Scripting News

Joe Trippi on this week's Sunday Gang

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:21:02 GMT

Nicco and I discuss Democratic politics with Joe Trippi.

http://sundaygang.com/002.mp3

We talked with him via Skype at his home in Maryland.

I scanned my notes into Flickr.

Links for 03/09/2008

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:00:01 GMT

Charles Cooper supports the public release of campaign conference call MP3s.

Must-read: Marc Cooper compares Samantha Power with the Clintons on genocide and Rwanda.

Maybe Obamaman should name his VP now

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:31:19 GMT

First, I can't get this video of this adorable kid out of my head. It was sent to me by Ross Mayfield, and I think it might be his son? This is one smart kid, probably the kind who will grow up to start a company and will be able to lead people because they all love him. I dare you to watch the video without loving the kid.

He calls the likely Democratic nominee for President Obamaman. So I call him that now too.

Read this comment by Josh Whalen who says that Obama should name his VP now. He even says who he should name. I think the first half might be right, not sure about his choice.

I'd like to see Obama choose Jim Webb, first-term Democratic senator from Virginia, a sizable state that usually goes Republican that Obama could carry in the fall. Having Webb on the ticket, a white male with a strong military background, ex Secretary of the Navy under a Republican president, Reagan, and a fantastic fighter, a no-bullshit debater, who can bring the battle to the Clintons and their surrogates. Let Webb organize the fight, and Obamaman stays above it. Webb is enough of an idealist to fit in the Obama regime, but he gets angry in a very productive way. I've watched him on Meet The Press, arguing with one of McCain's chief surrogates, Lindsey Graham, and he's hot shit. An attractive choice, imho.

It may be time for Obamaman to let us dream about his team, without a Clinton anywhere in sight. Goodbye Hillary. Goodbye Bill. Thanks for the memories, now get off the stage.

Hot products make successful startups

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:16:06 GMT

There's a thread on Techmeme about startups and money, and how important it is that they watch every penny.

Mike Arrington says they must do this or fail. Something really bothered me about this, and I couldn't immediately put my finger on it, but then I re-read the piece in the morning and it struck me.

Companies can't watch every penny. Of course everyone you hire in a startup has stock options, so theoretically they're all doing everything they can to make the company successful at all times. But that's just a theory, even the founder isn't going to watch every penny. You go out to eat a nice sushi dinner with people you want to influence, you go to a nice restaurant, order a nice bottle of wine. All that adds up to a lot of pennies that weren't watched.

As a general rule, no one in a startup works harder than the founder, and no one watches pennies more carefully than the founder. If the founder upgrades to business class, so does everyone else.

Companies even small ones are out of control messes that waste a lot of everything. All organizations do. Can't help it.

Yet some of them don't fail.

Imho, having started two companies -- one that failed and one that succeeded, and watched dozens of others over 30 years, the difference is the ones that succeed have a hot product that lots of people want, and the ones that fail don't. I don't think whether you savor every penny makes much of a difference, in fact if you pinch them too hard your people are going to hate you, and they have to love the founder, just as the customers must and the press and even the competitors.

When I think about the people who had runaway successes that made them fortunes the ones that had great products and were admired by many were the ones that really hit it out of the park. I can't think of anyone who had a great product and failed because they didn't watch every penny.

Clocks turn themselves

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:55:22 GMT

Last night was the "spring forward" night.

Spring forward fall back.

And it's a sign of the times that most of the clocks in the house took care of themselves. The wall clocks have radio receivers that receive the time from a government clock, and when there's a difference, the clocks self-adjust.

All the computers self-adjust too.

My watch does not, and I had to change it manually. But so far that's the only one.

But maybe Amazon S3 is having a problem?

Weird message, it showed up four times and then went away.

Oh well. Onward!

If you followed me on Twitter...

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:58:12 GMT

You'd know that...

The 3AM ad uses stock photos. The girl in the ad is grown up now. And guess what? She supports Obama! (Oh the humanity.)

She was a precinct captain for Obama in Washington! (Thank you Fox News.)

I'm watching Fox because CNN was pissing me off with all their "Hillary has momentum" bullshit. Weird that Fox is much easier to watch.

Google News search for "Casey Knowles."

The best tomato sauce

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:13:47 GMT

Smafulli, a Twitterer from Milano, has his own favorite sauce.

DerekTut digs San Marzano too, in Brooklyn.

Quick podcast while driving

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:01:19 GMT

Thinking about tomorrow's Sunday Gang podcast...

http://btre.blogtalkradio.com/74_91096.mp3

Want to talk about the final finale of The Wire? Trade theories about how the show will end. Will it be a lame ending like The Sopranos (my opinion) or satisfying like Six Feet Under?

BTW, I had hoped to go to the Legal Futures conf at Stanford, but there's no public parking. Oh well. (Luckily I have EVDO so I can post on the road, but not while driving of course.)

MP3 of Clinton conference call

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:00:16 GMT

A conference call focusing on foreign policy and more Obama-bashing.

http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/03/07/call2.mp3

Good that the reporters are calling them on it.

Interview with Steve Gillmor

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:37:56 GMT

I thought we'd do another 15-minute interview, this time with Steve Gillmor, who does the NewsGang website and daily podcast, he's one of the proto-podcasters, and all around wise guy.

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

It came out great, but it was actually 44 minutes.

Steve and I talked about developer platforms, Microsoft, Apple & Google, and Democratic Party politics.

Interview with Marc Canter

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:50:09 GMT

Marc wrote a blog post after hearing Ray Ozzie's keynote at MIX 08 in Las Vegas, giving it rave reviews.

So I wanted to hear direct from Marc why it was so great. We had a 15-minute talk about this and lots of other things.

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

I'm really getting into these short interview-style podcasts, doing some of them with Cinch and others with Skype, depending on where I am when I get the idea.

Dan Farber wrote up Ozzie's keynote.

MP3 of today's Clinton conference call

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:24:31 GMT

Just got this MP3 of this morning's conference call from the Clinton campaign, where they call for Samantha Powers to resign for calling Clinton a "monster."

http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/03/07/call1.mp3

If you want to receive all our MP3s in your podcatcher, subscribe to this feed.

MP3 of today's Obama conference call

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:28:54 GMT

An MP3 of today's Obama conference call.

http://sundaygang.com/obama/2008/03/07/call1.mp3

If you want to receive all our MP3s in your podcatcher, subscribe to this feed.

If you were following me on Twitter...

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:17:10 GMT

You'd know that...

New Republic: "Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried."

Don't know why I didn't see this sooner, but the Clintons are Republics who found a way to run against other Republics.

The beauty of Samantha Power's resignation over calling Hillary a monster is that it guarantees that the association of Hillary with that perfectly accurate word, will be smeared all over the nightly news and the front pages of every newspaper. Probably with not too flattering pictures of Hillary looking like a monster. In other words, be careful what you demand resignations over.

MikeA says only one iPhone app can run at a time. This effectively rules out a podcatcher.

I'm easy to find on Twitter.

Links for 03/06/2008

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:40:02 GMT

Larry David: "Does anyone want this nut answering the phone?"

New Republic says Michigan will announce its caucus in the next few days.

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.