Saturday, August 07, 2004

New comment management features for Manila.  

The Guardian asks us to forget the bloggers, and they have a replacement in mind, the vloggers. 

John Markoff, the self-proclaimed blogger from the NY Times, is still poking fun at his fellow bloggers. He's so clever, I've decided that my pompous lie-filled advertiser-owned "fact-checked" newspaper is Scripting News.  

I'm happy to report that my hotel room is a non-smoking room that doesn't smell like smoke. But the sign the hotel puts on the desk could use a little editing. For the continued comfort our non-smoking guests. Hmmm. What does the word "continued" add? Maybe they weren't comfortable to begin with and will only be comfortable if you don't smoke in this non-smoking room. And I'd love to see a room that's "equipped" for smoking. Perhaps it comes with an iron lung. An EKG machine? A nicotine patch on the pillow at bedtime? Or maybe a huge fan in the floor and the ceiling to move smoke quickly into the atmosphere outside the hotel? When I was a smoker I always wished the airlines would provide bathroom-like places for smoking with those kinds of fans. Anyway, net-net I'm happy to be able to sleep in a room that doesn't smell like an ashtray. 

Here's the edited version. "This is a non-smoking room. Don't smoke in this room. Non-smokers can tell you smoked here. If you smoke in a non-smoking room we will bill your credit card for the cost of removing your smoke, it usually runs around $25,000. If you want to smoke, we'll do our best to find you another room, it's much less expensive." 

Kerio Personal Firewall helps users "control how their computers exchange data with other computers on the Internet or local network." 

A .NET bloggers dinner in Boston, August 18. 

Phil Haack: "The firewall built into XP blocks incoming traffic, not outgoing." 

On this day last year Scoble was hanging with someone even more interesting than yours truly. Item 2. Lest anyone doubt that we lost a great blogger when Douglas Adams died, here's a piece he wrote, six years ago today, about his nose. Item 3. He wrote a testimonial for Scripting News. "His opinions are passionately held, well-informed, intelligent, argumentative and quite often wrong." Heh. 

Julie Leung wrote up my visit on Thursday. I didn't need a visitors badge, but I did have to take a ferry (which was very nice) and I was charmed by two new special friends who showed me their unusual blogs posts, on paper, if you can believe that. A generation is on the way to whom blogging is no big deal, esp when both Mom and Dad do it. I asked for Julie's help in planning a west coast con, since she flew all the way to Boston to help make the second one such a great success.  

Friday, August 06, 2004

More Bainbridge Ferry pictures, and Microsoft visitor badges. 

The first picture in the sequence is sure to get top billing on Scripting News at some point. The Seattle skyline was looking pretty good yesterday. The water of Puget Sound will make a good backdrop for the name of the site. 

Northern Voice is a blogging unconference in Feb 2005 in Vancouver. 

Julian Bond recommends ZoneAlarm for tracking all outbound traffic and Scott Frazer recommends TCP Spy, Jack Huisinga recommends Winternals TCP View Pro. I've tried ZoneAlarm, got lost setting it up. I'm more motivated now. I spent an hour and a half bending the ear of a Microsoft guy who's responsible for this stuff today. I said it's time to get on the side of the users. It's amazing the press isn't beating this drum more loudly, but it's just a matter of time. I paint a pretty good doomsday scenario for Microsoft people. Imagine a major bank requires its customers to get a Mac in order to do online banking. With the spyware situation on Windows, it's not such a far-fetched idea. These machines are leaky sieves. Who knows what info they're sending back to Spyware Corporate Headquarters. Passwords? Account numbers? Hmmm. 

There's something missing from the search engines. I'd like to give it a name of a thing or a person and have it show me, in reverse chronologic order, what's been said about that thing or person. That would allow me to effectively create a custom weblog about a person or thing, even if there was no weblog about the person or thing. 

There's something missing from Windows. An application that hooks into the outbound Internet message flow, and shows me where messages are going. This would allow me to figure out what spyware is running on my system even if the various utilities can't get rid of them. Then the next step would be to allow me to block traffic to certain servers. That would disable the spyware. It seems that I should have control of my machine at that level.  

Jeff Sandquist says that Windows XP SP2 has this feature. Cool! 

News.Com: "Microsoft on Friday wrapped up development on a long-awaited security update to Windows XP." 

Mary Jo Foley says Microsoft will release a local disk search before the end of the year.  

On this west coast trip I'm talking with people about the next BloggerCon, an academic, non-commercial un-conference. No speakers, no panels, no audience. Long 1.25 hour sessions, multiple tracks. A welcome session where we sing the national anthem, and a closing session where we say tearful goodbyes and plan to meet again. The first BloggerCon in October of last year was an inaugural. In April we did the mid-term. Should the next one be in October, or after the election? Are there enough true believers on the west coast to make it a clean sweep, setting the stage for a European Con in Spring 2005? We'll discuss this at the BBQ at Scoble's on Saturday, at the convention bloggers meeting at Stanford on Monday, and between bites of noodles and chicken at Jing Jing later Monday night.  

Steve Gillmor's Ode to iPod.  

Today, more meetings at Microsoft. Already I've learned that the interest in blogging and RSS in Microsoft is deep, broad and long into the future.  

President Bush: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."  

Washington Post: English, a Battleground State. 

NY Times: "Silicon Valley's digerati, traditionally the biggest proponents of initial public offerings of technology stocks, are overwhelmingly bearish on Google's anticipated offering." 

Thursday, August 05, 2004

I had a lovely lunch today with Julie and Ted Leung and their three fantastic daughters. Great conversation, food, and weather. Thanks! 

New Bryan Bell theme for Manila users.  

Engadget asks what's the best laptop for travel. 

Pictures from Bainbridge Island ferry ride (and one of Scoble). 

John Battelle: Google IPO delayed.  

CBS MarketWatch: Google IPO remains uncertain. 

Today's travel, to Bainbridge Island, will take me through the western terminus of I-90. Just last week I was at the eastern end, in Boston.  

Jessamyn's photo album of the DNC. 

I've heard so many people say that blogging coverage at the DNC sucked, but they usually don't say which blogs they were reading. I wonder if that includes Scripting News, because I think when we hit our stride, the coverage here was excellent. I say "we" because most of the items I pointed to were collaborations or created by others. There was magic in the air at times. For example, here's a brief audio with Rebecca Blood who stopped by the blogger's booth. Now if you know the history, you know that she and I have been at odds at times, not always in a nice way. We had never met face-to-face until Wednesday last week. She's cool, it turns out. We had a great time. She's got a huge heart and a very sweet disposition, made all the nicer because she brought that out in me. Do you doubt there was magic present that night? Listen. It's there. When I play the recording in iTunes, it automatically goes into Red Rubber Ball, which is the perfect song to play at that exact moment. More magic. 

Hanging out with Jeff Sandquist and Robert Scoble in Building 18 at Microsoft yesterday, I dug out my laptop, and recorded this very informal and somewhat kooky discussion. I thought I was using my conference room mike, but I had it plugged into the speaker jack. Serves me right for sitting on an airplane all day cramped into a New Mexico-size seat that was about 1/3 too small for my Texas-size body. 

At the next convention 

Chris Casey of the Democratic News Service asked, on the Convention Bloggers mail list, what we would do differently for 2008. Here's what I say.

In retrospect, it would have been incredible to have a BloggerCon at the DemCon. Off the floor. A room packed with big Democratic icons, the candidates, the operators, the money, the press.

A discussion leader. Let's get to the heart of things. Let's explain to the folks at home how this really works.

We've shown you what the convention looks like to a hayseed in the big city. Now what does it look like from the insider perspective.

And by the way, it's cool that you're all so excited about blogs. Really cool. But what about your friends at the RIAA. They're not our friends. Not because we're pirates, but because we love the First Amendment, like Democrats do. The two positions are not compatible. You can't love blogs and love Hollywood at the same time.

But this iteration was great. Next time let's give the people what only they have. Power. Government of the people, by the people and for the people. Shall not perish from the earth.