Random questions for the day

Friday, February 22, 2008 by Dave Winer.

My mind is buzzing with lots of interesting little projects/ideas. 

1. I want to find a way to flow some of my Twitter updates to Scripting News, into a Today's Links section, or Random Questions for the day (like the post you're reading right now). Here's an example. I'm using the exclamation point to delimit an update that I want to appear over here. Maybe that's not the right special character. Equal sign? Slash? Backslash?  

Update: Sol Young has been thinking about this too. 

2. Do people use AppleScript these days? I honestly don't know. I'm thinking of making a tool to run in the OPML Editor that calls one of your scripts when a new Twit from someone you follow comes in. The script would be in a special folder on your desktop and could be written in AppleScript. It seems to me people want to script Twitter, and I know how to make it easy. Not sure if AppleScript is the way to go in 2008. 

3. Scoble is really into the BlogTalkRadio zero-config podcast tool. That's so cool. Scoble is a useful guy to have around. Want to know what a user thinks or likes? Ask Scoble.  

4. I went to see There Will Be Blood today. I had to see it cause everyone says it's going to win a boatload of Oscars on Sunday. I liked it. Great acting. Not exactly a feel-good movie, but that's okay. Adults like movies that aren't necessarily feel good. (But I still think Juno is the best movie of 2007, and I'm a big fan of Michael Clayton.) 

5. The talking heads on cable news don't get the point in yesterday's USA 2.0 post. The Dems should be aiming at running the table, taking solid majorities in both houses and a mandate-level plurality for President Obama, an LBJ-level landslide. We need a government, not more bullshit. The Republics need to move over for four to eight years so we can resume our position of leadership in the world, the new world, not the old one. The one where our workers have to compete for the business. We used to get all the business by default. That's not the world we live in anymore folks. The Republics don't get that.  

6. Most people seem to be missing the substance in NY Times story about McCain and the lobbyist. It's not really a scandal, what happened is that the lobbyist was going around telling people she had special access to McCain, which seemed to be substantiated because she was seen around town with McCain a lot. Whether they were having sex or not is a distraction. That his aides met with her and told her to stop saying she had access was perfectly natural and appropriate. It happens in Silicon Valley too.