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Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Russell Beattie asks Obvious Question 2.0 Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Russ asks: Where's the OpenSocial container API?

I love Russ because he cuts through all the BS and gets right to the core, most basic question, and he doesn't care who he pisses off. That's my kind of developer. You can't lie to the compiler, when the bits hit the road, you gotta know what garbage goes in and what garbage comes out.

(Ahh programmer's humor!)

In other words, suppose I wanted to compete with Google, MySpace, Plaxo and LinkedIn, well, where's the spec that shows me how to do that?

A picture named worstApiEver.gifWell, of course I don't know, they aren't communicating with riffraff like me, but I have some experience with this kind of stuff, so I can hazard a guess. If they publish a spec,all kinds of projects will likely get started to enable the API in (just for the sake of argument): Drupal, WordPress, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Scripting News (why not add widgets to a random blog), CNN, The New York Times, well you get the idea. There might be lots of implementations very quickly. And that would be it for changes. It would be frozen de facto, they'd have to live with what they have, which given how quickly it was thrown together, probably isn't very good. Not the kind of stuff you'd like to support for the next decade or two.

Or maybe they would break everyone, something guaranteed to make them a lot of enemies, much the way Microsoft did, and they were good at migration of APIs.

Google is good at doing AJAXy web UIs, they make users happy, but they're not very good at APIs. This one is a loser, for sure. That's the answer to Russ's question. It's probably not malice that keeps them from releasing details to everyone outside their club, it's pragmatism. They have to try to hold on to it to keep it from becoming even more of a mess than it already is.

Just my opinion, for what it's worth. I've been wrong many times before.

Google's phone should be good Permanent link to this item in the archive.

While I think Google's plan to undermine Facebook was a bad idea that flopped, I think they should be able to design a phone that, like Apple's iPhone, is a necessary accessory for the future-minded geek.

One of the things we like the most about mobile devices is that they can be used to access Internet applications, but neither the Blackberry or the iPhone have hit the sweet spot with web access, imho -- but Google's design process should yield something not ony usable but uniquely powerful. Combining search with email, maps and news is something they should be able to make work better than their competitors because they've done it so well on the web.

When news organizations see what Google's up to, I suspect they will be more interested in what we've been doing with the NY Times.

And btw, I'm not selling my Apple stock. ;->

Trying out disqus.com Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I got an email a couple of weeks ago asking if I'd like to try out a new way to do weblog comments, from disqus.com. I thought about it, and decided to give it a try. Not sure whether I'm ready to provide an outlet for people's anger so easily, but let's see what happens.

To begin with the comments only appear on the story page, not on the Scripting News home page. Just click on the blue arrow to get to the story page.

     

Last update: Saturday, November 03, 2007 at 9:57 PM Pacific.

Dave Winer, 52, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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Oct   Dec

Lijit Search
Things to revisit:

1.Microsoft patent acid test.
2.What is a weblog?
3.Advertising R.I.P.
4.How to embrace & extend.
5.Bubble Burst 2.0.
6.This I Believe.
7.Most RSS readers are wrong.
8.Who is Phil Jones?
9.Send them away.
10.Negotiate with users.
11.Preserving ideas.
12.Empire of the Air.
13.NPR speech.
14.Russo & Hale.
15.Trouble at the Chronicle.
15.RSS 2.0.
16.Checkbox News.
17.Spreadsheet calls over the Internet.
18.Twitter as coral reef.
19.Mobs of the blogosphere.
20.Advice for Campaigns.
21.Social Cameras.
22.The Next Big Thing.
23.It's time to open up networking, again.
24.Am I competing?
25.Time to shake up conferences?
26.Bloggers working with journalists.

Teller: "To discover is not merely to encounter, but to comprehend and reveal, to apprehend something new and true and deliver it to the world."

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