Thursday, March 31, 2005

MSN Spaces Updates: "A list of Spaces that have updated in the last hour, as reported by Microsoft to weblogs.com." Ping! 

Starbucks coffee notes podcast, actually done in the morning, featuring the authors of Micro Persuasion, Hacking Netflix, Orbit Cast and Scripting News. Random stuff, kind of memorable, New York blogging, public relations, gnoing to Gnomedex, OPML. 

Five years ago: The Two Way Web White Board. 

This morning I listened to a Ron Bloom and Adam Curry podcast where they try to explain what they're doing. "Take a break from reality." 

The Internet Society of Puerto Rico appreciates RSS. 

Yesterday's Test Cases 

Regarding yesterday's test cases, I got quite a few comments about the second scenario, where I propose that I become the author of Cory Doctorow's web-published novel, offer it for sale, and seek distribution.

The uniform response was that since Cory's book is offered under the Creative Commons attribution share-alike license, I am not "permitted" to change the author's name, or charge for the right to a copy. I put the word permitted in quotes, because the responders haven't explained why Cory's work is so-protected and my work, which is offered under a standard copyright, isn't.

In other words, the responders think there is a line. Aha! There are some things one is not allowed to do with another person's work. They said not only is it possible for Cory to opt-out of my creative rip-and-burn act of 21st Century artistry, but it actually requires Cory to opt-in! Well well well.

Does this perhaps ring a bell?

And since I haven't heard from Cory, I still wonder if it's okay with him that I republish his work for money and claim authorship of it, since I know he doesn't believe in opt-in or out. I believe his philosophy is "Tough shit."

Also, I haven't heard from the EFF about the proposal that they let me filter eff.org, replacing links, author's names, correct spelling, and edit their copy to be more agreeable to the entertainment industry.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

I'm participating in a debate about blogs and the media next Tues in NY. 

If I were in charge of the Yahoo 360 bootstrap I'd stop everything and create a page that shows the new stuff in reverse-chronologic order. I want to see what's happening in their community. There doesn't appear to be a way to do that. I can't believe they don't have such a page for internal use. If so, make it public, and not just for members of the community, for everyone. 

Welcome to a new Corante weblog with a well-known bunch of blogging lawyers. Denise Howell, Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighell, Ernie the Attorney, Marty Schwimmer. 

Wired: "The debate over file sharing reaches the Supreme Court." 

Don Park: "Everyone seems to be copycats these days." 

Test cases 

In my discussion with Brad Templeton of the EFF, I asked him to map www.eff.org to one of my servers, and map his original server to backend.eff.org, so I can filter it.

I'd add links to their content, and see if they object. If that isn't a problem, I'll start changing the words, and see if that works for them. Then I'll put my name on their work, I imagine that would be okay too. Why not? I'm just being creative! Then I'll change their positions to be more in tune with the entertainment industry. Somewhere in there, there's got to be a line.

I'm thinking of mirroring Cory Doctorow's Creative Commons-licensed book and crossing out his name and replacing it with mine. Then I think I'll go to a printer and print up a bunch of copies of my book and stand on a corner in Times Square and sell copies. Maybe a book publisher will offer to distribute it for me. I'll be interested in talking with them.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

I'm in my hotel in Manhattan. Nice view. Stomach grumbling. Hmmm. 

Today's Morning Coffee Notes podcast is an interview with my father, Dr Leon Winer, about outlining and other topics. 

Movie: Uptown, east side, taxi cab. 

Marc Canter reviews Yahoo 360. 

Michael Schuermann reviews Yahoo 360.  

This is what Scoble sees when he clicks on the link to my 360 weblog. He's not a member. You gotta wonder what's the point of a weblog that's not publicly accessible. Postscript from Michael Schuermann. 

Ross Rader has taken an interest in the RSS textInput element. 

Michael Gartenberg sent me a 360 invite. So I have an account now. Here be my blog. And a funky song and a picture of Muddy Waters. My mojo is workin! Post a comment if you can. I opened it up to "everyone."  

Question: Do they have anything like weblogs.com? Do they ping weblogs.com? How do you find out which blogs have been recently updated?  

Today's song: "I got a gypsy woman givin’ me advice. I got some red-hot tips I have to keep on ice. I got my mojo workin’ but it just won’t work on you. I want to love you so ‘til I don’t know what to do." 

John Palfrey: "Not too long from now, this blog should have a first-hand account of the Grokster oral argument from the Supreme Court." 

Michael Gartenberg got a 360 invite. If you've written a 360 review based on a look inside, please send a pointer. And I'll certainly let you all know when and if I get an invite.  

Jeff Veen got one too. "It reminds me of one of my first trips to the plate in Little League Baseball." 

Jason Fried says Yahoo always had the mojo, but mojo is not the size, it's what you do with it. It's not the steak, my man, it's the sizzle. It's not the shape, it's how you shake it. Mojo is not about making the buses run on time. Muddy Waters was not thinking about stock prices when he sang about his mojo workin.  

Danny Sullivan: "With the Yahoo 360 social networking site making its semi-public debut, I thought it would be interesting to log back into rival service Orkut, offered by Google, to see what's new. But forget comparing features. What struck me the most was seeing a Google property finally acknowledging RSS as a distribution means." 

As Danny says, they are properly finally acknowledging RSS. Their feed is plain simple not-funky RSS 2.0.  

Review of Yahoo 360 by someone who wasn't invited.  

Happy third birthday to Paolo's weblog. He has some interesting comments about the apparent change in mood in the last three years. I don't think it's that we've grown up, we'll have fun again. All the projects he mentions are coming back. I dropped the ball, but I had a good excuse.  

BTW, I should mention that I'm on a diet since 3/18 and losing weight. I don't plan to go on a scale until 4/18, but I feel thinner. I find that the fasting feeling is starting to feel good, kind of like the ache of missing a smoke as I was quitting smoking. Getting in shape for some reason is easier in Florida, the beach is such an inspiration, it feels better to be in better shape. I'm going to lose about 30 pounds and then try to maintain. By writing about this publicly I guess I'm making the next-level commitment.  

Press release: "Google Inc today announced it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a San Diego, California based web analytics company." 

Yahoo 360 shows up, sorta 

Yahoo 360 has launched, invitation only. I'll let you know if I get one.

Here's Jeremy Zawodny's 360 weblog. He says to let him know if you were expecting an invite and didn't get one. Can't say I was expecting one. Also can't comment on his blog if you didn't get an invite. They should read my piece about two-tier communities and why they're so not-blog-like. This invite-only insiders stuff is gross.

It's a ghost town with 404's all over for people who weren't invited, the exact wrong thing to do on rollout day. The home page of the site is 404.

You know it was somewhat cute when Google did the invite-only thing with Gmail, but you could use it to communicate with people who didn't use it. This software is broken for people who aren't 360 users! And Orkut was invite-only too, and it's as dead as can be now.

BTW, Yahoo doesn't have its mojo back. What a crock. Their idea of hip is to copy everyone else, badly. Let the Flickr folks, who really do have mojo, show that the elephant can dance, just a little.

PS: Now the redesign of Yahoo Groups makes sense. They made it look like 360. And the pictures? Well, 360 shows pictures of people and groups. Now, too bad most of the groups don't actually have pictures. Someone should have thought that through. Did they think 360 was going to be such a raging success that it would make all the groups want to add pictures? This is what happens when big corporations plan out grand strategies, checking their assumptions with focus groups (if they check them at all). Flickr on the other hand, proved every one of its ideas with users. We know which approach leads to usable software.

Break with EFF 

I gave $5000 to the EFF when they started, I think it was in 1990, with the noble goal of protecting freedoms as our technology and culture move online. I think I have supported every cause the EFF has adopted since then, but that's no longer true. I gave this a lot of thought, believe me, and had a long email exchange with Brad Templeton, the chairman of the EFF board of directors, and think they have become as radically polarized as the entertainment industry, and like Hollywood are now working against the interests of those they were meant to serve.

The issue appears to be copyright, and it appears that the EFF believes there should be no copyright. My position is that copyright changes with the development of worldwide networking, and all creative people must have some right to the work they create, or else, truly, the incentive to create will disappear.

When the entertainment industry makes this claim, there's a glaring hole in their position -- they claim to represent the interests of creative people, but they don't. Their economics make the creative people powerless, they no more represent the interests of creative people than the EFF represents the interests of computer users (who are also creative people). Of course there's enough truth to each argument to make it hard to rebut. But in balance it's true. Instead of being aligned with users, the EFF is aligned with the financial interests of the electronics and software industry.

However, if there's any rationality to the justice system in the US, the EFF will prevail in the Grokster case. Why? Because, the act of freely distributing other people's work, without compensation, is something the user is doing, not the software developer. The Grokster defense is good because there are important non-infringing uses of the technology, and without those applications the right to free speech protected by the US Constitution would be violated. That must come first.

But copyright is is a good thing, even if it is applied immorally and stupidly by the entertainment industry. We can't have a rational society without it. The EFF can't claim to represent the interests of users if it doesn't stand behind copyright, in some form, and tell us what that is. Copyright is not sacred, and there are times when it must be relaxed, and it must be possible to disclaim copyright, something the Creative Commons helps with, but if we can't rely on the electronic media to render our thoughts and expressions without altering their meaning in transit, what's the point of having electronic media? As I've said here before, the written word is now largely electronic, as is commerce, health care, aviation, and who can disagree that accuracy and attribution matter in those endeavors?

The problem with the EFF psosition is that in order to remain consistent, they have had to say that copyright doesn't exist -- if a policy or law restricts what a user can do on the Internet then that is a bad policy or law. The courts can't agree with the EFF. I don't agree with the EFF.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Stephen Pierzchala: "The public school system in the Bay area is one of the reasons why I was not too upset to move to Massachusetts." 

Bloggers in Malaysia report on today's earthquake. 

BlogPulse conversation tracker via Tim Jarrett via Steve Rubel. 

Jon Udell: "I wasn’t even planning to enable RSS subscription to InfoWorld search. It just came for free. When that happens, it’s a sign that things are deeply right." 

Wired: "MGM Studios v Grokster, pits all the major movie studios and record labels against two operators of file-sharing services." 

Liz Smith: "With the whole world writing gossip, where is the place for the professional gossip?" 

Private Radio: "I wrote a PHP script that captures the Google News home page every 15 minutes. It then logs all the news sources it finds." 

Liberal is a code word 

When someone uses the L-word in conversation, chances are 999 out of 1000 that they're using it as a code-word to mean: weak, effeminate, misguided, powerless geek without morals. And it's equally likely that they're talking about you when they say it, although the play book says they should make it a question if it's directed at you at all.

"Are you a liberal?" they might ask. Who could say yes, but if you're honest you say that you have a heart and want your country to not take shortcuts, and you're concerned about the environment, and education, and think the government should stay away from our genitals, or telling our families when it's okay to pull the plug on a loved one, but you realize they've put you on the defensive before you've said anything.

So on Saturday night at dinner, when one of our companions, a man who considers himself a conservative, in the mold of Limbaugh, DeLay or Hannity, a death penalty proponent who feels deeply for the parents of Terri Schiavo, used the L-word in an argument, I said "Wait a minute, that's a code-word that means, weak effeminate, etc." I told him if he's going to talk about that, I'm going to expose him for what he is, an emulator of loutish, idiotic talk show hosts who say they're conservatives, but come on, they're not conservative, they're idiots who got a gig that pays them for being idiotic. The stupider they are the more they make. Competence in their work is incompetence everywhere else!

It worked.

The fading light of Silicon Valley 

If Steve Lohr is right and Silicon Valley's brightest days are behind it, it will have been their own fault. Technology isn't stagnant, we're going through a rebirth, the deals being being floated are incredibly rich, for the right people this time, and not in Silicon Valley. Not for the carpetbaggers, not for the imitation impressarios, rather for the technology that's making the difference and the people behind it.

Last week I wrote about insiders and two-tier communities. That's Silicon Valley. The hubris of financiers thinking they could do it by paying nothing for technology, nothing for ideas. Yeah Hollywood is corrupt, and they want to tie up tech to serve their purposes, but they are still turning out product that some people want. Can you say the same for Silicon Valley? Imho, it's become another gray metropolis, the ideas long gone, replaced by corporate strokers and lap dogs.

However, it's still the most welcoming of climates, a temperate haven, warm in winter, cool in summer. The garden you can grow in a SV back yard is one of the most diverse and nourishing anywhere in the nation, that's why Valley real estate is holding its value. Its got great schools, roads, shopping, even culture. What's missing is a heart and a purpose.

On the generosity of programmers 

1/2/02: "Of course there's nothing wrong with financiers, we need them to get our stock public. But as a group they did something really stinky to the software industry in the last part of the last decade -- they helped promote the myth that programmers work for free. In their folklore we're so selfless that we're willing to write new software and fix bugs, without being paid to do so. Another way of looking at it -- they get to keep all the money and programmers get nothing."

Sunday, March 27, 2005

News.Com: Mark Cuban to finance Grokster defense. 

I have an earlier version of the Sony laptop that Walt Mossberg reviews, and it's my primary computer. I left the ThinkPad, which is larger and weighs more, in Florida while I'm traveling. I can do everything on the Sony now. Took some work to get everything set up, but it's great.  

The LA Times has the story of the DeLay family's decision to terminate life support for the congressman's father, in 1988. 

NewHounds: "It looks like Fox got the morning White House memo: Steer clear of the Terri Schiavo matter." 

An important discussion at Cadenhead's about Feedburner, including comments from a company rep.  

Of course I don't like the new Yahoo Groups user interface. 

Joe Beda, a former Microsoft guy, now works at Google, and blogs about it. I find it hard to believe that being at Google is that good, don't fundamental laws of physics and human nature apply there? Otherwise why would they re-invent perfectly good technology just because it was Not Invented Here. Or why would they take chances with the Web as a free speech environment? On the other hand I've met Joe, even went out to dinner with him in Seattle, and enjoyed his company and thought he was an honest dude and a good catch for the Googlers. 

BTW, when Joe went to Google last fall, it sparked a rumor-fest that Google was developing a browser, which people should remember when they think about AutoLink. They could make a really good browser with all the money they have, and obviously they have good designers and engineers (look no further than Google Maps for evidence). A toolbar that behaves badly isn't really the issue, folks. It's what happens when the toolbar turns into a browser... 

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Julie Leung: Why high school never ends. 

Rogers Cadenhead says FeedBurner users are playing with fire.  

PodcasterCon is a "free users conference about podcasting. The focus will be on learning. In effect it is an anti-expo without swag, without product promotion, and a way to keep podcasting fun! We’re going to make our own Podcaster Conference happen, together." 

Wes Felter: "After having the best mailing list Web interface for years, Yahoo Groups has gone and screwed it up." 

Washington Post: "Republican congressional leaders find themselves in a moral and political thicket, having advanced the cause as a right-to-life issue -- only to confront polls showing that the public does not see it that way." 

Britt Blaser: Why FedEx calls it 2 Day Service. 

Keith Jenkins: "We just concluded the National Press Photographers Association's Best of Photojournalism awards, and two of the winners were what most people would refer to as photoblogs." 

Ed Cone: "The conservative crack-up is upon us." 

Tommy Williams: "On your post about OPML from Tim Jarrett, Jana is talking about the microsoft.com Blog portal. It doesn't have anything to do with MSN Spaces, that's just where she's hosting her blog. The blog portal is an aggregation point for Microsoft employee blogs." 

Sending good energy to Don Park who is in his third day of not smoking. As I'm sure Don knows, the first week is the hardest.  

Happy birthday to Brent Simmons who turns 37 today. 

Six years ago: "RSS is a good start at a syndication format." 

Friday, March 25, 2005

BlogNashville is a "three-day set of educational and informational sessions on blogging, May 5-7th, 2005." It's inspired by BloggerCon, and I'm sure it'll be great. Not sure if I can make it, there's talk of me making a quick trip to London for my 50th birthday (just three days before), but I will be there if at all possible.  

Adam Howell:: "We can all be our own gurus." Amen. 

A cartoon featuring Adam Curry and myself. Aruging, of course.  

According to Tim Jarrett, Microsoft is doing something interesting and intuitive with OPML and MSN Spaces. Can't wait to check it out. I'm doing so much with OPML, it's hard to imagine this won't play an important role in the bootstrap. 

There's a del.icio.us tag for Frontier.  

8:45PM Eastern: Arrived safely in NYC. 

Corporate Media News: Podcasting Comes of Age. 

Reuters: "Clear Channel plans to make some of its live morning shows available for downloading, commonly known as podcasting." 

Crooks and Liars: "Stewart brings humor to a humorless situation." 

I've mirrored the clip from The Daily Show to help with the bandwidth. 

Ground-breaking BBC article on commercialization of podcasting, with extensive quotes from Adam Curry and myself, and not surprisingly, we disagree. Adam says podcasting will kill radio. Nahhh. It'll become radio and vice versa. Airwaves are just another method of distribution. Same with satellites. What will change is who's talking and who's listening. Now the conversation will flow in all directions, with broadcasters listening to people they used to think of as "audience." Blogs changed the architecture of written-word-journalism in the same way. The BBC did miss that I did the early podcasts that were the inspiration for Curry and others, and continue to podcast, so it's not as if I'm on the sidelines, I'm in there, putting my ideas out, and helping inspire others to do the same.  

Christopher Baus: "Scoble tries to make a point, and Cory's response is to interrupt him with an eloquent, 'tough shit.'" 

Next Friday, a week from today, marks the end of the 8th year of Scripting News, started on April 1, 1997. A month and a day later, I turn 50. Oy! 

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Pictures: The day before spring break at the beach in Florida. 

Spring break starts tomorrow. If you're headed toward the north-mid coast of Florida, as many are (Daytona is just down the beach), you're headed toward some drop-dead gorgeous weather. Everyone's out on the beach, walking, throwing a frisbee, football or baseball -- swimming, surfing, riding a bike, fishing. Pack a bathing suit, suntan lotion, probably a lightweight rain jacket, because it probably will rain a few times during the week. Leave the sweaters at home, as improbable is must seem, you just won't need them. You're in for a treat. I guess all this is a way of saying how much I already know I'm going to miss this place. 

Deborah Branscum: High School and the Blogosphere. 

Philippe Martin has released dbSpy for Frontier, a low-level database analysis tool. This is going to be very useful! 

I started a directory for Frontier developer tools and tutorials and whatever else comes along. 

A new social bookmarking app: de.lirio.us.  

BTW, yesterday I bought a fun domain.  

Tod Maffin reports that Canada is amending its copyright laws in favor of content-creators.  

I sent an email today to Brad Templeton, the chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, asking that he take a look at issues raised by Google's AutoLink feature. As far as I know, the EFF hasn't taken a position on this. To me, there's a difference between a giant corporation having copyrights automatically renewed on work where the author has been dead for fifty years, and a giant corporation changing my writing to suit its corporate purposes. How different is this from Apple interfering with the work of authors of their fan sites, a cause which the EFF has championed. I say not very different at all (in fact there's no due process involved in Google changing my work). I've written to Lessig about this too, several times.  

The NBA podcast is available now. Here's the feed. 

DataBlogging is "the notion that traditional blog entries have extended data fields appended to them to track various things." 

Structured Blogging is a similar idea, but not as far along as DataBlogging, and it appears that it does not build on RSS. 

John Van Dyk did the Metadata Plug-in for Manila, in Y2K. 

News.Com: "Rep John Conyers says bloggers deserve the same legal protections as those accorded to print and broadcast journalists." 

Driving on US 1 with the dashboard Buddha.  

Great West Wing last night. Maybe the Republians will win the White House? I thought the scene with the president eating ice cream with the Republican candidate was a little dream-like, but I love the way they're doing the election.  

Dave Hodson reports on last night's Podcasting meetup in San Fran. 

Wes Felter on NY: "How can civilization survive in such inhospitable climates?" That's where I'm headed. I already feel cold. Brrrr. 

I think Ed Cone is saying being on TV is like having sex? 

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Welcome to the Blogland Motel! 

People tell me I picked a good time to go to NY because the weather is warming up. I guess it's all relative. The 10-day forecast has a high of 53 and a low of 31. There's a snowstorm rolling into town right now. Here, today, the high was 81. Remind me again, why I am I going north?  

Big Don would go to a Foo-Camp-alike, if there's a shower and bathroom nearby that won't freak out his wife. I feel the same way. I don't go anywhere where there isn't a good bathroom nearby. But California? Hello. I live in Florida. Otherwise it seems like a fun idea. 

I have one of the highest rankings in Google for beach pictures. 

Amazingly, I have the 2nd hit on MSN for Terry Shiavo. Must've mis-spelled her name. Yup. 

The Democratic candidate for vice-president of the US in 2004, John Edwards, is podcasting. Here's the feed.  

NY Times: "There are 12 medical doctors, 3 dentists, and 3 nurses in Congress, and most did not publicly invoke their medical experience during the Schiavo debate." 

Don Park: "I've been looking at the way people using tags." 

More about evil-or-not 

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I wrote a bit about evil, and how unfortunate it is that this word has entered discourse in the blogosphere. I think we can trace it back to the Google goal of not being evil, an idea that's run its course, and should be stricken from their corporate philosophy. Google is no more or less evil than any other company, has no basis to claim a moral superiority, and should openly cancel it.

And if they won't remove the hex, let me offer a new law of the Internet, a corollary to Godwin's Law. "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of it becoming about evil approaches one." And I'd add, that the length of time is shorter, but the effect on discourse is the same. It stops all rational discussion immediately.

More on the state of discourse these days 

While we're at it, a couple of other observations on the state of discourse.

1. If someone is critical of a group, a company, a gathering, a conference, any kind of association, and you are a member of that group, or were at the gathering, etc, it does not follow that the criticism is personal. If I say Apple is really fucking the bloggers, that doesn't mean if you work there that you are. If I don't know you, how could I possibly make a statement about you? Now you're welcome to take it personally, it seems everyone always will take everything personally, but that doesn't mean it was meant to be personal. No doubt someone here is thinking I'm talking about them right now, but please, believe me, if your name doesn't appear here, it isn't about you.

2. This bit is about Doc Searls. As I've come to know Doc over close to 20 years, I've come to know that he's extremely conflict-averse. But this itself seems to put Doc in conflict, with himself, because he has strong beliefs, and they're basically sound ones, intelligent, intuitively correct, and often courageous. But if he has a chance to make friends with someone, I've seen Doc throw his principles out the window, with passion, as evidenced in his defense of Evan Williams, who is violating every rule of Doc's own manifesto. Disclaimer: My opinion only.

3. This bit is about me, Dave Winer. Now, me, I'm not conflict-averse. I think conflict gives us human beings a chance to explore alternate views of the world. And we've got some serious problems, like global warming and in the US, the declining value of the dollar, and tunnels under the US border with Mexico, just to name three. If we don't listen to some foreign ideas, and consider that they might help us solve some of our problems, we're just going to drift into oblivion.

Why it's good there are no ads on Scripting News 

Last night I had a brief phone talk with Steve Gillmor. I told him I had finally figured out why it's good that there are no ads on Scripting News, and then spaced out on saying why (our conversations are often like this, lots of ideas back and forth, we never quite finish most).

So I thought I would explain here.

First, consider yesterday's edition. Among the top items are three that are clearly anti-Republican. Now if you support the Republicans, no matter how much they abuse your trust (heh, sorry bout that), and I was running ads, you might think that, by reading this blog, you were helping finance someone who you disagree with politically. I wouldn't have much chance of talking to Republicans.

However, because I'm not running ads, and have no reason, other than wanting to influence more people, to seek more readers, you can relax and have fun, maybe mutter to yourself when you see me criticizing the President and the Speaker and Majority Leader, people you admire and respect, people who should of course have their own blogs, btw.

That's not to say that blogs-with-ads are necessarily bad, but ads on Scripting News are not for me. As I said in yesterday's podcast, I'd happily pay money to get some ideas heard more, so for me, it's consistent to run Scripting News ad-free.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

A new Morning Coffee Notes about ocean swimming, podcasting as art, Terry Shiavo, my software project, and of course, philosophy. 

Charleston Post & Courier: Blogging Comes of Age. 

Political Wire on recent Republican flip-flops. 

Seattle Times: "The federal law that President Bush signed early yesterday in an effort to prolong Terri Schiavo's life appears to contradict a right-to-die law that he signed as Texas governor, prompting cries of hypocrisy from congressional Democrats and some bioethicists." 

Florida Today: "Washington's meddling in the Terri Schiavo case only worsens an already great tragedy." 

NowPublic: "This photo is smarter than you think." 

10 points for GoDaddy, a support rep actually visited a customer's site (mine) and answered a question. Good support, public relations. 

MarketingProfs on podcasting. I like the way they describe me. "Very popular and highly regarded." Boinnnnnnnng! 

An interesting choice for Google News.  

Roger Simon: "I have Google Ads on my site and wrote to them the other day to inquire what percentage I was being paid of their revenues. I found out that it is against their policy to disclose this." 

BTW, I don't say Google is evil, they say they're not evil. Important distinction. When you reduce a discussion to evil-or-not, you skip all the steps inbetween. When you say someone is evil, there can be no further discourse. It's the intellectual equivalent of the death penalty. I may not like what Google does, but I don't think they're evil. And it pisses me off when people take the shortcut of saying that criticizing a company is the same as saying they're evil. That's pure BS. 

Fluox: "Winer is een hippie man."  

Marc Canter notes that Eric Rice has a deal with Warner Music.  

What the heck is FU-Camp? Looks relaxing. 

Sounds like Barry Bonds' career is over, and he knows it. I almost feel sorry for him. But if he came back and bested Babe Ruth's home run record and started challenging Hank Aaron's, it would get too heavy to endure. He's gone.  

Today the sky has an other-worldly quality. 

John Palfrey: "Jimbo Wales has been appointed a Berkman fellow." 

Wales is an inspired choice. Good deal for everyone. 

David Gewirtz explains how to build Frontier in Microsoft Visual C 6.0. 

The Toronto Globe and Mail supports RSS 2.0. 

Rex Hammock says Google takes suggestions for Google News.  

Maps 

News aggregator ==> News aggravator

News aggregator ==> News alligator

Monday, March 21, 2005

Upcoming travel: NYC 3/25 through 4/1 & 4/5-6. 

TidBITS isn't a blog, it's an email newsletter, a website, and an RSS feed. It's been published for well over a decade. And with all the blogs and Mac fan sites it's possible that some Mac users don't know about it. Regulars include Adam Engst, Matt Neuburg and Glenn Fleishman. It's not flashy, but it sure is smart. Their report on podcasting was definitive.  

What Rex said. Podcasting is both an art and a hype balloon. Emphatically, it is not at this time a business. I believe in the art, passionately, and I hate hype balloons, always have, nothing new. I'm agnostic about the business, and any competent reporter should be too. I think the CBS guy is trying to provoke an open battle over things that aren't in contention. I'm glad not to be in the business that Adam Curry and Ron Bloom are in. Maybe it'll turn out that they can do great things for the art and make money, but until they do, I'm from Missouri.  

Re Terry Shiavo, the woman whose brain is dead, Congress and the President should not have gotten involved. They made a mistake. 

Tina Brown: "Bloggers are the new Stasi," or the East German secret police during the Cold War. They actually ran this piece in the Washington Post. The reporters have had a free ride all our lives, the only ones watching them were other reporters. Accountability, of which today's reporters have just the tiniest portion of, will improve journalism and politics, and will shake out the lazy ones, the ones who think that visibility is equivalent to totalitarianism. Thanks to Rogers for the link.  

Sylvia liked yesterday's column. "Bursting the bubble before it expands again." Yup, doing what we can to keep the world safe for innovation.  

Ourmedia: "We'll host your media forever for free."  

On the podcasters list, Alex Nesbitt posted a link to an OPML directory that organizes podcasts by genre. Of course, I wanted to see if my new directory browser could handle his outline. It worked.  

Wired: "More than a year after 'social networking' became the leading buzzword in internet startup circles, companies in the sector haven't gained the traction early enthusiasts predicted." 

Amazon patent for "Plogging" 

In June 2004, Ryan Naraine wrote in InternetNews: "[Amazon] has launched a beta of Plogs, or personalized blogs, to shuttle links of recommended products and relevant shopping information to users."

At the same time, of course, they had filed a patent application for the feature. Thanks to TheoDP for the heads-up and pointers.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Rebecca MacKinnon: Chinese protest BBS crackdown. 

I'm going to be in NYC starting Friday, for a week. 3/25 through 4/1. 

New header graphic. Vegetables at Pike Street Market in Seattle. 

NY Times: "IAC/Interactive Corp, the Internet company headed by Barry Diller, is close to an agreement to acquire Ask Jeeves Inc, the nation's fourth-largest search engine company." 

Congrats to Flickr who got bought by Yahoo. Except it should have been the other way around.  

Interesting that Google News doesn't have this bit yet. By 5:50PM Eastern, almost an hour later, they have a one-line report from Blogcritics. I wonder how long before a non-blog source gets the story. And they would have had it sooner if they deigned to scan Scripting News. 

On this day three years ago, we announced a deal to distribute NY Times headlines through Radio UserLand. It was a first step toward the Times support of RSS, which they now have. 

My email got more interesting today since Instapundit pointed to my positive male imagery piece. 

Blueberry Girl: "White men of the world, you are truely more lost than I thought!" 

Kosso: "No one actually *reads* this... do they?" 

Rex Hammock: "As those who fly first class between technology conferences take over the podcasting story, the focus will be more about the business of podcasting (and, thus, the inevitable boom and bust) and not on the more important issue: the transformational nature of what happens when everyone who has an internet connection can truly add their literal voice to a worldwide conversation." 

It's a bright, cloudless, totally comfortable day at the beach. Lovin it. 

Stand in the surf, with your shoes off, wearing jeans that get wet up to the knees. Point the camera down, click to start the movie. Waves in, waves out, in, out, in, out. Click to stop the movie. 

Scoble: "Dave, keep after me to stop listening to only the insiders. I appreciate that very much." 

GoDaddy support 

Yesterday I registered two new domains, and instead of going through my usual registrar, who charges $35 per year for registration and DNS, I went to GoDaddy, and got it for $9. But apparently, unless you're also hosting with GoDaddy, that does not include DNS.

I've hunted all over the site looking for a way to map domains to an IP address, and while they will "forward" the doman (not what I want) they won't map it. I then called their tech support line, was told the wait would be two minutes, and hung up after fifteen (and the ads, these guys are always pushing stuff at you).

First question -- is there a way to get GoDaddy to map a domain? How?

Second question -- I've got four Windows 2000 servers and one Windows Server 2003. Do they have a domain name server built in? I think they must. Somewhere. Where? How? Arrrgh, I didn't really want to learn how to do this.

Anyway, I've cross-posted here, comments welcome.

PS: The domains are independentpodcasters.com and indiepodcasters.com. Yeah, isn't it a shame that a medium that was supposed to be all-indie-all-the-time will probably need to distinguish between people who sign with MSM and those who do it for love.

Later, when the drugs wear off 

Doc Searls responds to my essay posted here yesterday.

Also on Doc's site, Lloyd Davis, like Doc, believes in the insiders.

Okay, let me explain why I don't.

First, I don't have a podcasting product, so when you think of me as a competitor of Evan's that's not correct. I'm working on other stuff, not podcasting tools. I may even be a user of Odeo's product, but right now I'm not inclined to, because they are going over my head to sell me, or that's what they think they're doing. All I've heard about Odeo has been second or third-hand, demos at exclusive insider conferences. Frankly, I'd rather use the open source tools, even if they're not quite as good as Evan's, because I get them without the arrogance and bluster. And hey, they actually exist. I have no direct evidence that Evan's software is anything but vaporware.

I used to go to those insider conferences myself, and I realized that they weren't doing anything other than talking about themselves, while, quite independently, the market was booming. They confused their talk with the boom in the market, created an image of cause-and-effect where there was none. Then when the boom went away it all looked silly. Then it happened again, and more conferences with people dropping hints that they really got the boom, so the boom had something to do with themselves, and they could make you rich if you bought their stock. Then the boom collapsed, but the self-proclamations continued, and again started to look silly.

Nowadays it's gotten to the height of ridiculousness. There isn't even a boom, just a bunch of insiders who think it's cool they're inside. No one has made one cent off podcasting and already the NY Times says there's a business model and tries to give the market to their friends (who haven't shipped anything), and people at TED are ooohing and ahhing, and wondering how they can get in on the IPO. These are the exact same people that got so many to think they were the brains behind the last booms. No wonder they want to do it again. It's really profitable, for some.

This time there's a chance for everyone to see how silly it is because centralized radio is being routed around and the playing field has been leveled in word publishing. So the new business models propose to install a new group of centralizers. Hmmm. Why won't that work? Well, because the economics shifted, and we don't need them anymore. Doc and the rest of the Gillmor Gang came really close to getting this and saying it out loud in the last episode. But when you get into the reality distortion field of one of these insider conferences, well, if you take the drugs you start to believe that the old guys are kaput, and you're one of the new guys! Start shopping for the big house and the fast car. But later, when the drugs wear off, you see that the new media isn't going to be owned by anyone, not you, and not your insider friends.

Anway, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say that all the vendors have to prove themselves in the market, and doing that means understanding the users, and to really understand the users, you have to be one of them. Ross, you don't have to do a podcast, and neither do I, but the people who make products for podcasters do, if they don't will have failed products. That's where it all gets very practical, again, after the drugs wear off.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

LiveJournal now supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures.  

David Czarnecki : Podcasting with Blojsom. 

I was knee-deep in the surf with my camera as the sun was setting, when a cute wet doggie comes to say hello.  

My new directory displayer now handles passages of text, so you can write little documents directly in the directory. 

One more thing re steroids and heroes, how about letting Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame. Geez Louise, was there ever a better player?  

10/24/02: "Baseball is nothing if not history." 

WNYC has a really good FAQ on Podcasting. 

David Pogue: "What happens to your PC when you die?" 

I was sitting at my desk doing some work and this thing appeared outside the window. A big wing with a motor and a guy in it. He looked right at me and waved. I waved back. Had to hunt around for the camera, dashed out on the patio and shot a movie. Life at the beach is different.  

CustomizeGoogle enhances "Google search results by adding links to other useful services. It can also remove ads." It's a toolbar for Firefox. At first I thought it was a website I could use instead of google.com. I would be very happy to contribute to such a site. I want better ads in my Google results. Hey it's my computer right? The users come first, right? I'm a user! Woo hooo. Party down.  

It's being discussed on ThreadWatch. 

Jason Calcanis wrote up Thursday's Odeo demo.  

I like the programming on WNYC better than the local station, WJCT. The only problem is the weather in NY is a lot colder than it is here in sunny Florida. So they're happy when the temperature in Central Park is 42 degrees Farenheiht. Brrrr. Here, we're complaining that it's not quite 70 degrees. "It's almost April!" the guy at the pharmacy said. What gives, why's it so cold? Anyway, unfortunately they're playing Car Talk right now. I hate Car Talk. Funny I used to think Click and Clack were funny until I moved to Boston. But that's another stawree. 

Sunrise on the Atlantic. 

Martin Schwimmer says someone has filed a trademark for "Podcast." 

My least favorite phrase in the English language: Take it like a man.  

More blogs are showing up in Google News. I would like to understand how they decide which are included. 

Two-level communities 

Last week there were two conferences that I didn't go to but followed through the Web. I could have gone to either of them in person, if I had been willing to pay their fees, and been willing to be in the audience or the hallways, at all times. In other words, I would have to accept my place as a second-level person, an outsider, in the presence of insiders.

There are two conflicting emotions around this. First, why aren't I an insider? I feel like I've earned the respect of the people who put on the conferences, and the people who participate. And the second emotion, harder to find with the first one swirling, is wait a minute, why should I accept the premise that there are two levels? When I put on a conference, or throw a party, I work really hard to erase the idea that there are two levels, to make everyone feel welcome and equal. Really. It's hard work, because people are always trying to nominate themselves for insider-ness, and push other people to the outside. I remember well what it was like going to Esther's conferences in the 80s, when the insiders all had someone to eat with, and I was paying thousands of dollars for the priviledge of eating by myself because I didn't know anyone. If I'm putting on the conference, that isn't going to happen

You can see it really clearly in this lecture by Doc Searls to Ross Rader, who said something pretty aggressive about a product for the podcasting community that hasn't yet had Word One to say to the podcasting community, instead has only been selling it to insiders, most of whom have no idea what the issues are in creating, distributing podcasts, and having them be heard. Doc, who understands how bloggers hate to be talked down to by professonal journalists who know bupkis about blogging, now does exactly the same thing to podcasters.

I gave Scoble a really hard time about this earlier this week, after he came back from an insider's conference, all full of their world, forgetting about the larger world that he's part of, that I know he cares about. After that conversation we decided to do everything we can to compete with the force of the insiders. Doc, how about looking at your words from our perspective. Talking to us through you ain't going to cut it. Your friends who want to earn the respect of the podcasters should explain in the medium, in their own voices, in their own words -- produce a podcast and tell us what the fuck they're doing, instead of leaving us guessing. Then you might see the hostility ease, because that's where it comes from.

Steroids and heroes 

I've only heard snippets of Mark McGwire's testimony in Congress last week on the use of steroids in baseball. He refused to say if he used steroids, but come on, it's obvious that he used something. He was a big guy when he played at Oakland, but not as big as he was when he was at St Louis. People just don't grow that way after a certain age.

When asked about Jose Canseco's claims, McGwire said "consider the source," as if we all knew that somehow Canseco has less credibility than McGwire does. But if McGwire took the drugs to enhance his performance, to best Roger Maris's home run record, well, at least Caseco came clean. And to us, former Bay Area baseball fans, we'll always remember that McGwire and Canseco were the Bash Brothers. If a man wants to talk that way about his goddam brother, well, I just don't want to know about some things, sorry Mark.

Baseball is worried about losing its heroes, well stop worrying, it's already happened. The record for most home runs in a season is now meaningless, and if Barry Bonds (also a steroids user) keeps hitting home runs there goes Hank Aaron's record.

Without heroes, is there any point to Major League Baseball? After all it's just a sport. In some sense we measure ourselves against our past selves through men like Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Hank Aaron, and the current crop of pretenders, McGwire, Sosa and Bonds. If we apply the test, even though Ruth was surely flawed, and Maris tragic, we lose.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Surfers in a roiling Atlantic Ocean today. 

The Dowbrigade is in Florida, looking for a cheezy motel. "Then we saw it, lying low and white in the moonlight, surrounded by apparently abandoned cars, discarded tires, a disintegrating jungle gym and overgrown weed fields. Next door was Big Al's Gun and Pawn Shop, shut down for the night. Jerked out of our reverie, we swerved to the left of the empty highway and fishtailed into the gravel-packed driveway of the motel." 

It's ironic that Danny O'Brian, writing on O'Reilly's website, quotes me saying things I didn't say and don't agree with in order to discredit my position on AutoLink. It's ironic because changing what people say is exactly what the dispute is about.  

I got an email from Yahoo's feedback department saying they had removed my primary email address from the penalty box, and sure enough they have. Thanks for the help. Whew. 

Ross Rader really likes BlogMatrix Sparks 2.0. Gotta check it out. 

I'm doing a new site that lists all the sites I manage. It's also a testbed for a new OPML directory browser. Caveat: The link will certainly break.  

Dare Obasanjo reports on yesterday's presentation by Odeo. 

Rebecca MacK has an article in The Nation about the WebCred conf. 

As of today, March 18, I plan to vote for Russ Feingold for President in 2008, and it looks like he might actually be running. I'm sure he has no chance of winning, but every time I've wondered if anyone would stand up against the lunatics that run this country, Feingold has been there. He has real courage and intelligence and he cares.  

TheoDP says we don't have to worry about Amazon patenting OpenSearch, because there's plenty of prior art.  

A bug report on the Google Toolbar beta. When I uninstalled it, it left a piece of software hanging around. Now when I enter a bad URL into my browser (MSIE6), it takes me to Google just like every other snarky search engine that manages to install some software on my machine. I never gave them permission to do this in the first placfe, so it's adware, but even if I had, it should have reverted when I uninstalled the Toolbar. Is this evil? You be the judge. It sure is annoying.  

Podcasting News proposes a way for casters to include metadata about advertisements that go in their RSS feeds, so that when they display a link to your podcast they can also display your ads. They asked me about this a few days ago, and I said it's a good idea, and a good use of RSS. There are too many plans for world domination in the podcast world, frankly I don't think any of them will work. A mini-dotcom boom. The people at Podcasting News are proposing something more modest, more realistic, more cooperative, less about domination and more about working together.  

Gary Turner: "Flickr is da bomb." 

Bingo Barnes: "Blogs are grassroots journalism at its best." 

Jane Peppler: "Let's remember to be mutual." 

Julie Leung: "Is blogging a religion?" 

Sylvia Paull: "I've seen company after company grow to the point where not only is evil permitted, it's sanctioned. It's like a Jekyll-and-Hyde metamorphosis of the business. It's like a sickness that permeates every large corporation, from WorldCom to Hewlett Packard, which began by two guys who supported a non-evil workplace and turned it into a company where evil vibes are commonplace." 

Danah Boyd: "I was actually part of the 5% who applied to etech, only my application was rejected because it wasn't emerging. That's fair. But as an academic, i can only go to conferences that i present at. I wasn't even thinking about SXSW until Tantek approached me to speak on a panel there." 

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Phillip Torrone attended the Odeo presentation at Etech. 

Audio.weblogs.com now has two BlogAds. Very cool! And it's not chump change either, some real serious money. I hope it's worth it for the advertisers, Podast Expo and FeedDemon. I like the way this feels.  

Phil Yanov reports that John Edwards is about to become a podcaster.  

SiliconValleyWatcher has a summary of what Odeo is.  

Today the Christian Science Monitor ran an editorial that actually said they can learn from bloggers.