Scripting News for 8/1/2006

Marshall Kirkpatrick has the scoop on a new RSS namespace proposed by Bloglines that would limit access by search engines to the contents of a feed. Seems a bit early to be saying it’s a standard, better to let people look it over and comment, imho. 

New header graphic. BlogHers nerding out during Friday’s keynote lunch. They’re definitely prettier than we are, but when it comes to our laptops, and our attention, we’re apparently not all that different. :-) 

According to Amyloo, I’m taking heat for my comments here about BlogHer. While I haven’t seen very many, it’s not really a surprise. 

Speaking of heat, the projected high in NYC today is 101. 

The first few days I hated my Blackberry and I just wanted my el cheapo Nokia back, but now I’m hooked. The big deal was getting it all wired into my email, now I can check mail while I’m in line at Andronico’s. Not too bad to have the web right there too, but I haven’t yet got that all set up. It takes a while to get the hang of the funky little keyboard, but every email comes with your excuse automatically inserted at the end. “Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless.” And my mother loves me, even if you don’t. :-) 

Outliners and hierarchic thinking 

Scott Rosenberg responds to a rant that outliners are considered harmful because they force hierarchic thinking.

I’ve spent most of my adult life thinking about this, at least part-time, and with all due respect, the people who are criticizing outliners have vastly over-simplified them.

Think of an outliner as text-on-rails. It does exactly the opposite from forcing you to live with a hierarchy. It allows you to edit the hierarchy.

The equivalent criticism of unstructured text would be to say word processors are harmful because printing forces a rigidity to thinking, but the power of a word processor is that it doesn’t force your ideas on to paper, it makes revision easy, and that has led to many variants from email to blogs and wikis. All were descended from the word processor, which was originally designed (misguidedly imho) to put words on paper.

I am one of the major proponents of outlining, along with Doug Engelbart, and I never imagined an outliner that forced you into a hierarchic box. For me, the puzzle wasn’t solved until the hierarchy was perfectly malleable. We reached that milestone, again imho, a long time ago, in the mid-late 80s, with MORE, and since then, text-on-rails has been a solved problem. Now the trick is to introduce the idea more broadly. That’s still waiting to happen.

My entry in this cause is the OPML Editor, which is open source, GPL, and is also a powerful text programming environment and content management tool, following in the tradition of previous programmable text tools, like Emacs on Unix.

Measuring success 

Shelley Powers said recently that I would never point to her, while observing that I had pointed to her in the past almost as often as I had pointed to Scoble. I point to her when she says something worth thinking about, which is often, but only those that don’t contain personal attacks.

Today, in a long piece about BlogHer, she said something that not only is worth thought, but which I wholeheartedly agree, and was wanting to say at the Politics panel, where they started the old tired male-bash that we don’t point to women often enough and that’s the cause of their suppression (which I don’t buy and for the most part neither did they).

Here’s what Shelley said. “If we, women and men both, follow a path where the only measure of success is the number of ads at our site, the links we have, the money we make, then the only power we’re exercising is that of consumer-catered to, perhaps; but essentially meaningless.”

Israel is wrong 

I know I’m going to catch hell for this, but it’s time to say something. Israel is wrong. There aren’t two sides to this anymore. I’ve heard all I want to hear from Israel. It’s time to stop the attack on Hezbollah, withdraw back into Israel, stop firing bombs into Lebanon, and shut up for a while and let everyone else sort this out. It’s not just Israel’s problem. There are hundreds of millions of lives at stake in the Middle East, and this time not only has an Arab country, and that’s what Hezbollah is, withstood Israel’s attack, but they’re also clearly justified in their response to the Israeli attack.

Hezbollah has every right to have defenses against Israel. If I’m not mistaken, Hezbollah didn’t start firing rockets into Israel until they were attacked by Israel. Okay, they took two Israeli soldiers hostage. And now Israel has killed hundreds of Lebanese, destroyed large parts of the country and its infrastructure. It’s enough already. Even a Jew like myself sees how wrong the Israeli position is.

Maybe there’s a silver lining here, maybe Hezbollah, having won not only a military victory, but also a political victory, maybe they can see their weapons as defensive, if not now, maybe soon. Especially if the western powers help get Israel to stop attacking.

Look, I’m not a diplomat, I don’t speak for a country, I’m just telling you what I think. I don’t expect a thoughtful response, but enough is enough, it’s time to say something.

Note: This post appeared last night, but shortly after posting it, the flames started and I decided to pull it. Then I got an email from an Israeli saying it was good I realized it was wrong and pulled it. So I put it back up. For me the turning point was listening to the Israeli ambassador to the UN blame the killing of 50 Lebanese civillians, many of them women and children, on Hezbollah, even though they were killed by an Israeli bomb. Had the tables been turned, had it been 50 Israelis, I can’t imagine Israeli logic concluding that they themselves were to blame for the deaths. Israel is not just defending itself, we are defending Israel. Without our army, our arsenal, our economy, Israel would not exist. They have an impossible problem, true enough, but they’re not the only ones anymore, and they’re just 3 million people. I don’t understand where they get their support. I’m an American Jew, first-generation, child of refugees. If anyone would support Israel, it would be me, but I don’t. This war has to stop now.

Scripting News for 7/31/2006

Christine Herron: Making Room for Men at BlogHer. 

The sparks start to fly over at Frank Paynter’s. Hard to find a quote to pull, but he’s saying publicly what a lot of people were saying privately, or in a veiled way (see below). Mena Trott is a former competitor of mine, so I avoided saying things specifically about her pitches, but I imagine Matt Mullenweg, who was in the audience at the time, might have felt it was unfair for her to sell TypePad, when his product is equally commendable. This is very common in tech conferences, and one of the best reasons to keep product pitches off the stage. 

Early August travel plans. Mid-day tomorrow I leave for NYC, spend Wed and most of Thu in Gotham, and then on to Cambridge for Wikimania, and then Mon back to Berkeley. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the heat wave we were suffering in California will make it to NYC about the same time I do. With the added bonus of east coast humidity! So, where it’s a nice cool 65 degrees in Berkeley, with no humidity, I’m going to be travelling cross country just so I can sweat like a pig. Oink oink. 

Three years ago: Chris Lydon’s weblog for the ears. 

Rocketboom has a new sponsor.  

Post-BlogHer thoughts 

These are some random notes on the day after BlogHer. They’re in no special order, and conclusions are scattered all through the narrative, organized thoughts will come later, maybe much later.

BlogHer this weekend created a lifetime of memories. Women are different from men, here I am at age 51, and I’ve still got more to learn. They come in all ages, shapes and sizes and they came from all over the world.

Women are generally more supportive of each other than men are, and they’re surprised to hear this, although I’ve known that for a long time (and wrote about it). They still think there’s a secret club of men, some sort of handshake that we use help each other rise to the top and run the world. Oh man. If only.

More and more I learn that point of view means everything, and you can never understand what someone else sees without asking. I saw this in myself, and in the women.

Now I want a gender-neutral version of BlogHer. I want men like myself to have a place to do what they do at BlogHer. BloggerCon is not quite that, esp for the last two which have been on the west coast. Both are user conferences, but they don’t have to fight so hard for that at BlogHer. A lot of people who come to BloggerCon still think it’s an industry event. That creates disharmony. There’s a difference between an insider’s conference, and an inclusive one. There’s no way to have a blogger’s conference that isn’t a user’s conference too, imho.

The commercialism that bothered some wasn’t in my way. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t tone it down next time, they should. Sponsors should not be on stage giving pitches. It sets the wrong tone, and excuses speakers for doing the same. I was embarassed for some of the speakers who did the usual thing, told stories to set up product pitches. That leaves you with a slimy feeling, mostly about them at a conference like this, where the idealism was the current driving the people. At tech events it’s different, where cynicism is the undercurrent.

I think it was Scoble who said he wished college had been like this. Amen. The ratio was great, probably 20-to-1 women to men. And these weren’t ordinary women. They were (as Ze likes to say) hard chargers. I was really impressed with Dina, the tsunami blogger from India, what character, what a force of nature, what an intellect. I was saying that out loud and one of the Hers turned around and with one look said “Hey that’s what this place is about.”

Some adjectives: They were good-natured, friendly, flirty, exceptionally beautiful, smiling, and glad to see guys like me there.

They are beautiful babes, but not like like booth bimbos, more like Thelma and Louise. So you got a great ratio, and they’re smart and driven, but that’s not all — they’re also bloggers! Which means I don’t have to explain what blogging is. One of the speakers said that since she started blogging her friends don’t ask how she is, they already know. Of course I’ve had that experience many times myself, but in this context, many of the people I talked to were readers, who understood what I have been writing in ways that my male readers generally don’t. So they not only know how I am, but they have an idea of who I am too.

Okay, so the hotel sucked, and there was too much commercialism, and my feet hurt, but who could notice all that, when the enviroment is all that incredible female energy. It was totally inspiring, and I don’t think they’ll mind my saying, totally sexy. If there is a heaven, I hope this is what it’s like.

And then there’s Grace Davis. At a convention of hard-charging alpha females, she stands out, in so many ways, and we have much in common, as much as we are opposites. First, we’re both 51, and basically happy with it. We talked about that. We’re both from the Bay Area, but from opposite ends, she from Santa Cruz and me from Berkeley. But then the politics of both places are more or less the same, wacked out left coast political hippie. She worked to save New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, and I went down to have a look post-Katrina. Neither of our work is done, but I have a strong feeling that the connection betw Grace and myself is going to create a path that lots of men and lots of women go down, working together, to make the world a happier, more fair and better-running place.

I could keep going. I’d like to write a paragraph about Ponzi, and Betsy, Zadi, Amanda, Maryam, Jory, Lisa, Elisa, Marra — and the men of BlogHer, who may be the happiest men on the planet. (And a callout to Guy Kawasaki, an old friend I had not seen in many years. Now that we’re neighbors again, let’s not be strangers.)

Scripting News for 7/30/2006

Donavan Watts: “A thief entered the house I was house-sitting for a friend in San Francisco last night. As I slept, the thief took my laptop, backpack, iPod, Pocket PC mobile phone, wallet, and faith in humanity. Save for me and my vehicles, Daisy and Niko, the entire Go! Team was wiped out in one fell swoop.” A PayPal button might help restore your faith. Also, I made a snapshot of your folder on the OPML server, so you did not lose your website content. Let me know when you want a Zip file and where to send it. 

JOHO: Ten reasons vacations are worse than real life. 

Scripting News for 7/29/2006

Schedule for Day 2 of BlogHer. 

Lizz Dunn of Technorati shows off before lunch. 

Elisa Camahort: “Blogging is the gateway drug of technology.” 

Betsy Devine: “I love this conference.” 

Amyloo tutorial on distributed OPML directories. 

familyoralhistory.us “explores how to use digital tools and media to record and preserve spoken memories of family members.” 

Tom Morris: “From OPML seeds, big, bushy buds of OPML can flower.” 

NY Times: “What if, instead of burning up minutes on your cellphone plan, you could make free or cheap calls over the wireless networks that allow Internet access in many coffee shops, airports and homes?” 

Rex Hammock celebrates Doc Searls birthday. To which I add, glad you’re still alive Doc. And glad we are contemporaries.  

If you create a new account on box.net you’ll get a folder of electronic schwag from BlogHer. 

Amyloo: “Aggregators ought to accept URLs of OPML files.” 

11/2/95: “Our new cave needs curtains and party favors.” 

Notes from last night’s party 

I had a wonderful time tonight. Met so many wonderful people, most of them women. Lot’s of bonding. No bad vibes, not even a teeny bit. I loved all the attention.

Maryam Scoble: “There are rooms full of beautiful, smart and smiling women here at Blogher.”

It’s so true Maryam. For example, when I had trouble getting online yesterday, it was Zadi Diaz who helped me figure out what was wrong. Man, I think I must have died and went to heaven.

A great picture of Steve Garfield, Amanda Congdon and Zadi Diaz taken last night.

Scripting News for 7/28/2006

Grainy movie of videoblogging session at BlogHer.  

Ryanne Hodson loves blip.tv. I just signed up and uploaded the grainy movie from this session. 

Ze Frank on profiteering by YouTube and other Web 2.0 companies. If you’re investing in “business models” that assume that “users” who “generate content” are going to remain naive forever, you might want to listen to Ze on this subject.  

Movie from lunch keynote at BlogHer. 

Photo: BlogHer chicks nerding out during an informative talk about RSS and accessibility.  

Photo: BlogHer chicks nerding out during lunch keynote panel.  

Marc Canter engages in dialog with the speakers. I have a rule, no questions or comments from Dave. I’m here as a guest, as an observer. Marc doesn’t have such a rule, leading to an outrageously funny exchange, that cracked me (and no one else) up. 

12:30PM — The net connection here has been really flaky. A couple of really good sessions, and until the lunch keynote panel, very informative and not much self-promotion.  

Movie from a first-day session.  

I was having trouble getting online, and a bunch of people offered help. It must have appeared to be an interesting scene, here’s the poor helpless male geek being assisted by a bunch of beautiful babes. We did get it working.  

Checking in live from Blogher. Everyone’s been very nice, lots of kissing and hugging. Total affection overload here. I’m just an observer so far, it’s very relaxing.  

They’re conspiicuously inclusive of men, it’s probably not a big deal for them, but it is for me.  

It’s also a fairly racially mixed group, much more so than the usual tech conference.  

Phil Hollows has an RSS-to-email service called FeedBlitz, think of it as an aggregator that delivers new stuff in email messages. Good idea. Now here’s something really interesting — his service supports OPML reading lists. He wants a public place for OPML file hosting. I’m sure we can figure something out. :-) 

Ted Leonsis: “The Long Tail theory says that every deal has value and that lots of singles aggregate up to more than one home run.” Interesting way of looking at it. That’s also the theory of MoneyBall. 

New directory: C-SPAN podcasts. 

Thanks Tom, for doing the C-SPAN podcasts directory, and embracing the small-is-beautiful approach. Little morsels of directory-ness make lots of things possible, and increase the likelihood of a thousand flowers blooming. 

According to PaidContent, the bit, below, about Azureus getting funded is news.  

Schedule for Day 1 at BlogHer. I already feel weird being here. Lots of shrieking and giggling in the hotel lobby while I was waiting to check in. What a weird place. First thought, I feel as out of place here as women probably feel at most tech conferences. I have to remind myself that it’s not dangerous here. I think. :-) 

Remember Dixie podcast experiment? 

Had an enjoyable dinner this evening in downtown Palo Alto. Walking back to the car after dinner I noticed a hand-written sign on an office door. It said Azureus. Apparently there’s a company behind the software? Yup. They’ve raised VC. Now there’s someone to tell me why Azureus doesn’t work on my Intel Mac.. 

Don Park has run into an enjoyable podcast that he wants to share.  

Marc Canter at BlogHer 

Marc: What’s the difference between a widget, a plug-in and an add-on?

Moderator: It’s really just semantics.

Marc: Does that have something to do with The Semantic Web?

Another Marc Canter story 

A beautiful blonde congratulates me, while I’m sitting with my sister-in-law, on the success of PeopleAggregator.

We look at each other: “She thinks you’re Marc Canter.”

Someday I’ll wake from a bad dream, relieved to find that I am not Marc Canter, and this is exactly how I’ll feel.

Scripting News for 7/27/2006

A movie snapshot of Steve Wozniak at AlwaysOn. 

A movie snapshot of Paul Saffo’s panel at AlwaysOn.  

Amyloo is maintaining a reading list of bloggers blogging BlogHer. 

Here’s a movie of a panel. It’s been so long since I’ve sat through one of these things. I keep thinking of things I’d like to add, or questions I’d like to hear them address. No way to do that. Basically they’re all ads for companies. I assume they pay for the right to be part of the panel.  

Checking in live from AlwaysOn in Palo Alto. I was able to talk my way in w/o paying the money. Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm is talking now. The guy talks in a drone, and he’s going to be on for 1/2 hour. Oy I can tell this is going to be hard work. The wifi here is awesomely fastttt. I uploaded the 2.9MB movie in a few seconds.  

They project the IRC discussion on the screen. It’s off on the side, no one is watching it. 

From yesterday’s Rocketboom, catsthatlooklikehitler.com. 

New header graphic. Milvia St in Berkeley. 

Nathan Myhrvold 

Podcast directory update 

I spent the first few days of the week working on static rendering for the podcast directory, and I almost had it done when I found a performance bug in the dynamic version, and now its running very smoothly, and I don’t need the static rendering. Why does it always work this way?

So now I’m ready for the next step. Remember, I want to go slow on the organization of the directory, and make decisions I’m reasonably confident in, because the cost of making a bad decision is either: 1. Living with it, or 2. Linkrot.

I’m confident that a separate top-level section for mainstream media podcasts is a good idea. A bunch of news organizations are putting real effort in creating useful news, science, business and lifestyle podcasts.

There also appears to be a strong interest in geographic-based sub-directories, although I personally don’t share the interest. Maybe at a micro level, it might be interesting to have a list of podcasts actively produced in, and about a smallish city, like Berkeley for example, because it could foster a community, provide a backbone for meetups. Or it could go the other way, it could be an activity for a group that already exists. An OPML directory of Berkman Center podcasts would be interesting. But a directory of podcasts from Holland or Canada, two hugely large and diverse places, seems an exercise without much purpose. However, because there is significant support for geography-based lists, I made a second top-level section for them.

I left copies in the New Branches section because I’ve added redirects. For example, if you click on the old link to CNN podcasts, it takes you to the new location. And the redirect nodes, while they are in the OPML, are not displayed in the directory rendering. (This is obviously technical stuff, mentioned here for people who are following OPML technology. I’ll have to write this up in more detail, later.)

Also I see a little bit of commercialism in the directories. I’m not going to point to anyone, because I think it’s innocent, but it’s gotta go. If you find yourself wanting to promote one of your own sites in your directory, don’t do it. I’m going to wait a few days, hopefully the commercialism will go away, if not, the directories that are doing it will be removed.

Let’s fork now and stay friends 

As you might imagine this has spawned a vigorous discussion on the podcast-directory mail list. The usual stuff, which will get resolved, imho, the usual way — by forking.

So let’s fork now and stay friends.

The only way to have fun is to have lots of ways of organizing podcasts. In the early days of blogging, when I said that there would be a millions blogs, there were a lot of snickers. It was an audacious idea, but today there are millions. (I actually said billions, not millions.)

There will be millions of lists of favorite podcasts, organized in all the ways you can imagine. There’s no point arguing about how The One True Podcast Directory For All Time will be organized, because it’s something that can’t last more than a nano-second before it gets forked.

So let’s fork now and stay friends.

Scripting News for 7/26/2006

Here’s the Rexblog’s first-ever Web 2.0 scoop. 

Kevin Burton suggests that Digg embrace RSS. Seems like a no-brainer to me. :-) 

Frank Barnako: Million-dollar podcasting. Hmmm. 

BetterBadNews asks if videoblogging is art. 

Digg’s Kevin Rose responds to Jason Calacanis, but doesn’t really respond. Jason raises a good question. No doubt Kevin is going to make something like $20 or $30 million when he sells Digg, which seems a pretty likely outcome. What will the users get? It’s a bit awkward for him to claim they do it for love if he himself doesn’t do it for love. As always Silicon Valley breeds hubris, that’s what Calacanis is taking advantage of, and doing it skillfully and without shame. If a lot of people didn’t agree with him he wouldn’t get away with it (Calacanis, that is). 

Mike Arrington is also a Daylife investor. 

I was trying to explain to a friend how much smarter we were when we were kids before we learned so much. I’m not kidding. An example. Ask an adult how hard it is to not smoke. Most likely they will say that it’s very hard. But ask a kid, and they’ll tell you it’s easy, you just don’t do it. See how much sense that makes, but to the adult mind it’s a mystery. Which is more work, smoking or not smoking? Obviously smoking is more work. You have to take a cigarette out of a pack, pick up a lighter, ignite the lighter, ignite the cigarette, take a puff, take another, tap off the ash (after you find an ashtray), take more puffs, then put it out. Compare that to the act of not smoking. You just sit there, and you don’t have to do any of that. You can just sit there and do nothing and you’re not smoking. It’s so simple a kid understands it, and so simple an adult doesn’t.  

I wrote something about this four years ago today after 42 days of not smoking. It’s four years later and my record is still perfect. No cigarettes. Easy! 

100 years ago 

Here’s a picture taken over a hundred years ago. Every person in the picture is dead. The person who took the picture is dead. Almost every person who was alive then is dead now. But there they are looking out at you through my weblog. What a strange thing. I wonder what devices a picture of my face will look out from 100 years from now.

Do you know that in Silicon Valley they have parties where someone says to the host that if they invite Dave Winer they won’t come. What do you think the people in the picture think about that! Do you think anyone will care 100 years from now?

Scripting News for 7/25/2006

How to edit an outline for the podcast directory. 

Mark Chernesky is absolutely right about the NY Times podcasts, they are poorly titled, and that makes it really hard to figure out what you’re getting when you look at the files that show up on your computer. Many of the feeds don’t have titles (Arrrrk!) so they end up in the Untitled feeds folder along with all kinds of eastern European podcasts (just kidding, I have no idea where they’re from). Because it’s the Times I’m willing to work a little harder, but it would be great to get their feeds properly annotated so what shows up on my hard drive makes sense.  

Robert Safuto is tracking all the OPML files that are announced on the podcast-directory mail list. Think of this as a staging area inside the staging area, a place where we get to see how things are shaping up before deciding on new categories. There’s nothing more disappointing than a section of an outline with a single sub-head.  

I haven’t written about Jay Rosen’s announcement because I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve read his description, and writeups by lots of senior bloggers. His project is an idea, it’s still got to boot up, and I’m not sure how that happens. Of course because it’s Jay Rosen, who I admire (and I’m hardly alone in that) I’ll watch, with careful attention.  

Buried in Jeff Jarvis’s writeup is a description of a startup called Daylife. As far as I know this is the first public description of the service, which I saw in April when I visited NY. I liked it so much I bought some stock. Keep your eye out for the official launch. :-) 

SF Chronicle: “Fog rolled into the Northern California coast Monday afternoon, the first sign of a gradual cooling that will bring temperatures back to normal within a few days.”  

Two outstanding podcasts 

I’ve discovered lots of new podcasts in the last few days, but two really stand out.

1. Times Talks is a series of hour-plus long interviews, a lot like the public symposia at Harvard, or meetings of the Commonwealth Club in the Bay Area. So far I’ve listened to two authors interviewed about a book on how we went to war in Iraq, and an interview with science fiction author William Gibson. I like the long form podcasts because I listen on my daily walk. It gives my mind something interesting to process while my body is getting some exercise.

2. CNN Long Form Programming is a series of interviews with CNN reporters, each lasting about a half hour, explaining their assignment — what it’s really like there. Very different from the superficial stuff we get in their TV reports. So far I’ve listened to reporters talk about Iran and Iraq. I learned more in these reports than I have in a year of trying to watch Anderson Cooper and Larry King. The podcasts are intelligent people talking to intelligent people about things that are really important. Unlike the dumbed-down crap we get in the official channels. One imagines the CNN reporters look forward to these podcasts because they rarely get to do “long tail” like story telling, which is probably why they got into journalism in the first place.

Let’s ask what RSS is 

Dead 2.0 asks his mom (she’s smart about technology) to tell him what RSS is. At first she can’t explain it, so she looks it up on Google, and is no wiser.

Me, I’m glad we’re talking about this.

When you look at the results of the Google search, it’s angry geeks complaining about RSS and saying they know the better way to do it.

It’s as if the “What is a car?” page was a battleground between people who prefer wanker engines over internal combustion engines. To most people a car is something you use to drive places.

When people ask me what RSS is good for, I start with “automated web surfing.” It gets you more news for the time you put into using the Internet. If you don’t want more news then RSS is probably not for you. But if there are subjects that you are intensely interested in, and if the people covering the topics also offer the information in RSS, then your computer (or a web site) can make web surfing a richer and perhaps more productive experience.

I could write about this (and have), but it would be widely flamed about, by the same people who control the conversation on Google.

Bonus link: Jo Twist wrote an excellent What Is RSS piece for the BBC.

Rex Hammock has a better search term for getting useful info about RSS.

Scripting News for 7/24/2006

George Ou: “The weather here in Silicon Valley is at peak levels over 100 degrees and the power in our neighborhood along with tens of thousands of others went out.” 

Mark Chernesky, web development director at CNN who is deeply involved in CNN’s podcasting efforts, offers $100 for the new podcast directory, and a newly updated OPML file, which is now part of the New Branches section of the rebooted directory. 

Dabble: “Search, collect and organize your favorite web videos.” 

Tomorrow, the AlwaysOn conference starts at Stanford. It’s a bit too pricey for my budget. Quite a line-up. The webcast is free. Hope their air conditioning works! :-) 

Elisa Camahort would like to talk about the weather. They’ve been predicting a break in the heat wave every day for the last week, and then it gets hotter every day than the day before. At some point it has to break, right? In the meantime it’s freaky hot here, very unusual.  

Four years ago today: “Being kind to each other doesn’t have to interfere with being true to ourselves.” 

Reminder: Ask not what the Internet can do for you… 

Scripting News for 7/23/2006

Doc Searls: “I thank Edwards too.” 

Okay, here’s a feature I want to implement, to connect directory pages with a page on the wiki. I want to generate a URL into the wiki, and then when someone clicks on it, and the page doesn’t exist, the wiki offers to create it for you. I tried this with PB Wiki, to see if it works, I thought it might, but alas it doesn’t. Is there something I need to put on the URL to get it to offer to create a page? Do other wikis have this feature? Here’s a screen shot of a page with the wiki link. And here’s a shot of the page it links to. 

I’m learning a lot, as I start working on the podcast directory. For example, I didn’t know that NBC News provides the full Nightly News with Brian Williams in podcast. This is quite useful, I’m almost never around to watch TV when the news is on, and frankly it’s a waste of human bandwidth for me to watch the news. I can listen while doing other things. Until now the only daily news I was getting via podcast was the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.  

I wonder if the media organizations are watching this. I’ve created, by hand, the OPML files for NBC and the NY Times. This is something they must actually do for themselves, because I won’t know when these files need updating. But I don’t mind helping get things started, that seems to be my job. If you need some pointers, please get in touch, or join the directory editors mail list if you can.  

New directory branch for Dutch podcasts. 

I’ve gotten a bunch of emails asking how to add a site to the directory. Because we’re going slow, and I’m sort of feeling my way through this, there is no way. I’ve started lots of directories, some that work, some that became disorganized messes. I’ve learned that the only way to end up with something good is to go slow. That said, I’m not going to be able to do what everyone wants me to do, so that will create the need for more directories. That’s fine and good and right. There shouldn’t be one directory any more than there should be one weblog. But if we do things right, the atomic units will be small enough so that they can fit into lots of different structures. So topics like New York or Minnesota podcasts are small enough to fit in. So far, sorting by geography seems to work. Of course that’s just one way to organize. 

Ole and Lena jokes never go out of style. 

A year ago today, a drive along the Charles River in Cambridge. 

You did know the flamers were coming… 

Here’s a dark cloud on the podcast directory project. I don’t know who the guy is, but I’m not a gatekeeper, route around me, please, right now. If you’re going to flame about it, let’s see if people really want the directory enough to stand up to the BS. I’m just doing a directory, it’s not the only one, not by any stretch of the imagination. And the OPML that people generate for my directory can be included in any other directory. What I’m contributing is promotion and an example for people to copy. If people would rather I didn’t, no problem, I’ve got plenty of stuff to do.

New Spa Per 

Are you tired of pros, like the New York Times, writing “Web log” when the correct word is weblog or blog?

Both are in common usage, they’re even in the OED, so why does the Times persist in knowing better?

How would they feel if we wrote about their product as a New Spa Per? Nahhh, that would be immature.

Maybe they could accept blogging for what it is, and stop messing with the name.