Posting with the WYSIWYG text editor to my Radio weblog. MacOS 10.2.6, Mozilla 1.5a.
Probably the last post from my Powerbook. I'm wiping it out
tomorrow and writing zeros to the drive for a couple of days.
All posts by warwick
Mitch Kapor on IMAP
IMAP with its multiple Inboxes and multiple sets of mailboxes adds cognitively complexity to the user model. Maybe it can be hidden. Maybe well-designed clients only expose more complexity incrementally. Maybe there are ways to bring people, self included, gently up the learning curve. But none of that has been my experience yet.
Apple's Mail.app has hidden some of the multiple mailbox issues you mention. I have two IMAP-enabled mail accounts that appear to be one. When I click on the “IN” box, the aggregated content of box actual in-boxes appear. I can choose to view either mailbox separately or both at the same time.
I have noticed that not all IMAP servers work quite the same way. Also, Apple's Mail.app does carry a frustration: try using the contextual menu to move a message. You are presented with a scrolling contextual *submenu* that has a list of *every* mail folder on every server. I have somewhere north of fifty. Ouch.
Send Steve to BloggerCon Update
Send Steve to BloggerCon Update
I want to put out an update about money usage for the trip. Some of the money criteria has changed for the better:
Transportation: I had originally budgeted $500 for a plane ticket, but I'm reducing it to $200. I've made the decision to drive, a 2 day trip one way. That adds an additional hotel stay into the budget; more on that later. I chose driving because it gives me the most freedom and frankly is the least expensive. It also allows my wife to go with me. She tells me she'll be happy to spend our money in the shops of Boston while I'm learning all about RSS and how it can change the world.
Lodging: I'm reducing it to $200 from $500. An old friend of mine lives in Waltham and will allow Tammy and I to stay for gratis. Bless you, Jason–you are making this trip possible. The $200 in the budget now accounts for my hotel stays on the road (one night each way).
That brings us to a new total: $500 for the conference, $200 for transportation, $200 for travel day lodging, and $200 for meals–$1100. With $105 pledged, we are now under the $1000 mark left. If Harvard and Dave will allow me to attend as a member of the press (I'm writing two articles for the Springfield Business Journal), then we can eliminate some of the conference fee.
Finally, we'll have a laptop issue. My Powerbook is (nearly) sold, so I'm going to spend some time with my local Apple dealer to aquire a Powerbook for the conference. Failing that, my Handspring Treo and Radio's mail-to-weblog feature will see me through. I'll need a better email client for the Treo, though.
To all who have kind words: encouragement is one of the best drugs you can give the human brain. Thanks!
Corn Roast 2003 Day One
Steve Gillmor's hammer hits a nail
This is dynamite. Can you hear the fuse sizzling? It makes me want to by the dev licenses and skip my Manila crash course. I think that Radio can be modified to do this. Needless to say, I'm jumping on this first thing next week.
With Microsoft taking the Longhorn view, Chandler betting on RDF, and Sun postponing OS/X OpenOffice to '06, what can we do in this lifetime? After video conversations with Gary Burd, Dave Sifry, and players to be named later, here's the plan:
1. Get Panther. This will cost $500 for an entry level developer license today.
2. Investigate the new Mail APIs and the new TextEdit developer kit (if it exists).
3. Develop Gary Burd's idea of a brute force private Google built on top of a local IMAP store hosted in Mail.app.
4. Produce NetNewsWire plug-in from #3's work and contribute it to Brent Simmons with all possible speed.
5. Use NNW plug-in framework to develop additional extensions for converting iChat AV/AIM/Rendeyvous presence and message attempts into RSS feed.
6. Investigate wiring #5's feed to iSync for persistent calendaring and scheduling.
7. Work with Mozilla-based cross-platform aggregators to migrate to Windows/Linux base.
8. Watch Microsoft and Google scramble to catch up.
BlogShares and Joe's Crazy Game
To those sending me gifts from BlogShares:
I'll be contributing, but this weekend is my family reunion, so I'll hit the list on Monday. I'm buying up some 'blogs tonight and will continue tomorrow, so I'll have some to give. I'm using the shares I'm given to sell to make cash so I can buy blogs and give them away. So philanthropic!
Brent Listens to Users
Brent, this is my single most favorite (grammar?) feature in NNW now:
HTML differences
I’m going to be writing about new NetNewsWire features for the next few days… Here’s another one: HTML differences.
I read this later in the same post:
That leads to a little advice for app developers—your users are smart. The list of features I didn’t think I’d like, but that I did anyway because people asked for, is pretty much the list of cool features in NetNewsWire. (Groups, for one thing. The Combined View is another big one. And so on.) [inessential.com]
Thanks for including this comment, Brent. It's one of the reasons I was thrilled to send you the money for the “pro” license for NNW. You write for and listen to your users. NNW is the only app that I want to use to read aggreagated RSS feeds.
How BloggerCon has changed me
BloggerCon has changed me. A single event has given me a focus that I haven't had for four years. My sleepy eyes have been trying to open since the fall of 2000 when I stopped doing training for my company and went back to being a technical consultant.
I've always been an idea person. I've been able to string together odd ideas into interesting proposals. Ask any of my friends about my bright idea about a library selling books. I kicked that idea around for two years before Amazon made good use of it. :>
RSS and it's related technology environment has inspired me like no technology before it. I pursued my CCNA, getting half way through it (reading about routing IPX frames over ISDN is a guaranteed cure for insomnia) before I gave up. I sold the books last week and bought “Designing With Web Standards” by Jeffrey Zeldman and “CSS: A Definitive Guide”[Amazon Link] by Eric Meyer. I'm saving money for a proper install of Frontier on MacOS X and am working through an oldie but goodie: “Frontier: The Definitive Guide” by Matt Neuberg. I bought it from an Amazon affiliate with a good rep and it came in good condition. It's amazing how much of it is still correct.
I've spent the last week explaining RSS, content syndication and XML to everyone who would listen. More often than not, I found myself explaining why content syndication has changed how I use the web. Of course, business wanted to know how to exploit the technology. I avoid conversations that talked abut advertising, instead focusing on the use of RSS and a delivery format for internal information: HR benefits, marketing info and sales stats. In my current company, we use web servers, databases and HTML to deliver content. In order to tell people, we send out mass emails that most don't need and don't remember. With RSS feeds we could eliminate the notify email and make broadcast information more manageable. After this conference, I'll become the local expert and evangelist on RSS, XML and content syndication. It will be the biggest thrill of my professional life and the biggest opportunity.
Finally, in this oddly structured post, I'd like thank Dave Winer for his efforts: popularizing RSS, Radio Userland, DaveNet, moving the spec to Berkman and BloggerCon. Before his inspiration and infectious enthusiasm, I never would have done this, this, this or this.
Doc's Mom
Doc, my prayers are with you. God Bless you in the following days.
“Mom at 90”
Mom passed away yesterday afternoon, surrounded by people who loved her, and could hardly imagine a world without her smile, her wit, her boundless love.
She's in the credits for countless lives, and at the top of mine.
These last two weeks were encores and curtain calls for Mom. In the last three days, when she could no longer speak, she stood on the stage and took in the applause, the gratitude, the love.
My sister says “Love” was her last word.
I'll never stop hearing it.
Site News
I'll be away from computers and technology for the next couple of days. It's my annual family reunion and I'll be manning the grill for roasted sweet corn. Expect some updates on Sunday.
I'm selling my Powerbook to allow me to upgrade to a newer machine and raise some funds for BloggerCon. My brother is deploying out to sea (he's a meterologist with the Navy) and he needs to sell his desktop machine. I'll set it up as the Radio server, allowing me to post from any web browser and read news. I still have my Handspring Treo, so moblogging will keep me busy on the road.
If you are interested in a great Powerbook at a great price, email me.
Steve Kirks 
