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  • 1 min read

The two Howards: Dean and

The two Howards: Dean and Stern. Everyone is wringing their hands about the way Howard Dean acted out on the night of the Iowa Caucuses. I heard well known pundits talk about ' the defining moment of Dean's campaign.' What a bunch of nonsense. This was a non-event, a crazy moment at the end of a long day with a huge crowd of revved up supporters. And indeed some of my friends who support Dean have commented, more eloquently than this, in his defense as well.

Forgive me to mention the other Howard in the same breath, but the best came on Howard Stern's show, who by the way, was making fun of the commentators and siding with Dean. A caller said that it was a classic 'Rocky' moment and that all you needed was to hear the theme from Rocky playing in the background and it would just 'bring a tear to your eye.' I can't play it for you here, but either use your imagination, or take my word for it: it was one of the all time funiest moments on Radio.

  • 1 min read

Channel Dean: “An RSS feed

Channel Dean: "An RSS feedthat 's like a clipping service for people interested in US politics." Dave Winer and some co- conspiritors have created something really cool: a new feed which brings together a series of feeds that all relate to US Politics. As I've said before, hats off to these kinds of innovation. I 'm just loving it! Here's the RSS (XML) link if you want to try it.This development raises some interesting questions/ideas:

  • What is the Dean-bias of this feed? Is it in fact a feed for people interested in US politics or one for Dean Supporters interested in US Politics. And with the subtlety of marketing and political campaigns these days, how do I even tell the difference?

  • It's pretty cool to see CNN articles right next to BBC, Salon, AP and NYT articles. For me, as a reader, it's exactly what I want. How do the content providers feel about it? Is this anything new with respect to intellectual property and copyright?

Keep 'em coming. This is what makes this space ("this" = RSS, Blogging, Syndication, etc.) so exciting.

  • 1 min read

Microsoft Money 2004. Disappointing. I

Microsoft Money 2004. Disappointing. I started preparing my taxes and so I thought I might upgrade my Microsoft Money to the 2004 from 2003. I am a fairly comprehensive user of Microsoft Money, and so every year I do this, and frankly almost every year I am disappointed.

There are almost no new features , enhancements, simplifications or whatever. Am I a sucker? Every year, I probably wait 2 to 3 months after the upgrade comes out to order it… I am well aware of their tack to extract yet another $50 from me (less the $20 rebate which) but I still fall for it, in the hope that even if nothing visible changes, bugs are fixed that will save me time even though I never am aware of it. Still I'd say if you are thinking of upgrading to 2004, you can safely skip it.

  • 1 min read

Did you hear this one?

Did you hear this one?(via some talkshow.) "President George Bush, trying to lay to rest concerns about our supply of beef: 'Our beef supply is safe. I tell you, do not be concerned about eating beef. If we see a reduction in the consumption of beef in this country, then, the cows have won! ' "

  • 2 min read

I want RSS to disappear.

I want RSS to disappear. The question was posed, "What do users want from RSS"? I thought long and hard about this and here's where I come out.

Speaking strictly as a user, what I care about are RSS applications. I care about reading, scanning, writing, absorbing, learning from, contributing, and sharing. So what I want from RSS is to disappear into the plumbing , and in every way possible enable and encourage great applications to be designed and built.

All kinds of wonderful new stuff that is yet to be invented. Authoring tools, reading tools, syndication applications, content applications, distribution servers, mass political blogging platforms, search engines and indexes, rating systems, and zagat's guides, catalogs and taxonomies, categorizations schemes and services, content crawling services - summarizers - delegators, translators, linkers, transmitters and receivers. This is still just the beginning, in my opinion.

So while I could list (and I will) a set of more prosaic wishes for the protocols and technologies which will enable these wonderful applications, I think at the core, I wish that the users never had the need to know the word Are-Ess-Ess.

By the way, lest anyone misunderstand. I think RSS has been and is an absolutely seminal invention and has enabled and will continue to enable a whole new class of communication with an impact that we can still not fully measure. It's just that, like TCP/IP and SS7 and Jet Engines and GPS Satelites, the people who use it don't want to know that it even exists.)

(More prosaic list follows: I wish trackback worked reliably; I wish permalinks always worked; I wish that when I moved my blog from one home to another, all my hard won traffic didn't get lost because no-one knew where I had gone; I wish I could use a richer editor to create my posts; I wish… I wish …; I wish)

  • 1 min read

David Isenberg’s WTF Conference: This

David Isenberg's WTF Conference: This is from David's newsletter, SMART Letter:

…. Here's the idea -- an instant, bottom-up meeting. WTF. Let's get together face to face. Let's talk about the end of telephony and the beginning of communication, about the end-to-end principle and its enemies, about smart people and dumb companies, intellectual property and creative commons, digital democracy and info-surveillance, e-commerce and the war against customers, and whatever else is on our minds. Let's get to know each other, learn from each other, exchange ideas, frustrations, tools, toys and hacks. And let's see what happens from there. WTF -- it'll be lots more exciting than talking corporate heads behind podiums…..

David, count me IN!

  • 1 min read

Scott Kirsner of the Boston

Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe: "Salas has spent the past few months developing BlogBridge , software that allows users to easily keep tabs on multiple weblogs -- kind of a "Reader's Digest" for the blog world." Thanks for the mention, Scott. The whole bit is:

Pito Salas was the chief technology officer at eRoom , an online collaboration company acquired last year by Documentum , which in turn was bought by EMC. Salas has spent the past few months developing BlogBridge , software that allows users to easily keep tabs on multiple weblogs -- kind of a "Reader's Digest" for the blog world. (You can try out an early version at www.blogbridge.com.)

But now it seems like Salas, a onetime Lotus exec, has put the project on hold temporarily, and is turning his energies to consulting.

This is accurate, but with a strong emphasis on the word TEMPORARILY.

I am looking into ways to add resources to the BlogBridge project. I continue to feel strongly about the underlying ideas. In fact with every week that goes by, things get more interesting. Please contact me if you want to talk or get involved.

By the way, you can find more information about BlogBridge at http://www.blogbridge.com.