Scripting News for 4/30/2007

Today’s links 

Slingbox supports AppleTV.

Adam Curry has a gripe with SplashCast.

The #87th most influential person in IT.

How to design a podcast player 

Notes from today’s *excellent* discussion.

It’s listed as a panel, but I’m the only official panelist.

Our topic of dicussion is, officially, How to design a podcast player.

I wrote a piece about this, with three points, in February.

1. Self-contained, untethered synchronization, much the same way a Blackberry gets email.

2. Read-write, two-way, should be able to record and connect with a publishing system for automatic upload and feed production.

3. Must be a platform, that is, people other than the manufacturer can add apps.

After we discuss that, we’ll talk about whatever people want to talk about.

Some more ideas…

1. Checkbox News.

2. Twitter as coral reef.

3. Spreadsheet calls over the Internet.

WebFS 

WebFS is a “web services protocol used to exchange files and associated metadata between web applications and services. It’s primary intentions are to allow the free-flow of files and data between web services and applications.”

I’m sitting next to Nick Cubrilovic of Omnidrive, who is developing this protocol as an interface to his service, and is working on an open source implementation as well.

Other developers are working on it, but he doesn’t have clearance to reveal their names.

He has a private mail list that’s he opening up.

Bay Area Outage, Day 2 

Raines has an outage update. Like Raines, I made my way from Berkeley to the Oakland Airport yesterday, without incident or traffic. I also took city streets and avoided the Maze, my route would have taken me through the section of freeway that’s missing!

Bradley Horowitz, who lives in Berkeley and works at Yahoo has a daily two-way traffic nightmare to look forward to. Maybe enlightened high-tech employers will take this opportunity to distribute their workplace.

Governor Schwartzenegger has declared BART free for all today. What a trip that’s going to be. It’ll be hard to get a seat on the Richmond line.

My Twitter Friends, Day 2 

Yesterday I documented the new My Twitter Friends feature in the OPML Editor.

At the time I hadn’t tested OPML inclusion in a Twitter post, but today I had a chance (while watching the Microsoft keynotes) and it worked.

Here’s a screen shot with an outline expanded.

And here’s the Twitter post that created the link.

Blogzone video 

I’m hanging out with Scoble at the Blogzone at the Venetian. We’re going to watch the keynote here. There’s a guy in an Elvis outfit here. Really embarassed for the guy.

This happens to me too 

Ross Mayfield: “I was reading the NY Times and glanced at the top right of the page looking for the time.”

Wikipedia editing 

Yesterday I did something I had never done before, I edited an article on Wikipedia. And then I edited another.

The first one was about the MacArthur Maze. It had already been updated to include the outage, I just fixed some typos, and rearranged the words so they flowed better. Then I decided to link to my page of links about the news, expecting that would be reverted in a few days at most as the full story was documented, but it was reverted within minutes, as were all my other edits.

Then I decided to look at the RSS page to see if it linked to the RSS 2.0 spec. It didn’t, so I added a link. I haven’t been back to see if that has been reverted. BTW, most of that page is worthless, things that never happened, Rove-like spin from god knows who. That’s the thing about Wikipedia, it’s a free-for-all slamfest, and you don’t have a right to confront your accusers. Feh.

Scripting News for 4/29/2007

Movies from the Blogzone 

Joshua Allen on leaking tomorrow’s announcements.

Jeff Sandquist on Pahrump, NV.

Miguel de Icaza on the name Miguel and how it feels to be at a Microsoft event.

The scene at the Blogzone.

Today’s links 

BART tips on commuting in the New Bay Area.

Scoble is hosting a geek dinner for Hugh MacLeod in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Dinner tonight, 6:30PM, Grand Lux Cafe 

Bloggers dinner tonight at the Grand Lux Cafe at the Venetian at 6:30PM.

Sign up, comments, on the wiki.

Seeya there!!

PS: My flight gets in at 3:30PM.

PPS: Get ready for weather shock. High of 94 today. Hot!

PPPS: I’ve got my Sprint Ambassador phone with me. 415-871-7163.

Major Bay Area highway outage 

This morning there’s a report on local news that a critical piece of Bay Area roadway is out, and may be out for weeks or months.

The biggest traffic bottleneck in a traffic-challenged metropolitan area is known as the MacArthur Maze. Four major freeways, 880, 580, 24 and 80 all come together from the East Bay, and from the other side — the Bay Bridge connects all that with San Francisco.

Early this morning a gasoline tanker truck caught fire on a ramp connecting 580 westbound with 880, causing 250 yards of freeway to collapse.

Google map of the maze.

Reports from SF Chron, KGO, Mercury News, Contra Costa Times.

New Twitter support in OPML Editor 

Yesterday I released new code that allows you to browse the posts from all the people you’re following on Twitter.

How to: 1. Choose Update opml.root from the File menu. 2. Click on OK. 3. Quit and relaunch the OPML Editor app.

There’s a new Twitter sub-menu of the Community menu, with two commands: 1. The Preferences command allows you to set your Twitter username and password, and 2. My Twitter Friends opens an outline window with a list of your friends.

In the window, when you double-click on a friend’s name, after a short delay, we display the last 20 status messages posted by that person. If the the message contained a URL, the outline node is a link, if you double-click it, the link opens in your web browser (screen shot). Although I haven’t tried it yet, if the URL ends with .opml, it should open in-place, since that’s a hack the OPML Editor uses to trigger an OPML inclusion.

As usual, report any problems here, or on one of the mail lists.

PS: Amyloo got it before I even wrote it up.

Scripting News for 4/28/2007

Spreadsheet calls over the Internet? 

I like having a spreadsheet around, but until Google came out with their browser-based spreadsheet, I hadn’t used one in many years. I find Office too much software, and all the other spreadsheets I had learned either didn’t run on my machine or weren’t being actively maintained. Without thinking much I had stopped using them.

But now I use it for all kinds of little tasks that require an array of values, or a bit of calculation. Now I’d like to start building more of my life around a spreadsheet, to use it to monitor various processes on my servers, but to do this, there will have to be a protocol for plugging web apps into the spreadsheet.

Here’s the syntax I imagine using:

[server].getPortfolioValue (username, password)

It would work just like a built-in spreadsheet function except the call would go out over the net, run the procedure on the indicated server, and display the value it returns, formatted according to how the spreadsheet author says it should be formatted.

The server url would include a protocol, server name, port and path. I would recommend doing XML-RPC first, it’s the simplest, most uniformly implemented RPC out there. You’d have to do some form of SOAP, and extend REST with standards for serializing and de-serializing parameter lists and returned values (or you could adopt the serialization format from one of the other protocols).

Example: xmlrpc://rpc.fidelity.com:7092/

Interestingly, this is one of the demos Microsoft did for Multiplan for the IBM-PC in the early 80s when it was competing with Visicalc. Then, it was a good vision, but impractical. Today it’s practical and would be very useful and would lead to many interesting apps, perhaps even businesses.

Today’s links 

“So what?” is exactly right. Imagine saying that the number of telephone calls had stalled at 15.6 million. Or the number of Word docs. Blogs aren’t businesses, they’re documents, or at best collections of documents. Counting them is an meaningless exercise. Look for individuals who are changing things using blogs, that’s what’s important.

Phil Wolff: “Skype lawyer Seema Sharma emailed blogger Jan Geirnaert Friday afternoon. She told him his popular skype-watch.com and skype-gadgets.com blogs put him in legal jeopardy.”

42 people have signed the Mix 07 wiki page so far.

Twitter as coral reef 

Calling a technology a coral reef is the highest compliment I can pay.

Here’s how the story goes. Scattered throughout tropical seas are coral reefs that started when a ship sank and sea creatures made it their home. Then the predators of those creatures started hanging out, and their predators, all the way up the food chain. Eventually, if the ocean climate was right, a coral reef would appear, much larger than the wrecked ship that started it all.

These days they deliberately sink ships where they want a coral reef.

It’s a little sad for the ship, to be devoured this way. I know how it feels, Radio 8 is hardly used anymore, although I think it’s a great piece of software, it got consumed in the flames of people who didn’t like RSS, but despite their protests, the coral reef did show up, and now RSS has become a thriving ecosystem.

When I develop something new these days, I automatically think of using Twitter as a back-end to connect users of my software. If other developers aren’t doing this, I imagine they will soon. And Twitter will beget competitors, and they will have to have APIs if they want to be competitive (Twitter has one) and by now I think they’ll have to be compatible with Twitter’s to be taken seriously.

The role that Twitter is playing is a vital one — it’s a notification system, always-up, and keeping it up is someone else’s problem. As a system designer, I’d like to believe that Twitter or something like it will always be there. I’m not sure of that yet, but it seems we’re close.

I know Microsoft is rolling out the red carpet for them in Las Vegas next week. Not sure I like that, or if I would like it if I were Twitter’s owners, I’m suspicious of Microsoft’s embrace, after lots of experience. But for me, there’s really not much risk, even if MS were to try to eat their lunch, as I said, they’d have to be compatible, right?? We’ll have to ask Ray about that.

In any case, Twitter is becoming, for me, a coral reef. That’s cool.

Little-known facts 

You don’t need to use Curl to get stuff from Twitter, you can use a web browser for some simple API calls to see what they return. Try clicking on this URL to see my most recent 20 status messages.

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/davewiner.xml

Yeah it’s XML. Hope you didn’t have a heart attack.

The docs could be much clearer about this, imho.

Another little-known fact, the RSS feeds that provide code updates for all the various components of the OPML Editor now have comments, that explain what changed in each update. I never release a part without explaining it (knock wood, praise Murphy, don’t sue me if I don’t). Here’s an example, the feed for opml.root.

http://bits.codecasting.org/opml.root/rss.xml

Should have done this a long time ago. I’m going to push some Twitter-related updates today, they should show up in that feed. This means you might want to also subscribe to these feeds in your aggregator or feed reader, because they now include human-readable bits. Unless you’re a programmer the notes will likely not make much sense, but that’s one way learn programming, almost by osmosis.

Blogs work in sports too! 

Curt Schilling: “So for one of the first times this blog serves one of the purposes I’d hoped it would if the need arose. The media hacked and spewed their way to a day or two of stories that had zero basis in truth. A story fabricated by the media, for the media. The best part was that instead of having to sit through a litany of interviews to ‘defend’ myself, or my teammates, I got to do that here.”

How many times have reporters proclaimed blogs stupid, irrelevant or dead.

Now you know why. They’re freaked out because their exclusive access to the minds of readers is in its waning days. Blogs are the reason why.

The next step is for publishers to realize that the monopoly is breaking, and to start doing deals with the sources.

Here’s Schilling’s blog. And feed.

My Twitter friends 

Scripting News for 4/27/2007

Chickenshit? 

I got a call from Mary Trigiani on Wednesday night. A regular reader of this blog, Silicon Valley communication consultant, cookbook author, sister of a famous author, and friend.

She had been at a conference on advertising in the new era, a panel discussion that included AlwaysOn publisher Tony Perkins and Kourosh Karimkhany from Wired Digital. The panel turned to the discussion that was brewing in our corner of the blogosphere about the role of sources and our relationship to reporters.

Based on Mary’s account I expressed optimism for how Wired was rising to the occasion. And it totally didn’t surprise me that Perkins took a couple of personal and cheap shots at Calacanis and myself.

One more loose-end to take care of…

Last night, I said I might offer the email I sent to the Wired reporter, Fred Vogelstein, on April 24. The text follows.

“I don’t think you would have gotten anytihng from a phone talk with me or Calacanis. We do all our business via email, and in blog posts, and in comments.

“Go read Mike’s Crunchnotes post. You’ll see his view of the world. See my response, and that’s how I push back against his view.

“The fact that all this exploded into Techmeme today made your story. Start reading, and post questions in the comments on all the blog posts that puzzle you. Make sure they know you’re from Wired.

“If you’re creative you’ll get a wonderful story.

“Think of yourself as an American in Iraq.”

In other words, do research, the story is on the web, not the telephone.

Phone intervews 

Now, after all the michegas about how I like to do interviews in blog posts, largely because they create a record that can be easily verified after a story runs, let me say that I often consider doing phone and face to face interviews, and sometimes I do them.

A couple of examples.

1. Recently we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Scripting News. There wasn’t a lot of press in the U.S., or in the blogosphere, but interestingly, the story got a fair amount of play in newspapers in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The Guardian (U.K.) wanted to do a piece about it, on a very short deadline, and wanted a phone interview.

Now, I have a long-standing gripe with the Guardian, in 2004 they ran a highly conflicted, perfectly awful article about RSS, as the “wars” were settling down, a piece written by one of the partisans, that reflected his point of view, and was presented as news, not comment. Others were not given an opportunity to respond. This is the kind of conflicted reporting that I just can’t support, and won’t. When I asked the Guardian to look into it, politely but openly, they attacked my qualifications and character, and that was it.

So when the reporter asked for the interview, in 2007, we had a long email exchange about the basis for trust — why should I work with the Guardian when they hadn’t responded adequately to a legitimate inquiry. After much consideration, I didn’t do the interview, and didn’t link to the piece because like many press reports, they called me a nasty personal name. I hate that part of what they do. They have no insight into who I am personally, and I felt given the dispute that this was their way of getting even. It looks bad, and in reporting, how it looks matters.

Net-net, what might have been fun, even interesting, was miserable. That’s the Guardian.

2. On the other side, I did a classic phone interview with a SF Chronicle reporter a week or so ago, shortly after the Virginia Tech massacre, to talk about the releasing of the videos from NBC. I wanted to discuss this with a news reporter, who I felt might have an opinion about it, who would likely want to view the videos himself, rather than have them filtered for him by a competitor. I wasn’t disappointed.

I chose to do that interview because there was something in it for me. And while I was extensively quoted in his article, all the quotes came from my blog, because (I hope) they most clearly represented my point of view, much better than my conversational quotes would have.

How to linkbait me 

Today’s meme, thanks to Jason Calacanis, is linkbaiting. Not why it’s bad, or why he won’t do it, or respond to it; rather what you should say if you want him to link to you, and what you shouldn’t say.

Okay I’m game, even though this is likely to spawn backlash from the people who say the A-list sucks or it’s a boys club, or whatever.

First, in the positive — here are things that get my attention and make it more likely I will link.

1. Your name is Scott Rosenberg. He’s a Berkeley neighbor, founding editor of Salon, a very nice person, but none of that is why I will link to his pieces more often than not. The basic reason is he generally says things I find interesting, even essential. Very rarely do his posts mention me or my work, so clearly I’m not being linkbaited. He’s a good journalist, and imho a great thinker, and a very lucid writer.

2. It says it on the What is Scripting News page: “A link on Scripting News means that I thought that the story was interesting, and felt that an informed person would want to consider the point of view expressed in the piece.” I know it’s corny, but that’s more often than not the reason I link.

3. If you link to something I wrote recently and add something to the discussion, esp an experience or point of view that hasn’t come up before. I often start threads here, or pick up threads from other sites. If you’re continuing a discussion that’s hot right now, I’m likely to link.

4. If you say I deserve a MacArthur or Pulitzer, I’ll probably link to that.

Now reasons I might not link.

1. If you call someone, esp me, a bad name.

2. In an email or other kind of direct communication you say or imply that I have an obligation to link. Anything other than “FYI” or “I thought you might find this interesting” is pretty much guaranteed not to get a link from me.

3. Lack of reciprocity. If I observe over time that the linking is one-way, i.e. I link to you but even when I’m on-topic for you, I don’t get a link from you, that will dampen my enthusiasm.

PS: Obviously this is one of those times Jason wants some link-love. Jason, if you’re reading this, see item #3 above.

Scripting News for 4/26/2007

Essential television 

Watching the Democratic candidates debate on MSNBC, all the candidates sound excellent, if not presidential, the kind of people I’d like to see in the Cabinet.

However, to make an informed vote, to even understand the context that the United States exists in today and in the near future, we need a lot more information about terrorism and the war in Iraq. Luckily, PBS has produced an excellent series that’s eye-opening, and fills in a lot of blanks in the picture that’s been created for us by the press and government.

You can download all 11 episodes via BitTorrent, and I highly recommend we all do that, watch the shows, talk about them on our blogs. Let’s have a great discussion about the future of our country, and have an equally great election in 2008.

And if you get something out of these programs, as I’m sure you will, please give generously to your local PBS station.

Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11.

The changing role of the source 

Must-read piece by Jeff Jarvis on the future of the interview.

I think Wired is doing a wonderful job of listening, far better than any previous print pub has. It’s awkward because a lot of understanding hasn’t yet taken place. No pain no gain.

The new reality for all publications is that their sources can go direct. It’s just like every other activity that the Internet touches, disintermediation happens.

This is a much bigger story than they were aiming for — it’s the still unwritten story of the blogosphere. Wired has a chance to get this scoop that has been out there for the getting for more than ten years, even though, ironically, I wrote much of the story myself, when I was at HotWired — before leaving, to bootstrap blogging.

Oh it’s a great big circle, it is.

Scott Rosenberg: “In the online conversation, the reporter doesn’t get the last word. And the reporter doesn’t get to filter which parts of the conversation are available to the public. No wonder journalists want to stick with the phone.”

A perfect demo 

This blog post from reporter Ryan Sholin perfectly illustrates why we need to create a record of our interviews to provide an incentive to report only the story, not to make up stuff to add drama to it.

For example, where did the “if he wants to” bit come from? Certainly not from me. I would have bent over backwards to answer his questions, of course it would only be “If I want to,” but that’s the same rule that would apply if he asked me a question on the phone, I would only answer “If I want to.” Sloppy reporting.

The second mistake is much more serious: “The problem, of course, for folks like Dave and Jason, is that they’ve done enough print interviews to get frustrated at the fact that not everything they say, not every bit of context, not every piece of backstory makes it into the final published piece.”

That doesn’t even come close to reflecting what I said or what I believe. I’ll leave it to your readers to click on the links and compare the way you’ve expressed my opinion and the way I express it.

My belief: You need the discipline of having your sources fully on the record so that you’re more careful about representing what they said. In this case, where the reader can fact-check you, you’ve utterly failed in your responsibility to tell the true story. And this is an insignificant meta-story, and not very complex, and in your area of expertise. I don’t have much confidence that you’d be straight with me or your readers if the story was more subtle, or complex.

Conference business models 

I think I’m one of the people who Jim Forbes was on a first-name basis with when I used to run a software company in the valley, and he was a reporter for various tech pubs.

As I read this rambling and interesting blog post, I started to get the idea that Jim was talking about me, and as it progressed I was sure, but he didn’t actually say my name.

I don’t have anything to hide, either about my involvement with the TechCrunch 20 conference (I’m not being paid for my services, and so far my only involvement has been to say that I am involved) or in the back-channel discussion with the Wired reporter. The only part that hasn’t been disclosed is a little advice I offered, on background, but if he wants to disclose it I don’t mind. (Maybe I’ll dig it up tomorrow and run it as a post.)

I certainly never said anything, publicly or privately to call into question Jim’s integrity, nor do I believe there is any cause to, but I do have a problem with conferences that showcase technology, charge people to attend and charge people whose products are demoed. I’m sure, based on knowing JIm for many years, that he never did anything unethical. And Demo, the show that he worked on, is better than a lot of shows, they tell everyone that the participants are paying, in other words, they disclose.

But I’ve paid to go to conferences where I was sure I was watching ads. Boy did that feel slimy.

People I used to admire did it. That felt worse than slimy, that felt like betrayal.

I know the pressures people operate under, I ran four conferences myself, and never took money for a speaking slot. But it’s common practice in the tech industry. And I’m glad that Jason and Mike are going to make an issue of it, because it will put pressure on other conferences to clean up their act. There will be a lot more disclosing in the future, and maybe some conferences will have to find a new business model to keep people coming.

Anyway, it’s late, I’m listening to old live Dead music as I write this on my new stereo that I love (a Mac) that’s also got an outliner and a browser on it. I’m so glad I lived to see all this convergence. I’ve smoked a lot of cigarettes with Jim, and maybe a few other things, many years ago when we and the industry we’re part of were much younger. I love the guy, and if I said anything that hurt him, it was inadvertent, but I’m sorry nonetheless.

I don’t do interviews by email 

I’m so tired of reading how I prefer to do interviews by email, as if to prove my point — can’t these reporters read or don’t they care about getting the story right? This is crux of the story. It’s not a minor detail. I don’t do interviews by email.

Here’s the piece where I explained how I do it.

Here’s where I explained it again.

One more time: I am not Jason Calacanis, who expressed a preference for interviews by email. My name is Dave Winer. I prefer to do it in blog posts, totally out in the open, in writing, on the record.

We’re in really deep shit here in the US, at least partially because reporters don’t do their jobs. I’m up to episode five of the PBS series. I’ve spent hundreds of hours reading news coverage of Iraq, and now I’m finding out what I suspected, all the reports were 100 percent garbage. Nonsense. Fiction. This is how it happens. They write what they think should be true, they don’t bother finding out what’s actually happening.

Today’s links 

NY Times: Jack Valenti dead at 85.

Newfangled indoor BBQ movie.

Checkbox News, Day 4 

Thanks Doc. What a nice thing to say.

I think Checkbox News is all the things you say it is.

Uninstalling IE7 renders machine useless 

1. I installed IE7.

The OPML Editor doesn’t run on Windows XP if IE7 is installed.

I want to use the OPML Editor on Windows XP.

Therefore, I uninstalled IE7 using Microsoft’s Add/Remove Programs control panel.

It told me I had to restart.

I restarted.

iertutl.dll blah blah blah.

Didn’t the government sue Microsoft over this?

52, the perfect age? 

I was born on May 2, 1955.

Which means that on Wednesday I will be 52.

Think about this.

May 2.

5th month,	2nd day.
5	2

Perfectly symmetric.

As is the number itself.

5 is an upside down 2.

And vice versa.

Sometimes life makes sense.

Or will make sense.

Next Wednesday.

We hope.

Praise Murphy.

Scripting News for 4/25/2007

Going to Mix? 

I was curious to see who’s going to Mix 07 next week, so I started a wiki.

Robert Scoble’s Mix 07 predictions. He says Microsoft may announce an S3 competitor. Maybe they’ll allow you to specify an index page, then it’ll be useful for about 100,000 real world applications that S3 isn’t.

If you’re going to Mix, and have something you want to talk with other people about, post a note in the comments, or on the wiki, and I’ll link to some of them here?

Iraq news 

Highly recommend two broadcasts for perspectives on what’s happening in Iraq and the US.

First, Monday’s Fresh Air interview with Bill Moyers, a preview of his Friday night PBS series, which begins this week with a look at how the press is in collusion with the administration in how they present news about the war. The interviewer challenged Moyers on that word, and he said there’s no other word for it (although it’s not universal, some of the press is, he says, trying to tell the truthful story).

He also expresses a point I wish more journalists would get, it’s not their responsibility to tell both sides of a story, it’s their job to say what’s actually happening. Most journalists let a Republican and Democrat chew at each other and leave us believing the truth is somewhere between. But in many ways the two parties are also in collusion and they’re not even in the neighborhood of the truth.

Second, I’m slowly working my way through the PBS series, America at a Crossroads, I’m in the middle of episode 3 (there are 11), and it’s beautifully done, and it explains the history of al Qaeda, the relationship between what they call al Qaeda in Iraq and the group founded by bin Ladin. Lots of revelations and important reminders. I didn’t understand that for all practical purposes we had destroyed al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that their plan of drawing the US into a hopeless war failed, that we prevailed and drove bin Laden into hiding. Then, something I did understand, we gave them the biggest gift, by invading Iraq.

The third episode contains stories told by soldiers in Iraq, with stories from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War intermixed. Great literature, eye-opening perspectives. Both parties say they are supporting the troops. They should watch this episode for an idea of what that actually means.

Connect the two shows together, Moyers and Crossroads, and you see that the press is still feeding us nonsense about Iraq, carrying the Bush message that we lose if we withdraw. In fact, we lose by staying, depleting our military, and going ever deeper into debt. And eventually the troops are going to figure out that no one is thinking about them back home, and we should expect a nightmare when they force us to look at what’s happening. A replay of Vietnam, at a societal level, only much worse.

bin Laden understands economics, and I’m sure the President does too, but it isn’t reflected in the public dialog. I hope Moyers will fully uncover that on Friday.

They’re doing great work at PBS. There’s at least one shining light in American journalism. Thanks.

Update: Bill Moyer’s Journal is on KQED in San Francisco tonight at 9PM.

Checkbox News, day 3 

An interesting discussion about Checkbox News yesterday, although it was overshadowed by the michegas about Wired and Arrington, both of whom took cheap shots, Arrington’s in the name of friendship. I echo his sentiment, with friends like that who needs flamebait?

Okay, enough about that, what about Checkbox News?

A bunch of people misunderstood that it’s a mechanism for giving feedback to the news networks. It is that for sure, but that’s not why it exists. Please read this carefully, it’s important.

When I uncheck an item, I no longer get news on that subject.

When I say no more Anna Nicole, I don’t get no more Anna Nicole. It isn’t a request to the network that they consider showing less of Anna Nicole, it’s like an on-off switch, or a checkbox (hence the name) — when unchecked, the flow is off.

So it’s a user interface control, a preference, not merely a feedback mechanism.

Of course if no one has Anna Nicole Smith checked, they’ll stop producing news about her, so it is a feedback mechanism in that sense. But if I don’t like the garbage they pass off as news, I can watch the stuff I am interested in.

Dan Gillmor says he votes by changing the channel, but that doesn’t work when all the networks are covering the same idiotic press conference, where the DNA results of the paternity test for Anna Nicole’s baby are being announced, or on the first day back at Virginia Tech when they’re holding yet another prayer vigil with orange and maroon balloons. I think it would be nice if they had such ceremonies without the network cameras there, and of course I turn off the TV when they all do that, but see the previous item about Iraq, there is actually news going on when they go into 24-hour hand-wringing mode, and TV is a good way to get news, if only you could get some.

And Trudy Schuett offered a great idea via email — a section where I say what kind of commercials I want and don’t want. I’d turn off the Head-on commercials (got the message, hate the product), and turn on the Apple-PC commercials (they’re so damned funny!) and I’d like to get commercials for kitchen appliances (I need some) and home entertainment systems, and travel deals to Europe. This allows Checkbox News to be part of my vision of how advertising works in the 21st century, it’s information, not intrusion. Yehi.

Scripting News for 4/24/2007

Checkbox News 

Yesterday’s piece got the most positive and enthusiastic response of any technology I’ve proposed in the 10-plus years I’ve been blogging. I love it when an idea takes root like that. Perhaps it’s a measure of how fed up we are with what passes for news on television.

We live in a complex world, and many of us have minds and are educated, and want to understand what’s going on. TV is not a bad way to do it, but the medium needs an overhaul in the age of the Internet. Our attention has mostly been focused on print, probably because we haven’t felt we can do much about TV. But as yesterday’s mockup shows, we’re really not very far from turning TV news upside down much the same way RSS revolutionized written news.

To implement this style of news, two things are needed:

1. The news has to be unbundled, each segment, each story, has to be available as a separate unit.
2. Each item needs to be categorized, needs metadata, to fit into a folksonomy.

Both #1 and #2 are easily within reach given the current economics of TV news. They have the technical means to do the unbundling, some are already doing it (examples: 60 Minutes, NewsHour). And I’d guess that some news organizations are already generating the metadata for each story, and if not, many have the editorial staff to do it.

Once #1 and #2 are in place, just turn your news flow into a frequently updated podcast feed, and we can do the rest, building a variety of clients from Apple TV to the Windows Media Player, running on iPods and cell phones, laptops, desktops — who knows where. All of it powered by the enormously simple idea of checkboxes.

PS: A J-school prof at Cal told me that most reporters have absolutely no idea which of their stories people read or don’t read. They’re flying blind. I bet TV news people are too.

Scott Rosenberg: “Not only do most reporters have no idea which stories are read, many if not most don’t want to know.”

Transcription errors 

Jason Calacanis was contacted by the same reporter who contacted me. I’m mentioned in Jason’s post, but somewhere along the line there was a transcription error. I did not offer to do the interview via email, I made a different offer.

Here’s what I said: “Not generally doing interviews these days. If you have a few questions, send them along, and if I have something to say, I’ll write a blog post, which of course you’re free to quote. Sorry that’s about the best I can do.”

Like Jason, I have a lot of experience being misquoted, or having comments linked with others, as if there was some back and forth that didn’t happen. Or I get used to make a point that the reporter wants to make, and my story gets lost. Often, the reporter’s point is that I’m a putz. Why should I work hard to help people do that? Also like Jason, I don’t have any trouble getting my ideas out on my own.

So if you want to work together, let’s find a new way to do it. I’m fed up with the old system. The way we start the reboot is to do all our work out in the open, real-time. Not via email, but in full view of everyone.

I will respect the reporter’s wish not to be identified, and if they want, I won’t even say my comments are in response to an inquiry from a reporter.

Another super-rude comeback from a Wired reporter. And they wonder why we decline to do interviews with them. Look in the mirror guys. Imagine someone talked about you that way, and ask if you’d go out of your way to help them.

Dan Gillmor: “Every journalist should have the experience of being covered by journalists. Nothing would improve the craft more.”

Joe Beda: “Talking to the media has absolutely no upside for me.”

Kevin Tofel: “How about an interview Wiki?”

Postscript: A Wired reporter takes issue with Jason’s post, calling him “cowardly.” As if to prove my point, perhaps. Can’t wait to hear what epiphet they have for me. The weird thing about it is that I know and respect Dylan Tweney, which makes me wonder if he’s trying to make some kind of really bad joke. If you’re trying to be funny, self-deprecating humor works better. Seriously.

Today’s links 

I was curious to find out who is going to Mix 07 next week in Las Vegas so I started a wiki page.

NY Times: “Federal securities regulators said yesterday that they would bring no civil charges against Apple over the backdating of executive stock options. But they stopped short of removing the cloud that for nearly a year has hung over the company’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs.”

Dan Farber: Apple’s former CFO blames Jobs over options.

Rober Ebert: “Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick.”

Scripting News for 4/23/2007

TV news of the future? 

Here’s a mockup of how TV news may work in the future.

How I came up with this view…

I was drinking coffee, watching the morning news when a story about Virginia Tech came on MSNBC. I really wanted to begin this week without more stories about how they’re coping. I know this makes me an ogre, but after listening to On The Media yesterday, my cynicism is validated. And after watching 60 Minutes about life in Baghdad, the first report I’ve seen to actually go in to get the story, I was aware that people are dying in places outside Blacksburg (and truthfully, the dying is probably over in Blacksburg).

I had a flash, I want a checkbox that tells MSNBC that I don’t want any more Virginia Tech stories.

Then came breaking news that Boris Yeltsin had died. In my ideal news system, the screen would refresh and a checkbox entitled Yeltsin would be added, checked by default. If, after hearing the first report, I didn’t want to hear more, I could uncheck it. No doubt a biography is coming, and testimonials, and interviews with Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. I am interested in this stuff, Yeltsin is history, but there may come a time when I’d prefer more news about Alberto Gonzales, and I definitely want to hear anything they have on the Internet or Macintosh, or the impeachment of President Bush.

And there are some longterm stories that I have an interest in, like Katrina, or topics that because of my past I want to stay tuned into, like NY Metro. I live in the Bay Area, so I want to be informed about news there, but mix it in with news of the world. As we head into baseball’s post-season, I’ll check Sports, but it’s still early, and I’ll look for the news of my teams on the net, myself.

I think this is another form of the River of News, the checkboxes represent subscriptions. I could see MSNBC including stories produced by CNN, and sharing revenue with them. The goal is to get the best news experience tailored to the interests of specific users. I don’t want to interfere with people who want to see the Virginia Tech students go back to class, but I want to move on, and want my news provider to respect that. (And I still want the choice to see Cho’s videos, I think that was the solution to the problems Howie Kurtz was concerned with on the Reliable Sources. Note that media navel-gazing is not checked in my customized view. This permits them to talk about themselves all they want, which is fine with me.)

I’d like a button that means “Go on to the next story.”

I thought I would write this up, but why not go a step further and mockup a prototype page, because it might stimulate some thought and other ideas.

And if you have comments, please let me know.

Today’s links 

NY Times: “Two former Apple executives expect to be sued this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission over the company’s backdating of employee stock options.”

American Cliche: “Has the Podshow lineup been booted off Sirius?”

Infoworld: Wi-Fi cloaks the City of London.

Technology Review: Vista vs OS X?

Google == Internet? 

Remember the newspaper guy so many were calling clueless for saying that Google was getting all his content for free without paying for it? I defended him, saying that from where he stood the name Google was synonymous with everything we think of as the web or the Internet.

Now there’s a study that ranks Google as the most valuable brand, not just in tech — it’s worth more than Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Wal-Mart, GE, and of course Microsoft and Apple. Google is the #1 most valuable brand in the world. That’s right — Google. How did that happen??

Now, if you stopped a man or woman in the street and asked what Google means, what would they say?

I don’t know, but I suspect they would say “The Internet.”

Get revenge on Wired, or..? 

A Wired reporter wants to go to Mix 07.

But there’s a hitch — it’s sold out, and there’s a waiting list.

Should Microsoft give the reporter special consideration?

Sopranos 

Amyloo was made nervous when Tony tended his tomatoes last night. It’s not the only recent hat-tip to The Godfather, right? They lead you right up to the cliff, and leave you hanging there. Heh.

I wonder if this Sopranos reference will be as high-ranked as last week’s? Seems kind of a scam, I wish I had more to say about it. For some reason Google thinks I’m authoritative on the Sopranos. Go figure.

Scripting News for 4/22/2007

Today’s links 

On The Media segment on Virginia Tech massacre. We were all actors in a drama.

Seattle P-I: The end of a blogging era may be near.

Yogi Berra: “We’re lost. But we are making good time.”

Surprised that my review of last week’s Sopranos is in the first page of results for Sopranos on Google.

Google Calendar security issue.

Moveon taking cheap shots at McCain? 

Amyloo chimes in on liberals not stooping to the ridiculously low level of Republican politics. One thing I’m not clear on is if Moveon.org is taking cheap shots at McCain for his gaffe about bombing Iran (which was insensitive, btw, to the Iranians who would die and the Americans who would risk their lives to drop the bombs).

If Moveon is doing this, can I have a pointer? The reason I ask is that the founders of Moveon are neighbors, and this is something we can do something about, unlike most of the misery of the world, we can help make this one better. And I’m willing to seek out Joan and Wes to express our displeasure.

Postscript: Yes, they are taking advantage of McCain’s mistake. Here’s a copy of the email they’re sending. They lose me when they do stuff like this. I’m not voting out one set of unprincipled losers to replace them with another.

Hannibal Lecter Lite 

Any time Anthony Hopkins stars in a murder mystery that gets reasonably decent reviews, I’m all over it.

Fracture sure isn’t Silence of the Lambs, it’s nowhere near as intellectually challenging, we figured it out an hour before the other main character did, but it’s still a good movie, with Hopkins in great form, even if it’s just a hint of the depraved cannibal that lives inside him.

I gave it a B- on Yahoo.

OPML Editor help 

I’m seeing reports on people’s blogs that they can’t get yesterday’s Twitter connection working.

In many cases the problem is that they haven’t updated to the new release process. The instructions are here.

If that doesn’t do it for you, post a message on one of the mail lists where people can help.

New Twitter prefs panel 

I added a prefs panel for Twitter support in the OPML Editor. This replaces step 3 in yesterday’s instructions, you don’t have to go looking for user.twitter.prefs in the object database, this panel takes care of that.

To get the panel, choose Update opml.root in the File menu.

Here’s a link to the prefs panel. You must have the OPML Editor running on your system for that link to work.

The OPML Editor has a built-in web server for applications like this. Makes it easy to configure apps in a web browser.

Advertising, day N 

Almost everyone in the comments missed the point of the naked car guy in the YouTube video, they commented on the quality of the ad, which is something everyone can have an opinion on, but that wasn’t the point.

Their gesture was significant even if no one was informed or entertained by it, it had the courage to say this is something you want to watch even if you don’t have to.

Read the part in italics, read it carefully before you post a comment saying the quality is too low. The point is that the age of intrusive commercialism is fading, and replacing it is opt-in commercials. Commercial information you seek out because you’re buying a car or refrigerator, planning a trip, need to get new shoes, or need surgery or to be represented in a lawsuit. We are all seeking commercial information all the time, and guess where we go to find it these days — the Internet — of course!

Imho, in five years, there will be so many commercial videos on YouTube and it will seem so much a part of life, everyone will say it was always totally obvious, but remember the day (today!) when you didn’t think so.

Commercial information will be opt-in, long-form, information-rich and entertaining, or people won’t watch it.

The ad agency responsible for the naked car guy may not get it right this time, but they should keep trying, because they’re onto something.

Money talks 

1. I’ve spent many thousands of dollars on the Internet.

2. I’ve spent $0 on ads that showed up in the margins of my attention.

3. I’ve never intentionally clicked on one.

4. Mark Cuban: “My viewers are my customers.”

Scripting News for 4/21/2007

First user-facing Twitter feature 

For OPML Editor users…

While I was waiting for today’s movie to start, watching some boring Coming Attractions, I was thinking about Twitter, and how to connect it to blogging software.

I went over the options, you could connect a RSS feed, so every post would be Twitted, immediately, as soon as it’s on the web. I didn’t like this so much.

What I opted for is to make it easy to post a link to your blog post to Twitter, by clicking a button, when you’re ready.

Here’s how it works…

1. Choose Update opml.root from the File menu. This will also update dotOpml.root.

2. Quit and re-launch the OPML Editor.

3. Jump to user.twitter.prefs, and enter your Twitter username and password.

4. Choose Open today’s outline from the Your OPML Weblog sub-menu of the Community menu.

5. Enter a blog post. When you’re ready to notify your Twitter friends of its existence, click on the Twitter button. A dialog appears, confirming what you want to say, and allowing you to edit it if you like. If you click on OK, it adds a permalink to the text, and shoots it up to Twitter.

6. And a few moments later, your wisdom is on Twitter.

Good advice for everyone 

David Weinberger: “MoveOn.org can decide to make political hay out of McCain’s gaffe, but we all pay a price for it.”

I agree. And our corner of the blogosphere can benefit from that advice as well. Think about it.

21st century advertising 

This is what I’ve been talking about.

In the future, advertising will be so entertaining that it will create its own pull. No need to intrude, to hitch a ride on other more compelling content.

8/3/06: “If it’s perfectly targeted, it isn’t advertising, it’s information. Information is welcome, advertising is offensive.”