Back at the dawn of time

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

I happened to trip over this Youtube video of John Lennon, Paul Simon and Andy Williams at the Grammies in (I think) 1975. They're announcing the winner of the Best Song, I think -- as usual Lennon is very funny and wry, and Simon is funny too.

Some observations...

1. There's a surprise guest toward the end, I won't spoil the fun by saying who it is, but we might spill the beans in the comments, so if you don't like spoilers watch the video before reading the comments.

2. Either John Lennon was short or Paul Simon is standing on a box. It's weird how a lot of famous people are really short, but you never find out until they stand next to someone who you know is short.

3. I don't get the joke about "dawn" -- Lennon says: "So this is what Dawn does." Dawn of Tony Orlando and Dawn? Hmm.

4. Weren't they both disapponted that Olivia Newton-John won? The competition was so good, Elton John, Roberta Flack, Joni Mitchell, Maria Muldaur.

5. Muldaur's song, her only hit, Midnight At The Oasis, also played a big role in the fabulous movie, Lost In Translation.

6. Unrelated, on NPR yesterday I heard that Enya has sold 70 million albums and lives in a castle in Ireland and is not lonely.

Last update: Wednesday, June 2, 2010; 2:52:53 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.

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