Sunday, January 11, 2004

Went out for a walk, it's a balmy 23 degrees F. Snow developing late, says the forecast, accumulations of 1 to 3 inches.  

Adam Curry says we should have an image trail as part of the Share Your OPML site. What he means is this. We subscribe to the Top 100 feeds to form an aggregator that's a view into the community. Now he wants another view that shows only the pictures, and links to the full items. I wrote the code that hooks into the flow, and looks at each post, and if it has a permalink and an image, I pull out the image, and remember the permalink. Once we obtain 20 or so images I'll write a script that displays them in reverse-chronologic order. So if you're in the Top 100, why not include a small picture today. 

I find it interesting that none of the Presidential candidate blogs are in the Top 100 on the Share Your OPML site. Here's a communication platform, open to the candidates, and none of them have used it well enough to match the individual bloggers? Also a surprise is the relatively poor showing of the big newspaper feeds. I would have guessed the NY Times would be in the Top 10. Not so. It's in my personal Top 10 for sure. I wonder why? I assume it's because people don't know that the feeds are there? 

Watching the Sunday morning political shows: Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer -- tons of Presidential ads. Boston is the big New England TV market and New Hampshire is in New England, so we see the ads, and boy are they interesting. I've never seen this kind of political advertising before. Suggestion to the campaigns, post your latest ads on the the Web and send me pointers, please. It's a cheap way of getting your message out and generating buzz. A curious thing about all the ads, at the end of each, the candidate says "My name is John Kerry, and I approved this message." They all say exactly the same thing (except Kucinich who says "Did I approve this message? You bet I did." Weird.) Anyway, why? This is new. This must have something to do with campaign finance reform.  

Peter Rukavina: I'm blahblahblah and I've approved this message. 

Meet the Press had a particularly clueless segment on blogs. Typical BigPub arrogance. One guy says he has a blog, but his is different -- he posts columns instead of pancake recipes. Oh. Okay. I guess you're smart and we're stupid. Thanks. 

I believe that Larry Lessig and I have found our creative commons, the concept of a citizen blogger. I will write a definition. 

Monday forecast: "Turning milder. Highs in the mid 30s." Whew. 

Bob Wyman, on the Atom-Syntax list, explains how the "liberal in what you accept" philosophy erects barriers that get no new features or performance for users.  

Today is the second birthday of Radio 8. Many happy returns! 

NY Times editorial: "Your nostrils begin to freeze, and you realize that your body is somehow merging with the elements." 

Don Hopkins: "Focus groups hated The Sims." 

Financial Times: Bush savaged by former Treasury chief. "In the CBS Sixty Minutes interview Mr O'Neill, the former chief executive of the aluminium company Alcoa, says there was little constructive dialogue between officials and the president." 

NY Times: My So-Called Blog. 

Phil Wolff's complete list of blogging awards. "The title of this post is the goal, not the result."