Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/101dumbest/

Yes, I know the link says dumbest, the smartest is an untitled popup window. You’re second or third into the sequence. Go Dave!

[Quoting Business 2.0 blurb]

Smartest Technology: RSS
At long last, really simple syndication, or RSS, came into its own. Developed by Silicon Valley technologist Dave Winer, RSS makes it easy for popular sites such as CNN, Reuters, and Yahoo — and tens of thousands of bloggers — to distribute online text, audio, and video worldwide. RSS has been around since 1997, but it got a big boost in the past year as Microsoft announced plans to integrate it into Windows, letting RSS do for online media what the Web did for the Internet.

Dervala’s blogging again, after a long break, and Silicon Valley just got a sharp poke in the schnozz:

Los Gatos used to be a farm town, prosperous enough to raise fine 19th century brick buildings. Now it’s home to some of the most materially successful people on this planet. It’s northern California, not Manhattan, so you can’t tell who’s winning by Blahnik shoes and Chloe dresses, but those are probably Marc Jacobs bags that the yummy mummies swing from their Australian strollers.

I first blog-met Dervala when she was roaming the world, sliding on her butt down muddy mountains in Ecuador. Later (such is the blessing of blogging) Halley introduced the two of us in NYC, over bowls of Union Oyster House oyster chowder, or maybe over an ice-skating spill at Rockefeller Center.

Dervala’s real life gets so enormously active that sometimes she doesn’t blog for weeks and weeks. But now, it seems, she’s back, rolling out mini-yarns and occasional long tales.

Welcome back, Dervala, please stick around for a while!

Rebecca Blood asks good questions and David Weinberger gives great answers:

Whose writing do you particularly admire?

Questions that ask me to name favorites put me into a neurotic tailspin because of what I’ll forget to mention. I will say that that Shakespeare guy has a way with a phrase.

What is your advice for a new blogger?

Links lots. Have fun. When in doubt, press the “publish” button.
…
Would you read your site?

That’s like asking me if I’d marry myself. I don’t know and I’m real glad I don’t have to find out.

Is doom rolling toward the Internet as we know it?

For Mark Cuban the threat is our insatiable need for more and more bandwidth:

Sure, new bandwidth is being added on networks every day. But guess what, our ability to consume bandwidth is growing far, far faster than the speed at which it is being added… The bigger and more powerful our PCs become, the more specialized processors that are enabled with internet connectivity, the more bandwidth we all consume.

Meanwhile, in Jakob Nielsen’s nightmares, so much Internet revenue gets picked up by giant search engines that there’s nothing left for the people who create web content:

There’s no doubt that search engines provide a valuable service to users. The issue here is what search engines do to the companies they feed on — the companies that fund the creation of original information. Search engines mainly build their business on other websites’ content. The traditional analysis has been that search engines amply return the favor by directing traffic to these sites. While there’s still some truth to that, the scenario is changing…Paid search confiscates too much of a website’s value.

Are you starting to flash on one of those Jolt-Cola nightmares where your web-powered Indiana Jones persona starts getting chased by a huge Katamari Damacy* rolling ball?

The truth is, lots of people have created real value all over the huge gift economy of “The Internet as we know it.” And lots of other people are working for changes that will let them roll up that value into their own pockets.

I’m glad that two such different web-giants are having such similar nightmares.

* I found this via Boing Boing. Bonus link: Google results for all their Katamari Damacy blogging.

A Flickred and geeky time was had by all.

Here, just getting started, I’m sitting with H20Town and OPML-fan-in-chief Lisa Williams, a bunch more people and of course Dave Winer. Drupal ubergeek Moshe Weitzman is helping Lisa tune up H20Town to a fine high pitch.

Dan Bricklin is podcasting with awesome tools (“Show us your tools, Dan!”) and will later demo something new called WikiCalc. Phil Greenspun wants to teach you how to fly a helicopter.

Just some of us….

• Dave Winer (The blogfather)
• Dan Bricklin (WikiCalc and podcasting)
• Lisa Williams (OPML Fan)
• Betsy Devine (“Making trouble today for a better tomorrow”)
• Bela Labovitch (OPMLWorkstation/OPMLSearch)
• Coleman Jolley (geekster)
• Philip Greenspun (helicopter instructor)
• Tim Post
• Rahul Dave (xml-rpc is fun)
• Moshe Weitzman (drupal developer)
• Aldo Castañeda (Identity is Central)
• Jesse Baer
• Jim Moore (Arriving the last of us, but by no means the least of us!)
• David Berlind (Organizer of Mashup Camp)

And some more of us…

• Fernando Belmonte (Very curious developer)
• Larry Bouchie (RSS Rocks!)
• Mark Doerschlag

Dave Winer is in Cambridge, starting the New Year off right.

Thanks for treating me to breakfast, Dave, and for posting your photo of me (mouth open, of course!)

Who else is local to Boston? Come to this Thursday’s blogdinner (Jan 5) at Cambridgeside Galleria food court…

Dear Frank Paynter–

How do I blog? Ay caramba! ;-)

Here are just a few things I didn’t blog in the past week, because I didn’t have time to type out the words they deserved:

1) From the NH courtroom where James Tobin is on trial: Why does Tobin’s high-priced DC lawyer rhapsodize to the jury about how warm and wonderful Tobin is–while keeping aloof when given a chance to interact with the wonderful man himself? Why do thousand-buck-per-hour lawyers wear suits whose cuff-buttons have no buttonholes? Why do young lawyers take notes on legal pads while young reporters take notes on steno pads? Surely the human hand-wrist anatomy is the same for both.

2) From NYC: The American Museum of Natural History has a handsome exhibit on Darwin (live tortoises!) and a glorious IMAX movie about the Galapagos Islands–but both of them include too much repetitive preaching about evolution. Lighten up, guys. Also, I recommend the Millburn Hotel and nearby Niko’s Restaurant (“sensible eating at sensible prices”, 76th St. at Broadway.)

3) From last night’s party: Richard Oldenburg (former director of MOMA and brother of Claes) reads the NY Times cover to cover every day. He says “That’s my Internet.” He was shocked to hear how I read news online: “But so often the most fascinating thing you read is something that you weren’t looking for at all.” I admitted that the riches of Internet search are wiping out much of this real-life serendipity–the book on the library shelf that catches your eye because it is next to the book you wanted.

Tool-istically, I use Manila on weblogger.com because that’s where I started out. When I started blogging, Paul Boutin was the only blogger whose blog i had ever read–and he used Manila on weblogger.com. QED.

Although you have made me feel a whole lot less guilty by admitting that you haven’t had time to share audio of Dervala saying “posh totty.” Ha ha ha ha–at least I’m not holding back something so magnificent!

All best, you babe-magnet you,
Betsy

…at least that’s the message from my del.icio.us bookmarks:

• How to Start a Startup (Nick Denton)
• How to Start a Startup (Evan Williams)
• How to Start a Startup (Paul Graham)

Then, if you want some venture capital, you need this bookmark: How to Write a Business Plan.

Sadly, according to yet another bookmark, Venture capital is totally dead.

But don’t cry, I have one more bookmark, to save the day: How to Start Your Own VC firm.

I was out of town for the Corante Symposium on Social Architecture, but got to hang out at two fine afterparties, the first hosted by Charlie Nesson and the second one BlogHer-centric but gender-mixed.

It was great to meet (finally!) BlogHer-oine Lisa Stone and to share lunchtime musings with Liz Lawley. Not enough time to hang out with the hellacious Halley Suitt, or with IdentityWoman Kaliya Hamlin, David IsenbergDavid Isenberg, Phil Wolff, Kevin Marks…

(And curses on the evil forces that kept away conference-attenders David Weinberger or Frank Paynter or Tony Kahn, folks I would have loved to see there.)

Thanks to the tag-errific Mary Hodder for inviting me and to all of you guys for letting me rant about reputation systems.