Scripting News for 3/22/2006

Can you come up with a creative caption for this picture? 

Wired: How France is saving civilization. Amen. 

Jon Udell explores Amazon’s S3 network storage system. 

And Matt Croydon is backing up his Flickr pics to S3. People ask why. Because it’s interop. It’s a blade of grass popping through the ground, certain to be followed by many more. The next blades will be more useful. 

David Berlind expands on the possible connection between OPML and wikis. 

Phil Jones found an XML-RPC interface for a wiki, not the MetaWeblog API, though. 

Steve Rubel notes that the Kremlin supports RSS. 

Sometimes, rarely, Valleywag has me in stitches. :-) 

Scott Rosenberg explains how he followed yesterday’s story of the Windows Vista delay, through Digg, the NY Times, Scripting News and Mini-Microsoft, and what this means for professional news organizations. The challenge for professional news organizations is to find a way to deliver all that through their web presence, with the trust and authority of their brand added to the breadth and instant responsiveness of citizen media. I’m ready to help news organizations make this transition, when they’re really ready to do it.  

News.com: Who Microsoft invites to a “conversation” 

Three years ago today: “Microsoft doesn’t really exist to give customers what they want, the harsh truth is that they exist to keep employing more Microsoft people.” 

Thoughts from Sunday’s CyberSalon 

I’m having lunch today with Sylvia to talk about Sunday’s CyberSalon. Here are some of my notes.

I sat in the front row, an unusual place for me to sit, but it allowed me to pass a note to John Markoff, technology reporter for the NY Times, who was one of the panelists. My note said “It doesn’t have to be adversarial.” He wrote a response, which wasn’t public, so I won’t include it here, but a productive discussion followed, and a handshake, and we’re having lunch next week in San Francisco.

If I had a chance to rewrite the note, I might have said — It mustn’t be adversarial, between us, because we already have a mutual adversary, the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, who would, if they could, completely disempower the press, and control the flow of information to the populace. Anyone who’s paying attention in 2006 needs to be concerned about this. I think our concern has morphed to ambivalence, because we all feel so powerless to do anything about it.

But what if we combined resources, saw ourselves as part of the same effort, with the same goal, to improve the flow of information to the citizens, to counter the negative efforts of the government. I have a sneaky feeling that money would start flowing again, while our attention was focused on our mission, and if we looked at each other, pro and amateur, less like adversaries, and more like allies.

I’ve given guest talks at two Markoff journalism classes, one at UC-Berkeley and one at Stanford. At the Stanford one we talked about coverage of City Hall, which he pointed out was a problem, as professional journalism was retracting, it was leaving civic politics uncovered. I may have pointed out, probably did, that the people can fill in and increase coverage of civic politics. I vaguely recall that Markoff was unconvinced. But as time has passed I’ve become more sure this is the answer, and that the respective role of professional and amateur is that of editor and reporter, teacher and student, coach and player. There is a relationship, but it’s a new one, and newness is always hard (but often fun).

We’re not going to get anywhere by calling each other wrong, there’s been finger-pointing both ways, and I’ve done it myself at times, and I’ve got to remind myself that it’s not constructive. The pros have often erred by being dismissive of the bloggers, but maybe we’re getting past that. They now tend to see the problem as economic — that Craig’s List is eating into their revenue. But there’s a balancing opportunity. Some, perhaps not many, of the people reading Craig’s List, share the passion for informaiton and democracy that a good idealistic reporter does, and will do it for love, not money. I believe the vast amount of editorial writing will be done for no money. This isn’t really new, after all, the publications don’t pay their sources — and that’s ultimately where the information comes from, right?

I envision an offsite, off the record, not for quoting or attribution, no grandstanding, no blogging, with five thoughtful reporters and five thoughtful bloggers. We set up in Big Sur for a week, go for hikes, sit around campfires, and do the bonding things that human resource consultants have Silicon Valley management teams do. During working hours our job is to figure out how we can help each other. I have no doubts that if we can relax and approach this creatively, we can solve a lot of problems that way, very quickly, because there’s a lot of potential locked up in the connection between amateur and professional media.

Scripting News for 3/21/2006

NY Times: “Microsoft’s said that its new Windows operating system would not be ready for consumer personal computers for the holiday sales season.” 

Mini-Microsoft: “Oy. Oy. Oy.” 

Fantastic piece in today’s SF Chron about the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. I thought the bridge was almost finished, but not nearly so. It won’t open until 2014, according to the plan, which doesn’t really exist, yet (even though construction is quite far along). The original plan called for the bridge to be completed by 2004, but politics interfered. But it wasn’t rational politics, about where the most resources go, it was about esthetics. A completely functional replacement for the not-quake-safe eastern span could have already been deployed, but the mayors of each of the cities wanted something ornamental that would look stunning and be famous world-wide, like the Golden Gate Bridge is, on the other side of SF. They also worried about how the ramps toward each of their cities would look. Oy. And you thought software industry politics was bad! (BTW, there was a small quake today in the East Bay, a reminder that there are important non-esthetic reasons to finish the new bridge.) 

Bruno Pedro has a tool that converts an OPML file into wiki-formattted text. 

Donald Knuth, famous comp sci prof and book author at Stanford, doesn’t have an email address, according to News.com. “You wake up, start answering email and the next thing you know it’s noon.” I know the feeling. He’s also the #1 Don on Google.  

Phil, thanks for listening, no sarcasm. :-) 

Scott Rosenberg: “Web 2.0 sometimes seems in imminent danger of collapsing in a heap of cutesiness, obscurity and alphabetical anarchy.” 

OPML to Wiki? 

How long will it be before there’s a wiki that supports the MetaWeblog API? A quick search on Google indicates that it might already have happened.

Anyway, send me a pointer to such a wiki, and I’ll try to get the OPML Editor working with it. If there are problems, I’ll document them, and when they’re fixed, I’ll try again.

There’s absolutely no reason that you shouldn’t be able to edit wiki-text using an outliner, and I bet it would be pretty useful.

Phil Jones part 2 

Another very interesting narrative about my software strategies by Phil Jones.

1. He’s figured some of it out, and he’s trying, and that I appreciate.

2. I’m not at war. I’m not trying to defeat the Semantic Web, and I like wikis. You’re not going to figure me out with warfare analogies, because

3. I only fight when people try to turn the clock back, because that’s the weakness of, the thing I hate most about the tech industry.

4. And he allows me enough pride so I can respond. Many of the people who comment about my work say I’m stupid, or a bad person, and I’m neither, and I won’t encourage such discourse by honoring it with a response. As soon as it gets personal, that’s when I walk out of the (virtual) room.

I wrote a longer piece last night, but that’s basically what it says.

A Microsoft-run blogging conf? 

It’s not surprising that Microsoft is doing some funny stuff with their RSS support.

I’m not at their blogging conference this week, but some honorable folk from the tech blogging community are. I wonder if they’re having a session on Fact-checking Your Ass.

Did you ever see the Sprint commercial with the guy sitting behind the desk in front of a top-floor skyscraper window, explaining how he’s using his cell phone to Stick It To The Man. His assistant, a Smithers type, says, But you are The Man. He responds, “I know.” So you’re sticking it to yourself? Big pause. Maybe.

In other words, there’s something weird and funny about a Microsoft-run blogging conference. There’s something not very blogging about it. Hmmm.

Back to Phil Jones

Another very interesting narrative about my software strategies by Phil Jones. Of course I have a number of comments.

Phil, I appreciate that you’re not making it about personalities, but you don’t understand that I’m not at war. I’m not trying to defeat the Semantic Web, and I like wikis. You’re not going to figure me out by fighting, because I only fight people who try to turn the clock back, because that’s the weakness of, the thing I hate about the tech industry.

But I’ll give you this much. You have figured some of it out, and you’re trying, and that I appreciate. And you allow me enough pride so I can respond to you. Most of the people who comment about my work say I’m stupid, or a bad person, and I’m neither, and I won’t encourage such discourse by honoring it with a response. Your piece is worth a response, and here it is…

It’s not about personalities

The people who make it about personalities are missing everything. It’s as if what was going on on a baseball field is a result of personalities. To some extent of course it is, but it’s also about how you swing a bat, catch and throw a ball, how good your eye is and how good your mind is. In software the quality of your thinking matters even more, in fact that’s all there is. And so many people miss the big picture, without even trying to see it. The notable thing about Phil, is that in a crowd of people who aren’t trying, he is. His reasoning ability isn’t remarkable, what is remarkable is that he cares enough to reason. And if you want to do that, you need to get your mind out of the schoolyard, and start thinking about the media revolution we’re in the middle of.

It’s not about formats

I don’t care if Atom gains strength, just as long as it doesn’t hold anything back or sacrifice any of the progress we’ve made. I said early-on that I would support Atom, and I have. I don’t want to fight over this so I don’t. Unfortunately some of the people involved want a fight, so they act as if one is hapening, and this confuses a lot of people. The tech industry, as I’ve written so many times, tends to throw out whole generations of work because of ignorance or jealousy. That’s what I’m against, if I’m against anything. If you try to figure out what I’m doing and remember that, about all that I’m willing to fight against is redoing things that already work, that don’t need redoing, because that is so often the knee-jerk reaction of this industry. I’ve seen whole careers wasted this way. We should all be fighting against that, imho.

I’m not trying to “win”

I’m not trying to win in the tech arena, certainly not in the sense that I’m trying to make anyone or anything or anyone lose. I’m interested in creating tools to manage information for people who have it. It’s the users that matter, Phil, not the techies. I think DMOZ and Yahoo’s directories are the wrong model, that this all needs to be opened up. There’s no single home page on the web, so why should there be a single home page for the global directory. Let a billion flowers bloom. May the best root win. May there be as many roots as there are points of view.

If the Semantic Web people were to create useful tools, I’d use them. I use HTML and HTTP, they’re wonderful. They were fully hatched before I heard of them. But when something doesn’t exist that I need, I don’t wait for someone else to do it, I do it myself, or if I can’t, I find out who can, and ask them to do it. So if I need news to flow through RSS, I have dinner with Martin Nisenholtz at the NY Times and ask him to flow his news through the network. If he won’t do it (he did of course) I would go to someone else. These days Microsoft is blowing me off. No problem. There are other tech companies. Eventually someone at Microsoft will get that they would do better working with me than against me, that a single guy can’t compete with a multinational corporation, and we’ll work together again, only this time we’ll go to the trouble to have a contract.

About Wikis, the other thing Phil got wrong, I’m pretty sure I understand them, and it won’t be long before OPML will be a form of content that wikis understand, both on input and output. If anyone wants to work on that, let’s start a project. Wikis already produce RSS, btw. There’s no conflict. You can’t defeat me by making content tools dammit, I think content tools are good!

Come on let’s stop fighting

Phil why are all your analogies about wars and fighting. I’m actually a creative person, always have been. Does someone who writes a book try to defeat anyone? I don’t think so. I think they want to express something. I want new tools to exist for people with knowledge to be able to share it with others and to build on other people’s knowledge. That’s how I express myself. It seems to me the only person who would want to stop that is someone who wants people to not share or have knowledge. What am I missing?

Anyway, I do appreciate what Phil is doing. Maybe we can have more discourse that isn’t about personalities, because none of the people who write about mine have any insight into it, and you aren’t going to figure me out that way. I’m actually pretty easy to figure out. I don’t hide what I’m doing, that’s also part of the formula (he doesn’t mention this). I’m a media guy who had to master technology because that was the only way to make it work.

Because people have gotten so good at lifting my ideas before I can finish building them, I’m going to go more stealth in the future. I’m not going to show my work until it’s ready to use. Then the people who want to fight with me will have to catch up, and in the time it takes to do that, I’ll be able to finish the thought, hopefully. Either that or I’ll just let you all do it yourself and I’ll go fishing or make pottery, or something.

But believe it or not, I think my life’s work is almost over, or about to enter a new phase, that’s quite different from the last directions. So maybe we’ll find out if there are any brilliant architects out there who have a vision that goes beyond OPML, RSS, outliners, blogging, podcasting, etc. I’d love to meet someone like that.

Scripting News for 3/20/2006

New features in the OPML Editor this morning. New commands in the right-click menu to add a feed (grazing), or, if experimental OPML 2.0 support is enabled, add an inclusion.  

Four years ago today UserLand announced we had made a deal with the New York Times that would allow users of our Radio aggregator to receive Times headlines, along with all the other blogs and pubs that were already supporting RSS. Here’s a screen shot showing Times headlines from 2002 in my aggregator. Imho this was the tipping moment for RSS, after this point its growth was a sure thing as the publishing industry followed the leadership of the Times. I wrote that day, “When we started syndicating Web content in 1997, I set a goal to get the Times headlines flowing though our space. Today, amazingly, that goal is accomplished. To me it’s a reminder that it’s worth setting lofty goals.” 

Scott Rosenberg on last night’s CyberSalon. 

Save the Merc? 

Dan Gillmor suggests that Yahoo might be the white knight to save the San Jose Mercury News.

I would support community involvement in saving the Mercury News, if the Mercury News would become a pioneer in community journalism. There are hundreds of thousands of potential journalists in the South Bay who could cover every school board, zoning commission, shareholder meeting. They could report on housing prices and gas prices, traffic patterns and other quality of life issues. How about helping us understand why mass transit doesn’t better serve the area. Integrate the South Bay universities, which include some of the best in the world, with the communities.

A newly configured Mercury News would include daily reports from sister publications in Bangalore and Shanghai.

This is how news will work in the 21st Century. The South Bay would become one of the best-served metro areas in the US, after being one of the worst. I don’t know very many people who feel fondness for the Mercury News. I lived in the their geography for 24 years, I never subscribed. I read the paper occasionally when I went out for breakfast, but I was raised on New York’s newspapers, and in comparison the Merc is strictly second tier, if that.

To get people excited enough to rally behind it, they’re going to have to do something exciting.

How to 

How to make money on the Internet v2.0: “If journalists won’t write from a users’ perspective, what’s to stop the users from becoming journalists?”

Scripting News for 3/19/2006

Photos from the Berkeley CyberSalon.  

AutoLink in a nutshell 

One year ago today: “Danny O’Brien, writing on an O’Reilly site rants at and about me, and my position on Google’s AutoLink. He quotes me saying things I’m quite sure I never said, and don’t agree with, and then proceeds to make fun of me for saying these things that I didn’t say, and he discredits the ideas behind the quotes, and not surprisingly he wins the argument — that he’s having with himself!”

“The irony is that the debate is about Google changing what people say.”

Who is Phil Jones? 

Phil Jones continues to impress.

In the comments on Hugh MacLeod’s blog post about me turning down god because I was too busy with RSS, he says: “Dave didn’t invent RSS. Nor does he claim to. Go listen to the NerdTV interview he did with Robert Cringely where he explicitly says he realized that (to paraphrase) the second mover ‘makes’ the standard, and so he threw away his own syndication format to support Netscape’s RSS.”

That’s true — and an important consideration that most people don’t seem to understand. In the world of standards the second-mover is the decision-maker, the first-mover is at the second guy’s mercy.

In the case of simple syndication formats, Netscape was the second mover, they blew off my earlier work. So I decided that I could either sulk about it, or do the powerful thing. Of course I did the powerful thing.

I added all the features of their format to mine, which they responded to (as I thought they would) by adding all the features of my format to theirs. At that point, I had what I wanted, I put a bullet in the head of my format, and made RSS my cause.

Invention here is hardly the issue. What matters is adoption and forward motion. The smart people in this space do what smart people do everywhere, they listen, think, learn and adapt, like Jones is doing. The idiots rule the roost though, it’s very hard to hear the intellect through all the honking and barking and ruckus that the idiots make. (Not talking about Hugh, his contribution is satire, and that’s always welcome. If you can’t laugh at yourself you break.)

Shane 

I watched Shane last night, rented from Netflix.

It’s really dated, kind of hard to watch because the acting is so bad, and the mid-20th century actors look so out of place in 19th-century Wyoming. But it was worth watching to understand what Nick Carr was saying about the place the blogosphere might be at.

Shane isn’t shallow like many westerns, it’s a faceoff between the old, the ranchers, who tamed a rugged and beautiful valley after the trappers fought off the Indians and laid traps for the beaver. The ranchers feel like the valley is theirs because they paid for it, many of them with their lives, and those that survived, with their youth. Along come the homesteaders, starting their pig farms and planting crops, fencing off the the pastures, and routing water to irrigate their fields so sometimes the rivers actually stop flowing. This is not fiction, this actually happened, the competing uses of land and water, and the argument about what god intended, continues to this day in the mountain west.

Shane, played by Alan Ladd, is a gunslinger for the farmers. The movie builds to a showdown with the hired gunslinger for the ranchers, played by a young Jack Palance. Ladd wins (of course, I’m giving nothing away) and the farmers take over, for now.

But when you drive around in this part of the country today you don’t see many farms, the land is too poor for farming and the summers too short. I think the ranchers eventually did win the argument, which kind of undermines the plot of Shane and the story that Nick Carr told.

After writing this, I re-read Carr’s piece, and it’s funnier than ever. Carr is a great writer and thinker. I hope to meet him some day and shake his hand.

State of the blogosphere 

The question of whether my retirement has any significance for the blogosphere is likely to come up tonight at the well-timed CyberSalon, with a variety of different panelists with a variety of views of the staying power and utility of the blogosphere.

Me, I’m tired, and I don’t enjoy being the the go-to guy for snarky folk who try to improve their page-rank by leading idiotic tirades about their supposed insights into my character. I want to enjoy the ability to plan and think before my would-be competitors have a chance to position themselves to grab the fruits of my labor. Too much transparency can be a hindrance, so I’m looking for less of that, and more fun, and more options.

Me, I’m thinking fiction might be fun. I’m thinking about dialog, and how a novel is a continuum, and a bunch of short stories hanging off a tree, and a few diversions to keep the reader on his or her toes. I’m thinking about the craft of writing in ways I’ve never done before.

I also see that much of what happens in the tech and publishing world happens “off-blog.” This week I had a bunch of meetings, in San Diego, Berkeley and San Francisco, none of which were blogged, by myself or the people I was meeting with. Did they care about the looney tunes world that the tech blogosphere has become? Not one bit.

At the two conferences I’ve participated in recently, Under the Radar and PC Forum, after a long absence from tech conferences (Gnomedex last summer was the previous one, and that was an exceptional event for me) that absence does make the heart grow fonder. So by taking a hike and working on my health and learning some new crafts, and working offstage more and more, I hope to evoke more fondness, smiles and hugs, and less lies, sneers and dishonesty.

If we’ve learned anything about humanity, is that it’s really good at closing ranks, filling gaps, and moving on. If a famous reporter were to retire, some young dude would come along and take his place, maybe three or four. In the competitive landscape that comes after a big tree falls, comes fresh thinking, as I hope to bring fresh perspectives to my next pursuits. And freshness is good.

For me, writing here is becoming stale, I’m energized by the idea of new frontiers, new holes to dig and then fill in and dig again.

Scripting News for 3/18/2006

Reminder: CyberSalon, tomorrow, in Berkeley.  

Chris Pirillo: “Just as a Web browser interprets HTML, there will be a new range of products — both Web-based and on your desktop — that will support and parse this strange new OPML thingy for you.” 

0xDECAFBAD: “Why don’t we have a Xanadu web run on Lisp serving up perfect, crystalline RDF?” 

Dowbrigade reports on a new Internet scam that involves cashing counterfeit checks. 

David Gewirtz: “Spam is certainly a problem, and email whitelists are certainly appealing. But while you might be perfectly happy telling your email client that your mom’s on your whitelist, you’re likely to be far less happy about having your ISP decide that Verizon or Caesar’s Palace is trustworthy, but, because she didn’t pay protection money, your mom isn’t.” 

Movie: Train pulling into BART station. 

Last year on this day: Surfers in a roiling Atlantic. 

Three years ago: “I’ve arrived in Cambridge. Rarin to go!” 

The Web Innovators Group of Boston will meet on Monday at the Hotel at MIT. 

Eirepreneur defines a “feed grazer” as an “OPML browser and an RSS reader in one.” Just FYI, the directory browser that’s built into the OPML Community Server has this feature. 

The next header graphic. I can’t wait to use this pic cribbed from a picture of the beach in Florida, but I have to let the railroad crossing run for a few more days. 

Tom Morris: “I’m surprised that nobody has done anything Web 2.0-ish with the humble discussion forum.” 

TechCrunch will have an awards party, mid-year, too big for Mike’s house. Amen to that. How about Candlestick? Okay, seriously, there’s a new Four Seasons in Palo Alto. Spicy Noodles for 10,000. :-) 

Ben Barren may win the award for best list of possible (funny) TechCrunch awards.  

I am an animated inventor. 

 

Scripting News for 3/17/2006

Phil Jones: “The entire history of computer science can be interpretted as one long war between pragmatic tool builders and idealistic format / process builders.” 

Mike Arrington notes that the NY Times is linking to the discussion on Scripting News from Esther’s op-ed piece. That’s pretty coooool! 

People who doubt that thoughtful discourse is possible in the blogosphere, need only look at the discussion here about Goodmail. In just a few hours we’ve heard why Goodmail is not the solution to the spam problem. That is, unless someone who believes in Goodmail can explain why it’s anything more but a new way for Goodmail, Inc and their partners (AOL and Yahoo) to make money. 

ComputerWorld: New Orleans’ Wi-Fi network now a lifeline. 

Mary Hodder: 400 skydivers in tandem. 

I’ve been emailing with David Berlind who is in the hospital recovering from back surgery yesterday, apparently it was successful and he’s getting better. Best wishes to David and his family.  

I missed this bit about a speech given by retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, warning of “dictatorship” in the United States. It was mentioned at the end of the first hour of the Diane Rehm show this morning.  

Dan MacTough: “The buzz-o-meter on OPML browsers is off the charts right now.” 

New header graphic. A railroad crossing in northwest Wisconsin, photographed on 8/29/04. 

Dave Johnson experiments with the Microsoft Feeds API, and finds they’ve made some unusual choices, which may not be good for interop. The solution of course is to parse the XML yourself, and it’s definitely not too late for the community to provide the equivalent of the Microsoft toolkit, if perhaps the community can discuss such a thing without flaming out.  

Looking for Mr Goodmail 

Esther Dyson has an op-ed in today’s NY Times about Goodmail. We discussed this in a roundtable at her conference earlier this week. Not quite an unconference, but some ideas were exchanged, in a relatively relaxed way. At one point I got the mike and asked if anyone could give an argument against Goodmail — no one did. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but what are they? BTW, I think Esther’s piece is right-on.

Daniel Dreymann, co-founder of Goodmail, checks in. “Most leading vendors have already signed up with Goodmail to make it a standard feature on their MTAs.”

I asked if they have filed for or received patents. Dreymann said: “We do have intellectual property here but we provide software libraries for implementing the sending side and libraries for the receiving side — all free of charge to interested MTA implementers.” Sounds like they do have patents. Okay, that’s a reason it might not work.

MTA is an acronym for Mail Transfer Agent.

Scripting News for 3/17/2006

Dave Johnson experiments with the Microsoft Feeds API, and finds they’ve made some unusual choices, which may not be good for interop.  

Esther Dyson has an op-ed in today’s NY Times about Goodmail. We discussed this in a roundtable at Esther’s conference earlier this week. Not quite an unconference, but some ideas were exchanged, in a relatively relaxed way. At one point I got the mike and asked if anyone could give an argument against Goodmail — no one did. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but what are they? BTW, I think Esther’s piece is right-on. 

Scripting News for 3/17/2006

Esther Dyson has an op-ed in today’s NY Times about Goodmail. We discussed this in a roundtable at Esther’s conference earlier this week. Not quite an unconference, but some ideas were exchanged, in a relatively relaxed way. At one point I got the mike and asked if anyone could give an argument against Goodmail — no one did. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but what are they? BTW, I think Esther’s piece is right-on. 

Scripting News for 3/17/2006

Mike Arrington notes that the NY Times is linking to the discussion on Scripting News from Esther’s op-ed piece. That’s pretty coooool! 

People who doubt that thoughtful discourse is possible in the blogosphere, need only look at the discussion here about Goodmail. In just a few hours we’ve heard why Goodmail is not the solution to the spam problem. That is, unless someone who believes in Goodmail can explain why it’s anything more but a new way for Goodmail, Inc and their partners (AOL and Yahoo) to make money. 

ComputerWorld: New Orleans’ Wi-Fi network now a lifeline. 

I’ve been emailing with David Berlind who is in the hospital recovering from back surgery yesterday, apparently it was successful and he’s getting better. Best wishes to David and his family.  

I missed this bit about a speech given by retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, warning of “dictatorship” in the United States. It was mentioned at the end of the first hour of the Diane Rehm show this morning.  

Dan MacTough: “The buzz-o-meter on OPML browsers is off the charts right now.” 

New header graphic. A railroad crossing in northwest Wisconsin, photographed on 8/29/04. 

Dave Johnson experiments with the Microsoft Feeds API, and finds they’ve made some unusual choices, which may not be good for interop. The solution of course is to parse the XML yourself, and it’s definitely not too late for the community to provide the equivalent of the Microsoft toolkit, if perhaps the community can discuss such a thing without flaming out.  

Looking for Mr Goodmail 

Esther Dyson has an op-ed in today’s NY Times about Goodmail. We discussed this in a roundtable at her conference earlier this week. Not quite an unconference, but some ideas were exchanged, in a relatively relaxed way. At one point I got the mike and asked if anyone could give an argument against Goodmail — no one did. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but what are they? BTW, I think Esther’s piece is right-on.

Daniel Dreymann, co-founder of Goodmail, checks in. “Most leading vendors have already signed up with Goodmail to make it a standard feature on their MTAs.”

I asked if they have filed for or received patents. Dreymann said: “We do have intellectual property here but we provide software libraries for implementing the sending side and libraries for the receiving side — all free of charge to interested MTA implementers.” Sounds like they do have patents. Okay, that’s a reason it might not work.

MTA is an acronym for Mail Transfer Agent.