Scripting News

Oh happy day!?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:44:02 GMT

A Twitter clone that's all-the-way open?

Did Christmas come early this year?

http://identi.ca/doc/faq

Marshall has a writeup.

I am dave over there. Follow me!

First thing --> looking for an API.

It supports the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, which I had not heard about until now.

evan appears to be the author of the software, or at least the authority on it.

From the FAQ, it will support the Twitter API, but doesn't yet. There is RSS here, but I haven't found it yet.

Here's the RSS. http://identi.ca/dave/all/rss Just add "/rss" after anything.

I've hooked it up to FriendFeed, but it looks (much) less than optimal (and I'm being kind). They really need to work on the RSS, it's the first really lame thing I've seen in identi.ca.

Social cameras, on the way

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:43:11 GMT

Bijan got a preview of the iPhone 2.0 software, which adds location to the camera.

It's a piece of the social camera puzzle.

When you come back from vacation where there are lots of other people taking pictures, go to Flickr 4.0 and enter the location and the time, and voila, vacation pictures and you're in all of them. :-)

It's bad news for people cheating on their spouses. Now it'll be easier to follow your trail and who you were with. (I had a preview of this, when I was on a date, walking down the street the other way was Justin with his camera mounted on his hat and his broadcasting laptop in his knapsack. It was a long time ago, if you want to see who I was out with you're going to have to search through a lot of archives. Enjoy!)

A feature like this (which was obviously coming for years) will reshape what it means to take a picture. That's why people are confused, because we all come from the past, and this product exists only in the future (for everyone but Bijan, who I hate).

Just kidding of course. Heh.

PS: This originally appeared as a comment on Bijan's blog. An illustration of "chasing the news" earlier today.

How to stop chasing the news

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:44:11 GMT

My Internet writing is so distributed these days, there are five main places I write, and a host of others where I write peripherally. Here are the five:

1. Scripting News (and its RSS feed).

2. The comments here (managed by Disqus).

3. Twitter (used to be a lot, now much less).

4. FriendFeed (links, comments).

5. The OPML Editor (for software dev work mostly).

My writing style differs in all the places, it depends on its newness, who's there, what the tools let me do, what I'm doing there.

None of them are what I want them to be, but I'm happy because I feel like things are shifting, and I'm almost ready to understand what I really want.

First, like a lot of people, I have either found or invented systems to connect the five places. When I write something here, I ping Twitter. FriendFeed has been programmed to automatically pick it up. My writing sometimes but rarely flows through the NewsJunk website and out to FriendFeed and Twitter because it's like a radio station, again, pushing links and content where we want it to go. We're all set up for new destinations. The NewsJunk software (which is a major undertaking, like Manila was in 1999) is all about moving ideas around.

But movement isn't really what we want.

For a moment think about TechCrunch. Okay let's say one of the editors writes something longish over on FriendFeed and then realizes that would make a good post on TC. So he switches over to WordPress (the editorial software they use) and pastes it in there, makes some corrections, adds a picture, some links, edits some more, adds a few thoughts, then publishes. A few minutes later an update, he spots a typo and fixes it. Now what happened to the FriendFeed article? It's still there, unchanged by all the improvements. But what should have happened?

It seems there should only be one copy of the story, and when it changes on TC, it should also change on FF. Further, when he adds some pictures, or links to a podcast, or embeds a video, that should happen in both places as well. And of course there shouldn't really be two places, there should be one, with two views. TechCrunch is a flow of articles grouped around a name, with the judgment we assume comes with it. But the idea originated somewhere else (it seems all of them do) and after it migrates it still exists there.

I go through a similar process with pieces that flow to the Huffington Post. First, I get the piece in perfect shape over here, and then copy it over there. Of course it never is perfect, and then I'm stuck making changes in both places.

Now should the comments in both places be the same comments? Ahhh, at that point I'm nto so sure. We'll have to try it out and see what happens. (In the Huffpost case, definitely not. I don't feel like a member of the community there, even though the comments I see are in response to my writing.)

If you want to get more ideas about this, revisit Web 2.0 Gas Prices, a piece that tells the story about how an idea sprouted in one place and then bloomed in another. Lots of data were integrated from pictures to maps to MP3s. Try to ignore the issue of wheher it's fair to McCain. That was the point in the discussion on FF, over here on SN, what's interesting are the editorial techniques and what kind of software will be needed to support them.

A few weeks ago for the first time a reader noticed the double-entendre in the name of this weblog. People always assumed it meant "News About Scripting." Sure to some extent that's what it means, but we all know, not so much these days. But it's main meaning was "The application of technology to news." Scripting is the verb, not the subject. You always have to be looking for that with me, I have a devious mind and sometimes (not often I hope) I lead you in one direction, when the action is in a different one.

PS: I've been working on a new "junk" site, this one for tech news. I'll have a writeup here soon.

PPS: What I've learned from the political NewsJunk, the MSM guys have figured out blogging, and generally do as good a job as the amateurs, though some of the pros are just running linkblogs and not much more. They typically don't like NJ, for some reason. Go figure.

PPPS: It seems postscripts should have lives of their own too. The next one should live here, and also live in the FriendFeed Feedback room.

PPPPS: The Reshare command in FF, it seems to me, shouldn't create a copy, rather should add the item to my flow, at the top of the list, and any comments that appear in either place would be seen in both. It's understandable that copies must be made when things move among silos, but within a silo why not deal in pointers? (Or give the choice to the user.)

Podcast with the Gnip guys

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:43:34 GMT

I caught up with Eric Marcoullier and Jud Valeski of Gnip in Eric's car, this afternoon.

http://mp3.newsjunk.com/interviewWithGnip.mp3

Earlier today, on Scripting News, I asked Twitter to use Gnip to communicate with developers so the network can come back on. I wanted to find out if anything had come of it.

Nothing had...

Meanwhile, the guys believe there's no technical reason that Twitter can't turn back on all the services that were hooked into the XMPP gateway -- the protocol is designed for that kind of syndication.

It seems, therefore that the reason must be economic -- which leads to the conclusion that Twitter, which was founded as an open platform, with a Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom philosophy, is now headed in the opposite direction.

We know where that leads, to the place where Instant Messaging foundered, which motivated the development of XMPP to route around the problem. (Oh the humanity!)

Gnip raises the question in about as clear a way possible, will Twitter come back to developers, or are we looking for a new platform to do the wonderful things we were hoping to do with Twitter.

Eric, like me, is friends with Bijan and Fred, on Twitter's board, so we're posing this question, which is potentially controversial, in a friendly way.

Here's the smiley to prove it:

I wish Twitter would partner with Gnip

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:17:17 GMT

Yesterday I wrote a teaser piece masquerading as a vision piece. The vision is not mine, it's Eric Marcoullier's, a very affable and brilliant entrepreneur from San Francisco, who founded MyBlogLog and sold it to Yahoo for big bucks a few years back.

As we know Twitter is having scaling problems, and in fact, some of the problems are related to people pounding their API when they should just be getting the data through Gnip, Marcoullier's new startup.

But Gnip didn't officially exist until 9AM today, but as of now (9:20AM) there is no excuse. Twitter, what are you waiting for? Call Eric now, and do a deal and let's get on with building a fantastic network of wired-up Internet apps that scale.

And if you want to get details, get the full scoop from my amigo Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb.

Here we go!!

Update: Mike Arrington seems to agree. "Notably absent from the list of partners is Twitter, which may be the one service that needs something like Gnip the most."

A way for Twitter back in the pink?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:18:31 GMT

I'm not sure how much of the stress in Twitter is caused by the services that poll its API on behalf of thousands of users, but it's got to be a lot of work to service all those requests that are constantly coming in.

Here's why it has so much work to do. When I post something to Twitter, within a couple of minutes it shows up on FriendFeed. I don't know for sure, but I bet that it's calling the Twitter API every few minutes to ask if Dave has posted something over there. Most of the time the answer is no. And it's asking for each of the thousands of FriendFeed users that have connected their Twitter accounts to their FriendFeed accounts. Wouldn't it be simpler for FriendFeed to say to Twitter: "Here's a list of all the FriendFeed users who want to have their twits reflected over here." Then Twitter could call FriendFeed saying "Yo, Dave just updated and here's what he said." Don't call us we'll call you. It's often more efficient.

Back in the old days when I used to work on much larger systems known as mainframes, they had special-purpose computers whose only job was to offload work for the main computer, much the way a booster rocket or a tugboat help a space ship or an ocean liner. In computers they were called TIPs which is an acronym for Terminal Interface Processor. Each user sat at a terminal, a sort of dumb computer that behaved like a printer, and typed away, and then the TIP would talk to all the terminals, and then talk to the mainframe in a language only the two computers understood. It was much more efficient for the mainframe. Seems Twitter could use that kind of efficiency.

There's lots of this kind of connecting going on these days, and it is costly. It slows systems down. Probably the way the problem is going to be solved is through something like the TIPs, adapted to the 21st Century.

Just a thought for a possible way to make Twitter a little more perky.

PS: In 1997 I knew Apple was going to fire its CEO, I had been brought in, in confidence. The morning of the announcement, I wrote a Wired column (published on the web) calling for his resignation. It ran two hours before the announcement. Some people mistook it for cause and effect.

Looking for a few good feeds

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:28:47 GMT

I'm revamping my feed reading.

FriendFeed has made me (and apparently others) much more aware of how I get my news.

I've also learned a ton from the NewsJunk project. I get much better political news now than I ever have, and it's getting better all the time.

Something I've learned...

The thing that makes the difference: GOOD FEEDS.

Behind those feeds of course are honest, smart people with a passion for information.

I started NewsJunk because I was getting terribly spotty news about politics. I asked how other people get their politics, and everyone said the same thing, they hunt and peck. Now I get a steady stream of great stuff. It's like the briefing books political candidates get from their staff, but open to everyone. When a story breaks I get a bunch of perspectives. If I'm not interested, I don't click, but in an instant I have a sense of what's going on.

And it's a level playing field. If a story breaks via pro or amateur, we get it. Fast. No waiting. (When we're doing our job.)

Now, I want to straighten out my access to news about technology.

In a word, it sucks!

I want it not to suck.

As much.

Tech news is different from politics though, most people in the tech world, the insiders, hit TechMeme at least a few times every day, I do, at least 20 or 30 times. I don't want it to change, it serves a very useful purpose. But it isn't enough.

What I want is what I've always wanted: News about products. New products. What people think about products, but features added to popular products. And not just the really huge products, like GMail and Amazon. I use lots of stuff. You should see my bookmarks and my system tray. And some of the products I'm interested in aren't even in my Bookmarks. Earlier today Steve Rubel wrote about Summize and a neat new feature they just added. It's a really small thing, but I care about really small things. I make and products for a living. Ideas are important. And someday I might meet the guy who did that, and I'd like to know about it so I can congratulate him. The personal touches matter. People care that you notice. I certainly do!

You know what else I like -- hearing about products from the person who implemented it. What were they thinking? What were their goals? What were they surprised by when people used the product? What questions do they have? You can learn a lot by listening to the person who wrote it.

Anyway, I want to know about products. Today I found two blogs that are devoted to reviewing tech products. I added their feeds to my mix.

I want to know what you rely on for product news, and I want to start reading what you read, voraciously. And I don't just want to read it, I want to consume it.

So please, if you feel so inclined, either post a URL of a favorite product-related feed in the comments here or send it to me at scriptingnews1 at gmail dot com.

Thanks!!

"cheesecake"

PS: If we can improve the flow of news about tech products we can create more opportunities for tech products. I'm sure there are niches we're missing, big ones, but they're hard to see because the picture has been muddied up by all kinds of peripheral stuff.

PPS: One of my inspirations for this work was a post by Fred Wilson where he said he wanted a TechMeme for inspiration. I don't think it'll end up looking like TM, and your source of inspiration might look very different from mine. We've gotten too centralized, imho -- we'll now get more decentralized. Pretty sure I see how it could work.

Web 2.0 gas prices

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 03:44:00 GMT

Earlier today we were having a hot debate about how John McCain doesn't know how much a gallon of gas costs. A Republican thinks we're being too hard on old John. I thought not, what single fact could you expect someone running for President to know? It's like asking the manager of a baseball team their percentage (the number of games won divided by the total number played). Or asking a batter how many RBIs he has. A president should know what gas costs, as would the CEO of an airline or car company. It's a very basic indicator of what's going on. You can't even go to war (something McCain is proud to say he knows something about) without gas. Lots of gas.

You could forgive him for not knowing what a gallon of milk goes for, you'd have to actually go inside a store to find out, but the price of gas is displayed prominently on street signs. All he has to do is look out the window of the famous Straight Talk Express.

Anyway, we did a little checking, found an MP3 of the interview where the question came up, verified that the transcript was accurate. (Yeah, if you want to split hairs, he wasn't asked if he knows the price of gas today, literally, just if he knew the price of gas at any time in the past. Lawyers everywhere.)

Then I went looking on Google Maps for a Street View of a gas price sign on a station at San Pablo and Marin Ave in Albany, an intersection I go through frequently on my way to San Francisco or the South Bay or the movies. Later I was waiting at a red light at that exact spot and thought to take out the camera and take a picture of the sign today. Uploaded it to Flickr. The prices had changed quite a bit!

What a world we live in. Gas is ridiculously expensive. But the Internet keeps getting more interesting.

More than meets the eye

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:18:00 GMT

This morning, the story I've been tiptoeing around here appeared for the first time in the business press.

Guardian: Shel Israel puppet show bites the dust.

There's an undercurrent to the story that insiders will understand that I don't want to explain here at this time.

People need to do some soul-searching, now, and then do some damage control before this gets much worse.

State of the Twitter, June 2008

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:22:00 GMT

June was a terrible month in TwitterLand. The service was down a lot. It's basically down right now, has been for days -- since the Replies tab doesn't work.

I've never seen anything like it. A service so many people use that can't stay up.

Yesterday I got an email from Jay Rosen asking if this was the day Twitter died. It had completely gone off the air. No whale, no features taking a rest, the server wasn't responding at all. I posted a message on FriendFeed linking to the Don McLean song American Pie that's about "The Day The Music Died." Yeah, yesterday might have been the day that Twitter died.

Fact is, Twitter as it was conceived was never meant to live.

It's very possible with better engineering its architecture might have gone on for a few more years, but eventually it would have hit this wall, where there were too many people posting too many twits to too many followers. The scale of the system as conceived rises exponentially. Just look at the spewage report for a sense of the scale.

So I started arguing for a decentralized system, and the engineers at Twitter sniffed that you would never be able to recreate Twitter in a decentralized fashion. I still doubt that's true, but now we have a counter-argument -- you couldn't keep it running in a centralized fashion either. It may just be too rich an application for today's computers. To a user this seems ridiculous -- it doesn't look rich. I guess sometimes appearances can be deceptive.

So the conversation moves to FriendFeed. True, I am ignoring the flow I have on Twitter. Easy come easy go. The flow there is pointless. It's like trying to make a baby by having sex with a rock. First, it's hard to get excited. And second, no baby.

And FriendFeed is a much better place for conversation than Twitter. No 140-character limit (they do have a limit, but it's much higher, so high I haven't had a reason yet to figure out what it is). And most important, with 10K-plus followers on Twitter, when I respond to one person's question, all 10K see the response and some get annoyed (a certain percentage say so) or ask what we're talking about. If I answer their question, I'm annoying and confusing a bunch more people. Conversation was awkwardly grafted onto Twitter as an afterthought. It seems to fit in better with FriendFeed.

However, before we all move to FriendFeed and think we've solved anything, this underscores the problem with putting all our eggs in one basket. We just move the problem into the future. FriendFeed may be able to scale where Twitter can't, but there are other problems with centralization, putting all your trust in a corporation, esp one so young and unformed. Instead, we should start bootstrapping a decentralized Twitter-like thing immediately, building off the base of clients that connect to Twitter. It can connect to any service we want to connect to, and if one should go away, we do the thing the Internet does so well, route around the outage. I wrote about this, extensively, in early May.

PS: I implemented my own suggestion. Here's my RSS feed of today's Twitter posts.

PPS: At 7:40PM, replies in Twitter are back. Now we get to find out if our fling with FF is the real thing, or just a summer love.

Classic geek video

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:44:11 GMT

Much-discussed today on FriendFeed, with art.

10 great movies in 10 genres

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:09:07 GMT

From today's Fresh Air, a selection of 10 great movies in 10 genres from the American Film Institute: Animation, Romantic Comedy, Western, Sports, Mystery, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Gangster, Courtroom Drama, and Epic. I love resources like this, cause there are bound to be some movies among the hundred that I haven't seen. Maybe you'll find some too.

To Obama: I'm not an ATM

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:16:06 GMT

I just got an email from David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Obama. Click on the image below to read the email.

I've underlined in red the part of the email that got me to write this angry blog post.

When I saw the email in my inbox entitled Strategy Briefing For You I thought for a brief instant that the Obama campaign had figured out that I have a mind, that I have an education and a resume, and I might be someone worth briefing. Three paragraphs later the disappointment hits. Watch the video then give us money.

I (like to) think Obama needs more than my money. I think Obama needs my mind and my influence and experience. My creativity. I think Obama might, from time to time, want to brief me, without asking for money. I think Obama might want to invite me to a meeting of people from Berkeley or Northern California or the tech industry, or academia, or any number of my other affiliations (Bronx Science alumni?) where people put their minds together and think about ways to co-create a new America.

The primaries are over and he won. There's one more hurdle and he'll be President. Yes, he's got my vote. He probably will get my full $2300. Does he want anything more? My guess is that honestly, no more than Clinton or Bush did. Sorry to say, but that's how it seems to me. Still a little time to turn it around. But the voter as ATM thing is wearing pretty thin.

PS: ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine. Someday soon some kid will ask "What's a teller?"

PPS: I had the same epiphany about public radio in 2003.

What is whoisi.com?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:46:47 GMT

This site showed up in my referrer logs.

http://whoisi.com/p/216

http://whoisi.com/p/755

Not sure what to make of it. Looks quite interesting.

I hadn't heard of it till today, but I see it's being discussed on Twitter.

Here are some other people...

http://whoisi.com/p/459

http://whoisi.com/p/1

I think I get it -- it's a wiki-like FriendFeed?

http://whoisi.com/p/683

http://whoisi.com/p/141

The opportunities for abuse abound (but there are obvious ways to fix things, if you claim your own person, and correct the links). It's very clever. Why didn't I think of it??

One of the things I love about it is that it does the right thing with RSS descriptions. Bravo!!

"cheesecake"

Some things shouldn't be joked about

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:32:03 GMT

It's been suggested that McCain made a good choice in hiring a comedian to write about Barack Obama for their campaign webiste. I humbly disagree.

There are some things that you shouldn't joke about. For example, tech support. How would you feel if your server had crashed and it turns out your ISP was playing a joke on you. Come on lighten up! Read the Cluetrain.

Or suppose your doctor was playing a joke on you when you went in for your prostate exam and hid a little treasure for you to find. Relax! It's a joke!

Presidents have buttons that launch missles that destroy the world. Their power is even greater than doctors and tech support people. It's better if they stick to telling us what they think without misdirection. Imho.

Good news or bad?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:25:07 GMT

I just signed on to Twitter and there were two status messages waiting for me and that was it. The entire Twitterverse had shrunk down to Charlene Li and Josh Bancroft. This is a new idea. An interesting plot for a science fiction movie? Or a sad comment on the times? I hope they like each other? Maybe one is a Republican and the other is a Democrat? I wonder what their offspring would look like?

John McCain's RSS feed

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:40:39 GMT

I forget how I stumbled across John McCain's RSS feed, but I've been reading it regularly for some time. Occasionally they have a post written in the candidate's name, but usually the stories are written by staffers.

I was hoping, when I found it, that I could learn more about the candidate, but mostly they use the feed to take shots at Barack Obama. A lot of it is very embarassing stuff, not for Obama, but for McCain. How could a candidate of his stoop to sarcasm bordering on bitterness. It sounds terrible, like they've already lost, know it, and all they have left to support their candidate is -- what? Do they think that undecided voters would be swayed by snark?

I'd like to see them use the feed to comment on current events, as they sometimes do. For example, today the Supreme Court released its first interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. No matter how you look at it, this is historic. It's not quite as big as overturning Roe v Wade, but it's in the ballpark. McCain ran a piece about the news that stated their position, and contrasted it to (their interpretation of) Obama's, without insulting the reader's intelligence. It was published in the candidate's name. Good use of the feed.

Later in the day they published a hard to parse piece that starts out as a criticism of Karl Rove and then attempts to defend Obama for rewriting the Declaration of Independence! And at first I thought they were serious in their denunciation of Rove, which would, imho, be a very smart thing politically. But that wasn't their point, at all. I don't think Obama has said anything about the Declaration, I guess this was a weak attempt at humor? If so, it didn't work. Screen shot. This piece was written by Michael Goldfarb. Not sure who he is.

I guess my message to McCain is this --> being President is serious stuff, and if you don't take it seriously, how could you expect anyone to support you?

BTW, the same criticism goes to Daily Kos and Redstate, two highly partisan blogs at opposite ends of the spectrum. I hardly ever refer people to either blog, because they always take cheap shots along with stating their interpretation of current events. But they're just blogs, two of many. McCain is just one of two major party candidates for President. There's a big difference.

PS: If anyone knows of an equivalent Obama feed, please let me know!

Silicon Valley as second grade

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:50:42 GMT

Posting a link to Shel Israel's piece here yesterday accelerated the discussion, of course. Most of the discussion that I've participated in has been on FriendFeed. I also talked for about 45 minutes last night with Mike Arrington. It was a surprisingly friendly conversation, I had forgotten how much I like and respect him. After sleeping on it, I've had a chance to distill my own thinking. Here's some of it.

First, when I became aware of how the videos were hurting Shel, I stopped watching. All I could think about is how mean this community had become. Most people had never heard of Shel before, he's not really a celebrity. That was until these people decided to make an example of him, and turned his name into a bad joke, which became more well known than the real person. Shel is far from rich, and this isn't just hurting him financially, it's breaking him, though he's too proud to say so.

Now they've gone after me too, but it's not so easy to hurt me. I've been trashed plenty, and I think most people whose opinions I care about know that I am not what they say I am, which can be pretty awful stuff.

As Duncan Riley said, one of the few bloggers who has been willing to come to Shel's defense publicly: "If I was Shel, I wouldn't be coping at all, in fact I'd probably fall to complete pieces." True. It's enough to wither your spirit. Not the satire itself, but the people who say they're friends who don't offer support. That's what really hurts. That's one of the things I tried to convey to Mike last night. I offer the same to several other people I'd like to call friends again.

When a friend is in trouble and asks for help, you don't turn your back. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that when a stranger is in trouble and asks for help you don't turn your back.

Satire that's based on hurting people stops being funny to most people pretty quickly. People who support it really need to stop and think how they're contributing to other people's misery, and whether it's still fun after realizing that. I believe that most people are good at their core, and when they give it some thought, will help us turn this corner and get to the next level. We've sunk really really low. Time to pull ourselves out.

PS: If you think writing this was easy, think again.

PPS: The First Amendment says you have the right to say (almost) whatever you want. But it doesn't say anyone has to listen.

California weather

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:10:47 GMT

Just a few days ago we were sweltering with near-100 degree heat, and today, it's so cold out we have the furnace on. I'll take the cold weather any day, but it would be nice to settle into a summer weather pattern at some point.

Arrington, Feldman & Israel

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:35:56 GMT

I'm forwarding this link to my readers, without comment, at this time. Please read it and give it your consideration.

Shel Israel: About Loren Feldman & Michael Arrington.

Thanks, Dave