Scripting News for 6/19/2006

Scion billboard in NY: “So wrong for so many.” 🙂 

Jay Rosen: “All sites become equidistant from the reader.” 

Johnny Carson via Doc Searls: “Don’t bother getting married, just find someone you hate and buy them a house.” 🙂 

Jon Udell picks “user generated content” as the most offensive buzzword.  

Jeff Veen: “The mob mentality of the blogosphere turned it’s wrath on Tim O’Reilly for taking a vacation…” 

Just drop the B 

A few years back I wrote that the P in P2P is people.

It got widely quoted, by O’Reilly even.

Now we need to hack and mash again, to put the focus back where it belongs because it has wandered, again.

Web 2.0 is wrong because it’s about technology, and the importance of the tools are that they empower people.

Luckily, it’s easy to fix, just drop the B and it makes sense again.

Morning BloggerCon Notes 

Paolo is on his way from Italia! And thus begins reporting on those traveling from far away to be with us this week. Paolo is just the first. Meanwhile, our to-do-list overfloweth. I’m way behind on lots of things including the software Doc will use to take notes while we have our informative and respectful user-focused discussions. I think we’re going to buy lunch on both days. Probably nothing too extravagant, but there are lots of great restaurants nearby, even on Saturday. We think we have the webcasting nailed. First, John Furrier at PodTech volunteered to pay the $8K, for which we were very very grateful, but it turns out we don’t need it, we found another way that’s free. I’ll tell you more about it as we get closer. We’re going to do some live webcasts on Wednesday and Thursday to check it out. So if you haven’t been getting your fill of Morning Coffee Notes, we should make up for that, amply, this week.

Dreams 

Steve Gillmor writes about his dreams. Renee Blodgett writes of dream catchers. I had a funny dream myself. Sitting in a crowded movie theater, probably in NY, someone’s cell phone rings, and the fcuker not only answers it, but he starts a conversation, in full voice. An usher, who for some reason was seated in the audience, gets up, grabs the phone, and walks out of the theater, with the guy following. Somehow I know who the usher is, it’s Saddam Hussein! I wonder if the guy knows who he’s about to get into an argument with. The crazy thing is that in this dream, Saddam is a smiling, friendly old guy, with a nicely trimmed beard, wearing a clean well-pressed usher’s uniform. I guess everyone needs a job, and what’s he going to do now that he’s been deposed by President Bush and Karl Rove with his fat backside. 🙂

Feeds Of Evil 

I decided it’s time to unsub from feeds that have those annoying little web bug graphics in each item, masquerading as “useful” stuff — they’re really there to send messages back to the publisher that the item was displayed in my browser.

This means that every time I read the newest stuff, my machine sends hundreds of stupid messages to ComputerWorld, Fast Company, WNYC, USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor and other sites with these bugs.

Enough. I’m on a campaign to eradicate these Feeds Of Evil from my subscription list.

PS: Ze Frank’s feed, whose show I love, has these stupid bugs in it too, so goodbye my dear friend, I’ll have to get my knowledge by hand. Maybe I have to think for myself now.

PPS: I got an email from Erik Gavriluk and from Ze Frank himself. They showed me how to work around the problems with the web bugs, and gave me a pointer to a feed with enclosures (the one I was reading didn’t have them) so now I’m happy! My podcatcher is busily downloading the episodes I missed, and will automatically copy them to my video iPod so I can watch them on the subway. Awesome.

Karl Rove’s big fat backside 

NY Times: “Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam War veteran, on Sunday mocked Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, for championing the war while ‘sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside.'”