/reader

I'm searching for some common ground between the twitter-like systems, a basis for interop, a common API even. We had that for the blogging layer of this onion, something called the MetaWeblog API. All the popular blogging software supported it. And that meant you could write once and publish to many places. And you could write the script that did that in an afternoon or two. We started out with simple systems and the best of intentions. There's no technical barrier. And we could do it in a few weeks at most if there was a will to do it#

BTW the Wikipedia page for the MetaWeblog positions it as a replacement for the Blogger API, but it's an extension of it. You could use MetaWeblog to publish to Blogger sites, but it also supported features that Blogger didn't have, that were in our blogging software, Manila.#

Hecklers#

• Hecklers at last night's rally in Greensboro, couldn't hear what they were angry about, but it had something to do with Gaza.#
• The US isn't doing the killing there, the issue is with Netanyahu who is part of the same political party as Trump. So you can be pretty sure the killing won't stop there at least until after our election. One way to be sure the killing continues is to elect Trump.#

It's good to laugh#

• It's wonderful that we're laughing at Trump now.#
• What a joke to think that after all he took us through, there are 47% of the people in the country who want more of that! #
• OMG we must be crazy. What else are you going to do but laugh. #

I also added a link to the RSS feed in each shownotes page. In the HTML at the bottom, as a white on orange icon and in the page source as a <link> element. #

I keep seeing mention of "Podcast 2.0" in various places. That is unusually greedy, even for the tech industry. What next? Deprecating the way podcasting has worked for the last 20 years? How do we know the people doing this aren't shilling for Spotify, Google or Amazon? Please don't mess with something that works as well as podcasting. You want to do something better, great -- make your own name and get people to respect it. Stealing respect from podcasting tells me you have no honor or self-respect, and it should say the same to everyone else. Something else that tells you it's bad, they never bothered to send me an email. Welcome to the tech industry. #

Braintrust query: I got an email from OpenAI saying I could access the new models, but I don't see the new models in the popup menu.#

I've been enjoying the recent blog posts by my longtime friend Jeff Jarvis. A couple of months ago, I was practically begging him to do this. He was pouring so much unfocused energy into making journalism play an appropriate role in our democracy. When Jeff started posting to his blog, it gave his friends something to point to. This writing had much more impact than a random tweet. Journalism crossed a line they should not have crossed. Now we fully expect them to try to do it again. We have to find a way for our ideas not to be scattered in the wind, so thorougly ignorable. And in doing so, I'm convinced we'd find a better way to organize the electorate online so it's more immune from unwise and unfair manipulation from the journalists. At the same time Dan Gillmor, who was also scattering his ideas about, has started a newsletter. Dan was a real blogging pioneer as was Jeff. We remember how this kind of thing boots up. We can set up any kind of distribution system we need. What matters is the collection of brilliance. Individuals are not so powerful unless they come from one of these. #

Another fantastic thinker and writer who is mostly scattering his ideas -- Dan Conover, who when he comes out with a piece, I stop everything and sit down and carefully read it and savor it, because not only is there sure to be new info and new ideas, the writing is sooo good. He's a former local reporter in South Carolina. I met him on a road tour I did a bunch of years ago. Where does he post this stuff? Facebook. I want it to be part of the concentrated web writers union. Maybe think of it as my karass, my version of The Atlantic, perhaps. Or my version of the op-ed page of the NY Times. I think there is definitely enough good stuff out there, unorganized, to easily rival them for originality, depth of thought, experience and great writing. Dan is on my list of such superheroes. #

And btw I also am wasting my ideas too, one in a hundred has any influence, and even then it's minscule, the ideas drift away unimplemented or unused. I keep writing, hoping I see a way to get into the global conversation, again. I remember what it's like. But I'm not done. We still have a big problem to solve in our political and communication system. Online software is where it's at. #

Someday an election will be like Game of Thrones or Succession. A campaign would be a season. There would be character development, arcs, twists, revelations, unforseen events, cameos, acts of god. Near the end of the season you have the election, with the following episodes the plotting, intrigue, and undermining of democracy, and at the end of the season the inauguration of a new president. Each year you have more michegas, until four years later you go through the election all over again. People would really study the candidates, and would have reasons they like one character over another. And maybe the patriarch doesn't die, and decides to run again. This is where we're heading, we might already be there. #

Dropbox almost reinvented the web#

• I was trying to explain to Miguel de Icaza, a longtime developer friend, how Dropbox was within inches of making the web a million times more useful, ten years ago, and then backed away from it. I don't think I've ever told the story here on my blog, so here goes. #
• In 2014, Dropbox had a developer program, you could write an app, and register it with them, and then the user could run your app from a website, and log on to Dropbox in the app, and they would have access to files in a directory in the user's Dropbox hierarchy in the app, as if it were accessing it from the local file system, which in a way they were.#
• I made an outliner for that system, and loved it -- it was great, I didn't have to get into the business of reselling storage, or user identity. And for the users, it "just worked" as they say, because they were already using Dropbox, and now it could be used for something completely new and incredibly useful, and it didn't require huge venture capital to get it going, so it would enable very small niche products to find a market. It was brilliant and visionary, and I was very open about my feelings on my blog. #
• They also had a Public Folder, where any user files could be accessed over the web. #
• They were within an inch of the perfect system. The problem was my app couldn't access user files in any other directory. So it didn't allow for specialization in products, every editor had to do everything. #
• They had an option where you could give an app access to everything but that was ridiculous, I couldn't recommend users do that. Users store all kinds of private data on Dropbox.#
• Here's the howto for the product and how it connects to Dropbox.#
• They lost interest in this, btw -- and when they broke the API, I took that opportunity to shut down the product. #
• I wish they had gone in that direction, or someone would go in that direction. #

I wouldn't have traded places with Harris for anything in the world, she did fantastic. The pressure on her was enormous. I don't think Trump said one thing that was true. And Harris made the point that the division is coming from that guy over there, and if we don't want it all we have to do is turn the freaking page. For once the power is with the people. The Repubs in the Senate wouldn't vote to convict, the Supreme Court just gave him immunity, but the American people, in a few weeks, can tell them all to fuck off. #

Idea for TV series. Law and Order style crime drama where all the crimes are against humanity.#

Even if his supporters don't see it, Trump is a pathetic broken has-been. When he's gone we'll dance in good riddance. #

A slip of the tongue?#

• It would have been cool if Harris had said "He's going to have you for dinner" instead of "He's going to eat you for lunch," which is what she said Putin would do to Trump. #
• Makes you wonder if that was a slip of the tongue or if it was a little Easter Egg she dropped for our later amusement. #

It's marketing dummy#

• What Harris is doing is marketing. It takes a lot of impressions to get people to believe she can be president. If she wants to win, she has to do a lot of interviews and rallies and say quotable things, and be tweeting all the time, not just in the campaign snark accounts (which are great) but also seriously in her own name. #
• People aren't going to care about the policies though they will say that's what they want more of. What they want to feel is that she is present. Biden was invisible that's why they didn't like or trust him, even though he is a good president. Trump is very present, and they like that, trust that, but most of them also know he's a creep. She just has to keep beating the drum. #
• And the secret is to keep beating the drum, constantly, after she wins. Don't disappear like Obama did. She must not only be president of the United States, but she has to be president of Twitter too (and by Twitter I mean all the twitter-like systems). #
• So don't expect undecided voters to all convert to Harris in one event. But they will if she stays in the news, even dominates the news (please) and help them see Trump as a thing of the past. #
• That's the way to win, and to win in governing too. #

Ed Kranepool was a Met when that really meant something. He started on the Mets in their inaugural year, 1962. They went from the worst team ever to World Champions in record time. They became the heroes of NYC in 1969. I was riding the subway back then to get from Flushing to the Bronx to go to school, and in the Bronx, when the Mets won, everyone was smiling. If you've ever been to NYC you know how unusual that is. And in the Bronx, which is of course where the always-hated Yankees were HQ'd. Ed Kranepool died Sunday. He was watching a Mets game when he had a heart attack. #

James Earl Jones: "I don't know if we ever learn from history."#

Famous heroic kitten breaks out of prison to rescue house pets in Ohio from being eaten by JD Vance.#

I made kittens the theme for the presidential campaign, it was my attempt to bring levity to it for readers of my blog. Then came "childless cat ladies" and now cats being eaten in Ohio. Either I was prescient, or the Trumps are copying me! Anyway, here's the Wordle Kitty $5 postage stamp, next in the series. She just broke out of prison to rescue the Ohio cats from JD Lance. My collaborator of course is ChatGPT.#

Podcast: Twitter President Kamala#

• Harris must become president of Twitter before becoming president of the United States.#
• After the debate, Harris should be interviewed anywhere they'll have her. Go ahead and be overexposed. Answer every question with one of your major positioning statements. Call in to radio talk shows, podcasts, whatever you can think of. Biden hardly ever promoted himself. Not being heard all the time was his biggest sin. Harris should get accustomed to being accessible when she's in office. Keep the kamalahq snark channel going. This will have been Trump's contribution to American politics, no fear of being heard. #
• BRIC countries == Brazil, Russia, India and China. #
• Brazil's population is 215 million, US is 333 million, so Brazil is 64% of US.#
• When we win the Twitter presidency we will have Jumped the Trump. 😇#
• 12 minute podcast. #

30th anniversary in a month#

• Are the Apple announcements like great reunions for people who have been going to these things regularly for 20+ years? If so, I can see the value in it. #
• I went to a reunion at Berkman, after 20 years, and it was great, made me wonder why we didn't do it every year for the last 20. When you get a group of people together who do great things in a special moment, you should see them from time to time. #
• But I have a feeling there's a lot of turnover at the Apple events. In any case, I stopped going to them somewhere in the mid-90s, or more accurately they stopped inviting me. Yeah I was disruptive, but only in comparison to how well-behaved the other journos were (at that time I was writing for Wired). #
• The press was in awe of Apple and other Valley companies. I enjoyed that for a very brief period when my company went public after I had a hit Mac product. Then I became something of a pariah, because I started blogging and believe me the icons of the Valley for the most part did not like it. They were accustomed to fawning attention and rewritten press releases. But because I was an insider, I had an idea where the bodies might be buried, and I wrote about it. Woz liked it. I was popular at the parties, I guess. #
• BTW, Heidi Roizen once observed that I took a date to an Apple announcement (the one where Steve came back). There weren't many people there, maybe 20 or 25. #
• Jeff Jarvis wrote in the foreword to his upcoming book that I'm like the Zelig of tech. This is what he meant, imho. 😄#
• We're coming up on the 30th anniversary of my blog, one month from tomorrow. You won't hear anyone from tech applauding, and you probably won't hear anything from the old bloggers. But I have something special in mind myself. Hopefully it'll come together in the next month, or sooner. :-)#
• Let's go back to 1994, by looking to the future. You won't need an invite, btw. It'll open to everyone.#

• A very practical issue. #
• BlueSky has a 300 character limit, which is less than the other services I cross-post to, namely:#
• Mastodon: 500 (using mastodon.social as benchmark)#
• Threads: 500#
• Twitter: 10000 (assume paying the montly fee)#
• RSS: no specific limit#
• WordPress: no specific limit#
• BlueSky: 300#
• This will be a problem when we eventually get peering working cross-network among twitter-like systems.#
• It looks to me, just eyeballing this list, that 500 is a good place to start, although I don't think ultimately there should be any specific limits. #
• We saw that clearly when RSS 0.91 was the most recent version, there were limits in the Netscape doc, but they were ignored by content sources, which is why I took them out in the 0.92 and 2.0 versions. #
• Peering is simpler than federation. It would enable people to send messages across these boundaries, but wouldn't handle the engagement features, likes, replies, forwarding. It's what many people are starting to do now, by hand. There's no way to put it off, imho -- the Bluesky limit is already hard to deal with. #