Scripting News

Movies I'd like?

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:29:48 GMT

Sad to say, my queue at Netflix is empty.

Okay, so you've been reading this blog for years, you know what movies I liked, probably don't have much insight into movies I don't (hint: I like most movies).

And now that we have easy comments (thanks to Disqus), it's easy for you all to tell me what your favorite movies are.

The Clinton Years

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:45:18 GMT

I just watched The Clinton Years, a Frontline documentary produced in conjunction with ABC News Nightline in 2001. It's good time to review the eight years of Clinton's presidency, because the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, was very much a part of that bit of history.

If find after having watched it that my impression of Mrs Clinton is quite different. How so? Hasn't really settled in yet.

The show is very well produced, with interviews of many Clinton staffers, and it shows the repeating cycle of Clinton's political and personal life. How would it be different with Hillary as President? That's a question we're clearly going to be deciding, very soon.

The PBS website for the program.

Twitter's business model

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:11:11 GMT

Dan Farber: "It's not hard to imagine a contextual ad showing up every time you Twitter something. Twitter 'I am drinking beer with friends' and a Budweiser ad shows up. Now imagine the Twitter revolt."

Oh yes there would be quite a revolt, a powerless one, unless there was an alternate service we could all switch to and then assuming we could get off our asses and actually switch. Yeah, we're good at screaming, but not too great at acting, here.

I'm a bit of a Twit, myself, and I'd find it revolt-worthy if they tried to interrupt or punctuate discourse with product placements, but then Twitter's destiny is, imho, to be acquired by a phone company and sold as a feature that gives users a reason to use one brand of phone over another. Not as a way for advertisers to hitch their "messages" on our discourse. We've seen how well that has (not) worked with advertising on email. Not likely to work much better on Twits.

Imagine if Nokia offered a cell phone with Twitter built-in, a checkbox for SMS users (default on?) -- "Do you want to send SMS messages to your buddy list?"

Don't you think the kids would go for that? (Maybe they can already do it, it's likely that I'm that cluelss.)

Good advice?

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:03:16 GMT

Paul Boutin: "Never try to win a fight with Dave Winer."

Heh. I wonder why?

Kaliya Hamlin, listening

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:15:36 GMT

Why Google launched OpenSocial

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:26:25 GMT

Today's announcement from Facebook is the reason why Google announced OpenSocial last week. They must have gotten a leak from one of the companies that stood with Facebook, so they knew what was coming. They weren't scared of Facebook's technology, because they didn't respond with technology. They were scared because Facebook has a better advertising story than Google does. They are getting ready to offer some very premium web real estate that (pay attention now) Google can't compete with. And advertising is Google's bread and butter, advertising is to Google as operating systems are to Microsoft. They can't let somebody appear to be better than they are in advertising. Yet that's what Facebook is, better than Google in advertising.

Here's what Facebook can do.

Let's say I bought a Wii and I like it. They can tell all my friends "Dave bought a Wii and he likes it." That's a lot more likely to result in a sale than an intrusive ad like this one, that was displayed next to an email I sent to some friends about their New Networked Living Room. Google thinks I might want to buy Moroccan Lamps, or something called a Unique Shabby Chic (huh?) or Crate & Barrell bedroom furniture. Of course I tune that shit out, I don't even see it. It has zero impact.

Anyway, I was talking with Doc Searls a few minutes ago and he mentioned OpenSocial and I told him it was just a lot of noise meant to distract people from what Facebook was doing in advertising. He hadn't heard anything about it even though he was at a tech conference in Denver today and yesterday. I said there you go, Google's strategy worked. But to no effect, longterm, because Facebook has the momentum and Google, try as hard as they want to stop it, will not be able to, any more than Alta Vista or Infoseek were able to stop Google once they figured out that their lunch was eaten. Google will be around for a long time, I'm not saying they will go away, but Facebook will be around too. And Google will have a hard time catching up to them.

Long-term, however they both have problems because advertising is on its way to being obsolete. Facebook is just another step along the path. Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that's good!

8/3/06: "Information is welcome, advertising is offensive."

Venus and the Moon over Denver

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 04:43:14 GMT

By Doc Searls.

Why I delete comments

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:43:10 GMT

First a caveat. You don't have to agree with me, this is my opinion, and my blog, and that's what blogs are for, they're places where, if you happen to have an opinion, you can put it.

This is the mode of a blogger with comments. Defensive. Yuck!!

If you say in your comment that I'm dishonest, I will delete your comment. That's the only tool I have to work with until my new friends at Disqus give me the feature Wordpress has that allows you to queue up every post in moderation when blog comments get flamey. This technique tells the honesty-attackers in no uncertain terms that they should take their attacks somewhere else.

So if your comment got deleted it's because something in your comment required a response from me (or someone else) that says basically "I am honest." I just save us all the trouble. No need to defend myself if the attack is gone.

You may think I am dishonest, you can even say so (but be careful to be sure you're right, and have the courage to put your name on it, only cowards make personal attacks anonymously) and do it in your space not mine. Here, I want comments with ideas and information. It's okay to disagree with me, the people who say that all they did was disagree are wrong. I never delete a comment just for being disagreeable. I delete them if they challenge my honesty. I really don't like that, I think the people who do it are creepy.

Okay, good. Glad to get that out of the way.

Margareta

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:59:04 GMT

Let's not go overboard

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:27:08 GMT

Some Windows advocates are using my post about Leopard as "proof" that Vista is really what you need.

When I said Leopard feels like Windows, I meant that it locks up, disappears, freezes and crashes. That I have to trick it into doing the right thing. I wasn't paying Windows a compliment, geez, you guys need to learn how to read.

And by the way so do some of the Mac advocates. I didn't say you're having no fun with Leopard. Glad you're pleased. I wish I could gloat at how great an upgrade it was, nothing would make me happier. And btw, since writing the piece yesterday, it's been performing pretty well on all four systems I have it installed on. Maybe getting all that out in the open is just what was needed.

For the record, I've never used Vista, I don't want to, honestly I'd rather live in Bucharest than use Vista. Not today's Bucharest, which I hear is actually pretty nice, I'm talking about the Bucharest of Ceausescu. The one who taught Cheney and Bush all they know about torture.

Loic Le Diplomat

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:17:57 GMT

Update: Loic wonders what you would ask or tell President Bush if you had 3 minutes with him.

I recorded a Twittergram with what I'd say.

I'm not happy with Leopard

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:05:00 GMT

I've given Leopard a chance, but it's pretty clear, this is not a good operating system release.

I've been out of the Mac loop for most of the last decade, just got back in a bit over 2 years ago. I don't know if early OS releases are generally as crappy as this one, but I wasn't prepared for where we're at now. If I had known, I would have waited, instead of upgrading most of my Macs to the new system.

Talking with a friend a few days ago, he asked what I thought of Leopard. He had installed the new version, like me, the first day it came out. "I'm not liking it," I said. He said something that was simple, profound and revealing: "It's like Windows." It is. It's that unpleasant to use. It disappears for long periods of time. Systems that didn't used to crash now crash regularly. On one system three hard disks were rendered unusable, and I lost a couple of full days restoring them (luckily I had good backups). The user interface is quirky. The new networking interface is a big step backward. The firewall moved and lost features! That's simply never done, you don't charge customers to remove features, esp security features. I think Apple doesn't understand how many people depend seriously on their Macs.

To Apple, I left Windows because it held my time and work in low regard. I was happy with the Mac because it seemed reliable. Now it seems my friend was right, I'm using Windows again, and I'm not happy about it.

Tree scene

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 05:35:44 GMT

RSS 2.0 comments element

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:24:20 GMT

RayS on Twitter asked why it is that more feed readers don't support the <comments> element in RSS 2.0. Interestingly, less than two hours before, I had added the element to the Scripting News feed. It's appropriate because there are now per-element comments here, people who subscribe should have the benefit in addition to people who read this blog in a web browser.

Truth is that some feed readers do support the comments element. All of mine do, dating back to Radio 8.0 shipped in January 2002, which is still my daily reader. It's really a simple feature, not very hard to implement. If an item has a comments element, it's represented as a little pencil in the right margin. Click on it and you go directly to the comments.

Maybe by writing about it here we'll find out that others already support it, and maybe encourage others to add support.

Disqus progress

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:45:26 GMT

We seem to have adopted the Disqus guys, helping them evolve their product to better suit our needs.

It's a win-win because I'm getting a better comment system, and so are they.

Yesterday I asked for an XMLization of my site's comments, and this morning I have them, and can provide more feedback.

Here's where you go to see the feedback and any ensuing discussion.

Google announces their phone

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:45:20 GMT

Three word comment: I want one!

A TwitterGram, recorded through my iPhone, explains why Google's phone will be important, and why I want one.

My email address got cut off at the end, darn it, it's dave dot winer at gmail dot com.

Remember the social camera?

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:56:11 GMT

In June, on a trip to Italy, I wanted a copy of a picture a stranger was taking. "What if his camera, as it was taking the picture, also broadcast the bits to every other camera in range. My camera, sitting in my napsack would detect a picture being broadcast, and would capture it. (Or my cell phone, or iPod.)"

Then on August 29, a review in the NY Times of the Fujifilm Z10fd said it could beam photos to other cameras that support the IRSimple protocol. Unfortunately the camera wouldn't ship until October. Well, it's now November, the camera is shipping. Yet none of the reviews on Amazon mention its social feature. I was thinking of getting one, but then what's the point if no one else has it? According to the reviews it's a fairly ordinary digital camera otherwise. (Though it has a "blog mode" which is mentioned but not adequately explained in the video ad.)

So -- do you think this this baby bootstraps? Are social cameras here now, or a thing of the future?

Today's links

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:55:13 GMT

Amyloo spent the day studying OpenSocial.

Mark Cuban suggests that Facebook license their API.

Steven Levy on what it's like to work at Google.

NY Times's BlogRunner has an RSS 2.0 feed; I'm subscribed.

Feedback for disqus

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:35:12 GMT

First, overall I like the way it works, but I'd like to see some improvements (or maybe pointers if I missed a feature).

1. WordPress has a very good feature that allows you to set a pref that requires a commenter to get approval the first time he or she posts. I want that here too.

2. I'd like an option to receive a copy of all comments via email. I think this feature exists, but I haven't been able to find a way to turn it on.

3. Spam hasn't been a problem yet, but it will be. What has disqus done to prepare for this?

4. I want to be able to maintain a copy of all the comments on my server in case I decide to switch later, and I'd like it to be in a format that a competitor can import. At some point, if this feature isn't there, I will switch to one that offers this feature. I don't support data lock-in.

To the disqus people, please don't send me private email, just respond in the comments here. Thanks.

Russell Beattie asks Obvious Question 2.0

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 04:20:28 GMT

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?

Well, 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.