Scripting News

I now hold APPL

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:57:22 GMT

Disclaimer...

I decided, after giving it much thought, to buy 300 shares of Apple. I think it's a good long-term investment. And I spend so much on Apple products, maybe this is a way to recoup some of that money, or maybe to spend even more. BTW, the share price is approx $165, so that's about $50K worth of stock.

Wish us luck!

Baseball can teach us about life

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:20:14 GMT

No kidding. I posted this in a comment on a fellow Mets fan's blog. He was responding to Jeff Pulver's poem about the 2007 season. I waxed philosophic. (Of course.)

I like Jeff's post, I said, but I'd add that it would have worked out better if the Mets had sucked more at the beginning of the season and been strong at the end than the way it worked out.

But I was lucky, I started loving the bums when they sucked 162 games a year, every year. Those were the Mets I fell in love with, those are the Mets I miss.

Choo Choo Coleman, Rod Kanehl, Bud Harrelson, Frank Thomas, Marv Throneberry, Ed Kranepool, Ed Charles, Bob Shaw (lived next door to us in Queens, mowed his lawn as a kid!), Gil Hodges, Duke Snyder, and on and on. Tommy Agee! Casey Stengel! These were the canonical Mets. They're smiling down from heaven or wherever they are (some are still with us, for sure) thinking how appropriate that the Mets disappointed this crop of fans, who actually expect them to win because that ain't the way it works!!

The Mets are about poetry, philosophy, drama and love.

Only winning when winning helps accentuate the above.

And baseball can teach us about life -- I'm serious about it. Because no matter how much fun life is, we all end up losing in the end. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is the truth. Enjoy it while you got it, cause it ain't gonna last.

You Gotta Believe is a better slogan during the season than after, when all the lessons of the previous season are available, and belief is pointless, because we now have knowledge. We know how it turned out, it's no longer a matter of believing.

To me, the perfect Met is Mookie. Because he's the bridge between the Lost Mets, the ones who'll never come back, and hope that at least some of the hapless wonderful loving spirit of that team is still with us.

I'm afraid, however, that next season may be the last season of hope, because it's the last year the Mets will play in Shea Stadium. They won't move far, to a stadium they're building in the parking lot. My first choice would have been they always play in the home stadium, like the Cubs or the Red Sox. I enjoyed ridiculing Seattle for destroying their own stadium, asking if a church ever destroys a sacred shrine, but now it's happening to the Mets. Maybe someone in charge will come to their senses and think of the good thing we have going in Shea Stadium, and instead aim the wrecking ball at the new stadium when the time comes. Or it could be that I've outgrown baseball then, and it's time to move on to whatever comes next.

iPhone web is faster in NY

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:09:54 GMT

An observable phenomenon.

Web access on AT&T's network is much faster in NY than it is in the Bay Area.

I was refreshing web pages as quickly as I do on wifi at home.

I find this interesting.

MacBook Pro reboots on cover close

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:10:46 GMT

Twice in the last two days I've had my MacBook Pro reboot when I close the cover and put it away. The trick I've discovered, and share for all to follow is to put the laptop down before closing the cover. That way the disk won't get jarred when the MacBook is going to sleep. Apparently if there's a problem in sleeping it just restarts. Not 100 percent sure this will always cure the problem but it did work twice for me. Interested in knowing if the theory is correct.

A juicy TwitterGram tech problem

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:45:56 GMT

I love an interesting technical problem, esp one that's about human behavior, and how to give people what they want even when it puts stress on a system.

Okay so here's the problem.

1. I recently opened the Flickr-to-Twitter feature of Twittergram.

2. A bunch of new users came on, some of whom don't understand the feature in all its fullness (not their problem, it's mine).

3. A user uploads 150 pictures in five minutes.

4. Dutifully, Twittergram sends notifications to all his followers, one at a time, creating 150 tweets, pissing them off, probably causing a few of them to send him nasty private tweets, and some probably unceremoniously unsub.

4a. In the future, when there are 200,000 Twittergram users, this will piss off the folks at Twitter when they realize they're spending a million dollars a year sending junk messages to people who don't want them.

5. Something must be done to regulate this.

Here's a screen shot that illustrates.

I have some thoughts, I'm interested in what the readers of this blog think. Post your comments here.

October weather?

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:20:41 GMT

Today's links

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 15:29:32 GMT

Fred Wilson explains how he uses tags to route pictures from his Blackberry to Twitter.

Bijan Sabet is a fan of Flickr to Twitter.

The Sunday morning talk shows are showing up on my Podcatcher downloads page.

Harder They Come

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 01:30:29 GMT

A travel day

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:39:22 GMT

Going from SFO to JFK via VA.

Reading material: Paul Graham on web startups.

Follow me on Twitter.

Virgin Laptop Airlines

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:28:49 GMT

I'm writing this from 35,000 feet, a few miles south of Interstate 70, and a few miles east of Grand Junction, CO. The airspeed is 527 miles per hour. I'm on a Virgin Atlantic flight from San Francisco to New York.

So here's the promised report on the experience. The networking features aren't live yet, it seems that will be the big differentiator. The only feature on entertainment system that's (imho) worth anything is the map that shows where the plane is at. Instead of the low-rez maps you get on international flights, which is a godsend on long trips, you get a beautiful Google political map, that you can zoom in and out on. It shows roads, cities and parks. It would be great if they also showed the terrain, esp since we're flying over clouds right now, and of course some of the most spectacular scenery in the world is below those clouds. No more guessing where you are, you know, with great precision, exactly where you are.

The power at the seat works. The USB connectors are for charging iPods and other devices that charge over USB.

The chat rooms, the feature people were most excited about, while inspiring, aren't being used by the other passengers. I don't like that they can see my seat number. Maybe that's why people aren't participating. I'll check back later in the flight, maybe then people will be more bored and will be trying out other stuff.

They offer a rich selection of movies and live TV, but I'm not that interested. If there were any breaking news happening right now (the Mets in the playoffs, or an impeachment debate in Congress, as examples), I guess there would be value in it. But I spend a fair amount of time before a trip accumulating videos, music, podcasts, etc. I have a huge surplus of stuff I already want to watch or listen to, it's ahrd for the airline to compete with that.

The flight attendants wear black and are young and all male. The lighting in the plane reminds me of a W Hotel, that is, very hard on my old eyes. But this is a daytime flight and the window shades are up, so we're getting good light. If it were dark, I'd have trouble seeing.

The crew is friendly, and geeky. There are two wireless LANs on the plane: secretva1 and walrus. I'm connected to walrus just for the heck of it. I asked a flight attendant what it was for, he said it's an internal network they use for the kitchen. Not sure what that means. I suggested it would be cool if we could share files among the passengers. I have a funny feeling we can. I can't log into the other network, secretva1. Not sure how to share just part of a Mac on a network, but I may try to figure it out. A file-sharing network among the passengers. That's an idea.

Anyway, I joked with the attendant that this seems to be the airline designed for laptop users, kind of like Virgin Laptop Airlines. I like the way that sounds.

BTW, now we're just south of Denver, and the clouds are gone. There are towns scattered across great distances. Pretty cool. Wish this were getting posted while I was writing it, as usual. Next year. Murphy-willing of course.

Yet another Feedburner problem

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:03:40 GMT

I got an email last week from an Italian blogger who I met at the dinner in Milan in June saying that a feature of Feedburner that allows people to game the subscriber count for a blog is wreaking havoc in Italy. I took a look and found immediately that the conversation is entirely in Italian, a language that I (unfortunately) do not read.

So I asked my Italian host and friend, Paolo Valdemarin, to look into it, and he sent me a detailed email, in English, explaining. I asked him to post the email and he has done so. It's a very interesting situation and calls into question some of the huge Feedburner subscriber counts you see on various blogs.

http://paolo.evectors.it/2007/10/06.html#a3354

The gist of the problem is that it's easy to add 2 million or 20 million subscribers to Feedburner's count for your feed. as Paolo explains.

Thanks Paolo for looking into this. It'll be interesting to see if a discussion develops in the U.S.

Twittergram update

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:49:35 GMT

Last night I opened up the picture processing part of the Twittergram service.

It's the second scenario in Thursday's post about web architecture.

That means that anyone can sign up for the service, and links to all their pictures will be posted to their Twitter account. A lot of new people are using it, but learning that too much of a good thing can be, er.. too much. So I'm going to have to put some constraints on it, like this: no more than five pictures per hour? So they queue up after that? Not sure. You could ruin an account by posting too many pics (it might take a long time to clear the queue). This is going to take some thinking and perhaps experimentation. Ideas are welcome.

Follow all the pics in the picstream account. I clearly should do a page on the Twittergram account that shows all the pics. Already some people are using it for R-rated pictures. Oy. This might get more "interesting."

Music-lovers liability insurance?

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:36:14 GMT

I was watching RIAA president Cary Sherman on CNN this morning. A reasonable guy, with a straight pitch. We know our future is on the Internet. We want people to enjoy music. We don't mind if you make copies of the music but don't go into competition with us, don't distribute the music. Hard not to sympathize when he says it so reasonably.

They got a $222K judgement against a Minnesota woman yesterday. We're thinking about it. And of course that's what the RIAA wants us to do, right. Think. Okay. We're thinking. Hopefully they'll do some thinking too.

First, Sherman seems so reaonable, makes me wonder if a negotiation is possible. I've always said I want to pay, but like Sherman, I want it to be reasonable. I've already purchased music on vinyl, then tape, then CD, if I'm going to do it again on the Internet I want a better deal than last time.

We got a good piece of what we want with the Amazon MP3 store. But I'd like to buy music in bulk, in MP3 form. Like I said, I don't mind paying, a reasonable amount of money. Half-terabyte disks cost $150, and the prices keep coming down. I'd like to go down to Fry's and buy a half-terabyte of music (they're not going to like this) for another $100. I'd like it already installed on the hard disk. Put the RIAA brand on it if you like. Make a deal with Seagate?

Anyway, I'm thinking, I'm thinking.

Another idea.

How about music-lover's liability insurance?

Companies, even small startups, buy director's liability insurance. Without it they'd never get high net worth individuals to serve on their board.

How about RIAA and MPAA insurance. Pay $1000 per year and download all you want, sure that if the RIAA wins a judgement against you, you're covered.

I bet a lot of people would go for it. Think of the peace of mind it would buy.

Then hopefully, the RIAA would get the idea that they could cut out the middleman.

PS: William Smith thinks someone is doing it.

PPS: Kim Jong Il may need some MLLI?

Virgin America travel day tomorrow

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:08:52 GMT

Flying from SFO to JFK on Virgin America.

Should be interesting. Power at the seats so I'm not going to bring an extra battery. They have USB ports, not sure what they do. For charging devices with USB chargers? No wifi yet. I'll take pics with my iPhone. People are curious about this airline. Me too.

Apparently it's really hot in the east. I'm still going to pack a couple of sweaters. It could get cold in NY in early-mid-October.

A bit of feedback to anyone at Virgin America who might read this. Your site could work a lot better with Firefox on a Mac. Come on! You're based in SF, not Redmond.

Ooops, look what happened when I tried to print my boarding pass. Repeatable.

PS: Virgin America is in the air today.

Today's links

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:19:57 GMT

Boston blogger dinner, Oct 18, 6PM.

Lance Knobel on the WSJ personal pages.

Declan McCullagh analyzes the RIAA victory in Minnesota.

Tim O'Reilly on the "Web 3.0 Nonsense Blogstorm."

Jackie Danicki's RSS sofa bed!

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 01:08:45 GMT

You can congratulate her on Flickr or Twitter.

Living room

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:17:17 GMT

Cloud & tree

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:35:45 GMT

Bill Clinton, First Lady?

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:49:42 GMT

Integrating multiple apps & services

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 01:41:16 GMT

Fred Wilson: "When will people start building apps/services that sit on top of multiple APIs?"

It's a good question, and the answer is -- we're already doing it. The services are now so reliable and flexible that you almost forget how complex the systems are.

Let's look at a Twittergram scenario:

1. Chris registers with the Twittergram site. That's App #1.

2. She takes out her iPhone and opens the phone app. That's App #2. (Yes, the mobile device is also a computer, it's running an app, with an interface, it can dial a number and transmit audio. It's old fashioned, but it works great.)

2. She calls BlogTalkRadio, 646-716-6000. That's app #3. Records a 30-second message.

3. She hangs up. BlogTalkRadio calls the Twittergram app. App #1, again.

4. Twittergram calls Amazon S3 to store the MP3. App #4.

5. Twittergram calls TInyUrl to create a short URL for the MP3. That's App #5.

5. Twittergram calls Twitter. That's App #6.

So there's a simple application that uses six different apps/services.

Another example, the Flickr-to-Twitter integration, also part of Twittergram.

1. Randy registers with the Twittergram site. That's app #1.

2. He goes to the park, sees a beautiful flower. Takes a picture with his iPhone. That's app #2.

3. He mails the picture to Flickr. That's app #3.

4. Twittergram is monitoring Randy's RSS 2.0 feed on Flickr. Some people might say this is another app, but let's be conservative. App #3, again.

5. It notices a new picture, grabs the URL, calls TinyUrl. That's App #4.

6. Grabs the title of the picture, appends the TInyUrl, sends it to Twitter. That's App #5.

Another app that uses five different apps/services.

We've been doing this stuff for a long time, all the way back to 1998, when XML-RPC first came online. It's always been about delivering functionality, quietly and reliably, to users.