Sunday, December 07, 2003

Chris Nolan: "Why can’t Big Media write about Howard Dean’s campaign without sounding like a bunch of clueless but well-meaning 19th century explorers debating the source of the Nile all the while breathlessly reporting back on the wonders of Africa?" 

Scoble: "I don't like group weblogs." This is a current topic with me. A bunch of people I know wanted to do a group blog. I said okay give it a try. I'm watching from a distance. I prefer to write for my blog and develop a way to route posts to categories so readers can assemble their own group blogs out of their favorite authors (of which I hope to be one). Scoble is a pundit and a very wise man. He's onto something.  

Adam Bosworth admits he doesn't get REST. I like that. It takes courage. The REST advocates promote by intimidation. A clear sign they don't want you looking too closely. Now Bosworth is going to do exactly that. Bravo.  

Went for a long walk in the snow. Still light flurries. Very beautiful. Quiet. All the houses lit up. Smell of fires in the fireplaces. Like a Currier & Ives print. No sleighs, but every other schmaltzy New England winter visual.  

Some stats on the new server we deployed yesterday. On a Sunday it's doing about 10,000 hits per hour and keeping up very nicely. Most of the traffic are things like the white-on-orange XML button, various graphics for Radio users, the DTD for RSS 0.91. I'm going to write some scripts that tally up how much of the bandwidth is subsidizing the community. Who should I send the bill to??  

Yippee. The weather forecast for tomorrow is Mostly Sunny. That would make me Mostly Happy.  

Okay, I've got a new laptop, a new MP3 player, next on the list of goofy gadgets is a hand-held GPS. I found myself at Best Buy last week with techno-lust, but I didn't know which one to buy. Stay tuned. 

There's been lots of talk on the weblogs and mail lists about making it easier for users to subscribe to sites. Of course, since we went first with Radio, it's very very easy for Radio users, just click on an orange XML coffee mug, where it's available, and confirm that you want to subscribe, and it's done. No copy-paste. Nothing complicated. If we wanted we could have made the url invisible, but we decided that would be too confusing. Now what's the general solution that works for everyone all the time? This is one of those times when, if Microsoft, Apple and Linux could get together, they could upgrade the Internet in a nice way. Probably just Microsoft alone could do it (the others would have to follow). Choose a port which is the Subscription Manager port. Say it's 5350, a random unassigned port. Then when you want to say "click here to subscribe to this website" include a link that looks like this. Since the OS has the Subscription Manager running on that port, it would confirm that you really want to subscribe, and then add the URL to the Desktop Database (on the Mac) or the Registry (Windows) or /usr/subs (Unix). Or whatever. Some place that the aggregators running on the system could watch. Yeah, it makes sense for some part of the aggregation system to migrate into the OS. If any of the OS vendors want advice on this, let me know.  

Snowy New England street. 

Jewish mother jokes. 

Lessig: "Declan is a brilliant writer, and excellent pundit. But he is more a bomb thrower than a careful reader." 

Newsweek: "Now that Dean has put 30 points between himself and onetime front runner John Kerry, his candidacy is coming under intense scrutiny -- from the media, the GOP and his Democratic rivals." 

An article in today's NY Times Magazine, about Howard Dean says "A team of Internet theorists -- David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Howard Rheingold -- consults for the campaign." According to Doc this isn't true. So where did this bit come from? Did the reporter invent it? Did the campaign put Doc on some list? BTW, I have buckets for the Dean campaign and for Doc's punditry in my taxonomy. 

Cheaters have infested the WizBang awards. 

In case you're not in the northeast, here's what almost two feet of snow looks like. I'm going for a walk myself in a few minutes after some coffee. Enough cabin fever. It's not snowing very hard now, and I've got sweaters, ski clothes, a hat, mittens, and warm boots. I'm bringing the camera too. BTW, I have a Boston Weather category.