Scripting News

Scripting the iPod, day 2

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:22:21 GMT

Continuing the thread from yesterday.

I got absolutely nowhere, some people suggested I use a smart playlist, missing the point that I'm a developer working on a podcatcher, not a user trying to use iTunes as a podcatcher. I'm sure it's an excellent way to subscribe to podcasts, but I have my own ideas how podcatchers should work, and I want to integrate them with other stuff I'm working on. Integrating with iTunes is proving to be quite a challenge, or maybe it's an art, we'll see.

As usual Mac users are superior sumbitches.

(Quoting the James Brolin character the first time we meet him in the third season finale of The West Wing.)

Anyway, the search continues, I tried another more direct tack, and looked for glue for iTunes for UserLand, and bingo, there's a match, from 2001, a well-known Frontier programmer Sean Elfstrom, apparently converted glue for the Sonic SoundJam app that iTunes used to be, before Apple acquired it.

I installed the glue in the OPML Editor. It's daunting, for sure, but let's see what I can get working.

Happy birthday XML

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:45:14 GMT

According to Tim Bray, and he ought to know, today is the 10th birthday of XML.

XML is good basic technology that we've built lots of stuff on.

It's certainly not perfect, but nothing is, it's a good example of Less Is More and Worse Is Better.

It has also been the subject of many dramatic political battles. But thankfully, that seems to be behind us now. Today, we just use XML, and it serves us well.

Thanks to the originators of XML and the W3C for seeing it through.

PS: My branch of the RSS tree was 10 years old in December, and XML-RPC will celebrate its 10th in March. This period in 1997 and 1998 was, in retrospect, a very productive period in web tech.

Scripting the iPod

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT

A Sunday morning exploration...

I want to write a script to move podcasts from my Mac hard disk to my New Podcasts playlist on my iPod.

More simply: A script to add an MP3 file to a playlist on an iPod. If it has to go through iTunes, so be it. It must be relatively simple and reliable.

I can write the script in AppleScript, but I'd prefer to write it in UserTalk so that porting to Windows (if possible) won't be a completely new project.

Update #1: I found this tool from Peter Breuls. (It doesn't contain any code for copying to an iPod.)

Update #2: This 2003 post from Adam Curry mentions a script created by "Marcus" that does what I want.

Yahoo + Microsoft, reloaded

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 18:24:42 GMT

If you search for Yahoo Microsoft, this page is the second hit. I like that of course. It's generating a fair amount of flow, since the combination of Yahoo and Microsoft is a pretty hot topic.

Keeping the topic going, I think it's pretty amazing that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo, but then again, which of all their web efforts has captured our imagination? At least Yahoo has Flickr, and when they try something new, we all try it with them (often with not the greatest results).

The rambling continues...

If Yahoo is into poison pills, try this one out.

Reserve 5 percent of Yahoo's common stock for blogger options. Put us to work to find new businesses for Yahoo, ones that are relevant to our world. When we find them, reward the bloggers with a significant upside stake in Yahoo's future, not the airy-fairy kind, but real stock that we can trade. Handled properly, it could raise shareholder value by much more than 5 percent. Just the kind of deal they pay you to do, oh Yahoo gods and board members.

Of course it'll never happen. It's an idea like the one I keep proposing for newspapers -- that they hire their public editors from the public, independent bloggers with no journalism experience, with no undue reverence for the institutions so revered by journos. They're going away, just like Yahoo is (sad but true). Now what will rise in their place? Imho, something that's home grown, with the integrity of the people, in our interest. The more they invite the public in, the more clued in they will be when we figure out where we want to go with news on the web.

It's why I'm excited about the Obama campaign and why I keep giving to it (I'm up to $400 now). I'm excited because so many other people are excited.

I like his idea about tuition for public service for college students. It's so simple. People want to be involved, they want to use their energy and creativity to solve problems. In the 20th century we were couch potatoes. In the 21st we do it for ourselves.

The first tech company that fully embraces this, not just in the form of User Generated Content (what an insult) but by giving us power (that comes from stock) will rule the world. If Y! had the guts, it won't be long before they're making tender offers to buy out Ballmer.

BTW, I think I understand why Ballmer wants Yahoo!

When Yahoo engineers wake up they program stuff like Yahoo Live, which is pretty cool and runs on the web, and while it steals ideas from smaller companies, it adds some pretty cool stuff of its own.

When Microsoft engineers wake up they program stuff like Vista, a multi-year, multi-billion dollar waste of money, time and customer goodwill. They can't do another Vista without wrecking the franchise. Now the question is -- where do they go for growth? That's what Yahoo is for.

Mini-Microsoft: "Give me that dream and a milkshake and at least I get to enjoy the milkshake."

Greenspun: "If I were a Yahoo shareholder, I would be looking at purchasing an old battleship, sail it into San Francisco Bay, and lobbing some shells on the Board members' houses in Atherton.

Debating health care in 2008, day 2

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:35:20 GMT

Yesterday's piece on health care and the presidential election got a great response, and some of it from Republicans, using the slogans and logic I hoped they wouldn't.

But that's okay, it helps me focus my rhetoric on the precise point of disagreement, and hopefully by illuminating it, I can either convince some of them to come over to my side, or help eliminate some of the confusion on both sides. Or maybe it'll just keep the argument from slopping over into all kinds of irrelevant issues.

The basic Republican argument goes like this. Why should I pay for the health needs of people who are so irresponsible as to not have health insurance.

If I got it wrong, please set me straight.

Now I'd like to answer this, very carefully.

The Democrats aren't proposing that you should pay for the uninsured. Key point. They either agree with you, or know that they're not going to get their proposal passed unless they take this into account. The Obama plan says you don't get care unless you have insurance. His proposal aims to get a lot more people insured. Clinton goes one step further, by requiring everyone to have health insurance.

Also, you already pay for the health needs of the uninsured. Whether you or I like it, we don't look the other way when someone is in need. You may feel the system should work differently, but that's not responsive to the proposal the Democrats are making.

The debate is how health care works for the non-indigent.

If you have property, a car, a house, or if your kids go to private school or college, or if you want to take a vacation, or have a baby, or exercise between jobs, getting sick without insurance is a sure way to go from being middle class to being poor, quickly. This is why we have health insurance, to smoothe out the risk, to protect our family's lifestyle. It seems to me it's a good thing. It's the market solving a basic human need.

So this is what we should be discussing, how can we get insurance for all the people who want it, or should we require it for everyone -- this is the debate of 2008. This is what the Democrats are putting on the table, and what McCain, or whoever is the Republican nominee, will have to respond to, if we're going to have the respectful debate everyone is talking about having.

Why is this such a problem?

A lot of people, even healthy people without pre-existing conditions, can't get health insurance. And what if you have a pre-existing condition? Do you really think it's cool for the insurance industry to refuse them coverage? Why is that a good thing? I honestly don't get it. Consider the penalty for not having insurance. (See above.)

So far the leaders of the Republican Party have managed to keep health care off the national agenda, but this year, it's there. If you doubt me, just ask a few people you know, and don't just ask poor people or Democrats, ask Republicans. Disease isn't a party issue, and while poor people tend to have poorer health, even well-off people need health care. And most people can't afford to pay for a catastrophic illness, and enough of them can't get health insurance to make this an important national issue. If you disagree with this, please let me know why.

PS: Phil Windley asks where it stops. Should we provide free housing for the homeless? And what about free cable TV for people without cable TV? (He provides other examples.) No, this is only about health insurance. It's not about any of the other things mentioned in Phil's post.

$99 down or $99 per month

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:34:35 GMT

Debating health care in 2008

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:20:30 GMT

I hope the Republicans come prepared to debate health care this year, and they leave the platitudes and slogans home.

Enough of us have been seriously sick, or know someone who has, or have family members who have been or are now. The way the Republicans describe health care, it's as if they've never been through it or don't know anyone who has.

I got some pushback, not much, from a casual mention of universal health care a few days ago. Some think the problem can be solved through the "private sector" but that's nonsense. There is no such thing in health care. It's not a free market, as anyone who's been through it can tell you. There's nothing free about it. (Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.)

When you check into a hospital you turn over your whole being to the health care system. I can't imagine anything changing that, nor do I think it should. When you're dangerously ill, decisions must be made about you. To people who have never relinquished control, it's a big trip, because that's what you have to do. You spend huge amounts of time waiting. You can't sleep because hospitals are 24-by-7. You're much more likely to get an infection in a hospital, and infection on top of other disease can kill. Even so, people are treated and some even are cured by the system. Lives are definitely prolonged, pain is eased.

Whether we have universal health care or not, it won't change the basics of how health care works, and how unfair it is to be sick and fighting for your life. But there are some things we can change, and if you have a heart, and think about it, I don't see how anyone could be against universal health care and still sleep at night.

One commenter said that no one is ever turned away from an emergency room, as if that's all there was to health care. First, emergency rooms do turn people away, and some of them die. But most disease is not treated in emergency rooms. If you need drugs to treat cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, AIDS, heart disease, depression, arthritis, emphysema, to name a few common chronic diseases -- you're out of luck if you don't have insurance. You could die years before you would with treatment, or might suffer, where if you had good insurance, you wouldn't.

I'm lucky I have good health insurance. It's lucky that I lived in Massachusetts when my COBRA policy expired, it's the one state in the US that has liberalized health insurance. I'm lucky that I can afford the monthly payments. I'm lucky. But why should getting the care and treatment you need depend on luck? We can do so much better. And I think our country would do better with a healthy population that knows if they, or someone they love, got sick they'll the help they need.

It'll be interesting to see if we can get McCain to talk about this, if he turns out to be the Republcan nominee. The Republicans have never been responslble about this issue. It's of huge importance to Americans, and McCain presents himself as an honest person. He must understand how the health care system actually works. He's been through it himself, probably many times.

BTW, Hillary's passion for computerizing medical records is a good thing. She's right, a lot of money could be saved, the system could be made much more efficient, people would get better treatment, and lives would be saved. The sooner we get busy doing this, the better it will be for all of us.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

McCain's baggage

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:49:13 GMT

McCain loves him some baggage.

That's right the women are smarter

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:13:28 GMT

Not sure where I heard this, but if Bill can be the first black president, then Barack can be the first woman president.

Pass it on.

"cheesecake"

This could be a nightmare

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:43:19 GMT

In a year the Democrats should win the White House in a walk, we've got a perfect storm that could put a Republican there.

With the Republican nominee all but decided, the Democrats are split down the middle across racial, gender, economic and age lines.

So we have three parties, not two, and the Republicans are spouting the same old fear about war and security while they advocate raping the Constitution and spending us into oblivion. Four more years of spitting and swearing while our economy goes from second rate to third world.

How will this get resolved?

Oy?

Alex G: "It will get resolved same way all other elections are -- with Americans getting shafted in the ass."

Paul Ding: "I think Hillary will drop out of the race long before Pennsylvania votes."

Shall we spy on Valleywag?

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:47:31 GMT

We know who they go after, but who won't they touch and why?

It would be easy to put together a scorecard and a list of Web 2.0 luminaries who haven't graced their pages.

We might find out who's sleeping with the editors of Valleywag.

Should Yahoo accept Microsoft's offer?

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:27:56 GMT

Mike Arrington is doing a great job of laying out the options for Yahoo wrt Microsoft's offer to buy them out. He's written two pieces that helped put it together for me. Mike clearly has great sources in the investment banking community and among potential buyers of Yahoo, and is actively talking with them. He's got a business lawyer's mind and, as you know I'm sure, he's spent the last few years immersed in web applications.

Bottom-line: Yahoo's three choices are: 1. Tough it out alone. 2. Sell advertising rights to Google. 3. Accept Microsoft's offer.

Mike argues that option 1 would result in shareholder lawsuits and in the end would get Yahoo nowhere because they'd end up selling to Microsoft eventually. Option 2 would enable them to pay a major cash dividend to their shareholders, making up for the lost windfall coming from Microsoft's offer. Options 2 and 3 have the risk of being rejected by government regulators.

Now, as a member of Yahoo's developer community, and generally a respector of Yahoo (is that a word) -- I say take the deal. I don't think Yahoo has ever had leadership that has been up to navigating the treacherous waters of tech industry economics and politics. At least with the Microsoft acquisition they would get one -- Ray Ozzie. He's a guy you can sit across the table from and plot something out and he can deliver. I've had many good meetings with Yahoo people, but rarely have they resulted in action. From my own selfish point of view, Microsoft owning Yahoo might mean that Ray makes more trips to the Bay Area (figuratively) and when he sits down, we can talk about new open interfaces and developer programs for Yahoo properties.

I've read most of the commentary on the Yahoo deal, and the other piece that made an impression was Mark Cuban's. He says that Yahoo should accept the Microsoft deal because it would give them the breathing room they need re Wall Street. He argues that the market has always allowed Microsoft to sink resources into developing markets, and that's exactly what Yahoo needs to become the organization that it has been trying to be. Instead, the market treats Yahoo as a comp to Google, but Yahoo doesn't have the economics of Google, so that's, long-term, a losing battle.

There's one more reason I think Yahoo should sell to Microsoft -- the fatigue of the people. The company has been wobbly too long. If they don't take the Microsoft offer it's going to be a long wobbly decline and the shareholders will be right to be angry. Here's their chance to get out, it's time, so just do it.

PS: Open postscript -- Turn Yahoo into The RSS Powerhouse in every way. Build all new systems around RSS. If it isn't RSS it doesn't fly.

Update: Henry Blodget spots a glitch in the Microsoft offer.

Pay now or pay later

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:47:50 GMT

Paul Ding: "You don't have to change the oil in your car. You can always replace the engine instead. Works the same way with health care."

Great essay on the cost heath care.

Been here before

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:57:00 GMT

Allfacebook: "Last night the MySpace platform went live. This follows the launch of Bebo and Google will begin providing support to OpenSocial developers."

I've had a long career in an industry with incredibly short cycles. I've been to this place before.

As O'Neill says above, platform wars are raging, this time the front line is in social networking. 20 years ago the front was in basic networking protocols, before that software to operate laser printers. What always happens is a low-tech winner emerges, a consensus platform, usually not from the biggest company.

Guidelines: Simplicity rules. You'll know it when you see it.

Until then, I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing.

It would be great if someone developed a network address book with a simple API that everyone could build on. An event system built on it. Either fully distributed or hosted by a company we trust. That's what we're waiting for.

Agence France-Presse in FlickrFan

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:47:56 GMT

We have some big news today for FlickrFan users, a major new source of high-def photography for the networked living room. They come from Agence France-Presse, one of the world's great news organizations, and a fantastic source of high-resolution news photography.

I met with Agence France-Presse when I was in Paris in December, introduced them to FlickrFan and explained what we were doing with the Associated Press. They got excited, it took a little while to work out the technical details, but now we're ready to go. The updates are all out, here's the howto for FlickrFan users.

Change #30: Agence France-Presse photos in FlickrFan.

There were unique challenges in this project because their flow is huge. Yesterday we got over 3000 new photos. Because there are so many, I asked my friend Matt Mullenweg, if his company Automattic could help us out with server space and bandwidth, and he said yes. The AFP pictures are hosted on wordpress.com. Many thanks to Matt and his company for helping us out. To the extent we're bootstrapping a new use of the net, which I hope is what we're doing, Matt's company has made the kind of contribution we'd like to see more companies make. Usually the companies are happy to make the money, but not willing to help out with the bootstrap, which often costs money. Matt has always been a great guy and a visionary. I thank him and hope that FlickrFan users find an appropriate way to thank him too.

And also, please consider the generosity of Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. We all hope that there's a market here, a way to monetize the flow of high-resolution photography to enrich and inform. Other content companies have been reluctant to take a chance on the Internet, we saw that in the early days of RSS and podcasting. I feel that these two media companies are playing the same pioneering role that the New York Times played with RSS 2.0 and NPR played in podcasting. Associated Press and Agence France-Presse deserve our respect and admiration for steping out, for going first, this is how new Internet activities get going. This is what we call market leadership, the real kind. Bravo!!

And this couldn't come at a better time, with tomorrow being Super Tuesday here in the USA. Think of all the great photographs we're going to get in the next few days!

Kevin Tofel helped test the feed over the weekend.

Philosophy in Boston

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:18:56 GMT

Tim Jarrett understands what I'm saying.

What a great Superbowl, and what an opportunity for Boston sports fans to learn the value in losing.

What? Value in losing? You bet.

It wasn't that long ago when Boston was one of the best cities in the USA for sports precisely because Boston teams were such spectacular losers. I'll never forget the misery of the Dowbrigade after the Red Sox lost something (or did they win, I forget). They must have lost because he swore he'd never let them break his heart again the way they had for his whole life (he's about my age).

Losing teaches you that there's more to life than winning, and that's the best lesson possible and it's the one lesson you keep needing to learn over and over until you lose everything, which like it or not is what we all do in the end.

People write poetry about losing, great music is composed about lost causes. Who writes an ode to winning? They're too busy getting drunk or getting laid.

Never have I loved a team more or felt more kinship with my fellow fans than when our team goes down in flames after a season of great ups and downs. No doubt there are no smiles or tears of joy in Boston today. But there is hope. And that, even when you win, is all that's left after a great season.

Campaign moments

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:10:59 GMT

Yesterday CNN's Ballot Bowl, which continues to be an excellent and very useful program, ended with Caroline Kennedy at a campaign rally in Los Angeles. She was introducing Oprah, and they had to cut to a tape of Thursday's debate, which struck me as odd. I totally wanted to hear what Oprah had to say.

Update: Oprah at UCLA on YouTube.

Later in the car driving to a SuperBowl party at the Scobles in Half Moon Bay, I listened to the debate which was being broadcast on KQED, the local NPR station, and I was struck by how intelligent the two Democratic candidates are. I had totally missed that the first time, when I watched it live, I was paying too much attention to Twitter, and I was looking for the zinger. They had a thoughtful debate, both candidates were very well-informed. At one point I imagined Obama saying, "There you go again, see that's what I'm talking about" and saying how lucky he was to have an opponent who is so intelligent and thoughtful.

We are lucky. After eight years of Republican appeals to our naivete it is refreshing to be talked to as adults on TV by political leaders.

In contrast, the Repubican field is a mess. The front-runner, McCain is a petulant angry sore-winner, he argues about nothing. Ron Paul tells the truth, and they laugh at him. Huckabee cracks jokes about how irrelevant he has become. While the Dems were talking about real stuff, and arguing the fine points, the Republicans have been reduced to talking about nonsense like being a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution and waving the white flag of surrender. Obama is right when he says the wheels have come off the Straight Talk Express.

I want Obama for President. I'd love to see Hillary as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, so she can drive the effort, this time for real, for universal health care. The difference this time is that it's one of the central issues of the campaign. It's going to happen this time if a Democrat is elected. We have to make sure of that.

This piece is cross-posted on the Huffington Post.

Obama live in Boise

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:27:58 GMT

Blogs win the LongNow bet

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:55:29 GMT

Decision: Blogs vs. New York Times.

For the last couple of weeks I've been emailing with people from the LongNow Foundation and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times, to determine who won the bet.

Ultimately we asked the foundation to consider all the arguments and make the decision.

They published their decision today. It's well worth reading because it answers some of the questions raised by the bet, for example, what is a blog, and how does Wikipedia relate to blogging. I don't agree with everything in the decision, but I do like the result -- we won.

The beneficiary of the bet? The World Wide Web Consortium. I chose them as the charity to receive the proceeds if I won the bet because web standards are what make it all work and the W3C is central to standards on the web.

Best feel-good picture of 2007

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:24:19 GMT

Okay, a few days ago I wrote a review of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly saying it could be the best picture of 2007, but even so you might want to skip it because the truth it reveals might be something you don't want to look at. It's a fine picture, but a tough one.

Another wonderful but tough picture is No Country for Old Men. It's one of those movies that leaves so much unresolved that you walk out of the theater not sure which foot goes in front of the other. On a second viewing it makes much more sense. The world isn't necessarily as crazy as it at first seemed.

But there's a movie that is also incredibly well crafted, and gets better every time you think about it -- Juno. I didn't realize how much I liked it until I heard someone compare it to Little Miss Sunshine, a movie that I did not enjoy, unlike everyone else it seems. I loved Juno because it organizes its sweetness into love for one person, the star of the movie, Juno. But everyone, no matter how dorky or clueless (and some of the adults are truly dorky and clueless) shares the love. The movie has a wholeness, an unqualified goodness, you not only walk out of the theater in love with Juno and everyone else in the movie, but your heart is warmed for everyone, including yourself. It's that good.

All three remind how good movies can be.

And there were some not-too-bad movies at the end of 2007, for example, Atonement, which some didn't like, but I did. 3:10 to Yuma is a well-crafted genre picture. Michael Clayton was a perfect showcase for the talents of George Clooney. Great acting and a simple story in The Savages.

Which one was the best? I'd hate to have to choose!