Midnight update 
It was a marathon mediation, starting at 10AM, finishing at 9PM, but we reached a settlement, drafted an agreement, and signed it. Most of the terms are confidential, but the important point is that we executed mutual releases, so there won’t be any lawsuits. I’ll probably post more about it over the weekend. Good night y’all.
Great community
Illuminating and informative comments in the last two days.
I’m spending the day in mediation of the Russo & Hale matter, so expect little or no blog posting. If you feel so inclined, say a little prayer for peace in our time, I’m hoping to come out of today with the whole mess behind us. 🙂
I’ve learned a lot about mediation in the last few weeks, esp talking with some people in Berkeley who do it for a living, and have come to think in terms of mediating conflict. Can we find middle ground, where we both achieve our goals? That’s what mediating is about, finding what’s in between.
It’s a funny concept for me, since I’ve spent my whole professional career doing things to dis-inter-mediate, so maybe it’s possible to go too far, and decentralize so much that in order to solve a problem you need to come together?
I expect to learn a lot today. To give some and get some, I hope.
Namaste y’all!
Jim Goodman: “A compromise is both parties going away unhappy.”
What to make of the Facebook APIs?
I have a Facebook page, but I don’t use it much.
I like the wild wild web, the unbounded frontier.
To me, getting to include something in a web page is ho-hum, been-there, etc etc.
A long time ago.
Like Amyloo, I wonder if they got it backwards?
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Paul on May 25, 2007 at 8:29 am
Couldn’t check out your FaceBook page since I’m not willing to register and give out my date of birth just to check out a website. Yeah I know they probably say that they ask for DOB to prove I’m over 13(they all do), but in my case, the decade would be enough.
Hope the mediation goes well and things get resolved fairly.
Posted by Jay Neely on May 25, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Hi Dave, I wrote about you and your questioning of the Facebook news on my blog, excerpted below:
“Dave Winer, Father of Blogging: “What to make of the Facebook APIs?”
Dave usually sees interesting new ways of using old things, but in this case he doesn’t see cause for excitement. This is because(besides not reading my blog), Dave is not a user. He’s on the web of course. He’s even on Facebook. But he doesn’t use it for anything. Why? Because Dave is someone who makes things. He’s someone who says things. He doesn’t have an interest in using a tool if he can’t push its limits, hack it, try to break it and rebuild it. Dave doesn’t find communities, communities find him.
But the rest of us aren’t Dave Winer. The majority of the internet isn’t interested the “wild wild web, the unbounded frontier”, at least not until it’s tame enough that they can bring their friends and play a song on it. Mainstream users are still figuring out the power the web gives them to express themselves, something visionaries like Dave have already seen, already gotten used to, and apparently, already gotten bored at seeing others discovering. 3rd party services on Facebook is more than a hundred people each posting blinking buttons on their Geotrifire page and demanding that all their friends go see it. It’s not like YahExciGoogle letting you move around a dozen or so pre-determined modules either.
3rd party services on Facebook will be groups of people determining what they want and how they want it, based on user adoption, word-of-mouth, and word-of-newsfeed, all of which can be seen in real-time by everyone connected to enough other people on the network. That’s not backwards. That’s the mainstream’s way forward.”
Hope this helps you understand Facebook’s platform a bit better, I’ve written more in-depth at http://socialstrategist.com.
Best,
~Jay Neely, Social Strategist
Posted by Kevin C. Tofel on May 26, 2007 at 6:41 am
Congrats on the middle ground solution; I hope it was such that everyone walks way feeling ‘a winner’.
Posted by Dave Winer on May 26, 2007 at 7:00 am
Kevin, here’s how I feel: “At least it’s over.” 🙂
Posted by Jim Louderback on May 26, 2007 at 7:18 am
Hey Dave, one thing to consider for european phones is to buy an international SIM – http://www.united-mobile.com/ United Mobile has one that works in many countries, and incoming calls are free, which is really good.
Also, there’s a bathroom upstairs on the 747.
have fun!
Posted by Mike Levin on May 26, 2007 at 10:18 am
Dick Cavett’s blog is free even though his NYTimes.com column is a Times Select (for pay) feature. Just a FYI…
http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/a-life-in-rim-shots/
Posted by Paul Ding on May 26, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I don’t know what’s the big deal about specifying a birthdate, Paul. I use July 4, 1976.
I remember that day well. Went to Chi-Chi’s with my youngest daughter, and had margaritas.
But feel free to invent your own, if you prefer. You probably don’t want to pick a cursed date like May 4, 1970, though.