Scripting News

Podcatcher for FlickrFan users

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:01:18 GMT

If you're using FlickrFan, you should have a copy of podcatcher.root in your Tool folder. If not now, at the top of the next hour (launch the OPML app so it can do the update).

I want to get started with a small group of people, develop features, and then figure out how to broaden it, if that turns out to be the right thing to do. For now, I just want a testbed to develop, and a group of interested users.

I've put together a brief cheat sheet for FlickrFan users.

http://codecasting.org/podcatcher/00001.html

If you have a question please post it there and we'll try to get you the answer.

Hope it works, and hope you like it.

Busy day

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:46:53 GMT

I'm working today on getting the first release of podcatcher.root out to FlickrFan users.

In the meantime, the BlogTalkRadio people are responding to support questions and updating the service in response to feedback in the comments on yesterday's post.

I think people are beginning to get the idea that this is an API, not an end-user service, although if you don't mind reading XML, it can be a pretty handy way to create a podcast when you're caught in Bay Bridge traffic or riding on a bus, or happen to have an idea while you're talking with a friend on your iPhone (it's really easy to turn a call into a conference call with the iPhone).

I hope people build apps for end-users with this back-end. I plan to use it to facilitate communication between people who use my podcatcher. And of course any other app that can read RSS 2.0 feeds with MP3 enclosures.

It's not meant to be a replacement for high quality studio-created podcasts, rather it's very good for instant note-taking type casts. I want to use this with Scoble to talk about some of the media hackery we hash out when we have brainstorming talks.

Not revolutionary, or earth-shaking, but easy, and a nice thing to have.

Anyway, if you use FlickrFan watch your Tools folder for podcatcher.root.

The simplest podcast API ever

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:37:10 GMT

A new service from BlogTalkRadio...

Call their special phone number: 646-200-0000. It records the call. When you're done it creates an RSS 2.0 feed with an enclosure that's an MP3 of the call.

The address of the feed is a function of the phone number you called from. I just called in a podcast from my Nokia N95, which they added to this feed:

http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/8583429663

That's all there is to it! No registration. They have a web page for it, but it's completely unnecessary.

It's the new application of RSS that I wrote about on Saturday. It's brilliant because of it's so simple.

Some people think innovation in technology is about how hard it is to implement, or how long it took, or how complex it is, or convoluted. They see innovation as wizardry. I see it differently. I'm impressed by the ratio of functionality to complexity. I like that number to be as big as possible, because the less complex it is, the fewer moving parts, the less likely it is to break, and the easier it will be for others to build on the idea.

Hats off to the BTR guys, they've come up with something truly useful that's also very simple.

Could it be simpler? I don't see how.

Ain't too proud to beg

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:59:22 GMT

The Obama Express. My latest piece on Huffington.

If you like it, please feel free to pass it on.

"cheesecake"

Maybe Flickr should have a Twitter?

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:42:39 GMT

Last summer, when I was exploring the edges of Twitter, and building a voicemail service that hooked into Twitter with BlogTalkRadio, and then hooking my digital camera up to Twitter through Flickr, it seemed inevitable that Twitter would eventually support "payloads" so that objects like pictures and MP3s could hitch a ride on a Twitter message without using up any of he 140 characters, and with a neat url-less display.

The idea just kind of sat there, we've been quietly using the services, accepting their awkwardness, but without direct support from Twitter, they probably won't become mainstream.

Along comes Twitxr, in a post by Mike Arrington on TechCrunch, and I go -- why? This doesn't seem right. Too many steps. I have it much easier, Twitter is hooked right up to my camera, I never have to get my desktop or laptop in the loop when I want to post a picture. To prove the point, I'll now take a picture of this post, and shoot it up to Twitter.

So now Twitxr basically says it's time to give up the wait for Twitter, and maybe they're right, but for this??? I don't really think this is what I want. If I have to use a whole new Twitter for photography, I probably want it to be Flickr, which I already use, whose API we've already mastered, whose scaling we trust, and even though Yahoo's future is in doubt, it's more certain than that of a startup.

Choice #1, if the Twitter guys are listening, is to go ahead and help us, your developers, create something seamless out of what you already have. No matter what it's easier for users to stay with what they're already using. It really isn't, it seems to me, in your interest to have users switch??

Twitxr throws down a challenge to both Flickr and Twitter.

To Twitter: Scale, scale, scale and add payloads to the API.

To Flickr: Go ahead and do an event streamer for pictures.

Alan Jones: "Twixtr seems to do a pretty fair job of guesstimating my location with each image I upload from my iPhone."

The Obama Express

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:38:45 GMT

Last night a bunch of us on Twitter watched the C-SPAN broadcast of the Democratic Party dinner in Milwaukee where both Clinton and Obama spoke.

Clinton was unusually good, but as Frank Rich says in today's excellent NY Times column, "It's hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama."

Obama was far from mediocre last night. His speech was of such high caliber, so motivational, even in anger Obama is the man, he keeps getting better and now he's in league with the best American political oratory. The man is only 46 years old.

Last night's speech is archived on the C-SPAN site. We're having trouble with it on Macs but it's reported to work well on Windows.

So many of us want to get on board the Obama Express. This is the America we want. This is the leadership we've been lacking. You have to go back to Kennedy's "Ask Not" plea to find a leader as inspiring as Obama.

And inspiration matters -- totally.

How else are we going to get past the wedge issue politics of the last N years. We need some good strong glue to connect us again.

The last eight years have been so terrible. The US government did more to help Iraqis than it did to help Americans. 49 percent of the electorate was held in contempt and then after the election the other 51 percent was held in contempt as well. No one but the cronies of the Bush family were given access to power. Iraqi politicians had more influence on our government than Democrats.

Yesterday I heard that 5 percent of the homes in Detroit are in some form of foreclosure. It's almost as bad in parts of the sunbelt, California, Arizona, Florida. And the mortgage crisis isn't over. There are more cliffs in the coming months, more junk mortgages whose payments balloon in the summer and fall, so there will be more foreclosures, more families going bankrupt. Those who think the government will bail them out should think about how effective government help has been in Louisiana and Mississippi, American states that are still economically under water, almost three years after Katrina.

Fred Wilson is concerned about the superdelegates thwarting the will of the electorate and ratifying the wrong candidate for President. I'm not worried. Read the Frank Rich article I linked to above. Obama is a freight train. The superdelegates aren't stupid, they can see, better than you and I, where the power is flowing. They want to be on the right side of history. And Obama is not naive, he's running a campaign on them now, just as he ran campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc.

Obama will sweep the remaining primaries, and by March 4 it will be apparent to everyone but perhaps Bill and Hillary that it's over. The superdelegates will adjust to get in line with reality.

New Gallup poll

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:06:04 GMT

For the first time Barack Obama has a statistically significant lead over Hillary Clinton, 49-42.

Draft Lessig

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:50:37 GMT

1-2-3 fix for boring conferences

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:05:23 GMT

Most conferences are brain-numbingly boring, right?

All the good stuff happens out in the lobby.

Right???

Want to fix conferences? Easy!

Just move the speakers out into the lobby.

You could put some mattresses in the meeting room for people with jetlag to catch up on their sleep.

It's just Scoble!

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:03:19 GMT

Talking on the phone with Steve Gillmor.

Another call comes in.

"Hold a sec Steve."

Pause.

"Never mind, it's just Scoble."

We had a good laugh.

I said it would be a good name for a Scoble TV show.

We both agreed. Even better, Scoble would probably like it.

I called Scoble back.

Sure enough, we were right!

Another application for RSS

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:10:58 GMT

On Monday, a new application for RSS.

Brilliant!

As far as I know, it's never been done before.

And no, I didn't invent it.

I heart EyeTV

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:13:15 GMT

One of the neatest gadgets I've bought in the last year is a high-def receiver to work with the EyeTV software. It plugs into a USB port on my Mac, and it receives digital high-def programming over the air.

I put it in my upstairs study where I've got a clear view of San Francisco Bay, and the reception is very very good. I get all the big networks this way, was able to record last night's episode of Lost in full HD fidelity, for example. Just for the cost of the disk space.

And the best thing is that I get a half-dozen different PBS broadcasts. I've recorded somegreat stuff. My favorite so far is a special from 1967 Monterey Pop festival. Wow. So many heroes of the rock revolution when they were young and dewy. I'm watching Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane singing one of their classics.

I forgot how optimistic those days were.

There's this moment where the camera moves to Mama Cass watching, studying -- in awe of Janis Joplin, performing Ball And Chain. There's art, and media, networks, and the future viewed through the lens of what's now relatively ancient history.

Scoble wrote the other day of technology so great that it made him weep. I know the feeling.

Why Valleywag doesn't work

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:33:05 GMT

Valleywag is mostly puff pieces. I guess they're writing about people who, for one reason or another, they don't want to offend.

Typical of business press. Don't screw your sources or else they'll dry up. Don't speak ill of Steve Jobs or else no cover picture for you.

So, it's reasonable to conclude -- if you read something unbelievably nice about someone in Valleywag, that person is a source.

Thing is, they're reduced to attacking about five people. And the flow is miniscule. A pointer from VW is worth about 20 hits.

In other words, hire a business reporter to do VW, and you get Infoworld, about 25 years too late.

Senate roll call on FISA renewal

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:43:23 GMT

President Bush is going all the way to get amnesty for the phone companies who assisted the government in what appear to be illegal wiretaps of American citizens.

The Senate, even though it's controlled by Democrats, went with this nonsense (roll call). The House acted as a firewall, and voted for FISA renewal without amnesty. Good for them.

Among the Presidential candidates, Obama voted against amnesty (thanks), McCain voted for, as did all other Republicans, and Clinton didn't vote, even though she was in DC and could have.

What if you were a criminal President?

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:08:03 GMT

President Bush wants to give the phone companies immunity.

Who would you like to give immunity to?

What crimes are you willing to excuse?

Putting outages to good use

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:16:42 GMT

If you're a regular user of Twitter you're probably quite familiar with this image.

They've tried lots of variants, making it funny, or cute, with pictures of LOL Cats, doing cute things with screw drivers, but the pictures aren't funny for long, the more you see them, the more tiresome they get.

Then I had an idea they could be used for a good cause.

Yeah that does it!

How to get Twitter to declare your love

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:44:39 GMT

Those little devils who keep the gears turning inside the Twitter machine added a toy that's got the community sending public love missives whizzing around. You can figure it out yourself, or you can cheat and read this howto.

@lovelyperson <3

Substitute the name of your lover in place of "lovelyperson" and you've just broadcast your love to all of TwitterLand.

While we're on the subject of Twitter, a couple of other items.

1. A must-read piece in today's NY Times, gives a clue why kids don't go for Twitter if their parents use it. No kid wants to be observed by his or her parents. Would they go for it if their parents weren't there? No one knows.

2. Conventional wisdom says you can't build a scalable distributed Twitter out of RSS. At first I accepted this, as a puzzle, then I remembered that's why we put the cloud element in there. I felt that for some applications polling would be too much. Since the cloud element has been largely ignored, most of the the apps of RSS couldn't scale to do what Twitter does. But if RSS desktop apps like NetNewsWire or FeedDemon were adapted to understand the cloud element, and if a proxy system was worked out to get through firewalls and NAT, it might just work.

3. Or you could use XMPP.

For the Twitter FAQ

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:26:29 GMT

This Meg Fowler post should be part of the Twitter FAQ.

"I even love the people that unfollow me because I won't shut up. I support your efficiency and realization of my inherent freakiness."

That pretty much sums up the mutual laissez-faire-ness of the culture that forms around a tool with the feature set of Twitter.

About my Seesmic investment

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:26:55 GMT

Today, Seesmic, the company founded by Loic Le Meur, announced their initial $6 million funding. Several people noticed that my name isn't on the list of investors.

I'll probably end up kicking myself when Seesmic becomes the next Google or YouTube. I remain a fan of the company and Loic and his team and will be rooting for them.

Why did I get cold feet? It has nothing to do with the product or the company, both of which appear to be outstanding. It's the stock market. I had to make the final Seesmic decision as I was getting out of stock, at a significant loss.

The only stock I hold now is AAPL, and sadly, it's way under the price I paid for it on October 8.

Like a lot of other investors, right now stocks give me the willies. I will likely get back in, slowly, a little bit every week to average out the price, hoping the market has found a bottom.

I don't care if Roger Clemens is lying

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:25:56 GMT

I'm a lifelong baseball fan, and I don't care if Roger Clemens took steroids, or if he is lying or if McNamee is lying.

News is stuff that's important. If it's national news, it's stuff that is important to everyone in the nation. Whether Clemens took steroids or not is a proper topic for a 60 Minutes, Fresh Air or Nightline segment. To take a whole day across all the cable channels the day after three pivotal primaries is very wrong. (And what if they do it again tomorrow? Oy.)

So it's ridiculous that all the cable news channels are broadcasting the full testimony of Roger Clemens and his accuser. Hours of repetitive questions and the same answers, over and over, while there is news happening in the world. I know because I'm subscribed to the MSNBC and AP feeds on Twitter. I have a Google Alert that shows me results of all the campaign conference calls. (There have been a couple this morning, from Obama and McCain, I'd love to get MP3s, and still looking for a feed.)

It's time for some serious routing-around, or for the cable news programmers to get back on the job.

Elisa Camahort: "Oh God, I so agree."

Cross-posted at Huffington.