Scripting News for 1/21/2007

Time flies when you’re having fun 

The 10 year anniversary of Scripting News is approaching and with it, the ten year anniversary of blogging.

http://scripting.com/1997/04/01.html

I’m thinking of having some kind of party to celebrate. Would you be interested in participating?

Bug report for OTM 

I’ve said it before, On The Media is my favorite podcast, I’m an unabashed fan, every Saturday I listen attentively to their latest.

That said, I have to object to their treatment, this week, of Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

The point of the interview was how the media decides on our behalf which candidates will be taken seriously.

Kucinich took some controversial positions in the 2004 election and they turned out to be visionary. HIs supporters are enthusiastic, his focus is where I’d like all our candidates to be, ideas and issues. Maybe he wouldn’t be the best leader, but maybe if he were given a chance, he might become exactly the kind ofl eader we need. I can’t imagine he’d be worse than the current President, who the press took more seriously than Kucinich.

That OTM laughed at him during this interview is just appalling.

He took the high road over and over, even quoting Emerson, explaining why he chooses to run this gauntlet, again, when the deck is so stacked against him.

They should listen to their own report with a critical ear, and when they do I hope they apologize to the candidate and their listeners.

Digital Lifestyle Servers Everywhere 

Marc has been struggling to find the right phrase the helps people understand what he’s working on. Yesterday he wrote something I’ve heard him say, but I don’t understand, that he was “forced” to change from calling it server in the closet. Why? I find that helps to position the software, if that’s really what he has in mind. I want a server in the closet, one that really works for the house as an interface to the universe, both ways.

I also believe that servers belong everywhere, and predicted it, and it’s happening. Nowadays if you want to buy a webcam, you can buy one that connects into your wifi network and has an integrated HTTP server. That’s how you get the images — visit a web page on your LAN. I just bought a receiver that has a built-in HTTP server, so I can program the stereo over the Internet. It wasn’t the reason I bought the receiver, but you can imagine I was delighted to find that it was there. It’s also why I strongly believe that the TV set in your living room or den is also going to be a full computer, a peer on the Internet, a client of various Internet services (as predicted by Mark Cuban) and a server so you can control it using a web browser, and also so you can have your own private YouTube or MySpace (that, I believe is Marc’s vision).

All the players here are orbiting around a set of protocols and standards that make this stuff work, even the ones you usually don’t see playing well with others, the entertainment and technology industries. The attraction of the formats is irresistable. As TBL said: “Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.”

What he didn’t say, but surely is aware of, is that it’s possible to add new layers to the Internet that have the same properties, and new proponents of evolution who stand beside himself and Vint Cerf. It didn’t stop with TCP, HTTP and HTML, and it won’t stop with RSS and WiFi. But the philosophy that TBL stated so succinctly is so important that it’s worth codifying as a law. And it can be restated in a mashup of the words of JFK: Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet.

Scripting News for 1/20/2007

Tim Berners-Lee: “Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.” 

Mark Cuban: “Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, Time Warner, Charter, Insight, Cox, any cable or satellite provider could easily offer a website that allows users to upload content the same way they upload to Youtube.” 

Most RSS readers are wrong 

Read this piece for a clue as to what’s wrong with RSS readers.

One of the first rules of software design is also the primary rule of business — “The user is always right.”

Most RSS readers remind the user, all the time, how wrong he or she is. Or inadequate or lazy or behind in their work.

Who needs that. I sure don’t. And if I’m designing software that I’m using myself, and it’s always telling me how I’m fucking up, you can be sure I’m going to want to change the software, not the user.

Think about it this way. Suppose you read the paper every day. What if at the top of the paper it told you how many articles from previous issues you hadn’t read. Whoa. When you subscribed to the paper did you mean to imply that you would read all the articles?

Emphatically: News is not email.

Unlike email, every article is not necessarily something you should read, or even look at.

I read so few articles that I want my software to work differently, I want it to make it easy for me to give a fraction of a glance to every new article and if I’m not interested, or too busy — too bad. No need to count the number of articles that didn’t get my attention. It’s a useless piece of data.

The author comes within an inch of getting the answer. “Here’s a simple trick to handle this load — goto the root folder and select ‘Mark All Items as Read.’ Now open the Techmeme River of News website and read the important stories that you might have missed while on vacation.”

Good idea! Now have the software do all that for you.

And not just when you come back from vacation, every day, rain or shine.

And then you’ll find you can subscribe to even more feeds.

9/20/05: “Let the news flow by you and relax like someone sitting on the bank of a river looking for something interesting as you while away the time. That’s how news works, and RSS is, emphatically, for news.”

Try this one out. Imagine you’re fishing, and there was some nerd on the other side of the river, shouting at you, the number of fish that went by that you didn’t catch. How long before you’d want to kill the nerd??

I don’t disagree 

Jeremy Toeman asks if I agree with his piece about the Apple iPhone and how its appeal is dropping daily. My response.

I don’t disagree, but that’s not the same as agreeing. I didn’t like the iPod at first, now I’ve owned three and use my current one and leave the others at home for various reasons. (The Sansa is broken, the Archos is too big, the others aren’t even worth mentioning). My original problem with the iPod was its dependence on the Mac (I didn’t even have one then) but they cured that, and now I use Macs only.

Now back to the iPhone. Apple is likely in it for the long haul, and we’ve only seen their first product.

On the other hand, I thought you were right about the launch souring over time, which is something I see too, and I think it’s important to observe, so maybe it’ll dampen the peak a little next time around (fat chance).

Now ask me what I think about Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke. Yummm!

A scary (probably patentable) vision! 

I had some errands to run yesterday after writing the piece about mapping software, the subject was fresh on my mind and I realized something that scared the shit out of me, and also made me want to run down the USPTO and claim an idea that’s sure to be worth billions. I decided to blog it and worry about the patent later.

Okay here’s the scenario. I program a destination into the GPS and start driving. I notice that it tells me to cut over to Solano Ave from Marin Ave about 20 blocks before reaching the destination. This is odd, I think, because Marin is the faster street, it’s primarily residential and wide, where Solano is heavily commercial, with lots of cars entering and exiting, stopping and starting. Lots of pedestrians too, and in California we like to stop for them (at least this driver does).

How curious, I thought. Why make me go this way. I decided to check it out. When I got to Solano, there’s a convenience store right there. I practically have to turn into its parking lot. How convenient, I thought, a perfect opportunity see if they have Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke (I’m getting single-minded about this, in kind of the same way NakedJen is about being naked). Later I realized something, the scary vision, the patentable scary vision.

There’s no way the GPS knew there was a convenience store there (a national brand, btw), but in five or ten years, I’m sure they will. And further, Toyota will make a deal with the chain to direct traffic by their store, as opposed to their competition. Remember in a lot of businesses it’s all about location. What if someday everyone has GPS, like everyone has automatic transmission now (they didn’t used to, believe it or not). That could be much more valuable than advertising. It’s not about impressions, it’s about delivering customers. Literally!

You can be sure, if we survive Iraq and nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and the Chinese shooting down our satellites, if we’re still driving ten years from now, our cars will be sending us on errands on behalf of the auto manufacturers. Maybe someday they’ll just give us the car, the GPS will be so profitable.

SXSW is not for me 

Yeah Marc, SXSW is promotes certain people, and if they don’t like you, there’s no way in. This year they have some kind of fig leaf that allows them to deflect criticism, but I’m not going to run the gauntlet after years of being snubbed, damn I’m one of the founders of the industry they cover, and I’ve never been invited to speak. I know lots of people who have been asked, many of them are users of stuff I created (hey, modesty aside, they all are users of stuff I created). They ought to roll out the red carpet for guys like you and me Marc, but something is wrong there, so don’t let it get to you man. I’ve asked, three times now, for an invite. That’s enough. Fuck em.

Aside: I remember listening to the podcast of their podcasting panel while I was still working on podcasting, thinking how it would have been cool if I could have told the people at SXSW where I saw it going (and ultimately where it did go).

Google Trend map comparing Podcast vs SXSW.

RSS plotted against SXSW is even more lopsided.

Marc created Director and many other miracles. If it weren’t for Director, you wouldn’t be using Flash. Marc also gave me a lot of the ideas that made it into Manila, which was, in 1999, one of the first blogging tools, widely copied, not respected by the SXSW crowd, unfortunately. But that doesn’t mean it’s not respected. A couple of weeks ago, for example, Peter Rojas of Engadget told me his first blog was a Manila site. And Marc’s vision for the People Aggregator is a good one, and different, and well worth listening to.

Marc doesn’t take himself too seriously, I think that’s why a lot of people don’t take his ideas seriously, but that’s a mistake. It really hurts me personally to see such disrespect for a man who has given so much, and wants to give so much more. You all ought to send emails to Hugh Forrest saying if they don’t show respect for Marc, then we won’t show respect for SXSW. This is one place where you all can make a difference, so how about it.

Crisis averted? 

It’s nice to see the Bush Administration starting to obey the law in foreign surveillance. Recall, when they said they weren’t going to get the warrants required by FISA, it caused an outraged and scared response among advocates of the Constitution, myself included.

Well, the good news is that they say they’re going to start obeying the law. The Attorney General says that times have changed, they’re not as worried now as they were after 9-11, but we suspect the real reason is that there’s now a Democratic Congress, that might ask some questions that the old Republican one didn’t, ones the Bush guys don’t want to have raised, or if they are raised, now they have an answer: “That was a time of emergency.”

But why should a new Congress make a difference? After all, if they were willing to break one law, why not break them all? Which raised the really ugly question, which as far as I’m concerned, is still out there — will Bush actually leave office at the end of 2008? Now it seems more likely he will. If so, what a relief it will be when that happens. Hope we make it.

Scripting News for 1/19/2007

Jeremy Toeman: iPhone appeal drops daily. 

After four years is it really necessary to continue to say “Radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.” Isn’t that like saying Compassionate Conservative President George W. Bush?? 

Two-way mapping 

Like everyone else (and the guys in Lazy Sunday) I use Google Maps to plot out routes, even walking routes, which isn’t something it’s really good at.

Yesterday I used it to map out a route to the BART station, it was a long walk, so when I returned I took a cab home. He took an odd left turn, and then when I realized what he did, I saw that this was a much better route. The road was wider, no traffic lights, less traffic, and it was a straight road, no curves and bends. It was probably faster, and it was definitely easier on the nerves.

So I went back to Google and looked at it on the map, and it’s even more direct than the route they mapped out.

So — when does mapping become a two-way app? I’d be willing to tell their software that I have a better route, it’s one that comes from living here, and being a cab driver here.

A missing product? 

Last weekend I went to a Marc Canter’s birthday party, it was great, but it would have been even better if they had my favorite soft drink.

I know what the host likes, it’s good stuff, but I prefer a little artificial sweetness and bubbles. These days I really like the black cherry vanilla flavor Diet Coke.

It’s not his fault, there’s a missing product. I have the same problem when I shop for a party — how to stock up on at least three or four of every popular soft drink, beer or wine. The missing product? A 24-pack that’s got a variety of stuff. A couple of Sprites, Diet Pepsi, Tejava — you get the idea. Of course Coke would have their own special pack, and Pepsi would have theirs. No problem. I’ll buy three of each.

BTW, I got Marc a Sansa 2GB MP3 player. Expect some convergence over there in CanterLand.

Scripting News for 1/18/2007

Better Bad News on Dreaming in Code, and Justin Timberlake on stage at CES with Bill Gates? 

Happy 42nd birthday to Robert Scoble! :-) 

I had a very nice dim sum lunch today with Paul Boutin in SF. What did we talk about? Lots of things. Including this commercial and its slogan: “Dogs don’t know it’s not bacon!” 

Brier Dudley on the new pricing for Skype out-calling.  

According to Michael Gartenberg it’ll cost $1.99 to turn on 802.11n support in already-purchased Macs that can do it. Weird. I don’t get understand why, but who cares. A leprechaun latte at Starbucks costs more.  

Scripting News for 1/17/2007

A Blog “Dedicated To Keeping CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Honest.” 

AHN: “Faculty at SMU in Dallas are protesting the plans to house the George W. Bush Presidential Library.” 

Bush or No Bush? 

I just got off the phone with Sylvia, who passed on a great idea that just might work, to help George Bush leave office early. Here’s how it goes. We all contribute to a fund, that hopefully would contain a lot of money, say $150 million. If Bush resigns on the first day, he gets the whole $150 million. Every day he waits, the fund goes down by 10 percent, so there’s a real incentive for him to act quickly. On Day 2 it’s worth only $135 million. On Day 3, $121.5 million. And so on. It’s kind of a simplified version of Deal or No Deal.

I love the idea! I’d kick in $5K.

Rating news organizations 

Here’s an idea for Jeff Jarvis, who says, with the best intentions, that we need to measure the number of people reading news sources or listening to podcasts so advertisers can know how many people are getting their messages, so they know how much to pay news organizations to carry those messages.

As a “consumer” of news (or user of news, or just citizen) I am interested in knowing which organizations do the best job providing news. The more they focus on news, the higher their score. I think there actually is a way to quantify it in a meaningful way.

Consider: When Anderson Cooper devotes his whole 2-hour show on CNN to the return of two children to their families in Missouri, that would add very little to the score of CNN. On the other hand, the Headline News channel, which repeats the top stories every half-hour, would score relatively high, because of the variety of the stories they carry, and the relevance of those stories.

There is a way to separate the human interest stuff that’s clogging the air waves from hard news. When four climbers are lost on Mount Hood, for example, if we look at it dispassionately, we’d see that the only people who are affected are the climbers (who died) and their families. If you want to stretch it, other people who climb mountains in inclement weather might also have an interest in that information. But the rest of us are only getting an emotional hit from the story. We project ourselves into the situation, and think how horrible it would be to die that way, or to have a family member or friend die that way. It’s not news, it’s not conveying information that affects us, it’s story-telling.

On the other hand, there is information that is news, that affects all of us, that has almost no story-telling to it. When the Fed raises interest rates, there’s no story, but wide impact. The fact that many Americans don’t understand how it impacts them, is perhaps itself a story.

Anyway, my hope is that if the various news sources were rated, they might feel pressure to add more news to their news shows. So someone who tuned into CNN might get 45 minutes of the hostages in St Louis, and 15 minutes on the PBS interview with Bush, or Scooter Libby, or global warming. Or if you like human interest mixed in, how about a story about the Christian Coalition working with Moveon.org. It’s a bit of a tear-jerker for sure, but it’s also news. Or, why not interview some of the families of Iraq casualties? There’s a real emotional rush, for sure, but it’s real. Or if you really want to go for the gusto, show Iraqis as human beings, and help people understand that when an Iraqi dies in violence that we caused (or at our hand) they leave behind people who miss them, who grieve them, just like us.

And how about the “meta” story of why the networks aren’t interviewing the families of Iraq casualties. These stories are about the times we live in. When future generations wonder what we were doing when all this was going on, we’ll have something to tell them. And I can’t help wondering if we aren’t witnessing a successful attempt by the government to control the news we’re getting.

Imagine an airline that, instead of taking you to Chicago, as advertised, gave you burgers and left you right where you were. Sure, the burgers taste better than airline food, but you got on the plane to actually go somewhere!

I’ll write some more about this later.

Scripting News for 1/16/2007

All the cable news networks are covering tonight are the two boys who were kidnapped in Missouri. Meanwhile, 70 people died today in one bombing incident in Baghdad. Barak Obama declared for President. The Scooter Libby trial started in Washington. Bush was interviewed on PBS. 

This post on TPM clearly belongs in the War On Bush link list, which is starting to feel like a blog. 

Scott Rosenberg’s first book, Dreaming in Code, arrived in bookstores today.  

Missing: Microsoft’s iPod platform 

Something that’s remarkable to consider. As closed to developers as Apple is with the iPod and now the iPhone, it’s pretty amazing that Microsoft, a company with a long tradition of offering developer platforms, hasn’t managed to offer a product that’s even worth considering by developers as an alternative to the non-existent option of producing software for Apple’s mobile devices.

It’s even more remarkable if you consider that Apple’s product wasn’t an early product and has been on the market for over five years. Plenty of time to catch up even if Microsoft was caught by surprise. Charles Fitzgerald, one of the few old-timers still at the MS used to say it was a “scrappy” competitor. I wonder what adjective Charles would use for the company today.

Techdirt: “Copying the technology is just one aspect to competing, and if the market is dynamic, by the time you catch up to whoever you’re copying, they’re way ahead of you.”

From the mind of RSS 

I have a strange bug in my CMS, it’s so entertaining that I haven’t wanted to fix it. Every so often it picks a random day and generates my RSS feed as if it were that day.

Today it picked 3/1/00, a day I had lunch with Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty, in San Jose. While we were having lunch, Tim got a call from Jeff Bezos about patents. I even got a picture of Tim’s side of the conversation. Like I said, it’s a strange bug.

What does it take to get fired? 

Washington Post: “The Pentagon yesterday disavowed a senior official’s remarks suggesting companies boycott law firms that represent detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”

To be clear, what the official did is a breach of everything that we hold sacred in our legal system. It reeks of totalitarianism.

I told you so 

Scoble was wrong, I was right.

However, the newly announced Netflix service is lame. The same service is already available from Comcast, without the dumb limits, and I never use it.

It’s another example of the movie industry’s lack of will to compete.

Plus, my TV is a Mac, and doesn’t run Windows software and I’m not going to switch when my settop box already does this and as I said, I don’t use it.

However, all that said, Scoble was wrong to predict the death of Netflix. They have a bunch of momentum, and they understand their users, something none of the others, including Apple, can claim.

PS: For all we know Netflix is using the Verisign service that was supposed to, according to Scoble, kill them.

Scripting News for 1/15/2007

Hugh MacLeod’s random notes on blogging. 

Berkman is having a conference today on politics and blogging. They’re also having a podcasting conference on Feb 24. I signed up and paid the $50, not sure if I’ll make it. If you’re in the Boston area, it’s probably worth checking out.  

Advice to Bill G 

One of the services I’ve provided to Microsoft over the years is free consulting. I do it in the open, so everyone gets the benefit. I recommended in 1994 that he give up on OLE and other hugely complicated attempts to control the universe and join the messy world of the Internet. After dismissing the idea, a year later, he turned his company upside-down in an effort to catch Netscape. I’ve done it many times since, and after reading this piece on his desire to chase Google (it’s not going too well), I have another bit of advice.

Find the CP/M of the Internet. It’s gotta be ugly and geek-friendly. A piece of software with a command-line that today’s 12 year old nerd could add something to that would make everyone’s life more fun, and give us something to do with the Internet that you could never sell inside a large tech organization like Microsoft or Google. Something like Visicalc, dBASE, 1-2-3 or Wordstar. MacPaint, MacWrite, Pagemaker or Flight Simulator. Tetris, PacMan, MySpace & Napster.

You aren’t going to get there by zigging where Google zigs, you have to zag to their zig, if you get my drift.

And Bill, fire a few people who are too comfortable in their jobs. They’re running your company to suit their purposes, not for the benefit of users and shareholders. I know because they’re always alarmed by things I say. Hey the things I say have helped your company see opportunities it otherwise would have missed. These people don’t want to think, that’s what you gotta root out. And most people will think, if they believe their livelihood depends on it.

waronbush.org 

Last week, when President Bush’s plan for Iraq was coming public, I realized it’s going to be a long fight, and if it’s anything like the fight we had in the 70s with Nixon over Vietnam, eventually it’s going to feel like a war, of ideas, a non-violent war, within the context of the political system of the US.

There were some heroes of the war with Nixon, we got a reminder when President Ford died at the end of last year, Sam Ervin, Peter Rodino, Barbara Jordan, Archibald Cox, even Charles Rangel, who was on the Watergate-era Judiciary committee, who is still in Congress, now the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

We’re definitely going to have a major disagreement in this country, you could see it forming in last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Bush. He’s not going to bend to the will of the American people. I think we’re headed for a Watergate-scale battle between the branches, with the lives of thousands of Americans and millions in the Middle East at stake, and eventually, perhaps soon, our way of life, which amazingly hasn’t yet felt the imact.

As a blogger, my job will be to cover this, and to put my spin behind it. I’ll do that here on Scripting News of course, but I’ve started another site to focus attention on the war between the people of the US and our president..

I’m not sure yet what form this site will take. I’ve thought it might simply be a place to register names of people who are opposed to the President, who, like the author of this site, are sickened by the prospect yet another existential battle for the soul of America.

Scripting News for 1/14/2007

Al Jazeera: Iraqi president arrives in Syria. 

According to Google News, the Iraqi president’s visit to Syria isn’t being reported by American news sites. It could be that my search is inadequate. Or it could be that we’re not getting all the news.  

Jason Lefkowitz outlines a reaistic nightmare scenario in Iraq.  

Congress has power again 

It’s time for everyone to bone up on the separation of powers in the American form of government. In its first six years the Bush executive was unchecked by Congress, but that’s over now. It’s remarkable to see the lights of our government come back on. The wisdom of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the fighting they did, the tension between the first Senate and the first vice-president (Adams), the personalities of our founding fathers are still what forms discourse in our country, in the age of television, blogs and podcasting. It really is a miracle to see it all start to work again. Brilliant!

What I meant to say 

Yesterday’s essay has gotten a lot of pointage and comments, but so far no one has pulled the key quote from the piece, probably because I buried it. So here it is, standing on its own.

“The iPod is a wonderful product, but damn it’s time we made one that could run our software, could run any software, so users have choice, and so you don’t have to buy new hardware to get software features, and so the market can grow at the rate of innovation, not at the whim of one marketer.”

Perhaps people can agree with this. Apple could even make it, a limited edition iPod that runs Mac software and allows us to add commands to the iPod user interface.

You never know what might come from this, after all Apple didn’t invent all the cool stuff that’s come along in the last few years.

What does it mean to be open? 

A permathread for sure.

Am I hypocrite because I want to write software to run on iPods but I won’t allow other people to post to Scripting News? I don’t know, maybe to some it does, but I think not.

When I started this blog in April 1997, I immediately published, for free, in source, the code I used to publish the site. The result, within a few months, a bunch of sites that worked more or less the same way this site did. When I added syndication to this site, I encouraged others to create their own syndicated content, and tools that use the content. Within a few years everyone is doing it. That may not be the only way to define being open, but it seems to be part of what it means to be open.

STFU about the hand-wringing 

Paolo: “Ask not what Apple can do for you. Buy their products and STFU.”

Ethan Kaplan says the hand-wringing is out of control.

I think the hand-wringing about the hand-wringing is out of control.

Governor of Caleee Forrrr Neeee Ahhhh 

I just watched our governor on ABC.

He’s great. Just what we need.

Scripting News for 1/13/2007

Paul O’Brien wonders if he has to obey a lawyer that works for Apple. I am not a lawyer, but Mike Arrington is.  

You don’t need to lock us in 

On The Media segment looking at Apple’s ability to turn marketing into news.

This is what I was trying to say yesterday. Carrying Apple’s product announcements as if they were news is probably not good for reporters and bloggers, ethically. We’re making a big mistake if we accept the news about iPhone, for example, only from Apple. There are other companies already in this market. How about taking a close look at their products when Apple asks us to look at the category? When Apple boasts of patents, as if that were a feature for users (imho it’s a feature that’s actually against them), this begs for a closer look as well.

Now, that’s starting to happen, and that’s good.

Another example. I took my friend Rex Hammock, who was in town for the Expo from Nashville, to Fry’s in Concord, for a cultural exchange. When I visited Nashville a couple of years ago, Rex took me to a great BBQ place. Fry’s is the closest we come to culture here in the Bay Area (I also took him on a drive up Grizzly Peak Blvd, the roundabout way to Walnut Creek, with great views of the Bay and the city). Rex, who had attended the Jobs keynote the day before, suggested I might get one of their new fast routers. I took him to the part of Fry’s where they had a whole shelf full of “Pre-N” routers, all of which were exactly as fast as Apple’s (and cheaper too). This fact had not come out yesterday, in the rush of all the press coverage. To be fair, the router was almost an afterthought in the panoply of marketing that masqueraded as news, but it should have been mentioned, right up front — there probably isn’t anything special about Apple’s product.

We have a lot of catching up to do here. Apple has received an unfair advantage from the press, and also from bloggers. I’m not saying that we should give Microsoft a free pass, because they still control who gets their news, and that’s wrong, it compromises the integrity of every reporter that takes their offer. It can be hard for reporters to say no, but they must, if they want to deserve our respect.

Many companies have lost their businesses, and customers have lost a lot of choice because of this system. Well-intentioned people inside the companies are led to believe that their products don’t have to be competitive because they have the press in their pocket, and lawyers to protect them with patents. James Plamondon, a good guy for sure, should never have been able to think of developers as pawns. The only way it makes sense is for them to think of developers as competitors. That’s where respect comes from. When we get there, vendors will make products that we use, they will not be thought leaders, or gurus. This is what they demand in order for us to have access. But we’re not doing them any favors by giving them what they ask for, and we’re sure not doing any favors to the users, and to ourselves.

I don’t believe for a minute that Jobs’s closed-box approach to cell phones is the right one. Growth is driven by choice. The Internet grew because, for the 80th time, it was the platform with no platform vendor. The Apple II won, the Mac won, the PC won, even Windows won, because you could install any software you wanted on them. The iPod is a wonderful product, but damn it’s time we made one that could run our software, could run any software, so users have choice, and so you don’t have to buy new hardware to get software features, and so the market can grow at the rate of innovation, not at the whim of one marketer.

Apple is now bidding once again to become the total control platform vendor that they have always been inside. When they introduce the phone software to the Macintosh (seems inevitable, doesn’t it?) will they shut down developers there too? I am writing this on a Mac, because it’s much better than Windows. Apple didn’t need any patents to get me to buy their system. I don’t even like the company, I think they’re brats, small thinkers. Even though I don’t have to, every year I spend thousands of dollars on their products. That says all I need to know about what kinds of locks you need on users. The only lock you need is to create a better product. The rest of it is nonsense.

Smoke and mirrors 

Sylvia Paull, who worked at a Mac software developer when NeXT was rolling out, explains how they fooled reporters into thinking that there was working software for Steve Jobs’s new computer. Great story.

She invited reporters to look under the table where there was a Mac that was actually running the supposed NeXT app, but they wouldn’t look. If they reported the fiasco, they’d lose access. This kind of deception is the rule, not the exception, in Silicon Valley.

I’ve heard from people who were at the Jobs presentation this week that there was a wire connecting his cell phone to something. I can’t tell you myself, because I am not allowed to attend Apple press events. If I were there, I would tell you.

Scripting News for 1/12/2007

James Plamondon: “Microsoft’s PR people are distancing from my 1996 presentation, saying that the approach to evangelism that it describes was not then, and is not now, Microsoft’s policy.” 

Why should we cheer for Steve’s patents? 

Michael Gartenberg and Steven Levy together, pull the truth out of Steve Jobs on why the iPhone doesn’t run software written by developers. But it’s not the truth that Jobs would have you believe.

Anyway, it was not actually a great PR week for Jobs. All that hype from Apple about patents as if they were somehow good news for users, exposes how ludicrous the whole Apple marketing system is. That they’re now getting called on it, if not by the mainstream guys, but by bloggers, shows you how there’s a new system of checks and balances. We’re watching the people who were supposedly our eyes and ears, and finding out that they’re playing footsie with the guys they’re covering, and have been for a long, long time.

Now Apple is not only playing hardball with bloggers, they’re pushing around another giant Silicon Valley company, one with deep pockets and expensive lawyers, as they try to roll over Cisco over the iPhone trademark.

Meanwhile, the option backdating mess is still there, hasn’t gone away, and I don’t think the SEC is going to be rolled over as easily as Cisco or as the press used to.

And you gotta ask yourself when it’s going to completely flip over, when a reporter that grants embargos to big tech companies like Apple or Microsoft is going to have to explain why they never run bad news about these companies. That’s an even bigger scandal, imho, than the option backdating one. Me, I’m proud that I’m not invited to Apple or Microsoft events, as long as they’re running such ethically compromised PR. And yes, I believe there is an ethics to PR, it’s the mirror image of the ethics of reporters. Vendors must respect that reporters must write what they believe, not what the companies want them to write. That I’m not invited is how you know that I haven’t compromised. Can’t say the same for other bloggers, however. Lots of people dipping into the same poisoned well that the MSM guys did.

Valleywag is doing a great job of chasing this story, it goes deep into the culture of Silicon Valley.

Douglas Harding 

I got an email this morning from Richard Lang of headless.org saying that Douglas Harding, a truly great teacher, died last night. My view of existence, like that of many others, was heavily influenced by Harding.

5/5/97: “It’s so easy to let what we’ve learned interfere with what we can observe.”