I took a walk today on the Highline.brbr a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/4439644898/sizes/l/img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/16/springWalk.jpg width=400 height=225 border=0 alt=A picture named springWalk.jpg/abrbr a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/4438898879/sizes/l/img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/16/sunners.jpg width=400 height=225 border=0 alt=A picture named sunners.jpg/abrbr What a beautiful day it was! img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr

a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/16/spidey.gifimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/16/agile.gif width=150 height=175 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named agile.gif/aOkay, the a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/03/16/whatBigtechcosAnnounce.htmlpiece/a I wrote earlier that mocked Bigs for wasting their time with big plans that amount to nothing begged a question. brbr What if you dont work for a Big and dont want to? What if you like to develop tech products for users and would prefer to do so in a truly free and open market, without the distortions caused by the struggles of employees at the Bigs?brbr What should you do then?brbr Well the question has a pretty obvious answer. You should do exactly what you want to do. brbr Just do it -- develop the products, and sell them and evolve them, and compete. brbr If youre lucky enough to be working in an area where there already is a defacto standard, then dont wait for teh Bigs to reinvent it. Just iUse/i It. brbr Basic guidelines:brbr 1. People come back to places that send them away. This means NO LOCK-IN. You dont hold your customers by force, you hold them with the love they feel for you. And the only way they feel love for you is if you love them. Sting a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTEm6oVPUD0once sang/a: If you love someone set them free. The wisest words ever sung, imho. People are smart. Even if they dont see the lock-in, they feel it. Eventually they will bolt. If your investors say you need to force your users to use your stuff, fire your investors and keep the users. Money is fungible. People are not.brbr 2. Choose the best people to compete with. If youre lucky enough to have your company grow, youre going to need great competitors to keep your employees from getting lazy and starting to act like they work for a Big. Its amazing how quickly that happens. The most successful entrepreneurs have been able to a href=http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inculcateinculcate/a a tremendous fear of and respect for competitors among their people. Its much better than thinking your competitors are buffoons. If theyre smart enough to compete with you, theyre pretty freaking smart.brbr 3. Make products for geniuses, for the simple reason that if you think your customers are stupid, then what does that say about you? You make a product that idiots choose? It must suck. So if youre making a good product, it follows that its for really really smart people who can sort through all the crap out there and pick the best stuff. Yours. brbr 4. Only steal from the best, and consider theft of your ideas the most sincere form of respect (it is). But when you steal, dont be a dick and make your version incompatible. See item #1. Thats lock-in and if you do it YOU SUCK and deserve to die.brbr 5. If I were an asshole Id make up a fifth rule because no lists have just four items. But Im not so I didnt. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr Thats about it for now. Let me know if youre going to build stuff according to these principles. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. brbr PS: Ive been talking with some folks in Comp Sci at NYU, trying to encourage them to build around these ideas. This school is interested in entrepreneurial development. Thats very cool. Now remember to give everyone choice and share your ideas, and compete based on price, performance and service, not locking people in. All universities should encourage their students to skip the shortcuts. Getting wealthy by cheating isnt a good way to live. Get wealthy by being the best! Thats cooool.brbr

a href=http://radio-weblogs.com/0001015/images/2002/01/29/worf.gifimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/16/worf.gif width=150 height=202 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named worf.gif/aBig Tech Companies enjoy a weird kind of megalomania, when viewed from outside. The net-effect of their announcements usually are: We will tell you soon how we plan to announce our universe-changing plan to make everything work the way we think it should. When we figure it out we will announce how we will announce our plan. You will be even more impressed then than you are now. brbr It is thus because in the meetings leading up to the big day, they can only agree that they will make an announcement, not what it will be. That comes later. brbr In the meantime the partners have some demos. They dont do anything other than show how, when the BigTechCos finally figure out how to announce their plann, they will submit to their will and become rich and powerful in their own domain.brbr What really matters are the TechCos, large and small, that are inot/i on stage. That usually is the point of the whole mess. We invited them, they will say, but they wouldnt come to be part of our open announcement of how we will announce our plan to dominate everything and do things the way we think they should be done (when we figure it out).brbr

I recorded a little podcast that explains what @anywhere is. brbr a href=http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/cn10mar16.mp3http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/cn10mar16.mp3/a brbr From my point of view. Your mileage may vary, etc.brbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/15/hippieVan.gif width=250 height=176 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named hippieVan.gifIf Twitter wants to be a force for good they should stick to small things they have high leverage over, not fancy big picture things that any other rich person could do. brbr Bill Gates made this mistake. Instead of cutting off the air supply of his competitors and landing his company in antitrust hell, he could have been a Force For Good by welcoming competition as a way to keep his company tough and on their toes and responsive to customers. It would have been good for business and made him a force for good.brbr Instead, hes giving money for education and health care, obvious good things, but places where his money is no better than anyone elses. Had he chosen to make less money 20 years ago the world would have been a better place itoday, /inot some day in the future.brbr For Twitter, doing good would mean decentralizing, not making every tweet flow through their servers. This makes the network weak, slow and fragile. To add bells and a href=http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/anywhere.htmlwhistles/a to a flawed architecture is irresponsible and definintely not something a Force For Good would do. brbr People a href=http://twitter.com/didic/status/10532682614wonder/a if theyd still be a force if they decentralize. Of course they would. Theyd be even bigger than before. On the web, people return to places that send them away. We could trust them because wed have a choice. People dont trust entities that force themselves on you. Look at how hated Microsoft became and how Google is going the same way. Twitters future is in their hands. They could either trust us to come back or force the issue. If they use force, eventually Twitter will break.brbr I use twitter.com when I could use any of dozens of clients. In the same way, in a decentralized loosely-coupled space, most people would use Twitter, as long as it remains reliable. And they would have an incentive to be the most reliable. Today we have no choice. brbr If theyre worried about Google eating their lunch, or Microsoft, forget it. Look at the Buzz rollout for a clue. Google is too messed up by strategy taxes to be an effective competitor. Facebook might be a problem, but Twitter decentralizing would apply pressure for Facebook to decentralize. Look at all the upside there. Not just for Twitter shareholders, but for the web. brbr Try ireally/i being good, not just saying youre going to be good. brbr Finally a comment on the little a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/15/andreaRosen.gifpopup cards/a. They break Twitter, as far as Im concerned. Because of the 140-character limit, I have to be able to easily see the last few tweets for anyone Im reading. And they need to read my tweet stream too. Try to get there (using Firefox/Mac at least). It requires a bunch of clicks to get the attention of the software. To replicate this paradigm on other sites makes me wonder if theyre doing any real user testing at Twitter, Inc.brbr PS: Please get rid of URL-shorteners. They make the web more fragile.brbr

Another keeper -- this week Jay is on the phone from SXSW and Im in the studio at NYU.brbr a href=http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot10Mar15.mp3http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot10Mar15.mp3/a brbr Topics include: Jake Tapper, problems with WordPress, Thursday evening meetup, Dave pre-orders an iPad, Jessica Roy, general mayhem.brbr

a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/03/11/stillWaitingForMyHttpscann.htmlimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/14/hippieVan.gif width=250 height=176 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named hippieVan.gif/aSo now Im following Lee Joramos a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/03/12/installingSnowLeopardOnAHe.html#comment-39447582instructions/a for installing Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini, in target mode. So far Ive got the Mini showing up as an external hard drive on the MacBook. brbr Update: It worked. I got a clean installation of Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini, using the method outlined by Lee. Unfortunately it didnt get the scanner working. I give up on that. Ill try getting another scanner. a href=http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CanoScan-Color-Scanner-3297B002/dp/B001R4BTI0Canon LiDE 700F/a is a bad deal. I hear the hardware works, but the drivers are a nightmare. I concur with the drivers part, never got to use the hardware.brbr Update #2: Netbook haters are going to biscream/i/b when they hear this. The Canon scanner works great on Windows XP on my little Asus netbook. The cool thing is that Windows has this built-in function that gets the drivers for you. I have no idea where they go or how it works, but -- it worked. I was able to scan all my tax forms, about 100 pages, in about an hour. I did it using the built-in Windows scanning software. No I did not do this just to irritate Mac zealots, but Im kind of pleased that it probably will. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/14/ipad.jpg width=128 height=153 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named ipad.jpgI take the a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_FifthFifth/a.brbr I plead temporary insanity.brbr a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolo_contendereNolo/a contendere.brbr I threw a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/03/12/meAndIpadNotNow.htmlreason/a out the window.brbr I felt smug for some reason.brbr And I was feeling jealous of all the people who, on April 3, would have their iPad. And I wont.brbr So, after reading that Andrew Baron ordered one with his winnings on AAPL stock, I figured I could do it too. So I sucked my gut and pressed Submit.brbr Now I have one of these things, whatever the frack it is, on its way to me in just a couple of weeks.brbr At least Ill be able to watch Fargo on it.brbr PS: I am a href=http://www.pcworld.com/article/191436/totally/a out of my mind.brbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/14/couch.jpg width=175 height=85 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named couch.jpgEvery few years I almost get snookered into making a major furniture purchase at a href=http://www.ikea.com/us/en/store/brooklynIkea/a. Then I come to my senses. brbr First, what Ikea is good for -- the little chotchkas you need to get a house started. Dishrags. Flatware. They have a starter box with a few pots and pans, measuring cups, a spatula, scissors, cheese grater. A hundred little things that if bought separately would cost $500, but they charge about $100. And you dont have to think of everything. A shower curtain. Cheap drapes. brbr But when you buy things that require assembly, thats when I get in trouble. And its even worse if you have to make a dozen choices before getting your order number. Thats when you have to deal with Ikea sales people. brbr Some of them are really nice, I imagine, but I always get the mean mofos. brbr You know how we have unconferences? These are unsalespeople.brbr I really appreciate them, because they save me from having to deal with the assembly contractors and delivery people. Their function is to kick the people out of the system who have low tolerance for Ikea. For that, they are a blessing.brbr So I buy real furniture. And I pay more for it. But the sales people treat me like a customer, and the delivery people actually bring the stuff into your house and set it up. When youre a kid I guess you have DIY this stuff. But when you get to be an adult, you should pay to have it done for you. brbr That is, imho, the lesson of Ikea.brbr

Not sure how long its been down, but its been a while. Nothing on status.twitter.com.brbr This reminds me what Im going to talk about at the a href=http://nyc2010.140conf.com/140Conf/a on April 20. How we are fools to think that something like Twitter can run entirely on one companys servers. brbr The Twitter guys should know that cant work, and should be planning on a resilient future, one where we can trust them because we dont ihave/i to trust them. brbr

See this a href=http://frontiernews.org/2010/03/12/opml-universal-app-available-for-testing/announcement/a on the Frontier News blog.brbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/12/macMini.jpg width=175 height=94 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named macMini.jpgI bought a a href=http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CanoScan-Color-Scanner-3297B002/dp/B001R4BTI0Canon scanner/a to use with my MacBook Pro 13-inch laptop, but it just doesnt work. Once in a while it produces a scan, but most of the time, the drivers say they cant find a scanner attached to the computer. brbr Ive been advised this may be because the device is powered through USB, and there isnt reliable power coming through USB so the scanner doesnt power up.brbr It first I thought I was out of luck cause I dont have a desktop at the NY apartment, but then I realized I do have a Mac Mini. So I tried installing the drivers on that computer, but was told they require Snow Leopard. Okay but the Snow Leopard disk is back in Calif. So I spent $25 to get another copy of the OS, and tried to install it on the Mac Mini, but...brbr Well first, its a headless Mac Mini. No monitor, no keyboard, no mouse. So when the computer rebooted it never showed up on the LAN. So I plugged in a keyboard and mouse and the disk starts whirring again, the installation continues, but eventually the disk stopped whirring and the computer still doesnt show up on the LAN.brbr After waiting an hour I recycled the power, but the computer still doesnt show up on the LAN.brbr Thats where I am now. Anyone with experience installing Snow Leopard on a headless Mac Mini? Help! If this works Ill put in an order for an iPad today. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/12/ipad.jpg width=175 height=219 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named ipad.jpgI was up this morning at 8:30AM Eastern and saw the notes that the iPad was now available for pre-order. So I went through the process, updated my credit card on Apples website, changed the address and phone number. The total price was a bit of a shocker -- approx $650 including tax. brbr I hesitated. I was typing the order on a $350 Asus Eee PC that I had bought a long time ago. It gets about 8 hours on the battery. It has a 160GB hard drive, three USB ports, Ethernet, webcam builtin. Real keyboard. No DRM. brbr I went to Amazon to see what I could get for $650. Lots of stuff Im not buying that Id like to have. A nice a href=http://www.amazon.com/Polk-Audio-AM1805-SurroundBar-Instant/dp/B001QCYHXC/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8coliid=IYRDSUYOFDKWKcolid=3ON5W8HBTKUOIPolk Audio soundbar/a is about $500. brbr I could fly roundtrip to San Francisco for that amount.brbr I thought about which I would bring with me on a trip to San Francisco, an iPad or the Asus. No doubt, Id bring the Asus. I have no idea what I can do with the iPad, and most important, I have a pretty good idea that I wont be able to run my software on it, or watch a movie I ripped from a DVD. Or listen to a podcast I downloaded with non-Apple software. brbr I decided that no matter how important it is for my work to understand what Apples product does, it can wait until I find out what the product iis./i I guess I no longer have the Apple bug up my ass that says I have to get one of everything they make on the day it comes out. brbr So for now at least, the answer to the iPad is no.brbr Update: People say here and on Twitter that youll be able to watch movies you rip from DVD or listen to podcasts downloaded with non-Apple software on an iPad. They reason that since you can do it on an iPod you will be able to do it on an iPad. brbr

a href=http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/riverOfNewsimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/11/loverss.jpg width=150 height=150 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named loverss.jpg/aJust read an a href=http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/03/11/why-did-nick-denton-truncate-gawkers-rss-feeds/article/a by Felix Salmon in response to a decision by Gawker to stop pushing the full text in their RSS feeds.brbr Ive heard this argument over years, from many people, but Ive never agreed with it. I prefer if publishers include thoughtfully written synopses in their feeds, with links to the full articles.brbr The reason I prefer this is that I am probably one of the few people to use a href=http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/riverOfNewsRiver of News/a approach to feed reading, which imho is the only rational way to read feeds.brbr I skim. I dont need the full text of each article, in fact I was so annoyed by feeds that publish full text that I made my aggregator truncate the articles at 500 characters. brbr My eyes are very good at scanning. I can quickly tell whether I need to read the full article. This allows me to consider orders of magnitude more stories than I would if I had to wade through feeds with full text. brbr Another point of view thats rarely considered in these debates.brbr BTW, everyone reads a River of News these days. Its called Twitter. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr Mine is better. (No 140-character limit.)brbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/11/hippieVan.gif width=250 height=176 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named hippieVan.gifMany years ago I a href=http://www.scripting.com/davenet/1997/09/14/FractionalHorsepowerHTTPSe.htmlwrote about an idea/a for simplifying hardware devices that scan stuff producing digital images. They shouldnt require any drivers and they should work effortlessly. But the architecture they use for these devices is still rooted in the 1980s, when it should have and easily could have made the transition to HTTP.brbr Im thinking about it again because I wasted a bunch of time on a a href=http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoActfcategoryid=120modelid=18125Canon 700F/a scanner that, because of driver problems, just wont work with my Mac laptop. Now that Ive got the problem I see that dozens of other users had it too (the problems didnt show up in the Amazon reviews, but do show up in various support forums).brbr After all these problems Im reminded how scanners ireally/i should work. Thus:brbr 1. It has a power cord and an Ethernet jack. brbr 2. You plug the power cord into the wall and the Ethernet jack into your router.brbr 3. A new device appears on your LAN called Scanner.brbr 4. Type http://scanner.loc/ into your browser and a simple configuration screen shows up. It lets you change the name of the device, turn security on, give it a username and password. brbr 5. The device has about three buttons on it. The first turns the power off and on. The second creates a JPG image, the third creates a PDF. brbr How to use it: Lift the lid, put a document in. Close the lid. Press a button. Refresh the home page of the scanner and click the Docs link. A list of docs in reverse chronologic order appears. To view a doc, click its link. To download, right-click its name and choose Open or Save or whatever other options your browser allows. brbr No drivers, no fuss, no muss. Nothing to go wrong. It just works.trade;brbr Please, please -- someone make this device. Thank you.brbr

I cant figure out how the new a href=http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/03/11/twitter-turns-tweet-location-mapping-tweets-twittercom/location-based Twitter/a works. Firefox cant figure out where I am. No surprise, My 13-inch MacBook Pro doesnt have GPS. Is there some place I can click on a map to say This Is Where I Am? Not at all obvious. Other people say they see it. Not on my machine. brbr Anyway, that doesnt mean we cant have fun with location stuff.brbr On Twitter, I posted a a href=http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8hq=hnear=95+Christopher+St,+New+York,+10014ll=40.727421,-73.988543spn=0,359.984615z=16layer=ccbll=40.727536,-73.988445panoid=m1wGeJp0CgG8naEts_LDBAcbp=12,302.22,,0,-4.99link/a to a Google Map a href=http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/10300036299asking/a if this was the location of the Fillmore East. brbr a href=http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/03/11/twitter-turns-tweet-location-mapping-tweets-twittercom/img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/10/hippieVan.gif width=250 height=176 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named hippieVan.gif/aI got back an answer that it was close, but the a href=http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8hq=hnear=95+Christopher+St,+New+York,+10014layer=ccbll=40.727615,-73.988385panoid=WhDgvgo1ScQd50MCnQLUVAcbp=12,309.75,,0,4.05ll=40.727698,-73.988321spn=0,359.984615z=16supermarket/a next door is where the Fillmore was. I tweeted back that I had read somewhere that that was where the Ratners was, next to the Fillmore, and if you go in there you can even see a giant R on the floor. Ratners was a great Jewish dairy restaurant. Until I read the article (cant remember where it was) I only knew about the now-gone a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratner%27sRatners/a on a href=http://maps.google.com/maps?f=qsource=s_qhl=engeocode=q=138+Delancey+St,+NYCsll=40.733373,-74.004711sspn=0.007268,0.015385ie=UTF8hq=hnear=138+Delancey+St,+New+York,+10002ll=40.718201,-73.986869spn=0.00727,0.015385z=16layer=ccbll=40.718249,-73.986971panoid=otbdCtZFMQydyxOPEyDzDAcbp=12,21.96,,0,-4.92Delancey St/a. I once took a blonde a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiksashiksa/a VP-Marketing from California to Ratners on Delancey, and the waiter yelled at me for bringing such a fine woman to such a lousy neighborhood. That was before it all got gentrified and yuppified. brbr Both Ratners are gone now.brbr Anyway, the same guy a href=http://twitter.com/pheezy/status/10301109716dug up/a a a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/10/fillmore.jpgpicture/a of the old Fillmore just before a Crosby, Stills, Nash Young concert. My theory was correct. Its the site of the bank. brbr I went to the Fillmore a few times. The most memorable concert was a Grateful Dead show with a surprise toward the end. A bunch of dirty hippies with long hair and beards come out and jam with the Dead. The music sounds weirdly familiar but hard to place. They were being deliberately misleading. Then all of a sudden a rock and roll standard -- Good Vibrations. It was the all-new dope-smoking a href=http://members.tripod.com/~fun_fun_fun/4-27-71.htmlBeach Boys/a! Oh man those were the days. I also saw the Incredible String Band there. a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyNBV-BTzDwTen Years After/a. brbr Were getting ready to do an East Village blog for the NY Times. Going down memory lane is my way of getting ready.brbr PS: I read about a href=http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/04/ratners-of-2nd-ave.htmlRatners/a on a href=http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/Jeremiahs Vanishing New York/a, an intriguing blog with lots of great stories about the ever-changing and not-always-for-the-best New York Shitty. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr

I was doing some research for a blog post and came across this folder of RSS enclosures from late 2004 and early-mid 2005.brbr These were the months when podcasting was beginning to take root.brbr I was doing Morning Coffee Notes. Adam Curry was doing Daily Source Code. Together, we were doing the Trade Secrets podcast.brbr Dave Slusher, Steve Gillmor, IT Conversations, Dawn and Drew, Tony Kahn at WGBH, Engadget.brbr It occurred to me that this slice of early podcasting might be worth preserving, so turned it into a torrent and have uploaded itbrbr a href=http://static.scripting.com/misc/earlyPodcasts.torrenthttp://static.scripting.com/misc/earlyPodcasts.torrent/a brbr If you have questions or comments, you can post them here.brbr PS: Another reason I like it is this is a non-infringing use of BitTorrent. We need more of those to protect this excellent distributed technology. brbr

Jay and I use WordPress to do the a href=http://rebootnews.com/http://rebootnews.com//a site.brbr Its a mixed bag. On the pro side, we both know how to use WordPress, and because Jay writes the show notes and I do the tech stuff, its a good tool to put between us. brbr But WordPress doesnt do podcast feeds well. brbr And thats being generous. brbr Heres how the UI works currently. You edit your post and link to an MP3 or a movie or an AVI or some other media object. The first one that WP encounters as it parses your text, it will supposedly turn into an enclosure. If you happen to link to two MP3s but the second is the enclosure, youre out of luck. And for some reason if you store the a href=http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot10Mar08.mp3MP3/a on Amazon S3, as we do, it usually doesnt even find the enclosure. But this is variable. Today theyve hacked up our link to point to some server on wordpress.com, totally without our permission. What a mess. And even so theres no enclosure in our a href=http://rebootnews.com/feed/feed/a for this a href=http://rebootnews.com/2010/03/09/rebooting-the-news-43/#commentsweeks/a show (which btw I think is one of our best, a href=http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot10Mar08.mp3one/a I hope everyone listens to).brbr For the last three episodes of our podcast, its failed to add an enclosure element to the feed. As a result none of our listeners get the podcast on time, and it always takes some fussing by the WordPress tech people to get it working, and for all I know a bunch of people inever/i hear the podcast. I suppose it depends on whether or not the client sees an item as read if the guid doesnt change but all of a sudden the item has an enclosure. Imho a proper podcast client would just watch the guid, and therefore would miss the enclosure. Regardless, its simply unacceptable that WordPress work this way and that Automattic doesnt do something to fix it.brbr This is how we did it in Radio 8, in 2002, eight years ago.brbr Heres a a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/10/radioForEnclosures.gifscreen shot/a. brbr a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/10/radioForEnclosures.gifimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/10/radioForEnclosuresThumb.gif width=200 height=157 border=0 alt=A picture named radioForEnclosuresThumb.gif/abrbr Click the screen shot for the full effect.brbr See the red arrow pointing to the box called Enclosure? Thats where you paste the link to the enclosure. Anyone no matter how technical they are not, could be taught to do that correctly. brbr We never had the problem WordPress is having. Granted a lot fewer people did podcasts then than now. Maybe. Id argue that the way WordPress works now is killing the art of podcasting because its so unpredictable and its virtually got the market cornered. Regardless, Im a paying customer, and Id like to continue to use WordPress, but eventually Im going to have to switch because its killing our product.brbr Please Matt and company, fix this!brbr PS: I wish Wordpress.com was more hackable, if there was a way for me to patch our feed I could fix this without their help. Alas its not something I can fix myself and I dont have any interest in running my own installation or fussing around with PHP etc.brbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/09/santa.gif width=125 height=199 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named santa.gifIts been a while since we could announce new major support for rssCloud, but today is one of those big days well remember for a long time. brbr Status.net has now enabled rssCloud support in the RSS 2.0 feeds for all its users. brbr This means that identi.ca, the server operated by status.net, has the feature, as well as all other sites they operate. I assume it will be baked into a subsequent open source release (status.net is GPL software).brbr What does this mean? Well, when I post an update to my account on identi.ca, any cloud-aware aggregator will receive an update notification. River2, the aggregator Ive built for Frontier (it runs in the OPML Editor) has support for rssCloud.brbr For a demo heres a a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/09/identicaPost.gifscreen shot/a of an a href=http://identi.ca/notice/24239307update/a I posted to identi.ca. Note the time of the update. I immediately refreshed the home page of my River2 server, and a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/09/river2version.giftheres the update/a. Elapsed time == 12 seconds. Thats what real time means. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr This is my a href=http://identi.ca/api/statuses/user_timeline/323.rssfeed/a. A source screen shot a href=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/09/cloudElement.gifshows/a the lt;cloud element.brbr Its also a holy grail for the idea of a idistributed loosely-coupled network of Twitter-like services, linked together in real time using RSS./i (What a mouthful!) Its very elegant and lightweight and it works today. brbr

img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/09/crumb.jpg width=150 height=199 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named crumb.jpgI stumbled across this very a href=http://www.techreaders.com/2010/03/18-interesting-firsts-on-the-internet/interesting list/a of 18 firsts on the Internet. Its a good way to look at things. You could argue who invented what first, and you often get nowhere that way, because invention is such a poorly understood concept. Everyones work builds on other peoples. The guy who invented the car used a lot of other peoples work to create something with four wheels and an engine. Did it have to have a steering wheel to be a car? We could argue about that, and that would change who the inventor was.brbr It may be more useful to say who had the first car. Who drove it, and where did they go? brbr And on the Internet, theres no doubt, for example that Tim Berners-Lee had the first website. Unless someone else says they did. (Havent heard anyone say that, btw.)brbr I was glad to get credit for creating the first podcast. brbr Who wrote the first blog post? They give credit for that to a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_HallJustin Hall/a (and mis-spell his name). brbr I wrote in the a href=http://web.archive.org/web/20000621141352/www.weblogs.com/aboutAbout page/a for weblogs.com that the first blog was also the first website. TBLs info.cern.ch was a reverse-chronologic list of new websites. Thats how central to the web I think blogs are. But if that wasnt the first blog, lets see Halls first post, and decide if that really was the first one. brbr img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2010/03/09/typewriter.jpg width=150 height=150 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named typewriter.jpgWho had the first feed? Thats going to be an interesting debate for sure. I can show you mine, it was first published on a href=http://www.scripting.com/davenet/1997/12/15/scriptingNewsInXML.html#3December 15, 1997/a. But what makes something a feed? Can you have a feed with no aggregator? Is it the aggregator that makes something a feed? If so, well have to figure out who wrote the first aggregator and when, and what feed(s) it read.brbr One of the criteria for being first is, imho -- Did your work lead to other people imitating you? That test says whether or not your work commercialized or popularized the concept. The implies hitting the spot where being the only one seems, somehow, less significant. Thats one argument against Hall as the first blogger, but in favor of TBL. As far as I know there were no bloggers that formed a community in the aftermath of his Links from the Underground. brbr Pretty sure the first blogging community, in the sense that we think of blogging today, was formed around Scripting News. Most blogs today can trace their roots back to Scripting News, if you go back far enough. I suppose some communities are disjoint. Did LiveJournal spawn out of a blog that spawned out of something that came from Scripting? I have no idea. But I do know that most of the early bloggers were readers of this site, and many participated in the discussion group here. There was a website that traced the lineage, called BlogTree, and it verified that the root of the tree was Scripting News. This is something Im proud of, I think justifiably.brbr One of the reasons Im proud of it is that blogging was created without the lock-in you see in systems like Twitter, Facebook and though theyll argue for sure, Buzz. Even Posterous, Tumblr and Wordpress.com dont give you easy ways off their servers. Blogging started without the concept of a single server, so there was no place to get off of. The whole point was to be as distributed as the web itself, to give people independence, to let billions of websites bloom. This is such an obvious feature of blogs that people dont usually see it. But its there, and its hugely important.brbr There are a lot of very vocal people who work to remove credit rather than give it. Im sure some of them will comment here. As long as their comments are respectful they will stand. brbr