Scripting News for 3/10/2008

Interview with Guy Kawasaki 

20-minute interview with evangelist Guy Kawasaki on Microsoft, Twitter, SXSW, how to do interviews, Apple, RSS.

http://sundaygang.com/dave/guyKawasakiInterview.mp3

Picture of Guy’s MacBook Air with hookups.

My notes for the Kawasaki interview.

You can subscribe to my podcasts using this feed.

Who should I interview next? 

I have a great rig here and I’m learning how to use it.

I can interview any willing interviewee with a telephone. I can do the interview when I’m at my desktop, or with somewhat less fidelity, using my iPhone from the road.

I like the 15-20 minute format.

I’ve interviewed Guy Kawasaki, Joe Trippi, Steve Gillmor, Marc Canter, Jay Rosen, Scott Rosenberg, George Lakoff.

Who should I interview next?

PS: Lots of great suggestions. I’m interested in either talking with people I know well, because it’s easy for me to pull a good story out of them. Or people who have a new product, esp one related to products I use. Or people involved with national politics because that’s a current focus for me. Better if there are people who mix all these.

We’re trying Chatterous tonight 

http://www.chatterous.com/landing/dave/

Passcode: 2chil

What is it? I have no clue.

I found out about it from this Seattle P-I piece.

Come over and help us figger it out.

Danes in Berkeley 

Thomas Madsen-Mygdal & Steffen Tiedemann Christensen visit from Copenhagen.

They are founders of the photo sharing site 23.

Thomas runs the popular and much-loved Reboot conference in Copenhagen.

Nicco says: Google = Evil 

I’ve reposted his piece here in full, in case Google/Firefox is blocking his site.

http://www.nicco.org/blog/2008/03/10/google-evil/

Today’s Clinton conference call MP3 

Retired military who support Clinton…

http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/03/10/call1.mp3

Democrats waste opportunity 

I listened to all the Sunday news shows on the major networks, Face The Nation, Meet the Press, This Week. I even did one myself. On all these shows, all that was talked about was the Democratic race for the nomination for President. Almost everyone on the shows were Democrats. The token Rep, Ed Rollins, was very polite and respectful of the Dems.

You’d think the Dems could find some way to use this advantage. But all they can talk about is each other. None of them talk about us. What they can do for us, why we should support them.

This is just like the Browser Wars in the software biz. Two big companies fighting with each other, neither of them listening to users, making their products better, fixing bugs, improving performance, adding new features. None of that. All their energy was devoted to each other. It’s simpler of course to focus your energy on a small target, but the job of a software developer isn’t to depose another software developer, it’s to make better products and services for users.

It happened again with the Java Wars. What was accomplished there? Not much. Maybe today Java would run better in more places. Maybe the dev tools would be better. I have no idea. But instead of talking about what we liked in software, they were talking about each other.

There’s a lesson here. The Internet and politics are merging, just as the Internet and technology did. When it’s all said and done, we will have the equivalent of User Generated Content in politics, although it will never be as tame as that “frame” implies. The founders of our country believed in the power of the people and set up a system that would be hard for a king to rule. Yet our political system today very much resembles a monarchy and the political spectacles are fights to the death that simply don’t matter, they just determine which family is stealing from us.

I watched McCain on 60 Minutes last night and was astonished when he said that waterboarding is torture (this from a man who has been tortured himself). He said Japanese were convicted of war crimes after WWII for waterboarding. The interviewer asked how America got to this place, and McCain said the politicians stopped listening to the military. Okay that’s a bit of a cop-out, but still, I was impressed. Not the usual humiliating lies we’ve come to expect from his party.

Of the three candidates running now the only one I could never vote for is Hillary Clinton.

I was seriously considering voting for Clinton in the Calif primary, but when they turned to race in South Carolina, that’s when I remembered how miserable they were when he was President. That the Clintons will do anything to win was brought home when she said last week that she and McCain had crossed the “threshhold” and had the experience to be CINC, but Obama did not. From that moment on I thought of Clinton in the same way I think of Joe Lieberman, a pathetic little faux Democrat who would change parties if they had an ounce of honor or integrity. The idea of campaigning for the Republic candidate while running for the Democratic nomination — there are few things more despicable.

Meanwhile, Obama was coasting. His first speeches were inspiring. But then as he took the lead in primaries, there were no more new ideas, not even new stories. I can recite them all by heart. This is a problem, because we’re all wondering if he’ll really be different when he becomes President. When he thought he had the nomination locked he started cruising, one wonders if his ambition stops at being President. Will he really put us all to work, pitching in to make American better, and a force for good in the world, living up to our hype? We tell everyone else that we’re the leaders of the free world, but what kind of freedom do we offer? And what about long-term investment in the US? There are people on the Gulf Coast who feel like finding a new country, they’re so forgotten by this one. How are we going to compete with growing economies on other continents. What about our education and health care systems. Getting elected is only the first step. It’s like an entrepreneur getting funded. It’s what you do after getting power that matters. I’d say based on what we’ve seen so far, there are at least some questions about whether Obama really means what he says. But he still has my endorsement. He’s the only candidate this year that I want to vote for. Hell, he’s the only candidate I’ve wanted to vote for since 1972, and I was too young to vote then.

Obama, start communicating with your troops directly — don’t do all your communication through TV. Pour big bucks into commercials that run on YouTube. Involve your people here on the net. We like the idea of all of us pitching in to make America a force for good. And use the fact that you control the conversation re the Republics to move beyond their style of politics. Don’t just say you want to do it — do it.

There’s no doubt that Hillary wants to have a conversation with you about her and you. You have to change the subject, it’s not enough to say she’s wrong. Let’s get beyond this.

Links for 03/10/2008 

NY Mag interview with Joe Trippi. 

Scripting News for 3/9/2008

Joe Trippi on this week’s Sunday Gang 

Nicco and I discuss Democratic politics with Joe Trippi.

http://sundaygang.com/002.mp3

We talked with him via Skype at his home in Maryland.

I scanned my notes into Flickr.

Links for 03/09/2008 

Charles Cooper supports the public release of campaign conference call MP3s. 

Must-read: Marc Cooper compares Samantha Power with the Clintons on genocide and Rwanda. 

Maybe Obamaman should name his VP now 

First, I can’t get this video of this adorable kid out of my head. It was sent to me by Ross Mayfield, and I think it might be his son? This is one smart kid, probably the kind who will grow up to start a company and will be able to lead people because they all love him. I dare you to watch the video without loving the kid.

He calls the likely Democratic nominee for President Obamaman. So I call him that now too.

Read this comment by Josh Whalen who says that Obama should name his VP now. He even says who he should name. I think the first half might be right, not sure about his choice.

I’d like to see Obama choose Jim Webb, first-term Democratic senator from Virginia, a sizable state that usually goes Republican that Obama could carry in the fall. Having Webb on the ticket, a white male with a strong military background, ex Secretary of the Navy under a Republican president, Reagan, and a fantastic fighter, a no-bullshit debater, who can bring the battle to the Clintons and their surrogates. Let Webb organize the fight, and Obamaman stays above it. Webb is enough of an idealist to fit in the Obama regime, but he gets angry in a very productive way. I’ve watched him on Meet The Press, arguing with one of McCain’s chief surrogates, Lindsey Graham, and he’s hot shit. An attractive choice, imho.

It may be time for Obamaman to let us dream about his team, without a Clinton anywhere in sight. Goodbye Hillary. Goodbye Bill. Thanks for the memories, now get off the stage.

Hot products make successful startups 

There’s a thread on Techmeme about startups and money, and how important it is that they watch every penny.

Mike Arrington says they must do this or fail. Something really bothered me about this, and I couldn’t immediately put my finger on it, but then I re-read the piece in the morning and it struck me.

Companies can’t watch every penny. Of course everyone you hire in a startup has stock options, so theoretically they’re all doing everything they can to make the company successful at all times. But that’s just a theory, even the founder isn’t going to watch every penny. You go out to eat a nice sushi dinner with people you want to influence, you go to a nice restaurant, order a nice bottle of wine. All that adds up to a lot of pennies that weren’t watched.

As a general rule, no one in a startup works harder than the founder, and no one watches pennies more carefully than the founder. If the founder upgrades to business class, so does everyone else.

Companies even small ones are out of control messes that waste a lot of everything. All organizations do. Can’t help it.

Yet some of them don’t fail.

Imho, having started two companies — one that failed and one that succeeded, and watched dozens of others over 30 years, the difference is the ones that succeed have a hot product that lots of people want, and the ones that fail don’t. I don’t think whether you savor every penny makes much of a difference, in fact if you pinch them too hard your people are going to hate you, and they have to love the founder, just as the customers must and the press and even the competitors.

When I think about the people who had runaway successes that made them fortunes the ones that had great products and were admired by many were the ones that really hit it out of the park. I can’t think of anyone who had a great product and failed because they didn’t watch every penny.

Clocks turn themselves 

Last night was the “spring forward” night.

Spring forward fall back.

And it’s a sign of the times that most of the clocks in the house took care of themselves. The wall clocks have radio receivers that receive the time from a government clock, and when there’s a difference, the clocks self-adjust.

All the computers self-adjust too.

My watch does not, and I had to change it manually. But so far that’s the only one.

But maybe Amazon S3 is having a problem?

Weird message, it showed up four times and then went away.

Oh well. Onward!

Scripting News for 3/8/2008

If you followed me on Twitter… 

You’d know that…

The 3AM ad uses stock photos. The girl in the ad is grown up now. And guess what? She supports Obama! (Oh the humanity.)

She was a precinct captain for Obama in Washington! (Thank you Fox News.)

I’m watching Fox because CNN was pissing me off with all their “Hillary has momentum” bullshit. Weird that Fox is much easier to watch.

Google News search for “Casey Knowles.”

The best tomato sauce 

Smafulli, a Twitterer from Milano, has his own favorite sauce.

DerekTut digs San Marzano too, in Brooklyn.

Quick podcast while driving 

Thinking about tomorrow’s Sunday Gang podcast…

http://btre.blogtalkradio.com/74_91096.mp3

Want to talk about the final finale of The Wire? Trade theories about how the show will end. Will it be a lame ending like The Sopranos (my opinion) or satisfying like Six Feet Under?

BTW, I had hoped to go to the Legal Futures conf at Stanford, but there’s no public parking. Oh well. (Luckily I have EVDO so I can post on the road, but not while driving of course.)

MP3 of Clinton conference call 

A conference call focusing on foreign policy and more Obama-bashing.

http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/03/07/call2.mp3

Good that the reporters are calling them on it.

Scripting News for 3/7/2008

Interview with Steve Gillmor 

I thought we’d do another 15-minute interview, this time with Steve Gillmor, who does the NewsGang website and daily podcast, he’s one of the proto-podcasters, and all around wise guy.

http://sundaygang.com/dave/steveGillmorInterview.mp3

It came out great, but it was actually 44 minutes.

Steve and I talked about developer platforms, Microsoft, Apple & Google, and Democratic Party politics.

Interview with Marc Canter 

Marc wrote a blog post after hearing Ray Ozzie’s keynote at MIX 08 in Las Vegas, giving it rave reviews.

So I wanted to hear direct from Marc why it was so great. We had a 15-minute talk about this and lots of other things.

http://sundaygang.com/dave/marcCanterInterview.mp3

I’m really getting into these short interview-style podcasts, doing some of them with Cinch and others with Skype, depending on where I am when I get the idea.

Dan Farber wrote up Ozzie’s keynote.

MP3 of today’s Clinton conference call 

Just got this MP3 of this morning’s conference call from the Clinton campaign, where they call for Samantha Powers to resign for calling Clinton a “monster.”

http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/03/07/call1.mp3

If you want to receive all our MP3s in your podcatcher, subscribe to this feed.

MP3 of today’s Obama conference call 

An MP3 of today’s Obama conference call.

http://sundaygang.com/obama/2008/03/07/call1.mp3

If you want to receive all our MP3s in your podcatcher, subscribe to this feed.

If you were following me on Twitter… 

You’d know that…

New Republic: “Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn’t create a more damaging scenario if you tried.”

Don’t know why I didn’t see this sooner, but the Clintons are Republics who found a way to run against other Republics.

The beauty of Samantha Power’s resignation over calling Hillary a monster is that it guarantees that the association of Hillary with that perfectly accurate word, will be smeared all over the nightly news and the front pages of every newspaper. Probably with not too flattering pictures of Hillary looking like a monster. In other words, be careful what you demand resignations over.

MikeA says only one iPhone app can run at a time. This effectively rules out a podcatcher.

I’m easy to find on Twitter.

Scripting News for 3/6/2008

Links for 03/06/2008 

Larry David: “Does anyone want this nut answering the phone?” 

New Republic says Michigan will announce its caucus in the next few days. 

Clinton running for VP? 

Hillary Clinton: “Look, I have said that Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign, I will bring a lifetime of experience and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002. I think that is a significant difference.”

It’s been pointed out elsewhere that you say stuff like that if you want the VP nomination, the Republican VP nomination.

In other words she’s as much a Democrat as Joe Lieberman is.

Podcast response to Barack Obama 

I got an email from the Obama campaign manager, then Barack Obama added something. They’re having a conversation in my inbox and I can’t participate. Ooops.

It’s good that we have a chance, once again, before it’s too late, to redefine a positive hope-filled candidacy. I admit that some part of me would be satisfied to hit back at the Clintons, hard. I’ve wanted to do that ever since they were in the White House. But they aren’t the issue. We are.

Let’s create something great.

I think Obama has lost sight of that, and that’s why we’re struggling, and scared that we might lose. The first step is to reset all our attitudes. We have to create more meaning out of the Yes We Can idea. We have to apply it to Wyoming, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and beyond, way beyond.

So here’s the podcast, it’s about 10 minutes long.

http://sundaygang.com/dave/podcastResponseToObama.mp3

Let’s get creative.

You can subscribe to my podcasts by subscribing to this feed in your RSS 2.0-compatible podcatcher. .

The Lakoff podcast referred to above, is here

How to subscribe to Scripting News podcasts 

In the last few days I’ve done a number of interviews, published MP3s of conference calls from the Obama and Clinton campaigns. People have asked for an RSS feed, a legitimate request, of course.

So I made it so that the feed for Scripting News, a feed that’s been published continuously since December 1997, has enclosures and can be understood by any RSS 2.0-compatible podcatcher.

http://scripting.com/rss.xml

If you subscribe, you should get all the MP3s published here.

Scripting News for 3/5/2008

Lakoff hits it out of the park 

I thought today would be a great day to interview UC-Berkeley professor George Lakoff on the Democratic campaign, who should have done what, and how his candidate (and mine) Barack Obama should proceed in the race with Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Here’s the 25-minute interview in an MP3.

http://sundaygang.com/lakoff/lakoff050308.mp3

I think he hit it out of the park and I hope this makes its way into the Obama campaign. It’s got so much more substance than the typical talking head stuff on CNN and MSNBC.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

Today’s campaign conference calls 

Listen to the Obama and Clinton campaigns spin results from yesterday’s primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Sorry I don’t have an RSS feed yet for all these podcasts. It’s all rushing by so fast, it’s the most I can do to get them online and downloadable.

Need some new tools, which I’ll have asap.

Morning podcast 

Another in a series of 20-minute interviews with smart people of all walks of life about the political issues of our day.

Today our guest is Scott Rosenberg, former Salon Managing Editor and book author.

http://sundaygang.com/misc/scottRosenberg.mp3

This podcast was recorded at 10AM on March 5, 2008, the day after the Ohio and Texas primaries.

cinch.blogtalkradio.com improved 

Okay the number one complaint about the wonderfully simple Cinch service from BlogTalkRadio was that your feed has your phone number in it.

So…

Now they’ve added a simple registration feature that allows you to give it a new name and hide your phone number.

I changed my feed to:

http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/dave

You can listen to my first podcast under the new regime.

Enjoy!

Quote of the morning 

Politico: “If she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and law firms and real estate deals and all that stuff issues, as I’ve said before I don’t know why they’d want to go there, but I guess that’s where they’ll take the race.” Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod.

Obama has to fight back and there’s lots to discuss. Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, impeachment, disbarment.

Scripting News for 3/4/2008

IRC for Ohio/Texas returns 

I started a chatroom for tonight’s primaries.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#ohioTexas

5PM Pacific: Vermont declared for Obama, the rest are closed or too close to call.

Update: I’m predicting a sweep for Obama tonight. 4-for-4.

5:50PM: Clinton is calling an emergency conference call about “irregularities” in Texas. Okay, she didn’t win Texas. Now comes the whining.

John W. McCain 

McCain loves him some baggage.

Technopeasant News 

Things you would have learned if you followed me on Twitter.

Apparently, I am, according to Andrew Keen, a hippie, academic and peasant. Pretty accurate. I’m a technopeasant.

Andrew Keen once said I should get a Pulitzer.

m.pownce.com is very nice. If you’ve been overwhelmed by all the michegas in Pownce you might try this UI.

Me, I’m here for the politics and the raw unadulterated sex.

Twitter doesn’t have to implement what Pownce has, as long as Pownce is there. I’m no longer telling asking them to implement payloads.

Hillary is falling.

I have 579 friends on Pownce. (Update: 639.)

I’m not a Democrat. I don’t believe that “we” have to win. I’m not part of that “we.”

“Hope” is the right thing to be focused on, because normally, we are “hope-less.”

Update: Francine Hardaway follows me on Twitter and confirms something a lot of people suspect. She’s only seen half of these twits. She thinks Twitter eats these gems. If so that’s very bad!

Jay Rosen interview 

A 15-minute Skype interview with NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen about politics, journalism and blogging on “Telltale Tuesday.”

Jay’s PressThink weblog.

Comparing Twitter and Pownce for payloads 

New development, now when I post a picture to Twitter from my iPhone, it also goes to Pownce.

A screen shot of the Pownce version.

A screen shot of the Twitter version.

We now can see, visually, the difference betw a messaging service that supports payloads and one that doesn’t. Not saying one is better than the other, because this is still very much an exploration. But there are definite advantages to each approach. Please consider that before you beg anyone not to listen to anyone else.

Update: I quickly added fields to the flickrToTwitter page to flow pictures to Pownce in addition to Twitter. Screen shot.

Scripting News for 3/3/2008

Pownce API 2.0, day 2 

I’ve made good progress wiring up the OPML Editor to Pownce, but I got stuck when it came to posting a media file.

The docs don’t say how to encode the data of the file. I guessed that it would be base64-encoded, but it didn’t work. If anyone has gotten this working, or knows how to do the encoding, please post a note here. Thanks.

BTW, this is the file I was testing with. It’s nowhere near the stated file size limit.

Update: FIle-sharing in Pownce, explained.

Update #2: It works. Here’s a file that I uploaded, you have to be a logged on and a friend of mine to see it. The key was using a multipart/form-data POST. Highly recommend that the API docs be updated to say just that. It’s enough of a clue so that an experienced developer will be able to get it to work with no extra help. Okay I’m happy about this now, I’ve got payloads working from both ends, under program control. Next thing I’m going to push up to the cloud is a campaign conference call MP3. Good news, we have a partner, a huge media company that decided to work with the bloggers.

Update #3: Here are Pownce entries for today’s Obama conference call and the Clinton call. You need to be signed into Pownce to listen in, and be a friend of mine. Just for this experiment. We’ll have other ways to download conference calls soon (for example, an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures).

Inquiring minds want to know! 

Cryptically MikeA teases about something new from Om Malik. What is it my brother? We need to know. Now!

Update: It’s a new blog about the business of open source.

Valleywag got a legit story, Mike 

I posted a comment on a post on TechCrunch by Mike Arrington, re a Valleywag story about Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.

Mike, I don’t like Valleywag, but I think you’re wrong in this case. They got a good story because Wikipedia, the publication that Wales runs, has rules that prevent people from editing stories they have an interest in. Wales was trading edits to Rachel Marsden’s profile for sex. They got him, and had they left out the parts you don’t like, it wouldn’t have been clear that they did.

This is not only a good story, but it’s an important one. Wikipedia, unlike Valleywag, is widely thought to be authoritative. Those of us it covers who are not friends with Wales know that it is far from authoritative. Both Valleywag and Wikipedia are pretty sleazy, imho, but Valleywag disclaims it, and Wikipedia pretends not to be.

Think about it this way, if we had the guts to challenge Wikipedia, if a glaring mistake was considered a problem in the tech industry, one of two things might happen: 1. They might clean up their act or 2. Entrepreneurs might launch competitive sites that fix its integrity issues.

Interesting comments on this topic on Silicon Alley Insider.

Yesterday: “Wikis are not enough.”

Scripting News for 3/2/2008

The Sunday Gang 

I’ve been a regular watcher of the Sunday morning political talk shows, and I’ve always in my heart wanted my own show. Then I started talking about it, people kept telling me just do it. So today I did.

http://sundaygang.com/001.mp3

My guests are Nicco Mele and Morra Aarons, a married couple, they live in Medford MA. Morra is a frequent guest on CNN and writes at BlogHer. I met Nicco when he was working on the Internet for the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Nicco was famous for switching to McCain a couple of years ago, but now he appears to have regained his senses. He still likes McCain and explains why in this 33 minute conversation which was cut short by the battery on my phone running out.

The next Sunday Gang show may actually come on Tuesday night, after the returns are in from Texas and Ohio. Hope you enjoy!

PS: I haven’t got the RSS feed ready yet, I’ll post a link here as soon as it is.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

How many blogging platforms are there? 

My post yesterday about my excitement over innovation in the Pownce API, led to what, in retrospect, was a predictable backlash from users who don’t want:

1. Twitter to get more complicated.

2. To switch to a service with less users.

3. To switch to another service.

And who do want:

1. Twitter to get more reliable.

I feel largely the same way, even so, I’m still going to:

1. Fill out the connective glue between my development environment and Pownce.

2. Revise my Flickr and podcasting tools to post to Pownce in addition to Twitter.

3. Possibly develop new services that can only work with Pownce because of their (new) API advantage over Twitter.

Now, what does this mean for the market? Hard to know for sure, but here’s what it could mean:

1. Twitter might be inspired to match the features in the Pownce API, thus blunting the new edge Pownce has.

2. Pownce could become more popular and may prove to have the same or worse scaling problems than Twitter.

3. Pownce could retain its edge, allowing different kinds of apps to be built that run on their network, and both continue to grow and deal with scaling in their own ways.

4. Something else.

I’m pretty sure what won’t happen is:

1. Pownce kills Twitter.

In blogging there are many platforms and related technologies. They all work differently and appeal to different groups of people. I suspect that’s what’s going to happen here.

Ouch 

I looked up blogging to find the names of some more obscure ones, the first hit was the Wikipedia page, and out of curiosity I searched the page for my name. It’s not there. All kinds of people get credit for building blogging as a practice and tools for blogging, but apparently, according to Wikipedia, I had nothing to do with it, nor did Scripting News or UserLand.

Anticipating some of the lectures I’m likely to get, no I can’t fix it, for two reasons: 1. It would be like editing my own bio page (which I haven’t looked at in ages, and don’t want to). 2. It would certainly get reverted in seconds.

Of course it’s likely this will be changed within minutes of my posting this. Check back later to see how it is after this has scrolled off. And that’s why, btw, we need blogs, wikis are not enough. Otherwise we’d all have to accept the mass view of history, as filtered through trolls. Blogging lets you object to the democratic view, and may result in a more accurate story. I say may, and not will, because it seems people are willing to accept Wikipedia as authoritative.

Oh well. Sighh.

Scripting News for 3/1/2008

The verdict is in: The Pownce API kicks Twitter’s ass 

Sorry Ev and Biz and Jack, but they got your number over there at Pownce.

I’ve been asking Twitter to support payloads for months now, and now I have what I was asking for, but it came from Pownce, and it’s beautifully implemented, far more than what I was asking Twitter for.

Let me state the problem.

I was at the Apple store in Palo Alto today, and I snap a picture on my iPhone and shoot it up to Flickr. I have an agent running on my server that watches for new pictures on Flickr. When it detects one, it posts a link to the picture on Twitter. Here’s what that looks like.

http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/765476227

It’s great because it works, not because it’s pretty because it’s not pretty. See the URL there. I’d much rather have it be an icon. That was the plan for the Payloads feature.

Earlier today I heard that Pownce has version 2 of their API that includes posting new messages. A message can have a link. So I wrote a script to test that out. After three tries it worked. Here’s the equivalent to the Twitter post above, in Pownce.

http://pownce.com/davew/notes/1442724/

Look at how beautiful it is. Exceeded my wildest dreams. Oh man. It looks better than it does on Flickr!

Twitter was my first love, but now I’m seriously considering a fling with Pownce.

PS: If you can’t read the Pownce post, here’s a screen shot.