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Today's links Slingbox supports AppleTV. Adam Curry has a gripe with SplashCast. The #87th most influential person in IT. How to design a podcast player Notes from today's *excellent* discussion. It's listed as a panel, but I'm the only official panelist. Our topic of dicussion is, officially, How to design a podcast player. I wrote a piece about this, with three points, in February. 1. Self-contained, untethered synchronization, much the same way a Blackberry gets email. 2. Read-write, two-way, should be able to record and connect with a publishing system for automatic upload and feed production. 3. Must be a platform, that is, people other than the manufacturer can add apps. After we discuss that, we'll talk about whatever people want to talk about. Some more ideas... 1. Checkbox News. 3. Spreadsheet calls over the Internet. WebFS WebFS is a "web services protocol used to exchange files and associated metadata between web applications and services. It's primary intentions are to allow the free-flow of files and data between web services and applications." I'm sitting next to Nick Cubrilovic of Omnidrive, who is developing this protocol as an interface to his service, and is working on an open source implementation as well. Other developers are working on it, but he doesn't have clearance to reveal their names. He has a private mail list that's he opening up. Bay Area Outage, Day 2 Raines has an outage update. Like Raines, I made my way from Berkeley to the Oakland Airport yesterday, without incident or traffic. I also took city streets and avoided the Maze, my route would have taken me through the section of freeway that's missing! Bradley Horowitz, who lives in Berkeley and works at Yahoo has a daily two-way traffic nightmare to look forward to. Maybe enlightened high-tech employers will take this opportunity to distribute their workplace. Governor Schwartzenegger has declared BART free for all today. What a trip that's going to be. It'll be hard to get a seat on the Richmond line. My Twitter Friends, Day 2 Yesterday I documented the new My Twitter Friends feature in the OPML Editor. At the time I hadn't tested OPML inclusion in a Twitter post, but today I had a chance (while watching the Microsoft keynotes) and it worked. Here's a screen shot with an outline expanded. And here's the Twitter post that created the link. Blogzone video I'm hanging out with Scoble at the Blogzone at the Venetian. We're going to watch the keynote here. There's a guy in an Elvis outfit here. Really embarassed for the guy. This happens to me too Ross Mayfield: "I was reading the NY Times and glanced at the top right of the page looking for the time." Wikipedia editing Yesterday I did something I had never done before, I edited an article on Wikipedia. And then I edited another. The first one was about the MacArthur Maze. It had already been updated to include the outage, I just fixed some typos, and rearranged the words so they flowed better. Then I decided to link to my page of links about the news, expecting that would be reverted in a few days at most as the full story was documented, but it was reverted within minutes, as were all my other edits. Then I decided to look at the RSS page to see if it linked to the RSS 2.0 spec. It didn't, so I added a link. I haven't been back to see if that has been reverted. BTW, most of that page is worthless, things that never happened, Rove-like spin from god knows who. That's the thing about Wikipedia, it's a free-for-all slamfest, and you don't have a right to confront your accusers. Feh.
Movies from the Blogzone Joshua Allen on leaking tomorrow's announcements. Jeff Sandquist on Pahrump, NV. Miguel de Icaza on the name Miguel and how it feels to be at a Microsoft event. The scene at the Blogzone. Today's links BART tips on commuting in the New Bay Area. Scoble is hosting a geek dinner for Hugh MacLeod in San Francisco on Tuesday. Dinner tonight, 6:30PM, Grand Lux Cafe Bloggers dinner tonight at the Grand Lux Cafe at the Venetian at 6:30PM. Sign up, comments, on the wiki. Seeya there!! PS: My flight gets in at 3:30PM. PPS: Get ready for weather shock. High of 94 today. Hot! PPPS: I've got my Sprint Ambassador phone with me. 415-871-7163. Major Bay Area highway outage This morning there's a report on local news that a critical piece of Bay Area roadway is out, and may be out for weeks or months. The biggest traffic bottleneck in a traffic-challenged metropolitan area is known as the MacArthur Maze. Four major freeways, 880, 580, 24 and 80 all come together from the East Bay, and from the other side -- the Bay Bridge connects all that with San Francisco. Early this morning a gasoline tanker truck caught fire on a ramp connecting 580 westbound with 880, causing 250 yards of freeway to collapse. Google map of the maze. Reports from SF Chron, KGO, Mercury News, Contra Costa Times. New Twitter support in OPML Editor Yesterday I released new code that allows you to browse the posts from all the people you're following on Twitter. How to: 1. Choose Update opml.root from the File menu. 2. Click on OK. 3. Quit and relaunch the OPML Editor app. There's a new Twitter sub-menu of the Community menu, with two commands: 1. The Preferences command allows you to set your Twitter username and password, and 2. My Twitter Friends opens an outline window with a list of your friends. In the window, when you double-click on a friend's name, after a short delay, we display the last 20 status messages posted by that person. If the the message contained a URL, the outline node is a link, if you double-click it, the link opens in your web browser (screen shot). Although I haven't tried it yet, if the URL ends with .opml, it should open in-place, since that's a hack the OPML Editor uses to trigger an OPML inclusion. As usual, report any problems here, or on one of the mail lists. PS: Amyloo got it before I even wrote it up.
Spreadsheet calls over the Internet?
But now I use it for all kinds of little tasks that require an array of values, or a bit of calculation. Now I'd like to start building more of my life around a spreadsheet, to use it to monitor various processes on my servers, but to do this, there will have to be a protocol for plugging web apps into the spreadsheet. Here's the syntax I imagine using:
It would work just like a built-in spreadsheet function except the call would go out over the net, run the procedure on the indicated server, and display the value it returns, formatted according to how the spreadsheet author says it should be formatted. The server url would include a protocol, server name, port and path. I would recommend doing XML-RPC first, it's the simplest, most uniformly implemented RPC out there. You'd have to do some form of SOAP, and extend REST with standards for serializing and de-serializing parameter lists and returned values (or you could adopt the serialization format from one of the other protocols). Example: Interestingly, this is one of the demos Microsoft did for Multiplan for the IBM-PC in the early 80s when it was competing with Visicalc. Then, it was a good vision, but impractical. Today it's practical and would be very useful and would lead to many interesting apps, perhaps even businesses. Today's links "So what?" is exactly right. Imagine saying that the number of telephone calls had stalled at 15.6 million. Or the number of Word docs. Blogs aren't businesses, they're documents, or at best collections of documents. Counting them is an meaningless exercise. Look for individuals who are changing things using blogs, that's what's important. Phil Wolff: "Skype lawyer Seema Sharma emailed blogger Jan Geirnaert Friday afternoon. She told him his popular skype-watch.com and skype-gadgets.com blogs put him in legal jeopardy." 42 people have signed the Mix 07 wiki page so far. Twitter as coral reef
Here's how the story goes. Scattered throughout tropical seas are coral reefs that started when a ship sank and sea creatures made it their home. Then the predators of those creatures started hanging out, and their predators, all the way up the food chain. Eventually, if the ocean climate was right, a coral reef would appear, much larger than the wrecked ship that started it all. These days they deliberately sink ships where they want a coral reef. It's a little sad for the ship, to be devoured this way. I know how it feels, Radio 8 is hardly used anymore, although I think it's a great piece of software, it got consumed in the flames of people who didn't like RSS, but despite their protests, the coral reef did show up, and now RSS has become a thriving ecosystem. When I develop something new these days, I automatically think of using Twitter as a back-end to connect users of my software. If other developers aren't doing this, I imagine they will soon. And Twitter will beget competitors, and they will have to have APIs if they want to be competitive (Twitter has one) and by now I think they'll have to be compatible with Twitter's to be taken seriously. The role that Twitter is playing is a vital one -- it's a notification system, always-up, and keeping it up is someone else's problem. As a system designer, I'd like to believe that Twitter or something like it will always be there. I'm not sure of that yet, but it seems we're close. I know Microsoft is rolling out the red carpet for them in Las Vegas next week. Not sure I like that, or if I would like it if I were Twitter's owners, I'm suspicious of Microsoft's embrace, after lots of experience. But for me, there's really not much risk, even if MS were to try to eat their lunch, as I said, they'd have to be compatible, right?? We'll have to ask Ray about that. In any case, Twitter is becoming, for me, a coral reef. That's cool. Little-known facts You don't need to use Curl to get stuff from Twitter, you can use a web browser for some simple API calls to see what they return. Try clicking on this URL to see my most recent 20 status messages. http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/davewiner.xml Yeah it's XML. Hope you didn't have a heart attack. The docs could be much clearer about this, imho. Another little-known fact, the RSS feeds that provide code updates for all the various components of the OPML Editor now have comments, that explain what changed in each update. I never release a part without explaining it (knock wood, praise Murphy, don't sue me if I don't). Here's an example, the feed for opml.root. http://bits.codecasting.org/opml.root/rss.xml Should have done this a long time ago. I'm going to push some Twitter-related updates today, they should show up in that feed. This means you might want to also subscribe to these feeds in your aggregator or feed reader, because they now include human-readable bits. Unless you're a programmer the notes will likely not make much sense, but that's one way learn programming, almost by osmosis. Blogs work in sports too! Curt Schilling: "So for one of the first times this blog serves one of the purposes I'd hoped it would if the need arose. The media hacked and spewed their way to a day or two of stories that had zero basis in truth. A story fabricated by the media, for the media. The best part was that instead of having to sit through a litany of interviews to 'defend' myself, or my teammates, I got to do that here." How many times have reporters proclaimed blogs stupid, irrelevant or dead. Now you know why. They're freaked out because their exclusive access to the minds of readers is in its waning days. Blogs are the reason why. The next step is for publishers to realize that the monopoly is breaking, and to start doing deals with the sources. Here's Schilling's blog. And feed. My Twitter friends
Chickenshit?
She had been at a conference on advertising in the new era, a panel discussion that included AlwaysOn publisher Tony Perkins and Kourosh Karimkhany from Wired Digital. The panel turned to the discussion that was brewing in our corner of the blogosphere about the role of sources and our relationship to reporters. Based on Mary's account I expressed optimism for how Wired was rising to the occasion. And it totally didn't surprise me that Perkins took a couple of personal and cheap shots at Calacanis and myself. One more loose-end to take care of... Last night, I said I might offer the email I sent to the Wired reporter, Fred Vogelstein, on April 24. The text follows. "I don't think you would have gotten anytihng from a phone talk with me or Calacanis. We do all our business via email, and in blog posts, and in comments. "Go read Mike's Crunchnotes post. You'll see his view of the world. See my response, and that's how I push back against his view. "The fact that all this exploded into Techmeme today made your story. Start reading, and post questions in the comments on all the blog posts that puzzle you. Make sure they know you're from Wired. "If you're creative you'll get a wonderful story. "Think of yourself as an American in Iraq." In other words, do research, the story is on the web, not the telephone. Phone intervews
A couple of examples. 1. Recently we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Scripting News. There wasn't a lot of press in the U.S., or in the blogosphere, but interestingly, the story got a fair amount of play in newspapers in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The Guardian (U.K.) wanted to do a piece about it, on a very short deadline, and wanted a phone interview. Now, I have a long-standing gripe with the Guardian, in 2004 they ran a highly conflicted, perfectly awful article about RSS, as the "wars" were settling down, a piece written by one of the partisans, that reflected his point of view, and was presented as news, not comment. Others were not given an opportunity to respond. This is the kind of conflicted reporting that I just can't support, and won't. When I asked the Guardian to look into it, politely but openly, they attacked my qualifications and character, and that was it.
Net-net, what might have been fun, even interesting, was miserable. That's the Guardian. 2. On the other side, I did a classic phone interview with a SF Chronicle reporter a week or so ago, shortly after the Virginia Tech massacre, to talk about the releasing of the videos from NBC. I wanted to discuss this with a news reporter, who I felt might have an opinion about it, who would likely want to view the videos himself, rather than have them filtered for him by a competitor. I wasn't disappointed. I chose to do that interview because there was something in it for me. And while I was extensively quoted in his article, all the quotes came from my blog, because (I hope) they most clearly represented my point of view, much better than my conversational quotes would have. How to linkbait me Today's meme, thanks to Jason Calacanis, is linkbaiting. Not why it's bad, or why he won't do it, or respond to it; rather what you should say if you want him to link to you, and what you shouldn't say. Okay I'm game, even though this is likely to spawn backlash from the people who say the A-list sucks or it's a boys club, or whatever. First, in the positive -- here are things that get my attention and make it more likely I will link. 1. Your name is Scott Rosenberg. He's a Berkeley neighbor, founding editor of Salon, a very nice person, but none of that is why I will link to his pieces more often than not. The basic reason is he generally says things I find interesting, even essential. Very rarely do his posts mention me or my work, so clearly I'm not being linkbaited. He's a good journalist, and imho a great thinker, and a very lucid writer. 2. It says it on the What is Scripting News page: "A link on Scripting News means that I thought that the story was interesting, and felt that an informed person would want to consider the point of view expressed in the piece." I know it's corny, but that's more often than not the reason I link. 3. If you link to something I wrote recently and add something to the discussion, esp an experience or point of view that hasn't come up before. I often start threads here, or pick up threads from other sites. If you're continuing a discussion that's hot right now, I'm likely to link. 4. If you say I deserve a MacArthur or Pulitzer, I'll probably link to that. Now reasons I might not link. 1. If you call someone, esp me, a bad name. 2. In an email or other kind of direct communication you say or imply that I have an obligation to link. Anything other than "FYI" or "I thought you might find this interesting" is pretty much guaranteed not to get a link from me. 3. Lack of reciprocity. If I observe over time that the linking is one-way, i.e. I link to you but even when I'm on-topic for you, I don't get a link from you, that will dampen my enthusiasm. PS: Obviously this is one of those times Jason wants some link-love. Jason, if you're reading this, see item #3 above.
Essential television Watching the Democratic candidates debate on MSNBC, all the candidates sound excellent, if not presidential, the kind of people I'd like to see in the Cabinet.
You can download all 11 episodes via BitTorrent, and I highly recommend we all do that, watch the shows, talk about them on our blogs. Let's have a great discussion about the future of our country, and have an equally great election in 2008. And if you get something out of these programs, as I'm sure you will, please give generously to your local PBS station. Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11. The changing role of the source Must-read piece by Jeff Jarvis on the future of the interview. I think Wired is doing a wonderful job of listening, far better than any previous print pub has. It's awkward because a lot of understanding hasn't yet taken place. No pain no gain. The new reality for all publications is that their sources can go direct. It's just like every other activity that the Internet touches, disintermediation happens. This is a much bigger story than they were aiming for -- it's the still unwritten story of the blogosphere. Wired has a chance to get this scoop that has been out there for the getting for more than ten years, even though, ironically, I wrote much of the story myself, when I was at HotWired -- before leaving, to bootstrap blogging. Oh it's a great big circle, it is. Scott Rosenberg: "In the online conversation, the reporter doesn't get the last word. And the reporter doesn't get to filter which parts of the conversation are available to the public. No wonder journalists want to stick with the phone." A perfect demo This blog post from reporter Ryan Sholin perfectly illustrates why we need to create a record of our interviews to provide an incentive to report only the story, not to make up stuff to add drama to it. For example, where did the "if he wants to" bit come from? Certainly not from me. I would have bent over backwards to answer his questions, of course it would only be "If I want to," but that's the same rule that would apply if he asked me a question on the phone, I would only answer "If I want to." Sloppy reporting. The second mistake is much more serious: "The problem, of course, for folks like Dave and Jason, is that they've done enough print interviews to get frustrated at the fact that not everything they say, not every bit of context, not every piece of backstory makes it into the final published piece." That doesn't even come close to reflecting what I said or what I believe. I'll leave it to your readers to click on the links and compare the way you've expressed my opinion and the way I express it. My belief: You need the discipline of having your sources fully on the record so that you're more careful about representing what they said. In this case, where the reader can fact-check you, you've utterly failed in your responsibility to tell the true story. And this is an insignificant meta-story, and not very complex, and in your area of expertise. I don't have much confidence that you'd be straight with me or your readers if the story was more subtle, or complex. Conference business models I think I'm one of the people who Jim Forbes was on a first-name basis with when I used to run a software company in the valley, and he was a reporter for various tech pubs. As I read this rambling and interesting blog post, I started to get the idea that Jim was talking about me, and as it progressed I was sure, but he didn't actually say my name. I don't have anything to hide, either about my involvement with the TechCrunch 20 conference (I'm not being paid for my services, and so far my only involvement has been to say that I am involved) or in the back-channel discussion with the Wired reporter. The only part that hasn't been disclosed is a little advice I offered, on background, but if he wants to disclose it I don't mind. (Maybe I'll dig it up tomorrow and run it as a post.) I certainly never said anything, publicly or privately to call into question Jim's integrity, nor do I believe there is any cause to, but I do have a problem with conferences that showcase technology, charge people to attend and charge people whose products are demoed. I'm sure, based on knowing JIm for many years, that he never did anything unethical. And Demo, the show that he worked on, is better than a lot of shows, they tell everyone that the participants are paying, in other words, they disclose. But I've paid to go to conferences where I was sure I was watching ads. Boy did that feel slimy. People I used to admire did it. That felt worse than slimy, that felt like betrayal. I know the pressures people operate under, I ran four conferences myself, and never took money for a speaking slot. But it's common practice in the tech industry. And I'm glad that Jason and Mike are going to make an issue of it, because it will put pressure on other conferences to clean up their act. There will be a lot more disclosing in the future, and maybe some conferences will have to find a new business model to keep people coming. Anyway, it's late, I'm listening to old live Dead music as I write this on my new stereo that I love (a Mac) that's also got an outliner and a browser on it. I'm so glad I lived to see all this convergence. I've smoked a lot of cigarettes with Jim, and maybe a few other things, many years ago when we and the industry we're part of were much younger. I love the guy, and if I said anything that hurt him, it was inadvertent, but I'm sorry nonetheless. I don't do interviews by email I'm so tired of reading how I prefer to do interviews by email, as if to prove my point -- can't these reporters read or don't they care about getting the story right? This is crux of the story. It's not a minor detail. I don't do interviews by email. Here's the piece where I explained how I do it. Here's where I explained it again. One more time: I am not Jason Calacanis, who expressed a preference for interviews by email. My name is Dave Winer. I prefer to do it in blog posts, totally out in the open, in writing, on the record. We're in really deep shit here in the US, at least partially because reporters don't do their jobs. I'm up to episode five of the PBS series. I've spent hundreds of hours reading news coverage of Iraq, and now I'm finding out what I suspected, all the reports were 100 percent garbage. Nonsense. Fiction. This is how it happens. They write what they think should be true, they don't bother finding out what's actually happening. Today's links NY Times: Jack Valenti dead at 85. Newfangled indoor BBQ movie. Checkbox News, Day 4 Thanks Doc. What a nice thing to say. I think Checkbox News is all the things you say it is. Uninstalling IE7 renders machine useless
52, the perfect age? I was born on May 2, 1955. Which means that on Wednesday I will be 52. Think about this. May 2.
Perfectly symmetric. As is the number itself. 5 is an upside down 2. And vice versa. Sometimes life makes sense. Or will make sense. Next Wednesday. We hope. Praise Murphy.
Going to Mix?
Robert Scoble's Mix 07 predictions. He says Microsoft may announce an S3 competitor. Maybe they'll allow you to specify an index page, then it'll be useful for about 100,000 real world applications that S3 isn't. If you're going to Mix, and have something you want to talk with other people about, post a note in the comments, or on the wiki, and I'll link to some of them here? Iraq news Highly recommend two broadcasts for perspectives on what's happening in Iraq and the US. First, Monday's Fresh Air interview with Bill Moyers, a preview of his Friday night PBS series, which begins this week with a look at how the press is in collusion with the administration in how they present news about the war. The interviewer challenged Moyers on that word, and he said there's no other word for it (although it's not universal, some of the press is, he says, trying to tell the truthful story). He also expresses a point I wish more journalists would get, it's not their responsibility to tell both sides of a story, it's their job to say what's actually happening. Most journalists let a Republican and Democrat chew at each other and leave us believing the truth is somewhere between. But in many ways the two parties are also in collusion and they're not even in the neighborhood of the truth.
The third episode contains stories told by soldiers in Iraq, with stories from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War intermixed. Great literature, eye-opening perspectives. Both parties say they are supporting the troops. They should watch this episode for an idea of what that actually means. Connect the two shows together, Moyers and Crossroads, and you see that the press is still feeding us nonsense about Iraq, carrying the Bush message that we lose if we withdraw. In fact, we lose by staying, depleting our military, and going ever deeper into debt. And eventually the troops are going to figure out that no one is thinking about them back home, and we should expect a nightmare when they force us to look at what's happening. A replay of Vietnam, at a societal level, only much worse. bin Laden understands economics, and I'm sure the President does too, but it isn't reflected in the public dialog. I hope Moyers will fully uncover that on Friday. They're doing great work at PBS. There's at least one shining light in American journalism. Thanks. Update: Bill Moyer's Journal is on KQED in San Francisco tonight at 9PM. Checkbox News, day 3 An interesting discussion about Checkbox News yesterday, although it was overshadowed by the michegas about Wired and Arrington, both of whom took cheap shots, Arrington's in the name of friendship. I echo his sentiment, with friends like that who needs flamebait? Okay, enough about that, what about Checkbox News? A bunch of people misunderstood that it's a mechanism for giving feedback to the news networks. It is that for sure, but that's not why it exists. Please read this carefully, it's important. When I uncheck an item, I no longer get news on that subject. When I say no more Anna Nicole, I don't get no more Anna Nicole. It isn't a request to the network that they consider showing less of Anna Nicole, it's like an on-off switch, or a checkbox (hence the name) -- when unchecked, the flow is off. So it's a user interface control, a preference, not merely a feedback mechanism.
Dan Gillmor says he votes by changing the channel, but that doesn't work when all the networks are covering the same idiotic press conference, where the DNA results of the paternity test for Anna Nicole's baby are being announced, or on the first day back at Virginia Tech when they're holding yet another prayer vigil with orange and maroon balloons. I think it would be nice if they had such ceremonies without the network cameras there, and of course I turn off the TV when they all do that, but see the previous item about Iraq, there is actually news going on when they go into 24-hour hand-wringing mode, and TV is a good way to get news, if only you could get some. And Trudy Schuett offered a great idea via email -- a section where I say what kind of commercials I want and don't want. I'd turn off the Head-on commercials (got the message, hate the product), and turn on the Apple-PC commercials (they're so damned funny!) and I'd like to get commercials for kitchen appliances (I need some) and home entertainment systems, and travel deals to Europe. This allows Checkbox News to be part of my vision of how advertising works in the 21st century, it's information, not intrusion. Yehi.
Checkbox News
We live in a complex world, and many of us have minds and are educated, and want to understand what's going on. TV is not a bad way to do it, but the medium needs an overhaul in the age of the Internet. Our attention has mostly been focused on print, probably because we haven't felt we can do much about TV. But as yesterday's mockup shows, we're really not very far from turning TV news upside down much the same way RSS revolutionized written news. To implement this style of news, two things are needed:
Once #1 and #2 are in place, just turn your news flow into a frequently updated podcast feed, and we can do the rest, building a variety of clients from Apple TV to the Windows Media Player, running on iPods and cell phones, laptops, desktops -- who knows where. All of it powered by the enormously simple idea of checkboxes. PS: A J-school prof at Cal told me that most reporters have absolutely no idea which of their stories people read or don't read. They're flying blind. I bet TV news people are too. Scott Rosenberg: "Not only do most reporters have no idea which stories are read, many if not most don't want to know." Transcription errors
Here's what I said: "Not generally doing interviews these days. If you have a few questions, send them along, and if I have something to say, I'll write a blog post, which of course you're free to quote. Sorry that's about the best I can do." Like Jason, I have a lot of experience being misquoted, or having comments linked with others, as if there was some back and forth that didn't happen. Or I get used to make a point that the reporter wants to make, and my story gets lost. Often, the reporter's point is that I'm a putz. Why should I work hard to help people do that? Also like Jason, I don't have any trouble getting my ideas out on my own. So if you want to work together, let's find a new way to do it. I'm fed up with the old system. The way we start the reboot is to do all our work out in the open, real-time. Not via email, but in full view of everyone. I will respect the reporter's wish not to be identified, and if they want, I won't even say my comments are in response to an inquiry from a reporter. Another super-rude comeback from a Wired reporter. And they wonder why we decline to do interviews with them. Look in the mirror guys. Imagine someone talked about you that way, and ask if you'd go out of your way to help them. Dan Gillmor: "Every journalist should have the experience of being covered by journalists. Nothing would improve the craft more." Joe Beda: "Talking to the media has absolutely no upside for me." Kevin Tofel: "How about an interview Wiki?"
Today's links I was curious to find out who is going to Mix 07 next week in Las Vegas so I started a wiki page. NY Times: "Federal securities regulators said yesterday that they would bring no civil charges against Apple over the backdating of executive stock options. But they stopped short of removing the cloud that for nearly a year has hung over the company's chief executive, Steven P. Jobs." Dan Farber: Apple's former CFO blames Jobs over options. Rober Ebert: "Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you're sick."
TV news of the future? Here's a mockup of how TV news may work in the future. How I came up with this view... I was drinking coffee, watching the morning news when a story about Virginia Tech came on MSNBC. I really wanted to begin this week without more stories about how they're coping. I know this makes me an ogre, but after listening to On The Media yesterday, my cynicism is validated. And after watching 60 Minutes about life in Baghdad, the first report I've seen to actually go in to get the story, I was aware that people are dying in places outside Blacksburg (and truthfully, the dying is probably over in Blacksburg). I had a flash, I want a checkbox that tells MSNBC that I don't want any more Virginia Tech stories.
And there are some longterm stories that I have an interest in, like Katrina, or topics that because of my past I want to stay tuned into, like NY Metro. I live in the Bay Area, so I want to be informed about news there, but mix it in with news of the world. As we head into baseball's post-season, I'll check Sports, but it's still early, and I'll look for the news of my teams on the net, myself.
I'd like a button that means "Go on to the next story." I thought I would write this up, but why not go a step further and mockup a prototype page, because it might stimulate some thought and other ideas. And if you have comments, please let me know. Today's links NY Times: "Two former Apple executives expect to be sued this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission over the company's backdating of employee stock options." American Cliche: "Has the Podshow lineup been booted off Sirius?" Infoworld: Wi-Fi cloaks the City of London. Technology Review: Vista vs OS X? Google == Internet?
Now there's a study that ranks Google as the most valuable brand, not just in tech -- it's worth more than Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Wal-Mart, GE, and of course Microsoft and Apple. Google is the #1 most valuable brand in the world. That's right -- Google. How did that happen?? Now, if you stopped a man or woman in the street and asked what Google means, what would they say? I don't know, but I suspect they would say "The Internet." Get revenge on Wired, or..? A Wired reporter wants to go to Mix 07. But there's a hitch -- it's sold out, and there's a waiting list. Should Microsoft give the reporter special consideration? Sopranos Amyloo was made nervous when Tony tended his tomatoes last night. It's not the only recent hat-tip to The Godfather, right? They lead you right up to the cliff, and leave you hanging there. Heh. I wonder if this Sopranos reference will be as high-ranked as last week's? Seems kind of a scam, I wish I had more to say about it. For some reason Google thinks I'm authoritative on the Sopranos. Go figure.
Today's links On The Media segment on Virginia Tech massacre. We were all actors in a drama. Seattle P-I: The end of a blogging era may be near. Yogi Berra: "We're lost. But we are making good time." Surprised that my review of last week's Sopranos is in the first page of results for Sopranos on Google. Google Calendar security issue. Moveon taking cheap shots at McCain?
If Moveon is doing this, can I have a pointer? The reason I ask is that the founders of Moveon are neighbors, and this is something we can do something about, unlike most of the misery of the world, we can help make this one better. And I'm willing to seek out Joan and Wes to express our displeasure. Postscript: Yes, they are taking advantage of McCain's mistake. Here's a copy of the email they're sending. They lose me when they do stuff like this. I'm not voting out one set of unprincipled losers to replace them with another. Hannibal Lecter Lite Any time Anthony Hopkins stars in a murder mystery that gets reasonably decent reviews, I'm all over it. Fracture sure isn't Silence of the Lambs, it's nowhere near as intellectually challenging, we figured it out an hour before the other main character did, but it's still a good movie, with Hopkins in great form, even if it's just a hint of the depraved cannibal that lives inside him. I gave it a B- on Yahoo. OPML Editor help I'm seeing reports on people's blogs that they can't get yesterday's Twitter connection working. In many cases the problem is that they haven't updated to the new release process. The instructions are here. If that doesn't do it for you, post a message on one of the mail lists where people can help. New Twitter prefs panel I added a prefs panel for Twitter support in the OPML Editor. This replaces step 3 in yesterday's instructions, you don't have to go looking for user.twitter.prefs in the object database, this panel takes care of that. To get the panel, choose Update opml.root in the File menu. Here's a link to the prefs panel. You must have the OPML Editor running on your system for that link to work. The OPML Editor has a built-in web server for applications like this. Makes it easy to configure apps in a web browser. Advertising, day N Almost everyone in the comments missed the point of the naked car guy in the YouTube video, they commented on the quality of the ad, which is something everyone can have an opinion on, but that wasn't the point. Their gesture was significant even if no one was informed or entertained by it, it had the courage to say this is something you want to watch even if you don't have to. Read the part in italics, read it carefully before you post a comment saying the quality is too low. The point is that the age of intrusive commercialism is fading, and replacing it is opt-in commercials. Commercial information you seek out because you're buying a car or refrigerator, planning a trip, need to get new shoes, or need surgery or to be represented in a lawsuit. We are all seeking commercial information all the time, and guess where we go to find it these days -- the Internet -- of course! Imho, in five years, there will be so many commercial videos on YouTube and it will seem so much a part of life, everyone will say it was always totally obvious, but remember the day (today!) when you didn't think so. Commercial information will be opt-in, long-form, information-rich and entertaining, or people won't watch it. The ad agency responsible for the naked car guy may not get it right this time, but they should keep trying, because they're onto something. Money talks 1. I've spent many thousands of dollars on the Internet. 2. I've spent $0 on ads that showed up in the margins of my attention. 3. I've never intentionally clicked on one. 4. Mark Cuban: "My viewers are my customers."
First user-facing Twitter feature For OPML Editor users... While I was waiting for today's movie to start, watching some boring Coming Attractions, I was thinking about Twitter, and how to connect it to blogging software.
What I opted for is to make it easy to post a link to your blog post to Twitter, by clicking a button, when you're ready. Here's how it works... 1. Choose Update opml.root from the File menu. This will also update dotOpml.root. 2. Quit and re-launch the OPML Editor. 3. Jump to user.twitter.prefs, and enter your Twitter username and password. 4. Choose Open today's outline from the Your OPML Weblog sub-menu of the Community menu. 5. Enter a blog post. When you're ready to notify your Twitter friends of its existence, click on the Twitter button. A dialog appears, confirming what you want to say, and allowing you to edit it if you like. If you click on OK, it adds a permalink to the text, and shoots it up to Twitter.
6. And a few moments later, your wisdom is on Twitter. Good advice for everyone David Weinberger: "MoveOn.org can decide to make political hay out of McCain's gaffe, but we all pay a price for it." I agree. And our corner of the blogosphere can benefit from that advice as well. Think about it. 21st century advertising This is what I've been talking about. In the future, advertising will be so entertaining that it will create its own pull. No need to intrude, to hitch a ride on other more compelling content. 8/3/06: "If it's perfectly targeted, it isn't advertising, it's information. Information is welcome, advertising is offensive."
RSS miscellany Looking for sources of photo feeds for flickrRivr... I came across an OPML file listing all the NY Times feeds. Now that's cool. I wish they had told me about it, could have saved a bunch of time. Here's the OPML in a browsable form.
Basically I'm looking for RSS 2.0 feeds with either Media-RSS photos, or enclosures, with medium resolution photos, between 100K and 1MB, with family-safe pictures. Today's links
SF Chronicle: "The Virginia Tech shooting is the first major U.S. news story in which traditional media and new-media technologies became visibly interdependent." Microsoft is hosting a blogger lounge at Mix 07, April 30-May 2 in Las Vegas. Tim O'Reilly defends Amazon, who is suing Statsaholic, a site that builds on Alexa, which is owned by Amazon. Amazon is an O'Reilly customer and also sponsors their conferences. Reuters: "The Vermont state senate passed a symbolic resolution on Friday calling on the U.S. Congress to impeach U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over their handling of the unpopular Iraq war." Frank Shaw: The Press And Iraq. Dan Ruby's Festival Preview. Engadget: Wal-Mart $299 HD DVD player. Oh Valleywag
Sorry, but I had to even the score before I could write about them. The latest evidence of self-abuse is this piece where they say Apple won in podcasting. I strongly disagree. The users won. And the people with programming that the users like won. It's not all about technology. One would think the Valleywag guys would get that. Sure there's a little bit needed, and Apple helped distribute podcasts, enormously. If I were Evan Williams or Adam Curry I never would have invested in the systems they invested in, even before Apple came in to the market. I put my stake in the ground when both these systems launched. No future here. It was kind of obvious -- podcasts aren't like photos, you can't make a social network form about them because people get ideas about podcasts when they're nowhere near a computer, unlike photos or blog posts. Apple didn't make this mistake. Their goal was to help the MP3s make the trip from the podcaster's server to the user's iPod, and that they do fairly well, so god bless them, they helped us get this thing going. Thank you Apple.
Today's MSM monologue Can they only do one story at a time? Today they're only reporting on the second floor of Building 44 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Is this news? Barely. In the meantime our government is in crisis. And who knows what else is going on. The news doesn't mention anything other than a nameless sub-contractor who may or may not have taken hostages. Not much is known, but massive amounts of attention are focused on it. Podcast Hotel, day 2
Live stream from Podcast Hotel on Ustream.tv. We cracked the code
The best way to find out what the troops think, if that's their real concern (of course it isn't, their concern is that they might get blamed for the mess they created) is to ask them. It could be that soldiers in Iraq have very little idea what we're doing there, and don't relish dying to keep Bush from going down as the disaster that he is. Who loves Bush so much that they'd be willing to die for his legacy? Isn't the next President going to have to own up to Bush's mistakes? At that point, how will Bush spin it? The tools available to ex-presidents are nothing compared to the power of the incumbent. Yes, of course, the war is lost
I don't think there was any way for Reid to win by saying what he said. So maybe he was motivated by something that the Republicans don't understand, maybe his conscience dictates that he tell the truth, if it might possibly save one life, no matter what kind of a Republican shitstorm it provokes. When the Republicans say we should stay so we don't lose, they're playing politics with the troops lives. And Reid is to be applauded for saying what's so obvious that no one else in politics seems willing to say. BTW, if you want to find the bug -- we didn't have a national discussion about the war before we started it. Instead skeptics were shouted down as unpatriotic. Look at what a mess that created. Will we learn the lesson? Seems we have another chance to do that. Reject the Republican smear. I don't think Reid is wrong, but he simply expressed an opinion, and as majority leader of the Senate, we want him to do that, even if we don't agree.
Podcast Hotel
Spend a week there, writing code, blog stuff, doing podcasts around the clock. This was in the early days when you could fit all the podcasters in a dinky beach hotel. Then, basically -- you'd get infinite connectivity if you stayed long enough. Everyone would get to know each other, and there would be a dozen podcasts that were great, tons of great ideas, and out of that would come a roadmap for all of us. And a great memory of when we worked together, to help launch an industry, a new human activity. Unfortunately it never happened, for a lot of good reasons, mostly that it's hard to get people to work together. Now in San Francisco, tomorrow and Saturday, there will be a conference at the Swedish American meeting hall on Market St, that is called Podcast Hotel, but it's a pretty ordinary conference, not even an unconference, and nothing like the podcast hotel we envisioned. I may stop in tomorrow or Saturday to schmooze a bit, shake hands, listen to a bit of stage-talk, and wonder What If. Today's links Joe Conason: Gonzales' resignation is not enough. Mark Glaser asks, on his PBS blog, whether NBC should have released the Cho videos. Jeff Jarvis: Losing control of media. 1/3/05: "The professional journalist is totally part of the story he or she is writing. That they believe otherwise is the major bug in their process." News.com: Dell brings back XP on home systems. Scoble argues for full-text feeds. Joe Trippi, Dean campaign manager in 2004, joins the Edwards campaign. Internet Identity Workshop, May 14-16, Mountain View. Jackie Danicki signs up with Ing Direct based entirely on reviews here. I hope she'll write up her experience as she becomes more familiar with it. One of the problems with all the online banking systems is that you can't see the software before you sign up for an account. Cho-TV, day 2
Some people say that if NBC were to release the videos, completely and exactly as Cho produced them, this would spawn copycats. That's a valid opinion of course, but I don't see why. We don't know what's on the videos. And do you think anyone who wanted to see them hasn't seen enough to get the basic idea? Maybe the copycat will strike because Cho's video didn't get broad distribution, and they have an easy shot at outdoing him. I don't know how the mind of a mass killer works, if anyone does. I said we hadn't forseen this use of the technology because, as utopians, we tend to look for the good stuff. I liked to think I had a balanced view, and could see where bloggers weren't doing good, but I hadn't seriously considered our tools used to further such a bad cause. What's next? Isn't it obvious -- the latest and greatest stuff, Ustream, Twitter and mass murder. When you see a suicide bomber with a camera strapped to his or her head, you'll know that the bad has caught up with the good. Reuters looks at questions raised for newsrooms about social media and events like the Virginia Tech killings. Reuters asks if they should accept amateur video, when doing so might encourage others to take risks they otherwise wouldn't. I think that's an easy call. They should accept video from anyone who's credible. They should stop seeing themselves as parental to amateur reporters. They also say no amateur ever dies covering a story. They can't have it both ways. They accept video from professional reporters who take risks, so they should treat amateurs equally. Rob Sama: "At this point given that NBC has done a partial release, they should just finish the job and go with WinerÕs suggestion. But NBC's attempt to split the difference between the two opposing schools of thought, both of which make valid points IMO, wound up embracing the worst aspects of both. As it now stands Cho has his stardom and the public doesn't have enough information to figure it all out." Frank Shaw says if he had received the videos, he would have turned them over to the police without airing them. What would you do if you had to make the call? I've heard it said we're exploiting other people's pain. I suppose almost any event could be spun that way. For example, when the President says we should wait six months before judging his troop surge, a lot of people are going to die because of that, and anyone who is critical of his plan might be seen as exploiting their pain. It's in times of crisis like this that we learn the most about our values and how they compare to others. A lot of learning happens. There are always people calling foul, so be it. (People used to say who was I to write about tech, then they said I shouldn't write about politics. I said don't read it if you don't like it.) Paul Andrews: "Cho undoubtedly did not want NBC to censor the materials. But he apparently, naively or stupidly, sent only one copy out. So NBC owns the rights, unfortunately." Time: "How much Cho to show?" Online banking, day 2 Great response to yesterday's request for experiences with online banking services. Sounds like Ing Direct gets the highest marks from its users. Based on what I read, I almost set up a new account yesterday. Read what Clay Johnson says about them. It's pretty rare that a product gets that kind of review from a customer.
Vlogging comes to mass murder
In other words, vlogging comes to mass murder, in ways no one anticipated (or no one I know). It makes perfect sense, in a perfectly senseless way. He sent the package in the 2 hours between the first and final killings. Note: I took this post down for a few hours this afternoon because it wasn't clear what was in the package, and if it would be released. We're watching it on MSNBC now. It's amazing stuff. The videos are Quicktime files. NBC should release all of the videos in Quicktime form as downloads. It's wrong to withhold them. They're sifting through them and deciding what to release and what not to release. It's 2007, and it's a decentralized world. We should all get a chance to see what's on those videos. GIven enough time the focus will go on their process, much better to just let it all out now, with no editorial judgement. If you have contacts in the blogging world or MSM that could influence NBC's decision, please pass this on.
Micah Sifry: "There's no obligation to put it all out there..." NY Times: Package Forced NBC to Make Tough Decisions. Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing is chronicling the release (or lack) of the Cho "multimedia manifesto." Via email, Doc Searls nails a bunch of angles on this: "Cho sent those recordings to a major broadcast network. Not to the police, not to other individuals. (Far as we know.) Clearly he wanted his recordings broadcast -- after the deeds were done, and he was dead as well. Best online bank? A couple of years ago when I started using my bank's online system to pay bills, I was in awe. How much easier and faster it was than paying bills by hand. What used to be a chore that I put off and as a result paid late fees, and my credit rating suffered, had become a pleasure. My queue of unpaid bills was never very deep or very old.
So I decided to check out Consumer Reports on this subject (you must be a member for that link to work) and they don't yet rate banks based on their websites. I suspect this will change soon. Anyway, I thought I'd ask you to share your experiences. You don't have to name the bank if you'd rather not for security purposes (as I am) or you can use a fake name so you can name the bank without risk. I'm just interested in getting an idea if my experience is bad or typical or good, for 2007. Today's links Fantastic rendition of My Generation. New coffee maker. Key feature: hot coffee. A YouTube group for OPML users. Dvorak on the Web 2.0 Expo. Andy Carvin: "Virginia Tech's students are about as wired as any other school, with laptops everywhere and cell phones close to ubiquitous." CNN: "Insurgent bombers launched a series of attacks across Baghdad on Wednesday and killed at least 171 people and wounded scores -- a particularly violent day in a bloody capital city enduring sectarian warfare and an aggressive government crackdown against insurgents." NPR segment on a blogger's code of conduct. Republican rhetoric The BS you hear from Republicans on radio, TV and in print would never play if it were repeated in an offline political discussion between citizens. With a majority favoring withdrawal from Iraq, even though the President is against it (which indicates a fairly strong conviction, imho), you can't get away with the kind of idiocy that Vice-President Cheney said in his Face The Nation interview last Sunday with Bob Schieffer, who patiently put up with it because it's his job to. The Republicans repeatedly say the consequences of withdrawal is failure in Iraq. Which is easily pushed aside. We've already failed, and you're right, the consequences suck. What now? Last night on Countdown, Olbermann asked the same questions I asked here yesterday, although much more politely. Why are the lives of the Virginia Tech students any more precious than the lives of our soldiers in Iraq, and please explain to me why they're more precious than the lives of Iraqi children, some much younger and more helpless than the Virginia students. They aren't. A life is a life, all are equal. And as Olbermann pointed out, the deaths in Iraq are more preventable than those from a random act of violence. I had a radical idea watching a debate on TV about the war, between a Republican and a Democrat. Maybe now it's time to have some discussions of the future without the Republicans. They drop the level of discourse to the lowest level I've ever seen, and these days it's all about covering their ass for the disastrous things they've done to this country, and the rest of the world. Maybe it's time to stop giving them equal time so we can get on with fixing the mess they created and stop debating why they're not to blame. No, you don't get it! A while back I was being lectured, in a blog post, by a woman, about how sexist I am. She explained that one way to tell you're being sexist is to reverse the genders in a story you tell, and sometimes the sexism reveals itself. Your prejudices about one gender are influencing you, and by switching them, you switch the bias around, and what was invisible before now is visible. I knew about this, and agreed, it is an excellent way to see sexism or any kind of ism for that matter -- racism, ageism. For example in a TV commercial, a woman hits a man in the face, as a joke. Or turns the sprinkler on him. Or says he's so predictable, in a dumb way, because he likes black cars. Or doesn't remember something like an anniversary. We're supposed to laugh. But if we were getting physical that way with a woman, or being so condescending, it would evoke a completely different reaction. The irony, is that if the person lecturing me were to flip genders in her own story, she'd probably see her own sexism. Would she lecture a woman the same way she was lecturing a man? Might she consider the possibility that the woman is smart, and might be offended by the assumption that she's not? Especially if the woman she's talking to is 20 years her senior? Basically it's always a mistake to assume you understand something that the other guy doesn't. Another thing like that is the zealot's proclamation that You Don't Get It. Michael Gartenberg indulges in that today. As with my sexism teacher, the danger in saying that about someone else is that it likely applies to you as well. Michael has no idea what I get or don't get. In fact he's basing his conclusion on old data. I've refined my position. Even so, I haven't used it once so maybe I have to refine it again.
New Samsung phone I got a new Sprint phone today, a freebie. I posted a picture earlier, and a whole bunch of comments showed up. Maybe we can start a self-help group for clueless people like me. I can see it's got a ton of features, but I can't get started, I don't even know what the number of my phone is. CNET review of the Samsung SPH-M620 phone. Politically incorrect questions 1. How long before Bush connects what happened at Virginia Tech with the global war on terror? 2. How long before a Republican presidential contender says the Democrats want to take your guns away? 3. How long before one of the cable networks runs any story other than Virginia Tech? 3a. What's Don Imus doing during all this michegas? 3b. Anna Nicole Smith? 4. Will anyone notice that while we're venting and emoting about Virginia Tech, hundreds of Iraqis have died. 5. Okay, I suppose some people believe American lives are worth more than Iraqis, so what about the 3300 Americans who have died in Iraq. That's about 100 times the number of people who died at Virginia Tech. What are we doing to prevent another 3300 deaths? Who's responsible? Could those deaths have been prevented? 6. If you're glued to your TV hanging on every word, when was the last time they said anything that even remotely qualified as news? (If you get bored, try playing a game, every time they say Virginia Tech, substitute Iraq.) 7. How long before Lou Dobbs raises the killer's immigrant status? Local image URL syntax?? I have a folder of images on my local disk. If I drag one onto the Firefox icon in my toolbar, it displays. The URL in the address bar is:
However, if I use that URL as the src attribute on an img element, I get a broken image.
Question: Is there a way to get the browser to display an image coming from the local file system, and if so, what's the syntax for the URL? Sam Yates says it might be a Firefox security feature. Via email, Wendy McCully writes: "As long as the HTML file that references the local images is in the same directory as the images themselves, you don't need to indicate any path at all." I tried it -- and it works, without changing the browser's security settings. Today's links NY Times: Corzine's Speed Put at 91 M.P.H. Near Crash Site. Scoble says always-on isn't for him. Good move. Michael Gartenberg has a Mac laptop question. I got a new Sprint phone today -- a freebie! Worth another look after three years. Virginia Tech's phones Roanoke Times: "When Virginia Tech wanted to alert students to developments in a recent campus manhunt for an accused double murderer it relied on e-mail, the Web and messages sent to dorm phones." Google search for "Virginia Tech" and "Rave Wireless." Andy Carvin: "I spoke with a PR rep at Rave Wireless today and she said that they have no relationship with Virginia Tech." Scoble's cam Yesterday at the Web 2.0 Expo, I did a brief interview with Robert Scoble. I wondered what his camera hat looks like.
Social networking and search When I search on Google for RSS, I'm only interested in knowing about the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I like having a spreadsheet around, but until Google came out with their browser-based 
Calling a technology a coral reef is the highest compliment I can pay.
Now, after all the michegas about how I like to do interviews in blog posts, largely because they create a record that can be easily verified after a story runs, let me say that I often consider doing phone and face to face interviews, and sometimes I do them.
Of course if no one has Anna Nicole Smith checked, they'll stop producing news about her, so it is a feedback mechanism in that sense. But if I don't like the garbage they pass off as news, I can watch the stuff I am interested in.
I think this is another form of the 
I went over the options, you could connect a RSS feed, so every post would be Twitted, immediately, as soon as it's on the web. I didn't like this so much. 
I'm finding I can't use as much of Yahoo's stuff as I hoped to. They have feeds of news pictures, but they're too small, when they are displayed on a TV screen they're grainy and hard to look at. There were some other problems with Yahoo feeds, but I'm going to try reporting them directly to Yahoo people before writing them up here.
I think they're all smoking crack down there, or abusing small animals, or sticking things in orifices god never intended things to be stuck in, or maybe all of the above (at the same time), because their brains seem to be shrinking, visibly, every day. 
So it's shaken out as it obviously would. There was no boom in podcasting technology, and there won't be. There's still lots of opportunities in players, iPods are the best available, but they're designed to play music, not podcasts, and there's a lot of 
I described the idea of a podcast hotel in a Trade Secrets podcast with Adam Curry in 2004 or early 2005. The idea was pretty simple. Rent a cheap hotel in the middle of nowhere. I was thinking 
When it came out yesterday that Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, had sent 23 QuickTime videos to NBC in NY, that changed forever how I thought about blogging, video, podcasting, etc. When I first put up the 
The Virginia Tech shooter sent a package of video and pictures to NBC.
