Scripting News

Club 140

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:43:09 GMT

Just for fun I'm keeping track of people I follow who have posted "perfect" Twitter messages, ones that are exactly 140 characters long.

http://club140.org/

Here's the announcement, which of course, is a perfect 140.

The number one feature request for http:\//club140.org/ is our own RSS feed, so of course, that's exactly what I implemented. Everyone happy?

Lost my watch

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:15:47 GMT

Lost my watch somewhere in the house, and now I wish Apple sold one.

Where is Apple's watch.

Who makes the iPod of watches?

What's the real story??

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:10:19 GMT

Bush and Cheney knew what was going to be in the NIE for months. That's not a stretch. It's completely unbelievable that they didn't ask or weren't told what was coming.

They tried to drum up support for a war anyway.

Hoping to rush us to war. Then the NIE would come out and they'd say that no one knew that there was no nuclear program in Iran.

The only question is why they didn't start the bombing.

Could it be that they gave the order and the military didn't do it?

In the meantime one has to wonder why the French president Sarkozy was saying the same things about Iran along with Cheney and Bush.

There's a back-story we're not hearing.

Bowling for gold

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:30:36 GMT

My mom sent a news clipping about some seniors who have bowling tournaments with their Wii's. Of course it's on the web too, but there's something nice about getting a clip in the mail from mom.

Zune as a podcast player?

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:59:13 GMT

A discussion of Zune as a podcast player has begun under the late November Casting in 2007 piece.

NPR radio debate

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:37:12 GMT

I caught a bit of today's radio debate between the Democratic presidential candidates.

NPR is providing it as an MP3 download. Much appreciated.

One thing's for sure, we dodged a big World War III size bullet today with the National Intelligence Estimate. Looks like the military didn't want to go to war with Bush, again.

Now a question for the electorate, how do we make sure that the next president gets the message loud and clear -- no more bullshit wars. I think a late-term impeachment and trial of Bush and Cheney would help make the point to future presidents. Fuck with the people again and we'll have your ass.

That Bush even thinks about legacy is a travesty. He belongs in jail. That's his legacy.

The creative process

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:55:16 GMT

I've been focused for the last 1.5 months on creating something new. It's amazing how much work it takes to do this. In the end you strive to make it look so simple and install so easily that it seems obvious and trivial. But after all that, if it worked, people are creating in ways they weren't before. That's the gratification available to creativity. These days it's rarely rewarded with money. Okay, that's the way it goes, and in some sense is the way it's always been. The reward of art is insight. The reward of achievement is the possibility of more achievement. Having done it once, you always want to do it again, the next time on your terms, but it never works out that way.

Creativity is a process like seduction. The idea has to be teased out, you have to come at it straight on, then from the side, then sneak up from the rear. It isn't until you understand all facets of a problem that the solution is revealed, and then, if it's really a solution, it reveals a whole new class of problems. (The joy of platforms.)

I think I got there this time. I have to wait a couple of weeks before taking the next step. Now I have to get ready to get out of town. There may be more writing here, maybe not. We'll find out soooon enough!

Want something more to read? Check out this piece about different things we've done with RSS. Think about it. Moving the ball forward in one of these directions is what's next.

Odd fact

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:35:33 GMT

A one-night stay in a relatively nice hotel in a European capital costs an American about the same as a Mac Mini.

It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine which is a better deal.

Greenspun

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:36:33 GMT

I miss Phillip, a real agent provacateur if there ever was one.

As reported by the NY Times, he's offering payments to illustrators to spiff up Wikipedia articles.

"It occurred to me that when the dust settled on the Wikipedia versus Britannica question, the likely conclusion would be 'Wikipedia is more up to date; Britannica has better illustrations.'"

Just $20K (less than 30 nights in a European hotel for an American) and he's given the publishing world something to think about.

That's called leverage!

This is just a test

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:29:01 GMT

Best wishes to Marc

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:30:24 GMT

Best wishes to Marc Orchant and his family.

Marc had a heart attack yesterday, not a small one, and he's in a coma after surgery, and fighting for his life.

This is a test

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 05:26:26 GMT

Jeff and Bill

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:25:14 GMT

It's fascinating to watch the back and forth between Bill Keller, a top editorial guy at the NY Times, and Jeff Jarvis, a NY blogger who they look to for an authoritative view of blogging as it relates to journalism.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/11/30/updating-bill-keller/

I don't want to presume to speak for Jarvis, but I share his obvious frustration at the way Keller spins the blogger position. God help us if the bloggers replace professional journalists, but also god help us if the professionals don't start taking their jobs seriously. Someone needs to watch the people who run the show, who manage the US budget and military, run the education system, keep the trains and garbage trucks running. If it's not the Times, who would it be? I don't trust any of my fellow bloggers to do it.

Keller's comments are about as irresponsible as our President's insistence that Congress is to blame for his mistakes. It's a joke -- you don't have to look very deeply to see that Congress was Republican for most of Bush's tenure, and the bloggers are, like Congress, looking for some leadership from the professionals. Keller, if you want permission to keep doing the same sloppy business in the future that you've been doing in the past, you won't get that from us bloggers. We want you to do better. And you can start by quoting Jarvis accurately.

Non-competes

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:43:09 GMT

Bijan Sabet, a Massachusetts VC, wants to get rid of non-competes.

Bay Bridge

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:51:37 GMT

PS: Whenever you see a pic like this on Scripting News, you can click on it to see the full picture and comments.

PPS: Pictures taken recently in San Francisco.

The Hollywood writer's strike

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 03:00:28 GMT

I haven't heard it said in the tech blogosphere that the Hollywood writer's strike cuts right to heart of the philosophy of the entertainment industry and what goes on on the Internet. But it does. It's a classic faceoff, and in this case, the execs, the nemesis of the Internet, seem to be taking the side of the Internet. They can't promise the writers a share of the money they make on the Internet because they don't see how they're going to make money on the Internet. How can you share something that doesn't exist??

When we talk with people from the entertainment industry they explain how they can't just release stuff on the Internet, because they have agreements with the rights holders that assume the realities of the old more restrictive distribution system. Those are the writers.

Now you can see how real the concerns are, when there are real people who express them, and how the execs are in the middle.

I'm a net native (even though I've heard young people question whether anyone my age can be) and while I appreciate the human concerns, there is no meaningful way to be sympathetic. I'm not going on strike, even though I am a writer. I don't ask to be paid for my writing. I haven't been paid for writing software in a very long time, but I keep doing it. Yet I look in my bank account, and somehow the balance keeps going up. In the end, that's all that matters.

I don't hold on to a principle that I must be paid for what I do. I look at money as separate from my living. I live through my work. Some of it pays, and it's unfortunately unpredictable what that is. Welcome to the net, welcome to the 21st century.

I heard a report on Nightline how the writers of The Simpsons are producing YouTube videos, and they're funny. Of course they are -- the people who write that show couldn't possibly write something that wasn't. They should keep doing them, I suspect they will.

Never mind how you get from point A to point B, we're going there. Creative work won't be directly paid for in the future. And we're already in that future. Read my essays from the 90s to see how angry this made me. Now the anger has subsided, as a software writer, and it will subside for the Hollywood writers too. This may be the moment when the system breaks. It looks more and more like that.

Boardwalk at Crescent Beach

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 06:18:22 GMT

Yeah yeah sure sure what ever

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:48:07 GMT

I was sure that when Facebook backed off the privacy invasion of its "Beacon" service, that MoveOn would crow. We're so powerful, they say, we got the giant software company to back down.

But as Valleywag points out, the war in Iraq still rages, Bush is still President, and MoveOn is still a creepy organization that sends out prodigious amounts of spam, and when you ask them to stop they respond with more spam.

Facebook wants to change, but like everything in tech there are tradeoffs. Open up more (good spin) and lose some privacy (bad). They figured no matter what they did people would protest, so they did something extremely radical, people freaked, they backed off, and now will do something less radical, which is probably what they were planning all along.

FB is a smart company run by people with IQs higher than typical creeps at political action committees. God knows what they're thinking at MoveOn, but they lost my support with this ridiculous incursion into techland.

Casting in late 2007

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:14:23 GMT

There are two sides to RSS, casting and catching.

On the casting side, obviously there is:

1. MP3 casting (aka podcasting).

2. News item casting (blogging, news organizations, PR).

3. Photos (not much has been done here, but that will change).

4. Video (check out the major networks, they're doing a lot here).

5. The new hard to describe (for me) casting done by users on social networks like Facebook (which I almost called Feedbook).

6. I think Twitter is a form of casting (it's also a catcher).

7. Publishing bits of code in feeds. I use this extensively as the update mechanism for all my software. Others do too.

8. Torrent feeds (slapping forehead). With this innovation it's possible to write a TiVO that runs on a desktop or Mac Mini. Check out EZTV's feed, very sensible, futuristic (one hopes).

9. What else?

Some comments...

For MP3s you're basically on your own. There aren't many tools for creating RSS 2.0 files with MP3 enclosures. This art has been around since 2001, it's been popular since 2004, so it's fair to assume perhaps that there isn't much demand. It's pretty easy to cobble together a podcast feed by hand. I write scripts to do it, myself, I never do them by hand.

Blogging software is probably the most common tool for news item casting.

For photos, you have Flickr, and Apple's iPhoto does something they call "photocasting" but I haven't investigated this yet (I will, for sure). I have some stuff coming here myself not too far down the road.

Question: What photo collecting sites offer RSS feeds of users' photos? Are they compatible with Yahoo's feed format (they use a namespace called Media RSS) or do they use enclosures, or something else?

Answers: Zoomr, ShoZu (but no metadata about the photos, so what's the point).

For video, it's basically like MP3, if there are any tools on the casting side, I'm not aware.

If you'd like to add anything to this list, which is far from complete (I'm sure) please use the comments.

I'll write about the catching side of this later.

Specifically about podcasting

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:46:43 GMT

I've heard that podcasting didn't achieve its promise, and I guess it's time for me to say what I think about that.

First, obviously it depends on what you felt was the promise.

Second, it depends whether you think there's more to do.

I think there is, and when that's done, podcasting will become more than it is.

As much as I love the iPod, it is not a great podcast player. However, unfortunately, it is the best podcast player you can buy, today.

What if the energy that went into Chumby, for example, went into designing a podcast player? The player might actually look more like Chumby than it does an iPod. The interesting thing about the Chumby is that it is connected but not tethered to the network. The ideal podcast player would be even more loosely connected.

1. It would directly read its feeds over wifi, it would not have to synch through a desktop or laptop computer. The iPhone has enough connectivity to do this. The iPod Touch does. A Nokia N800 does as well. Most cell phones do.

2. You could use it to create a podcast. We're basically there with Twittergram and BlogTalkRadio. Just call a number, and we not only shoot your minicast at Twitter but we also maintain an RSS 2.0 with enclosures feed. In other words, in every way, it's a podcast.

3. It must be open, so users can have a range of choices of catcher software. I don't think a one-vendor approach has a chance of working.

When we get this device, podcasting will work better.

In terms of expectations, a lot of people hoped they could make podcasts and quit their day jobs. I wasn't one of those people, and I never encouraged people to believe that. I see podcasting, for bloggers, as just another way to communicate with a few people who are interested in what they know and think. I also see it as a way for professional news organizations, esp non-profits, to flow reports to people in a very convenient and powerful way. As a consumer of podcasts, I am in heaven. I am a regular listener of: Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, Fresh Air, Nightline, NYT Tech Talk, and numerous NPR shows. I have far more content than I have time to listen. Thanks to podcasting I am a much better informed person, and it gives my mind something to do as I get my exercise.

I don't do my own podcast very often these days, but then I don't do much public speaking or go to many parties or do press interviews either. I'm in a quiet period. I don't know how long it will last, or if it will ever end, I'm just going with the flow. I like to write, and hang out with friends in small groups, and I do a lot of reading and listening, and I also am working on software projects. If I were driving coast to coast or going to political conventions or teaching at a university, I imagine I would also be doing more podcasts.