Scripting News

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 02:23:23 GMT

Just went to Barnes and Noble to buy a current Rand-McNally road atlas, and a bunch of books on cassette, including (of course) On The Road by Jack Kerouac, performed by Matt Dillon. I've now finished all the closets, picked a mover, and am starting to pack the car and mentally prepare to hit the road next Monday.

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 02:35:01 GMT

News.Com: AOL gets new technology czar.

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 03:33:57 GMT

LA Times: Apple online music service wins kudos.

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 02:49:25 GMT

NY Times: "Let's say you are the replacement for Jerry Garcia in the Grateful Dead. Your new job is to go in front of 20,000 fans and play music that they probably know better than you do."

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 00:27:47 GMT

Here's a pic of Mena Trott, myself and Ben Trott at the Sunday party. This was just after we had a great talk. These are nice and smart people who we can definitely work with. Jason DeFillippo is in the background, and to the right. ";->"

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 00:19:53 GMT

A national WiFi map from Don Park.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 21:37:22 GMT

Marc Barrot: Outlined RSS Comes to the Browser.

A list of "known blogs authored by known (or suspected) Microsoft employees."

WiFinder enables "locations, companies and individuals to offer, use and profit from wireless LAN service."

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 16:28:36 GMT

Aaron Swartz reports that AllTheWeb has redesigned to look more like Google. Good idea.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 15:38:57 GMT

Justin Hall: "I'll put my brain in Dave Winer's hands for a little while." Scary thought.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 12:43:09 GMT

Glenn Reynolds: "The 'Raging Cow' campaign, I predict, will exude all the hipness of those 1970s-era Soviet rock bands. All the elements of hipness will be there, but somehow the whole will be less than the sum of the parts."

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:36:20 GMT

I'm working on the Radio-side of Audblog. Did my first post just now. Their XML-RPC interface works as advertised. I still think this is the wrong way to do it. There are lots of Manila users who will want this, and the Audblog people apparently don't think they're important. Of course since I use Manila I see it differently. Aside from that, there's no way I should have to do this work for them. I want a plain vanilla service that just sends an email with the URL of the MP3 file. That would work with everything. The gee-whiz part, that it posts to my weblog (if it happens to be on Blogger) is lost the minute you see that the post has no content at all.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:58:52 GMT

Wired: "When your medical records are indexed in Google, something's wrong."

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:30:16 GMT

Guy Kewney: "If the answer to all the miseries of the universe is the filling in of automated forms, then of course we have to go along with it."

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:40:17 GMT

Last week I got a demo of the new Microsoft Office suite. Poor Jean Paoli, his hardware wouldn't cooperate, and every dozen keystrokes it would freeze up. Even so, I got the gist of what it does. I told him in advance not to expect much from me. Been burned by Microsoft too many times. Don't tell me it's open, because I expect, fully, that you will break anything I build in the next corner-turn. Anyway, no matter what I said, however begrudgingly, I think people will like and use the XML capabilities of the new suite. However, as a professional, I gotta say, it's not smart to do so. Microsoft's track record is really bad. It would be like booking a seat on an airline known for never making its schedule. Interop is not a feature you can sell if you don't honor past agreements. And Microsoft doesn't. And it's not the usual Evil Empire reasons. It's just corporate arrogance, the kind that plagued Apple in the late 80s and early 90s. Yup, today SOAP means "works with Microsoft" and that makes it no more interesting than COM was.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 09:45:26 GMT

Lindon Parker sends a pointer to James Farmer's new education weblog, which reminds of Jenny the Librarian; and Farmer points to Anne Davis who in turn reports on what her students think of weblogs. "Every once in a while you have those teaching days when you know that this is why you teach," says Ms Davis. To which I say, this is one of those days when you know why you write software. ";->"

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 09:57:04 GMT

Yesterday Donna Wentworth linked to a Stanford project to help people in their community start weblogs. Right on. I say this all the time: Nothing is going to stop west coast schools from adopting weblogs. That's why I went east. If someone didn't get weblogs going there, it could turn become a west coast thing, like hot tubs, Esalen, massage, Buddhism, meditation, Jerry Brown, etc. Also note that it's important to have a Pied Piper. It's not enough to put up a server, you'll wait a long time before the weblogs start. Someone has to make it look interesting and fun and point to the cool stuff. That's what Jenny does for librarians, and Denise and Ernie for the attorneys. I always keep an eye open for a Pied Piper. I of couse am a PP myself.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 09:51:24 GMT

Chris Pirillo sends a pointer to this MSDN article that explains how to build a desktop news aggregator. And they say Microsoft isn't paying attention.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 09:52:58 GMT

Kevin Marks: \"Plan your route so you pass an Apple store once a day, and upstream using their open 802.11 network. Plenty of bandwidth for photos and audio.\"

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:16:07 GMT

On this day in 1998, a DaveNet piece about XML-RPC. We were already working with Microsoft, but I wasn't allowed to talk about it. In 2001, a new trend: B2R. And for some reason I can't replay, every March 4, I seem to say -- it's a Spicy Noodles kind of day.