Scripting News

The HD is woking!

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:06:38 GMT

The receiver is working with the cheap antenna that it ships with.

Here's a screen shot from a PBS program about Mexico. Look at how sharp it is.

Now I have to figure out how to get the EyeTV software to record shows in the future.

Very exciting!!

PS: I figured out how to get it to record. But playback seems to be only through their UI. How do I get an AVI file so I can watch it in the den or bedroom? Are they trying to say I have to watch it at my computer? There must be some way to get it to export, or do I have to buy the $39 add-on for that?

Enough to make me (almost) love Mitt Romney

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:07:17 GMT

"Like all Americans we love our sports teams and hate the Yankees."

Last line in tonight's Republican debate, delivered by Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts.

joel.reddit.com

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:30:49 GMT

Joel Spolsky has the Digg-clone I envisioned for Scripting News.

Programming less

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:59:27 GMT

A programming lesson I keep relearning.

The design of the central data structure of an app determines the quality of the app, in every way.

Any extra thought that goes into this, will pay off in:

1. Maintainability of the code.

2. Size of the code (you'll write less code with a well thought-out central data structure).

3. Simplicity of the user interface (the structure inevitably shows through in the UI).

4. Ability to respond to feature requests.

5. Adapt to new hardware, OS changes, other apps.

6. More "it just works" experiences.

This is why it's sometimes the right thing to start over from scratch. Programmers often want to start over because they look at the code and it looks complicated, and they think they can make it simpler if they start over. They're right, of course, it will be simpler when they start over, because it won't do nearly as much as the mature product does. Once they finish building out the feature set, it may well be just as complicated.

It's a judgement call. I remember looking at the source of Unix kernel for the first time as a grad student in Wisconsin, and being amazed at the simplicity and obviousness of the code. I couldn't believe something so simple actually worked. Your code at its kernel level must have this simplicity. But at the edges, where you're accomdating the minds of users, inevitably it gets a little messy. The key thing to look for is how hard is it to add a completely new feature. It should be easy to do that. If it's not, it's likely because of a poorly organized (and therefore not well-understood) central data structure.

I've rewritten apps many times, over many years, because when I wrote the first or second versions, I didn't understand the problem well enough, and the code had turned into a morass of patches and workarounds.

Right now I'm recoding the internals of a special-purpose aggregator. I've written many of these, over the years, always quickly, trying to get something running fast, and then lived with data structures that resulted. This time I'm going slowly and carefully, with an installed base of one (me) and ripping up the pavement whenever I find even a slightly better way of doing something. I have other users who are waiting, but that's life.

5/7/97: "When a programmer catches fire it's because he or she groks the system, its underlying truth has been revealed."

Morning miscellanea

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:52:31 GMT

From the What a Great Idea Dept, this guy has made the Wii remote work with Macs. Thanks to JY for the link.

I got the Hauppauge 1145 working with the EyeTV software, connected to my Comcast cable line, but I'm disappointed with the quality of the image, lack of HD support (I thought that's why I was buying it) and the software is too limited. It was able to get the listings from TitanTV when I hooked up to the antenna they provide, but it doesn't get the listings when I use the cable hookup. There is a way to manually record, but I couldn't find the automatic way. And the software is "lite" -- it costs another $39 to get the full thing. I want to make beatiful recordings of PBS shows like Frontline and Nova (I get the HD versions via Comcast), still not there. But I am determined!

I'm working with people in Italy to organize a conference in February to create a connection betw American and Italian bloggers. Of course the food will be excellent, as will the wine. The Italians will tell us how poorly their country runs, and we will tell them we wish we had it so bad.

London Geek Dinner, December 7, 7:30PM

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:59:59 GMT

I'll be in London on Dec 7, as will Robert Scoble, so Hugh MacLeod, the blogger who does those outrageously funny business card size cartoons, is kindly hosting a dinner that evening.

There's only room for 50 people, and already 40 people have signed up (sorry about that), so if you want to come, please quickly send an email to Hugh.

The details are on this page...

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004358.html

Looking forward to visiting London!!

Dave

The next step in the next step

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:53:08 GMT

Thanks for the excellent discussion that followed yesterday's post, the second in a series about new directions in editorial systems. There's no doubt that there will be more Digg-like systems, based on all kinds of software. Let's hope that there's innovation to match.

I've been head-down for the last month, writing code, designing, working with a small group of testers, learning, rewriting, etc. My deadline is early December, which is coming up very soon. I want to be able to talk about this work at Le Web 3 in Paris on December 11.

Yesterday, I heard for the first time about software called Pligg, it apparently is a Digg clone that runs on LAMP systems. I don't know much more about it, but I'm certainly interested. I have a MAMP test-bed running here, so at some point I will probably try to set up a Pligg installation to play with.

Yesterday I got the Slingbox, my second one (the first was given to a friend, I was frustrated at setting it up). This time it worked, and now I have TV on any computer in the house. This is really cool, actually it's so cool I'd say it's a thrill. The setup still required guessing and fear that I was doing it wrong, they used terminology that I was not familiar with, for the type of remote I have. But in the end it worked. The reason it didn't work the first time is that the connections on the back of a modern TV and settop box were foreign to me. Now they're familliar.

I also got my HD tuner for the Mac, runs on a USB port. I haven't had time to set it up, but I'm anxious to do so.

I'd also like to also thank the guys at Disqus for providing excellent comment software, it runs very nicely in my environment, and has sufficient moderation tools to keep discussions focused and not abusive. The community at Scripting News is becoming visible again, and I'm happy to report that they're still the smartest, most knowledgable, helpful and generous mofos I know. It's making this blog much more fun for me. And you can quote me on that.

The next step in Digg clones

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:12:13 GMT

On Saturday I wrote a post asking for private email from people who are working on Digg clones. I got about a dozen responses, they all look good. I think any of them could work for the project I have in mind.

This left me with a vexing problem -- which one should I work with, and what should I tell the others? I decided to work with all of them, and anyone else who may be reading, by describing the project here, openly.

So here's the idea...

Imagine Digg in the old days, when there were just 25 people using it. Maybe that wasn't enough. Maybe it didn't really get interesting until there were 100 users or 250 or 1000. It was good, the articles were gems, things we weren't finding on our own, there were huge numbers of them, but they were prioritized, and the community had a heart of gold, people were doing it for love. The maturity level was high.

But then something happened as Digg grew from 100 users to 100,000 and more. I'm not going to characterize it other than to say that it stopped being interesting to me as it grew. The stories weren't what I was looking for.

I wonder if we could start a Digg-like community with the readers of Scripting News. The numbers are small, relative to Digg, it would be just like the old days, maybe 250 active participants. I was describing the idea to Fred Wilson this morning, and offered that his blog might host such a community. Or we could do a Digg-like community with 25 people by invitation, some you've heard of, some you haven't. All would be voracious news junkies. They would be empowered to add articles, comment on them, vote them up or down. I would invite Scoble, Fred Wilson, Steve Rubel, Amyloo, Jim Posner, Lawrence Lee and (I'm sure I'll think of many more). We'd count on the judgement of these people to find us interesting news items, and be fair in deciding their relevance.

Key point -- it would serve as an editorial system. Only members could participate in the social functions, but anyone could read the results. You could see what the community decided was important at any moment in time. You might choose to read the TechCrunch Digg clone, but not Scobleizer's or Instapundit's.

Two very smart people are thinking this way too.

1. Steve Gillmor, the genius who brought us attention and gestures, has exactly this kind of system running right now, in private beta. I first stumbled across it when I described the idea to a friend back in October, and was told "You have to talk with Steve!" So I called him, and sure enough he had it. He plans on unveiling it publicly very soon, perhaps even this week.

2. Om Malik and I talked about this on Saturday when he came to visit in Berkeley. I am pretty sure this is part of the editorial system he'd like to use at GigaOm. One thing we both agreed on, strongly, is that it's time to shake up the market for open editorial tools. It's been stagnating. Enough of that!

So that's the idea. I want starting a Digg-like community to be as easy as creating a weblog on blogger.com. Just fill in a form, click Submit and off we go. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Sure most will be ghost towns, there will be press articles talking about the abandoned communities, but I bet we look back in a couple of years and see the landscape in the blogosphere has changed yet again.

Do you have a Digg clone?

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 04:59:16 GMT

Is it not one of the ones blessed by the critics and users?

If so, I have an idea that starts with a Digg clone, and I may have a business proposition for you if your product is right and you are willing to retool, slightly.

Send me a private email if you're interested. Principals only.

Pictures from the community

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 04:49:38 GMT

The Twittergram site makes it easy to flow pictures through your Flickr account to Twitter.

Now you can see the stream of pictures, visually, not as URLs.

http://www.twittergram.com/picstream

It gives you a visual look at the community. Worth a look, maybe a bookmark?

It's not currently available as an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures, an obvious to-do list item.

The user experience has been a disaster

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 03:31:04 GMT

The NY Times has a piece today where they say the mobile web is so close yet so far.

"The user experience has been a disaster," says Tony Davis, managing partner of Brightspark, a Toronto venture capital firm that has invested in two mobile Web companies.

The NY Times has totally ignored the NY Times River, which makes the Times work on mobile devices with ease of use that they so often report is eluding them.

It's like a fly perched on the end of your nose. You can feel it but it won't come into focus. Please, Times people, I beg you -- use it to read the Times while you're riding on the subway or waiting at a red light, in line at D'Agostinos, Katz's, Junior's, Original Ray's, The 2nd Ave Deli, Sammy's or Zabar's.

You'll fall in love. I promise. (At least someone will. There must be some news junkies at the Times??)

PS: I don't think the Times has a mechanism to cover itself as a technological innovator. As far as I know they never ran a story explaining what RSS is and the role the Times played in making it a standard. It's vexing. It's not as if the Times doesn't report on itself, it does.

PPS: Thanks to the Times for the link love from the main Tech page today.

Digging into the latest Facebook privacy issue

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:10:30 GMT

In response to yesterday's piece about gaining control of our data, jmdelaney says that the newest Facebook issue is serious. I don't doubt that it is, I just don't fully understand the issue, and I bet a lot of other people don't either.

To restate my point -- there is some kind of disclosure we want them to do, and others we don't. Let's not say all disclosure is bad. I might not mind having a purchase of an electronic gadget be a public act (with conditions) where I would mind disclosure of medications. Clearly this should be up to the individual to decide. Until I understand how it works, I'd like the default to be opt-out, and I decide to opt-in on a case by case basis.

What conditions might apply? Well, if they're going to disclose that I bought a Slingbox, there ought to be a way for me to attach to that reference a diary of my experiences with the product. The link shouldn't be without risk to the vendor, it should carry information that's useful to other potential purchasers.

To say that I bought a ticket on American Airlines to fly from New York to San Francisco via Dallas should allow me to add that I missed my connection because the first flight was delayed, and AA refused to cover my hotel expense. Otherwise, of what value is this to the user, and why shouldn't we switch to another network that gives us the ability to communicate about products. Or do they give us that ability?

How little we know about what they're doing. Please post links to screen shots. Help us figure it out. As far as I know Facebook hasn't leaked any of my data (or have they?)

Scott Rafer has two excellent posts on this topic.

Ethan Zuckerman explains, with screen shots. "Pardon me while I switch all my embarrasing purchasing behavior over to another browser that doesn't know anything about my social networking sites."

Om Malik in Berkeley

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 02:11:16 GMT

Subscription list interchange may be prior art

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:55:31 GMT

I have to write a piece about how OPML came to be the defacto standard for interchange of subscription lists. I hadn't thought about it this way until just now but it's actually the model for what I want Netflix and Yahoo to do with movie rating data, and now it's just been suggested that the model be used for interchange of social network data. I know the gurus of this probably won't like it, but it actually a good use case. This could be the beginning of an interesting comment thread.

I want control of my data

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:50:20 GMT

A few weeks ago I not only gave $100 to MoveOn.org, but I also encouraged readers of this blog to do so. Now I regret it. Why? Well, I gave them the money thinking I was supporting a group that was working to end the war in Iraq. Now they've launched a campaign against Facebook, a naive one, and in what way is that consistent with the goals of the organization I gave money to?

Every time Facebook moves, they stir up stuff. It happened when they first implemented the innovative news feed feature. All of a sudden you could keep up to date on who's-with-who without visiting their profile page. The users of Facebook had been counting on lack of interest, on obscurity, to keep information they consider private out of view of people, who, because they're "friends" have been granted access to the information. By automating the process, much as RSS readers automated news gathering for blogs and newspapers, the information was no longer obscure.

Facebook held their ground, and now the news feed is part of the fabric of their community, and people presumably are a bit more careful about what they post. That's what they should have been doing all along, a safe computing expert would likely say.

Now they're breaking down another barrier and of course there's a sense of violation, and I'm not saying that Facebook is right, but before we claim they're wrong, let's understand what's going on.

There are thorny issues here, but we want these companies to give up control of our information, and we don't want them to be overly scared of public opinion as they do it.

And this is hardly the most important giving up of control. Most important, I want them to give me control of my data.

So before we overly politicize the leading edge of technology, let's get together on what actually does and doesn't serve the user's interest.

I want Netflix and Yahoo to give me an XML version of my movie ratings, for me to decide what to do with. I've been asking for this for a couple of years, I still don't have it. This is information I created. I want to keep a copy. I want to make sure that Netflix knows about all my Yahoo ratings and vice versa. I'd like to give a copy to Facebook (assuming they agree to not disclose it) and maybe to Amazon, so they can recommend products I might want to purchase (again keeping it to themselves). I want to begin a negotiation with various vendors, where I give them something of value, and they give me back something of value.

The leaders of Silicon Valley begrudgingly gave up their view of us as couch potatoes, now they think of us as generators of content they can put ads on (and pay us nothing). We still need to work on that respect thing. When I have an XML file here on my local hard drive that they want they'll make me a better offer. Two companies that are not as shiny as they used to be, Netflix and Yahoo, have the power to take a leadership role in a what will be the next revolution of the Internet, but neither of them are moving.

That's something worth fighting for, because once one vendor gives us power over our data, the dominoes will start falling, I bet it'll happen very quickly.

Today's impulse purchase

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 20:55:10 GMT

Okay it is Black Friday...

And I want to help the world economy, so...

As an act of patriotism...

I purchased one of these babies...

For Saturday delivery!

Click the pic for the Amazon product page.

PS: Thinking about getting one of these, to capture over the air broadcasts. Is that what it does??

workspace.folderToRss

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:45:05 GMT

This OPML Editor script takes a folder of images, and turns it into an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures, and optionally uploads the images to S3. It could easily be converted to handle other data types.

I'm publishing this so it shows up in Google, making it easy for me to find it later. If you want to use, feel free, no support, every caveat applies. You're probably better of coding this from scratch yourself.

Pink hardhat

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:53:35 GMT

I took this pic in Dec 2005 in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Another, less impulsive, purchase

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:29:46 GMT

I also bought three of:

Because...

1. They're easy to lose or misplace.

2. They're damned useful.

3. On sale, 3-for-the-price-of-1!

Hope you had a great party yesterday!

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:27:59 GMT

Now comes the aftermath...

Cold turkey in the fridge.

Turkey soup on the stove.

Did you go shopping at 4AM?

Yawwwwn. Time for coffee.