Pito's Blog

FWIW

I don't nearly have the right to a public opinion given that I am a total newbie to the world of blogging, but I have to say that I've been puzzled and amazed at the spite and invective that has been flying recently around what would seem to be a technical question about protocols and standards. I don't claim to understand the nuances of what's wrong with RSS 2.0 or 1.0 or 0.9, or what's good or not about Echo, so I won't talk about that.

Here's what I will talk about: I have been following Dave Winers' work and writing for years and have developed tremendous respect for him, his ideas and ideals, and his real accomplishments.

Maybe I don't understand the culture. Maybe I don't understand the history. Frankly I am nervous even writing this post because it seems to have become dangerous to express support for Dave. But whatever... that's how I feel, and I felt it was time for me to stand up.

Posted by Pito Salas at 03:14 PM | Permalink

How Wikis and Blogs might be integrated

In Radio there's a feature "Stories" where I can write a story or article which is longer and perhaps revised over time and point to it from the blog itself. I'm finding Stories useful as a place put more detailed ideas that I want to update and refine over time. Very nice, but would it be even cooler if the Stories area was a Wiki?

Making the Stories page into a Wiki would provide a superset of functionality, while allowing for a nice set of additional possibilities, like multi page Stories and Stories that others' comment and participate in. Does this fly in the face of the essential single-person voice of a blog? Maybe, but on the other hand it might provide a clearly delineated "other" place where other voices can be heard without affecting the fundamentally personal voice of the main blog thread.

Posted by Pito Salas at 06:44 AM | Permalink

Do you use WinZip? Did you pay for it?

Most people will admit that they do use it, and have not paid for it. I ask myself how many other incredibly useful applications have not been written or distributed because it just doesn't pay. 

I believe that the world is ripe for a whole new way to getting great software products from creative developers world-wide into the hands of consumers who will in turn be willing to pay for quality delivered. Read more about this idea here: A new model and market for Fair Trade Software.

What is so appealing to me is the thought of the amazing number of creative and enterprising software people around the world who have been kept on the sidelines that we could get back into the game.

[I've been musing on this for a while, but I was inspired to write something down after reading others' musings on closely related topics: Who will pay Part 2 and the preceding one: Who will pay for software? and also after spending hours batting ideas like these around with my friend Paul English]

Posted by Pito Salas at 05:04 PM | Permalink

Video Conferencing - not yet there

Or, video phone, or teleconferencing if you like. I am amazed. A neat new camera from Logitech. About the size of a poolball, looks pretty cool. I unpacked, and plugged it into my Windows XP computer, and moments later, with no muss or fuss, there's my smiling face looking back at me from the screen. It even has a built-in microphone. Wow, this stuff really works. It's a lot better than the old days... or so I thought.

Only, that's about as far as I got. I have tried a whole bunch of windows apps that purport to give me painless videoconferencing (services, utilities, AOL IM extensions, and yes, even Microsoft Messenger), and I have had much pain. Other than a single exception (about which I can't talk yet) there's been a hundred and one reasons why it didn't (quite) work. Quite legitimate ones, the most typical one being the NAT "firewall" that guards my network. But there were other ones, some of them that didn't make any sense at all.

I had the opportunity today to speak to some folks from a very large company who are big fans of video conferencing. They are pretty passionate about how for a modern global corporation, in fact, if video conferencing could be made to work well it could have a real business impact (read "save money" not necessarily "make money".) They were testing a product and were enthusiastic about the success they were seeing. When I asked what made that product different, the answers focused on two things: great video quality (high frame rates) and really effective ad-hoc (impulsive) use - in other words there was no need to plan ahead: you could just "pick up the phone and call."

It got me thinking about the contrast between my experience and their expressed need. Is there room for a brain-dead simple video conferencing application which just works? In the same way that my Logitech Camera just worked (at least as far as it went, which was to successfully connect to Windows XP and put a video picture on my screen. Video Conferencing which would have the same immediacy and intemacy as my telephone. No thinking required. Just think it and do it.

What makes this hard? I am sure there's more than this but here's my list:

1. There are significant technical problems. Dealing with the NAT, dealing with the unknown configuration and capabilities of whoever you are trying to contact, and on and on.
   
2. There are bandwidth and QoS issues which go over my head but are real.
   
3. There are user interface issues, like overcoming the problem that if I am looking at my screen I am not looking at the camera.
   
4. There are useability issues, like achieving the simplicity and intuitiveness of the telephone.

I would approach this problem by assuming the latest technology. Assuming the latest cameras, very fast computers with a lot of memory and disk, the latest operating systems, assuming high bandwidth connections and large screens.

Leave the legacy behind and build on the future! But central to this vision is extreme usability, reliability, and video quality. If it can be done, then of course the next and most important question is: is there a business there?

Posted by Pito Salas at 09:47 PM | Permalink

Progress!

Posted by Pito Salas at 03:54 PM | Permalink

Pointer to speclet of Blog Bridge. I will continue to update this as it progresses.

Posted by Pito Salas at 10:14 AM | Permalink

Quickie: I discovered recently that my Dell desktop (about 4 months old) had a display adapter with both a digital and analog connector in the back. I suspect most newer computers have that. At any rate, if you are running XP, you can spend $300 on a 15" LCD display and use XP with two screens!

Now most people who see this setup first say: "Why?????" All you have to do is remind them of what it's like to be looking at help while writing in Word, or looking at the web while working in DreamWeaver, or looking at JavaDoc while writing some code. We've all been through the move the window here - read - move it back over there, read the other window, etc. Having a two headed setup resolves that beautifully. And what clinches it is when you drag a window from one display to the other. It's like magic. Try it!

Posted by Pito Salas at 07:08 AM | Permalink

Early screen shot of my new rss browser, Blog Bridge

This is clearly still under construction, but it does give you an idea of what I am after. I've written a speclet describing what I have in mind, and especially, why the heck I think it's worth writing a new blog browser given that there are several excellent ones out there (NewzCrawler being my favorite.)

Posted by Pito Salas at 09:53 PM | Permalink

Observations of a blogging newbie, continued

I keep in close touch with my "corporate" friends and they are always asking me what I am up to. Having been 100 percent in that universe for the last 10 years, and now suddenly finding myself back in the self-employed / army of one / independent mode there are some things that are true that my buddies who work at actual corporations are not aware of, or have forgotten.

So when they ask me "what I am up to" I talk about this odd community of people like me who meet in Starbucks and Thai Restaurants, who are constantly on IM and email, but who otherwise are happily esconsed in their caves doing whatever they do. And this community communicates pretty heavily and generally does not seem to get "lonely" or "miss the spirit of the workplace" or any of that kind of nonsense.

And in a way that is also, I think, what blogging is connected to, somehow. The ability to unobtrusively communicate and share thoughts and questions with your network of like minded people, withough imposing yourself on them.

Posted by Pito Salas at 09:32 PM | Permalink

Observations of a Blogging Newbie

There's been quite a bit of discussion trying to "define" what a blog is, and what it is not. As I mention to people that I have an interest in this, I am surprised how many people have never heard the term. I am asked to explain what it is and so I find myself smack in the middle of the definition problem. Here are the questions that I hear most often:

• So, what's a blog?
  
• Sounds just like a newsgroup -- how is it different?
  
• Where do I find blogs that might interest me?
  
• Why do people do it, anyway?

This last question is the one that is the most interesting. But before I try to answer let me start describing my personal reactions to the few posts that I've made so far, which will further inform my answers to the above. (Note to veterans: this is all old hat to you, so forgive my naivete, but, then I am a big believe in naivete. That's for another time.)

First Reaction: It's surprisingly easy to get going. Of course no one will discover this and anyway, I am just playing with the software.

Second Reaction: Someone I really respect has linked to me! Wow! Now, should I continue posting to my blog? What belongs in my blog and what belongs in my email (i.e. in messages sent to friends?)

Third Reaction: It's kind of like a way to write an "opt-in email to the whole world" - in other words, I can blah blah blah all I want, and no-one will complain because they chose to read it, I didn't make them.

More on this later.

Posted by Pito Salas at 09:54 AM | Permalink

Having been very deeply involved in Collaboration software for many years, naturally, I often think about the state of the art in collaboration (=groupware, =teamware, =social software) software and where it might be going in the future.

One of the motivations behind this experiment in blogging is to try to really "grok" what's going on here. And particularly, what are the dynamics that lead to so many really smart people to spend so much of their time writing mini-essays that are not addressed to anyone specific (like I am doing right now!)

I can't say I've figured it out, but I am coming to believe that two "new" collaboration-related trends (blogs and wikis) might just be the "next big thing" that the commercial collaboration software guys will need to pay attention to. I'm not there yet, but a sneaking suspicion is creeping up on me.

I have some serious questions about what would need to happen to blogs and wikis to allow them to actually succeed commercially, and their certainly not there yet. But the spark is there and it is intriguing. (And p.s. where is the spell checker in Radio?)

Posted by Pito Salas at 06:32 AM | Permalink

Web authoring tools stink. It seems that there are two extremes: On the one hand, low end tools which are buggy and produce incredibly complex and obscure html and relatively baroque sites. And on the othe rside we have powerful kitchen-sink systems suitable for authoring microsoft.com (yes, I suspect they don't use Front Page for that :-) that require you to become expert in all the exotica of html, style sheets. I spent several hours with Dreamweaver (which is apparently the favorite among experts,) Front Page and looking at several others... I am back to using a somewhat mediocre tool called Namo Web Editor which at least is simple so you can just use it.

Posted by Pito Salas at 03:58 PM | Permalink

Posted by Pito Salas at 09:05 PM | Permalink

The reason I am testing out Radio it's part of my "research" to see if it suits my (peculiar) needs as a blog reader. I end up using the "News" feature (the aggregator, I guess) as my blog reader. There's a lot to like in Radio: It has boatload of powerful functionality, behind a very elegant user interface.

I've tried to conduct an informal, exhaustive visit of blog readers, and Radio is the most recent one in the sequence. It is remarkably easy to start blogging (see?) but it doesn't live up to my fantasy blog reading client. Why?

I am an avid blog reader. In fact more and more, I quickly peruse dozens and dozens of blogs. I've almost stopped reading magazines (except Entertainment Weekly :-) and get all my industry and technical updates through the web and primarily by reading blogs and following their links.

The best one I've found is NewzReader, and that's the one I use regularly. But in using it I've come to think about a rather different spin on blog reading, one specifically designed for me. Ok, or someone like me. Let me summarize what I am looking for. In a later post I will list somewhat more formal requirements, and then later I will describe what I am doing to meet them.

Pito's Ideal Blog Reader:

1. I am focused totally on efficient reading of blogs. Dozens, no hundreds of blogs. I want to spend as little time as possible, and still see what I want to see.
   
2. I want help not only reading. but locating blogs I don't know about, that I might be interested in. At the same time, I want to remove those that I am not interested in from my focus. This applies to blogs, but it also applies to individual posts.
   
3. I want to tie into the resources on the web to help me with (1) and (2.) I want to know what other people are reading, I learn about blogs which are like the ones that I like.  I what to discover other resources in the net that I can use to enhance the experience.
   
4. Oh, and I want a beatiful piece of end user software that is a pleasure to use and stunning to look at.

That's all.

Posted by Pito Salas at 10:24 PM | Permalink

Ok, this is weird. After spouting off that while I love reading others' blogs I couldn't see how anyone had the time. Now that I installed Radio, I find myself strangely tempted to start writing. While this will be broadly accessible on the web, I don't know how or whether anyone will stumble across it. so I still feel relatively safe.

Posted by Pito Salas at 09:04 AM | Permalink