Scripting News: Ponzi and Chris

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Ponzi and Chris

Last Friday I spent the day with Chris and Ponzi Pirillo at their new house in the Seattle area.

A day with the Pirillos means lots of talk about gadgets, for sure. Their house is filled with cool electronic toys.

I was raving about Fractional Horsepower HTTP Servers, and that got Chris started, and he showed me a Panasonic webcam that I had to get, so I did.

Quick impulse decision that it was, I didn't remember until later that the difference between my house and theirs is that theirs runs on Windows and mine runs on Macs. Of course I have the obligatory Windows machine (and Chris has a Mac Mini) so I was able to get the webcam configured and working (and it's very very cool) but what I really want is to be able to use it from my desktop and laptop. And for that, I have to be able to use it with a Mac, which I have not managed to do yet, even though it appears to be compatible, based on this member review on the Amazon site. And there's software that claims to work with it on the Mac, but I haven't gotten it to work yet.

It's a personal issue I'm sure, probably has something to do with the post-op haze that's enveloping my mind. Expect me to rave about it once I get the booger working properly with my Macs.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:30 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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Jan Mar