Monday, December 13, 2004

I'm doing a fellows breakfast on podcasting at Berkman tomorrow, 10:30AM to noon. Open to all.  

I've hacked my Manila to support enclosures, so people can do podcasts with Manila. For people who really know what they're doing, here's the source code for the three parts of manila.root I had to modify. It's probably safer to ask UserLand to incorporate this code, or something equivalent, into their next release than to install it yourself because it might get wiped out in a future update from UserLand (I have updates turned off on my servers). For the user, there's a new field on the page you enter and/or edit an item on, where you enter the URL of the enclosure. It automatically generates the enclosure element in the RSS feed. Nothing more to it. 

Northern Voice, a blogger's conference on Feb 19 in Vancouver, will feature a howto session on Podcasting by Tod Maffin. 

Today's movie, about Peter Pan author JM Barrie, is a gem. Finding Neverland with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. A real sweet movie. 

I can't look at this picture without cracking up in uncontrollable laughter. With my chest cold, it really hurts to laugh so much.  

Can you download this file? 

Mary Jo speculates on today's announcements from Microsoft. 

John Palfrey summarizes the I&S conference, with pointers to blog posts from people participating. One story so far untold, with me (crammed into) the back seat of Betsy Campbell's BMW, with Craig Newmark in the front seat. I say to Craig: "I'll tell some friends I rode in a car with Craig, and they won't believe me." He said something like they should get a life he's not really that important. Regardless, hanging with Craig is like eating dinner with Ben & Jerry, which I actually did once as well. 

Ian Landsman also blogged the trip in Betsy's BMW. 

Flamers and idealism 

The subject of flames came up at Andrew Orlowski's session at the I&S conference on Saturday. Had Andrew been willing to let me have the floor for a minute or so, here's roughly what I would have said about utopianism and flames, from my point of view.

I used to be the target of virtually incessant flames. There weren't many people leading them, and in the end it apparently depended on one person to keep them going, and now that he has sworn off the Internet, thankfully, while isolated flames still happen occasionally, they don't seem to take root any longer.

It's important to note, however, that the flames were not a lone person's act, it was a mob, people who attacked me apparently only because they saw others doing it. Without the mob, they aren't so brave.

I'll never forget what it felt like to be at the center of so much hate, to have so few stand up for me, I will never forget the people who who turned so ugly as a form of recreation.

The worst were people who used the hate to advance their careers. Now that it has dissipated, it's fascinating to watch them scramble. Not a good thing to stake a career on.

Anyway when people say I'm an Internet idealist or utopian, it's true, because I still think it's a force for good, in balance. That good must be pretty good because the ugly side of the Internet sure is ugly.