DISQUS

I've been trying to keep up on netbooks myself and there are a few others in the states, including Kevin Tofel at jkOnTheRun and Brad at Lilliputing.

http://www.liliputing.com/

Definitely the Sony is not a netbook.

And I put together what I think is a definitive list of criteria for a netbook and try to keep it current as the form is evolving.

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/12/17/wha...

Also to Scoble's readers -- the reason I'm keeping up with Scoble is that I've added him to a new kind of Twitter feed, a "friends-of" channel that works really well, imho. Instead of aggregating tweets it aggregates blog posts.

http://twitter.com/friendsofdave

Bottom line: I think it's a little early to annoint anyone the "netbook king." :-)

Podcasting is not dead -- it just isn't what these guys thought it would be. No big deal. Now we can get on with what it really is. :-)

This is a work of fiction. You should put a big disclaimer on it up front -- you're wrong on so many fronts, and you missed what was interesting technically about the product and you're supposed to be a tech pub. There were actually four people on the editorial, and we got as much criticism for favoring the Republicans as for favoring the Democrats. One of the things that you should bear in mind is that the Democrat won Mark, so his press was going to be better, for whatever reason, having nothing to do with NewsJunk.

Anyway it was pitched specifically as being NOTHING LIKE Memeorandum.

Gotta go now someone is at the door.

How about another role -- making sure that the big companies play fair with technology, like the current debacle with Comcast. Keep the President advised on ways he can use the the bully pulpit to get people organized to make sure we don't all get rolled over by the companies. Kind of the antidote to Bush.

The problem is that whatever they said to your friend would also be read by the people who compromised the account. There aren't many options for them at that point, but completely shutting down the account will stop the breaches so it *seems* like they did the right thing.

Scoble, I gave a talk at Mark Anderson's Future in Review conference a couple of years ago. It's a conference of CEOs and CTOs mostly in the tech world. The question was much the same as the one the people at the Fortune conference were raising, but I wasn't outnumbered, and the audience wasn't full of journos. So I asked for a show of hands of anyone whose point of view had ever been accurately reflected in an article they were quoted in. I got a lot of applause (probably like the applause the Fortune guy got) and not one hand went up and no one spoke in defense of reporters. In other words, here are people who are often quoted by the press, and none of them felt they had EVER been represented accurately.

I said -- That's why I blog, and rested my case.

I think those reporters are smug and have their heads buried in the sand, if they don't see blogging as a rebellion of the people they used to quote, they're completely missing the point. (And they mostly are.)

And thank you for representing us Scoble. Most professional journalists have a contradictory point of view. They think they have taken over blogging, and at the same time look down condescendingly at bloggers. Funny, since everyone on stage at your event were professional reporters who use blogging tools. As if somehow what software you use changes who you are in some fundamental way.

Dave

Everyone thinks we're biased against them. That's just the way politics works -- you don't notice the ideas that are in agreement with your world view, but the dissonant ones totally stand out.

And we're definitely NOT trying to replace Memeorandum. They're as different tools as a word processor is from a spreadsheet. Each has its strengths. Ours is that we get breaking news fast, but it's unprioritized.

I hope you'll keep using it, and go ahead and say we're biased, we'll keep listening. :-)

Here's the opposite of River of Noise.

River of Noise -- I love it!

That's beautiful.

Bret, great post. Just want to be clear, I'm sure the reason Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo is to turn it into a developer platform for running AWS-style hosted apps using open source software as the basis. It's a way for them to buy a leading position in the LAMP space and start at a running pace.

Being a dev platofmr is in Microsoft's DNA. They can't not look at the world that way.

I thought Mike's piece illustrates how what they call "the blogosphere" is actually a recreation of the tech press. Nothing wrong with that, but tech blogs serve a purpose, sharing information user-to-user. The tech industry is an incestuous place, if you say the wrong thing about someone you lose access, but users never had access, they don't think in those terms, so there's nothing stopping them from saying what they experience and what they think.

TechCrunch is that, sometimes, but less often these days, and if they make the transition Mike talks about, it will happen even less often.

Thanks for transcribing my podcast (not!) -- I did it by voice because I thought it would be hard to explain in writing.

Try this out.

I bet when you go to a conference, you spend a lot of time listening to people who want to get five minutes of your time to hear their idea. Do you ever get tired of this? Do you wonder why you have to *pay* to have other people make demands on your time? Doesn't that sound like work??

Now imagine what it must be like to be Al Gore at one of these events. That's what I can't stop thinking about, and it's why I won't barge into their space with my pitch because I know he won't really be listening and there's zero chance that anything will come of it. In other words, that opportunity that you think you have is not actually an opportunity.

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe not defining your life in those terms. Or put yourself in places where there's a good balance, where you're as much sought after and well-known as everyone else. I don't think cornering celebrities, unless you're very beautiful and have something they want (which means they still aren't listening!), will get you anywhere.

Take your son for a walk today and tell him a story about your childhood? A funny one! What do I know. :-)

I did a podcast to respond to this post.

http://sundaygang.com/misc/responseToScobleBlog...

OMG, it's Scoble! :-)

Turn it into the Internet's address book, and they can get back on the hypergrowth track. Make a coral reef instead of just a shipwreck.

Sorry but I had the image of William Hurt in Broadcast News when I read about the tear running down your cheek. :-)

"The digital-to-analog converters in the MacMini suck when compared to the ones in my Denon receiver."

Exactly right. My readers taught me that when I went through this bit of learning. It's about specialization. Your receiver probably doesn't have a great user interface and it's word processor probably sucks. :-)

To Markman, cut the crap. We're people, not big news organizations. We're not reporting news, we're narrating our lives. You'd think by now you'd understand what blogging is about. (To return the arrogance back in your face, sometimes you really are a P.I.T.A.)

In other words, get a clue -- we're civillians.

And btw, so are the big news guys, they just won't admit it. :-)

Thanks, this is a fine piece of evangelism.

I appreciate that you're waiting until the product is released. I don't want to piss off TechCrunch, GigaOm, RWW, et al. I asked you to use the software because I value your contribution as a user, and you surely did make a great contribution. There's a beautiful button in the UI that should be called The Scoble Button. Maybe I'll write a post with that title. Tomorrow. :-)

Scoble! The user's web is alive and well. We're in a little cul de sac, off on the side, talking about something that is of little concern to 99.999999999 percent of the people in the US (never mind the world).

To be clear, I didn't write the piece, Andrew Baron did. As far as I know he likes Jason. When I criticized Jason's product, I liked Jason myself, it was only when he attacked me, repeatedly and personally after I was critical of his product, that I came to dislike him personally. But that has absolutely nothing to do with what Andrew wrote. You question his honesty in this piece, that's something you should be careful about. I'm sure you wouldn't like it if someone so casually questioned your honesty.

I don't think they actually pay Boutin, do they? :-)

Thanks for the kind words...

It's been an interesting day, lots of comments, lots to absorb.

My first reaction -- if they follow this to its logical conclusion they will turn the web browser into an email client. The cool thing about the web is that it's for publishing, which at its root means "public." Email, by its nature is the opposite -- it's personal, non-public. P2P. Both modes of communication are necessary of course. Yin and yang, zig and zag.

The key is the people, just like the P in P2P was people. You rob banks because that's where the money is, and you build on Twitter because the people (I want to communicate with) are there. Q.E.D.

Here's a list of the Mets of the 60s.

http://ultimatemets.com/decades.php?ThisDecade=...

I like Jeff's post, but I'd add that it would have worked out better if the Mets had sucked more at the beginning of the season and been strong at the end than the way it worked out.

But I was lucky, I started loving the bums when they sucked 162 games a year, every year. Those were the Mets I fell in love with, those are the Mets I miss. Choo Choo Coleman, Rod Kanehl, Bud Harrelson, Frank Thomas, Marv Throneberry, Ed Kranepool, Ed Charles, Bob Shaw (lived next door to us in Queens, mowed his lawn as a kid!), Gil Hodges, Duke Snyder, and on and on. Tommy Agee! Casey Stengel! These were the canonical Mets. They're smiling down from heaven or wherever they are (some are still with us, for sure) thinking how appropriate that the Mets disappointed this crop of fans, who actually expect them to win because that ain't the way it works!!

The Mets are about poetry, philosophy, drama and love.

Only winning when winning helps accentuate the above.

And baseball can teach us about life -- I'm serious about it. Because no matter how much fun life is, we all end up losing in the end. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is the truth. Enjoy it while you got it, cause it ain't gonna last. :-)