Scripting News

Plan B

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:15:26 GMT

On May 22, I wrote: "I must have a Plan B, because I intend to build a business that depends on this service."

I was referring to Twitter, and the business is NewsJunk.com.

Rafe Needleman takes it a step further, suggesting today that Twitter shut down completely until it's ready to provide reliable service.

He talks about what we're all seeing, the upward momentum is gone, the new idea every 24 hours that so inspired us is a distant memory. Now we're going the other way. When I log onto Twitter these days, it's empty, quiet, a ghost town.

People wondered what would replace it. It's becoming clear the answer to that is the worst possible one -- nothing. The energy of Twitter is evaporating. Which is terrible, because it replaced decentralized systems built around our blogs, which are now quiet, they sleep with Twitter. It was a bad deal.

The lesson we keep learning, over and over, is that centralized systems don't work. If they get wildly popular as Twitter did, they break, as Twitter did.

FriendFeed is not Plan B, however it has turned into the place where people congregate to discuss the need for a Plan B.

Meanwhile the culture of Silicon Valley prevents people from saying anything negative about their friends. It prevents people who could take first steps toward routing around the outage to route around it. Where are the architects with guts? I don't think they use Twitter.

I've proposed in a back-channel that Twitter (the company) reconceive itself as a directory, patterened after Network Solutions, that facilitates a federation of Twitter competitors, so lots of different approaches can be tried out. I still think this is the only workable way to bootstrap a much bigger more robust network.

Is Microsoft reinventing upstreaming?

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:40:41 GMT

Amyloo thinks so.

It's ironic, and a shame, that this didn't happen much sooner.

Upstreaming was built on XML-RPC, a technology we co-developed with Microsoft in the late 90s.

Did HRC lose to sexism?

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:31:10 GMT

This question will be asked for years to come, no doubt.

I don't have any deep insights to offer, at least not at this time, but I do have a superficial one.

Yesterday I saw an interview with a woman who said it was sexism, and offered an example. Why is it she asked, that we referred to her as Hillary and referred to the others as Obama, McCain, Romney, etc.

She said that was an indication of sexism.

Maybe so, but I can offer two explanations that have nothing to do with sexism.

1. She was called Hillary because "Clinton" would be confusing. There are two Clintons, one is a former President, and until recently Clinton would refer to Bill Clinton not Hillary Clinton. Now, I think she's established herself as an equal to her ex-President husband, so maybe next she time runs we'll call her Clinton. I've been trying to do that in my writing, actually.

2. But there's an even more convincing reason. She calls herself Hillary. Look at the signage for her campaign. The ads, the banners, the buttons. They all say Hillary, not Clinton. I noticed this in the same segment, they had a campaign rally and there was a sea of Hillary. My guess is that they made a marketing decision, that reason #1 above dictated the brand being Hillary and not Clinton.

I don't want to be a sexist so I'll try to refer to her as HRC. I want to be properly respectful. Though I supported Obama and still do. And I chose him, initially, over HRC, because I thought she and her husband were appealing to racism, even being racist themselves. I will never go for that, as much as I would have chosen her over Obama if I thought he was appealing to sexism.

NewsJunk.com update

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:16:16 GMT

What a week!

I've been having the time of my life this week, writing code and watching the political news fly by. So much to think about and ponder, and with the new tools, I have the best seat on the Interweb. Which I am happy to share with everyone else.

http://newsjunk.com/

Several developments in the last few days to report.

1. There's now a Top-25 list of most clicked on stories.

http://newsjunk.com/counts.html

The community is still very small, but it's big enough so you can see some interests develop. Crafting a good headline is definitely good for flow. (The list is rebuilt every 10 minutes, stories fall off the list after 24 hours.)

2. We've now got a bunch of podcast feeds in the rotation. On Sunday morning we'll have the three political news shows, Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week. On Fridays, On the Media. When they cover political topics, Fresh Air. Same with Bill Moyers.

3. The podcasts flow through all the channels, the RSS feed has enclosures, the Twitter feed points to the MP3s as does the FriendFeed.

4. The editorial system will soon have an API so content sites can directly notify NewsJunk of hot stories. Some sites will flow directly onto the home page. If you work at one of the top political sites and would like to coordinate, please send an email. It'll work much like weblogs.com pinging in 1999.

5. I have many feature requests for the feeds of the various news sites. Some are perfect, like Salon, Slate, the NY Times. Others are so broken as to be useless. Many are inbetween.

Where does all this go? It seems to me we're defining a new kind of news site that makes sense in the context of 2008. When we started talking about it, a couple of years ago, it was an Open Campaign Briefing Book, patterned after the physical books they published every day at Dean for America where Nicco worked. But it's advancing beyond that. I'm not aware of any campaigns using our resource yet, but please let me know if you know of any.

I want to add a commenting system, but I'm not sure at what level to do it. With the simplicity of Disqus, we could easily add it at a variety of levels. I'm thinking of opening a comment thread for every day. Thinking before doing anything.

My first 'Get A Clue' post for Obama

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:12:24 GMT

Dear Mr. Obama,

I applied for credentials to the Democratic Convention and was turned down.

Okay, I can accept rejection -- have a great party, I'll watch it on TV.

But could you ask your people at the Democratic Party to stop sending me press releases about things that are happening there. It's so tacky. I can't come cause you said no. There's no point rubbing it in.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

New York is Hillary Country

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:17:22 GMT

When I arrived NY in mid-May, I asked the cab driver, a black man, who he voted for in the primary. He said Hillary. Of course, I thought. He said everyone in NY likes Hillary.

When I bought the NY Times today, thinking it would be a MEN WALK ON MOON type historic banner headline, I should have known they would play down the history of it, and play up the Hillary of it.

Click on the pic above to get the full extent of the Times' (lack of) historic perspective.

PS: The Chicago Tribune sees the history.

Yahoo Address Book API

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:49:18 GMT

This looks interesting, making a note here because I want to come back to this.

Is anyone building on it? If so, how's it going?

Why gas is so expensive

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:09:47 GMT

We're sending all the dollars we can print to China.

What do you think they buy with the dollars?

1. Cars.

2. Highways.

3. Gasoline.

4. Inflation (for us).

BTW, the Chinese "still live in an $80 per barrel oil environment," (thanks to government subsidies).

PS: This was inspired by a thread started by Steve Rubel on FriendFeed.

The Jackie Robinson of Politics

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:39:39 GMT

It's hard for a man to compete against a woman. You can see it in the speech that Obama gave tonight, he went right at McCain, in a way he never could have against Hillary Clinton, even though she was incredibly tough on him during the primary campaign.

Political competition between men and women is like everything else between men and women. We defer to women, we are protective of women, and we won't stand for a man attacking a woman, even symbolically. And like everything else in gender relations, the women have better PR, men almost never speak for their gender (I do, but it's rare). It's now finally become a matter for the highest level of political competition, and it's so taboo, you'll see that I will likely be attacked for stating an opinion. I've withheld it this long because I didn't want it to be tied up in the competition between Obama and Clinton, now it's clear that is over (one can hope) and we can see clearly the difference between it and the upcoming one between two men. The two contests will be very different, I think anyone can see that.

Oddly, the awkwardness of compeittion betw men and women disadvantages both, the woman is seen as not being serious, and the man is seen as being weak. Obviously because the man is not taking the woman seriously (by withholding serious competition) and the man is being weak.

Obama will continue to defer to Clinton, they'll maintain the traditional gender roles, but we'll forgive him if he doesn't pay her much attention from this point on. He has a battle to fight, one which more and more of us will want him to win, I predict.

Obama was the perfect candidate to compete with a woman for President, for the same reasons he's a perfect black candidate. His anger is supressed, the same way it was for Jackie Robinson. Obama is the Jackie Robinson of politics. In the same way the first black major leage player had to soak up everyone's rage and express none of his own, no one votes for an angry black man,, at least not yet (we will eventually) and anger expressed by a man for a woman is not tolerated either.

Put a note aside until the next Presidential election where there's a serious woman canddiate, hopefully a visionary woman who understands this issue, and can communicate about it the way Obama was able to communicate about race. Let's create a level playing field, let's not tolerate sexism, in either direction -- and let both candidates be fully competitive. When a husband protests that his wife isn't being well-respected, as Bill Clinton did in this election, let's ask him to stand aside and let his wife fight her own battles. And let's not require one candidate to send flowers to the other, competitors only have to be gracious in defeat or victory, not while the fight is ongoing.

BTW, I have MP3s of each of the three candidates' speeches tonight. Unfortunately the McCain speech was interrupted when the polls closed in South Dakota, putting Obama over the top for the Democratic nomination. All the networks interrupted McCain.

1. McCain's speech.

2. Clinton's speech.

3. Obama's speech.

It's all happening right now

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:45:30 GMT

Superdelegates are announcing for Obama.

http://newsjunk.com/

Calif Senator Diane Feinstein says it's time for Clinton to quit. (She's a Clinton supporter.)

AP has a story saying she will do that, but it's being denied by Clinton officials.

I know this sounds like an ad, but it's all there on NewsJunk this morning. I'm watching it unfold as I'm improving the code.

Marc Ambinder: "One very senior Democrat who has not endorsed Obama advises the Clinton campaign to divert the campaign's charter from New York to Minnesota today, to join Sen. Obama on stage."

AP calls it for Obama. "The first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House."

Brief editorial.

Bill Clinton's Macaca Moment

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:06:08 GMT

Yesterday during the rush of news and the initial rollout of NewsJunk.com a story flew by that Bill Clinton had said some pretty nasty things about Todd Perdum, the author of a Vanity Fair slam piece about him.

This morning, I heard for the first time that:

1. There's audio of his remarks.

2. It was recorded on a rope line after a Bill Clinton campaign event.

3. They didn't allow reporters on the rope lines, to avoid BC getting quoted saying the kind of thing he was quoted saying yesterday (apparently he talks candidly with people on rope lines).

4. The person who recorded his comments was the same person who recorded Barack Obama's controversial comments about poor people in Pennsylvania, a person they identified as a "citizen journalist."

Now, I hope to get the audio (got it, it's part of the Huffington Post report, below), and I found the reporter's name, Mayhill Fowler, but I had to search for it. In the report this morning on MSNBC, they didn't identify her. I kept waiting for them to say her name, but they never did. I think it's not only disrespectful, it's unethical to cite a source without identifying it, unless there was a prior agreement that the source was off the record. As you can see from the report, the reporter clearly wants credit.

In the next segment Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, argued with passion that HRC lost, at least in part, because of sexism. I thought this was an incredible contrast. Where is the respect? Just because someone isn't a credentialed member of the press corps, she must remain nameless? Why didn't KVH tune into this (Fowler is a woman, in addition to being an amateur reporter).

Mayhill Fowler's report on Huffington.

They talked earlier, on the Morning Joe show, how Bill Clinton is old school and hasn't learned how things have changed since his last campaign in 1996. KVH asked if everyone remembered Macaca? I do, of course, it's how Jim Webb came to be the Senator from Virginia. Did we ever hear the name of the reporter who videotaped it? I don't recall that I ever did. He not only shot the video, but he was the focus of the story, he was the one who George Allen called Macaca.

This should be a lesson to all handlers and would-be political leaders. You're basically always on the record, unless you're talking with one or two people who have agreed in advance that you're not, and even then you have to be careful. I've learned this in the blogosphere, it's why industry parties are uncomfortable for me. I don't think of myself as a public figure, but every conversation is subject to reporting. I've even had conversations with people who were, without disclosing it, streaming video and audio of it, live to viewers on the net. It first happened when I visited the office of a competitor in the late 90s, believe it or not.

I don't like it, but this is the world we live in. But parts of it I do like. I think we should get behind the facade presented by the comfortable relationship betw Washington reporters and the political leaders they cover. There's too much control of the political process by the press, and that's too easily manipulated by the candidates. We'll see that play out in the fall as two favorites of the press, Obama and McCain, compete.

Update: A report on the MSNBC's website by Mark Murray begins: "The same Huffington Post reporter who broke the Obama 'bitter' story got a new scoop yesterday..." Mayhill Fowler's name does not appear in the 8-paragraph report, though they take a swipe at her ethics ("she didn't identify herself as a reporter and said she disliked the article when asking for his reaction").

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

NewsJunk.com

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:42:56 GMT

My next big project is NewsJunk.com.

The name comes from the people it is designed to serve, news junkies.

So we've gone beyond mere users, now we're making tools for serious users.

This is turning out to be a broad project that will involve lots of people, and I will have much more to write about it over the coming weeks. But the news is happening so fast now, and we're bringing tools on as fast as we can, so I'll have to wait for the philosophy.

For now there are five main ways to consume the flow:

1. Refresh the home page periodically.

2. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

3. Follow it on Twitter.

4. Befriend it on FriendFeed.

5. Watch for developments on the weblog.

There will be more ways, for sure, soooon!

Still diggin!

Update: Nicco's post on NewsJunk.

Owen Thomas speaks in Berkeley

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:21:57 GMT

Just got an email from Sylvia...

Why does Silicon Valley need its own gossip rag? Come find out Wednesday, June 18, from noon to 1:30 at the Berkeley Rep on Addison between Shattuck and Milvia in Berkeley. It's $12 at the door for a delicious meal and a chance to hear Valleywag editor in chief and founder Owen Thomas dish it out on the dubiously fact-checked doings of our digerati. Thomas will be taking questions, so feel free to ask away.

RSVP to whoisylvia at aol dot com.

NASDAQ goes real-time

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:39:17 GMT

As if on command, this press release dropped this morning.

We're getting real-time stock quotes.

Great. Now think about it -- how much like Twitter is that?

I wrote about this yesterday. If NASDAQ and other rich companies like Google, CNBC, etc are willing to take the risk on their technology it must be pretty reliable? Otherwise, imagine the lawsuits that would ensue.

As I wrote yesterday, I bet you can license the technology to run Twitter much more cheaply than you can to build it yourself.

Bill Clinton's Nixon moment?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:56:44 GMT

Bill Clinton: "I want to say also that this may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind. I thought I was out of politics, 'til Hillary decided to run. But it has been, one of the greatest honors of my life to go around and campaign for her for president."

Richard Nixon: "For 16 years, ever since the Hiss case, you've had a lot of -- a lot of fun -- that you've had an opportunity to attack me and I think I've given as good as I've taken. But as I leave you I want you to know -- just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

Update: I think Marla Erwin nailed it. This means WJC won't be campaigning for Obama.

What Twitter did for Scripting News

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:30:58 GMT

We spend a lot of time talking about the technology of Twitter here, because tech is the root of Scripting News, it's how the blog got its start in 1997. But it's been largely a male thing, where DaveNet, its predecessor, was closer to gender-balance. The new connection with Twitter has helped bring us more women readers our way, which is appreciated. It isn't much of a party without em. And I might add, it's given us a bit of racial balance too, although I think the all-but-certain Democratic candidate for President had something to do with that as well.

We're angry, uneducated and unhealthy. Now what?

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:45:13 GMT

Jeff Jarvis said something that got my fur up: Only Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan had an irrefutable point. 'We've got a totally irrational system of nominating our president,' he said.

It's refutable. Obama looked at how the nominating process was laid out and then built an organization and strategy to win on the terms of the system, rather than close his eyes and try to hit the target and then blame the game for his loss as Clinton and her supporters are doing.

Which kind of President would you rather have -- one who accepts the world as it is and then maps out a way to win, or one that grouses at how irrational it is.

Yeah it's irrational that all the oil is in the Middle East. Now what?

Yeah it's irrational that Bush started a crazy war and that the country's education and health care systems are inadequate to compete in a global economy. Now what?

Our infrastructure is crumbling, our products aren't competitive, we're uneducated, unhealthy, angry and to make matters worse our houses aren't worth shit. Now what?

I want a President who welcomes the chaos and then figures out how we can be smart about the hand we've been dealt. Not one that whines and complains about how irrational the world is.

I can't wait until the Clinton Democrats accept that their time has passed and the world their way worked in has passed too, and let's get on with it.

Update: This piece, cross-posted at Huffington.

Cousin Mikey is taking an interest in Twitter

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:22:19 GMT

Mike Arringtoh wrote a post yesterday about architecture issues in Twitter which was mostly pretty good, though his last question is very lawyerly and off the wall, no way one person is responsible for the problems with Twitter, and if there were one person, it would be the CEO not a programmer.

I sent an email to Mike and even tried to call him, but he's not answering, so I'll just get him the info here on Scripting. If you know Mike and he reads your email, please send him a pointer to this piece and say hi for me!

Here's the message: It's pretty likely you can buy or license off-the-shelf software that does more or less what Twitter does. (Probably more.) The problem of reliably sending massive numbers of notifications quickly was solved a long time ago in the financial services industry, apparently. Think about it -- the stock markets and banks have to do this, and if they drop out like Twitter does, billions of dollars would be lost, maybe the whole economy! There would be a lot of good reasons to throw lots of money at this problem.

The pointers came up during an extensive discussion about decentralizing Twitter's architecture here in January.

It made sense to me -- I encountered these kinds of people when I worked in NYC as a programmer after graduating college in the mid-70s. That the software has been commodified since then is not surprising.

I've tried to suggest to the Twitter management that they take this route, but haven't gotten through.

Maybe someone should look into the idea of just adapting technology the enterprise guys are using?

Just a thought.

NewsJunk podcast with Joe Trippi

Sat, 31 May 2008 19:16:09 GMT

We just did a podcast with Democratic consultant Joe Trippi about today's Democratic Rules Committee meeting, and the next steps in the nominating process.

http://newsjunk.com/mp3/nj080531.mp3

Then we switch gears and talk about the new venture I'm starting with Nicco Mele. We're still just covering the edges of the vision, but it's about news, politics and technology, three things close to my heart.

BTW, this is the first NewsJunk podcast. You can subscribe, for now, through the scripting.com RSS feed.

IRC for Democratic Rules Committee Meeting

Sat, 31 May 2008 15:19:24 GMT

Fascinating stuff coming up during testimony at Democratic Party Rules and Bylaws Committee today in Washington.

Since we had IRC for each of the major primaries this year, I thought we'd try the same for this event.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#dncMay31

Hope you can join us!