Scripting News

Clinton running for VP?

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:47:24 GMT

Hillary Clinton: "Look, I have said that Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign, I will bring a lifetime of experience and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002. I think that is a significant difference."

It's been pointed out elsewhere that you say stuff like that if you want the VP nomination, the Republican VP nomination.

In other words she's as much a Democrat as Joe Lieberman is.

Podcast response to Barack Obama

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:34:13 GMT

I got an email from the Obama campaign manager, then Barack Obama added something. They're having a conversation in my inbox and I can't participate. Ooops.

It's good that we have a chance, once again, before it's too late, to redefine a positive hope-filled candidacy. I admit that some part of me would be satisfied to hit back at the Clintons, hard. I've wanted to do that ever since they were in the White House. But they aren't the issue. We are.

Let's create something great.

I think Obama has lost sight of that, and that's why we're struggling, and scared that we might lose. The first step is to reset all our attitudes. We have to create more meaning out of the Yes We Can idea. We have to apply it to Wyoming, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and beyond, way beyond.

So here's the podcast, it's about 10 minutes long.

http://sundaygang.com/dave/podcastResponseToObama.mp3

Let's get creative.

You can subscribe to my podcasts by subscribing to this feed in your RSS 2.0-compatible podcatcher. .

The Lakoff podcast referred to above, is here

How to subscribe to Scripting News podcasts

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:19:25 GMT

In the last few days I've done a number of interviews, published MP3s of conference calls from the Obama and Clinton campaigns. People have asked for an RSS feed, a legitimate request, of course.

So I made it so that the feed for Scripting News, a feed that's been published continuously since December 1997, has enclosures and can be understood by any RSS 2.0-compatible podcatcher.

http://scripting.com/rss.xml

If you subscribe, you should get all the MP3s published here.

"cheesecake"

Lakoff hits it out of the park

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:59:24 GMT

I thought today would be a great day to interview UC-Berkeley professor George Lakoff on the Democratic campaign, who should have done what, and how his candidate (and mine) Barack Obama should proceed in the race with Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Here's the 25-minute interview in an MP3.

http://sundaygang.com/lakoff/lakoff050308.mp3

I think he hit it out of the park and I hope this makes its way into the Obama campaign. It's got so much more substance than the typical talking head stuff on CNN and MSNBC.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

Today's campaign conference calls

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:39:39 GMT

Listen to the Obama and Clinton campaigns spin results from yesterday's primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Sorry I don't have an RSS feed yet for all these podcasts. It's all rushing by so fast, it's the most I can do to get them online and downloadable.

Need some new tools, which I'll have asap.

Morning podcast

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:21:51 GMT

Another in a series of 20-minute interviews with smart people of all walks of life about the political issues of our day.

Today our guest is Scott Rosenberg, former Salon Managing Editor and book author.

http://sundaygang.com/misc/scottRosenberg.mp3

This podcast was recorded at 10AM on March 5, 2008, the day after the Ohio and Texas primaries.

cinch.blogtalkradio.com improved

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:26:49 GMT

Okay the number one complaint about the wonderfully simple Cinch service from BlogTalkRadio was that your feed has your phone number in it.

So...

Now they've added a simple registration feature that allows you to give it a new name and hide your phone number.

I changed my feed to:

http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/dave

You can listen to my first podcast under the new regime.

Enjoy!

Quote of the morning

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:55:55 GMT

Politico: "If she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and law firms and real estate deals and all that stuff issues, as I've said before I don't know why they'd want to go there, but I guess that's where they'll take the race.'' Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod.

Obama has to fight back and there's lots to discuss. Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, impeachment, disbarment.

IRC for Ohio/Texas returns

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:11:05 GMT

I started a chatroom for tonight's primaries.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#ohioTexas

5PM Pacific: Vermont declared for Obama, the rest are closed or too close to call.

Update: I'm predicting a sweep for Obama tonight. 4-for-4.

5:50PM: Clinton is calling an emergency conference call about "irregularities" in Texas. Okay, she didn't win Texas. Now comes the whining.

John W. McCain

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:40:05 GMT

McCain loves him some baggage.

Technopeasant News

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:11:05 GMT

Things you would have learned if you followed me on Twitter.

Apparently, I am, according to Andrew Keen, a hippie, academic and peasant. Pretty accurate. I'm a technopeasant.

Andrew Keen once said I should get a Pulitzer.

m.pownce.com is very nice. If you've been overwhelmed by all the michegas in Pownce you might try this UI.

Me, I'm here for the politics and the raw unadulterated sex. :-)

Twitter doesn't have to implement what Pownce has, as long as Pownce is there. I'm no longer ~~telling~~ asking them to implement payloads.

Hillary is falling.

I have 579 friends on Pownce. (Update: 639.)

I'm not a Democrat. I don't believe that "we" have to win. I'm not part of that "we."

"Hope" is the right thing to be focused on, because normally, we are "hope-less."

Update: Francine Hardaway follows me on Twitter and confirms something a lot of people suspect. She's only seen half of these twits. She thinks Twitter eats these gems. If so that's very bad!

Jay Rosen interview

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:43:48 GMT

A 15-minute Skype interview with NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen about politics, journalism and blogging on "Telltale Tuesday."

Jay's PressThink weblog.

Comparing Twitter and Pownce for payloads

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:48:09 GMT

New development, now when I post a picture to Twitter from my iPhone, it also goes to Pownce.

A screen shot of the Pownce version.

A screen shot of the Twitter version.

We now can see, visually, the difference betw a messaging service that supports payloads and one that doesn't. Not saying one is better than the other, because this is still very much an exploration. But there are definite advantages to each approach. Please consider that before you beg anyone not to listen to anyone else.

Update: I quickly added fields to the flickrToTwitter page to flow pictures to Pownce in addition to Twitter. Screen shot.

Pownce API 2.0, day 2

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:15:36 GMT

I've made good progress wiring up the OPML Editor to Pownce, but I got stuck when it came to posting a media file.

The docs don't say how to encode the data of the file. I guessed that it would be base64-encoded, but it didn't work. If anyone has gotten this working, or knows how to do the encoding, please post a note here. Thanks.

BTW, this is the file I was testing with. It's nowhere near the stated file size limit.

Update: FIle-sharing in Pownce, explained.

Update #2: It works. Here's a file that I uploaded, you have to be a logged on and a friend of mine to see it. The key was using a multipart/form-data POST. Highly recommend that the API docs be updated to say just that. It's enough of a clue so that an experienced developer will be able to get it to work with no extra help. Okay I'm happy about this now, I've got payloads working from both ends, under program control. Next thing I'm going to push up to the cloud is a campaign conference call MP3. Good news, we have a partner, a huge media company that decided to work with the bloggers.

Update #3: Here are Pownce entries for today's Obama conference call and the Clinton call. You need to be signed into Pownce to listen in, and be a friend of mine. Just for this experiment. We'll have other ways to download conference calls soon (for example, an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures).

Inquiring minds want to know!

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:42:57 GMT

Cryptically MikeA teases about something new from Om Malik. What is it my brother? We need to know. Now!

Update: It's a new blog about the business of open source.

Valleywag got a legit story, Mike

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:15:16 GMT

I posted a comment on a post on TechCrunch by Mike Arrington, re a Valleywag story about Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.

Mike, I don't like Valleywag, but I think you're wrong in this case. They got a good story because Wikipedia, the publication that Wales runs, has rules that prevent people from editing stories they have an interest in. Wales was trading edits to Rachel Marsden's profile for sex. They got him, and had they left out the parts you don't like, it wouldn't have been clear that they did.

This is not only a good story, but it's an important one. Wikipedia, unlike Valleywag, is widely thought to be authoritative. Those of us it covers who are not friends with Wales know that it is far from authoritative. Both Valleywag and Wikipedia are pretty sleazy, imho, but Valleywag disclaims it, and Wikipedia pretends not to be.

Think about it this way, if we had the guts to challenge Wikipedia, if a glaring mistake was considered a problem in the tech industry, one of two things might happen: 1. They might clean up their act or 2. Entrepreneurs might launch competitive sites that fix its integrity issues.

Interesting comments on this topic on Silicon Alley Insider.

Yesterday: "Wikis are not enough."

The Sunday Gang

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:41:08 GMT

I've been a regular watcher of the Sunday morning political talk shows, and I've always in my heart wanted my own show. Then I started talking about it, people kept telling me just do it. So today I did.

http://sundaygang.com/001.mp3

My guests are Nicco Mele and Morra Aarons, a married couple, they live in Medford MA. Morra is a frequent guest on CNN and writes at BlogHer. I met Nicco when he was working on the Internet for the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Nicco was famous for switching to McCain a couple of years ago, but now he appears to have regained his senses. He still likes McCain and explains why in this 33 minute conversation which was cut short by the battery on my phone running out.

The next Sunday Gang show may actually come on Tuesday night, after the returns are in from Texas and Ohio. Hope you enjoy!

PS: I haven't got the RSS feed ready yet, I'll post a link here as soon as it is.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

How many blogging platforms are there?

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:49:25 GMT

My post yesterday about my excitement over innovation in the Pownce API, led to what, in retrospect, was a predictable backlash from users who don't want:

1. Twitter to get more complicated.

2. To switch to a service with less users.

3. To switch to another service.

And who do want:

1. Twitter to get more reliable.

I feel largely the same way, even so, I'm still going to:

1. Fill out the connective glue between my development environment and Pownce.

2. Revise my Flickr and podcasting tools to post to Pownce in addition to Twitter.

3. Possibly develop new services that can only work with Pownce because of their (new) API advantage over Twitter.

Now, what does this mean for the market? Hard to know for sure, but here's what it could mean:

1. Twitter might be inspired to match the features in the Pownce API, thus blunting the new edge Pownce has.

2. Pownce could become more popular and may prove to have the same or worse scaling problems than Twitter.

3. Pownce could retain its edge, allowing different kinds of apps to be built that run on their network, and both continue to grow and deal with scaling in their own ways.

4. Something else.

I'm pretty sure what won't happen is:

1. Pownce kills Twitter.

In blogging there are many platforms and related technologies. They all work differently and appeal to different groups of people. I suspect that's what's going to happen here.

Ouch

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:01:50 GMT

I looked up blogging to find the names of some more obscure ones, the first hit was the Wikipedia page, and out of curiosity I searched the page for my name. It's not there. All kinds of people get credit for building blogging as a practice and tools for blogging, but apparently, according to Wikipedia, I had nothing to do with it, nor did Scripting News or UserLand.

Anticipating some of the lectures I'm likely to get, no I can't fix it, for two reasons: 1. It would be like editing my own bio page (which I haven't looked at in ages, and don't want to). 2. It would certainly get reverted in seconds.

Of course it's likely this will be changed within minutes of my posting this. Check back later to see how it is after this has scrolled off. And that's why, btw, we need blogs, wikis are not enough. Otherwise we'd all have to accept the mass view of history, as filtered through trolls. Blogging lets you object to the democratic view, and may result in a more accurate story. I say may, and not will, because it seems people are willing to accept Wikipedia as authoritative.

Oh well. Sighh.

The verdict is in: The Pownce API kicks Twitter's ass

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 04:45:25 GMT

Sorry Ev and Biz and Jack, but they got your number over there at Pownce.

I've been asking Twitter to support payloads for months now, and now I have what I was asking for, but it came from Pownce, and it's beautifully implemented, far more than what I was asking Twitter for.

Let me state the problem.

I was at the Apple store in Palo Alto today, and I snap a picture on my iPhone and shoot it up to Flickr. I have an agent running on my server that watches for new pictures on Flickr. When it detects one, it posts a link to the picture on Twitter. Here's what that looks like.

http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/765476227

It's great because it works, not because it's pretty because it's not pretty. See the URL there. I'd much rather have it be an icon. That was the plan for the Payloads feature.

Earlier today I heard that Pownce has version 2 of their API that includes posting new messages. A message can have a link. So I wrote a script to test that out. After three tries it worked. Here's the equivalent to the Twitter post above, in Pownce.

http://pownce.com/davew/notes/1442724/

Look at how beautiful it is. Exceeded my wildest dreams. Oh man. It looks better than it does on Flickr!

Twitter was my first love, but now I'm seriously considering a fling with Pownce.

PS: If you can't read the Pownce post, here's a screen shot.