Scripting News

nytimesriver.com back

Mon, 19 May 2008 23:47:37 GMT

While I was traveling the machine that was generating nytimesriver.com overheated and stopped running the app.

This morning the first thing I did was get it running again, and made a few tweaks and small performance improvements.

http://nytimesriver.com/

Thanks everyone for being so patient.

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing

Mon, 19 May 2008 16:44:27 GMT

Mark Evans asks a provocative question -- are pro bloggers going to be extinct soon?

If you were to ask a pro blogger this question, they would say of course not.

Now if you ask me -- there never was such a thing as a pro blogger. It's a contradiction in terms. It's like calling someone a professional amateur. It's like salty orange juice, a drink whose taste is derived from its acidity. Blogging is an amateur activity. It's users writing about what they do, not professionals writing about what users do.

That pros have tried to hijack the term doesn't somehow evade the old question of what happens to pros in an age where users go direct to each other. They thought they could pull a fast one "Oh we'll just steal their name" and somehow their economic model will start making sense when it didn't before.

Oh lord, you can't buy a Mercedes Benz with that.

Remember this old Doc Searlsism. We make money because we blog not from our blog. We earn because we learn from sharing our experiences with others, not because we let advertisers hitch a ride on our writing for a fee. No one pays attention to the ads, so it doesn't matter if you include them or not.

As Billy Preston once sang, nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

Hopefully that answers the question Mr. Evans asked.

Sites that trust their users

Mon, 19 May 2008 12:44:08 GMT

I've been writing about locking users in by holding their data for a long time from a number of different angles.

1. Sites that have my data, but won't let me use as I'd like to. Example -- movie ratings data locked up by Netflix and Yahoo. Why, when I rate a movie at Netflix can't I let Yahoo have that data and vice versa. And if you'd like to link movie ratings to a dating profile on match.com or Jdate, why not let users arrange that?

2. I've always believed that blogging and RSS tools should export their data so users can switch tools and the products at UserLand all did this. As a result, there's a tradition among RSS readers that they import and export OPML subscription lists. It happened because Radio UserLand, the early market leader, did.

3. Interestingly, this is another example of "People return to sites that send them away," a long-held belief here on Scripting News. For background see this post.

Now, what more can we do?

In an email exchange on this subject, Fred Wilson said: "I still use last.fm because I use at least a half dozen services actively that suck in my last.fm feed," he said.

Vendors, pay attention --> Fred Wilson may be a bleeding edge user, but he is a user, and if he figured it out, others are sure to follow.

Which led me to this new idea...

Let's reward companies who trust us with our data by giving them awards, a seal of approval they can boast about, a way of identifying those services that will survive the purge that's certainly coming.

Eventually we will abandon our data and start anew, this time with the requirement that we can take our data with us.

Lock people in with price, performance and features, not a deadbolt.

Lock users in with love, not force.

Sting sang it: If you love someone set them free. A paradox only if you think you can force someone to love you.

Back in California

Mon, 19 May 2008 03:49:38 GMT

When I get back to California I always queue up this Beach Boys song. Puts a smile on my face and gets me back in the spirit. It's a great song cause it's not just a great California song it also says how great the whole USA is. I love this country, north, south, east and west, but coming home is getting back to the great weather, clear sunshine, warm days and cool people with the attitude and politics I'm so comfortable with. Don't get me wrong, Boston and New York are great too, but home is in California.

Here are some pics and videos from the New York/Boston trip.

Didn't get a chance to talk with 1/2 the people I wanted to.

It was mostly a busdev trip. To start working face to face with the SwitchABit team. And to plot out the next projects after that.

On Thursday we announced what SwitchABit is -- a platform for wiring together the apps that are rising up, all with APIs that allow them to be combined in itneresting ways, by more technical users, so we all can learn, and do more cool stuff and then who knows what.

Question -- Did you switch over to the new flickr.twittergram.com? How's it working? Any feedback for the team? We're dying to know if it's working for you. Did you push any pics through the engine over the weekend? Did they get through quickly and accurately?

iTunes is now playing Hotel California. I've got it playing all California tunes. Hah. Wonder what's next.

Gillmor Gang food fight

Mon, 19 May 2008 04:31:00 GMT

Finally broke down and listened to the latest Gillmor Gang on the michegas with Facebook and Google and Plaxo. These guys are fucking crazy. Steve Gillmor is still hung up on BigCo's as is Marc Canter. These guys are old enough to know better, and Marc I'm sure does. Arrington is a complete lawyer, using every trick lawyers use to piss people off and Scoble takes the bait hook line and sinker. There's not much light in that show, just a lot of people elbowing each other and saying ouch.

About the substance of it all, see this recent blog post.

The answer is not the BigCo's -- they will have to catch up with what the market decides on. Some little guy will pop in at exactly the moment a sufficient number of users are ready to be free and it will look like they are visionaries when in fact they were at the right place at the right time. Little guys are always entering the market. Every day. It's like roulette. One of them will be the next big guy, but will get there by taking advantage of paralysis caused by the bigness of the current big guys.

But it's hardly the first time I've written about it.

Of all the people on the show Scoble is the most right, but of course no one listens to Scoble. Arrington was out of his mind with self-admiration before he won the Time 100, now he's completely lost it. But he actually made some good points, and I liked the way he called Canter on his bullshit, even though he was giving Scoble shit just for the sake of winding him up and getting him to spin around, which Scoble did, to an amazing extent. I thought there was a good chance he'd explode at one point. That's what I don't like about Arrington. Like most Republican lawyers he's just in it to make people look stupid, not trying to actually improve things. If you think Arrington doesn't deserve this, just listen to the podcast.

Congrats to Gillmor on the theater (pretty sure that's what he's in it for) and with the new TechCrunch label, he's being listened to more than ever. Let's just hope at some point these guys work a little harder to get to the bottom of it.

PS: For the 180th time, wouldn't it be great if Netflix let the users have their movie rating metadata for use in dating sites, for example. Why try to hit a home run when it would be just as good to get on base. Also don't forget Amazon is building up quite a profile on each of their millions of customers and could offer an interface to it through their developer services. Just a thought. It's a big world out there, don't just focus on three "players" -- the world is much bigger and more interesting.

Switching to SwitchABit

Thu, 15 May 2008 15:50:39 GMT

The SwitchABit platform was developed because we noticed that an ever more complex flow of ideas and information is being facilitated by editorial systems and aggregators such as Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Seesmic, Qik, Ustream, YouTube, BlogTalkRadio, Disqus, Wordpress, Tumblr, TypePad, Blogger, etc. And it's not likely to get any simpler over time, rather people are going to want to connect more apps together, with more flexibility and therefore more complexity.

So we developed a platform to make it easy to set up these complex relationships. The focus has been on power with maximum ease of use. It's called SwitchABit, and it will go to private beta sometime in the next couple of weeks. We'll have a signup page where you can let us know you want to work with us on getting it smoothed out and ready for massive consumption.

In the meantime, to prove that it's working, we've adapted two of my early Twitter-related apps, both on the Twittergram domain, to run on the SwitchABit platform. The first of these is ready for people to use -- the Flickr-to-Twitter functionality. If you're already a Twittergram user, you can go to the original setup page, and look for the yellow box with the picture of the friendly postman, and click on the link to be taken to the new site. Fill in the form, validate your account, and give it a whirl.

It should be every bit as reliable as the original service (maybe more so) and quite a bit faster. It's also designed to scale to work for hundreds of thousands of users, Murphy-willing.

Anyway -- wish us luck -- the journey begins today. We hope you come along for the ride!

Twitter status? Yeah it's down. Again.

Thu, 15 May 2008 21:18:53 GMT

What are you doing now?

There's no words there!!!

Fill in the appropriate four letter word.

Berkman @ 10

Thu, 15 May 2008 13:09:31 GMT

Today I'm at the Berkman @ 10 conference in Austin Hall on the Harvard Law School campus. It's a reunion of sorts, of people who have been part of or interested in Berkman Center. I was a fellow there between 2003 and 2005 and worked on getting blogs to be part of the Harvard culture.

Just took a bunch of pics. Going to upload a few now. The wifi here seems pretty good. Doc Searls just walked by don't think he saw me. Someone just took my pic. I always make a face as they get their camera focused. Can't keep a smile on my face for more than a second or two before I start feeling silly.

Video of the schmoozing before the opening of the conference.

Listening to Elena Kagan, Dean of Harvard Law School, listing Berkman accomplishments of the faculty. No mention of the fellows. John Palfrey is becoming the Dean in charge of the Harvard Law Library. Amazing job. Hope he does interesting things with it.

Terry Fisher, listing Berkman's accomplishments, said the first podcast was done at Berkman. Can't tell you how pleased I am to hear him take credit for this (no sarcasm).

Some. Professors. Speak. Slowly. And. Deliberately.

Jon Zittrain is thinking of going to Stanford, and they want him to come back to Berkman. They're really schmoozing him up in front of everyone.

Video: Jon Zittrain explains the Internet.

Comcast is a very strange company

Thu, 15 May 2008 09:33:00 GMT

They just announced that they bought rolodex company Plaxo.

Price rumored to be betw $100 and $200 million.

Media sharing? Comcast? You gotta be kidding.

Maybe they can share the rolodex of the people they just bought and try to work with creative media technology people instead of threatening to fire them as customers.

Just sayin.

Edwards endorses Obama

Thu, 15 May 2008 01:18:32 GMT

And fucking Twitter is fucking down.

Fuck!

$1000 reward

Wed, 14 May 2008 19:59:49 GMT

See also: Interview with Nicco Mele, the man behind the $1000 reward.

Seesmic and Disqus sittin in a tree

Wed, 14 May 2008 13:29:27 GMT

I like video comments, didn't think I would but I do. I think people are more responsible and throughtful when their words are backed by their voice and face.

So when Daniel at Disqus and Loic at Seesmic asked if I would let them use Scripting News as one of the places they rolled out their new partnership I said Yes and I would be honored (I said it weeeth ze Franch agzent).

I thought they were going to roll it out at 11AM Eastern, but I see Fred Wilson has already posted on it.

We already have some video comments (Scoble was first, of course, followed by Steve Garfield) so here we go, a new era in conversational blogging.

And congrats to the good folk at Disqus and Seesmic for making this a reality.

PS: A disadvantage of video comments -- it's hard to hear them in a crowded terminal waiting for a plane to Boston.

PPS: Why do people talk so quietly when they're leaving video comments? Sounds like they don't want to wake someone up.

Photos/Videos from NY/Boston trip

Wed, 14 May 2008 03:11:16 GMT

I'm accumulating a photo log of my east coast trip on Flickr.

There's a puzzle on one of the pics. Why are bus signs so high off the ground? Hint: It has nothing to do with snow.

Tuesday political notes

Wed, 14 May 2008 02:26:15 GMT

Tuesdays bring political news and today is no different.

First, an op-ed in today's New York TImes from 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. I worked for McGovern, he was the last candidate before Obama that I believed in, this was when there was a draft and a war, and I was draft age, but not old enough to vote.

Something I didn't know -- Hubert Humphrey led a challenge to the California delegation that made McGovern and his staff fight for the nomination through the convention, and according to McG this led to his defeat in November. This was news to me.

McGovern wrote: "After winning the California primary in June, I thought I had the nomination in hand. But a desperate slash-and-burn effort was pressed against me by the candidates I had defeated. California's delegates that year were allocated under a winner-take-all system, but my opponents -- led by Senator Hubert Humphrey, my lifelong friend -- began clamoring to change the rules and to assign the state's delegates proportionally."

The whole story is good reading. Also division in the Democratic Party led to the election of Nixon in 1968 and Reagan in 1980.

Key takeaway -- HRC is playing with fire when they hold out the possibility of fighting Obama's nomination all the way to the convention.

She won as expected tonight in West Virginia. Her speech was not in any way a concession, she's not looking to land the plane. Her advocates are talking dangerous election-losing talk.

Meanwhile, as Mickeleh says on Twitter, the really big news of the night -- the Dems won a special election in Mississippi, a district that the Republicans fought hard for. Mississippi is deep in the heart of Republican territory. Olbermann said it's as if the Dems lost a seat in Brooklyn. It's serious and very positive news for change.

Poor Huckabee was on MSNBC when the news of the Childers win came in. He didn't spin, came right out and said the news was every bit as bad for Republicans as it appears. Russert gave him credit for saying openly what Republicans had been saying privately.

Meanwhile President Bush predictably, desperately threw FUD at the process, warning that if Obama is elected there could be another major terrorist attack on US soil. Thanks for the terrorism, Mr. President.

Demo of Firefly

Tue, 13 May 2008 14:41:52 GMT

I'm at the offices of Betaworks in New York, meeting with CEO John Borthwick who I know for many years from AOL.

They have built a product called Firefly which is rolling out tonight at the Tech Meetup in New York.

He just gave me a demo and my first reaction was "You can't do that," then I asked if I could put a demo of it on Scripting News today and he said (to my surprise) Yes.

It's so weird it's practically illegal. You can watch people's mouse move around the page, and then chat with them. Go ahead and give it a try.

Why decentralizing Twitter is hopeless

Sun, 11 May 2008 13:47:25 GMT

To every yin there's a yang. Here's a brilliant counterpoint to what I've been writing here about decentralizing Twitter. I've excerpted the last paragraph because it is some of the best tech writing I've ever read. Wonderful.

Echovar: "The idea of building competitors to Twitter on the same platform, or redistributing Twitter to multiple players reminds me of the idea that New York City should be rebuilt in Ohio because it would be cheaper. Or perhaps we could distribute a little of New York City in every state of the Union. New York City is what it is because of the people who live and visit there. Building another New York City in Las Vegas doesn't result in the phenomenon that is New York City. In a very important sense, Twitter is decentralized at its core, it is rhizomatic rather than arborescent."

Now go read the whole thing, please.

PS: As has been pointed out by several emailers, the idea of relocating cities in the virtual world appeared in a piece I wrote yesterday, where I said indeed it does happen. It can't happen in the real world. But in defense of echovar, it would only happen if there were a war where platform vendors were fighting in vain to lock us in, and only when Twitter was so mature that we understood every nuance of how it's used. Yes, we are, today, locked into Twitter. And I'm not comfortable about that. Eventually, relocating New York may be what we have to do. Charles Cooper is very correct though in his piece on this subject, it's time for Twitter to get into this discussion and tell us what their thoughts are.

What do the images mean?

Sun, 11 May 2008 13:51:39 GMT

From time to time people ask what the images in the margins of Scripting News mean. I don't think I've ever answered the question on the blog itself.

There are many answers to the question because they mean whatever you want them to mean. The point is to stimulate creativity. If I wrote an article about Fidel Castro, for example, and put a fiery picture of Fidel next to the piece it would satisfy curiosity. "I wonder what he looks like?" Suspense eliminated. That kind of imagery serves to quell creativity, to push it down, stifle it. It answers questions as opposed to raising them. Lowers entropy instead of increasing it.

My goal is to stimulate thinking. If people say they disagree with me -- excellent. Sometimes I disagree too. There are many sides to every question, and many of them are valid. To fix on one answer as being the only one would be to eliminate creativity, imagination. It's why stories told on radio can be so incredibly vivid compared to movies or TV. You get to supply the visuals. So if the meaning isn't obvious, you get to find your own meaning. That's better sometimes than filling in all the blanks. Create new blanks.

My pictures are supposed to raise questions. The first one might be "Why did he put that there?" You may find you have an answer, but know that that's your answer, not anyone else's. It says something about you. Or you might look at the picture and say "That's a weird picture" and not give it another thought. That's also a valid answer. Or you might be tired of the pictures and see one and choose not to read the article. More power to you!

Esther Dyson once sent an email asking why there was a big picture of herself next to an article that had nothing to do with her. "I thought it was an interesting picture" is what I said. I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I once got a call from a neighbor when I lived in the country, she said she was going to get some baby goats, and they might make a lot of noise as they were being weaned from their mother. I asked why she was getting the goats. She said she always wanted goats.

That's pretty much what the images mean.

What will Hillary do with her power?

Sat, 10 May 2008 19:52:00 GMT

Oh the political debate is getting interesting!

Assuming the Democratic nomination is actually decided, then what is Hillary Clinton's future role?

Last night on Larry King I heard Carole Simpson, a black woman, supporter of HRC, say that it's white men calling for her to withdraw. (Transcript.)

Stephanie Miller chimed in "I have ovaries."

Even so, it seems to me that people of all genders are conspicuously not asking Clinton to withdraw out of respect for her power, which she has a lot of. What she does with that power now will have a lot to do with what happens next. I know that's pretty waffly, but I don't know how else to say it. She could blow something up. She could ask women to get angry. If she does, it seems there will be some angry women. Maybe many very angry women. Scary thought. No sarcasm.

Perhaps her role will be analogous to Al Sharpton, sharp-tongued rallier of specialized anger.

HRC is potentially a political leader of women unlike any leader we've ever seen. There have been some powerful women politicians -- Bella Abzug, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Nancy Pelosi.

But what will Hillary do with her power?

How tech wars end

Sat, 10 May 2008 14:38:17 GMT

The tech industry is organized around the concept of wars. In recent memory, the browser wars, the Java wars, before that there were wars over email APIs, desktops, GUIs, networking standards, you name it, if there's money to be made in controlling users, there's been a war to lock those users in. It's been that way since the dawn of time, and it will always be that way. It's in human nature.

It's also in human nature for the users to realize they're being used, get fed up, and create or discover the technology for themselves thereby routing around all the warring parties. It's as if the citizens of France during WWII got fed up with the Germans and the Allies, and decided to create a new France on new land and all move there, leaving the armies to fight over nothing. You can't do it in the real world, but it's how it works in the virtual world.

Having seen a number of these wars, and seeing each of them end not in triumph, but irrelevance, I believe we're getting closer to the end in the warfare defined by social networks. That's the real lesson behind this article by Mike Arrington, about the three companies throwing vapor at each other, two publicly, MySpace and Facebook, and Google in the back channel. Somewhere lurking back there are Microsoft and Yahoo, each with also-rans no doubt coming soon. I wouldn't pay too much attention to what the big players do here, they will be too constrained by BigCo thought processes, and a desire to appear to be giving stuff away without actually giving anything away.

Open is a funny thing, you can't be partially open. You can't edge your way toward open. You can't be open and hold the valuable stuff in reserve for yourself. BigCo's can't afford to do what it takes to coalesce a popular maturing technology around their own platform. It won't happen in BigCoLand. Only a little dude with nothing to lose can choose to build around something truly open. (The big guys are always forced to, eventually.)

The most famous war-collapse was when the web took over from the warfare between Microsoft and the Taligent team (Apple, IBM, Borland, Novell, lots of others). They were all busy blowing smoke at each other over the users when out of nowhere a network that had been around longer than any of them, that had already solved every problem they were trying to solve that was worth solving, swooped in and doused all the warfare. How? The users fell in love, and as we know, love is a very powerful force.

My guess, if I had to make one, is that the social network that we will all be building on in the coming years is already out there. It could be Twitter, after it's federated, or it could be what FriendFeed is teasing about. Or it could be two kids in a garage that no one is paying attention to. Keep your eyes and ears open and trust your gut, you'll know it when you see it.

When Obama wins...

Sat, 10 May 2008 14:53:39 GMT

There's a game being played on Twitter that goes like this.

"When Obama wins..."

The game is to fill in the blank creatively. .

Here are some examples.

Here's my entry.