February 2006
Journalism isn’t open heart surgery
Scott Karp of Publisher 2.0 writes,
Does “news” and information filtering really require professional “expertise” at any point in the process, or can we really just do it all ourselves? Since we know that professionals are fallible — doctors make mistakes, stupid laws get passed, lawyers want to sue everyone — let’s get rid of them altogether. Or, maybe we just embrace the idea that “news” isn’t as important as law and medicine — who cares whether we get it right?
Well, yes but a Lawyer takes years to understand the ins and outs of a court system. Same with a Doctor and the body.
While you can argue that of a news person, it is only a small subset of the editorial portion of a news organization that is needed here.
Not as many editors and a columnist is basically anyone who is an expert on a subject that can write well.
For that matter, we can trim down the photography department, meld interactive with PR etc.
I’m all for News professionals, but not the same old news organizations. Those are going away.
But the argument was more toward an editor versus the collective.
Here, while a professional can provide a much needed function to the wild, at what point does a a professional become a “good member of the news community”, and a “good member of the news community become professional quality.”
While some journalistic methodologies are not intuitive and need years of training, it isn’t exactly open heart surgery.
RSS 3.0 Roadmap
Update: I was just BSing below but should Instant Outlining be an open protocol to provide “in-band” communication, or am I nuts?
* * *
I think it would be interesting to do what Dave Winer says and call it “Molecule”, just to see what people have in mind to make the spec better. It may never get adopted but it would still be interesting.
Some would just want to clarify the existing spec.
Some would want to create another Atom.
I might like to see a better “communications enclosure” element like:
<comm type="AIM">buddybuilder</comm>
<comm type = "skype. . .
<comm type="
We know we need better identity. In fact, let’s just scrap the old systems and build a mail/IM system right into RSS + SSE.
Who’s with me?
I’m sure something is cooking over at microformats.
Gumbo Ya Ya for sale
Happy Mardi Gras Blogosphere!!
To celebrate Mardi Gras and Edgeio’s launch I’m selling my famous Gumbo Ya Ya Recipe exclusively for $100.
You can’t beat this mighty rad gumbo!!
OPML + SSE vagueness
With all the noise (and little signal) about the RSS spec, I thought it would be fun to talk about some real world questions:
OPML+SSE . . . short pause. . . burst of cheer!!
After a break from SSE since the SkinnyFarm experiment, I thought I’d look at OPML.
I remembered that Niall Kennedy had an applescript thingy that exported his NetNewsWire subscription list as OPML+SSE.
Niall needs to convince me that his placement of the sx:sync element is correct.
The spec says:
The most important extension described in this spec is the sx:sync element, which contains the information required for synchronization. This element is a child of the item or outline element. This is a REQUIRED element of all items in all feeds wishing to participate in SSE-based replication.
And here is a snippet of his output:
<outline type="feed" text="Everything TypePad! " htmlUrl="http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/" description="Everything TypePad!: " xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TypePadNews">
<outline type="item" text="Keep in touch by giving the gift of blogging" htmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TypePadNews?m=85" category="Announcements" created="Wednesday, September 21, 2005 10:15:20 AM"/>
−
<sx :sync id="tag:www.sixapart.com,2005:/typepad/news//24.5956" version="1">
<sx :history when="Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:09:51 PM" by="NetNewsWire"/>
</sx>
<outline type="item" text="Pick your Pics" htmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TypePadNews?m=76" category="Features" created="Thursday, August 18, 2005 11:21:17 AM"/>
−
<sx :sync id="tag:www.sixapart.com,2005:/typepad/news//24.5770" version="1">
<sx :history when="Thursday, August 18, 2005 1:10:32 PM" by="NetNewsWire"/>
</sx>
Hmmm. I take the above statement about REQUIRED to mean that every outline element of an OPML doc or every item element of an RSS doc must have an sx:sync id.
And I certainly wouldn’t think that one outline element could have more than one sx:sync child.
I guess I’ll ask the Microsoft RSS guys because there aren’t many examples around.
Niall? Jack? Paresh? Calling Dr. Bombay . . .
Buzzmachine is a little buzzed today
Jeff? C’mon! Jarvis gets it right so often that it becomes a worthwhile link for me when I disagree.
What a conclusion he comes to when he says a study finds,
TV is not bad for kids
First of all, few have ever said TV was all bad, but that “too much” TV could be bad.
Second, the study shows that TV was not bad for student’s test scores. Does this mean TV is not bad for you?
Suppose the test scores are up and so is the number of pounds overweight from a sedentary lifestyle.
Suppose the test scores are up but so is violent crime.
There is more to life than test scores.
In all fairness, it is a blog post and not an essay, so perhaps he was generalizing and being succinct, realizing that we understood these caveats.
That said, I probably agree. I don’t think TV is bad. Newspapers on the other hand. . .
Gotta go, F-Troop is on.
Update: I was just wondering if a day will come when they say “too much RSS may be bad for you.”
Is Dave Winer a star or am I just a geek?
I really like Dave Winer’s piece on actors. I’m especially in agreement that Blogs will be like telephones or cars and his contention,
That there are stars is, I think, a vestige of the world we’re leaving behind.
is truly insightful.
I work for a small news media company, formerly a newspaper company.
I’m guessing there is one person besides myself among several hundred who knows who Dave Winer is.
Am I a geek or are they clueless? Is he a star or is the geekosphere an echo chamber?
Really, I’d like your thoughts.
We are all brothers
Following the lead from Alex Barnett and Kent Sharkey , I decided to find my lost relatives, over at myheritage.com . What a good looking and musical family. Even brother Eddie had a hit, “Party all the time.”
Reading Lists are coming ….still some work
Lisa Williams points to a neat tool for creating
del.icio.us Reading Lists
We are definitely at a turning point here, with Technorati favorites (which are just Reading Lists) and data being re-bundled like this example, and grazing lists being carved from the marble that was OPML and RSS.
But for widespread adoption, users don’t want to know it’s OPML or even use an OPML editor. In fact, most probably want to steer clear of Technorati.
They want it to be there, feeling more powerful than what has come before, yet simpler to use and delving deeper still.
The New Economy or the Servile State?
Observation 1: There is an incredible amount of waste in great big companies, especially media companies. (Isn’t it odd that this soft underbelly complains about corporate layoffs?)
Observation 2: The Internet is the great equalizer, maximizing competition and allowing that competition to span International borders.
Observation 3: These large corporations seem reluctant to sacrifice short term profit for long term position in the new marketplace.
Is there another conclusion except that a radical shift in power and economy is going to occur, resulting in a widespread loss of savings wrapped up in corporate 401K plans and leaving tens of thousands in the braces of the Servile State?
Hammertime
MC Hammer on Baseball. I guess spring training is underway down south.
Update: Plus some photos posted from Hammer’s sidekick