Don Park: "Reading Dave Winer's blog these days is like watching a house being built from the inside." Heh. 

Round-trip air fare is $399 from SFO to BOS with enough time to do Day 2. At prices like this, can you afford to miss the show? Dave Sifry, Don Park, Jeremy Zawodny, you won't be sorry. Coming from Seattle? It's even cheaper! Brent Simmons and Robert Scoble, we'd just love to see your smiling faces on Day 2. You know you gotta do it.  

Chris Lydon: Another Way to Think About Wesley Clark. Must-read piece. I admit to being not impressed by Clark on Friday, I just heard a lot of easy answers to softball questions. Chris's filters kick in, he says he thinks there's something there, and a few hours later, a picture emerges. I described it to a friend like applying a PhotoShop filter to a poorly lit picture. All of a sudden you can see things that were there all along, but the contrast was all wrong. Bravo Chris, this may be the first really thoughtful piece on Clark.  

Some time in the next 24 hours I expect we'll have yet another BloggerCon announcement. This show has turned into a venue. Lovin it.  

Interesting question, a Web question. I'm hearing from my uncle's friends. There was a party for him in Negril on Thursday. There will be pictures, for sure. My mother, his sister, just wrote a story of her trip to Negril with my brother. Sounds like there's going to be a party in Crescent Beach at Ken's old house (it's still there, it turns out) on Oct 11. In other words, there's a flow of news about him, the story isn't over yet. He has a Manila site. I don't think I want to change the home page. I think I want to leave it as he left it. It's a little part of his body that's still alive. If we change it, I reason, it won't be his any more. Maybe that's silly. Should I create a weblog on his site, but keep the home page undisturbed? Hmm. A bit of a puzzle. Give it some thought, don't send email, just think, I'll ask again in a few days, maybe we'll figure this one out. There's certainly plenty of time to decide. 

I've started to work on the draft press release announcing the program for BloggerCon. I was looking for the verb. What do bloggers do when they convene? I decided the correct term is flock. The bloggers will flock. It's a nice blog-like word. Flock flock flock flock flock. I like it. 

I added the three-part interview with Cluetrain author David Weinberger to the special Lydon RSS feed. He takes us back to the foundation of the Web, the link; it's the idea and the philosophy that all our work builds on.  

Here's what it looks like when an enthusiastic supporter of a presidential candidate withdraws. It's not a pretty sight. 

RSS News Ticker looks interesting. Windows. 

Michael Feldman, the designated teacher of BloggerCon, tackles the What Is A Weblog question. 

5/23/03: "At Berkman we're studying weblogs, how they're used, and what they are. Rather than saying 'I know it when I see it' I wanted to list all the known features of weblog software, but more important, get to the heart of what a weblog is, and how a weblog is different from a Wiki, or a news site managed with software like Vignette or Interwoven." 

Saturday, September 27, 2003

A daring essay: Why they hate me. 

BloggerCon essay: It's not really piracy. 

Don Park says I'm full of shit, of course I am, but not about this, as I explain in a comment on his post. 

BloggerCon blogroll ready to roll. If you're coming on Day 2 (the free day) please register on this page to be sure to be included in the blogroll. And if you know people who are coming (who might not read this weblog) spread the word. We want to create a lasting community from this conference so having people sign up is important. 

Greenspun: "The things that I hate about Microsoft.." 

I received a glossy annual-report-style brochure from Steve Elman at WBUR, Boston's news-oriented public radio station. There isn't much financial information, but there is some. Income was approx $21 million, 50% came from listeners, 36% from corporate support, 14% from grants. Expenses were also $21 million, of which 45% was spent on news and programming, 16% on fundraising, 9% on engineering, 8% on administration, 8% on new media, 5% on corporate support, 5% for overhead, 4% for listener services. 

Irony galore. The unofficial Edwards weblog is better than the official one. The official guys turned us down. Should we invite the unofficial guys? The first question I'd ask is "Why did the official guys turn us down?" 

Dowbrigade: "Tomorrow, Sunday, from 1 to 5PM, all of the Harvard museums are open free of charge." 

Frank Paynter: "I'm bringing a toy-box to BloggerCon." 

Pictures from the Clark campaign in Henniker, NH. 

Clark: "I don't know all the answers, but I will." 

Dowbrigade has the guts to ask What if every state had an action hero governator? 

Bennington Banner: "Web sites that attack one candidate while subtly or overtly supporting another are popping up more frequently in cyberspace, tracking the sudden rise in the Internet's importance to presidential politics." 

Doug Kaye has an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures of his interviews with Tim O'Reilly, John Hagel, Paul Bausch, Anne Thomas Manes, Cory Doctorow and others. 

Added Real Live Preacher to the Lydon RSS feed today. It also has enclosures, of course. Hey we're starting to get a (very small) installed base of interesting feeds that use the enclosures. To use these feeds you need an enclosure-aware aggregator. Talk to the developer of your favorite aggregator, if it doesn't support enclosures. It's an easy feature to add and a new source of interesting ideas for users. (BTW, there appear to be bugs in Radio's implementation of enclosures. I'll try to take a look at this before BloggerCon.) 

I interviewed a reporter yesterday, a nice turn of events, and asked him what he thought of weblogs. He said they're mostly commenting on stories in newpapers like his own. I asked what he bases this on, did he do a study, how many weblogs did he look at. When I pressed him, he said that it was Instapundit that works this way. I told him that's not what I do on Scripting News. Not only do we dig into new stuff pretty regularly, but we also create new formats and protocols, far beyond anything done by the IT people at his newspaper, and we deploy them, and evangelize them, and then move on to the next thing. I don't think he was actually very impressed.  

Paul Krugman webcast at UC Berkeley School of Journalism. 

Friday, September 26, 2003

New BloggerCon speakers confirmed: Eric Folley, Democratic National Committee; James Taranto, Wall Street Journal; Len Apcar, New York Times; Jeff Jarvis, Advance Publications, Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News. Folley is the director of Internet operations for the DNC, and is responsible for Kicking Ass, their weblog, reviewed below. Taranto edits the Opinion Journal best-of-the-web. Apcar is the editor in chief of NYTimes.Com. Jarvis manages the online presence of Advance Publications, which includes Condé Naste and several newspapers. Gillmor, who needs no introduction to readers of Scripting News, is a technology columnist, and was one of the first users of Manila in 1999. Taranto and Apcar will discuss the value of editing, a hot topic in the blogging world. Folley will particpate in the Day 1 presidential politics panel, and Jarvis will lead the Day 2 discussion about presidential politics along with Dan Gillmor, Ed Cone and several others we've invited who have not yet confirmed.  

Jon Udell: "Folks who consume news by way of blogs are likelier to be exposed to primary sources than folks who rely on conventional news sources." 

Don Park: "If I get run over by a herd of pigs in my dream, I am going to buy some lottery tickets as my way of saying I got the damn message!" 

Megnut is at the MIT Emerging Technology conference. What a contrast between their website and the BloggerCon site. I like ours better, of course.  

Oy. I wanted to send a message of compliment to the bloggers at Democrat.Org and ask them if they wanted to be part of BloggerCon. So I used their web form. First problem, they ask for my mailing address. Uhhh. Why? Second, I get a confirming email that accuses me of being a Democrat and asks me to be part of some network of Democrats who want to elect Democrats to every office there is. I'm not a Democrat. There's some real serious cluelessness over there. On the other hand, the person who's doing their blog posts is a star. Jesse Berney? I love the fact that they took us behind the scenes into the spin room at last night's debate. That's what bloggers are supposed to do. Give us a sense of what it's like to be there. Observe and report. Skip all the bullshit that you get on network TV and NPR.  

BloggerCon will be webcast.  

Rogers Cadenhead reports on an analyst who apparently was fired for criticizing Microsoft. 

Andrew: "The BloggerCon infrastructure session is starting to come together." 

Wendy asks if BloggerCon badges should show the URL of your weblog or the name of your weblog? 

Description of the last session on Day 2. Remember, Day 2 is free. Spread the word.  

Lunch suggestions for Day 2 people. 

NY Times reports that Dell is going into consumer electronics, with a portable music player, online music service and flat panel TVs. 

Ever get a song into your head that just won't leave no matter how nicely you ask? Such a song: "He’s a one boy cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy." 

Uncle update. The autopsy results are in. He died of a heart attack. A massive one. Killed his heart, then everything else died. I wonder if such a heart attack leaves you conscious. Do you know you won't come back? Is the pain excruciating. Then I read that rock star Robert Palmer, only 54, died yesterday of a heart attack. And on this day in 2002, a famous programmer, Bob Wallace, died suddenly. Two quotes come to mind. One from Woody Allen. "It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens." An argument for good drugs. Laughing so hard, I forgot the other quote. Sorry. 

Woody Allen: "How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?" 

I have to write a BloggerCon essay about the term "piracy." It'll go something like this. As long as the music industry labels all use of music on the Internet as piracy, and as long as pubs like the NY Times go along with this, the "problem" will never be solved. The music industry is insisting on a moral principle that they don't hold themselves to, that musicians should be paid for their work. They need to clean their house first, and that's going to mean disclaiming ownership of some of their supposed property, and deciding what they want to be paid for, and then asking for (and maybe receiving) help from the online community, in much the same way the US presidential candidates are. The music industry is going over our heads (by going to Washington), and under (by suing users), but the solution is here. First, give up trying to control the old music. We understand that there was no money in this anyway. Don't give up the copyrights, so if the music is used for commercial purposes, like in ad jingles or public radio pledge drives, you can charge your license fees. Then let the Internet have them to distribute and listen to for free, without fear of a lawsuit. Watch carefully to see what happens. We might not need to go to war anymore. Music is that powerful. Specifically exclude the new stuff, the stuff you're making money on, and provide proof that the artists are getting a share of the profits. Having done this, you may get some leaders on the Internet to agree to calling ripoffs of that stuff piracy. More in a bit, after some coffee. 

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Happiness is a new Chris Lydon interview, with Cornel West. Chris and I are going to see Wesley Clark tomorrow in Henniker, NH. And it appears that Clark has a blogmaster, and it's someone we know. I hate to tease, but then, well, I love to tease.  

Reminder to aggregator developers working with enclosures, here's the test feed.  

Daniel Drezner is "offering a scholarly paper, during the draft process, for public comment, on the political impact of blogs, with a fellow named Henry Farrell," said Ryan Overbey. "It's very exciting stuff," he continued. 

Quotes from tonight's debate from the Democratic weblog. 

100 days of Dowbrigade. Natural Born Blogger. 

Checking in on the Wesley Clark campaign, it's been a week since he entered the race, and we don't have an official blogger. According to Daily Kos, the Clark campaign is trying to disband the grass roots blogs. Seems like a mistake to me, that was the most exciting thing about Clark. I was interviewed yesterday by one of the major TV networks, Newsweek is sending a senior political analyst. The NY Times is sending two people, one a reporter covering the event. We've got the venue for the presidential bloggers. Clark, if you can figure out who's doing your weblog, he or she would be totally welcome. Same with Bush, Kucinich, and any of the candidates who currently don't have blogs. We have confirmations from Dean and Graham. Turndowns from Kerry and Edwards (the door's still open). And if anyone is up for a road trip to see Clark tomorrow (see below) let me know. 

NHPolitics.Com: Wesley Clark is doing a Town Hall Meeting at Simon Hall, New England College, Henniker, 6:30PM tomorrow. 

Ed Cone: "Journalists were banned from today's annual meeting of Cone Mills." 

Four years ago today: Dave's History of SOAP. 

Derek Willis disputes some of what I've said about public radio, agrees with some.  

Scoble is definitely full of shit today. I don't see evil, and my disk is full (of shit), so it seems like it's time to start cleaning out the temp files. And geez Louise, how would an ordinary user know these files even exist. So many Microsoft people take even the appearance of criticism as condemnation. Get a sense of perspective. My software has bugs too. Sheez. 

Replay Radio is an "incredibly easy way to record radio broadcasts. It's like a VCR for the radio." Sounds perfect. 

Essay: When someone close dies. 

Today's song: "Some say my uncle, that he's a zero." 

BBC: Net guru peers into web's future. 

National Public Radio is not very public 

They like to say "you own the station," it's one of the big marketing pitches, but it's not true. There's very little to distinguish a public radio station from commercial one. The major difference is the business model. NPR stations sell subscriptions and commercial stations don't. But the distinction is fading because public radio stations are running more commercial-like spots all the time. See the bit about conference sponsorships earlier this week. The NPR stations don't disclaim or disclose much, so it's reasonable to assume that they sell speaking spots too, stuff that sounds like editorial but is really commercial.

Streaming is a form of copy protection 

There's very little talk-radio type stuff, BBC, or NPR programming, that's available in MP3 format. Yet there's this incredible growing installed base of players that can play MP3s. Time-shifting of audio, news and comment, click and clack, should be flowing out this way, and were it not for the fears of the broadcasters, it would. See item #1 for a clue why NPR stations aren't taking advantage of this. The BBC, if I correctly understand their model, should distribute through MP3 and the Internet, and RSS enclosures. I bet there are some good connections between Harvard and the BBC. I'll explore that after BloggerCon, unless someone from the BBC would care to participate in the conference? Anyway, Chris Lydon's stuff is far and away the best content flowing in MP3 that I found yesterday when I asked for pointers. He's more of a pioneer than I realized.

Nothing temporary about temporary files 

While I was writing this the operating system informed me that I had run out of space on Drive C, my system drive. That was surprising because I had gone through a cleanup routine just a few days ago. I had no more obvious places to go to get back space, so it was time to run my Find Large Files script. This time it didn't find much that I could delete, but I watched as it ran, it showed me the names of thousands and thousands of files I couldn't find browsing around the file system. Then I realized -- they must be hidden files. In a deeply nested sub-folder of Documents and Settings called Temp. I flipped the bit and sure enough there they were. The thousands of one-pixel gif web bugs, and all the Shockwaves, gigabytes of them, that I had looked at since I bought this computer many months ago. In other words Windows just consumes disk space. I wonder if Microsoft bought some stock in one of the disk drive makers. This is just appalling. How is a regular user supposed to find these files? Why should they have to? As we use MP3 more and more, do we need to write some utilities for people that make their systems perform better? (BTW, I'm sure Scoble will say "That's fixed in Longhorn.")

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

New Manila feature: Mail-to-Weblog. 

MedicineNet.Com unveils over 1000 new fabulous totally not-funky RSS 2.0 feeds. Very nice. Thanks! Via LibraryStuff. 

Harold Bloom: "The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for distinguished contribution to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life." 

Bloom is in the Lydon archive in three parts. Great stuff.  

Scott Rosenberg: "Scanning the blogs this morning I came across an interesting dustup between Glenn Reynolds and Josh Marshall. Since I'm sharing a panel with them at BloggerCon next week this naturally caught my eye." 

Mike Lockwood tells the story of his last day at Apple working on the Dylan project. And there's a list of Apple history stories told by Apple insiders. A gold mine of now-it-can-be-tolds.  

Here's a serious question. Is anyone else doing Lydon-style interviews? I'd settle for the BBC World News available in MP3 form. I'm all caught up on the Lydon interviews and I want to go for a walk. I'm looking for news shows that are distributed over the Internet in MP3 format. Any clues? 

Eugene Volokh is the latest confirmed presenter. He will lead a Day 2 discussion on weblogs and law. Chris interviewed Volokh, who is now a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. 

Three years ago today, OPML 1.0. 

Cornell Daily Sun: "Between 50 and 100 Cornell students gathered on Ho Plaza for the University's first-ever flash mob." 

Glenn Reynolds is now part of the special Lydon RSS feed. 

Screen shot of Radio's enclosure prefs page. 

Disclaimer: My friend and Harvard associate Chris Lydon is a former WBUR star.  

I'm listening to the WBUR pledge drive this morning. I paid them $120 in April, a generous amount according to the station. So I listen to the pledge drive guilt-free. They say we get both sides of the story on WBUR, but then I just realized, we don't, they don't explain how they spend our money. This morning Jane Christo, the general manager of the station, is pitching us. How do I call in and ask questions on the air? How much salary does Ms Christo draw? How many execs are there at WBUR and what are their salaries? And how about the talent, how much of my money do they get? I suspect that public radio in the US is like most other industries, execs control the money, and get most of it, and don't do very much for it.  

A search for "Christo" on wbur.org returns no matches. The navigation system on the website appears to have no information about the management of the station or its finances. I admit to being a neophyte here. What reporting responsibilities do public radio stations have? How open do they have to be?  

I'm trying to reach Ms Christo by phone right now. I explained the purpose of my call to the receptionist. I've paid up. I'm listening to Christo pitch us, saying in general terms how much it costs to provide the news, and I'd like to know how much she costs us. I asked to be transferred to the studio so I could ask her myself. The phone has been ringing, but there's no answer. I think I got transferred into the bit bucket. I called back, and she said "They didn't pick up at the studio." Okay I knew that. So she transferred me to the assistant general manager. He said he has to go on the air in four minutes and asked for my number, which I gave him. I suggested we could talk about this on the air, and he laughed. I said I was serious about it. Personally, I think all WBUR subscribers would find the answer to the questions about station finances very interesting. It also seems the management doesn't want to discuss this.  

I then called the official pledge line, 800-909-9287, and talked with one of the volunteers. I asked for an accounting of how my money is spent, she said she didn't know if it was available. I asked if she'd be interested in seeing it, and she said yes. That's one of the cool things about putting volunteers on the phone, since they aren't getting paid, they're not scared of the truth. You can call too, but I'd recommend only doing so if you've already contributed to WBUR, or are seriously considering it. You can also call your local NPR station and ask the same questions.  

Enclosure Extractor allows you "to easily extract and download enclosures from newsfeeds." 

BBC: "MSN is closing all its chatrooms in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and most of Asia from 14 October, and changing the way others are operated globally." 

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Chris Lydon has been doing a series of audio interviews on his weblog at Harvard. There are already over 25 interviews, representing 40 separate MP3 files. The archive is nearly 300MB. It's a perfect application for RSS enclosures. 

BloggerCon essay: Groundrules for BloggerCon. 

BloggerCon essay: Questions for Presidential Candidates. 

Day 2 session: Medicine and Weblogs. 

Mark Glaser: "Should news sites edit their blogs?" 

Bob Doyle will record BloggerCon on video and audio. 

A cheat sheet explains how to kill your Sims. 

News.Com: "A federal jury has convicted a Florida man of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in the first jury-trial conviction under the controversial law." 

AP: "Democrat Wesley Clark, in the presidential race for less than a week, is tied with President Bush in a head-to-head matchup." 

Tim Bray explains the economics of conferences, books, TV, etc. As we tried to sell sponsorships in BloggerCon, I learned the same thing. People expect to get something very specific in return for their money. We tried saying that we'll find an appropriate (unspecified) way to thank the sponsors for their contribution, but that wasn't good enough, they wanted speaking slots, and I said no way. This is a conference about weblogs -- largely a non-commercial medium where the authenticity of the voice is what matters. No shills. So we're making due with a less-fancy lunch, and I'm going to pay for the Friday night party out of my personal savings (along with Adam Curry). We'll have a great conference and no one will have to worry which talks are ads and which are the real talks, they're all real.  

BTW, I included the Diet Pepsi picture to blow your mind. They didn't pay me to put it there. I added it because I like the product. Nothing more than that. 

I'm trawling for BloggerCon essays. I've already written four and am outlining more. If there's an issue you want to be part of the discussion at the conference, whether or not you will be there in person, now's a good time to start thinking, and in the next few days, writing. Let's add your passion to the agenda at next month's conference. 

According to The Command Post, Wesley Clark would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned his calls. 

Scott Rosenberg: "How dare they? What do they think this is, a democracy?" 

Glenn Reynolds: "If you want to know, in a nutshell, why Old Media is in trouble, this is it." 

Can you believe it -- there are weblogs that turn away traffic based on referrer. This is bad practice. These people seriously need to take a refresher course in what the Web is about and how important links are and stop screwing around with them. I won't read sites that do this, and I certainly won't point to them. You should let the authors of the sites know that you won't either. If they don't want to be linked to, just take the site off the Web. 

Monday, September 22, 2003

BloggerCon essay: Paul Krugman and Lies. 

Rogers Cadenhead: "XML-RPC does everything I'd use RMI for, without the hassle over stubs, skeletons, registries, and binding." 

Wendy Koslow on BloggerCon dress code and parking. 

Political Wire: Clark and Kerry beat Bush in new poll. 

The Democratic National Committee has a kickass weblog. 

Fredrick Marckini: The Coming Search Engine War. 

E&P: Newspapers Try 'Really Simple Syndication'. 

The Berkman server is getting Slashdotted. Usually it's not a problem, but the combination of Monday, the Greenspun name, and him calling Java the SUV of programming tools was too much for our humble server. Caching helped a lot. 

Sunday, September 21, 2003

BloggerCon essay: The Spirit of the Web. 

The Internet Archive has video of Chris Lydon's interview on Friday with Paul Krugman. I listened to it today, it's great stuff. Makes me proud to know Chris. I found out about it through the RSS feed that the Internet Archive provides. 

NY Times review of Aretha at Radio City. 

News.Com: ICANN asks VeriSign to pull redirect service. 

People are buzzing about calendars and RSS. Adam Curry and Marcus Mauller were the pioneers here. Use the search engines guys. RSS isn't that new. Most of the ideas being talked about now have ample prior art, with docs, and implementations. Just ask. Lots of solved problems.  

BTW, I can't wait till Chris meets Adam on Oct 4. Sparks are going to fly between those two minds. Hoo boy. Stand back. Look out.  

Listening to Ed Cone and Chris Lydon talking about Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. Chris asks: Ed is this the beginning of a fight or a courtship? Ed: Don't know how long you've been out of the dating market Chris. Chuckles.  

Mike Clough: Hurtles ahead for Dean. 

Press release: "Oliver Willis announced his candidacy for the presidency today." 

In honor of my uncle, I killed all the characters in my current Sims house. I built a tiny little room, told them all to go into it, and sealed it off. No door, no windows, no food, no place to sleep, nothing. After a few days they died. The house is still there, seems to be fine without them. I'm going to let it run for a while and see what happens. I'll let you know. 

It's strange that I ordered three bittersweet movies from Netflix before I knew there would be a death in the family. On Golden Pond, Driving Miss Daisy, and today's Glengarry Glen Ross, which is a lot better than I remembered. All-star cast. All three are sad tales, real heart-grabbers. The previous three movies were different: The Matrix, Lord of the Rings and Amadeus. 

Greg Reinacker: RSS and MIME types. 

Steve Gillmor is full of shit; as is Derek Powazek (And if history is a guide Powazek will be complaining about this link well into the next milennium.) Also, Scoble is full of shit, and if I know Scoble he'll be bragging about it for decades.  

The shit parade continues with John Robb, who thinks blogs don't matter in RSS space. He must not be paying attention to US presidential politics.  

A reader's guide to shit-fullness. I wouldn't say someone was full of shit if I didn't think there was some value to their bullshit. Remember the rule I have about links. "A link on Scripting News means that I thought that the story was interesting, and felt that an informed person would want to consider the point of view expressed in the piece."  

The Obsolete Computer Museum uses RSS 2.0. 

The Trademark Blog reports that the owners of the Dewey Decimal System are suing a NYC hotel for trademark infringement. A must-read.  

Not sure if Verizon has solved the problem or not. This morning the net is unbelievably slow. Maybe it's not just me. Meanwhile, reality is sinking in, in a new way. Probating an estate in Jamaica, that's going to be some kind of treat. Not. After all the outages, and with BloggerCon coming up, it's cool that I have a brother to deal with the first couple of weeks. After BloggerCon I'm pretty free. In the meantime, if you know a good lawyer in Jamaica, let me know.  

I still have more work to do on the schedule of BloggerCon, and we still have to get leaflets for Day 2 posted all over Harvard and MIT, but now my attention is going to turn to writing. Chris Lydon says he thinks it's kind of like a constitutional convention. Maybe so. Is there a chance to do some writing that gets on the record in a new way? Perhaps. 

Saturday, September 20, 2003

Chris Lydon interviews NY Times columnist Paul Krugman. 

Earlier this year, Terry Fisher, the director of Berkman Center, outlined a proposal that would flow money to the recording industry by taxing Internet usage and devices used to record and play back music. While I think the proposal is brilliant, I also think it's unworkable because it's unfair.  

Brian Buck: "People use the word friend too casually, but the counterpoint to that is that is that people use the term family too strictly."  

Press release: "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the New York City Department of Education today announced a $51.2 million effort that will support the creation of 67 new small, challenging high schools." 

A new more complete rendition of the BloggerCon blogroll. 

Essay: What is friendship? 

More -- what happens when friends are full of shit? 

Speaking of people who could be friends who are full of shit -- today Joi Ito sings a well-sung but false song about Microsoft screwing with nascent standards. Joi, in RSS-land, MS is playing fair and square, so far (and so are AOL and Yahoo, btw). The people who are pissing in the soup are people you don't have the guts to criticize. You're in their blogroll, they're in yours. Dig deeper dear Joi, really disassemble the lunacy of our little world, and do what you can to unravel it. Then, when and if Microsoft screws with us, you'll have some credibility. Right now you haven't got a leg to stand on.  

Three years ago today: What is P2P? 

Last year on this day Morning Coffee Notes re-appear. 

Jon Udell: "Doing more with less is the theme of Michael Lewis’ terrific new book, Moneyball." 

Verizon economics 

BTW, the 1.5 week outage, it turns out, was Verizon's fault. It took four multi-hour phone conversations to convince them that the problem was on their end. In each of the first three conversations they said the issue was closed. One time they thought it was a problem with my Linksys router, another time, a problem with my email service provider.

All the while there was a short on their wire, and a quick test they can run to prove it. According to their economics, the time of an employee and a customer is much less valuable than the time of a diagnostic device. I can understand (somewhat) they're throwing out my time, but what about the people they're paying to support customers? Even if they worked in Bangalore (they don't, I asked) it would still be diseconomic, it seems.

A throwback to the time of punch cards and mainframes when computer time was more expensive than human time, but I thought we crossed over that line a long time ago.

Friday, September 19, 2003

Bad news in the family. My uncle died yesterday in Negril, Jamaica. We don't know the cause. It was very sudden, unexpected, totally sad. Some thoughts here. 

Marc Canter: "I'll be lighting one up for him tonight." 

Betsy Devine welcomes BloggerConners to Cambridge. 

NY Times: "He has missed the summer trifecta of local Democratic politics: visiting the butter cow at the Iowa State Fair, marching in the Labor Day Parade in Des Moines and appearing at Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry in a balloon field." 

Matt Gross appears on JOHO tonight. 

Andrew Grumet: "Free your mind, and your weblog will follow." 

Thanks to Martin Schwimmer for the link to We Like The Moon. 

Verizon finally came out and the problem was a short between the house and the station, so they gave me a new line and said everything should be fine now. If you can read this at least it's fine now. Fingers crossed, praise Murphy, and still diggin. 

Ahoy mateys. Piracy is legal today. Arrr. 

Dr Vaughan: "I'm not doing this to save money. I'm doing this because the music industry doesn't give me what I want." 

They're talking about RSS in Latvia. 

Philip Greenspun compares the budget of Hamas, an effective Middle East terrorist organization, with compensation package for William Grasso, former chief of the NYSE. 

Thursday, September 18, 2003

Nico MacDonald: The Future of Weblogging. 

Photo of Hurricane Isabel from the space station. 

Day 1: Weblogs in Journalism. 

Day 1: Weblogs in Presidential Politics. 

Notes from tonight's weblog writers meeting at Berkman. 

Highly recommended: Political Wire weblog. 

Elizabeth Spiers: "New York Mag made me an offer and a few details have to be worked out, but it looks like I'm going to take it." She will still headline at BloggerCon. 

Jenny Levine: "Is there a moblog set up for BloggerCon?" 

Best of luck to people in the path of Hurricane Isabel.  

Roderick Nordell: "Pollsters keep asking people to split hairs on how interested they are -- very, somewhat, not, or don't know -- in inescapable matters like the economy and healthcare. Perhaps we'd have more confidence if you and I defined the questions and multiple choices." 

Roger Simon: "Clark came off as a civilized and well-spoken fellow." 

News.Com profile of Doug Engelbart. 

Wired: "VeriSign's controversial 'typo-squatting' Site Finder service is about to be bypassed by an emergency software patch to many of the Internet's backbone computers." 

Chris Lydon interviews Joe Conason, Doc Searls, Ed Cone and Josh Marshall on the candidacy of Wesley Clark. 

NY Times: "The problem you have getting in this late is you have no field troops, you have no ground operation," said Bill Dal Col, who ran Steve Forbes's campaign for the Republican nomination in 1996 and 2000. "Without the troops, it doesn't matter how good your logistics and planning are." 

News.Com interviews RIAA president Cary Sherman. 

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Sign up here for the blogroll for BloggerCon. 

Unnamed source: "Bush's campaign manager announced in a private meeting this afternoon that the campaign will have an official blog to be launched next week." 

The question came up if we would welcome a Republican blogger-in-chief at BloggerCon, and the answer is an enthusiastic Yes! Of course. BloggerCon is non-partisan and will not endorse a candidate or a party. Our only interest is in the use of weblogs in all aspects of politics, business, education, science, basically everything. This year the use of blogs in politics is front and center. We can all learn from each other as the candidates compete for votes. Voters can have blogs too. The more the merrier. 

I'm almost caught up on the Lydon interviews. Today was Joi Ito Day. The only bit of controversy in his talk, as far as I'm concerned, is his belief that the great coders of the blogging world are in their teens and twenties. Pfui. Ito is 37. Wishful thinking? Now that I'm pushing 50, I've learned something all over again, a guideline of my teens and twenties, with a minor caveat, from a new point of view. Never trust anyone over 30 (and under 40).  

Josh Allen's list of Microsoft bloggers, in OPML. 

Jason Levine is searching for NY bagels in Brookline. 

Elaine of Kalilily on Art Interludes at BloggerCon, an idea we're kind of running out of time on. I'm still game if artists want to use our environment to innovate. 

BBC: Clark enters White House race. 

Nick Denton: "Google text ads will give blogs a business model; but they'll also warp the format." 

Four OPML files generated from the blogroll app: People attending Day 1, Day 2, both days and either day. 

Something not to worry about: Entering your information more than once. That's cool. You're allowed to make changes.  

A test version of the blogroll in a web page. It should update approximately once an hour. Still needs some work.  

Ben Adida: "Today, we have the technology to cheaply deliver any piece of music ever recorded to your car, stereo, or portable music player within seconds. Why isn't it happening?" 

Zeldman asks the question no one dared ask, did Microsoft want to lose the browser patent case? Postscript: Vincent Flanders dared to ask. 

The Democratic National Committee has a weblog, and it supports RSS. 

Apparently I'm one of the 25 most innovative this year.  

Jacob Reider posted a description for the Medicine and Research Day 2 session. 

Word pirates. "Marketers, politicians and other short-sighted, self-interested, sticky-fingered people have been stealing our words. Not only do they take them for commercial purposes, but they misuse them entirely." 

Wesley Clark has an official campaign website. 

Apparently the official Clark weblog is the one we pointed to yesterday.  

Brigham Young University has an RSS news feed. 

USA Today: Edwards upstaged on his big day. 

Joshua Allen: "My Boss Has a Blog!" 

Wired: "Clark apparently decided to run following an elaborate Internet-based draft movement that grew on its own, without much help from the candidate himself." 

Lots of new stuff on the NH political calendar. 

Comment notification in Manila.  

Creative Computing review of ThinkTank from 1983.  

Two years ago today the stock market re-opened. 

This morning my home DSL is fast. And tempting. But I didn't go for it. I drove to the office, got a couple of cups of coffee on the way, got a parking spot right in front of Berkman on Mass Ave, and I'm getting ready to do some long-delayed programming work. We need an easy registration page for Day 2 of BloggerCon so we can see who's coming. I'm on it boss! 

9/17/97: "I forgive you now, and always, unconditionally." 

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Tom Tomorrow: Clear-eyed Conservative Realists. 

Blog Graham says it's not enough to be a general. "When Perot ran for president he was eaten alive by the press." 

6PM: Knock on wood, my home DSL is working, very well. It's super fast. It feels like a strong wind is at my back. Pray for my DSL. And Praise Murphy! 

Comment notification for Radio is released. 

Orlowski asks if Google is the only archive we'll ever need. 

Microdoc News: "Type in the word blogs into any searc