Scripting News

More movement in TwitterLand

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:45:14 GMT

I love it when things change!

And so far it looks like the Twitter folk did a good job with the features to support threading.

This is a very lightweight feature on the server side, lots more work in the client, and very similar to the effort required to support payloads. Just three new fields in the struct that represents a status. A pointer to the payload, its MIME type and size so clients know what to display to represent the payload.

I love that identi.ca is matching Twitter feature-for-feature in the API, where it counts; continuing what Steve Gillmor calls their bearhug. Good term.

I also love that Twitter's API seems more responsive since the last time I worked on code that ran against it. Seems all the outages had a payoff, faster service for API calls.

I'm in a good mood, that's for sure, and then I heard that Obamaman raised $51 million in July. I love how they waited to announce theirs until after McSame announced he raised a mere $27 million. Heh. I love it when Dems play nasty. It's about fcuking time.

BTW, back to tech politics, Steve Gillmor is absolutely correct to insist that identi.ca stick to the 140 character limit. If they didn't, users would have to remember to only type 140-character posts if they wanted them to be able to go over a bridge to Twitter. Imagine if all the rail in the US were the same gauge, how much easier things would have been (they're not even a consistent gauge in the NYC subway system). Engineers have a hard time accepting historic limits like this, but it's often a good idea (not always of course).

On a related topic DeWitt Clinton talks about the way FriendFeed handles general RSS sources.

Russian general threatens Poland

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:16:31 GMT

It sure is escalating quickly.

AP: "A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a U.S. missile interceptor base exposes the ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported."

Almost as if the ~~Soviets~~ Russians had a plan.

Gotta wonder if Bush is up to this level of confrontation.

Hope he talks to his dad and Scowcroft, and listens.

And someone needs to tell McCain, seriously, STFU.

They picked the perfect time to challenge the US. (For them, worst for us.)

Hat-tip, I read about this first, of all places, on Powerline, a right-wing blog. I thought at first, oh yeah sure, they're blowing it out of proportion, but, unfortunately, they're not.

It's in Pravda too, whatever that is, these days. It used to be the house organ of the Soviet Union, when there was a Soviet Union. Seems pretty clear, the Russians want to reconstitute their old empire, at a minimum.

Follow the discussion on FriendFeed.

Perfect timing!

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:23:10 GMT

I just read this interesting post on Louis Gray's blog.

Essentially now any Twitter client can now associate another post as a reply to another existing post. This means that Twhirl or TweetDeck can allow a user to post a normal status update, and provide a "+" sign underneath and a new post can be appended as a reply to the previous post.

Hmmm. Where have I seen that before?

Oh yeah! Sounds like an outliner.

Update: I've got something working with a test account. You can actually walk the threading structure in the browser. Nice!

Here's what the threading looks like in the outliner.

Click on the pic for a larger image.

The beginnings of community

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:53:49 GMT

Yesterday an update of FlickrFan shipped for the Summer of OPML project, and as we hoped, new users popped up and all of a sudden it's a teeny little bit like a community!

So, of course it's time to put it in perspective, with a howto explaining how to report problems and ask for help.

http://editor.opml.org/community.html

Hope you enjoy, and you're free to repurpose it for other projects, but attribution is requested.

FlickrFan is converted

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:21:08 GMT

The Summer of OPML is rolling right along.

The next app to be converted is FlickrFan.

http://flickrfan.org/

Onward!

Which bank has the best online UI?

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:31:08 GMT

I had a huge problem last night with the online banking website at BofA. I needed to adjust a repeating monthly payment, the price had gone up, and I was getting nasty letters from the vendor. I couldn't figure out how to do it. This morning I chatted with one of their online support people, who told me I had to call the 800 number, and amazingly it took less than two hours to find the answer, which I never would have found just by navigating the site.

I did finally solve the problem but now I wonder if there are any great simple UIs for online banking out there? It would cost me nothing to switch. So I'm wondering if any of the readers of this blog have good experiences with their online banking service? I've heard good things about Citibank, Wells Fargo. Are there any that are just plain great??

Great comments here and on FriendFeed.

A brilliant idea at Harvard

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:07:24 GMT

Before I started blogging, I held many if not most of my good ideas in reserve because I thought some day I might do them as products. But as you get older, you realize that most of the things you think of are going to be outside your grasp, you're not going to get to do them, so rather than hold on to them, it's better to let them go. Maybe someone else will do them, and at least you'll have the pleasure of using the product before your time is up. That was one of the ideas that led me to write the first set of DaveNets, I was just dumping all the ideas I had pent up that I was never going to do.

Anyway...

When I was at Harvard, I came across a project called H2O, which was an abbreviation for Harvard 2.0, kind of like Web 2.0. Cute, eh? I believe it was the brain child of Charlie Nesson and Jonathan Zittrain.

At first glance it appears to be a discussion group, a way for a community of people to discuss something, but it's actually twice as clever, and represents a fundamentally different idea. Something new in discussion groups, you say? Cannot be. Everything's been done, everything's been thought of. Well unless I'm mistaken this is a new idea. It was for me.

Let's say you're in an online discussion. Someone asks a divisive question. Quickly the discussion devolves into personal attacks. Sometimes it's amazing how quickly it gets personal. Of course there's nothing interesting about that, the people don't know each other personally, so the attacks aren't even on target. And you get no new perspectives on the issues, no new information that might change your mind or at least help you see the other side of the argument.

What if, instead, you couldn't see what other people said for 24 hours. Then the first responses are unveiled, and you can write a rebuttal, but once again, they stay hidden for 24 hours. You can write as much as you like, or as little, or edit or refine your position, but only you see it. It works, you learn a lot more this way.

And then you can tweak it from there. What if during the 24 hour period only one other person, chosen by the moderator, can see what you wrote? The moderator can be devilish or compassionate, he or she can choose someone who will agree with you, or show you the folly of your ways, or show you a perspective you've never considered. That's where people like Charlie and Jonathan really shine, they are always thinking of ways to bend your mind. Why not make an online platform that enables them, not just the idiotic pointless banter that most online discussions devolve into.

Anway that's the new idea for the day.

PS: Pretty sure H2O is open source.

PPS: The discussion software is called Rotisserie, the project is H2O.

The EFF position on Wikipedia

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:20:21 GMT

EFF: Wikipedia Wins Dismissal of Baseless Defamation Claims.

While it may have been a good defense in court, their position is nonsense. Wales et al promote Wikipedia as an authoritative encyclopedia. Wikipedia likes certain people, and dislikes others -- it tends to like people who say it's wonderful and utopian, and dislikes people who have mixed opinions about it. I believe it's used as a way to attack people they don't like. I bet the profiles of everyone who has ever given Jimmy Wales good press are positive. Show me one where they are trashed. (I was thinking about this watching Wales on a WNYC radio show the other day, I bet the interviewer, Brian Lehrer, has a great profile on Wikipedia, otherwise he might have asked some non-softball questions.)

I'm reminded of this when I see the glowing bios for Nesson and Zittrain and am reminded of the way they treat me. Just in their choice of pictures you can see their opinion.

So the court may have been convinced, but I am not. Let Wales disconnect, stop promoting the thing so much, let the Wikimedia Foundation fade into the background, and then let's start talking about how to make this thing really neutral and independent of these people's interests.

A memeplant that worked

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:42:27 GMT

Yesterday I pointed to a howto by Jay Ridgeway that showed how to connect two laconi.ca communities together. Today I'm going to try it myself.

I followed the instructions, and it worked. I have a new account on Jay's laconi.ca installation, and I subscribed it to Ars Technica on Evan's installation.

Obviously this is just a first hack at the problem -- there needs to be authorization on the other side, otherwise anyone could subscribe me to their feed and well, that's a pretty powerful tool for spammers. But we're off to a good start!!

Update: There's a piece on Louis Gray's blog that explains why this idea is so powerful.

Update: There's something about the word memeplant that I really like, but I can't put my finger on it.

Update: Phil Windley got the seed.

More random stuff

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:25:17 GMT

I admit I'm writing about some of this stuff so it'll get indexed by Google, then I'll be able to find it while I'm working. It's annoying not having Google know about something I wrote two weeks ago!

Daniel Ha confirmed that they have implemented XML export in Disqus. Not sure when this became available, but it's here now. An example of the XML it produces. Not a familiar format, but it looks very easy to work with. I'm going to do OPML Editor based tool that breaks it up into a folder of files, one per comment.

Tools in the Summer 2008 release of the OPML Editor now optionally have a top-level table named #installer which contains instructions to the Tool installer code (new) about services it wants to hook into.

The docs for the OPML Editor-based podcatcher are ready.

No kidding I really got this fortune cookie

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:04:02 GMT

New Disqus

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:09:49 GMT

Good to see lots of improvements in Disqus today.

Looking for docs that explain how you export comments for offline archiving.

Followups

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:13:50 GMT

Om Malik followed up with Evan Williams at Twitter and corrected the assumption behind my piece published yesterday about new limits in Twitter.

Also read the comments for more clarification.

In a conference call today with the bit.ly team, we have an instance of laconi.ca running so we can learn how it works, and I had relayed the news that they had federation up and running, and Jay verified that they do. He was able to follow his presence on identi.ca on our instance. He says it's difficult to find the magic bits you need to do it, but he's going to write a howto and I'm going to try to set this up myself. It's a big deal, as I've said before.

What goes around

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:23:15 GMT

On FriendFeed, Andrew Baron notes that, according to compete.com, Mahalo stopped growing six months ago.

Proof that the shut-them-up-with-flames approach to PR doesn't get you where you want to go.

Update: Google Trends confirms the compete.com data.

How to Demo at DEMO

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:02:19 GMT

I wrote the first howto for demoers at DEMO in 1991.

And unlike some people's howtos, this one is still on the web.

Yeah, a lot of the ideas that people claim as theirs now were in this piece, written 17 years ago.

Oy. 17 years.

Random stuff

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:54:15 GMT

Interesting email today speculating that Wes Clark will be the VP nominee. If so, I like this choice. I know Clark said that being a prisoner of war doesn't qualify McCain to be president, and some (notably John Kerry) thought this was wrong, but obviously it's true! Being shot down and locked up for years in a dark cell and being tortured, while sad and painful, hopefully has nothing to do with being President or VP. However, Clark has real experience in the military at an executive level, the kind of experience that does prepare you for other executive offices. Imho.

I've become bored and fed up with political punditry, I can't make it through Meet The Press or Face The Nation or On The Media, so in desperation I started listening to an audio book on my daily walks, the last couple of days -- Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. It's really quite a book, refreshing and smart, and in many ways he anticipated everything that's happened so far in the campaign. If you're planning on voting for Obama, I highly recommend reading the book, you should know what you're supporting, and I believe it'll make you feel strongly that you've made the right choice.

Work on the OPML Editor continues at an agressive pace. Two milestones today: I more or less finished the podcatcher tool, and I came really close to getting the kernel to build on Windows. I really want to be able to do kernel builds, I'm not comfortable running the same binaries year after year. Sooner or later a version of one of the OSes is going to break us, and then we'll be panicking trying to get it back on the air. I want to get out in front of it.

I can help Twitter and FriendFeed and maybe some other services improve their future-safeness. Look at this URL and let me tell you what's wrong with it. What if someday Amazon gets taken over by the government, or shut down by a lawsuit, or otherwise goes out of business? What if you get acquired by an Amazon competitor? You can easily use aliases to mask the amazon.com part of the addresses, and if someday you want to use some other service you'll be able to switch. By distributing all those hard Amazon addresses, you're removing a choice for yourself down the road. It's a very easy thing to preserve.

Back to Obama -- should he be running ads that make fun of John McCain the same way McCain made fun of him? He's doing it. Is it right? Yes!! I hate it when they attack him and he doesn't attack back. We're hiring a President not a therapist. When the US is attacked, we want our President to get angry on our behalf. You can't wonk your way to the Presidency, we don't elect wimps to our highest office, for good cause -- it's a dangerous world and we want a tough mofo in the White House (but please one with a brain who likes to use it). Remember how Dukakis responded to the question about Kitty getting raped and murdered. Oy. The correct answer is KILL THE FCUKER, I'D WANT HIM DEAD RIGHT NOW. People like a little emotion from their leaders. So Obama hit McCain back, in a very nice way, so maybe he'll think twice next time one of his fancy advisers says you can paint Obama as a limp-wrist elite celebrity. A little fear in our opponents is a good thing.

BTW, pretty sure that's Edward James Olmos of Battlestar Galactica doing the voiceover on Obama's ad.

Twitter limiting followers to 2000

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:48:39 GMT

Just read in various places that people are getting messages from Twitter saying that there's a limit of 2000 followers per account.

Lots to say about this of course!

1. My first take: Probably a good idea.

2. Is this a problem for people?

3. Confirmation that the expensive thing in Twitter is distributing status messages to large numbers of queues.

4. A business model appears? If you want more than 2000 followers, that'll cost you $X per year per thousand?

5. If no business model then here's something you can't use Twitter for. I had the idea that it would make a good medium for delivering hot news bulletins, and have set up a few channels for doing that. But if they can't grow beyond 2000 followers, there's not much point investing.

6. Or is it a method of keeping malicious or annoying Twitterers in check?

7. ???

8. ???

Obama strikes back

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT

;

How viral is GPL?

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:28:31 GMT

A couple of disclaimers up front:

1. I love to stir the pot cause that's how we all learn, by pushing up against the boundaries of what people think to see how strong our beliefs are. It's the same reason my friend NakedJen walks around naked, partially cause it feels good and partially cause it gets people to think differently.

2. About open source and whether I have the standing to discuss it, I've made a huge contribution to open source with the 2004 release of Frontier under the GPL. I was releasing code long before the terms free software or open source existed. Even so, as you'll see, I don't believe in the boundaries, I think ideas should freely cross the boundaries, and they do.

Anyway, a few days ago I suggested that identi.ca and Disqus, two products that I admire, should be made to work with each other.

I suggested that a plug-in architecture could be designed for identi.ca that would allow developers to add modules without modifying identi.ca. They would cross server boundaries, my plug-in would run on my server, and would be linked into identi.ca via a URL.

It was suggested, I believe incorrectly, that because Disqus was not licensed under GPL that such integration can't happen. You can read the discussion on FriendFeed.

So if this is true, if it can't happen, why is it that I can point from FriendFeed to identi.ca and vice versa?

Further, why is it that I can call into identi.ca through their implementation of the Twitter API from any software I want to whether or not it is licensed under an open source or free software license?

This is where open source religion has always fallen down, and it was one of the reasons I promoted XML-RPC and SOAP, because I wanted to end the uberness of all operating systems and religions once and for all. Choice is what matters, and people should always be free to use whatever they want and to license their work on any basis they want, without coercion. It's cool to be generous, but giving stuff away with onerous conditions isn't particularly generous. And the web fights you on this, unless you want to completely wall yourself off from the rest of the world, the rest of the world is going to get in, whether you want them to or not.

I love identi.ca, and I love what Evan and his team are doing. I plan to support it as long as I'm breathing. I also like that it can be influenced by and has influence on stuff that lives elsewhere and works according to different rules. I also love that Twitter defined an open API that was waiting for identi.ca to adopt. I love where all this is going.

I hope this generates a stimulating and interesting and respectful discussion.

New HowTos

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:45:45 GMT

I've spent the last month working on a new release of the OPML Editor for Mac and Windows. The goal is to ship with an empty Tools folder, and make installing tools a point-click operation, as it always should have been. So far it's going really well.

As part of the process I'm rewriting the HowTos for the OPML Editor. They're starting to show up in Google, which is good. I'm going to point to them here as they are ready for review. There's a place to leave comments at the bottom of each of the documents.

Here's the first new howto, it explains how to edit subscription lists with the OPML Editor.