Monthly Archives: January 2008

Chris Messina and Friends Productions

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“This is true”, Chris Messina giggles at a minute thirty of Citizen Garden Episode 1: Winter Solstice Edition in response to Larry Halff asking him about being involved in a social networking project. If you know Chris, you know “this is true” is a chrisism. If you don’t, I’m excited that he and friends Larry, Tara Hunt, Brian Oberkirch and more have recently started giving us great opportunity to get to know their isms with at least two productions:

  • Podcast Citizen Garden, “seeding the citizen web”
  • Videocast OpenMediaWeb, “exploring the possibilities and opportunities of the Open Media Web and developing the methods, formats and protocols to make it possible.”

Both already have a couple great sessions and other content. Enjoy!

Apple is the Leader in Consumer Computing!

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Jason Chen, “To recap on what [Steve Jobs] talked about today.”

  1. Time Capsule, the wireless backup utility.
  2. iPhone update and iPod Touch update.
  3. AppleTV + iTunes movie rentals.
  4. MacBook Air.

January 16th update: here is The Steve Jobs 90 Minute Keynote (in 60 Seconds):

Scoble Broke Our Trust And The Law By Sharing Our Personal Data

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I haven’t been able to influence Dennis Howlett or Thomas Otter into making clear arguments that supports their accusations, let along clear accusations, so here I will try to do that first step for them:

Scoble broke the law by sharing our personal data with Plaxo.

Continue reading →

Serious Accusation, Scoble Shot The Sheriff

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Dennis Howlett and Thomas Otter recently made serious accusations against Robert Scoble, explicitly stating that he has broken European Union law. They both use very strong language, no if, maybes, buts about it. Both have responded to my article. Unfortunately, to my frustration they continue to level these accusations without clear arguments and focus — arguments relying on quotes without legal context, colorful prose, but no reference of legal precedent. How such polarized positions and accusations suit their own interests is plain, but both have unmet responsibility to clearly present such serious accusations.

Andy Olmsted’s Final Post

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Andy Olmsted, a US Army Major was killed in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2008. The following day his friend published Final Post written by Andy in case he was killed.

I highly recommend you read it, and the other articles this very thoughtful and articulate person shared on his blog and in other online communities. Here is one of the many passages in Final Post that really moved me:

But for those who knew me and feel this pain, I think it’s a good thing to realize that this pain has been felt by thousands and thousands (probably millions, actually) of other people all over the world. That is part of the cost of war, any war, no matter how justified. If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision. Because it is pretty clear that the average American would not have supported the Iraq War had they known the costs going in. I am far too cynical to believe that any future debate over war will be any less vitriolic or emotional, but perhaps a few more people will realize just what those costs can be the next time.

Scoble Breaks EU Laws By Updating His Address Book?!

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Literally, throw the book at him!

Robert Scoble titled a recent article “Scoble is an EU lawbreaker, blogger says“, the accusation the title speaks to his because Robert used a tool to record information that his contacts had shared with him.

Dennis Howlett claims “under EU law, it’s also illegal” based on Thomas Otter “[nailing] it” — if nailing means taking the back roads and maybe not even arriving at your destination. Neither make a a clear argument, legal or otherwise, of what Robert did wrong.

What other reason is there for me to share my email address with Robert in Facebook than the hope that he will record it in his address book and email me. Robert, you missed my 30th birthday in December!

“So we asked some bloggers”

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I really enjoyed seeing in 2007 an ever increasing number of people self-identify as bloggers and giving their own meaning to the term. I’m looking forward to even more diverse and expressive uses of blog, blogging, and blogger in 2008.

This is an amazing video put together by rbloggers4peace with bloggers showing their appreciation for Rosie O’ Donnell:

Seen at R BLOG

What does the term blogger mean to you?

WordPress Hands Free Upgrade?

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This comment by Matt is too good to leave obscure in a WordPress bug report:

Fundamentally, I think the reason [automatic upgrade] should be core is that WordPress being used as, and has the responsibilities of, a platform. Therefore it’s useful to look at the evolution of a few of the other most successful platforms out there, I would consider the top 4 to be Windows, Mac OS X, Flash, and Firefox. Each has a built-in update mechanism that is essential to the security of its users and gives it, to varying degrees of success, extremely good upgrade rates. (I think Firefox is our closest analogue.)

We are all familiar with the high-profile WP blogs running old versions of the software, and what happens to them. If a blog is hacked or compromised people don’t care if it’s a 2-year-old version of WP, it reflects badly on us and permanently damages our reputation in their eyes. IMO it’s the biggest threat to WP today.

My biggest regret is that this issue has festered for so long, I think partially because I switched to SVN-managing all my blogs a long time ago and forgot what a pain it was to upgrade/install, even as streamlined as we’ve made the process.

Like anything, I expect this to be a feature iterated on and improved in future version of WP after the one it ships in, for example it might be cool to have it utilize native SVN commands if available, and a file MD5 check UI and diff viewer.

We’ve hooked a huge number of people on the power of WordPress because it’s so easy to get started with, let’s keep it working for them and not shooting them in the foot.

I think it’s safe to say that there will be a one click (few click) upgrade of WordPress in our future.