the ryan king

My friend Adam has started a blog. I’d like to think my ‘encouragement’ had something to do with it.

I recently finished reading The Cluetrain Manifesto. To be honest, there wasn’t much to surprise me. That could be, however, because I read the web version long ago and have been reading blogs like Doc Searls, Scoble and Gaping Void for quite awhile. If you can’t get a Clue by reading them, I’m not sure you can get it at all.

For my friends who’ve never heard of the Cluetrain Manifesto, it is a must-read for any intellectual blogger, anyone who cares about Internet culture. At the same time, however, it seems to be one of those books that is strikingly obvious, but only in retrospect.

I’m sure that, by now, most members of the blogosphere have read Dvorak’s article, Podcasting: Not Ready for Prime Time. I know this is slow in coming, but I have a response. Though I quote in blocks below, please read the whole article.

After praising the idea of Podcasting, Dvorak states:

For one thing, you have to wonder how long the trendy, overhyped iPod will dominate the portable music player market. I suspect that once people figure out that it’s an overpriced toy, they’ll come to their senses. Either that, or they’ll do so when every Nokia phone becomes an MP3 player.

Holy FUD Batman! First of all, Apple makes iPods specifically for Windows machines! Secondly, Podcasting works with more than iTunes and iPod (the name is somewhat unfortunate is this regard). Also, “overpriced toy”? This is pure shit- one man’s toy is another’s tool. Yet, Dvorak continues…

What I’m saying here is that the podcasting idea, designed around the Macintosh, will probably have to reinvent itself fast, if it’s going to be much more than another short-lived cool idea for Macheads.

“No, John, no. You’ve got it wrong again!” I’ll be hearing that from the crossover Mac/PC users. You don’t need a Mac or an iPod to make this work, they’ll argue. Yes, everything can be made to work if you fool around long enough. But today’s beleaguered user wants instant gratification. When initiatives developed on the Mac cross over to the PC side, they never work as well as they do on the Mac.

Wake up Dvorak, its already reinventing itself. People are “fooling around with it” in order to eventualy make it point-and-click easy for everyone to do. And of course “today’s beleaguered user wants instand gratification,” that’s why they use Windows instead of Macs… wait, no they don’t. And, as a side note, should something this cool be a reason to switch, rather than a reason to bash? If there’s a party going next door, don’t bitch about how the party isn’t at your place- join the party. :-)

And while Macheads will huff and puff about Windows and how much better the Mac is, they are always wrong. The fact is Mac developers are Mac developers and they can seldom get things to work properly on a Windows machine. They don’t want to put in the extra work.

Huff. Puff. First of all, I’m not sure how this phrase: “can seldom get things to work properly on Windows” implies that the Mac isn’t better than Windows. Perhaps some people use the Mac because they don’t want to do “extra work.” Personally, I dont enjoy wasting my time fixing computers– I prefer things to just work.

Secondly, I don’t think anyone who uses “always” to describe human behavior should be given any credence.

Next Dvorak goes on to describe his experience with ITConversations. First of all, ITConversations is not the typical podcast site, since it allows streaming. Anyway, he eventually ends up downloading an MP3 (even though he tought it was streaming) and listens to it.

What Dvorak doesn’t get here is that his experience was not Podcatching. The innovation in Podcasting is the Last Mile delivery. I’ve always been able to download MP3s and put them in iTunes and on my iPod. The innovation of Podcasting is that I can subscribe to Podcasts and this process is done automatically. So, in that sense, Dvorak hasn’t even tried Podcatching.

And finally:

Will this podcasting idea take off? It’s essentially the newest form of push technology.

No, its not. Its post and poll.

I’m not sure what caused it, but John Dvorak is a bitter man, and uninformed.

Alright, this is something I’ve been thinking about for awhile. I think it might have been a post by Tim Bray that got me thinking about this, but I can’t seem to find that posting now.

I’ve noticed my computing habits are changing and coming more inline with my own tendencies. First, a confession… I still bookmark webpages. I know, accorind to O’Reilly, its better to just use Google to find it later. The problem is, I’m don’t always remember what it is that wanted to remember. That makes these webpages, as Rumsfeld would say, unknowable unknowns.

Ok, so I still want to collect links, but having a hierarchical organization just doesn’t work. For example, where would The Scalable Webmail HOWTO belong? It could fit under email, web development or php, just to name few. Actually, it belongs under all of them, but its not useful to have multiple copies of a bookmark. Del.icio.us to the rescue. For those not familiar with del.icio.us, it is a “social bookmarks service.” That means you can post your bookmarks to the site and share them with others. For example, you can see mine here. My favorite feature? Tagging. Forget organizing into folders, just tag links.

This leads me back to my main point. My tendency in off-line life is to be unorganized with my stuff. I generally don’t care where I put something, just so long as I can find it. There is no “right place” for things in my mind, only places where I can find things. My online life is becoming more like that. As search becomes better (I can’t wait for Spotlight in Tiger), electronic organization becomes less important. As long as I can still find things, who cares where they are.

Ok, as soon as I got this powerbook I decided I’d write a review of my first impressions. I’ve had it for over a week and I’m just now getting aroud to writing this up.

1. I love the screen. I know its not significantly larger than the iBook 14″ I had, but the widescreen makes a significant difference. In terms of screen space, I’d always rather have more width. Most windows don’t need to grow taller, but I could always have more widows open side-by side. +1
2. The dev tools weren’t installed and there wasn’t a CD, so I went digging for the last CD version I had then downloaded an updater. It was only after this 2 hour ordeal did I realize that there was an installer package in /Applications. +0 for Apple (should have a CD), -1 for me
3. The trackpad feels coarser than my iBook was. Perhaps my iBook trackpad was broken in after 2 years of use -1
4. The keyboard is more comfortable +1
5. ONLY 256M of RAM! I know I could have ordered more if I’d bought from the Apple store, but that’s a rip off. In my opinion, no G4 machine should even be offered with 256M of RAM, 512 would be my bare minimum. My 1.33GHz G4 feels slower than my 800MHz G3 (w/ 680MB of RAM) was. OS X is RAM hungry, why won’t Apple feed it? I just ordered a 1G RAM stick to solve this problem -1

+1 for Apple, -1 for me