lo

What a week!
  So much happened, it deserves a recap.
  In the middle of the week, on Wednesday, we had our Sources Go Direct panel with Nick, Rachel and Fred at NYU. I think we can do better, and I hope we do. It was my first NY event since I put on a concert at Bronx Science in 1972.
  Nick Denton says nothing has changed, there were gatekeepers then and there are gatekeepers now. I agree. What we didn't go into is who the gatekeepers serve, how they protect each others' business models, and how blogging can circumvent that. The perfect example is blogging itself, a story the gatekeepers refused to carry, but a story that got out there anyway. And the blogging network was used to bootstrap other stuff, including podcasting and RSS.
    And that begat the political blogosphere, which nailed Trent Lott, to start with -- and science bloggers, and Brooklyn bloggers, and Facebook, Twitter etc etc.
    The point is -- yes we still have gatekeepers. We still have TV and sleds, but we also have cable and snowboards. All layers stick around. But we have something new now, something we didn't have before.
    Yesterday's gatekeepers worked for Microsoft and Sun and today's gatekeepers work for Google, Facebook and Apple. And they have always worked for the VCs. Gatekeepers love money, they swarm around it, and believe all kinds of myths about it, such as it has something to do with innovation.
    The users write about what they love, and that feeds the people who create with love, and new stuff is born, and yes we get new gatekeepers, but the seeds of their route-around are already planted.
    So much more to say. But that will have to wait for another event.
  On Thursday we had our weekly meetup at NYU. Rich Ziade, the author of Readability joined us. We talked about a lot of very interesting and potentially heavy stuff. Rich will be our guest on today's podcast. If you care about the future of publishing as it relates to Apple and the web, I recommend listening.
    You can catch the podcast live on BlogTalkRadio at 9AM Pacific, or pick up the MP3 at rebootnews.com.
  Also on Thursday, I took the wraps off the new 2.0 version of the software behind the Scripting News weblog. I'm reaching for the stars with this one. I have a lot of years of experience using the old version, and I've studied the other blogging tools that are out there, and I think it's time for a re-look at the whole thing, with a new codebase.
    I put together a placeholder site at scripting2.com.
    It explains how the development process will go, and what I'm looking for in the initial users.
    First and foremost, I want really good bug reports and an ability to narrate your experience.
    If you read the stuff I write, that's a big plus.
    Being a Natural-Born Blogger is nice.
    Or being Amyloo. ";->"
  On Friday, I shook up those people who were watching (not a whole of people, unfortunately) with a feature I call sub-text, which is actually a simple sub-case of outline-based browsing. What's important is how it's used. Just beginning to feel my way around this.
  Next week should be a little quieter. I'm heading to Calif on Wednesday for a few days of business. But we're off to a great start here in NYC, and the next few months should be really something! ";->"