Scripting News: I love this shit, I admit it

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

I love this shit, I admit it

I've wanted to play with the Flickr API for quite some time, so I woke up in the middle of the night (my body clock is still in Europe) and dug into the docs, which are pretty dense, but they make sense if you take it a step at a time.

As a result I've now got the OPML Editor authorized to talk to Flickr on my behalf, and of course it's coded in such a way that it'll work for all users of the OPML Editor (and Frontier and Radio) once the code is released.

I have some apps in mind, but as usual, this glue is there to make it possible for others to build on the connection, much as we connect with Google, Amazon, Wordpress and other Internet-based services.

I spent a bunch of time talking with friends in Europe about connecting our desktop environment with web services in this way. It's a callback, to the early part of the decade when I was excited about all these things that now are starting to mature. Yeah, I took a few years off, but the lights are coming back on.

What am I working on, well recent experience has taught me it's better to hold my cards a little closer to my chest. There are people who think I am working for them, but it's time for me to be working for me. Tired of being other people's business model. Actually more like fed up with it. ";->"

You'd be surprised at how rich some of the people are who think I like to work for free while they make millions from my work.

Anyway, I'll have a screen shot of Flickr working with the OPML Editor once I have code that uploads the screen shot to Flickr. In programming we call that one of two things: 1. Recursion or 2. Eating the dog food.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:51 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.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

May Jul