Thursday, September 30, 2004

Ed Cone's description for the political discussion at BloggerCon.  

Welcome to the real-time Trade Secrets debate spin-room! 

7PM Pacific: No doubt, Kerry is cleaning Dubya's clock.  

After tonight's debate, if the US re-elects Bush, we totally deserve whatever happens to us. Kerry will make an excellent President.  

Russell Beattie: "I donated another $50 today to the DNC (and I'm unemployed) and volunteered to work a phone bank for Kerry." 

Dowbrigade: "That Dowbrigade slug hasn't posted in over two weeks!" 

The USGS is blogging Mt St Helens. (Sort of.) 

Mt St Helens webcam. 

The open source release of Frontier didn't shake the world, or boil the ocean, but it is steadily climbing the Daypop Top 40, indicating there is some interest. 

Nelson Minar takes a contrary position on XML as a wire format.  

I bought the new laptop. Over 7 hour battery life. Easy to carry. 

Howard Dean: "Somebody has to take responsibility for being on the school board, on the city council." 

Lance Knobel, in London, will be up at 2AM to watch tonight's 90-minute debate, at 7PM Eastern, 4PM Pacific. Adam Curry and I will do a live Trade Secrets, with Adam in Belgium, watching and commenting on the debate, blow by blow (we hope). Unfortunately the candidates are not allowed to talk to each other. Supposedly the cameras have to stay on the person speaking, but thankfully they say No Way.  

It's great to see collaboration among people I really admire, working to make Frontier a better HTTP server. Dave Luebbert was a developer at Microsoft, for years, working on Word. He's roughly my age. Being a good developer is more than knowing how the computer works, it's also about knowing how to get the best work out of yourself and others on the team. 

News.Com: IE--embraced, extended, extinct? 

Rebecca MacKinnon: "The American School in Shanghai turned a bunch of North Korean asylum-seekers over to the Chinese police, who will send them back to North Korea and thus to jail/torture. The media is totally not reporting this. It would be great if the blogosphere raised a stink over the questionable actions of our fellow Americans overseas." 

NY Times: New Company Starts Up a Challenge to Google. 

Clusty is the search engine in the Times article. 

Mary Hodder: "This is an RSS love letter." 

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

A philosophy note about BloggerCon. In recruiting discussion leaders I look for people who seem to have a sense of blogging, they were born knowing how to do it, they have something to say, it came naturally to them. I don't look for big names, I look for people who will make good discussion leaders. People who have a passion for the subject, and (more important) have a passion for the story. It's the kind of humility that makes a successful moderator. I tell them "you're a reporter" and the sources are in the room. They are not an audience, they are your panel. The goal is for the conversation to stay in the room, that people who have something to contribute feel welcome to do so. 

Another thing BloggerCon gives you that the others don't: diversity. Other conferences are invitation only, how they can claim to be part of the Web is a mystery to me (the Web is inclusive, by design, it routes around exclusivity). Other conferences charge thousands of dollars for a chance to rub elbows with the rich and super-rich. Not BloggerCon. We don't charge people anything to participate. We will ask for donations (soon), if you can afford to kick in some money, we'll have lunch, and be able to pay for Wifi and webcasting. I always contribute my time at no charge, and I give $1000 in cash. Adam has also given $1000 each time. But you don't have to pay to participate, and everyone is invited. Why is that good? Because you don't just get one point of view, or just hear from people I like. No footsie here. I once said to someone who held an exclusive a-list-only event at BloggerCon that you know it's an open event, because if it weren't, you wouldn't be here. We encourage people to be open to others, no matter how famous they are, no matter who they're friends with. It's transparent. It's a user's conference. No speakers, no panels, no audience. 

Robert Scoble will lead a discussion on Information Overload. The idea is not to avoid it, but to embrace it and thrive in overload mode.  

The BloggerCon announcements will become more frequent as we head into the final month of preparation. We have a new discussion leader for the main political session, it's Ed Cone, who has been blogging from North Carolina, which may be the leader in state-level political blogging. It's long been my belief that this is where political blogging will first achieve real significance, I think in two, four or six years the entire House of Representatives will be blogging. It's too good a medium for local politics. I learned at the DNC that at least one of the two major parties sees it the same way. Ed has been with the political blogging story all the way, he led the journalism discussion at BloggerCon I. He also planned and ran a successful unconference in August in Greensboro. He'll be great in this very key role for the Fall 2004 con. His session description should be up shortly.  

CBS: Bush's Top Ten Flip-Flops. ! 

Ted Leung: "I'm curious to see the internals of Frontier. The integration of a scripting language and an object database is exactly what we're building at OSAF." 

John Edwards: "[Cheney] was against getting bogged down in Iraq before he was for it." Hah! 

Susan Kitchens blogged today's space flight from Mojave. 

Dave Luebbert describes a substantial performance enhancement to the kernel that can be achived in 15 lines of code.  

Steve Rubel: "Microsoft is thinking about RSS, but it's thinking bigger than where the market is now." 

On Nov 12 I'll be on a panel with Arianna Huffington, Mickey Kaus and Joe Trippi at the Online News Association conf in Hollywood.  

Craig Cline will lead the BloggerCon discussion of Mobile Blogging. 

Donald Katz, the founder of Audible.com, is blogging at PaidContent.org. 

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had a great headline about Dick Cheney. 

Real Software has an office in easy walking distance from my apartment. 

Today's movie: Musicians performing in front of the world's first Starbucks at Pike Place Market, Seattle. 

Places that viruses and trojans hide on start up. 

Yesterday a friend showed me Replay Radio. He also had a super-cool new laptop. I almost bought the laptop on the Web yesterday, but instead went for RR. I told it to record two programs from KQED, the NPR affiliate in San Francisco. At midnight it started recording All Things Considered. If all goes well, at 1AM there will be an MP3 in its output folder containing the show. And get this, it has an iPodder built in. It can tell iTunes to load the MP3 and copy it onto the hard disk of my iPod. Pretty cool. I'll let you know if it works. [Postscript: There was a 25MB file, but when I played it, it was all dead air. Something obviously didn't work. Time to RTFM. I then installed the Enhanced Audio Driver per Jeff Sandquist's recommendation. Testing it now.] 

Google weblog: "For users inside the People's Republic of China, we have chosen not to include sources that are inaccessible from within that country." 

Wired: "Ever wonder why Google News has been in beta for three years? Possibly because it hasn't figured out a way to make money without enraging publishers." 

I got a response to this post from Rafe Needleman. He chastised me for: 1. Criticizing his article in public. 2. Causing him trouble if he corrects his mistake and 3. Not realizing that he personally had not written that part of the article. My response is public because his article is public. Had he, or a CNET researcher, asked me about this in private, then it would have stayed private. Further, the article has his name on it, so I'd be really concerned if I were him about what other misinformation it might contain, rather than somehow blaming me for CNET's incompetence. Finally, the arrogance of these reporters! Somehow one article in CNET makes him the boss of RSS-Land. The proper response would be first to apologize for giving credit for my work to others, and skip the exuses, then do some research, correct the errors, and go on.  

Seattle P-I: "Seismologists had a few words of advice: Don't hold your breath. No cataclysm. Keep paying the bills." 

Last night I talked with Julie Leung about her BloggerCon session, about the emotional component of weblogs. Then I read this on Seth Dillingham's blog post about the open source release of Frontier. "When Dave announced that the source would be released, I was determined not to let it affect me. I wouldn't let this thing I loved hurt me again. ;-) Imagine my surprise, then, when reading about the release and listening to Dave's audio commentary almost brought tears to my eyes." It never occurred to me that my audio blog post would have that effect, but now that I read Seth's comment, I can see why it would. Frontier has had a huge human cost to it. It's an obession. It should have a warning label. Warning, could cost you years of your life. Many. Beware. Like Seth I'm determined not to get dragged into its vortex again. So when Wes Felter (another former devotee) posted a message challenging the one in charge to decide this or that, I just flipped the cover of the laptop, and lay down to read a political novel I borrowed from the library. "It's a young man's thing," I said to no one at all, "I gave my youth to this passion, and now both are gone." 

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Today's Morning Coffee Notes explains the open source release of Frontier. Jeff Sandquist previewed the audio and said he had never understood what Frontier was before. It's good that this event which is probably one of the largest releases of open source code ever, may mean that more people appreciate this interesting and unique piece of software. Or it may be a time capsule, a message in a bottle, or a bridge to the future, and that would be fine too. One thing it's not is an attempt to boil the ocean, or a threat to your favorite scripting language, Web content system or HTTP server. Just trying to preserve a life's work of programming, so it doesn't end up lost or forgotten. Peace brother.  

An audio blog post about the Bloglines API, the commons, fair compensation for centralized services, what's not fair. 

Paolo Valdemarin comments on the Frontier open source release. It's an interesting perspective, however mainResponder will be released under the same license as the kernel. We wanted to get the main kernel stuff released first before looking at mainResponder. 

Rasterweb: "Excuse me while I dig through my backups from the late 1990's for all my UserTalk code!" 

Doc Searls: DIY radio with Podcasting.  

Technorati cosmos for the Frontier open source release.  

Mary Hodder will lead a discussion on the Core Values of the Web. 

Jeremy Zawodny boasts that Yahoo now has an open content model. I think that means you can subscribe to whatever you want to. Funny thing is the RSS content model was open long before Yahoo showed up. Should we thank them for giving back to us what we already had? This is what big companies do so well. Give back to us stuff that we already had.  

A new Trade Secrets is up. In it Adam and I discuss the merits of Mac vs Windows. Now of course I'm getting (friendly) email from people suggesting that I get a Mac. I'll make a deal. If John Kerry wins I'll get a Mac.  

According to CNET, O'Reilly Associates is one of the core developers of RSS, along with Netscape and Harvard. I guess BigCo's only recognize BigCo's, or BigU's. CNET did the same with SOAP, taking UserLand off the list of originators. Rafe, I take pride in my work, why did you take me out of the story? I wonder how Rafe would feel if CNET took his name off his article, or put someone else's name on it. Rafe, please explain. 

Actually, Allawi is the Secretary of Iraq.  

Comments on Adam's daily audio blog post 

1. I really liked yesterday's Daily Source Code. You're reaching another level, esp with all the excellent content you're playing, and the connect with WGBH. It's weird, I listened to that part as I turned a corner and was surprised to find the offices of Real Networks. It's a ten minute walk from my apartment.

2. A little guy who's into soliloquy? Hmmm.

3. However, I totally disagree with the conclusion that Kerry and Bush are cut from the same cloth. The reason Kerry is behind is because he is having trouble choosing from a vast field of true issues with Bush. On the other side, Bush has to make up stuff to attack Kerry with. A rational voter would go for Kerry in a second.

4. IMHO.

5. Keep up the good work!

Monday, September 27, 2004

Adam Curry will lead a BloggerCon discussion on Podcasting. 

I was interviewed today by a reporter on Yahoo's efforts in RSS. I gave them a pretty negative review. I didn't want to be misunderstood, so I did an audio recording of what I said to the reporter, so you can get an idea of the thinking behind the soundbites that may be in the news article.  

Seattle P-I: Microsoft 'Search Champs.' 

Ethan Zuckerman on systematic biases in Wikipedia. 

Scott Rosenberg: "The Bush team has cemented its message: Kerry is a wimp." 

BBC: "King Abdullah of Jordan says it will be impossible to hold elections in Iraq in the current state of chaos there." 

I was looking for the Frontier stress testing suite amid some very old stuff on my hard disk and came across this wonderful WAV file of Pinky and the Brain talking about Gilligan's Island.  

AP: "A 108-year-old man has taken up smoking again, encouraged by gifts of cigars from as far away as London." 

Steve Gillmor: "And before you get too irate, I want more data, not less." 

Snappy the Clam: "See how many gladhanding, namedropping shoutouts you can find in this latest conflict-ridden (now with no disclosure!) advertorial puffball from RSS cheerleader and 'tech journalist' Steve Gillmor." 

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Take a walk on the campus of the University of Washington. 

Twenty years later, ThinkTank still gets fan mail. 

A mostly negative story by the NY Times' Bob Tedeschi about Philadelphia's courageous plan to cover the city with wireless Internet access. I'm glad that Philadelphia is doing this, even if it isn't universally used. I want to Internet access to become ubiquitous and free as soon as possible. A few years ago Tedeschi was saying blogs wouldn't amount to anything.  

Talked with Scoble today, he told me about DotNetRocks which is an audio blogcast he loves. Got to check it out. 

One year ago today: "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." 

On this day in 1998, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire hit their 66th home runs, in doing so setting the all-time record for the most home runs in a season. McGwire would finish the year with 70, only to be topped by Barry Bonds three years later, with 73. Roger Maris still holds the American League record with 61, supporting the widely-held belief that the AL is not a "real" baseball league. 

Electoral Vote Predictor: Kerry 207, Bush 311. 

An interesting discussion on the NetNewsWire mail list. A user asks if Apple's foray into RSS utilities will have a negative impact on Ranchero. Brent responds the way developers usually do, saying it's good news, Apple will grow the market, creating more users, etc. I've been there myself, in the struggle to co-exist with AppleScript in the early 90s. If I had it to do over again I would have been direct and honest when answering these questions. Basically, I don't know, it's really up to the users. If you want us to continue developing the software, you have to be sure we get enough money to do so. If you think Apple is capable of satisfying all your needs, then you have nothing to worry about. If you'd like insurance, help us stay in business. The power has always been with the users, not the platform vendor, no matter how much spin there is that says otherwise. You can have your cake and eat it too. Developers can do something that platform vendors don't do well -- listen to users. Consider that when you decide whether or not to buy the software.  

Talking with Adam this morning, not in Trade Secrets mode, I said that I buy servers the way women buy shoes. I thought that was worth getting on the record not because I understand myself better, but rather because I think I understand women's relationship with shoes better.  

Elizabeth Edwards on blogging. 

I hate to interfere in British politics, but it seems if they drive Tony Blair from office, we'll be more likely to send Dubya back to Texas.  

This Netflix feed updates once a week early on Sunday morning with the list of new movies. 

Barry Bowen has started an OPML-based directory site. 

Saturday, September 25, 2004

Projected landfall for Hurricane Jeanne is Vero Beach. 

Movie. Hurricane coverage on CNN mostly consists of reporters standing outside in the storm reporting on what it feels like to be outside when no sane human being would be outside. Is that journalism? Have to ask Jay Rosen about that.  

NY Times: Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail. 

Business 2.0: The new road to riches. 

Adam Curry: "Looks like podcasting is getting popular." 

Geek News Central explains why centralized directories are evil. The right way to do it is decentralized, using a convenient XML format for representing and editing directories. We happen to have one, it's quite popular and has a lot more power than is being used. Please see the Googlish way to do directories, which could easily be the MSN-way to do directories, or what Yahoo can do when they're ready to give up the centralized model. It's really simple. Teach your search engine to look inside OPML files, and index them using the same page-ranking method you use for HTML. When the searcher wants to go into a directory, display it like Yahoo or DMOZ. Voila, let a thousand directories bloom. If someone tries to "own" a category, route around them. The Web doesn't have a single home page, why should directories? Competition is the way of the Web.  

More on Google, directories and OPML. 

A new episode of Trade Secrets Radio, lots of laughing, very little work got done. Got caught in configuration hell.  

We're getting close to the open source release of Frontier. I'm running the software on my desktop. Decided on the license. We may do special licenses for commercial developers who want to make private enhancements (not shared). The GPL offers the most flexibility.  

As part of the release I had to come up with a positioning statement. "High performance Web content management, object database, system-level and Internet scripting environment, including source code editing and debugging." 

8/31/04: Progress report on the open source release. 

In May, I explained why I wanted to do this release. 

Esther Dyson invests in Flickr. 

We're going to do a Trade Secrets during the first Presidential debate.  

Help compile a list of Netflix and Blockbuster shipping centers. 

NY Times: "CBS News said yesterday that it had postponed a 60 Minutes segment that questioned Bush administration rationales for going to war in Iraq." 

Three years ago today, the BBC said that Bush was lining up with the doves. Wolfowitz was urging an immediate response to 9-11, bombing Afghanistan and invading Iraq, while Colin Powell wanted to build a coalition. 

Former President Bush I on the beach with a cute young gal. Meanwhile his son, Former President Bush II, relaxes, thinking about his upcoming retirement. 

Friday, September 24, 2004

Can you spot the volcano in this picture of Puget Sound? 

Jeanne aims at Florida. The National Hurricane Center has an RSS 2.0 feed tracking the hurricane. 

Dan Farber interviews Guy Kawasaki. Hey it's been years since I'd seen Kawasaki, who was a friend a long time ago. It's cool to be able to catch up this way. He hasn't changed. Still a smart guy. Excellent 

7/29/95: Evangelism as God Intended. 

BTW, October 7 marks the tenth anniversary of this little network of mine. There haven't been many days since 10/7/94 that I haven't put some kind of foolish idea on the Web. I often forget this anniversary, but I'm determined not to do so this year.  

I've been lurking on the ipodder-dev list, and have been totally impressed with how productive this community of users and developers has been. At the core is an activity they call podcasting, a really simple idea with powerful implications. Think of an iPod that can subscribe to audio feeds the same way a desktop aggregator subscribes to text feeds. Adam Curry, who's been feeding this community with his Daily Source Code programs, is a natural born community leader. He knows just enough technology to be dangerous, and doesn't mind asking questions. The community is on the cusp of shipping a polished and revolutionary product. This work will be visible at BloggerCon III, Adam is leading a discussion, and with any luck at least some of our sessions will flow out through the podcast network.  

News Hounds: "Even Fox News' own poll can't find George Bush's convention bounce anymore." 

Mobile Blogging 

We've got a discussion leader, and we're side-stepping the controversy over what moblogging is or isn't.

Our interest is blogging away-from-the-desktop. Pictures, audio, words, what else? How well supported are we in this activity? How safe are we? What tools, what devices do we need to make it really work?

To our discussion leader, who I will introduce later, let's discuss positive things we can do to direct vendors who are interested in this stuff, to create the products we want. Imho, that's an important function of blogging, to generate ideas that provide direction to vendors.

To people who feel they own the term moblogging, I can recognize an argument I don't want to have. So we're going to call this session Mobile Blogging and leave it at that.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Taegan Goddard: "Tom Goldstein got permission to post the must-read October 2004 Vanity Fair article on the 2000 Bush v Gore election litigation including 'never-before-reported details about what happened inside the Supreme Court.'" 

Larry Lessig debates the merits of the Edwards candidacy. He will also lead the law-blogging discussion at BloggerCon III on Nov 6 at Stanford. 

"thinkusaalignright"Kottke: "I want to compile a short list of essential resources for people who need to register to vote, vote via absentee ballot, and, you know, vote normally." This is a good idea. I registered by mail to vote in Washington, but haven't received any kind of confirmation. The deadline is rapidly approaching. Should I register again? How can I find out if I'm registered? 

Audio of today's Bush press conference, with comments by yours truly. This is a format I want to play with, I first heard Rush Limbaugh do it, artfully, with a speech by John Kerry.  

Bush says he gets the truth from the Iraqi Prime Minister. He appointed him. Geez Louise, call Central Casting. Who do we have to blow to to get a little truth around here? 

Paolo dreams of a Google browser.  

JD Lasica: "Google News uses computer algorithms to identify top stories while Yahoo News favors old-fashioned human editors. But do Google's automated search results display a conservative bias?" 

From Joey de Villa, Picking Up Girls Made Easy. But don't tell President Bush about this, he'll probably say it's a Theater In The War On Terror. "We must not allow the actions of a few to determine the fate of these good people as well as the security of the United States." So go out and pick up some girls, and do your part to combat global terrorism. "It is tough work, everyone in America knows that. 

Geek News Central approves of AOL's more secure sign-on, and so do I. It would be great for example if a brokerage firm offered a more secure login, and some rules about when and in what amounts transfers could be made. Some in the blogosphere have criticized AOL for this, but identity theft is a big problem, and any attempt to build more secure identity systems is worth considering. 

Bush still lies, saying the war in Iraq is a war on terror. "It's the central front in the war on terror," he says. This is the fatal flaw of his government, it's built on a lie.  

I had dinner last night with Joe Beda, the Microsoft guy who jumped to Google last week. We walked all the way across the University of Washington (pronounced U-Dub) campus to get Thai food, but the restaurant was jammed so we had Gyros instead. I liked the way the campus looked, even after dark, and Joe is a nice guy. Our walk was almost two hours round trip, which was really cool because I had skipped my walk yesterday, wasn't feeling too good yesterday afternoon. This morning, I feel great, didn't eat too much and walked a lot with Joe. I also took his picture wearing his new Google beanie, above and to the right. 

BBC tea-leave-read about Google's rumored browser. 

Julie: "When Ben & Jerry's names an ice cream after Dave -- or after bloggers in general! -- then we'll know blogging has finally caught fire."  

Jerry: "I know the rent is in arrears, the dog has not been fed in years, it's even worse than it appears." 

Wired reviews the Sims 2. I still haven't been able to run it here. I used a patched version to get past the problem with it not liking its own key disk, but then it crashed, repeatedly, a few minutes into the game. It took the whole system down with it, something about my graphic card. I got enough play in to realize I was going to like it, but I just can't afford the time and the risk. It's paranoid buggy software.  

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Seatte Times: Blogging guru stops, for a while, in Seattle. 

A new Trade Secrets is up, recorded this morning.  

News.Com: "Sony confirmed on Wednesday that it is working to add native MP3 support to its portable music players -- a major strategy reversal." 

JD Lasica: "How do we get Mark an RSS feed?" 

Feedster now supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures. Bing! 

Lunch today was at Etta's Seafood, 2020 Western Ave. Very good.  

Kevin Gossett: "I hate Dave Winer because he's in Seattle and I'm not." 

Taegan Goddard summarizes the latest national poll. 

Andrew Sullivan: "Not bad for a bunch of slackers in their nightclothes." 

Juan Cole: "What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll." 

Paul Krugman: "America's overstretched armed forces are gradually getting chewed up in a losing struggle." 

Scripting News is once again officially a Pacific Time Zone weblog. 

BloggerCon session announcements 

Session: Bloggers and Journalists -- Border Crossings.

The next BloggerCon is November 6 at Stanford Law School. Late last week I started working with the discussion leaders, one-to-one, talking about how BloggerCon sessions work, and to get started on the session descriptions.

I like to present the sessions one at a time, on the BloggerCon site, and here on Scripting News. Starting today we'll be introducing sessions on a fairly regular basis until the grid is filled in, which will probably be the day before the conference, if memory serves me.

Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon, will lead our discussion on journalism and blogging. He's an ideal person to lead this discussion because he's a skilled reporter, and both a journalist and a blogger. All three BC's have had sessions about journalism. The first discussion was led by Ed Cone, the second by Jay Rosen, and now we turn to Scott Rosenberg.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Frank Leahy: "The theoreticians throw around RDF notation like it’s fairy dust, certain to charm everyone if they just sprinkle enough of it." 

Tell Tim O'Reilly what to ask Jeff Bezos or John Doerr.  

BloggerCon I: "One of the fundamental ideas of the Web is the link." 

Finally, I have an opinion in the evolving CBS story. When the producer called Joe Lockhart in the Kerry campaign she crossed a very important line. At first I wasn't sure, but then I asked myself how I would feel if the Republicans had called Fox News and suggested they talk with a source, especially one who was pushing forgeries. I wouldn't like it. On the other hand, I'm absolutely sure that Fox is in the loop on the daily Republican talking points, you can see the coordination in their news programs, and I'm very angry that they do that. It's time to do a cross-party, cross-network cleanup. I think the Republicans have played much looser here than the Democrats. 

I wonder if the UN would let Kerry give a speech? 

96 days ago, I posted a transition plan for weblogs.com-hosted sites. Rogers Cadenhead offered to host the sites for free for 90 days, and I would redirect to the new sites from their old addresses. I'm extending the redirects to Oct 1, at which time we will no longer do the redirects. Note, this has nothing to do with radio.weblogs.com sites, they are unaffected by these changes. 

Just for fun, 830 days since I quit smoking.  

David Davies: "I had a moblog before any of you." 

Robert Palmer: "You like to think that you're immune to the stuff, oh yeah. It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough. You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love." 

What if every coalition member in Iraq wore one of these GPS bracelets? Then, when Zarqawi threatens to behead you, the special ops guys swoop in and behead him first. I suppose they would just take the bracelet off your body before they take you to their secret hideout, but maybe we can come up with a GPS implant that's harder to detect. I'd really enjoy hearing that there was a video of Zarqawi begging for his mommy as they sawed his head off, slowly. 

Dowbrigade: "As a teacher and a blogger, the Dowbrigade dreams of the day when he will discover a blogger in one of his classes." 

Morning coffee notes 

I haven't really settled in until I figure out The Daily Walk.

In Newton, where I lived last, I'd walk up one street, across another, then across a field, past a school, hang a right, walk a few blocks, right again for a bit then left, then right, and back to my front step. Once I settled on it I no longer had to watch the time, I knew it was 50 minutes, plus or minus; and it was good in the snow (the field part was fun when the snow was deep), and I didn't have to think. I listened to all of Chris Lydon's interviews in that mode. And NPR news. It was on that walk that I heard about Ronald Reagan's passing (I rarely took the walk in reverse, but on that day for some reason I did). I also heard about the passing of Robert Palmer there too, and spent lots of time thinking about Uncle Vava who died shortly after I started taking that walk.

So now I'm in a new city, and trying to figure out the new walk. The first day I went toward the central library. No good, too many hills and too many stops for traffic lights. Then I tried heading over to the ballparks, pretty good -- it's flat, the traffic's not too bad, you can do a loop (always better than turning around) but it's a little on the noisy side (highway 99) and yesterday I think I found a better one, and it may be the one.

Here's how it works. Walk to the waterfront, go north on Alaskan Way (instead of south, as I had before). The cool thing that happens is that it separates from 99, so it gets quiet, and then even better, there's a sidewalk on the harbor side of the street that has no traffic lights (because all the streets end at the water, duh). You can walk for a long way without a stop. After about 20 minutes you hit a park, and if you want to catch your breath, there are benches looking out at the harbor. It was on one of those benches yesterday that I heard Adam Curry play one of my favorite old Alice Cooper songs. Loop around, and come up Western Ave, through Pike Place Market, and grab some fruit and head back home. The whole loop, just about an hour. No noise, very little traffic. Yes, it's very promising.

Monday, September 20, 2004

Seattle Times article on the RSS "blog jam." 

NY Times: "At a time when the violent insurgency in Iraq is vexing the Bush administration and stirring worries among Americans, events may be propelling the United States into yet another confrontation, this time with Iran." 

A walk in pictures today on the Seattle waterfront. 

AP: "Subscribers get a matchbook-size device from RSA Security Inc displaying a six-digit code that changes every minute. The code is necessary to log on, so a scammer who guesses or steals a password cannot access the account without the device in hand." 

Jay Rosen: "Today's announcement is just one part of a massive institutional failure at CBS, much of it still to be uncovered." 

Dan Gillmor: "Now it's time for CBS to tell us what happened." 

Scott Rosenberg: "Dan Rather and his colleagues have now stuck a fork in the tattered remnants of the blue-chip brand name they inherited from Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite." 

Request for help. We need a moderate-size conference room in Seattle that we can use every Thursday evening between now and the November 2 election to hold round-table discussions among Washington bloggers who are covering the 2004 election. The room should hold 20-30 people, have WiFi, and a projector. The Seattle library would be perfect, as some have suggested, but they won't have meeting rooms available until early 2005. If you can offer us space for these meetings, please send an email asap. 

CBS: Bush Memo Story A Mistake. 

AP: "Chief anchor Dan Rather apologized for 'a mistake in judgment.'"  

A bulletin from CBS says they can't authenticate the memos. 

CBS: Now comes the Blog backlash. 

MediaDailyNews: "I want my MP3." 

Don Park asks if Firefox Live Bookmarks is the same thing as Internet Explorer's CDF support? Today's IE still supports the Push Technology of the mid-90s.  

Russell Beattie will speak about mobile technology at the Web 2.0 conference in October in SF. 

Okay, I bought the Sims 2 yesterday, on a whim, and just installed it. Now it says I should insert the correct DVD. There are only two DVDs, I tried them both, no luck. $49 is a lot for something that does so little!  

Most people seem to like yesterday's attempt to define Moblogging, but some don't. The most common complaint is that Moblogging is much less than what I say it is, they say it's just snapping pictures of people on your cell phone and having them automatically uploaded via the MetaWeblog API. It could be there's more to Moblogging than some realize, or it could be that there's no such thing as Moblogging, or it could be they're right, and we need a new term to describe the very real activity I wrote about yesterday. Anyway I hope we can all get along with each other. Maybe we'll just call the session Mobile Blogging, and sidestep the controversy. It's amazing how readily people flame when there's such an obvious compromise available. 

EVP: "While the election is 6 weeks away, the deadline for registering as a voter is almost upon us. In most states it is in less than two weeks." 

Okay, I have to admit that I hate Andy Rooney. It's a bias that I cultivate. In a world where it's not politically correct to hate almost anything, I allow myself this one excess. I hate his homilies. I don't think he's cute. I wish he'd trim those eyebrows and clean out his desk. But, even I have to admit he told a good joke last night. He said his friend wants people to declare their political intentions so everyone knows how they're going to vote. So people who are going to vote for Kerry should drive with their headlights on during the day and (can you see it coming now) people who are going to vote for Bush should drive with their headlights off at night.  

NY Times: "CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night." 

Pandia: "Your site may be banned because someone else has copied it!" 

Versioning and extensibility in XML formats 

On the Atom-Syntax list they're talking about versioning and extensibility, two problems that are very easily solved in XML.

For versioning, define a required version attribute on the feed element, a string in the form x.y, where x and y are two numbers. X is the major version, and y is the minor version. So a version 0.3 feed would have a version attribute whose value is "0.3". A version 1.0 feed would have a version attribute of "1.0".

For extensibility, allow the format to be extended through namespaces and trust the W3C, who is the owner of the namespaces spec to tell you how to do it. Build on the works of others.

For extra credit, the format should evolve by adding new elements. A processor can tell whether it should expect the new elements or not by checking the top-level version attribute.

I honestly don't think there's another way to do it, so all the arguing and fussing is just going to end up there, so you might as well just do it. Of course this is just my opinion, I have no position re the Atom working group, or the RSS advisory board.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

It had been a couple of years since I bought a wireless router, and I was having troubles that were traceable to my old Linksys router, so I bought a new Netgear router at Best Buy in Northgate. First the good news, it works. Now, more good news, all I had to do to configure it was click three times. It was able to figure out what kind of net connection I had, and automatically configured itself. The only small complaint I have about the setup is that the instructions are labored and complicated. Why not just say: First try it the simple way, it usually works, and that's all you have to do. I guess someone in marketing didn't trust the engineering? Anyway, nice work! 

Hey there was actually some sun today in Seattle. 

Oy I had a server meltdown. I have it mostly put back together now. Time for a walk, with Adam's latest Daily Source Code on my iPod. He says he's got his content studio all working, the scoop is on the MP3.  

Scoble: How your blog will get discovered. 

NY Times survey of spyware and adware. "...a program that creeps onto a computer's hard drive unannounced, is wrecking the Internet." 

What is Moblogging? 

I spent much of yesterday with Scoble, we went to the ballgame, then Pike Place Market, where he bought flowers for his wife Maryam, and then on to a Tully's coffee shop where we figured out what Moblogging is.

First, why is it important that I of all people know what Moblogging is? Okay, as Zero Mostel says, I'll tell you. (Sorry.) Blame Rebecca MacKinnon, my former Harvard colleague, and former Tokyo bureau chief for CNN, and friend of Joi Ito. Rebecca keeps telling me that I must have a session about Moblogging at BloggerCon. At the closing session of the last BC, I asked the room if they felt we should have one, and everyone said yes we should. However, unless we know what Moblogging is, if we were to have a discussion about it, it seems we would spend all our time debating what it is and whether or not it belongs at a BloggerCon. Those are exactly the kinds of meta-discussions that I like to avoid. At all costs. So I want to know what it is, and if it's worth discussing.

So Scoble and I sat down for coffee with this mission in mind. To figure it out. To figure out what Moblogging is. And we did. We nailed it. We know. And now I'm going to tell you.

Moblogging is any activity that occurs away from your normal blog-writing place whose purpose is to create content for your blog.

So, when I took pictures of the coffee shop, that was moblogging.

When I wrote this explanation that was not moblogging, since I did it at my desk, fully supported by my normal high-speed net connection, laptop, multi-gigabyte external hard disk, second monitor, USB hub, mouse, etc etc. There were no distractions that come from being in the real world, no toll booths, gas gauges, semi-trailers, weather reports, ticket takers, hot dog vendors, fish throwers, jelly tasters that demand attention above and beyond the blogging I'm doing.

I was moblogging when I crossed the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota, where it's just a slow-flowing creek. If I hadn't taken the pictures and later uploaded them, I still would have been delighted and impressed, but I wouldn't have been moblogging.

When I'm driving through the corn fields of Saskatchewan recording an audio blog post, I am moblogging. Here's a 15-second Quicktime movie that illustrates what it feels like to moblog while driving, from my point of view.

I am also moblogging when I almost drive off the road trying to hit pause on the recording. (In other words moblogging requires new hardware that is designed specifically for moblogging.)

In the future I will be moblogging when I hit the big red Record button on my iPod and talk into it for a half-hour while driving across the wheat fields of Alberta and then hit the big red button again to pause the recording and save it to the internal disk of the iPod. (A low battery also causes it to be saved.) I will be moblogging when I don't drive off the road into one of the wheat fields.

Before we came up with this definition, we were fumbling around trying to figure out if moblogging was more than taking pictures of things with cell phones and having them uploaded to some central server so we could point to them from our blogs. Yes yes, moblogging is more than that, it's a way of blogging, perhaps even a way of living. It's important and fully capable of supporting a 1.5 hour discussion at Bloggercon.

Comment here.

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Pictures: Safeco Field, Pike Place Market, Tully's Coffee. 

Lisa Rein has video of Ben Barnes on 60 Minutes. 

Electoral Vote Predictor explains how opinion polling works. 

I just heard about this weblog called Mini-Microsoft. "Let's slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine! Mini-Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft, lean-and-mean!" 

Barry Bonds hit his 700th career home run last night. "The homer made Bonds only the third player in major league history -- after Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron -- to reach that milestone." 

Jay Rosen: "Bringing devastating memos into a campaign's final sprint is like bringing pistols on stage." 

A directory of French language RSS feeds. 

Meanwhile Republicans try to change the subject just when the campaign gets interesting. Finally, finally, we're getting the discussion of the Bush presidency that he deserves. Now, if you still want to vote for Bush, go for it, but do it with your eyes open. This is a guy who will never help the American people. He'll probably never do anything good for Republicans either. He's one selfish mofo, a blame-anyone-but-me machine. Please go read the biography of Harry Truman, that's what we should be aspiring to. Not this figment of a President. Let's make a deal with Kerry, that he'll agree to hire Clinton's advisors, and listen to them, and give him the job and send Dubya off to Baghdad, to complete his military service. 

Scoble: "They have blogs for everything nowadays." 

Friday, September 17, 2004

Today's Morning Coffee Notes, about BloggerCon, a great audiobook, a pioneering TV show from the 60's, and a cameo appearance by Robert Scoble, via cell phone. 

Richard Nixon did appear as a guest on Laugh-In, on 9/16/68. He had one line: "Sock it to me." Other Laugh-In standards: Here come da judge (with Sammy Davis, Jr), Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls, and Bet your bippy. I know it sounds silly, but the Laugh-In gags used to crack us up. I guess you had to be there.  

Librarian.Net: Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library. 

I've been having trouble with email. Some of my mail isn't getting through, or vice versa. Hard to tell. If I haven't responded, please try this method, which seems to be reliable. Thanks.  

Tim Jarrett moved to Boston as I was moving to Seattle. Heh. I guess in the coastal dimension Tim is my inverse and vice versa. 

The text of an email I've sent to BloggerCon discussion leaders. 

Rafe Colburn: "The grim realities of war really sink in when your RSS reader lets you know that a few more Americans have lost their lives several times a day." 

News.Com: "Electronic Arts on Friday began shipping the long-awaited sequel to its hit PC game The Sims. 

Three Iraqi brothers, living in Baghdad, have a weblog. 

Talking Points: "The president is willing to keep burning through the US Army and the Marine Corps to avoid admitting the failure of his policies." 

Twelve days before CBS ran the story about Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, we had it here, as the top item on August 27. The CBS piece ran on September 8. Why did they wait so long? 

Wired: "The broadcasting industry, surprised by the debut of Microsoft's Radio Plus service, hasn't reached full freak-out mode yet." 

Electoral Vote Predictor: "Breslin claims that pollsters do not call the 168 million cell phones in the country." 

Yesterday was an amazingly productive day. Did the first Trade Secrets show with Adam. Mailed in my voter registration, got a library card, visited the central Seattle library (a modern marvel), took out a book that's out of print that I've wanted to read for several months. Walking by a housewares store on Fourth Ave, saw they were selling 20 wood hangers for $10. How did they know my apartment came without hangers? Finally, I walked through the Pike Place Market for the first time. What an interesting place. It's a little bit like the waterfront in New Orleans, but the fish! Oh man. I gotta eat there. So many choices. Which are the good ones? 

Speaking of Pike, before Radio was called Radio it was called Pike. We had to change the name because there already was something called Pike. Too bad, it was a good name.  

New header graphic, the Alps in Davos. The previous graphic, Shea Stadium from a plane taking off at LaGuardia Airport, was really bad luck for the Mets, who lost 21 of their last 25 games. Ouch. 

Don Park: "Words like crappy and useless come to mind." 

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Another thing Steve asked is when my new show is going on the air. He's good at reading tea leaves. Here's the announcement... 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, announcing a new Web radio show, using only the latest technology and the freshest drugs. The name of the show is Trade Secrets. It's an integrated app, a collaboration between myself and Adam Curry. We're using AIM to do a weekly, and perhaps daily or as-necessary radio talk show with music clips and politics and software and guests and more, ranging far and wide. Live from two continents, it's Trade Secrets Radio. Yah man.  

And here's the initial Trade Secrets show. And away we go! 

And by popular demand, here's a Trade Secrets site, and a RSS 2.0 with enclosures feed you can subscribe to. "This is a bad site for fans of George W Bush." Sorry.