I made the reallySimple package for Node.js because I wanted to make it as easy as possible to read feeds in Node apps. It should be as easy as reading a file. Give it the URL of a feed, get back a JavaScript object that's as simple as feeds are. It can read RSS, Atom and RDF feeds, but you get the same object regardless of what form the feed was in. I'm up for creating some example apps if you're interested. There is a very simple Hello World app included in the package and a set of demo apps. It's MIT-licensed, so you can do whatever you want with the code. It would lovely to see it ported. The idea is to plant some seeds in the Node.js world to make it easy for developers to try out new ideas with feeds, figuring the easier it is, the more people will do it. Be creative. Blow our minds! :-)

The question has come up in various contexts, is a Substack feed a blog? Yes, I think it can be. For some reason people thought I'd say no. In 2003, I compiled a list of things that make a blog a blog, and it's not about the software you use, rather it's about who's writing it, and whether they're being edited. Now it's a different question to ask if I would use it. I would not. Because it forces you to use their editor. And that's a pernicious form of lock-in. It might sound like a small thing, but it means you can't easily try out something new. You are not available to other software developers as a possible user, so no software will be designed for you. I know how well that kind of system works. And that's probably why they lock you into using their editor. If I can't switch without breaking everything, I'm not going there.

Mathew Ingram asks if AI will save us or kill us. It could both save and kill us. That's what's so disturbing about evolving. We live such short lives, people aren't really design to evolve, but because of medicine and other tech, we are often forced to do it. Evolution can c...

I keep writing on my hybrid WordPress/Mastodon blog at my kitchen table. This morning I wrote about why I don't believe in the Ya Gotta Believe, a baseball slogan coined by a 1973 Mets pitcher Tug McGraw. It's on-topic because the Mets are in a challenging series with the Do...

Gruber gave me an idea when he put his NYY logo on his blog. I thought that was both interesting and weird. I don't get how anyone I know can be a fan of the that team. An American League team in a National League city. Kind of like rooting for Staten Island. Anyway, the Yankees may win the ALCS, but what does it mean? It's not going to make New York love them. But then Gruber is in Philadelphia so why isn't he thinking about the Phillies, who btw, the Mets beat soundly in the division series, earlier this month. In any case, I have made the team picture of the 1969 world champion Mets as the banner image on Scripting News for now and into the forseeable future.

BTW, I've been too busy to keep up with the Podcast0 feed. Not sure when I'll be able to pick it up again.

Threads just added an online status feature, where it'll show your icon to others with a green dot if you're online. I turned it off. I don't see this as a social network, I see it as a two-way publishing medium. Big fundamental difference. My words speak for me here and on Threads. It's a strong argument in favor of "Follows" being the default algorithm, btw.

Everybody's maxing out on Wordle today. I stopped with one step left. Stumped. I may lose my streak today. A lot of people are.

A long time ago I ran a free service called weblogs.com. It was the early days of blogs. RSS didn't exist yet, so there was no way to find out which blogs had new stuff other than going through your blogroll and clicking links. So I built a simple server, running in Frontie...

Highly recommend today's Olbermann podcast. I've seen video of a recent press interview where Trump said he's use the military to arrest and in some cases kill Americans, starting with but not limited to Hispanics. This is not being reported in the major news orgs. We can't wait for them to fix it, we have to create new channels for news flow that have credibility and work, and we need it before the election. People need at least have a chance of understanding what they are voting for.

Someday I have to reboot Bingeworthy, it's the software snack I miss the most. It broke when Twitter broke their identity system.

BTW, why doesn't Netflix buy Metacritic and integrate their ratings aggregator in their user interface. I predict I'd watch far more stuff on Netflix than I do now. Or Apple TV, Max, Hulu, Disney, etc. The idea that such a valuable resource is not part of the user experience is crazy imho. What a waste. What reminded me of this is Plex has integrated the equivalent of Bingeworthy in their service, which is also a good idea and will glue communities of users to you. The idea is to systematize recommendations. If I know a specific friend liked a movie or a show is valuable information for me, not just advertisers.

Textcasting shows up as a slight blip or less on Google Trends.

I am totally having a blast with my hybrid blog, built by textcasting WordPress and Mastodon. Just wrote a post about the day the NYT signs off, finally realizing how fcuked we are if Trump is elected or manages to steal the election next month. Their final headline in this story is GOOD LUCK AMERICA.

I would switch to any podcatcher that let me edit my subscription list outside their app, because I use that list in different contexts, also because I’d like to share my list with others, and would like that to be a dynamic connection, so I could add feeds as I learn about them, or remove feeds that have stopped updating. Also because there are lots of others, aka influencers who’d like to too. You’d own the market if you did this.

The common denominator between journalism, business and politics is that none of them have any respect for people. To rise in influence, money or power you have to give up imagination, and be ruled by cynicism. If you don’t believe this, show me a journalist who listens, a business that makes products for thinkers, or a politician who lets individual people lead them.

Cynicism isn’t always the right explanation. Sometimes people just want to share something good with you, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re stupid, maybe they just like you.

Well we know who the Mets are facing, starting tomorrow, in the league championship series.

Last time we played them in the postseason we kicked their ass. And now they have the nerve to show up again. Geez some people never learn.

And we haven't forgotten how Chase Utley broke Rubin Tejada's leg, deliberately, basically ending his major league career. We thought he should have been arrested for that, no kidding -- it was a vicious un-baseball assault. He and the Dodgers showed no remorse.

BTW, the reason there's such a confluence of power between WordPress and Mastodon is this. WordPress has a complete, debugged, deployed, scaled and frozen API. It's been around since 2016 or so. In contrast Mastodon, while they're doing excellent work, is trying to wrangle a...

Summarizing the last 18 years on the web. Between Twitter and Google Reader, the web was cut into two, and they didn't get along. We may now be on the cusp of fixing that. Why? Because WordPress and Mastodon work with each other in unforeseen ways. We got lucky, because I don't think this was done consciously by the developers of either product.

I have a morning ritual which begins with breakfast and iced coffee, and my laptop, on the kitchen table, to review the news, sports, whatever. Write a few tweets or share a few links. Usually with WNYC playing in the background until I find something I want to read carefull...

A tweet that says something that's obviously true until you realize it's not. "No kid remembers their best day in front of the TV." In fact I have four memories from my youth, watching TV. I remember my father rolling around on the floor when the ball went through Buckner'...

I'm posting development notes on the wordland product in my wordpress/mastodon account. I'm starting to like using the new editor. Today I switched the format we save drafts in from HTML to Markdown. More consistent with my believe that Markdown is the ideal subset of web writing features for the social web.

Isn't it weird that businesses work hard to get better position on Google search, but fight the other way with AI to be excluded. At some point they will could realize that one of the approaches isn't correct.

Quick note about last night's Mets win over Philly. The series is over, the next game on Sunday will be against the winner in the west, either San Diego or Los Angeles. Last night's game was stressful, low scoring, until the Mets star shortstop hit a freaking grand slam home...

Thanks for all the good wishes re the 30th anniversary of the start of blogging here. It's not the same as it was at the beginning, but it's still pretty good. And to all the friends no longer with us, and there are plenty of them -- you are appreciated, respected and missed.

Summary of my posts about New Orleans in December 2005.

December 2005: Biloxi/Gulfport after Katrina.

After Katrina I went to New Orleans to see what was left, esp in the areas where there was a 15-25 foot storm surge in coastal Mississippi. If you went inland from the coast for a few miles there was nothing left. No trees, only a few skeletal all-concrete buildings where the beach used to be, otherwise everything destroyed. What you don't necessarily realize that it isn't just 15 feet of water, it's 15 feet of stormy ocean with cars and building debris being pushed around floating in the water. This video on Threads provides a visual illustration of what a 9 foot surge is like.