http://odeo.com/channels/189-Scripting-News JamesMSnell no Dave Winer's weblog, started in April 1997, bootstrapped the blogging revolution. Dave Winer's weblog, started in April 1997, bootstrapped the blogging revolution. Dave Winer's weblog, started in April 1997, bootstrapped the blogging revolution. en-us 40 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:58:27 -0800 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:58:27 -0800 http://odeo.com/episodes/25413487-I-got-a-DROID I had to do it. Went down to the Verizon store in El Cerrito and put down $350 and bought the $99 per month unlimited texting plan. Took it home, fell in love. It really is beautiful. I'm an iPhone user who loves the esthetics of the iPhone. The DROID is different, but also very nice. I'm sure there will be annoyances, always are, but the first-time experience is great. The web browser display is large enough to be usable. The gestures that work on the iPhone don't work on the DROID. I find both the on-screen keyboard and the physical keyboard hard to use. The keys are too small. Oddly, when entering text into Facebook or an email, typing is natural and easy. It's only a pain when entering a username or password. I wonder why this is. (Probably has more to do with the operator than anything.) The setting system makes sense. There are a few puzzlers. It allows you to format an SD card, but I don't see one. I've read the docs, very limited, but they make no mention of it. They just se... I had to do it. Went down to the Verizon store in El Cerrito and put down $350 and bought the $99 per month unlimited texting plan. Took it home, fell in love. It really is beautiful. I'm an iPhone user who loves the esthetics of the iPhone. The DROID is different, but also very nice. I'm sure there will be annoyances, always are, but the first-time experience is great. The web browser display is large enough to be usable. The gestures that work on the iPhone don't work on the DROID. I find both the on-screen keyboard and the physical keyboard hard to use. The keys are too small. Oddly, when entering text into Facebook or an email, typing is natural and easy. It's only a pain when entering a username or password. I wonder why this is. (Probably has more to do with the operator than anything.) The setting system makes sense. There are a few puzzlers. It allows you to format an SD card, but I don't see one. I've read the docs, very limited, but they make no mention of it. They just sent me a text message asking me to sign onto their website, but the password doesn't work. Tried 8 times. Asked them to send a new one, they sent the same one again. I'll come back to this. Took some pictures with the camera. Example. Can't figure out how to get some music onto it. Plugged in the USB cable into my Mac but it doesn't mount as a hard drive. Don't tell me I need to use iTunes -- please! Update: Quick podcast review, recorded on the DROID speaker phone using Cinch. A little baseball philosophy thrown in at no extra cost! Update: How do I get music on this thing? Tried something dumb, after mounting it on my Mac desktop, I copied the contents of a Little Feat album into a folder I named Music. Let's see if the Music app on the Droid can find it. I launch the Music app and it says Sorry, your SD card is busy. Interesting! Let me try unmounting it. I had to click in the menubar to unmount it, and then boom (sorry Steve) the music app found my Little Feat songs. This is how it's supposed to work. Goodbye iTunes. Forever. Update: It plays iPod-size movies, just watched a bit of fargo.m4v. Looks great. I had to do it. Went down to the Verizon store in El Cerrito and put down $350 and bought the $99 per month unlimited texting plan. Took it home, fell in love. It really is beautiful. I'm an iPhone user who loves the esthetics of the iPhone. The DROID is different, but also very nice. I'm sure there will be annoyances, always are, but the first-time experience is great. The web browser display is large enough to be usable. The gestures that work on the iPhone don't work on the DROID. I find both the on-screen keyboard and the physical keyboard hard to use. The keys are too small. Oddly, when entering text into Facebook or an email, typing is natural and easy. It's only a pain when entering a username or password. I wonder why this is. (Probably has more to do with the operator than anything.) The setting system makes sense. There are a few puzzlers. It allows you to format an SD card, but I don't see one. I've read the docs, very limited, but they make no mention of it. They just sent me a text message asking me to sign onto their website, but the password doesn't work. Tried 8 times. Asked them to send a new one, they sent the same one again. I'll come back to this. Took some pictures with the camera. Example. Can't figure out how to get some music onto it. Plugged in the USB cable into my Mac but it doesn't mount as a hard drive. Don't tell me I need to use iTunes -- please! Update: Quick podcast review, recorded on the DROID speaker phone using Cinch. A little baseball philosophy thrown in at no extra cost! Update: How do I get music on this thing? Tried something dumb, after mounting it on my Mac desktop, I copied the contents of a Little Feat album into a folder I named Music. Let's see if the Music app on the Droid can find it. I launch the Music app and it says Sorry, your SD card is busy. Interesting! Let me try unmounting it. I had to click in the menubar to unmount it, and then boom (sorry Steve) the music app found my Little Feat songs. This is how it's supposed to work. Goodbye iTunes. Forever. Update: It plays iPod-size movies, just watched a bit of fargo.m4v. Looks great. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-06,25413487 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:58:27 -0800 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/25380070-Random-travel-notes I chose to travel with my newish 13 inch MacBook Pro instead of my newish Asus Eee PC. It's just a one-day trip to LA and I figured I wouldn't be needing the 8-hour battery, but there is a fundamental difference between the two computers. With the MacBook I'm always looking for a power outlet. With the Asus, you know you're going to make it all the way without a charge, so you can relax about power. Apple may think they have the battery issue licked, but they don't. And the fact that you can't carry a spare battery for this computer is a real step backward. The computer also likes to randomly reboot. It's happened four or five times so far. Just happened a few minutes ago. Luckily I didn't lose any work. Also the computer just disappears for a minute at random times. Computers have been doing this for 25 years. When will someone make an operating system that's always there for the user, no matter what crazy thing the OS has to do to keep itself running. All the michegas about Macs w... I chose to travel with my newish 13 inch MacBook Pro instead of my newish Asus Eee PC. It's just a one-day trip to LA and I figured I wouldn't be needing the 8-hour battery, but there is a fundamental difference between the two computers. With the MacBook I'm always looking for a power outlet. With the Asus, you know you're going to make it all the way without a charge, so you can relax about power. Apple may think they have the battery issue licked, but they don't. And the fact that you can't carry a spare battery for this computer is a real step backward. The computer also likes to randomly reboot. It's happened four or five times so far. Just happened a few minutes ago. Luckily I didn't lose any work. Also the computer just disappears for a minute at random times. Computers have been doing this for 25 years. When will someone make an operating system that's always there for the user, no matter what crazy thing the OS has to do to keep itself running. All the michegas about Macs working better, that's a half-truth and half-lie. Speaking of lies, the lies caused by the Suggested User List are approaching epicness. CNN ran a piece today that profiles five unknown superstars of Twitter, all with over a million followers. They only mentioned the SUL once, in passing, when they were describing Veronica Belmont. So the myth created by the SUL, that there are superstars and the rest of us, keeps growing. And then you have to wonder how much of a tool the SUL is for Twitter, to keep people in line. Pierre Omidyar is on the list now, and he wonders how many of his 99K followers have any idea who he is. He has Fuck You Money so there's no way he's controlled. But Anil Dash is now on the list too and has 99K followers, and he's a working man, and I'm sure he can be influenced. I unfollowed Anil when he made a joke about how it feels like being on the Yankees. Exactly. That's what I dislike intensely about the Yankees. Their sense of entitlement. Maybe not so much by the players, but by the fans. Twitter is like blogging, it's best when it's just people. The people with millions of unearned followers must be uncomfortable, wondering when the millions are going to catch on. Is 20 people enough to get started with? That's what a new user gets by default. I seriously doubt it. My Berkeley page is just starting to get interesting, and it follows a list of 167 people. And they weren't chosen at random. They all have one thing in common, they're neighbors of mine. The other day I said I was starting a linkblog. It's now visible at protoblogger.com. I really like the way it feels. I'm using the LifeLiner tool so it's hooked into rssCloud and it publishes through wordpress.com and I can route a link to Twitter with a single click. The idea of restarting our blogs came up on today's Rebooting The News, with our guest this week, Jeff Jarvis. This is how I think we will restart them. By making websites that carry the kind of content we're flowing through Twitter. I was wrong the other day about what the BuddyPress theme is for. I'm still confused about the layers of WordPress. I'll figure it out. I chose to travel with my newish 13 inch MacBook Pro instead of my newish Asus Eee PC. It's just a one-day trip to LA and I figured I wouldn't be needing the 8-hour battery, but there is a fundamental difference between the two computers. With the MacBook I'm always looking for a power outlet. With the Asus, you know you're going to make it all the way without a charge, so you can relax about power. Apple may think they have the battery issue licked, but they don't. And the fact that you can't carry a spare battery for this computer is a real step backward. The computer also likes to randomly reboot. It's happened four or five times so far. Just happened a few minutes ago. Luckily I didn't lose any work. Also the computer just disappears for a minute at random times. Computers have been doing this for 25 years. When will someone make an operating system that's always there for the user, no matter what crazy thing the OS has to do to keep itself running. All the michegas about Macs working better, that's a half-truth and half-lie. Speaking of lies, the lies caused by the Suggested User List are approaching epicness. CNN ran a piece today that profiles five unknown superstars of Twitter, all with over a million followers. They only mentioned the SUL once, in passing, when they were describing Veronica Belmont. So the myth created by the SUL, that there are superstars and the rest of us, keeps growing. And then you have to wonder how much of a tool the SUL is for Twitter, to keep people in line. Pierre Omidyar is on the list now, and he wonders how many of his 99K followers have any idea who he is. He has Fuck You Money so there's no way he's controlled. But Anil Dash is now on the list too and has 99K followers, and he's a working man, and I'm sure he can be influenced. I unfollowed Anil when he made a joke about how it feels like being on the Yankees. Exactly. That's what I dislike intensely about the Yankees. Their sense of entitlement. Maybe not so much by the players, but by the fans. Twitter is like blogging, it's best when it's just people. The people with millions of unearned followers must be uncomfortable, wondering when the millions are going to catch on. Is 20 people enough to get started with? That's what a new user gets by default. I seriously doubt it. My Berkeley page is just starting to get interesting, and it follows a list of 167 people. And they weren't chosen at random. They all have one thing in common, they're neighbors of mine. The other day I said I was starting a linkblog. It's now visible at protoblogger.com. I really like the way it feels. I'm using the LifeLiner tool so it's hooked into rssCloud and it publishes through wordpress.com and I can route a link to Twitter with a single click. The idea of restarting our blogs came up on today's Rebooting The News, with our guest this week, Jeff Jarvis. This is how I think we will restart them. By making websites that carry the kind of content we're flowing through Twitter. I was wrong the other day about what the BuddyPress theme is for. I'm still confused about the layers of WordPress. I'll figure it out. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-26,25380070 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:26:58 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/25364539-Bruce-Sterling-at-Reboot Bruce Sterling gave a wonderful talk at the Reboot Conference this summer in Copenhagen. At the beginning of the talk I wanted to strangle him, but as it progressed, it made more and more sense. By the end I thought it was one of the best speeches I'd ever heard, a story that I think everyone should hear. I've made an MP3 of his talk because I want to make it available to people in my family as a podcast. I hope Bruce and the people at Reboot don't mind. He talks about clearing your life of posessions, how you should divide everything into four categories: 1. Beautiful things. 2. Things with emotional value. 3. Functional things. 4. Everything else. Divide each category into the things you keep and the things you get rid of. In category 1, you can keep it if it's on display in your house, if you show it to your friends, if you share it. If not, then you don't need it, it's taking up space and time, which you're paying for with your money, time and health. Take a picture, put it on a... Bruce Sterling gave a wonderful talk at the Reboot Conference this summer in Copenhagen. At the beginning of the talk I wanted to strangle him, but as it progressed, it made more and more sense. By the end I thought it was one of the best speeches I'd ever heard, a story that I think everyone should hear. I've made an MP3 of his talk because I want to make it available to people in my family as a podcast. I hope Bruce and the people at Reboot don't mind. He talks about clearing your life of posessions, how you should divide everything into four categories: 1. Beautiful things. 2. Things with emotional value. 3. Functional things. 4. Everything else. Divide each category into the things you keep and the things you get rid of. In category 1, you can keep it if it's on display in your house, if you show it to your friends, if you share it. If not, then you don't need it, it's taking up space and time, which you're paying for with your money, time and health. Take a picture, put it on a thumb drive, take it everywhere with you and get rid of the original. In category 2, if it has a compelling story, one that you actually tell people, you can keep it. In category 3, unless it's very good at what it does and it does something you do a lot of, it goes. And of course everything in category 4 goes. He says you shouldn't try to do this in normal times. Wait until a spouse dies, a divorce, a child is born or a child leaves home. Wait till you move. It pays to figure out now what you want to do when that time comes. I know Sterling is right because I've had things like that happen and I've done it both ways. Most of the time I don't clean house, and miss the opportunity to improve my life. But sometimes I do make the changes and it's always, in the end, been a good thing. Most people advise you not to make changes in times of great life turmoil. That's exactly the wrong advice. Those are the only times you can make change. This is a hot topic in my family because of Father's Day. It just happened, and the shock is just now beginning to set in. It's strange that along with the pain and sorrow, there's also a new sense of freedom, of possibilities. It's palpable. And it doesn't take a second to locate the source -- it's the changes Sterling talked about so eloquently. Anyway, most of the time most of us are not in position to do anything about the mess in our lives. But listen to Sterling's talk. It's only 43 minutes. It might be the best 43 minutes you've ever spent. Bruce Sterling gave a wonderful talk at the Reboot Conference this summer in Copenhagen. At the beginning of the talk I wanted to strangle him, but as it progressed, it made more and more sense. By the end I thought it was one of the best speeches I'd ever heard, a story that I think everyone should hear. I've made an MP3 of his talk because I want to make it available to people in my family as a podcast. I hope Bruce and the people at Reboot don't mind. He talks about clearing your life of posessions, how you should divide everything into four categories: 1. Beautiful things. 2. Things with emotional value. 3. Functional things. 4. Everything else. Divide each category into the things you keep and the things you get rid of. In category 1, you can keep it if it's on display in your house, if you show it to your friends, if you share it. If not, then you don't need it, it's taking up space and time, which you're paying for with your money, time and health. Take a picture, put it on a thumb drive, take it everywhere with you and get rid of the original. In category 2, if it has a compelling story, one that you actually tell people, you can keep it. In category 3, unless it's very good at what it does and it does something you do a lot of, it goes. And of course everything in category 4 goes. He says you shouldn't try to do this in normal times. Wait until a spouse dies, a divorce, a child is born or a child leaves home. Wait till you move. It pays to figure out now what you want to do when that time comes. I know Sterling is right because I've had things like that happen and I've done it both ways. Most of the time I don't clean house, and miss the opportunity to improve my life. But sometimes I do make the changes and it's always, in the end, been a good thing. Most people advise you not to make changes in times of great life turmoil. That's exactly the wrong advice. Those are the only times you can make change. This is a hot topic in my family because of Father's Day. It just happened, and the shock is just now beginning to set in. It's strange that along with the pain and sorrow, there's also a new sense of freedom, of possibilities. It's palpable. And it doesn't take a second to locate the source -- it's the changes Sterling talked about so eloquently. Anyway, most of the time most of us are not in position to do anything about the mess in our lives. But listen to Sterling's talk. It's only 43 minutes. It might be the best 43 minutes you've ever spent. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-21,25364539 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:11:41 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/25034084-Joe-Hewitt-on-Bad-Hair-Day-at-7PM Our special guest for the Bad Hair Day podcast at 7PM Pacific is Joe Hewitt the author of Facebook for the iPhone. What a great day to talk with Joe! You can listen live on BlogTalkRadio. I had lunch with him yesterday in Santa Cruz. I said that if Facebook wanted to compete with Twitter they needed a vastly simpler version of Facebook. Little did I know that 24 hours later I'd be looking at it. If you have any questions for Joe, please post them as comments here, and Marshall and I will try to get to them. You can listen to the show live on BlogTalkRadio, and of course it will be available as a podcast from the badhair.us site. Here we go! Our special guest for the Bad Hair Day podcast at 7PM Pacific is Joe Hewitt the author of Facebook for the iPhone. What a great day to talk with Joe! You can listen live on BlogTalkRadio. I had lunch with him yesterday in Santa Cruz. I said that if Facebook wanted to compete with Twitter they needed a vastly simpler version of Facebook. Little did I know that 24 hours later I'd be looking at it. If you have any questions for Joe, please post them as comments here, and Marshall and I will try to get to them. You can listen to the show live on BlogTalkRadio, and of course it will be available as a podcast from the badhair.us site. Here we go! Our special guest for the Bad Hair Day podcast at 7PM Pacific is Joe Hewitt the author of Facebook for the iPhone. What a great day to talk with Joe! You can listen live on BlogTalkRadio. I had lunch with him yesterday in Santa Cruz. I said that if Facebook wanted to compete with Twitter they needed a vastly simpler version of Facebook. Little did I know that 24 hours later I'd be looking at it. If you have any questions for Joe, please post them as comments here, and Marshall and I will try to get to them. You can listen to the show live on BlogTalkRadio, and of course it will be available as a podcast from the badhair.us site. Here we go! tag:odeo.com,2009-08-27,25034084 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:57:29 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24905943-Rebooting-the-News-19 Show notes. MP3. Feed. Show notes. MP3. Feed. Show notes. MP3. Feed. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-03,24905943 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:52:32 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24893839-Bad-Hair-Day-6 This evening we recorded the sixth Bad Hair Day podcast. (not to be confused with actual BHDs which number in the tens of thousands) You can find the show page on the BHD site. The feed is handy for subscriptions. And the MP3 if you're in a hurry and just want to listen. This evening we recorded the sixth Bad Hair Day podcast. (not to be confused with actual BHDs which number in the tens of thousands) You can find the show page on the BHD site. The feed is handy for subscriptions. And the MP3 if you're in a hurry and just want to listen. This evening we recorded the sixth Bad Hair Day podcast. (not to be confused with actual BHDs which number in the tens of thousands) You can find the show page on the BHD site. The feed is handy for subscriptions. And the MP3 if you're in a hurry and just want to listen. tag:odeo.com,2009-07-31,24893839 Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:30:48 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24877964-News-from-NY I'm spending the week in NY with family. Doing a rssCloud road show on Thurs and meeting with tech industry people on Thurs and Friday. Yesterday Jay and I did Rebooting the News #18, show notes, MP3. Subscribe to the feed. Every week it's better than the last. People keep asking for info on programming in the OPML Editor environment. I put together a list of resources. If you know of others please add a comment. Went to the Mets game yesterday as the guest of Alan Levy of BlogTalkRadio, with my mom and Jesse Stay. I'd say it was the best Mets game I've ever been to. Fantastic come-from-behind victory where the deciding runs were scored with a pinch-hit grand slam. Alan really is up on the Mets so we understood all the strategy behind the Mets moves. Fantastic game. (Right up there with the exciting 16-run World Series blowout by the SF GIants of the Angels in 2002, which I went to with Scoble and Jake Savin.) Saw this great sign on a walk today: Queens for Mike. I'm spending the week in NY with family. Doing a rssCloud road show on Thurs and meeting with tech industry people on Thurs and Friday. Yesterday Jay and I did Rebooting the News #18, show notes, MP3. Subscribe to the feed. Every week it's better than the last. People keep asking for info on programming in the OPML Editor environment. I put together a list of resources. If you know of others please add a comment. Went to the Mets game yesterday as the guest of Alan Levy of BlogTalkRadio, with my mom and Jesse Stay. I'd say it was the best Mets game I've ever been to. Fantastic come-from-behind victory where the deciding runs were scored with a pinch-hit grand slam. Alan really is up on the Mets so we understood all the strategy behind the Mets moves. Fantastic game. (Right up there with the exciting 16-run World Series blowout by the SF GIants of the Angels in 2002, which I went to with Scoble and Jake Savin.) Saw this great sign on a walk today: Queens for Mike. I'm spending the week in NY with family. Doing a rssCloud road show on Thurs and meeting with tech industry people on Thurs and Friday. Yesterday Jay and I did Rebooting the News #18, show notes, MP3. Subscribe to the feed. Every week it's better than the last. People keep asking for info on programming in the OPML Editor environment. I put together a list of resources. If you know of others please add a comment. Went to the Mets game yesterday as the guest of Alan Levy of BlogTalkRadio, with my mom and Jesse Stay. I'd say it was the best Mets game I've ever been to. Fantastic come-from-behind victory where the deciding runs were scored with a pinch-hit grand slam. Alan really is up on the Mets so we understood all the strategy behind the Mets moves. Fantastic game. (Right up there with the exciting 16-run World Series blowout by the SF GIants of the Angels in 2002, which I went to with Scoble and Jake Savin.) Saw this great sign on a walk today: Queens for Mike. tag:odeo.com,2009-07-28,24877964 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:40:22 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24834187-Walter-Cronkite-s-Cosmic-Disaster-editorial In this week's Rebooting The News podcast, I chose Walter Cronkite as our inspiration of the week. In this week's Rebooting The News podcast, I chose Walter Cronkite as our inspiration of the week. In this week's Rebooting The News podcast, I chose Walter Cronkite as our inspiration of the week. tag:odeo.com,2009-07-20,24834187 Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:54:54 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24830951-Craigslist-is-progress I don't think I've ever written about Craigslist here. Probably because I don't spend much time thinking about it, or worrying about it. But I know that some people do, for example Terry Gross, the host of NPR's Fresh Air. It comes up when people talk about the Internet destroying things that matter, like the classified ads in newspapers. At one point in an interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson she asks, in a bewildered way, what happened. She was saying it was a shame that Craigslist comes along and does what the newspapers were doing, for a fraction of the cost, employing a small fraction of the people who used to support the classified ads in newspapers. I'm not surprised, and if you think about it, it's very predictable. It's called productivity, and it's what new technology is supposed to do. We used to employ 20 percent of the workforce in agriculture, now it's just 2 percent. That's because of technology. You may say it's bad, but there's also less hunger in the US now t... I don't think I've ever written about Craigslist here. Probably because I don't spend much time thinking about it, or worrying about it. But I know that some people do, for example Terry Gross, the host of NPR's Fresh Air. It comes up when people talk about the Internet destroying things that matter, like the classified ads in newspapers. At one point in an interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson she asks, in a bewildered way, what happened. She was saying it was a shame that Craigslist comes along and does what the newspapers were doing, for a fraction of the cost, employing a small fraction of the people who used to support the classified ads in newspapers. I'm not surprised, and if you think about it, it's very predictable. It's called productivity, and it's what new technology is supposed to do. We used to employ 20 percent of the workforce in agriculture, now it's just 2 percent. That's because of technology. You may say it's bad, but there's also less hunger in the US now than there was then. And there probably are far more classified ads today, now that they're mostly free, than there were when they cost money. It's productivity. It basically a good thing. And as long as we invest in progress it's inevitable. Here's an MP3 of the segment quoted above. I don't think I've ever written about Craigslist here. Probably because I don't spend much time thinking about it, or worrying about it. But I know that some people do, for example Terry Gross, the host of NPR's Fresh Air. It comes up when people talk about the Internet destroying things that matter, like the classified ads in newspapers. At one point in an interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson she asks, in a bewildered way, what happened. She was saying it was a shame that Craigslist comes along and does what the newspapers were doing, for a fraction of the cost, employing a small fraction of the people who used to support the classified ads in newspapers. I'm not surprised, and if you think about it, it's very predictable. It's called productivity, and it's what new technology is supposed to do. We used to employ 20 percent of the workforce in agriculture, now it's just 2 percent. That's because of technology. You may say it's bad, but there's also less hunger in the US now than there was then. And there probably are far more classified ads today, now that they're mostly free, than there were when they cost money. It's productivity. It basically a good thing. And as long as we invest in progress it's inevitable. Here's an MP3 of the segment quoted above. tag:odeo.com,2009-07-19,24830951 Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:41:10 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24797269-Rebooting-The-News-16 Recorded this morning at 9AM Pacific. Show page here, with notes written by Jay. Recorded this morning at 9AM Pacific. Show page here, with notes written by Jay. Recorded this morning at 9AM Pacific. Show page here, with notes written by Jay. tag:odeo.com,2009-07-13,24797269 Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:16:43 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24778954-Bad-Hair-Day-3 Marshall is buying a new house, so I recruited two guests for this podcast, and they were excellent. They had really bad hair! Michael Gartenberg is a Jupiter analyst, an expert on mobile devices. Andrew Baron is a video producer and entrepreneur, founder of Rocketboom and the brand new video aggregator, Mag.ma. At the end of the show he gives out beta access codes for the new service. We talk about Google's Chrome OS, iPhones, video, realtime stuff and of course Andrew's Mag.ma service. The feed: http://badhair.us/rss.xml Marshall is buying a new house, so I recruited two guests for this podcast, and they were excellent. They had really bad hair! Michael Gartenberg is a Jupiter analyst, an expert on mobile devices. Andrew Baron is a video producer and entrepreneur, founder of Rocketboom and the brand new video aggregator, Mag.ma. At the end of the show he gives out beta access codes for the new service. We talk about Google's Chrome OS, iPhones, video, realtime stuff and of course Andrew's Mag.ma service. The feed: http://badhair.us/rss.xml Marshall is buying a new house, so I recruited two guests for this podcast, and they were excellent. They had really bad hair! Michael Gartenberg is a Jupiter analyst, an expert on mobile devices. Andrew Baron is a video producer and entrepreneur, founder of Rocketboom and the brand new video aggregator, Mag.ma. At the end of the show he gives out beta access codes for the new service. We talk about Google's Chrome OS, iPhones, video, realtime stuff and of course Andrew's Mag.ma service. The feed: http://badhair.us/rss.xml tag:odeo.com,2009-07-10,24778954 Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:32:31 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24761919-Rebooting-the-News-15 Podcast here. Show notes here. RSS feed here. Podcast here. Show notes here. RSS feed here. Podcast here. Show notes here. RSS feed here. tag:odeo.com,2009-07-06,24761919 Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:37:12 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24739269-Heading-to-Europe I'm leaving tonight for Copenhagen to participate in the Reboot conference. This will be my third Reboot. It's a very nice group of people, very far away from Silicon Valley, and I always have fun. Looking forward to partying with Thomas and his posse and Paolo, Stowe, and everyone else. I'll be leading a talk on Thursday evening on Rebooting the News. After Copenhagen, I'll spend three days in Berlin, then head back to the US via Chicago on July 1. See you on the other side of the world, tomorrow night! PS: I recorded a podcast with Phil Windley of IT Conversations last Monday. A little bit of time has gone by but I think it's pretty good. We talked about the technical side of Rebooting the News. I'm leaving tonight for Copenhagen to participate in the Reboot conference. This will be my third Reboot. It's a very nice group of people, very far away from Silicon Valley, and I always have fun. Looking forward to partying with Thomas and his posse and Paolo, Stowe, and everyone else. I'll be leading a talk on Thursday evening on Rebooting the News. After Copenhagen, I'll spend three days in Berlin, then head back to the US via Chicago on July 1. See you on the other side of the world, tomorrow night! PS: I recorded a podcast with Phil Windley of IT Conversations last Monday. A little bit of time has gone by but I think it's pretty good. We talked about the technical side of Rebooting the News. I'm leaving tonight for Copenhagen to participate in the Reboot conference. This will be my third Reboot. It's a very nice group of people, very far away from Silicon Valley, and I always have fun. Looking forward to partying with Thomas and his posse and Paolo, Stowe, and everyone else. I'll be leading a talk on Thursday evening on Rebooting the News. After Copenhagen, I'll spend three days in Berlin, then head back to the US via Chicago on July 1. See you on the other side of the world, tomorrow night! PS: I recorded a podcast with Phil Windley of IT Conversations last Monday. A little bit of time has gone by but I think it's pretty good. We talked about the technical side of Rebooting the News. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-23,24739269 Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:21:29 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24739270-Rebooting-The-News-14 Show notes here. MP3 here. Feed here. Show notes here. MP3 here. Feed here. Show notes here. MP3 here. Feed here. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-22,24739270 Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:35:49 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24713109-Rebooting-the-News-13 Thirteen is a lucky number when it comes to revolutions! We've got a new website for the podcast and a new feed. Go get it! (And it's in the scripting.com feed, too, as always.) Thirteen is a lucky number when it comes to revolutions! We've got a new website for the podcast and a new feed. Go get it! (And it's in the scripting.com feed, too, as always.) Thirteen is a lucky number when it comes to revolutions! We've got a new website for the podcast and a new feed. Go get it! (And it's in the scripting.com feed, too, as always.) tag:odeo.com,2009-06-16,24713109 Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:05:09 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24667203-Rebooting-The-News-podcast-12 The latest Jay/Dave podcast, recorded last night at 7PM Pacific. A little glimpse inside the news industry's mind: the recent recommendations of the American Press Institute. Charge for news, go after the aggregators, police fair use, look to consumers because the advertiser doesn't pay the bills anymore. A suicide pact, Dan Conover says. The New York Times has a neighborhood blogging experiment, The Local. This week it extended an invitation to users: be the journalist. "Here is your first assignment: We're looking for someone to go to the 88th Precinct Community Council meeting next Wednesday, the 10th." Three interlocking elements of a new system. The start of our kit for re-booting the news. 1. The pro-am invitation: help The Local cover Ft. Greene. Help us investigate. 2. Posted guidelines: how to cover a meeting for The Local; how to contribute to Chicago Now. 3. Assignment desk: an organized online list of everything we would cover if we had complete coverage of... The launch... The latest Jay/Dave podcast, recorded last night at 7PM Pacific. A little glimpse inside the news industry's mind: the recent recommendations of the American Press Institute. Charge for news, go after the aggregators, police fair use, look to consumers because the advertiser doesn't pay the bills anymore. A suicide pact, Dan Conover says. The New York Times has a neighborhood blogging experiment, The Local. This week it extended an invitation to users: be the journalist. "Here is your first assignment: We're looking for someone to go to the 88th Precinct Community Council meeting next Wednesday, the 10th." Three interlocking elements of a new system. The start of our kit for re-booting the news. 1. The pro-am invitation: help The Local cover Ft. Greene. Help us investigate. 2. Posted guidelines: how to cover a meeting for The Local; how to contribute to Chicago Now. 3. Assignment desk: an organized online list of everything we would cover if we had complete coverage of... The launch and logic of inberkeley.com, a new local news blog that Dave and Lance Knobel have started. "It may not end up being the Berkeley blog. It may be the other thing that starts because people hate what we're doing." The coral reef method of getting things done online. The Wikipedia stub. Their equivalent in news. "Why wouldn't you want to be the newspaper of record...?" (Dave) vs. The Era of Omniscience is Over (Jay). Sources of inspiration (Jay's turn this week.) Andrew Leonard's 1999 article in Salon, Open-source journalism. "This vision is alive." The latest Jay/Dave podcast, recorded last night at 7PM Pacific. A little glimpse inside the news industry's mind: the recent recommendations of the American Press Institute. Charge for news, go after the aggregators, police fair use, look to consumers because the advertiser doesn't pay the bills anymore. A suicide pact, Dan Conover says. The New York Times has a neighborhood blogging experiment, The Local. This week it extended an invitation to users: be the journalist. "Here is your first assignment: We're looking for someone to go to the 88th Precinct Community Council meeting next Wednesday, the 10th." Three interlocking elements of a new system. The start of our kit for re-booting the news. 1. The pro-am invitation: help The Local cover Ft. Greene. Help us investigate. 2. Posted guidelines: how to cover a meeting for The Local; how to contribute to Chicago Now. 3. Assignment desk: an organized online list of everything we would cover if we had complete coverage of... The launch and logic of inberkeley.com, a new local news blog that Dave and Lance Knobel have started. "It may not end up being the Berkeley blog. It may be the other thing that starts because people hate what we're doing." The coral reef method of getting things done online. The Wikipedia stub. Their equivalent in news. "Why wouldn't you want to be the newspaper of record...?" (Dave) vs. The Era of Omniscience is Over (Jay). Sources of inspiration (Jay's turn this week.) Andrew Leonard's 1999 article in Salon, Open-source journalism. "This vision is alive." tag:odeo.com,2009-06-08,24667203 Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:14:52 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24667204-Netbooks-are-great-XP-machines Just tweeted: "Microsoft's problem, they employ billions of dollars worth of engineers who produce stuff no one wants." I pointed to this article. Short version of this post: Microsoft -- Let the netbook guys put whatever they want to in the box, and sell them XP Home for a reasonable price and stop trying to tell us we have to use Vista because people don't want to. Longer version. Netbooks are great Windows machines. I remember seeing a $600 pricetag on an Asus last year and thinking "Geez that's cheap!" so I bought one. Now it seems expensive. Same computer now is $280. That's even cheaper. So cool. And it runs Windows XP Home so I can run my software on it. Now I'm totally uninterested in buying an iPhone-like laptop, which Apple almost surely will want to sell me. You'd think that would be great news for Microsoft! You'd think they'd be running ads on TV saying "Holy Shit People Like Our Stuff Now Man That's So Fucking Cool." But you'd be wrong. Because. Because. Well. You tell... Just tweeted: "Microsoft's problem, they employ billions of dollars worth of engineers who produce stuff no one wants." I pointed to this article. Short version of this post: Microsoft -- Let the netbook guys put whatever they want to in the box, and sell them XP Home for a reasonable price and stop trying to tell us we have to use Vista because people don't want to. Longer version. Netbooks are great Windows machines. I remember seeing a $600 pricetag on an Asus last year and thinking "Geez that's cheap!" so I bought one. Now it seems expensive. Same computer now is $280. That's even cheaper. So cool. And it runs Windows XP Home so I can run my software on it. Now I'm totally uninterested in buying an iPhone-like laptop, which Apple almost surely will want to sell me. You'd think that would be great news for Microsoft! You'd think they'd be running ads on TV saying "Holy Shit People Like Our Stuff Now Man That's So Fucking Cool." But you'd be wrong. Because. Because. Well. You tell me why they're not super excited about this. Steve? Ray? As a user, I'm happy as can be. I love this new stuff. And I'll tell you what. It's found money for them, whatever they get, because I wasn't ever going to buy a Microsoft product. I'm amazed that I like XP. But only because it runs on these coool new netbook computers. And the netbook market is incredibly competitive. They keep dropping the prices and they want to add features, but Microsoft won't let them. If they add more features, they say, they have to put Vista on the computer. People don't want Vista. And Microsoft must be worried they don't want Windows 7 either. That's their problem, not mine. Their job is to create software people want. I recorded a brief podcast about this, but if you've read this post you don't need to listen to it. You've already heard what I have to say. XP is cool. Sell it and be proud. Create products people want, and all is good. Create products people don't want, go back to the drawing board or find another line of work. Just tweeted: "Microsoft's problem, they employ billions of dollars worth of engineers who produce stuff no one wants." I pointed to this article. Short version of this post: Microsoft -- Let the netbook guys put whatever they want to in the box, and sell them XP Home for a reasonable price and stop trying to tell us we have to use Vista because people don't want to. Longer version. Netbooks are great Windows machines. I remember seeing a $600 pricetag on an Asus last year and thinking "Geez that's cheap!" so I bought one. Now it seems expensive. Same computer now is $280. That's even cheaper. So cool. And it runs Windows XP Home so I can run my software on it. Now I'm totally uninterested in buying an iPhone-like laptop, which Apple almost surely will want to sell me. You'd think that would be great news for Microsoft! You'd think they'd be running ads on TV saying "Holy Shit People Like Our Stuff Now Man That's So Fucking Cool." But you'd be wrong. Because. Because. Well. You tell me why they're not super excited about this. Steve? Ray? As a user, I'm happy as can be. I love this new stuff. And I'll tell you what. It's found money for them, whatever they get, because I wasn't ever going to buy a Microsoft product. I'm amazed that I like XP. But only because it runs on these coool new netbook computers. And the netbook market is incredibly competitive. They keep dropping the prices and they want to add features, but Microsoft won't let them. If they add more features, they say, they have to put Vista on the computer. People don't want Vista. And Microsoft must be worried they don't want Windows 7 either. That's their problem, not mine. Their job is to create software people want. I recorded a brief podcast about this, but if you've read this post you don't need to listen to it. You've already heard what I have to say. XP is cool. Sell it and be proud. Create products people want, and all is good. Create products people don't want, go back to the drawing board or find another line of work. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-07,24667204 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:47:16 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24636652-Rebooting-The-News-11 Last night's podcast is up this morning, bright and early! A theme from last week continues this week: Bug catching as a key practice in a re-booted system of news. Jay unfolds an example from this week: the AP's coverage of the Twitter TV show. The TechGuardian asks How much is it worth to be one of Twitter's suggested users? Dave discusses BitTorrent and why he put RTN 1-10 on it. CheckBox News, Dave's mock-up of a re-booted user interface for television news where you can uncheck the streams you don't want and check the ones you do, and program your TV set that way. For sources of inspiration (it's his turn) Dave returned to three: James Burke's public television series Connections, about the history of science and technology (inventions are usually the result of a synthesis of things created by earlier inventors); the Cluetrain Manifesto (ten years old and great); and VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers-- the demo for which was almost a spiritual exper... Last night's podcast is up this morning, bright and early! A theme from last week continues this week: Bug catching as a key practice in a re-booted system of news. Jay unfolds an example from this week: the AP's coverage of the Twitter TV show. The TechGuardian asks How much is it worth to be one of Twitter's suggested users? Dave discusses BitTorrent and why he put RTN 1-10 on it. CheckBox News, Dave's mock-up of a re-booted user interface for television news where you can uncheck the streams you don't want and check the ones you do, and program your TV set that way. For sources of inspiration (it's his turn) Dave returned to three: James Burke's public television series Connections, about the history of science and technology (inventions are usually the result of a synthesis of things created by earlier inventors); the Cluetrain Manifesto (ten years old and great); and VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers-- the demo for which was almost a spiritual experience. With a response from Jay about the common thread: distributing power outward from the insiders to the users. Two views of the announcement this week that the New York Times had hired a social media editor, Jennifer Preston. Dave argues that the great news organizations should be the operators and originators of systems like Twitter. It's not too late, but soon it will be, he warns. We close with a short reading from Barbara Ehrenreich's commencement speech to the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. "A recession won't stop us. A dying industry won't stop us. Even poverty won't stop us because we are all on a mission here." Last night's podcast is up this morning, bright and early! A theme from last week continues this week: Bug catching as a key practice in a re-booted system of news. Jay unfolds an example from this week: the AP's coverage of the Twitter TV show. The TechGuardian asks How much is it worth to be one of Twitter's suggested users? Dave discusses BitTorrent and why he put RTN 1-10 on it. CheckBox News, Dave's mock-up of a re-booted user interface for television news where you can uncheck the streams you don't want and check the ones you do, and program your TV set that way. For sources of inspiration (it's his turn) Dave returned to three: James Burke's public television series Connections, about the history of science and technology (inventions are usually the result of a synthesis of things created by earlier inventors); the Cluetrain Manifesto (ten years old and great); and VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers-- the demo for which was almost a spiritual experience. With a response from Jay about the common thread: distributing power outward from the insiders to the users. Two views of the announcement this week that the New York Times had hired a social media editor, Jennifer Preston. Dave argues that the great news organizations should be the operators and originators of systems like Twitter. It's not too late, but soon it will be, he warns. We close with a short reading from Barbara Ehrenreich's commencement speech to the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. "A recession won't stop us. A dying industry won't stop us. Even poverty won't stop us because we are all on a mission here." tag:odeo.com,2009-06-01,24636652 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:25:49 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24604082-Rebooting-the-News-10 We got this one folks! Topics include: Maureen Dowd of course, the Church of the Savvy, One year of Twitter for Jay. Why is user interface so damned hard? 10 years since Edit This Page. And an inspired choice for Inspiration of the week, Elvis Costello's recording of Nick Lowe's classic What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding. One of the best Reboots yet, imho. PS: As usual subscribe in your podcatcher or iTunes. We got this one folks! Topics include: Maureen Dowd of course, the Church of the Savvy, One year of Twitter for Jay. Why is user interface so damned hard? 10 years since Edit This Page. And an inspired choice for Inspiration of the week, Elvis Costello's recording of Nick Lowe's classic What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding. One of the best Reboots yet, imho. PS: As usual subscribe in your podcatcher or iTunes. We got this one folks! Topics include: Maureen Dowd of course, the Church of the Savvy, One year of Twitter for Jay. Why is user interface so damned hard? 10 years since Edit This Page. And an inspired choice for Inspiration of the week, Elvis Costello's recording of Nick Lowe's classic What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding. One of the best Reboots yet, imho. PS: As usual subscribe in your podcatcher or iTunes. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-24,24604082 Sun, 24 May 2009 20:51:46 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24584232-Rebooting-the-News-9-5 A 15-minute test-cast that turned into a mini-episode. Jay asked me to explain why it was so important that the NYT has a River of News. We're now using the full-blown BlogtalkRadio system, this was just a test to make sure we knew what we were doing after Sunday's disaster. However the feed stays the same, you can follow us in your podcatcher or iTunes. A 15-minute test-cast that turned into a mini-episode. Jay asked me to explain why it was so important that the NYT has a River of News. We're now using the full-blown BlogtalkRadio system, this was just a test to make sure we knew what we were doing after Sunday's disaster. However the feed stays the same, you can follow us in your podcatcher or iTunes. A 15-minute test-cast that turned into a mini-episode. Jay asked me to explain why it was so important that the NYT has a River of News. We're now using the full-blown BlogtalkRadio system, this was just a test to make sure we knew what we were doing after Sunday's disaster. However the feed stays the same, you can follow us in your podcatcher or iTunes. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-19,24584232 Tue, 19 May 2009 20:21:38 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24574660-Placeholder-podcast I screwed up and lost this week's Rebooting The News podcast. This brief three-minute solo cast explains what happened and expresses apologies to Jay and everyone for this screwup. Sorry!! I screwed up and lost this week's Rebooting The News podcast. This brief three-minute solo cast explains what happened and expresses apologies to Jay and everyone for this screwup. Sorry!! I screwed up and lost this week's Rebooting The News podcast. This brief three-minute solo cast explains what happened and expresses apologies to Jay and everyone for this screwup. Sorry!! tag:odeo.com,2009-05-17,24574660 Sun, 17 May 2009 20:22:54 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24553896-Rebooting-the-News-9 This week's Rebooting the News podcast is up. Jay and Dave talk about paying for the news, Ted Nelson as inspiration, "Giant Pool of Money." As usual, subscribe to this feed in your podcatcher to get all the shows. This week's Rebooting the News podcast is up. Jay and Dave talk about paying for the news, Ted Nelson as inspiration, "Giant Pool of Money." As usual, subscribe to this feed in your podcatcher to get all the shows. This week's Rebooting the News podcast is up. Jay and Dave talk about paying for the news, Ted Nelson as inspiration, "Giant Pool of Money." As usual, subscribe to this feed in your podcatcher to get all the shows. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-10,24553896 Sun, 10 May 2009 19:52:30 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24542383-Gadget-talk-with-Scoble I was browsing FriendFeed yesterday and saw Scoble had started a thread on the new Kindle, which was being dismissed by the tech press as a "Hail Mary pass" to save the news industry. I don't see it that way. I like the Kindle, esp for reading the news, but a Kindle with a bigger screen might make the news even more attractive. Do I think it will work? I don't know, but why not give it a try. So I called BlogTalkRadio, then called Scoble and we did a quick podcast, that started out talking about the Kindle, but turned to gadgets, the iPhone, the MIT Tech Review slam of Clay Shirky and myself, and on to opportunities for the Palm Pre to zig where Apple zags. They could let the software market run without control from the mother ship, see what happens. Maybe there are some great X-rated apps for mobile devices? As always, you can subscribe to my podcasts using a podcatcher or iTunes. I was browsing FriendFeed yesterday and saw Scoble had started a thread on the new Kindle, which was being dismissed by the tech press as a "Hail Mary pass" to save the news industry. I don't see it that way. I like the Kindle, esp for reading the news, but a Kindle with a bigger screen might make the news even more attractive. Do I think it will work? I don't know, but why not give it a try. So I called BlogTalkRadio, then called Scoble and we did a quick podcast, that started out talking about the Kindle, but turned to gadgets, the iPhone, the MIT Tech Review slam of Clay Shirky and myself, and on to opportunities for the Palm Pre to zig where Apple zags. They could let the software market run without control from the mother ship, see what happens. Maybe there are some great X-rated apps for mobile devices? As always, you can subscribe to my podcasts using a podcatcher or iTunes. I was browsing FriendFeed yesterday and saw Scoble had started a thread on the new Kindle, which was being dismissed by the tech press as a "Hail Mary pass" to save the news industry. I don't see it that way. I like the Kindle, esp for reading the news, but a Kindle with a bigger screen might make the news even more attractive. Do I think it will work? I don't know, but why not give it a try. So I called BlogTalkRadio, then called Scoble and we did a quick podcast, that started out talking about the Kindle, but turned to gadgets, the iPhone, the MIT Tech Review slam of Clay Shirky and myself, and on to opportunities for the Palm Pre to zig where Apple zags. They could let the software market run without control from the mother ship, see what happens. Maybe there are some great X-rated apps for mobile devices? As always, you can subscribe to my podcasts using a podcatcher or iTunes. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-05,24542383 Tue, 05 May 2009 08:46:29 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24533707-Rebooting-the-News-8 This week's podcast with Jay Rosen is up. Topics: Jay opted out of Twitter's Suggested Users List, he explains why and we discuss. His choice for Inspiration of the Week is Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. As always, you can subscribe in your podcatcher or iTunes. This week's podcast with Jay Rosen is up. Topics: Jay opted out of Twitter's Suggested Users List, he explains why and we discuss. His choice for Inspiration of the Week is Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. As always, you can subscribe in your podcatcher or iTunes. This week's podcast with Jay Rosen is up. Topics: Jay opted out of Twitter's Suggested Users List, he explains why and we discuss. His choice for Inspiration of the Week is Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. As always, you can subscribe in your podcatcher or iTunes. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-03,24533707 Sun, 03 May 2009 19:56:43 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24507023-Rebooting-the-News-7 This week's 40-plus minute podcast with Jay Rosen and myself. To subscribe, add this URL to your podcatcher (or iTunes). This week's 40-plus minute podcast with Jay Rosen and myself. To subscribe, add this URL to your podcatcher (or iTunes). This week's 40-plus minute podcast with Jay Rosen and myself. To subscribe, add this URL to your podcatcher (or iTunes). tag:odeo.com,2009-04-26,24507023 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:10:56 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24479143-Today-s-Morning-Coffee-Notes-podcast New podcast: Sidebar to last Sunday's Rebooting The News podcast with Jay Rosen, relating the blogger assignment desk idea to Hypercamp, which is a more comprehensive blueprint for how blogging becomes the backbone of news in the future. Also a response to Kevin Marks and Steve Gillmor who, in comments, asked me to clarify a blog post about mixing data with Facebook and/or Twitter structures. Mystically they all seem to relate. Finally, a tribute to the hippie-surfer culture of California. PS: You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes. It's the second command in the iTunes Advanced menu. Paste this URL into the dialog that appears and click OK. New podcast: Sidebar to last Sunday's Rebooting The News podcast with Jay Rosen, relating the blogger assignment desk idea to Hypercamp, which is a more comprehensive blueprint for how blogging becomes the backbone of news in the future. Also a response to Kevin Marks and Steve Gillmor who, in comments, asked me to clarify a blog post about mixing data with Facebook and/or Twitter structures. Mystically they all seem to relate. Finally, a tribute to the hippie-surfer culture of California. PS: You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes. It's the second command in the iTunes Advanced menu. Paste this URL into the dialog that appears and click OK. New podcast: Sidebar to last Sunday's Rebooting The News podcast with Jay Rosen, relating the blogger assignment desk idea to Hypercamp, which is a more comprehensive blueprint for how blogging becomes the backbone of news in the future. Also a response to Kevin Marks and Steve Gillmor who, in comments, asked me to clarify a blog post about mixing data with Facebook and/or Twitter structures. Mystically they all seem to relate. Finally, a tribute to the hippie-surfer culture of California. PS: You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes. It's the second command in the iTunes Advanced menu. Paste this URL into the dialog that appears and click OK. tag:odeo.com,2009-04-21,24479143 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:44:58 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24471866-Rebooting-the-News-podcast-for-April-19 Tonight's podcast. To subscribe, add this address to your podcatcher: http://scripting.com/rss.xml A bit of housekeeping -- the podcast now has a name -- Rebooting the News. Perfect name, cause it's got the technical side with rebooting, and boot is the first part of bootstrapping. And News is what it's all about. I hope you enjoy this show!! Tonight's podcast. To subscribe, add this address to your podcatcher: http://scripting.com/rss.xml A bit of housekeeping -- the podcast now has a name -- Rebooting the News. Perfect name, cause it's got the technical side with rebooting, and boot is the first part of bootstrapping. And News is what it's all about. I hope you enjoy this show!! Tonight's podcast. To subscribe, add this address to your podcatcher: http://scripting.com/rss.xml A bit of housekeeping -- the podcast now has a name -- Rebooting the News. Perfect name, cause it's got the technical side with rebooting, and boot is the first part of bootstrapping. And News is what it's all about. I hope you enjoy this show!! tag:odeo.com,2009-04-19,24471866 Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:12:28 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24446996-This-week-s-podcast-with-Jay-Rosen I spent 40 minutes this evening talking with Jay about news, tech and the future of journalism. As always it was a great learning experience with the NYU journalism professor. A frequently asked question -- what feed should I subscribe to to get the flow? The answer -- the feed for Scripting News. When I do a podcast it's included as a standard RSS 2.0 enclosure. At the end of the show I promised to create a room on FriendFeed to post links to stories we'll discuss on future shows. I spent 40 minutes this evening talking with Jay about news, tech and the future of journalism. As always it was a great learning experience with the NYU journalism professor. A frequently asked question -- what feed should I subscribe to to get the flow? The answer -- the feed for Scripting News. When I do a podcast it's included as a standard RSS 2.0 enclosure. At the end of the show I promised to create a room on FriendFeed to post links to stories we'll discuss on future shows. I spent 40 minutes this evening talking with Jay about news, tech and the future of journalism. As always it was a great learning experience with the NYU journalism professor. A frequently asked question -- what feed should I subscribe to to get the flow? The answer -- the feed for Scripting News. When I do a podcast it's included as a standard RSS 2.0 enclosure. At the end of the show I promised to create a room on FriendFeed to post links to stories we'll discuss on future shows. tag:odeo.com,2009-04-12,24446996 Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:42:10 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24435632-Journalists-need-to-learn-about-bootstraps New 36-minute podcast explains why New Journalism won't appear in a big bang of epiphany; but will boot up, iteratively. New 36-minute podcast explains why New Journalism won't appear in a big bang of epiphany; but will boot up, iteratively. New 36-minute podcast explains why New Journalism won't appear in a big bang of epiphany; but will boot up, iteratively. tag:odeo.com,2009-04-10,24435632 Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:14:28 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24421797-Podcast-with-Chris-Brogan I did a quick 1/2 hour podcast with Chris Brogan this afternoon about "100 Twitters" -- a topic we have both recently posted on. I did a quick 1/2 hour podcast with Chris Brogan this afternoon about "100 Twitters" -- a topic we have both recently posted on. I did a quick 1/2 hour podcast with Chris Brogan this afternoon about "100 Twitters" -- a topic we have both recently posted on. tag:odeo.com,2009-04-07,24421797 Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:47:33 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24387540-Jay-and-Dave-ride-again Four weeks in a row, the clicking and clacking blogging brothers talk about the reboot of journalism, the news of the week, and a new $1.75 million fund for investigative journalism that Jay is advising. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/clickClack09Mar29.mp3 Hope you enjoy! Four weeks in a row, the clicking and clacking blogging brothers talk about the reboot of journalism, the news of the week, and a new $1.75 million fund for investigative journalism that Jay is advising. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/clickClack09Mar29.mp3 Hope you enjoy! Four weeks in a row, the clicking and clacking blogging brothers talk about the reboot of journalism, the news of the week, and a new $1.75 million fund for investigative journalism that Jay is advising. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/clickClack09Mar29.mp3 Hope you enjoy! tag:odeo.com,2009-03-29,24387540 Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:01:32 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24343625-Click-and-Clack-the-Blog-Brothers Just did the Sunday podcast with Jay Rosen. Really enjoying this. Today it was more laughs and less serious. We'll do another next Sunday, Murphy-willing. Just did the Sunday podcast with Jay Rosen. Really enjoying this. Today it was more laughs and less serious. We'll do another next Sunday, Murphy-willing. Just did the Sunday podcast with Jay Rosen. Really enjoying this. Today it was more laughs and less serious. We'll do another next Sunday, Murphy-willing. tag:odeo.com,2009-03-22,24343625 Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:05:33 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24333999-EC2-for-Poets Today's the day -- if you've been wondering if you can set up a server in Amazon's cloud, the answer is Yes You Can. Here's how: http://howto.opml.org/dave/ec2/ If you're wondering what it's all about, I've recorded a 22-minute podcast that explains. Even if you don't go through the howto, I recommend listening to the podcast. There's something that everyone who cares about the net should know about the cloud. Lots of new ideas in the howto and the podcast. Paolo Valdemarin, my friend in Italy, went through the EC2 howto, and it opened up a lot of ideas for him. Important stuff. Today's the day -- if you've been wondering if you can set up a server in Amazon's cloud, the answer is Yes You Can. Here's how: http://howto.opml.org/dave/ec2/ If you're wondering what it's all about, I've recorded a 22-minute podcast that explains. Even if you don't go through the howto, I recommend listening to the podcast. There's something that everyone who cares about the net should know about the cloud. Lots of new ideas in the howto and the podcast. Paolo Valdemarin, my friend in Italy, went through the EC2 howto, and it opened up a lot of ideas for him. Important stuff. Today's the day -- if you've been wondering if you can set up a server in Amazon's cloud, the answer is Yes You Can. Here's how: http://howto.opml.org/dave/ec2/ If you're wondering what it's all about, I've recorded a 22-minute podcast that explains. Even if you don't go through the howto, I recommend listening to the podcast. There's something that everyone who cares about the net should know about the cloud. Lots of new ideas in the howto and the podcast. Paolo Valdemarin, my friend in Italy, went through the EC2 howto, and it opened up a lot of ideas for him. Important stuff. tag:odeo.com,2009-03-20,24333999 Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:49:27 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24309786-Can-Twitter-save-the-news Jay Rosen, this week the question of Twitter as an environment for journalism came up. If the outlets of MSM are in trouble and if Twitter is rising, can it fill some of the role vacated by MSM? What about having a tech company running it? Esp if the company interferes with content? Or do they? Are any conflicts inherited by publications that Twitter favors with flow? Is the behavior of non-favored pubs altered by the environment. Ideally how should a company such as Twitter behave relative to its community if it wants to foster journalism? http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09march15.mp3 Is Twitter the savior of journalism? Or something like it? Links mentioned in today's podcast... Clark Hoyt: Bad News, and More Bad News. CJR: Derivatives Echo Chamber. Scripting News: Why it's time to break out of Twitter. The back-and-forth with Karl Rove re Obama's "straw man." Also mentioned in this Scripting News post. "We've arrived at a place where a political spinmeister, former adviser... Jay Rosen, this week the question of Twitter as an environment for journalism came up. If the outlets of MSM are in trouble and if Twitter is rising, can it fill some of the role vacated by MSM? What about having a tech company running it? Esp if the company interferes with content? Or do they? Are any conflicts inherited by publications that Twitter favors with flow? Is the behavior of non-favored pubs altered by the environment. Ideally how should a company such as Twitter behave relative to its community if it wants to foster journalism? http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09march15.mp3 Is Twitter the savior of journalism? Or something like it? Links mentioned in today's podcast... Clark Hoyt: Bad News, and More Bad News. CJR: Derivatives Echo Chamber. Scripting News: Why it's time to break out of Twitter. The back-and-forth with Karl Rove re Obama's "straw man." Also mentioned in this Scripting News post. "We've arrived at a place where a political spinmeister, former adviser to the President, can get fact-checked by a random blogger, and get a confusing response. That seems a lot like the job that George Stephanopoulos or Bob Schieffer has." Jay Rosen, this week the question of Twitter as an environment for journalism came up. If the outlets of MSM are in trouble and if Twitter is rising, can it fill some of the role vacated by MSM? What about having a tech company running it? Esp if the company interferes with content? Or do they? Are any conflicts inherited by publications that Twitter favors with flow? Is the behavior of non-favored pubs altered by the environment. Ideally how should a company such as Twitter behave relative to its community if it wants to foster journalism? http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09march15.mp3 Is Twitter the savior of journalism? Or something like it? Links mentioned in today's podcast... Clark Hoyt: Bad News, and More Bad News. CJR: Derivatives Echo Chamber. Scripting News: Why it's time to break out of Twitter. The back-and-forth with Karl Rove re Obama's "straw man." Also mentioned in this Scripting News post. "We've arrived at a place where a political spinmeister, former adviser to the President, can get fact-checked by a random blogger, and get a confusing response. That seems a lot like the job that George Stephanopoulos or Bob Schieffer has." tag:odeo.com,2009-03-15,24309786 Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:24:59 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24308804-Can-Twitter-Save-the-News Jay, this week the question of Twitter as an environment for journalism came up. If the outlets of MSM are in trouble and if Twitter is rising, can it fill some of the role vacated by MSM? What about having a tech company running it? Esp if the company interferes with content? Or do they? Are any conflicts inherited by publications that Twitter favors with flow? Is the behavior of non-favored pubs altered by the environment. Ideally how should a company such as Twitter behave relative to its community if it wants to foster journalism? http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09march15.mp3 Is Twitter the savior of journalism? Or something like it? Jay, this week the question of Twitter as an environment for journalism came up. If the outlets of MSM are in trouble and if Twitter is rising, can it fill some of the role vacated by MSM? What about having a tech company running it? Esp if the company interferes with content? Or do they? Are any conflicts inherited by publications that Twitter favors with flow? Is the behavior of non-favored pubs altered by the environment. Ideally how should a company such as Twitter behave relative to its community if it wants to foster journalism? http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09march15.mp3 Is Twitter the savior of journalism? Or something like it? Jay, this week the question of Twitter as an environment for journalism came up. If the outlets of MSM are in trouble and if Twitter is rising, can it fill some of the role vacated by MSM? What about having a tech company running it? Esp if the company interferes with content? Or do they? Are any conflicts inherited by publications that Twitter favors with flow? Is the behavior of non-favored pubs altered by the environment. Ideally how should a company such as Twitter behave relative to its community if it wants to foster journalism? http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09march15.mp3 Is Twitter the savior of journalism? Or something like it? tag:odeo.com,2009-03-15,24308804 Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:24:59 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24274044-Interview-with-Jay-Rosen It's a good idea to check in with Jay on where journalism is at every once in a while, which is what I did this morning. I'm going to try to do these more regularly with people who are on the Friends Of Dave channel, like Jay. We start off talking about curmudgeons, then on to rebooting journalism, Meet The Press, the broken government, and everything related. Jay is really smart, spends a lot of time thinking about things I really care about. I thought the interview came out great. Hope you all listen. 40 minutes. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09Mar08.mp3 Jay is a professor of journalism at NYU and was my choice as Blogger of the Year for 2008. Update: Two articles mentioned in the interview. A follow-up: It might make sense for Jay to offer one or two paragraph critiques of various bits of journalism. For example this story on TechCrunch is interesting, but it might be more believable if we knew who the author was talking to, or why the source wouldn't go on the record. H... It's a good idea to check in with Jay on where journalism is at every once in a while, which is what I did this morning. I'm going to try to do these more regularly with people who are on the Friends Of Dave channel, like Jay. We start off talking about curmudgeons, then on to rebooting journalism, Meet The Press, the broken government, and everything related. Jay is really smart, spends a lot of time thinking about things I really care about. I thought the interview came out great. Hope you all listen. 40 minutes. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09Mar08.mp3 Jay is a professor of journalism at NYU and was my choice as Blogger of the Year for 2008. Update: Two articles mentioned in the interview. A follow-up: It might make sense for Jay to offer one or two paragraph critiques of various bits of journalism. For example this story on TechCrunch is interesting, but it might be more believable if we knew who the author was talking to, or why the source wouldn't go on the record. Handwritten notes from the interview. It's a good idea to check in with Jay on where journalism is at every once in a while, which is what I did this morning. I'm going to try to do these more regularly with people who are on the Friends Of Dave channel, like Jay. We start off talking about curmudgeons, then on to rebooting journalism, Meet The Press, the broken government, and everything related. Jay is really smart, spends a lot of time thinking about things I really care about. I thought the interview came out great. Hope you all listen. 40 minutes. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09Mar08.mp3 Jay is a professor of journalism at NYU and was my choice as Blogger of the Year for 2008. Update: Two articles mentioned in the interview. A follow-up: It might make sense for Jay to offer one or two paragraph critiques of various bits of journalism. For example this story on TechCrunch is interesting, but it might be more believable if we knew who the author was talking to, or why the source wouldn't go on the record. Handwritten notes from the interview. tag:odeo.com,2009-03-08,24274044 Sun, 08 Mar 2009 10:57:52 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/24051173-One-more-time-open-the-news-industry As I said in a podcast a few days ago, since the beginning of my career in the early 80s, I've been meeting with people in the news industry to try to play a role in its transition to an electronic medium. But that's only half of it, the easy half. The hard half: I want to be a reporter, but a new kind of reporter. Instead of one of the few, I want to be one of the millions. And I want technology to find a way to do what reporters of the 20th century used to do, to organize all the information from what they used to call "sources" into reports that people like you and me can read and think about and discuss. Reporting is a connecting art, like a real estate broker, travel agent, stock trader. The writing part of reporting is mundane, you want the reporter to stay out of your way as much as possible, and the good ones do. It's like the other arts -- who wants a real estate broker who sells you on how great it would be to live in a house while you're looking at it. They don't know how... As I said in a podcast a few days ago, since the beginning of my career in the early 80s, I've been meeting with people in the news industry to try to play a role in its transition to an electronic medium. But that's only half of it, the easy half. The hard half: I want to be a reporter, but a new kind of reporter. Instead of one of the few, I want to be one of the millions. And I want technology to find a way to do what reporters of the 20th century used to do, to organize all the information from what they used to call "sources" into reports that people like you and me can read and think about and discuss. Reporting is a connecting art, like a real estate broker, travel agent, stock trader. The writing part of reporting is mundane, you want the reporter to stay out of your way as much as possible, and the good ones do. It's like the other arts -- who wants a real estate broker who sells you on how great it would be to live in a house while you're looking at it. They don't know how you live, their chatter interferes with your dreaming, and it's the dream that buys the house. I once had a travel agent who loved to golf, so I ended up staying at hotels near golf courses. I don't golf. So now I do my own travel agenting. It takes more time, but I stay in places that are a better fit. The news people talk about paying for news, but the suppliers of news, the sources, are never paid. So if we can find a way to do what reporters do, without paying reporters, then voila, we can have our news for free. Before you rattle off some tired rationale, think about it. What are reporters doing that amateurs and/or software can't do? Jay Rosen explained this to me once -- the word for what reporters do that machines don't is "authority." Humans convey authority. But -- only until humans teach us how to do it for them. Here's the idea I would program into the heads of people who run the news corporations if I could turn them upside down and hang them by the feet until all the old wrong ideas ran out of their heads, forming a fetid puddle on the ground beneath them. News people are all around you, anxious to get in there and work, for free, on the news. At first thousands of them, and then once the glitches are worked out, tens of thousands. There's no shortage of people who want to inform others. The challenge is to figure out which ones want to do it for love. And that might not be such a challenge. I can show you a few dozen, and I bet they could show you a few more and so on. In the end you might not be able to make money at news, but you're not making money now, so what else is new? The manufacturing process for news has radically shifted. The question is, as with the economy, whether we can transition the existing process to become the new one (imho preferable) or does the old system have to collapse before the new one can rise to take its place. The key is to look at all those empty newsrooms, and to envision, before they completely shut down, filling them with volunteers -- who we can teach to write the news. One more thought -- as with all post-apolcalyptic thinking, post-Katrina New Orleans provided the testbed, the dry run. Look at what the Times-Picayune did in the days after the hurricane. In my humble opinion a great newspaper rose overnight where a mediocre one had been the day before. The printing presses weren't running, and the normal management structure was heavily disrupted. But they had a story, a great one -- and if you go back to the roots of news, that's when it really happens, not when someone pays you well, but when you have a great story. (Same thing happens in software, when you're shipping a winner, somehow everyone on the team knows, and they put it in an even better performance.) That's what we all want to be part of -- something great. I think that expresses the best of the human spirit. As young people we want to be the greatness, but as we grow we want to be part of greatness. That's much more exciting. Update: Here's an example of the kind of reporting I find riveting, Pulitzer-worthy, written by an amateur, with passion. As I said in a podcast a few days ago, since the beginning of my career in the early 80s, I've been meeting with people in the news industry to try to play a role in its transition to an electronic medium. But that's only half of it, the easy half. The hard half: I want to be a reporter, but a new kind of reporter. Instead of one of the few, I want to be one of the millions. And I want technology to find a way to do what reporters of the 20th century used to do, to organize all the information from what they used to call "sources" into reports that people like you and me can read and think about and discuss. Reporting is a connecting art, like a real estate broker, travel agent, stock trader. The writing part of reporting is mundane, you want the reporter to stay out of your way as much as possible, and the good ones do. It's like the other arts -- who wants a real estate broker who sells you on how great it would be to live in a house while you're looking at it. They don't know how you live, their chatter interferes with your dreaming, and it's the dream that buys the house. I once had a travel agent who loved to golf, so I ended up staying at hotels near golf courses. I don't golf. So now I do my own travel agenting. It takes more time, but I stay in places that are a better fit. The news people talk about paying for news, but the suppliers of news, the sources, are never paid. So if we can find a way to do what reporters do, without paying reporters, then voila, we can have our news for free. Before you rattle off some tired rationale, think about it. What are reporters doing that amateurs and/or software can't do? Jay Rosen explained this to me once -- the word for what reporters do that machines don't is "authority." Humans convey authority. But -- only until humans teach us how to do it for them. Here's the idea I would program into the heads of people who run the news corporations if I could turn them upside down and hang them by the feet until all the old wrong ideas ran out of their heads, forming a fetid puddle on the ground beneath them. News people are all around you, anxious to get in there and work, for free, on the news. At first thousands of them, and then once the glitches are worked out, tens of thousands. There's no shortage of people who want to inform others. The challenge is to figure out which ones want to do it for love. And that might not be such a challenge. I can show you a few dozen, and I bet they could show you a few more and so on. In the end you might not be able to make money at news, but you're not making money now, so what else is new? The manufacturing process for news has radically shifted. The question is, as with the economy, whether we can transition the existing process to become the new one (imho preferable) or does the old system have to collapse before the new one can rise to take its place. The key is to look at all those empty newsrooms, and to envision, before they completely shut down, filling them with volunteers -- who we can teach to write the news. One more thought -- as with all post-apolcalyptic thinking, post-Katrina New Orleans provided the testbed, the dry run. Look at what the Times-Picayune did in the days after the hurricane. In my humble opinion a great newspaper rose overnight where a mediocre one had been the day before. The printing presses weren't running, and the normal management structure was heavily disrupted. But they had a story, a great one -- and if you go back to the roots of news, that's when it really happens, not when someone pays you well, but when you have a great story. (Same thing happens in software, when you're shipping a winner, somehow everyone on the team knows, and they put it in an even better performance.) That's what we all want to be part of -- something great. I think that expresses the best of the human spirit. As young people we want to be the greatness, but as we grow we want to be part of greatness. That's much more exciting. Update: Here's an example of the kind of reporting I find riveting, Pulitzer-worthy, written by an amateur, with passion. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-06,24051173 Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:55:51 -0800 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/23486319-Do-you-know-anyone-at-Biogen If so, read this plea from Andrew Baron. His father is dying and desperately needs a drug. Thanks to TC for pushing this. If so, read this plea from Andrew Baron. His father is dying and desperately needs a drug. Thanks to TC for pushing this. If so, read this plea from Andrew Baron. His father is dying and desperately needs a drug. Thanks to TC for pushing this. tag:odeo.com,2008-10-14,23486319 Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:44:37 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/23348319-Morning-podcast-with-Jay-Rosen Things have been heating up politically and Jay Rosen has been steadily posting interesting stuff to Twitter, so I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to share my thoughts with more this morning so here goes. First, I read Frank Rich's column in the NY Times, everyone should. There's a lot of meaning in the choice Sarah Palin's invisible speech writer made in using Truman as the model for her unusual path to the Republican nomination for VP. It would be chilling for John McCain if he read it the way Rich did; we know how Truman's path to the Presidency was completed. (That they put this out there so openly is pretty amazing.) Also be sure to read this Politico piece which explains why the Republicans feel justified in shutting out the press, and openly lying. Can't say I support it but I understand it. Their reasons are the same ones I have for rarely doing interviews with reporters, they're always looking for a gotcha and have no interest in reporting what's actually going on. Why bo... Things have been heating up politically and Jay Rosen has been steadily posting interesting stuff to Twitter, so I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to share my thoughts with more this morning so here goes. First, I read Frank Rich's column in the NY Times, everyone should. There's a lot of meaning in the choice Sarah Palin's invisible speech writer made in using Truman as the model for her unusual path to the Republican nomination for VP. It would be chilling for John McCain if he read it the way Rich did; we know how Truman's path to the Presidency was completed. (That they put this out there so openly is pretty amazing.) Also be sure to read this Politico piece which explains why the Republicans feel justified in shutting out the press, and openly lying. Can't say I support it but I understand it. Their reasons are the same ones I have for rarely doing interviews with reporters, they're always looking for a gotcha and have no interest in reporting what's actually going on. Why bother? What's in it for me? That's the calculus the Republicans offer and it's compelling. That led me to the idea that perhaps it's not Obama that the Repubs are really running against, perhaps it's the press. What clued me into that was the way Carly Fiorina conflated three NY Times columnists as "The Democrats" on This Week earlier today. Huh? They may be Democrats, but they are not The Democrats. If the Repubs are running against the press, then why do the press care what the Repubs think (the mistake Obama makes too). And how does Obama get back in the game if the conversation is to between the Repubs and the press (and the press like Obama are always three steps behind, confused as hell and not going to take it anymore). Which finally led me to the conclusion for the Obamas and I really hope they get the message, you need to grow your own press, quickly. Use the Internet. It's all you've got. Don't count on the press caring, they're busy fighting a war with the Republicans. This really is the battle for Democracy with a capital D. If the Republicans win this election, kiss what's left of what we think of as the United States goodbye. Imho. Here's the podcast. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/cn08sep14.mp3 Dave Things have been heating up politically and Jay Rosen has been steadily posting interesting stuff to Twitter, so I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to share my thoughts with more this morning so here goes. First, I read Frank Rich's column in the NY Times, everyone should. There's a lot of meaning in the choice Sarah Palin's invisible speech writer made in using Truman as the model for her unusual path to the Republican nomination for VP. It would be chilling for John McCain if he read it the way Rich did; we know how Truman's path to the Presidency was completed. (That they put this out there so openly is pretty amazing.) Also be sure to read this Politico piece which explains why the Republicans feel justified in shutting out the press, and openly lying. Can't say I support it but I understand it. Their reasons are the same ones I have for rarely doing interviews with reporters, they're always looking for a gotcha and have no interest in reporting what's actually going on. Why bother? What's in it for me? That's the calculus the Republicans offer and it's compelling. That led me to the idea that perhaps it's not Obama that the Repubs are really running against, perhaps it's the press. What clued me into that was the way Carly Fiorina conflated three NY Times columnists as "The Democrats" on This Week earlier today. Huh? They may be Democrats, but they are not The Democrats. If the Repubs are running against the press, then why do the press care what the Repubs think (the mistake Obama makes too). And how does Obama get back in the game if the conversation is to between the Repubs and the press (and the press like Obama are always three steps behind, confused as hell and not going to take it anymore). Which finally led me to the conclusion for the Obamas and I really hope they get the message, you need to grow your own press, quickly. Use the Internet. It's all you've got. Don't count on the press caring, they're busy fighting a war with the Republicans. This really is the battle for Democracy with a capital D. If the Republicans win this election, kiss what's left of what we think of as the United States goodbye. Imho. Here's the podcast. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/cn08sep14.mp3 Dave tag:odeo.com,2008-09-14,23348319 Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:55:55 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/23118215-Listening-respect-and-teamwork Scoble writes about Silicon Valley VC disease. I almost wrote a comment there saying that I've tried many times over many years to get VCs to invest in ideas I had for products, some of which turned out to be quite successful, but I thought better of it. Why single out the VCs, when the problem is much broader. Here's what it is, from my point of view. There's not enough respect, listening, or teamwork. After years of banging against the brick wall, one day, in a meeting with a VC, it came to me, clear as a bell. This person wasn't listening to my pitch. Every time I'd pause to take a breath, he'd start taking the story off in some other direction toward some vision he had. The VCs are the superstars, not the entrepreneurs, even though the hype is the other way around. So far everything I've said coincides with what Scoble said. Here's where we diverge. The entrepreneurs have the same damned disease. They don't want anything from the VC other than their money. The reporters have the... Scoble writes about Silicon Valley VC disease. I almost wrote a comment there saying that I've tried many times over many years to get VCs to invest in ideas I had for products, some of which turned out to be quite successful, but I thought better of it. Why single out the VCs, when the problem is much broader. Here's what it is, from my point of view. There's not enough respect, listening, or teamwork. After years of banging against the brick wall, one day, in a meeting with a VC, it came to me, clear as a bell. This person wasn't listening to my pitch. Every time I'd pause to take a breath, he'd start taking the story off in some other direction toward some vision he had. The VCs are the superstars, not the entrepreneurs, even though the hype is the other way around. So far everything I've said coincides with what Scoble said. Here's where we diverge. The entrepreneurs have the same damned disease. They don't want anything from the VC other than their money. The reporters have the disease too, so do the bloggers. Silicon Valley is a really small place, getting smaller all the time, but it hasn't figured that out yet. To make products that sell, it has to reach out into the world for wisdom, and that requires a lot of listening, respect -- teamwork. Listening, respect and teamwork. Back when Scoble worked at UserLand, when I wanted to ship a product, I made everyone at the company listen to Al Pacino's fantastic speech in Any Given Sunday. When you think that way, VCs, entrepreneurs, developers, everyone -- You'll start making really great products that mean something to real people. Until then, everyone will just be trying to be heard over the din of everyone else yelling how great they are. Update: Here's a podcast that explains why, if I were David Hornik, I'd invest in iPhone apps and wouldn't worry about other platforms right now. (Later, yes, but not now.) Scoble writes about Silicon Valley VC disease. I almost wrote a comment there saying that I've tried many times over many years to get VCs to invest in ideas I had for products, some of which turned out to be quite successful, but I thought better of it. Why single out the VCs, when the problem is much broader. Here's what it is, from my point of view. There's not enough respect, listening, or teamwork. After years of banging against the brick wall, one day, in a meeting with a VC, it came to me, clear as a bell. This person wasn't listening to my pitch. Every time I'd pause to take a breath, he'd start taking the story off in some other direction toward some vision he had. The VCs are the superstars, not the entrepreneurs, even though the hype is the other way around. So far everything I've said coincides with what Scoble said. Here's where we diverge. The entrepreneurs have the same damned disease. They don't want anything from the VC other than their money. The reporters have the disease too, so do the bloggers. Silicon Valley is a really small place, getting smaller all the time, but it hasn't figured that out yet. To make products that sell, it has to reach out into the world for wisdom, and that requires a lot of listening, respect -- teamwork. Listening, respect and teamwork. Back when Scoble worked at UserLand, when I wanted to ship a product, I made everyone at the company listen to Al Pacino's fantastic speech in Any Given Sunday. When you think that way, VCs, entrepreneurs, developers, everyone -- You'll start making really great products that mean something to real people. Until then, everyone will just be trying to be heard over the din of everyone else yelling how great they are. Update: Here's a podcast that explains why, if I were David Hornik, I'd invest in iPhone apps and wouldn't worry about other platforms right now. (Later, yes, but not now.) tag:odeo.com,2008-07-26,23118215 Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:15:03 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/23075111-A-demo-of-something-that-s-not-crowd-sourcing To Jay Rosen, here's an example of two people collaborating to make an interesting story that neither of us would likely make on our own. Notice that nothing like "crowd sourcing" is taking place. When I was flying back from NY last Wednesday, the plane was equipped with a live Google Maps display so I could see in advance that our path was likely to take us over Denver, so I prepared, and took several pictures as we passed over the south side of the city. When I got home I uploaded one of the pics to Flickr along with several others. Then, unexpectedly, yesterday, a person named Paul Wicks added an interesting caption to my picture in a comment. I learned a lot about what I had flown over. See, we're not acting as a crowd -- we're acting as two curious strangers from (presumably) fairly diverse backgrounds (I have no way of knowing) whose paths crossed and were able to make an intellectual exchange thanks to a collaborative service. No one made any money off it, but something good ... To Jay Rosen, here's an example of two people collaborating to make an interesting story that neither of us would likely make on our own. Notice that nothing like "crowd sourcing" is taking place. When I was flying back from NY last Wednesday, the plane was equipped with a live Google Maps display so I could see in advance that our path was likely to take us over Denver, so I prepared, and took several pictures as we passed over the south side of the city. When I got home I uploaded one of the pics to Flickr along with several others. Then, unexpectedly, yesterday, a person named Paul Wicks added an interesting caption to my picture in a comment. I learned a lot about what I had flown over. See, we're not acting as a crowd -- we're acting as two curious strangers from (presumably) fairly diverse backgrounds (I have no way of knowing) whose paths crossed and were able to make an intellectual exchange thanks to a collaborative service. No one made any money off it, but something good happened anyway. For another example, see my piece earlier today asking people for their experiences with foreclosures locally. When it's "done" if it ever is, I'd say it'll be as good as any story written for a national newspaper on how the foreclosure crisis is hitting the average American. In one way it's better -- no one edited the sources' words, we're getting it straight, no "telephone game" errors introduced (which is why sources say they never are quoted accurately in the press, something reporters always deny, funny how that is). Update: A podcast to go with this post. To Jay Rosen, here's an example of two people collaborating to make an interesting story that neither of us would likely make on our own. Notice that nothing like "crowd sourcing" is taking place. When I was flying back from NY last Wednesday, the plane was equipped with a live Google Maps display so I could see in advance that our path was likely to take us over Denver, so I prepared, and took several pictures as we passed over the south side of the city. When I got home I uploaded one of the pics to Flickr along with several others. Then, unexpectedly, yesterday, a person named Paul Wicks added an interesting caption to my picture in a comment. I learned a lot about what I had flown over. See, we're not acting as a crowd -- we're acting as two curious strangers from (presumably) fairly diverse backgrounds (I have no way of knowing) whose paths crossed and were able to make an intellectual exchange thanks to a collaborative service. No one made any money off it, but something good happened anyway. For another example, see my piece earlier today asking people for their experiences with foreclosures locally. When it's "done" if it ever is, I'd say it'll be as good as any story written for a national newspaper on how the foreclosure crisis is hitting the average American. In one way it's better -- no one edited the sources' words, we're getting it straight, no "telephone game" errors introduced (which is why sources say they never are quoted accurately in the press, something reporters always deny, funny how that is). Update: A podcast to go with this post. tag:odeo.com,2008-07-13,23075111 Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:23:42 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/23042482-Podcast-with-the-Gnip-guys I caught up with Eric Marcoullier and Jud Valeski of Gnip in Eric's car, this afternoon. http://mp3.newsjunk.com/interviewWithGnip.mp3 Earlier today, on Scripting News, I asked Twitter to use Gnip to communicate with developers so the network can come back on. I wanted to find out if anything had come of it. Nothing had... Meanwhile, the guys believe there's no technical reason that Twitter can't turn back on all the services that were hooked into the XMPP gateway -- the protocol is designed for that kind of syndication. It seems, therefore that the reason must be economic -- which leads to the conclusion that Twitter, which was founded as an open platform, with a Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom philosophy, is now headed in the opposite direction. We know where that leads, to the place where Instant Messaging foundered, which motivated the development of XMPP to route around the problem. (Oh the humanity!) Gnip raises the question in about as clear a way possible, will Twitter come bac... I caught up with Eric Marcoullier and Jud Valeski of Gnip in Eric's car, this afternoon. http://mp3.newsjunk.com/interviewWithGnip.mp3 Earlier today, on Scripting News, I asked Twitter to use Gnip to communicate with developers so the network can come back on. I wanted to find out if anything had come of it. Nothing had... Meanwhile, the guys believe there's no technical reason that Twitter can't turn back on all the services that were hooked into the XMPP gateway -- the protocol is designed for that kind of syndication. It seems, therefore that the reason must be economic -- which leads to the conclusion that Twitter, which was founded as an open platform, with a Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom philosophy, is now headed in the opposite direction. We know where that leads, to the place where Instant Messaging foundered, which motivated the development of XMPP to route around the problem. (Oh the humanity!) Gnip raises the question in about as clear a way possible, will Twitter come back to developers, or are we looking for a new platform to do the wonderful things we were hoping to do with Twitter. Eric, like me, is friends with Bijan and Fred, on Twitter's board, so we're posing this question, which is potentially controversial, in a friendly way. Here's the smiley to prove it: I caught up with Eric Marcoullier and Jud Valeski of Gnip in Eric's car, this afternoon. http://mp3.newsjunk.com/interviewWithGnip.mp3 Earlier today, on Scripting News, I asked Twitter to use Gnip to communicate with developers so the network can come back on. I wanted to find out if anything had come of it. Nothing had... Meanwhile, the guys believe there's no technical reason that Twitter can't turn back on all the services that were hooked into the XMPP gateway -- the protocol is designed for that kind of syndication. It seems, therefore that the reason must be economic -- which leads to the conclusion that Twitter, which was founded as an open platform, with a Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom philosophy, is now headed in the opposite direction. We know where that leads, to the place where Instant Messaging foundered, which motivated the development of XMPP to route around the problem. (Oh the humanity!) Gnip raises the question in about as clear a way possible, will Twitter come back to developers, or are we looking for a new platform to do the wonderful things we were hoping to do with Twitter. Eric, like me, is friends with Bijan and Fred, on Twitter's board, so we're posing this question, which is potentially controversial, in a friendly way. Here's the smiley to prove it: tag:odeo.com,2008-07-01,23042482 Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:43:34 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/23005036-AP-mess-day-3 I spoke with Jim Kennedy at AP this afternoon and talked about the controversy over how bloggers should link to and use information published by the AP. I asked him to look at one of my sites to tell me if it was infringing, and he said it was not, which should put to rest some of the concerns that bloggers have expressed. Please listen to this podcast to get an idea of what happened, and where I think we should go from here. I spoke with Jim Kennedy at AP this afternoon and talked about the controversy over how bloggers should link to and use information published by the AP. I asked him to look at one of my sites to tell me if it was infringing, and he said it was not, which should put to rest some of the concerns that bloggers have expressed. Please listen to this podcast to get an idea of what happened, and where I think we should go from here. I spoke with Jim Kennedy at AP this afternoon and talked about the controversy over how bloggers should link to and use information published by the AP. I asked him to look at one of my sites to tell me if it was infringing, and he said it was not, which should put to rest some of the concerns that bloggers have expressed. Please listen to this podcast to get an idea of what happened, and where I think we should go from here. tag:odeo.com,2008-06-18,23005036 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:04:51 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/23001723-Remembering-Tim-Russert Tim Russert died on Friday. I never met the guy, but I sure was familiar with his work. I thought he personified what was wrong with the political process, and I said so. It would be hypocritical now for me to say he was a great man, because I don't think he was. Sometimes I felt the politician he was crossing was well-equipped to speak honestly for himself, and I wanted to hear what he or she had to say, and Russert interfered. It came up in his interview this spring with Ron Paul, who actually had some new ideas that I felt deserved airing, but he couldn't get much of that past Russert, who applied his inside-the-Beltway logic. I noticed he was a lot harder on outsiders. And he was always easy when interviewing members of his profession, who he let speak without interruption, without interrogation. An odd exception, I thought -- it would be nice if they took as much care with their own consistency as they do with the people they interview Of course his death is a sad thing, for ev... Tim Russert died on Friday. I never met the guy, but I sure was familiar with his work. I thought he personified what was wrong with the political process, and I said so. It would be hypocritical now for me to say he was a great man, because I don't think he was. Sometimes I felt the politician he was crossing was well-equipped to speak honestly for himself, and I wanted to hear what he or she had to say, and Russert interfered. It came up in his interview this spring with Ron Paul, who actually had some new ideas that I felt deserved airing, but he couldn't get much of that past Russert, who applied his inside-the-Beltway logic. I noticed he was a lot harder on outsiders. And he was always easy when interviewing members of his profession, who he let speak without interruption, without interrogation. An odd exception, I thought -- it would be nice if they took as much care with their own consistency as they do with the people they interview Of course his death is a sad thing, for everyone. And I did enjoy Russert enough to listen every Sunday to Meet The Press. Through the magic of podcasting, I never had to miss one. And there's a chance that this ultimate insider would have discovered the power of the rest of us, not only in the aggregate, but as individuals as well. I think they pay lip service to it, and keep it far away and abstract, content to live with their view of the world, as revolving around them, which of course in some ways, it does. The most poignant eulogy for me came from Bob Schieffer, longtime host of Face the Nation (CBS), who was clear up front, Russert was a competitor, and both of them took the competition seriously. He said that he and Russert were also friends. This is what I want for us in the blogosphere and we don't have it. Competition here is so cutthroat, so personal, that it's impossible to have a relaxed conversation, to learn from people who compete. It would be nice if we could get to that place, if Schieffer wasn't exaggerating for effect, marking the sadness that comes with anyone's passing, even someone whose success you envy. Update: Arianna apparently sees it the same way. Tim Russert died on Friday. I never met the guy, but I sure was familiar with his work. I thought he personified what was wrong with the political process, and I said so. It would be hypocritical now for me to say he was a great man, because I don't think he was. Sometimes I felt the politician he was crossing was well-equipped to speak honestly for himself, and I wanted to hear what he or she had to say, and Russert interfered. It came up in his interview this spring with Ron Paul, who actually had some new ideas that I felt deserved airing, but he couldn't get much of that past Russert, who applied his inside-the-Beltway logic. I noticed he was a lot harder on outsiders. And he was always easy when interviewing members of his profession, who he let speak without interruption, without interrogation. An odd exception, I thought -- it would be nice if they took as much care with their own consistency as they do with the people they interview Of course his death is a sad thing, for everyone. And I did enjoy Russert enough to listen every Sunday to Meet The Press. Through the magic of podcasting, I never had to miss one. And there's a chance that this ultimate insider would have discovered the power of the rest of us, not only in the aggregate, but as individuals as well. I think they pay lip service to it, and keep it far away and abstract, content to live with their view of the world, as revolving around them, which of course in some ways, it does. The most poignant eulogy for me came from Bob Schieffer, longtime host of Face the Nation (CBS), who was clear up front, Russert was a competitor, and both of them took the competition seriously. He said that he and Russert were also friends. This is what I want for us in the blogosphere and we don't have it. Competition here is so cutthroat, so personal, that it's impossible to have a relaxed conversation, to learn from people who compete. It would be nice if we could get to that place, if Schieffer wasn't exaggerating for effect, marking the sadness that comes with anyone's passing, even someone whose success you envy. Update: Arianna apparently sees it the same way. tag:odeo.com,2008-06-17,23001723 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:06:10 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/22579428-Bill-Clinton-s-Macaca-Moment Yesterday during the rush of news and the initial rollout of NewsJunk.com a story flew by that Bill Clinton had said some pretty nasty things about Todd Perdum, the author of a Vanity Fair slam piece about him. This morning, I heard for the first time that: 1. There's audio of his remarks. 2. It was recorded on a rope line after a Bill Clinton campaign event. 3. They didn't allow reporters on the rope lines, to avoid BC getting quoted saying the kind of thing he was quoted saying yesterday (apparently he talks candidly with people on rope lines). 4. The person who recorded his comments was the same person who recorded Barack Obama's controversial comments about poor people in Pennsylvania, a person they identified as a "citizen journalist." Now, I hope to get the audio (got it, it's part of the Huffington Post report, below), and I found the reporter's name, Mayhill Fowler, but I had to search for it. In the report this morning on MSNBC, they didn't identify her. I kept waiting for ... Yesterday during the rush of news and the initial rollout of NewsJunk.com a story flew by that Bill Clinton had said some pretty nasty things about Todd Perdum, the author of a Vanity Fair slam piece about him. This morning, I heard for the first time that: 1. There's audio of his remarks. 2. It was recorded on a rope line after a Bill Clinton campaign event. 3. They didn't allow reporters on the rope lines, to avoid BC getting quoted saying the kind of thing he was quoted saying yesterday (apparently he talks candidly with people on rope lines). 4. The person who recorded his comments was the same person who recorded Barack Obama's controversial comments about poor people in Pennsylvania, a person they identified as a "citizen journalist." Now, I hope to get the audio (got it, it's part of the Huffington Post report, below), and I found the reporter's name, Mayhill Fowler, but I had to search for it. In the report this morning on MSNBC, they didn't identify her. I kept waiting for them to say her name, but they never did. I think it's not only disrespectful, it's unethical to cite a source without identifying it, unless there was a prior agreement that the source was off the record. As you can see from the report, the reporter clearly wants credit. In the next segment Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, argued with passion that HRC lost, at least in part, because of sexism. I thought this was an incredible contrast. Where is the respect? Just because someone isn't a credentialed member of the press corps, she must remain nameless? Why didn't KVH tune into this (Fowler is a woman, in addition to being an amateur reporter). Mayhill Fowler's report on Huffington. They talked earlier, on the Morning Joe show, how Bill Clinton is old school and hasn't learned how things have changed since his last campaign in 1996. KVH asked if everyone remembered Macaca? I do, of course, it's how Jim Webb came to be the Senator from Virginia. Did we ever hear the name of the reporter who videotaped it? I don't recall that I ever did. He not only shot the video, but he was the focus of the story, he was the one who George Allen called Macaca. This should be a lesson to all handlers and would-be political leaders. You're basically always on the record, unless you're talking with one or two people who have agreed in advance that you're not, and even then you have to be careful. I've learned this in the blogosphere, it's why industry parties are uncomfortable for me. I don't think of myself as a public figure, but every conversation is subject to reporting. I've even had conversations with people who were, without disclosing it, streaming video and audio of it, live to viewers on the net. It first happened when I visited the office of a competitor in the late 90s, believe it or not. I don't like it, but this is the world we live in. But parts of it I do like. I think we should get behind the facade presented by the comfortable relationship betw Washington reporters and the political leaders they cover. There's too much control of the political process by the press, and that's too easily manipulated by the candidates. We'll see that play out in the fall as two favorites of the press, Obama and McCain, compete. Update: A report on the MSNBC's website by Mark Murray begins: "The same Huffington Post reporter who broke the Obama 'bitter' story got a new scoop yesterday..." Mayhill Fowler's name does not appear in the 8-paragraph report, though they take a swipe at her ethics ("she didn't identify herself as a reporter and said she disliked the article when asking for his reaction"). Update: Cross-posted at Huffington. Yesterday during the rush of news and the initial rollout of NewsJunk.com a story flew by that Bill Clinton had said some pretty nasty things about Todd Perdum, the author of a Vanity Fair slam piece about him. This morning, I heard for the first time that: 1. There's audio of his remarks. 2. It was recorded on a rope line after a Bill Clinton campaign event. 3. They didn't allow reporters on the rope lines, to avoid BC getting quoted saying the kind of thing he was quoted saying yesterday (apparently he talks candidly with people on rope lines). 4. The person who recorded his comments was the same person who recorded Barack Obama's controversial comments about poor people in Pennsylvania, a person they identified as a "citizen journalist." Now, I hope to get the audio (got it, it's part of the Huffington Post report, below), and I found the reporter's name, Mayhill Fowler, but I had to search for it. In the report this morning on MSNBC, they didn't identify her. I kept waiting for them to say her name, but they never did. I think it's not only disrespectful, it's unethical to cite a source without identifying it, unless there was a prior agreement that the source was off the record. As you can see from the report, the reporter clearly wants credit. In the next segment Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, argued with passion that HRC lost, at least in part, because of sexism. I thought this was an incredible contrast. Where is the respect? Just because someone isn't a credentialed member of the press corps, she must remain nameless? Why didn't KVH tune into this (Fowler is a woman, in addition to being an amateur reporter). Mayhill Fowler's report on Huffington. They talked earlier, on the Morning Joe show, how Bill Clinton is old school and hasn't learned how things have changed since his last campaign in 1996. KVH asked if everyone remembered Macaca? I do, of course, it's how Jim Webb came to be the Senator from Virginia. Did we ever hear the name of the reporter who videotaped it? I don't recall that I ever did. He not only shot the video, but he was the focus of the story, he was the one who George Allen called Macaca. This should be a lesson to all handlers and would-be political leaders. You're basically always on the record, unless you're talking with one or two people who have agreed in advance that you're not, and even then you have to be careful. I've learned this in the blogosphere, it's why industry parties are uncomfortable for me. I don't think of myself as a public figure, but every conversation is subject to reporting. I've even had conversations with people who were, without disclosing it, streaming video and audio of it, live to viewers on the net. It first happened when I visited the office of a competitor in the late 90s, believe it or not. I don't like it, but this is the world we live in. But parts of it I do like. I think we should get behind the facade presented by the comfortable relationship betw Washington reporters and the political leaders they cover. There's too much control of the political process by the press, and that's too easily manipulated by the candidates. We'll see that play out in the fall as two favorites of the press, Obama and McCain, compete. Update: A report on the MSNBC's website by Mark Murray begins: "The same Huffington Post reporter who broke the Obama 'bitter' story got a new scoop yesterday..." Mayhill Fowler's name does not appear in the 8-paragraph report, though they take a swipe at her ethics ("she didn't identify herself as a reporter and said she disliked the article when asking for his reaction"). Update: Cross-posted at Huffington. tag:odeo.com,2008-06-03,22579428 Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:06:08 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/22572505-NewsJunk-podcast-with-Joe-Trippi We just did a podcast with Democratic consultant Joe Trippi (formerly of the Edwards and Dean campaigns) about today's Democratic Rules Committee meeting, and the next steps in the nominating process. http://newsjunk.com/mp3/nj080531.mp3 Then we switch gears and talk about the new venture I'm starting with Nicco Mele. We're still just covering the edges of the vision, but it's about news, politics and technology, three things close to my heart. BTW, this is the first NewsJunk podcast. You can subscribe, for now, through the scripting.com RSS feed. We just did a podcast with Democratic consultant Joe Trippi (formerly of the Edwards and Dean campaigns) about today's Democratic Rules Committee meeting, and the next steps in the nominating process. http://newsjunk.com/mp3/nj080531.mp3 Then we switch gears and talk about the new venture I'm starting with Nicco Mele. We're still just covering the edges of the vision, but it's about news, politics and technology, three things close to my heart. BTW, this is the first NewsJunk podcast. You can subscribe, for now, through the scripting.com RSS feed. We just did a podcast with Democratic consultant Joe Trippi (formerly of the Edwards and Dean campaigns) about today's Democratic Rules Committee meeting, and the next steps in the nominating process. http://newsjunk.com/mp3/nj080531.mp3 Then we switch gears and talk about the new venture I'm starting with Nicco Mele. We're still just covering the edges of the vision, but it's about news, politics and technology, three things close to my heart. BTW, this is the first NewsJunk podcast. You can subscribe, for now, through the scripting.com RSS feed. tag:odeo.com,2008-05-31,22572505 Sat, 31 May 2008 12:16:09 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/22436453-I-got-something-to-say A ten-minute quickie rant. http://sundaygang.com/dave/cn08Apr17.mp3 Hey Barack Obama was really saying something important in the "bitter" quote and in last night's debate, and all the idiot pundits on TV are blowing by it. A ten-minute quickie rant. http://sundaygang.com/dave/cn08Apr17.mp3 Hey Barack Obama was really saying something important in the "bitter" quote and in last night's debate, and all the idiot pundits on TV are blowing by it. A ten-minute quickie rant. http://sundaygang.com/dave/cn08Apr17.mp3 Hey Barack Obama was really saying something important in the "bitter" quote and in last night's debate, and all the idiot pundits on TV are blowing by it. tag:odeo.com,2008-04-17,22436453 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:59:53 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/22432610-A-new-reason-to-hate-Comcast As long as I've been a customer of Comcast I've been writing how much I wish they'd sell their Internet business to a company that doesn't hate its customers so much. But sometimes you forget, when the service is good, you just cruise along, happy and productive. And so I was blissfully forgetful until I read, on Twitter, that Dave Sifry was testing the bandwidth on Comcast with PowerBoost and was blown away by how great it was. I had Comcast as a backup, rarely used it, so I hooked it up, tried it out and I got even better bandwidth than Sifry did. Amazingly I was getting 28 megabits down, about 3 megabits up. So I started using it on my LAN, I kept my DSL service, but I'm not using it as much. Then this morning around 9AM the service went down. I called the service number, and was quickly directed to call a special number. I couldn't record the call because I didn't have Skype working, but I wish I had found a way. The recording said I was talking to their legal services departmen... As long as I've been a customer of Comcast I've been writing how much I wish they'd sell their Internet business to a company that doesn't hate its customers so much. But sometimes you forget, when the service is good, you just cruise along, happy and productive. And so I was blissfully forgetful until I read, on Twitter, that Dave Sifry was testing the bandwidth on Comcast with PowerBoost and was blown away by how great it was. I had Comcast as a backup, rarely used it, so I hooked it up, tried it out and I got even better bandwidth than Sifry did. Amazingly I was getting 28 megabits down, about 3 megabits up. So I started using it on my LAN, I kept my DSL service, but I'm not using it as much. Then this morning around 9AM the service went down. I called the service number, and was quickly directed to call a special number. I couldn't record the call because I didn't have Skype working, but I wish I had found a way. The recording said I was talking to their legal services department, Press 1 if you are stealing content, 2 if you are using too much bandwidth, 3 if Comcast hates your guts, 4 if you're a criminal. (I don't remember the exact wording, this wasn't it, but the word "criminal" was actually part of the presentation, to me, a paying customer, in good standing. And by pressing a button I was admitting to doing something wrong. Amazingly bad customer service.) I was quickly connected to a man who told me I had been deliberately disconnected because they had tried to call me and I didn't pick up. The number they called was my Blackberry, which I disconnected a couple of months ago because I never use it, I much prefer the iPhone. Then he threatened me. He told me I was in the top 1/10th of 1 percent of all their Internet users and that if I didn't immediately stop using so much bandwidth they would suspend my service for 12 months. I asked if I could get this in writing, he said no. I asked how much bandwith would be acceptable, he wouldn't say. I told him this wasn't much of a threat if they weren't willing to put it in writing, and I wasn't intimidated. I also told him I was a blogger and would be writing it up. He didn't care. Now, before I called the first number, I posted about the outage to Twitter, and sent a direct message to comcastcares, an amazing account, staffed by a guy named Frank who works at Comcast in Philadelphia, who really does seem to care. A few days ago, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch mentioned on Twitter that his Comcast service was down, they contacted him immediately, and had a service tech at his place the next day (I think). Mike was so pleased with the service he said he'd be willing to pay double if they could keep it up. Pretty impressive. So I spoke with Frank on the phone after receiving the threat. He asked me to write it up, and I am doing so here. I also recorded a podcast with Christina Warren of Download Squad. A bunch of ideas and questions resulted. 1. They should have sent me a letter. This idea of disconnecting customers to get them to call is utterly unprofessional and disrespectful and should get them in trouble with the FTC and the FCC and everyone who uses Comcast or who works at Comcast who has any self-respect. The letter should have said something like this: "We noticed that you're using a lot of bandwidth, and we're happy you like the Internet so much, and like our PowerBoost service, but if you're going to use this much bandwidth you should seriously consider getting our higher-class service, which will cost $X more per month, but along with it you get 5 new features that only our most special customers get." I told Christina, there are few things I'm so happy to spend money on as bandwidth and Internet connectivity. It's so easy to make it a positive instead of treating a customer as a criminal. 2. I used AT&T DSL the same way I use Comcast and they never threatened me. So their claims in their commercials that they're better than AT&T are bogus. I still love Comcast's commericals, esp the faux news announcer and the turtles, all who ridicule AT&T but I think Comcast is dishonest, they're selling something they don't deliver on. (Except PowerBoost really is awesomely fast when they haven't cut you off.) 3. I can see where people would be very intimidated to have their service turned off and to be lectured the way they lectured me. 4. Honestly, I think Comcast should give me my service for free and let's work to create new services that use more bandwidth so they can sell them to customers as part of the upsell to people who use a lot of bandwidth. 5. I figured out why I use so much more bandwidth than the average Internet user. I have five computers, all Macs, all sucking down FlickrFan pictures once an hour. That adds up to quite a few gigs. It would be easy to cut back. Not sure I will though, cause I hate to be lectured and threatened by companies I pay $180 per month to. 6. The thing that amazes me, that is totally unacceptable, is that they refused to put the threat in writing. I knew, having dealt with lawyers enough, that I had a right to receive the threat in writing, and I wanted to scan it and put it on Flickr along with my $3 million Comcast bill. 7. I've now spent all of today working for Comcast. Should I send them a bill? 8. What's the big issue with bandwidth anyway? Does a company like Comcast pay their ISP for bandwidth? Do they even have an ISP? Update: A plausible explanation of why they'd want to constrain bandwidth usage. As long as I've been a customer of Comcast I've been writing how much I wish they'd sell their Internet business to a company that doesn't hate its customers so much. But sometimes you forget, when the service is good, you just cruise along, happy and productive. And so I was blissfully forgetful until I read, on Twitter, that Dave Sifry was testing the bandwidth on Comcast with PowerBoost and was blown away by how great it was. I had Comcast as a backup, rarely used it, so I hooked it up, tried it out and I got even better bandwidth than Sifry did. Amazingly I was getting 28 megabits down, about 3 megabits up. So I started using it on my LAN, I kept my DSL service, but I'm not using it as much. Then this morning around 9AM the service went down. I called the service number, and was quickly directed to call a special number. I couldn't record the call because I didn't have Skype working, but I wish I had found a way. The recording said I was talking to their legal services department, Press 1 if you are stealing content, 2 if you are using too much bandwidth, 3 if Comcast hates your guts, 4 if you're a criminal. (I don't remember the exact wording, this wasn't it, but the word "criminal" was actually part of the presentation, to me, a paying customer, in good standing. And by pressing a button I was admitting to doing something wrong. Amazingly bad customer service.) I was quickly connected to a man who told me I had been deliberately disconnected because they had tried to call me and I didn't pick up. The number they called was my Blackberry, which I disconnected a couple of months ago because I never use it, I much prefer the iPhone. Then he threatened me. He told me I was in the top 1/10th of 1 percent of all their Internet users and that if I didn't immediately stop using so much bandwidth they would suspend my service for 12 months. I asked if I could get this in writing, he said no. I asked how much bandwith would be acceptable, he wouldn't say. I told him this wasn't much of a threat if they weren't willing to put it in writing, and I wasn't intimidated. I also told him I was a blogger and would be writing it up. He didn't care. Now, before I called the first number, I posted about the outage to Twitter, and sent a direct message to comcastcares, an amazing account, staffed by a guy named Frank who works at Comcast in Philadelphia, who really does seem to care. A few days ago, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch mentioned on Twitter that his Comcast service was down, they contacted him immediately, and had a service tech at his place the next day (I think). Mike was so pleased with the service he said he'd be willing to pay double if they could keep it up. Pretty impressive. So I spoke with Frank on the phone after receiving the threat. He asked me to write it up, and I am doing so here. I also recorded a podcast with Christina Warren of Download Squad. A bunch of ideas and questions resulted. 1. They should have sent me a letter. This idea of disconnecting customers to get them to call is utterly unprofessional and disrespectful and should get them in trouble with the FTC and the FCC and everyone who uses Comcast or who works at Comcast who has any self-respect. The letter should have said something like this: "We noticed that you're using a lot of bandwidth, and we're happy you like the Internet so much, and like our PowerBoost service, but if you're going to use this much bandwidth you should seriously consider getting our higher-class service, which will cost $X more per month, but along with it you get 5 new features that only our most special customers get." I told Christina, there are few things I'm so happy to spend money on as bandwidth and Internet connectivity. It's so easy to make it a positive instead of treating a customer as a criminal. 2. I used AT&T DSL the same way I use Comcast and they never threatened me. So their claims in their commercials that they're better than AT&T are bogus. I still love Comcast's commericals, esp the faux news announcer and the turtles, all who ridicule AT&T but I think Comcast is dishonest, they're selling something they don't deliver on. (Except PowerBoost really is awesomely fast when they haven't cut you off.) 3. I can see where people would be very intimidated to have their service turned off and to be lectured the way they lectured me. 4. Honestly, I think Comcast should give me my service for free and let's work to create new services that use more bandwidth so they can sell them to customers as part of the upsell to people who use a lot of bandwidth. 5. I figured out why I use so much more bandwidth than the average Internet user. I have five computers, all Macs, all sucking down FlickrFan pictures once an hour. That adds up to quite a few gigs. It would be easy to cut back. Not sure I will though, cause I hate to be lectured and threatened by companies I pay $180 per month to. 6. The thing that amazes me, that is totally unacceptable, is that they refused to put the threat in writing. I knew, having dealt with lawyers enough, that I had a right to receive the threat in writing, and I wanted to scan it and put it on Flickr along with my $3 million Comcast bill. 7. I've now spent all of today working for Comcast. Should I send them a bill? 8. What's the big issue with bandwidth anyway? Does a company like Comcast pay their ISP for bandwidth? Do they even have an ISP? Update: A plausible explanation of why they'd want to constrain bandwidth usage. tag:odeo.com,2008-04-16,22432610 Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:45:52 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/18673503-Today-s-Clinton-conference-call-MP3 tag:odeo.com,2008-04-02,18673503 Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:26:30 -0700 no Scripting News http://odeo.com/episodes/22223358-Today-s-Clinton-conference-call-MP3 It's always darkest just before dawn, the saying goes. Yesterday I said we probably weren't going to get the campaign conf calls, and today I got one. http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/04/02/call1.mp3 Thanks to Sarah Lai Stirland, Evan Hansen and Michael Calore at Wired for their help in bootstrapping this. It's always darkest just before dawn, the saying goes. Yesterday I said we probably weren't going to get the campaign conf calls, and today I got one. http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/04/02/call1.mp3 Thanks to Sarah Lai Stirland, Evan Hansen and Michael Calore at Wired for their help in bootstrapping this. It's always darkest just before dawn, the saying goes. Yesterday I said we probably weren't going to get the campaign conf calls, and today I got one. http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/04/02/call1.mp3 Thanks to Sarah Lai Stirland, Evan Hansen and Michael Calore at Wired for their help in bootstrapping this. tag:odeo.com,2008-04-02,22223358 Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:26:30 -0700 no Scripting News