb a tree.

Or quietly go crazy.

Or you can use http://twitabit.com/ -- a sweet little tool from the folks at SwitchABit. It knows when Twitter is down, and queues your messages until it comes back.

PS: I own a little bit of this company, so you know.

PPS: Of course twitabit has an API. It does the queuing thing too.

The AP mess, day 4

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:18:11 GMT

I gotta say the AP guys are digging the hole deeper every time they communicate.

But the bloggers aren't helping. Almost everyone seems to be making the story bigger than it is, with a few exceptions.

Scott Rosenberg is doing his usual excellent job of reporting. Sticking with what he knows to be true, and carefully saying what is speculation and what is not. Even Rogers Cadenhead, who I sometimes think as the blogger's equiv of Al Sharpton, is actively trying to douse the flames. But Mike Arrington, who I sometimes think of as the blogger equiv of Lou Dobbs, sees a conspiracy.

Fact is, while I don't support or belong to the Media Bloggers Association, it has been around for a long time. A lot of the bloggers who are expressing their rage are careful to say that they never heard of them, which is hard to refute, but a simple check at archive.org shows that the website has been around since August 2004. It was launched at BloggerCon III in November 2004, at Stanford.

Robert Cox is a real person. He's a Republican, a bit outrageous, but seems harmless, and I think he's doing good work. The blogger who's being harassed by the AP needs help, he's providing it. The press statement by the AP makes it sound like something more is happening. See my first paragraph. They need to learn how to communicate publicly. Amazing isn't it -- here's a media organization that is doing a super poor job of participating in media. The problem for them is that on this side, when they're the source of the controversy, they're just a big corporate entity without much experience. Of course their reporters (are they covering this -- they should, imho) could teach them a thing or two.

We've been around this block so many times. When Dan Rather was being picked to death by right wing bloggers, CBS should have split in two, one half responding to the outrage, and the other half covering it, all sides, all angles. Their reporters had unique access and perspective, and could have presented a more balanced story, one that included left wing bloggers and the core of the story that the right wing guys didn't want anyone to pay attention to -- the hypocrisy of attacking a guy who served in Vietnam on behalf of a guy who dodged the draft at the same time. That story got buried because reporters didn't do their jobs.

I've been where AP is now, when in 2004 I gave up on weblogs.com hosting. I got the shaft from bloggers, and initially from the pros too. But when the furor settled, the pros were willing to take another look and decide if the story had been fairly reported. The bloggers weren't willing.

It was then I realized that this panacea I had envisioned in 1995 had turned out a bit differently than I had imagined. I thought bloggers were going to keep the press honest. Here was a case where the opposite was true. This led me to a softer position re pros -- I believe we need both approaches, and the bloggers who just want to lynch AP are engaging in the worst kind of discourse, it's anti-intellectual, they jump to conclusions, ignore information that contradicts their assumptions that's easily available, and points of view that don't agree with theirs. This is worse than what AP is doing, their lawsuits will not happen, not unless they want to commit corporate suicide. But the bitterness of this shitstorm will linger, for a long time to come.

PS: I noticed yesterday that the NY Times is starting a social network. Told you so. Starting in 2002, and many times since, I asked them to give all reporters blogs, and offer nytimes.com hosted blogs to everyone who is quoted in a Times story. Imagine if they had done that, the kind of social network they'd have now, and the difference in discourse in the blogosphere. Sure it would be opinionated, lynch mobs may still have formed, but some of the authority of the Times would have rubbed off. One can hope. It's still possible and it's still a good idea.

AP mess, day 3

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:04:51 GMT

I spoke with Jim Kennedy at AP this afternoon and talked about the controversy over how bloggers should link to and use information published by the AP. I asked him to look at one of my sites to tell me if it was infringing, and he said it was not, which should put to rest some of the concerns that bloggers have expressed. Please listen to this podcast to get an idea of what happened, and where I think we should go from here.

NewsJunk on Facebook!

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:12:13 GMT

Facebook is the 8th way to follow NewsJunk.

Reddit goes open source

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:17:06 GMT

A very welcome development, as I've written here earlier, I am interested in one-off special micro-community news voting systems.

I wonder how easy it is to install your own Reddit? Any user experiences would be welcome.

$99 for 500GB at Amazon

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:02:52 GMT

I subscribe to a feed of top electronic products at Amazon. In my River of News aggregagtor, I see a few products showing up every day, most are repeats and I have most of them, or competitive products, or have no interest in some (not many, I love electronic toys).

Today a very interesting product came along, not because of its features, rather because of its price. $99 for a Seagate 500GB external. That's a very nice price, it seems to me, so I twitted it, and found out that you can get competitive drives even cheaper elsewhere.

It must be a closeout, who would buy a 500GB drive when you could get a 1TB drive? No matter, it's a milestone. I still remember paying $10K for a 10MB Corvus drive for my Apple II in 1979.

PS: I figured out why they called it Amazon. Because amazing.com wasn't available?

New NewsJunk Junk

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:14:38 GMT

There's a certain symmetry to the headline of this piece.

Anyway... We're working on a bunch of stuff that's almost ready to release. I'm taking notes here and testing stuff as I go. It won't show up in the RSS feed until it's done.

If you look in the right margin on scripting.com you'll see two sets of headlines from NewsJunk.com. The first set are the 5 most recent stories. The second set is the top 5 stories. Both change without the scripting.com home page being updated through the magic of JavaScript includes.

How to include these bits in your blog or website.

Do you want NewsJunk headlines to flow to you through email? We're ready to go with a Google Groups interface, subscribe today!

That brings us to...

7 ways to follow NewsJunk.

Number 8 is coming sooooon.

Remembering Tim Russert

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:06:10 GMT

Tim Russert died on Friday. I never met the guy, but I sure was familiar with his work.

I thought he personified what was wrong with the political process, and I said so. It would be hypocritical now for me to say he was a great man, because I don't think he was. Sometimes I felt the politician he was crossing was well-equipped to speak honestly for himself, and I wanted to hear what he or she had to say, and Russert interfered. It came up in his interview this spring with Ron Paul, who actually had some new ideas that I felt deserved airing, but he couldn't get much of that past Russert, who applied his inside-the-Beltway logic. I noticed he was a lot harder on outsiders. And he was always easy when interviewing members of his profession, who he let speak without interruption, without interrogation. An odd exception, I thought -- it would be nice if they took as much care with their own consistency as they do with the people they interview

Of course his death is a sad thing, for everyone. And I did enjoy Russert enough to listen every Sunday to Meet The Press. Through the magic of podcasting, I never had to miss one. And there's a chance that this ultimate insider would have discovered the power of the rest of us, not only in the aggregate, but as individuals as well. I think they pay lip service to it, and keep it far away and abstract, content to live with their view of the world, as revolving around them, which of course in some ways, it does.

The most poignant eulogy for me came from Bob Schieffer, longtime host of Face the Nation (CBS), who was clear up front, Russert was a competitor, and both of them took the competition seriously. He said that he and Russert were also friends. This is what I want for us in the blogosphere and we don't have it. Competition here is so cutthroat, so personal, that it's impossible to have a relaxed conversation, to learn from people who compete. It would be nice if we could get to that place, if Schieffer wasn't exaggerating for effect, marking the sadness that comes with anyone's passing, even someone whose success you envy.

Update: Arianna apparently sees it the same way.

AP pay-to-quote, day 2

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:50:38 GMT

A commenter named Billenator says it's all about money. It's a good essay, and worth thinking about.

But what's been missing in much of the discussion is an understanding that large entities like AP rarely are of one mind about anything. I first learned this in the 80s trying to make sense of Apple, a company that was, while Steve Jobs was gone, a land of many opinions and much second-guessing. Today's Apple is still a complex animal, for sure, but it presents a simpler interface to the world.

Harvard is an interesting place, all great universities understand that every person has their own opinion, they celebrate that with something called academic freedom. Universities see diversity of opinion as part of their mission. At least good ones do.

AP is a large organization with many opinions, and they're not like Apple nor are they like Harvard. How many people know that AP is a not-for-profit cooperative? Does that change your thinking?

And while it seems that lawyers are running this show, how much do you know about what actually happened here? Are you sure the blogger is telling the whole story? (I have no reason to believe he's not, but bloggers are people too, and sometimes they have motives other than the obvious ones.)

I want to testify on behalf of the AP. I did a deal with them at the end of last year, a quiet one, that the tech community mostly ignored. We didn't run press releases or go on a press tour. I did talk with a few analysts, there were a few articles, but none seemed to catch the trust in the community coming from the AP. It seems that the last 10 years have influenced AP, they are willing to take some risks with their content, but it seems many if not all bloggers are not quite as innovation-aware as they think they are -- how many were willing to give any thought to the unique experiment the AP did with some of their most valuable content? If any were, they never made their presence known to me.

Neither Mike Arrington or Jeff Jarvis, two of the leaders of the AP rebellion, noticed the good work that AP was doing, but they were willing to shut down the relationship between the blogosphere and the AP, over what? All that had happened was a threatening letter was written. Arrington is a lawyer (disclaimer: at one point he was my lawyer) and he knows how insignificant such a letter is. He actually publishes the ones people send him on his site! All of a sudden the earth shakes because AP sent one to another blogger? Come on, the blogger dost protest too much, methinks.

The point is -- as a group -- we haven't grown up yet. We're in the middle of a revolution, and we've attracted some of the energy we're revolting against. Time to stop thinking about centralizing power and punishing those who don't recognize it. That's not going to work for AP anymore if it ever did, and it's not going to work for BuzzMachine or TechCrunch either. I don't respect your brands, I respect ideas and thought, innovation, generosity, even kindness.

AP is a large organization that serves many constituencies, and is dependent on them in ways very few people outside AP understand. I certainly don't. But I do admire the courage of the people I've met there, for good reason. I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack, because whether you like it or not, the relationship between bloggers and the AP continues, and it's nowhere as simple as you think it is.

Where's your data?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:28:42 GMT

Earlier today I asked for advice -- should I use Yahoo or Google Groups or something else to distribute email to NewsJunk readers? In the discussion that followed, a few people suggested that because Yahoo's future was uncertain, Google would be a better bet. This made sense, like everyone else I've been following the news about Yahoo and Microsoft, noting that key people are leaving, the stock price has fallen, pundits say the company's future isn't bright.

This underscores the need to control our data, we should never think of a company as permanent. If you're new to technology maybe you're learning this for the first time. If you've been around a while, as I have, you've learned this many times. I remember when I thought that CP/M-formatted 8-inch floppies were a perfectly safe way to store data. I figured there would always be a way to read those disks. Only a few years later, that was wrong. Today you'd imagine that you could always view a static HTML file. Seems that way to me too, but I bet someday someone will wonder what you mean by that.

I guess it's like a Zen Haiku or something -- there really is no here or now, you don't really have any data, but for the time-being it's still a good idea to think before you choose a place to put stuff you care about. Today Google seems safe, Yahoo not so safe. Mark that, let's come back in 10 years and see if it's still that way.

Yahoo Groups or Google Groups or ?

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:02:34 GMT

We're adding a 7th way to get your fix of NewsJunk politics -- email. Yeah, it's old and boring, but lots of people still use it!

Of course we'd like to use someone else's service to do the actual distribution, at least at first while we're bootstrapping. In the old days I'd go with Yahoo Groups and not worry about it, but I wonder if there isn't a better Web 2.0 solution out there for email distribution, or if Google Groups is more popular now? Or something else entirely?

Your opinion is sought in the comments...

Update: I created a Google Group as an experiment. You're welcome to subscribe. We won't start promoting it until we're sure it fits the bill.

AP objects to quoting-and-linking

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:24:50 GMT

This morning the top story on both TechMeme and Memeorandum is about the AP and its opinion that quoting and linking is a violation of fair use.

This is something I've been doing on Scripting News going back to the mid-90s.

Examples? According to AP, everything on NewsJunk.com would be a violation.

As many have pointed out, quoting and linking is the norm in the blogosphere.

I have noticed that more bloggers quote the whole piece these days, and put a sentence before and after, saying "This sucks!" or "Dave is an idiot!" I think they could accomplish the same thing by pointing to the article instead of mass-copying it. For the amateur blogger this is an annoyance you have to live with. For an organization like the AP, I guess it's more of a concern.

So why go after a mere link-and-quoter, when if you went after a mass-quoter, you'd have most people on your side? This is a mystery.

Over the years I've worked with the AP on various RSS and blogging projects, and it's always been enjoyable, respectful and professional work. There's a lot of goodwill here. I sent them an email this morning offering help, and it was graciously received. And we're going to continue to use the AP as a source on NewsJunk.com, at least for now.

One word to describe John McCain?

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:50:08 GMT

Pew Research did a survey where they asked people to provide one word to sum up their feelings about John McCain. You can read this Baltimore Sun piece about the survey, but I wanted to invite readers of this weblog to answer the question, and perhaps provide an explanation. My answer follows.

"Disappointment" is my word.

I know it may seem hard to believe, given how much I've campaigned for Barack Obama this year, but there was a time, in 2000, when I almost wanted McCain to be president. I didn't think Gore vs Bush offered meaningful difference (in hindsight I see this was wrong), and I saw McCain and his straight talk as the best hope for a meaningful Presidential election. I saw what happened to him in South Carolina and became more convinced that both parties had nominated the wrong person.

Then, when he supported Bush in 2000 and again in 2004, I stopped believing in his independence. I want to vote for a candidate who, as the CEO of a company is responsible to the shareholders (at least in theory) -- is responsible to American voters and taxpayers. The Republicans didn't have a candidate running this year who fit that bill, although I, and many others, believed the John McCain of Y2K was that candidate.

So, I don't think "old," technically, is the right word -- and if "lost his way" were one word instead of three, I might have said that. My view of McCain is best summed up as "disappointment." At one time he had potential, but he sold it out in favor of cynicism.

I'd also note that my view in 2000 was probably wrong. Now that he's the presumptive Republican nominee, I've learned more about him, and see that his past is checkered with compromise. It seems more likely that in 2000 he had a good sales pitch, and wasn't what he appeared to be.

PS: I wrote a disclaimer on politics in September 2000, which I stand by almost 8 years later.

PPS: The other thing that disappointed me was the end of the last episode of BSG, which aired on Friday. I want more. But this was the last episode before the final run of 10 that might not air until next year. And we still don't know who final Cylon is. Oy.

Who will fill Russert's shoes?

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:01:57 GMT

We're sitting around NewsJunk HQ, talking politics and wondering when the discussion is going to turn to the game of musical chairs that must be playing out at NBC.

Think about it this way -- suppose a Presidential candidate died suddenly, can you imagine that the talking heads at CNN, NBC and Fox wouldn't, between heartfelt sympathy for the family, be speculating at who the party would nominate in place of the fallen leader? Would it be Romney or Huckabee, Clinton or Edwards, or maybe someone else entirely?

More than 24 hours after Russert's sudden passing, we haven't yet heard any speculation, so we thought we might as well raise the question and run down some possibilities.

1. Keith Olbermann. Af first we thought he'd be a shoe-in, he's batting cleanup at MSNBC, he's personally responsible for them passing Fox in ratings, but he's not a terrific inteviewer, and is seen as highly partisan. It's possible that he could lead NBC at some time, a few years after the election, but not now.

2. Chuck Todd is the rising young star at NBC News, and would be my personal choice. He's a no-nonsense political reporter, respects the Internet and bloggers. When he comes on everyone listens. But he's probably too young and too new to network news to fill Russert's shoes.

3. David Gregory seems most likely to get the job, he's covered the White House for six years, famously stood up to Scott McClellan, but frankly -- he's boring. Gregory would be a good choice if you think the Republican will win in the fall, but if it's Obama, you want someone bright and young and a little wet behind the ears, like Todd.

4. Andrea Mitchell is the most senior of the reporter-analysts at NBC News, and if Gregory doesn't get it, she probably will.

5. Chris Matthews probably thinks he should get it, but he won't. Same with Morning Joe.

6. Tom Brokaw will certainly fill in on Sunday, and maybe for a couple of weeks while the dust settles at NBC, but he's the emeritus anchor at NBC, and not likely to want to come back into the fray. They'll save him for big interviews and to deliver the obits on NBC.

We're assuming they would promote from within. If not, consider Wolf Blitzer, David Gergen, George Stephanopoulous, Chris Wallace, Anderson Cooper, Gwen Ifil, Bill Moyers, Charlie Rose and my favorite dark horse, Aaron Brown (whose contract with CNN has just expired).

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.