Scripting News - Latest Comments

Re: How Hollywood portrays bloggers. (Scripting News)

dave — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:53:25 -0000

NYT review..

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/movies/07j...

Re: Coolest software of the decade? (Scripting News)

sull — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:50:32 -0000

to cover a decade is real tough to answer. but some that come to mind are gmail, android 2.0, iPhone OS, screenflow, bittorrent, haxial KDX, littleshoot, dropbox, sony vegas. wow, i can go on and on.

hard to pick just one ;)

Re: How Hollywood portrays bloggers. (Scripting News)

dave — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:19:18 -0000

I totally agree. I can't understand why anyone liked that movie.

It would have been great if they had just done a biography of Julia Child.
The whole Julie thing was a gimmick. As you say she wasn't even remotely in
the same league as Julia.

The movie is probably going to win a huge number of Oscars though.

Re: How Hollywood portrays bloggers. (Scripting News)

openid-9394 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:10:28 -0000

I thought Julie and Julia was the most mean-spirited Nora Ephron film ever: Julia Child took that desire to change herself and learned how to cook. Julie Powell whined about how hard it was to follow instructions that Julia thought anyone should be able to do.

Maybe they thought the stunt appraisal would make Julie look really bad.

Re: How Hollywood portrays bloggers. (Scripting News)

Zandr — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:56:47 -0000

Characters develop in most >140 character forms of entertainment. The overall portrayal of that character was not what they opened with.

Re: How Hollywood portrays bloggers. (Scripting News)

Matt — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:52:28 -0000

There was a fictionalized version of blogger extraordinaire Duncan Black (aka Atrios, http://www.eschatonblog.com/) on West Wing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrios#Appearance_...).
Definitely not on the scale you're talking about here, but I thought I'd mention it.

Re: How Hollywood portrays bloggers. (Scripting News)

dave — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:44:47 -0000

Why not?

Re: How Hollywood portrays bloggers. (Scripting News)

Zandr — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:37:15 -0000

You've seen one of those movies, anyway. Not that State of Play was very good, but you can't make judgments of their portrayal of the 'blogger' without watching the whole thing.

Re: Can Twitter users link out? (Scripting News)

twitter-8915162 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:11:24 -0000

This happened to me and I was removed from Twitter search until I begged and pleaded Twitter to get this fixed. Very frustrating. What I encourage you to do is to interact more with those you follow. I think that is a positive behaviour.

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

ellenfeaheny — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:33:04 -0000

Agree with you that RSS is hardly dead, and in my opinion, only on the edge of understanding in terms of potential power by marketers and consumers as the social web finally takes a strong run and impact in business, primarily seen as a result of Twitter (and perhaps a 2009 recession - coincidence?)

RSS since 2002 - only the geeks were tuned into it back then. In the insular high-tech world, we commonly think our early-acceptance of technologies, protocols, and methodologies are the ways and understanding of the whole world, or even our whole country. NOT.

Proven again and again with every technology and protocol - including SMTP and HTTP by the way. RSS is no different in this regard of delayed "common realizations" - only a later entrant to the canvas.

Similarly, the more Enterprises that clue in with brand, content, and internal and external timely proliferation of information using RSS - the more it should become a *crux* protocol strategically. That too, seemingly at infancy. Technologists "talk about" these ideas for years before Enterprises get on board and make them happen.

At least the good news is that the better vendor products these days are all supporting activity streams, as well as statistics and management of those streams.

Re: Reporters accepting freebies. (Scripting News)

dave — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:20:36 -0000

Yes

Re: Reporters accepting freebies. (Scripting News)

interstar — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:14:10 -0000

"As far as I know, no reporters, columnists or news organizations have opted out."

Didn't Jay Rosen ask to be taken off?

Re: Can Twitter users link out? (Scripting News)

edial — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:12:06 -0000

While I do think a platform needs some rules, you make a very good point! For me, I use Twitter as a way to find content. Adding all the authors I like will not help me find that content though. I trust others, the people I follow, to curate all the things I'm interested in.

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

Plankhead — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:27:46 -0000

When are you going to make a Twitter client, Dave? It seems like none of the current client developers are listening to you, so why not show them how it's done?

(By "Twitter client" I mean "status client" of course)

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

cdexterd — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:08:56 -0000

Agree that the "RSS is dead" crowd is missing the point. Is email dead if we do not talk about SMTP?

With regard to being "pushed down" the stack. Dave, as you point out RSS was never more than a protocol. So in that sense nothing changed but to its ultimate hinderance RSS also became a common functional name. In my opinion we would be further along in this dialog if, like email, the functional name for RSS would have evolved separate and distinct from the technical aspects.

Regardless, RSS is used ubiquitously by sites and applications. This may be more widespread that people commonly think. We have had conversations with solution architects that have designed RSS at the heart of their products but have not discussed that widely. This has huge potential.

From a vendor perspective we have effectively done what you suggest with our Attensa server enabling aggregation and routing of a wide variety of activity based feeds. We create activity streams that can combine multiple sources and be consumed privately or distributed openly using RSS as the foundation. This, as you suggest, is a node in a loosely coupled network that can be configured to serve the private needs of an organization while also enabling the open exchange with other nodes and solutions.

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

Dan Brickley — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:35:54 -0000

Are you liking identi.ca / statusnet on this front?

Re: Reporters accepting freebies. (Scripting News)

DrewKime — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:55:24 -0000

I agree that there's value to being on the SUL. But by the same token, there's value to being on the front page of the New York Times. Does the times have to register a campaign contribution every time they cover a politician?

If we're calling Twitter "the new media", why would we saddle them with stricter reporting requirements than the old media?

Twitter -- and other services like Blogger, Digg, Reddit, AOL, etc. -- are clearly blurring the lines between "common carrier" and "editorial control" in plenty of ways. So I do think there should be some standards around how they do that. But we should be careful not to impose conditions on them that are so much stricter than those on "old media" that they can be shut down or co-opted by the system they're replacing.

Re: Help save a BusinessWeek blog. (Scripting News)

superjaberwocky — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:36:12 -0000

I'm not really a techie, so I have to ask: How future-safe the SQL backups? In 50 years, will someone still be able to use those files?

As I understand it, plain text is one of the best ways to store data in the long term since almost any piece of hardware can open a plain text file (even ones decades old). Is there something out there that can convert a Wordpress blog and its comments into plain text?

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

dave — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:34:31 -0000

Sam, there's a 1-1 correspondence betw Atom and RSS 2.0. There are no
elements in one that are not in the other. And if there were, for the sake
of argument, an element in Atom that wasn't in RSS, you could include it in
RSS because it is extensible.

But please if you want to argue this, do it somewhere else. I have paid the
Atom tax, many times, over many years.

Re: Maybe it's time for personal servers? (Scripting News)

markoa — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:10:11 -0000

Wait, you say "I've been inside too many tech companies to be willing to trust my writing with them, esp not long-term" -- but all comments on this blog go through Disqus?

Re: Help save a BusinessWeek blog. (Scripting News)

vrypan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:08:43 -0000

I used http://www.httrack.com/ to convert an old, inactive Wordpress blog to static html and worked just fine.

Re: Can Twitter users link out? (Scripting News)

algotruneman — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:05:51 -0000

In fact, the links to informative sites is one of the MAIN reasons I follow somebody. Their links are what defines them. VALUE (to me)

I cannot remember the context, but someone said that the links a person puts on a Web page are good indicators of who the person is...a little bit like "you are who you associate with". Twitter entries that simply tell what a person is currently doing are BORING. "I'm at the mall." "I just bought a hat." Wow.

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

samksethi — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:59:26 -0000

I agree with Dave Winer that Techcrunch, Arrington and Gilmore are wrong. RSS is not dead! However I only partially agree with Dave Winer "RSS will form the basis for the open distributed version of Twitter."

IMHO Atom 1.0 and not RSS 2.0 will form the basis of the distributed realtime web. Dave tweeted me that RSS and Atom where the same thing. Below was my tweet response.

>>@DaveWiner naughty Rss!=Atom same roots but diff i.e Atom has AutoDiscovery, Extraction and Aggregation. Can RSS integrate ActivityStreams or Salmon? No

@CSHotton: Atom is extensible can already be sent over XMPP unlike RSS.

>>Atom 1.0 allows standalone Atom Entry documents; these could be transferred using any network protocol, for example XMPP. Atom also has support for aggregated feeds, allowing entries to point back to the feed they came from when they are included into other feeds.<<

Re: Can Twitter users link out? (Scripting News)

rythie — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:58:04 -0000

People are using thier twitter clients to subscribe to content that would normally be in rss. If twitter can't accept this use case, clients will start to support other networks that do. I note that in friendbinder I can subscribe to any rss i like mixed in with my twitter feed. I don't think it matters that twitter is walled - clients just need to support alternative ways of getting content.

Re: Can Twitter users link out? (Scripting News)

cranstone — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:49:02 -0000

Amazing. The reason I read your blog is the links (and the colorful commentary). Now you can't link, so all that leaves is comments about "what's happening". What does that mean? What's happening with me, what's happening with someone I know, what's happening on the web? Down the slippery slope we go.