Thursday, March 10, 2005

Brian Russell is featured in a Voice of America article about podcasting. He was one of my hosts in Chapel Hill, and gave me the neat Buddha that's on my dashboard.  

Podcasting is going mainstream so quickly. Yesterday on NPR I heard an analyst talk about how any of the three major networks, ABC, CBS or NBC could quickly get back in the news game. He said they should embrace new methods of distribution, like podcasting. He said it four times, and didn't bother to define the term. And then Bill Jennings sent a pointer to a travel writer contest where they are happy to take a podcast as a contest submission. 

Something new, a PBS show with a podcast. 

Robert Cox: Why Blogging Sucks. 

How to never miss an episode with BitTorrent and RSS. 

The Microsoft aggregator is down now, but Richard MacManus has screen shots and some theories about how the competition is shaping up. 

AP: "Microsoft said Thursday it was acquiring leading collaboration software company Groove Networks Inc, and naming its founder, Ray Ozzie, as Microsoft's chief technical officer." 

Scott Rosenberg: "This strikes me as a pretty big deal." 

Question: Does anyone know anyone who uses Groove? 

Lance Knobel: "I've been using Groove extensively for the last eight months for a new venture I'm putting together with three partners. We're scattered across the globe, and I've found the synchronisation, filing system and storage (and hence backup) really wonderful for us. It's fairly cheap and easy to use. I'm a fan." 

Douglyss Giuliana is a former Groove user. "The automatic document sync between team members is quite nice." 

Rafe Colburn: "It uses more resources than a Java IDE, which is to say, a lot." 

MSN has an RSS reader 

Here's the link. Click on News to add feeds.

Try adding Scripting News. (Let's see if it becomes one of the "popular feeds" or if they decide who's popular. Heh.)

BTW, I found out about this in my aggregator, from Rogers Cadenhead, who found it on Read/Write Web, who found it on SiliconBeat.

Hint: You should have a section for popular blogs.

Not that I've been counting or anything 

FYI, it's been 1000 days since I smoked. Yaha.

I do occasionally miss it, but not in a literal sense. I can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke and if I took a drag on a cigarette I'd choke, for sure. What I miss is the high, and the pain. It's when I feel a rush of self-loathing that I wish I could light up. I think we all have moments when we don't like ourselves very much. A smoke is the perfect companion for that feeling.

Anyway, I haven't actually been counting, I have a little script that does the counting for me. And now, having reached this milestone, I think we can stop reporting on the progress. What would be the next one? 2000? 5000? Nah. I'm no longer a smoker. I make it through the occasional craving by taking a deep breath of ocean air. Works much better, I think.

Counting pings 

Now while I haven't been counting days, I have been counting pings on weblogs.com. The number is actually pretty astounding. On March 8, for example, the server received almost a half-million pings. The exact number was 477,012.

And spam is starting to show up. Search Engine Optimizers have discovered blogs, specifically blogspot. We're going to have to develop some systems for dealing with this.

Mossberg on AutoLink 

In today's Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg weighs in on AutoLink.

It seems that Mossberg has been saying the same things to Google that I have. I'm glad to hear, based on his column, that Google is considering a redesign for AutoLink. For what it's worth, if they changed to use only a drop down menu listing all the places they can take the user from the page, instead of marking up the page itself, I would turn from a critic to a supporter. I want the features, I like it when computers do things for me, but its design was too costly for authors and publishers. In a drop-down there would be no confusion about where the new links came from, and which were the new links, they would emanate from a space clearly marked as being Google's, instead of appearing to come from the author of the page.

Last night's West Wing 

I think they must have two writing crews on the West Wing, because last night's show was great!

I mean it wasn't quite as good as the really good old ones, but it got me emotional at times, especially at the end. Okay, anyway, if they're listening, it's kind of obvious that Jimmy Smits is going to be the new President, after we're finished with Bartlett. That's good. If you're trying to make us fed up with the lame duck, it's working. More episodes with Josh and Matt, please, and the new crew, and the new writers, and cameramen. Hey even Donna was sharp and not too embarassing this week. And I'm glad you-know-who finally got knocked out.

Last night was classic WW. Keep up the good work.