Scripting News: How to learn new stuff

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

How to learn new stuff

A story worth mentioning.

I was watching a blogtv show with Jeff Pulver talking about the iPhone. He didn't have one. Not that he can't afford it, he can, but he objected to the myriad of ways the iPhone is closed to anyone's innovation but Apple's, or anyone's economics but AT&T's. I share his disgust. Sometimes it seems as if American corporations are in the business of deceiving customers into thinking they're getting more power and utility, and then snatching it back and leaving us with less (and them with our money). Even though I adore the product, Apple is really pushing the limits on this with the iPhone.

But I digress.

I posted a comment on Twitter that caught a fair amount of attention, and surprisingly, caught Pulver's attention too, and shortly after that I read on his blog that he had bought an iPhone!

Now that surprised me. People aren't supposed to listen to what I say. That's not part of my movie, whose plot is that I spread the truth and no one hears me.

What's next? An open SDK from Apple?

Reminds me of another story.

In the mid-90s I was considered by some at Apple to be their #1 enemy, more so than Microsoft which was eating their GUI lunch, or the web that was undermining their assumptions about how dumb users are. I think it was because I didn't know how to present my opinions so they'd go down easy (I'm better at it now) and because they weren't listening very well (they had bigger problems to solve). Then they fired the CEO and brought in Gil Amelio, a kindly older gent, who really prided himself on listening. I was invited in to meet him, and of course we hit it off (all I wanted was to be listened to). A month or so later I was invited to be part of an Amelio keynote (a poor imitation of a Jobs keynote) and it went off smoothly, and created quite a bit of buzz in the then-nascent blogosphere.

Someone who worked at Apple at the time wondered if hell had frozen over too.

Funny how people can do things you don't expect them to.

The point? Congrats to Pulver. We ought to get together in a few weeks to compare notes on the iPhone.

Also after a little more than a week I have some concrete conclusions, which I outline briefly in this TwitterGram, but which I will expand on for sure either in a blog post or a podcast.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:12 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.

Jun Aug