FeedCity

Dom Christie has an interesting idea related to listening lists. Aggregate all the shows from all the feeds in a list into a single feed. This seems brilliant because it reduces the implementation in the client to almost nothing, just rebuild a feed periodically, it could be done entirely in the client app. But it also could be something users could share with other users, sort of a meta-channel. I think it's brilliant with the caveat that sometimes when you implement it you find something that makes it more complex than it seems at first. This is the second idea I've heard that the initial listening lists idea spawned. I think there's a lot of unexplored possibilities here.

I am definitely the last person to hear about ListenNotes search engine for podcasts. It's incredible. Just starting to explore its capabilities.

I filled out the Podcast Ideas page I started as a placeholder on Nov 30. If you have a friend who works on a podcast client, please send them a pointer to this piece, or link to it from your social web accounts on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads or via your blog. Let's nurture and feed new features to the open podcast world, ones that helps creators and influencers build new networks that can only work outside of the silos. It's time to start moving the market again, it's been stagnant for far too long.

In Government Gangsters, Kash Patel identifies 60 individuals he alleges are part of a Deep State undermining the US government. Michael Atkinson: Former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. Lloyd Austin: Defense Secretary under President Joe Biden. Brian Auten...

Today's song: Where is the love?

I frequently have trouble remembering the names of things I want to use in my writing. I've come to rely on ChatGPT for help when this happens. So I wrote to ChatGPT: "I'm trying to remember the name of the stone that has the key to understanding a language." To which it replied: "You're likely thinking of the Rosetta Stone. It was crucial in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs because it featured the same text written in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic. The Greek text provided the key to understanding the other two scripts."

I was very happy to see this post on Bluesky this morning from a friend, Matthias Pfefferle, who works at Automattic on the connection between WordPress and ActivityPub. In his post he asks if there is a BDG for creating a PDS for Bluesky. A BDG is a Busy Developer's Guide...

We're looking for a Busy Developer's Guide to Bluesky's feed format.

BTW, another thing journalism is getting wrong, the FBI is not the squeaky clean organization they present it as.

President Biden pardoned his son. I have no problem with that, because his son was accused as a proxy for his father. If there is any legitimate use of presidential pardons, this is it. Perhaps relatives of the president should also be immune from prosecution. Does anyone really think Hunter Biden would have been tried for such petty crimes if he weren't Biden's son? The journalists, as always, have equated two very different things, and they should just be ignored. They're playing their own game, trying to self-pardon in a way, to avoid being a target for the incoming administration, which we're all scared of, and I guess that's the point, to make us scared.

WordLand is the easy editor that writers using WordPress always deserved. I updated the docs this morning to include very basic getting started stuff, and it now includes a link to a form where you can apply to be a tester. At this time it's limited to people who know how to write a bug report, how to find and read the JavaScript console in a web browser, and take a screen shot that shows clearly what went wrong. This the hardest part of getting a product fit for general use, and I'm too old to try to wrangle workable bug reports from well-intentioned users who basically aren't scientists. This time I'm determined to do this the right way without excess wear and tear on me. 😄

I'm using the term "RSS-based podcasts" in place of "podcasts" to make sure whoever reads it knows to ask the question of other "podcasts," are you RSS-based? The best answer is to encourage YouTube et al to just connect their "podcasts" to RSS and everyone's happy. Like "organic cheeseburgers." :-)

One way to help RSS-based podcasts is to promote individual episodes from the past. Sometimes shows are done, but the archive contains good stuff. Not everything is based on current events. Music, art, history for example.

The Big Interview with Dan Rather podcast is a gold mine, esp when political blogs basically have nothing to say at least for a while. Just listened to his interview with Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band and the Sopranos. There are nine seasons of this podcast between 2013 and 2021. Going to keep me busy for a while.

For the record, Bluesky has completely taken over from Threads. Threads is basically at zero, needs something to shake it up. Obviously this could be different for everyone. And engagement on Twitter is pretty close to zero. I still check in there periodically because despite what people say a lot of people I follow still post there. And I do too, since cross-posting costs me nothing. And it has been pointed out that deleting your Twitter account comes with a fairly huge risk. And if you do it, I wouldn't announce it, because anyone apparently can claim your account once it is completely deactivated. And that could create some problems for you. Probably better to hold the account indefinitely.

I've exported the data from Bingeworthy 2 in JSON and uploaded to a new public repo. It can be used to seed the ratings table for the updated instance.

And welcome to the time of year you can't remember what the day of the week is. For what it's worth today is Sunday. Feels like Monday?

And here, for the record, is the archive for November. A relatively lite month, only 87K worth of text. The norm is about 120K.

Welcome to the last month of Scripting News in the year 2024. Each year goes by faster and faster. And as we move forward in time, there's less room in front of us on the runway of life, and more behind us. At some point in the next decade my plane will probably take off. I feel a sense of urgency about getting it done. Still a fair amount on my todo list, but I'm making progress. As someone once said many times: Still diggin!

I wasn't clear enough yesterday. We're losing the word "podcast" very quickly. It's come to mean video interviews on YouTube mostly. Our only hope is upgrading the open platform in a way that stimulates the imagination of creators, and there's no time to waste. If you make a podcast client, it's time to start collaborating with competitors and people who create RSS-based podcasts to take advantage of the open platforms with no silo walls, otherwise having a podcast will mean getting distribution deals from Google, Apple, Spotify and Amazon. And they, as we know, are nuzzling up to the government leaders, who will want to impose severe limits. This isn't a casual request, it's urgent.

I've been working on a reboot of Bingeworthy over the last few days.

Today's song: I guess the lord must be in New York City.

Heres's where I'll post ideas to help podcasting stay open.

Think about primarying Democratic candidates not from the right or left, but from courage, intellect, and power in communication. People who say what they think and know if the press excoriates you, you can survive it, and the users will love you for it.

I want to add an important feature to podcasting that can only work with RSS, it can’t work with Spotify, Google, Audible etc. The idea is subscribing to subscription lists, which the influencers are likely to really love because they can create networks of podcasts. And when they want to edit the list, if this is done right, the users will automatically be updated. The RSS-based podcast industry just hasn’t been moving and if we don’t add features, improve the tech with new features for creators and users, then we deserve what we get. More on the technology to come in subsequent blog posts. But this is the core idea, just to get started.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate the holiday. What am I thankful for? Peloton for one. And living in the most beautiful part of the United States, except for all the other most beautiful parts. I know we're going to find our way out of this mess. My hope is we all sta...

Analogously, Trump is Kennedy and Biden/Harris is Nixon. And the social web is 2024, what TV was in 1960. Trump has mastered the new medium. To a large extent, he created the new medium, and the resulting network formed around him. So when Carville says he wants to figure o...

Every generation or two you hear about a few tech wiener boys who think after getting founders stock at a Silicon Valley company and getting his picture in Business Week or TechCrunch that he should run Africa or make up some country and for a minute tries doing it and no one pays much attention and a generation or two later it happens again, and the conclusion is that being a tech wiener boy doesn’t really prepare you to do anything but make a bunch of money once, be bored, and really nothing else. First time I witnessed this phenomenon was with a few product marketing wünderbrats at Apple in the early 80s, smart people (not kidding) but not nearly as smart as they thought they were. A big part was the serendipity of being in a Hobee’s or Buck's when Steve Jobs or a Kleiner partner was having breakfast after a big IPO.