Scripting News

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:13:47 GMT

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 16:31:26 GMT

ABA Journal: "I�ve started getting fan mail now,� says Martin Schwimmer, publisher of the weblog called the Trademark Blog. �It�s safe to say that I got virtually no fan letters when I was just a trademark lawyer.�

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 03:01:01 GMT

Scott Rosenberg's piece about the Davos reporter who got caught saying what she really thinks.

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 04:45:45 GMT

Sterling Hughes: "Overture, Inktomi and Google will battle it out, and Inktomi is going to get creamed."

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 04:02:32 GMT

Matt Brown of Macromedia shows how to use Dreamweaver with Radio, thanks to Paolo and eVectors. "Blogging is cool," says Matt.

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 03:42:19 GMT

256 days since I quit smoking. Yeah, I'm a programmer. Sue me.

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 03:02:44 GMT

This evening I got something working that I've wanted for quite some time. A community RSS aggregator in Manila. I'll explain it in the morning. I still have another programming project tonight -- to get Radio working with Audblog. We've got the wire we need on the server side, now I have to try to call it from the workstation and see if it works. Fingers crossed. (Postscript: Worked the first time.) Praise Murphy. And Jake has an announcement, but I'm going to let him make it first on the Radio UserLand mail list before pointing to it here. There's gotta be a reward for being in the loop. ";->"

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 01:36:51 GMT

Jake took some great pics of my house and dumpster #2.

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 20:30:43 GMT

Ars Technica: "We're probably Harvard's oldest blog, and we're certainly its most popular."

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 16:37:47 GMT

Now I know for a fact that Ashcroft is crazy. With all the problems in the world, they go after people who sell hash pipes and bongs. Geez Louise.

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:28:55 GMT

Microsoft's threedegrees sounds really interesting. I read about it in Newsweek, current issue. It's an icon on your desktop that you can drop MP3s on. Then every one of your friends will hear the tune. It's like a group jukebox over the Internet. And you can play games with the icon. All an attempt to get you to switch from AIM or ICQ to Microsoft's Instant Messenger, but with proper bait, a sexy feature or two. It only runs on XP, so I won't be running it anytime soon, unless I buy a new laptop, which I'm thinking of doing.

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:16:03 GMT

Daypop Word Bursts are "heightened usage of certain words in weblogs within the last couple days."

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 13:57:11 GMT

This is News Quakes, "world news for the lazy," brought to you by the makers of Info Breakfast.

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 13:41:11 GMT

LA Times: Internet users drive South Korean politics.

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:03:07 GMT

News.Com: "Overture Services plans to acquire the Web search services of Fast Search & Transfer, another sign that it intends to compete more strongly on the Internet search market."

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:21:59 GMT

Phil Ringnalda has implemented the white-on-orange XML icon in the more politically correct PNG format.

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 22:54:09 GMT

Dylan Greene did the button in CSS, which is precisely as politically correct as the PNG version.

Ev plays the age card

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:47:58 GMT

Evan Williams says: "I hope I'm not that cynical when I'm older, just because I've been around the block a few times," about me, quoted here. Heh. I could play the age card too, in the reverse direction, but I won't.

Google is cut from the same cloth as every other Silicon Valley company. They hire from the same talent pool. I saw that last year when we were coordinating on the Google API. They're actually a bit dumber than earlier companies because the dotcom thing was such an incredible distortion field, there isn't any prior art on how to coexist anymore.

So they think they're the center of the universe, and get a lot of reinforcement for that, but it ain't true. It looks like they're going down the predictable path. So what. If you got stock Ev you're going to get a lot of Kleiner Perkins money, and I hope you invest it wisely.

Okay there's a tiny little bit of reverse "age card" stuff. Please forgive me. I mean well. ";->"

Selling out

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:59:25 GMT

Now to the substance of what Ev said. I only noticed it after I got rid of the dirty ageist bit in his post. Ev says "Blogger Sells Out, some guy says. Dave, of course, agrees. Sigh."

A lot of entrepreneurs who sell out have a problem dealing with it. Even though they sold out they don't think they did. When I sold out in 1987, I went through the same thing. I am going through it now, living in a house that I sold. Did I sell out? Yes I did. It was raining yesterday and I was thinking how much the garden would love the rain in a couple of months when the sun returns. Ah ah. It won't be my garden then. For all I know the new owner will have already torn down the house and turned the garden into a dirty mess. It's his garden now to do with as he pleases. I don't think he really cares about it, he might not even know it exists. That's how selling a company works too. I was paid a lot of money to give it up. I sold out. Just like Evan did. Fact, not theory.

I knew this about my company a few moments after signing the papers to merge it with Symantec in 1987. Immediately the mood changed. I was given an order. I gulped. It's so strange. Why is he giving me an order? Oh that's right, I work for him now. Oy. This will strike Evan at some point, and I hope he blogs about it. He would make history in doing so.

Why weblogs are cool

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 13:25:14 GMT

Imagine a News.Com or NY Times article about the deal we're talking about. I might be able to get a sound bite in there, but that would be it. There would likely be a transcription error, so maybe I'd be quoted saying something I don't agree with, and it would also likely not be my best quote. But most important, people reading the article would not likely find out what I really think. And if new information was revealed over time, or for some reason my perspective shifted, that would not be part of the article because they only do one article about any given news event.

Because I have a weblog, I can write about it at length, several times. I can write until I'm finished. If you don't care, that's cool too, you can hit the Back button. But I get to say what I want, and I can get it right, and if I don't there's a fresh empty page tomorrow that I'm going to fill, Murphy-willing of course.