Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 10/14/2000
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 10/14/2000; 6:09:51 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 10/14/2000 Msg #: 21872 Prev/Next: 21871 / 21873
New sexy Manila feature: Home Page Template. Allows you to add features to the home page without adding them to every page on the site. Works with static sites. Not localized yet. Available on all UserLand-hosted Manila sites.
Brent got it done just in time for the Mariners-Yankees game. Now there's dedication, on a total baseball weekend.
Cards win 8-2 at Shea. Mets lead series 2-1. Signs of philosophic malaise in NY, as the library lions at the Public Library (5th Ave & 42nd St) each don caps of one of the NY baseball teams. Not a good sign. Hint to NY residents: If the Mets and Yankees win their series, get earthquake insurance.
New weblog for Frontier United Kingdom Users.
Duncan Smeed: "Good luck with FUKU."
Pictures of real-world Cobalt Qubes.
Robert Young, Chairman of Red Hat: "The software industry that Microsoft has been the role model for is built on the premise that customers are not to be trusted with the technology that they are building their organizations on."
My opinion: The software industry that Microsoft has been the role model for is dead, if it ever existed.
Rate me on BlogHop:(Green is best, red is worst.)
You can add your site to BlogHop on this page.
OPML for all
Oliver Travers wrote an OPML document for my ghost writing project that might in some way be part of O'Reilly's book on P2P. If you have Radio UserLand, choose Open URL from the File menu to read it as an outline.
BTW, to people who think OPML is weird, we do weird things at UserLand, and then they become mainstream.
A few months ago a reporter asked if Scripting News was the first weblog. In a way it was, but really Tim Berners-Lee had the first one. That's how central weblogs are. What we're doing, and Blogger, and now Zope, is upgrading the tools for the core purpose of the Web, which is to inform people in a timely basis.
After meeting Doug Engelbart, I know that I didn't have the first outliner either. Then I realize I was building on the work of two great men, one of the previous generation (Englebart) and one of mine (TBL). And Philippe Kahn, Dan Bricklin, Mitch Kapor, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld and Steve Capps. Oh boy I could keep going. We're an industry, we're growing up, we're not kids anymore, many of our accomplishments are behind us, but many more are still ahead (I hope).
So when I say "Go go go" to Blogger, I mean it. The big picture is to create a Web for the people. Distribution, great writing, technology and style make the difference, those are things the big media companies have that we don't, yet. When they do a deal with Conde Nast, a seed is planted. A lot of smart people write for Conde Nast. Blogger is good software. When they see the power, in their hands, not controlled by a big media company, they might get the idea that they don't need the big media company.
Rambling, when I was a writer for Wired a well-intentioned person said "Dave everyone needs an editor." It didn't take me more than two minutes to realize this wasn't true. I don't need an editor. My words stand alone. They mean nothing at all, except here's a human being speaking directly to you, person to person, no middlemen. That's a revolutionary thing. It's what the founders of the US envisioned, over 200 years later. It's so precious. So if people prefer Blogger, I support that. I of course am human, and I like my software to be appreciated too, and I know it is. So that's happy. Excellent.
Anyway, we're weird, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I always hesitate to predict success (there are so many naysayers), but someday I believe that if you're serious about writing for the Web and using the Web and providing services for people who use the Web, you'll be supporting "OPML", or something very much like it. We already do. ";->"
Today's song
Mountain: Mississippi Queen. "Went down around Dick's place, around Louisiana way, where lived the Cajun Lady, aboard the Mississippi Queen. You know she was a dancer. She moved better on wine."
New discussion group UI
The new discussion group interface got a major new feature yesterday. Now there are two views, a category view and a chronologic view. You can try it out on the Radio discussion group. Jake wrote a doc explaining the new features. After testing, feedback and refinement, we're going to upgrade all UserLand-hosted Manila sites, and then provide it as an upgrade to all Frontier users.
Integrity
I'd love to take today off and go for a massage and a hike, but it ain't gonna happen. Two things on the plate. Number one, I have to finish my article for WorldLink, it's going to be on integrity on the Web. A perfect place for that story, because the WEF has to deal with all flavors of Web writers, and we can do better at getting opinion clearly expressed and set some standards for disclosure of conflicts and background info on the people who are writing. There should be a simple way to find out Who Said That. The Web doesn't have the limits of print in that area. I'm especially interested in know who's paying the analysts to say what they say about the vendors who pay them.
The Radio cloud
The second project is to work on the release of the cloud that runs behind Radio UserLand. Since there's so much new interest in Zope in our land (this is good!) I hope that we can get a cloud running behind Radio that works in Zope, and like XML-RPC, in every other major scripting environment. The cloud is thin and simple, and the docs will be fun, I hope.
We're also going to release the source so Frontier and Radio can act as clouds. The goal is to create an open source foundation for P2P, to cut through the hype, and give the geeks a way of taking control of the technology, which is how Murphy intended it to be, as far as I know.
Ray and me
Before I get to work, some people may have missed my comments after the two-way demo with Ray Ozzie on Thursday. Here's what I said.
"Ray has a philosophy, a good one, and nice software. They run a Manila weblog internally, and he's been reading Scripting News since 1997. I will certainly write about their software when it's announced, it could be very big, maybe as big as Netscape 1.0. It's different from what I expected, but I understood it immediately."
I'd add this after having 24 hours to think about it. UserLand will support Groove. It'll be easy. There are a lot of places where Frontier, Manila and Radio can connect into Groove.
This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:54 PM.
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