Disqus - Latest Comments for scott

Re: Scott Wiener declares victory in state Senate race

scott — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 01:08:21 -0000

I kind of hoped Jane Kim would win. I live in her district and she does not care about the issues that are most important to her constituents unless it involves a photo op. Don't have your campaign call me asking for my vote and promise to respond to an email you previously ignored and then not follow through. Also it does not look good if you are overly responsive to tweets from rich venture capitalists who don't even live in San Francisco and then scramble to cover your ass when called out by the people suffering due to obvious neglect of those who you do represent.

Re: What changes at Medium and Yahoo Pipes teach us about the persistence of the web

scott — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 14:47:12 -0000

I would just discourage people from publishing anything to a silo that does not have an API to download/pubsub/etc an archive of your silo'd content in a standard format. A trusted web service can manage the archiving and silo data interchange for the overwhelming number of people that do not want to invest in any type of self hosting scenarios.

Re: The Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to Palm Pre and iPhone

scott — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:53:38 -0000

Hardware glitches and unpolished apps are less important to me than the comparisons between the respective platforms. The former issues will take care of themselves. What will be interesting to watch now is the frequency of Android/iPhone OS releases and the improvements contained in those OS releases. Can Apple compete against a whole industry not only on the hardware side as they have had to do with desktop PC manufacturers but also compete with a whole industry on the software side, something they have not had to do with Windows which is also controlled by a single company?

Re: Developers: the best smart phone platform is?

scott — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:14:46 -0000

I mean that Apple and RIM do not have the resources to compete against the manufacturers of televisions, cars, cameras, home/office appliances, and new types of embedded devices on their turf when the manufacturers can simply adopt Android with no investment in recreating a system like Android which has a developer ecosystem already in place. These verticals are not in the OS business. However, Android is very easy to adapt to their devices with relatively very little cost to them considering their other options. Why would these companies hand over a significant portion of their profits to Apple or RIM if they did not have to? Microsoft is losing a ton of money on the XBox. Apple is failing with their AppleTV product. I doubt they will be entering into the automobile business anytime soon. I'm betting on Android as a commodity and that open with the backing of industry will beat closed for embedded operating systems. The evidence is substantial. The industry leader, Symbian, has even realized this. IMO Linux has been held back by the GPL license which is not business-friendly. Android is licensed under Apache 2.0 which is similar to the BSD license. BTW, Apple's OS is built on top of BSD Unix.

Re: It Just Might Be the Droid You Are Looking For

scott — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:46:40 -0000

I believe that if the device says "with Google" on it then Google has licensed their apps to the carrier. I have no idea what the terms are. However, there are carriers and device manufacturers that are not partnering with Google and enhancing the base OS with their own UI and bundled apps. It will be interesting to see the reception the Sony Ericsson XPERIA receives ...

hardware: http://www.youtube.com/watc...
software: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: Developers: the best smart phone platform is?

scott — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:33:15 -0000

I'd suspect that Android is doing even better than RIM in streaming/downloading of video based on its capabilities and the YouTube factor. In addition to looking at download numbers and especially the rate of change of those download numbers it is important for developers to factor in the opportunities to re-purpose their investments. It is obvious to me that Android will be injected into televisions, cars, cameras, home/office appliances, and new types of embedded devices that don't exist today. I also would not be surprised if we see the reincarnation of the Java Applet as an Android plug-in for the Chrome browser/OS. Can Apple or RIM compete against a free and open platform that is supported by so many verticals? I don't think so.

Re: Lists and OPML (Scripting News)

scott — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:56:43 -0000

I have a feed that has entries which each link to other third party feeds. Please explain how OPML can add value to this list of lists without me having to convert my feed to OPML. My list needs to be dynamic therefore I cannot model it as an OPML subscription list because aggregators do not support updates to OPML subscription lists. They do support updates to feeds.

Re: Lists and OPML (Scripting News)

scott — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:39:56 -0000

OPML inclusion is a good example of the problem I am trying to illustrate. In the context of lists of lists I would need to convert all of my feeds to OPML. The only value I see in doing this would be to enable my content to be editable in your OPML Editor thus making my content incompatible with all the tools and infrastructure that currently exists for RSS and Atom. I can't see why any developer would want to do this or how this proposition would benefit the domain of open content distribution.

Re: Lists and OPML (Scripting News)

scott — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:31:57 -0000

Coming from the perspective of a developer, the problem with OPML is that it is focused on outlines and not on distributed lists. There are already two standards for distributed lists; RSS and Atom. The moment you introduce hierarchy in a single document format you lose the distributed nature that most of the use cases rely upon and you open the door for content getting out of sync which introduces a new problem that is very difficult to solve and decreases the usability of such solutions. An RSS enclosure or an Atom link can reference any content type, not just a media file. If the entries of a feed contained links that simply referenced other feeds then developers could leverage existing technologies and paradigms as well as provide a better fit for the common use cases of distributed lists.

Re: Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

scott — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:24:46 -0000

Although I thought your article was more thoughtful and balanced, you still seemed to emphasize the communication aspects (e-mail) over the publishing aspects. Despite Lars' assertion I don't see Wave replacing email either. IM with notification filtering might consolidate and simplify the direct messaging app space. I do think Wave could replace Wikis and apps like PowerPoint though my inclination is to let it evolve into something not tied to old metaphors. My impression is that the realtime communication functionality will direct and serve as commentary on the publishing process and that the recorder will eventually be used primarily as a presentation playback engine for the content being produced and not as a conversation playback engine.

There's nothing wrong with being an edge case unless you don't realize it.

Re: Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

scott — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:36:37 -0000

You completely misunderstood the use cases for this platform. It is a realtime collaborative publishing tool. You and Louis are edge cases. Wave is not intended to replace Twitter or FriendFeed, which are more about individuals broadcasting to the masses, marketing themselves, amassing followers, curating egos, etc.

Re: The post iPhone world

scott — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:34:27 -0000

Apple will not be able to follow Android into the domain of embedded systems. Android is already built on a very lean multi-process component model while the iPhone was designed to run monolithic apps. Additionally, Apple does not have the resources to compete against such a diverse set of industries. The profit margins are just not going to be sufficient to justify the investments required to go there. Android is free ... it's hard to compete with that. Apple will probably get their technology into televisions and do well there but they will soon have to start defending their turf against those that have learned from their success. I wouldn't count Sony out just yet. I read that the next iteration of the Walkman will run on Android.

Microsoft + Twitter = Blue screen of death + Fail whale. Enough said. I think XMPP (also free and open) will be the common language that devices will be speaking to each other with.

Re: I have 3,571 tweets that show that Twitter isn’t for lunch anymore

scott — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:40:51 -0000

OK. I'll check out your performance at TC50 (link?). Nonetheless, if you maintain the impression that you are a soft touch when doing face to face interviews by killing those interviews where you get confrontational then the end result is the same.

Re: I have 3,571 tweets that show that Twitter isn’t for lunch anymore

scott — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:18:53 -0000

People like me? Do tell. To be clear, I don't equate "going Gillmor" with being nasty. Steve is good at asking tough questions without going there. It's easy to rip on companies in a forum where they don't have the opportunity to provide a response. If the people you interview don't expect to be challenged on anything they say then the interview becomes a commercial.

Re: I have 3,571 tweets that show that Twitter isn’t for lunch anymore

scott — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:48:28 -0000

You are comparing yourself to a sushi restaurant?? I would watch more of your videos if you started challenging the business people you interview à la Gillmor instead of engaging in ass kissing à la Furrier.

Re: I have 3,571 tweets that show that Twitter isn’t for lunch anymore

scott — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:50:21 -0000

You are an edge case. Twitter will never become profitable if they cater their service to your needs.

Re: Monday morning stuffff (Scripting News)

scott — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:23:11 -0000

I don't think the analogy of gif and jpeg is accurate. A better comparison would be with HTTP. Imagine if we had two competing standards for HTTP. Would that be a good thing for users?

Re: The State Of The Twittersphere: Don't Look For A Bell Curve

scott — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 12:55:22 -0000

I have to believe that the magic (or optimal) N count will be different for different types of users and that the amount of time you and your network of Twitter users want to or can invest in the service is atypical.

Re: TiVo Is a Zero On the Social Web. It's Time They Fast Forward.

scott — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:23:05 -0000

I have always thought that TiVo was missing a big opportunity by not becoming a platform for third party applications. How long has it been since they did anything interesting with their user interface? I attended the Android fireside chat at googleio and was pleasantly surprised when a TiVo engineer stepped up to the mic to to ask a question. Unfortunately, I don't remember what he asked ... probably because my mind instantly went into what if mode. Perhaps we'll see a WebKit browser and OpenSocial multimedia widgets on TiVo some day in the near future.

Re: Feedback for disqus (Scripting News)

scott — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:20:17 -0000

It seems a bit hypocritical of Dave promoting a service that does not protect the rights of content creators.

Re: Feedback for disqus (Scripting News)

scott — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:59:36 -0000

It appears that the content creators (commenters) do not own their content. This makes the Disqus service unusable for me. I don't support data lock-in.