Scripting News for 5/20/2007

Police intimidation of free speech in NJ? 

On the plane today, one the of the flight attendants told me about a scandal rocking New Jersey, where the state troopers union, unhappy with questions raised about its practices by a radio talk show host, publicized his home address and phone number, and tried to intimidate the show’s sponsors and the radio station’s executives.

I said I’d ask about it on my blog, and I am hereby doing so.

Here’s a Goggle News search query that returns lots of relevant hits.

Is this for real? Is this the United States of Fascism now? Are we allowed to ask questions about civil servants, without fear of reprisal?

Ebb & Flow 

SF Chron: Chronicle to cut 25% of jobs in newsroom.

3/24/07: “Embrace the best bloggers.”

Back in Beserkeley 

See you at the Cybersalon tonight.

Scripting News for 5/19/2007

Today’s links 

Kevin Tofel: “Widsets have extended my phone by magnitudes; granted, I use a Windows Mobile smartphone, but these widgets are Java based, so many phones can run them.”

Winksite 

I’m in a presentation by Dave Harper, founder of Winksite.

One of the people in the audience is monopolizing the discussion, saying over and over how she doesn’t get it. That’s the problem with a vendor doing a product presentation. He’s got to be nice because it’s a customer. The room empties out. I’m staying here because I’m getting caught up on email.

Postscript: I asked Hudson what he thought of Twitter. A long discussion ensued. I suggested that he provide a user interface, both mobile and desktop, for posting to Twitter, in addition to allowing for the display of Twitter-created RSS feeds. I thought Winksite could be the perfect first-peer in Twitter’s coral reef. Let’s see what happens.

Unconference art 

Neither of the conferences I went to today are really unconferences, people are doing presentations, I’m in the audience, expected to either ask questions or make suggestions.

People don’t seem ready yet to accept that knowledge is distributed through the room, we’re here to be taught.

3/5/06: What is an unconference?

Afternoon at MobileCamp 

I spent the morning at the PDF Unconference, so I’m spending some time this afternoon at MobileCamp. I’m in Room 3, watching a presentation about how to build your own SMS gateway. Not sure I need to do it, but the other sessions are either over-full, or I don’t understand what they’re about.

Cocoa UltraSMS is a “free utility for extracting SMS messages from a mobile phone into a MySQL database for use within your own applications and websites.”

The teacher, Jose Marinez, says he’ll put the full instructions for setting up the SMS gateway on his blog. He has the gateway running on his Mac Mini at home. Maybe I’ll set one up too, but I couldn’t follow the demo he did here today.

Remixing politics by JD Lasica 

I’m in a discussion led by JD Lasica about remixing politics.

He’s describing a project to allow people to share speeches and interviews, commercials.

Problems with Youtube, per JD:

1. Uploads are limited to 10 minutes.

2. No Creative Commons.

3. Can’t download the video.

Outthink Media is doing the development.

Blip.tv is a partner.

Ourmedia is the central place people will go to.

Coral reefs, the saga continues 

Bravetrail asks how many coral reefs do fish need?

The answer is of course that we only need one coral reef.

But a federated server that ties into Twitter would not be a new coral reef, it would be part of the Twitter coral reef.

Just as Feedburner is part of the RSS coral reef. And rumors say they’re selling their piece of the reef for $100 million to Google.

The danger is that Google is a super-power, and coral reefs depend on harmony and no one entity being too powerful. Such an entity might disrupt the fragile ecology of the whole reef. Of course they’ll say they won’t, but…

Well I’ve gotten too far ahead of reality. There is no announced deal, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. This is the main reason I’ve been uncomfortable with a company (Feedburner) trying to make a business out of the centralizing something that only works if its decentralized.

And I’d feel much more comfortable if a publishing company bought them, than a technology company. Publishing companies tend to accept technology as-is, technology companies, often try to play a game of lock the user in the trunk.

Scripting News for 5/18/2007

Next stops 

Sunday back to Calif, early morning flight. Ride BART from SFO to North Berkeley.

Sunday evening, Cybersalon, a reprise of the “debate” here this afternoon.

Tuesday afternoon, San Diego for the Future In Review conference. On-stage interview with BBC Radio Wednesday.

Friday, mediation with Russo & Hale.

Monday, fly to Copenhagen for REBOOT 9 on Thursday. Days inbetween to discover Denmark, acclimate to time-zone, midnight sun.

June 1-7, train riding around Europe. Destinations unknown!

June 7, return to US of A through Milano.

Pretty good wifi at conference 

Bloggers debate 

Andrew Keen opens a panel at Personal Democracy Forum debating The Cult of the Amateur.

Links of the Day 

Aaron Pressman on MSM that fell for hoaxes.

BBC on Flickr censorship.

Twittervision in 3-D.

Wandered into a press conference 

It was hard to find a place to sit down to eat lunch, wandering around I saw an open door in a room with some tables and an empty chair. Turns out it was a press conference announcing a movement to draft a “tech president.” I sat down, asked if it was okay, started eating my lunch and listened.

Craig Newmark is sitting at the table, saying Being There type quotable things, of course he is much more self-aware than he lets on. Eli Pariser from Moveon.org is sitting to my right.

Will something come of this? Well, there are a lot of industries that want to see the US networks for computers and cell phones to stay in the 20th Century. The cable and entertainment industries are scared of access being a free or relatively free thing.

Stifling while listening to Friedman 

I did a good job of stifling while listening to NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, although at times I did gasp out loud at his arrogance and disregard for us, the audience.

As you know I don’t like the audiences, but today I am definitely in one. I’m not allowed to talk, respond, agree or disagree. My job is to listen and that’s it.

Friedman told an old story about how the Internet out of control would turn everyone into a public figure, like Friedman, who suffers from slander and exposure. True, the press can be unkind, Friedman himself has given credit for my work to a mob. What recourse did I have? Not much. I was thinking of responding to him in a question after his speech, but luckily I didn’t have the chance.

Talking from the audience is to talk with no power. I’ll wait until I have the stage, later today, or here on my blog, when I can finish a thought without having to explain my qualifications.

Friedman told the story of an Indonesian woman who thought Al Gore is Jewish, something she heard on the Internet, which Friedman says is untrustworthy. But we remember when Friedman warned of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, who explained to us in his audience why we had to go to war. If I had time to ask a question, I might have asked him what regrets he has about the mistakes he’s made, the lies he told that caused more death than the lies the Indonesian woman who thought Gore is a Jew. The mistake we make is when we blindly trust any source, including the NY Times.

I’ve been able to use my ability to out bad businesses to get equitable treatment for myself and others. Sure some people will use this medium for bad purposes, as Friedman uses the Times for what I think are bad purposes. Him painting our medium as inherently evil might have slowed things down a tiny bit, a few years ago, but today it only tells us how flat this world looks to a man in Friedman’s place. It’s no more flat than any other world, but if you over-simplify it can look that way.

Report from the PDF 

I’m finally ensconced in a seat in the auditorium at Pace University in NY listening to Lee Rainey talking numbers. Millions of people do this. Millions of people do something else. The median age has risen from 33 to 39. It’s a lot less white. But it seems we could read this on the web and be a lot more comfortable.

People are dressed much better here than the typical California conference. Lots more women. ALready schmoozed with lots of people who it was good to see. Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, Craig Newmark, Salim Ismail. I have Alzheimer’s, I know this because I’ve been confused by three people who knew me who I didn’t recognize. Two of them were very attractive young women. I’m losing my mind.

Sitting next to Ed Cone. I explained that he was lucky that I actually recognized him.

I’ve already sung his praises, as the godfather of Greensboro blogging, a legendary small North Carolina city that probably has the highest per capita blogging population than any other comparable city in the US.

Ed Cone: “Guy in tie at podium w/slides == death.”

Please, no more presentations!

How about a discussion. This conference desperately needs to adopt the philosophy of the medium that it covers. If you’re reading this in the room and agree, please cover your mouth and cough three times.

It’s not the blogosphere 

Engadget on the Apple leak that made the stock move.

Somehow a fraudulent email was distributed to Apple employees. One of them forwarded the email to Engadget. They made a reasonable attempt to verify the email, failing to get a comment from Apple PR, they believed it was authentic, so they ran it.

What’s new is the quick turnaround, otherwise Engadget is a professional publication that happens to use the web and tools of the blogging world, but this is not the blogosphere. Nothing wrong with that, and I don’t think Engadget did anything wrong. Are they a powerful publication now? Yes. The news, while it was believed to be true, made Apple’s stock go down; when retracted, the stock went back up.

They acted as any professional news organization would, which is what they are.

Scripting News for 5/17/2007

Miscellanios 

BBC: “Anya Peters went from homeless blogger to published author in the blink of an eye.”

My Sprint EVDO card works grrrreat in this hotel.

Josh Marshall: “This White House has mainly used ‘classification’ as a way to keep embarrassing information out of public view.”

Checked in at the Hilton, across the street from Ground Zero.

We’ve all been here at one time or another. Well, at least I have.

Ron Paul the hero of 2008? 

Of course the Republicans are trying to tar and feather Rep Ron Paul, spin what he says to make it sound like he’s a nut.

Even the Democrats aren’t making as much sense as he is.

The things he’s saying are surely what the politicos in Washington say when the cameras aren’t on. We need more of that. Poor McCain, I can imagine at one point he might have said these things. But he’s too sold out now to have any chance of winning if he did. His career would be over. But, you gotta wonder why he doesn’t go ahead, because his career is totally over anyway, and the thought of more people dying, Americans and Iraqis, so he can hold on to a sliver of hope that he might win an election someday, suggests that he never really had any morals, he was just playing someone with them, in the hope of getting elected.

I’d like to shake Ron Paul’s hand someday. I might even work for the guy, how about that! I honestly don’t give a damn if the Republicans win or the Democrats — I’d just like to see us, as a country, start using our brains, and start caring about not just ourselves but the poor schnooks who are dying. A little Golden Rule would help us feel okay about all the blessings we have.

As Maude used to say, and I think this every time I hear one of these guys like Blitzer or McCain (they’re all the same) lie on TV — God’ll get you for that Walter. Well God won’t only be getting Wolfe and John, he’ll be getting you and me, if we stand around and don’t do anything and let the bullshit continue.

Point of view is everything 

Les Orchard: “Twitter becomes immensely interesting when it turns out that you’ve amassed a group of contacts who tend to run in similar circles as you, because even their off-handed remarks and random burps have a decent chance of surfacing something interesting or entertaining. When it’s good, this sets up a nice ambient chatter like sitting in a coffee shop filled with just your kind of people.”

That’s exactly right. And he goes on to explain that’s why when reviewers look at Twitter, or other networking systems (like blogs) they see them as mundane. But it’s like listening to random phone conversations, you’d think the same thing. But suppose you were listening to a conversation among people you know?

Twitter isn’t private, so it’s not exactly like eavesdropping, but it is personal. These days on the Internet we’re experimenting with various mixtures of private and public, subscriptions and ephemeral connections. Almost no one watches the main Twitter page, yet that’s probably where most of the reviewers go.

The naive reviewer hasn’t got much to offer these days.

Wolf Blitzer interviews Ron Paul 

It’s amazing how Blitzer protects his viewers from the new information that there might be understandable reasons why the US was attacked on 9-11. (Of course the information itself is old, what’s new is that it’s being aired on CNN.)

We’ve been killing huge numbers of people in the Middle East for a long time. If a foreign power was doing to us what we do to them, we’d be pissed, and we’d fight back. (As they are.)

Paul is right, of course — and Blitzer is wrong. Paul is the only candidate of either party with the guts to cut through the nonsense and say what’s obviously true. And Blitzer is the one that owes us an apology, for carrying the lies for so long. He’s supposed to be a journalist, and his job is to be neutral and to find and tell the truth.

Ron Paul is good medicine for the US political system.

PS: If Giuliani is so good at protecting us, why did the attacks happen on his watch? Why no warning from Giuliani? Didn’t he see it coming? Couldn’t he prevent it? Why should anyone think he’d do any better if he was President?

Scripting News for 5/16/2007

Today’s links 

Excerpt from last night’s Republican debate cited below.

Larry King doesn’t use the Internet, and doesn’t want to learn how to.

Nik Cubrilovic: “The stats for torrent downloads are staggering.”

I wish I had seen the Republican debate 

I had a dinner in NY last night, so I missed the Republican debate.

The Nation summarizes an exchange with frontrunner Rudy Giuliani and Texas Congressperson Ron Paul, who said: “Right now, we’re building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting.”

Here’s the actual video.

Giuliani has no basis for running on his ability to defend the country against terrorism, other than an impression that he made some people feel better when he appeared on TV after the 9-11 attacks. I didn’t have a TV then, so I remain perhaps the only American who doesn’t have fond memories of Giuliani, who I remember as a brash district attorney, definitely not Presidential material. New York politics, even though NY is our biggest city, is a very small little world.

I’d like to see the current NY mayor, a Republican, get into the race. Unlike Giuliani, he comes from the city, not its political system, and is a genuinely smart man, who uses his brain, and his heart.

And I like the effect Ron Paul is having on the Republicans. He may be their Howard Dean, four years later, and perhaps without the self-destructiveness. They need, we need, someone to connect that component of our policial system in reality, and he’s doing that quite well.

I don’t usually watch Larry King 

A few weeks ago they had the entire cast of Heroes on Larry King, I’m a big fan of the show, so I watched. It was worth it, if only to hear the story of Adrian Pasdar, who plays Nathan Petrelli on the show, who is married to Natalie Maines, a Dixie Chick.

When she tours, in Japan for example, she can’t get the show on broadcast or cable, so she downloads it from the Internet. No one remarked that this was illegal, or could get her a big fine or jail time. Larry King didn’t say a word, nor did any of his fellow cast members. No lawyer served him with a subpoena. It went unnoticed.

Did a little reality leak in? On one hand, artists want their work to be seen. And the Internet reaches everywhere, including places that broadcast and cable don’t. And it’s the perfect time-shifter. Why shouldn’t I be able to watch the Republican debate even if I happen to be in NY and eating dinner with a business associate at the time it was broadcast?

Isn’t it time for the entertainment industry to deal with reality, instead of making obvious deals with Alberto Gonzalez to impose insults to the Constitution and the people, in order to support their denial of technology that serves people so incredibly well.

Maybe they should star in their own reality show, you could call it Network Execs in Denial. Put them on an island with a bunch of real people and Internet connectivity and watch them pull their hair out trying to explain to them why what they’re doing is wrong.

PS: Yaacov suggests that she was watching on this website. Interesting. Does it work in Japan??

Scripting News for 5/15/2007

Saturday unconference in NY 

On Saturday I’ll be at the PDF unconference at the Pace University Student Union, One Pace Plaza, 10AM-6:15PM. It’s open to the public, $35 for lunch, coffee, snacks & wifi.

I’ll also be at the non-unconference on Friday, part of an incredible lineup of creative bloggers and technologists who care about democracy.

I return to California on Sunday.

PS: If you read Scripting News and are going to the PDF meetup on Saturday, could you sign up here on my wiki, so I’ll have an idea of who’s coming. Maybe we can have a special meeting just for this community.

PPS: MobileCamp NYC is on Saturday. I’ll try to make it over there, I want to show off the NY Times River. It seems that NYers who are into mobile tech might find that interesting!

What is Yahoo up to with Flickr? 

Read what Thomas Hawk says and give it a lot of credence.

Thomas has earned our respect. He says Yahoo is unfairly deleting stuff.

As a paying user of Flickr this is very disturbing to me!

Yahoo, please explain. Thanks.

Gotta say 

It’s good to see Les Orchard blogging again.

Photos from a morning walk in Rockaway Beach 

Click here for more photos.

B. Mann loses it 

He says he lost it when he read my post about federating Twitter last night. He says “Forget Twitter. It has a bunch of users, that’s about it.” And goes on to say someone should rebuild Twitter using Jabber.

But having a bunch of users is very important feature. You can’t just skip over it as if it didn’t matter, because imho it’s all that matters. Jabber is a good technological foundation. But we’ve learned over and over that that isn’t enough to get people to use something.

So many people who know technology think they know better than users. The trick is to forget that and just go where the people are. Jason wants to use Twitter. So do a lot of people. That’s good enough for me.

Previous citation: Twitter as coral reef.

Life in prison for copyright infringement? 

News.com: “Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including ‘attempts’ to commit piracy.”

Theory — this is what the Democrats got to look the other way and let the Gonzales matter drop. Howard Berman, the advocate for the RIAA and MPAA, is on the House Judiciary Committee, and in general, the Democrats are the ones pushing for legislation on behalf of the entertainment industry.

Also, I have no idea what attempted infringement means, but it could mean visiting a site that has BitTorrents available for download.

The News.com article isn’t clear about this, but apparently there are some infringements deemed so serious that the proposed penalty is life in prison.

Scripting News for 5/14/2007

Twitter Premium? 

Jason Calacanis is known for stimulating interesting discussion. Today is no different.

He says he’d pay $100 a year for a Twitter that was always fast, almost always up, and had some additional features.

I sent Jason a private email which I’ll now repeat here.

Just FYI, because of their API, you don’t really need Ev and Biz to do that for you. A bunch of us could pool resources and set up a server of our own, and peer with Twitter’s. If Twitter is down it would just queue up the messages, in the meantime, anyone who was on the premium system would see the messages immediately.

Wigglin Spree 

I find this commercial endlessly fascinating. Just love the song. And the dancing. Simple pleasures.

BTW, I’ve been saying this for years — why don’t companies put their ads on the net? Really high quality versions. They are ads after all, they want us to watch them, right? Or what am I missing?

Apparently it’s sung by Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies. Here’s an MP3 of the beginning of the song. Some people love the ad (like me) and others hate it.

Okay there’s a bit of wiggling on the Jell-o site. Not enough and not the commercial with the kid and the cow.

Another day in the park 

Speaking of simple pleasures…

It was just too lovely to spend much time blogging today.

I don’t remember east coast weather as nice as the last two days.

Here are some pictures of turtles in the park for your entertainment.

Scripting News for 5/13/2007

Ideas for the TechCrunch 20 conference 

Jason posted an outline of the agenda for the TechCrunch 20 conference coming up in September. I had some ideas I wanted to add, and asked if he’d prefer if I post them publicly or send them privately. He said he prefers public discourse, and naturally I agree, so here goes…

I think something is missing if we start with product pitches, and don’t go any further back in the gestation process. Ideally I’d like to have a discussion about a roadmap for the next ten years in Internet entrepreneurship. Which ideas of today will still be around in ten years and which won’t? What problems will be solved that will change the nature of products we can make in the future? I think that’s a hard nut to crack, but there are some obvious things — for example the mythical podcast player we’re always talking about. It seems that, while no startups are today producing such a product (correct?) at some point in the next ten years someone will. Yes or no? If we want to see this problem solved, because, theoretically it will enable many more companies to start, how can we create incentives?

If given a chance, I’d get up and evangelize Checkbox News. I wouldn’t actually be pitching it, but I’d be interested in knowing if anyone wants to work on it. A friend, Greg Stikeleather, once called this Idea Capital, it works like venture capital, but it provides a fertile idea for a group of entrepreneurs, much the way VC provides cash to stimulate the development of new entrepreneurship. That’s a business I’d like to be in myself.

Just after the last boom ended, I argued that VCs should set aside some of their profits in boom times to build up a stock of developed ideas to fuel the next boom. I think doing so would help diminish the familiar boom-bust cycle that Silicon Valley has been going through for all these decades.

So that’s part one of the discussion. Part two is more fun — I’d like people to talk about some crazy idea they have, ideas they don’t think will get funded, but products they’d like to see nonetheless. Companies don’t solve all the problems out there, some things get created with little thought of creating a company, but they end up creating opportunities for companies — things like folksonomies, syndication, digital photography and video, blogging, podcasting. Personally, I’d like to see us make archving really work, so what we create on the web may outlive us. If there’s a Hemingway or a Woody Allen out there today, they’re probably creating for the Internet. How will we make sure their work survives? And of course that’s just one idea. And some ideas never become commercial yet still have a potentially positive effect on our lives.

Now it could be these kinds of things don’t have a place at the TechCrunch 20 conference, that’s up to Mike and Jason to decide. But I would find a conference with a broader agenda more interesting, and perhaps it would provide a reward for some of the entrepreneurs who come, beyond helping get their companies funded, and their shareholders liquid.

Finally, I think of this set of ideas as nutrition for the startup community. So many times people come away from these shows feeling that nothing new was discussed. I feel strongly that the way to make sure that people feel they got their money’s worth is to be deliberate, even systematic, about bringing the new ideas in.

Perfect weather in NY 

The weather in NY today is perfect, so I took a walk in Central Park with a friend and my camera.

Here’s a four-picture Flickr set.

Weird movie made by holding camera at side while walking.

Today’s links 

Rockbox is an “open source replacement firmware for mp3 players.”

Demo of wordpress.root

Please ignore, this is just a demo.

Scripting News for 5/11/2007

Today’s links 

Happy 40th birthday to Nick Bradbury. He was born in the spring before the Summer of Love.

NY Times: “Bonds’s impending achievement would normally have the sport in a congratulatory frenzy, except that many fans view Bonds’s ascendancy as the signature event of the ignominious steroids era.”

Two-word comment: “If Only.”

Wired on results from Alexa on traffic at various blogs. At least they’re honest when they say it’s link-baiting.

Mike Shaver: “Why wouldn’t you choose the web, given its record and power and openness?”

Great BBQ in Berkeley 

Marc Canter will love this place if he doesn’t already know about it. Wonderful home-style BBQ, all varieties. Been there twice so far, we’ve had baby back ribs, brisket and North Carolina-style pulled pork. All of it very well prepared, lean, very tasty. The hot sauce isn’t too hot. The side dishes are prepared authentically. We had collard greens and cauliflower last night. At the table next to us, they had corn bread and macaroni. It’s going to be a regular. Easy to get to, off the Gillman St exit of I-80.

Theodore Roosevelt 

Retraction & apology 

A couple of days ago, in documenting a misquote in a Business Week article, I theorized that the misquote was a result of “empty throwaway words that fill up all Business Week articles.”

While the theory accurately reflects my state of mind, which is all it purported to do, it’s unfair to say all Business Week articles contain this kind of misquote, or even most. I should have said that some Business Week articles do.

I apologize for this mistake. I believe they care about the quality of their publication, it was unfair to imply that they don’t.

The last movie I saw in a theater 

A few weeks ago I got a new sound system for my home theater. It makes a huge difference in the experience. I’ve been going back and watching old favorites to see what they’re like now that the sound is better than the picture. I haven’t found a way to describe in words how much richer it is.

My screen isn’t as big as the screens in theaters, but the quality is much higher, and I sit 8 feet from the screen so in effect my screen is bigger.

Then early this week, went to see SpiderMan 3 at the AMC Bay Street, a relatively new theater, which should have the latest screening equipment. The movie had just come out, so it seems the print should be in good shape. This is the first time I’ve been to a theater seen since upgrading my sound system, and while I had always been impressed with the sound at theaters in the past, this time I was surprised to hear how bad their system is. The one I have at home is thrilling, theirs is mushy. And the film had all kinds of defects that I never would have noticed before, but now I’m spoiled by HD. However, even normal movies that I screen at home from an ordinary DVD are better quality than what they show at a theater. I wonder why?

One reason I mention this is to point out, in my own humble way, an opportunity for the movie industry, to turn theaters into fantastic movie-viewing venues, with the best equipment, cranked up for maximum effect. Honestly, I think they’re going to have to do that to compete with the equipment that’s making its way into the home these days. Sure I spent a fair amount of money on my setup, but if there’s one thing we know for sure, the prices in home electronics go down very quickly these days.