In a Starbucks - with Phil Torronne and Beth Goza
“Starbucks coffee notes with Phil Torronne and Beth Goza in Kirkland, WA.”
Dave discusses various technology topics, including the potential for podcasting on XM satellite radio, the challenges of copying DVDs to portable devices due to DRM, and the capabilities of the Archos portable media player. They also talk about the benefits of open platforms that allow user-created content, like the example of World of Warcraft mods. Additionally, they explore the convenience and potential of devices like the SPOT watch that can receive RSS feeds and notifications.
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Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated.
It is Dave Winer here, I’m
with Beth, Dave again, say what
, goes up, and Bill Turone,
I’m going to have a crowd for
that name, and we’re in a
Starbucks in Kirkland,
Washington,
and we’re just having this
really interesting conversation
about lots of really
interesting
high-intensity things that I
thought, it’s about the laptop,
and turn this into a podcast,
so that’s what we’re going to
do.
So where were we? I guess I can kind of resume the conversation that we were starting.
We were both commenting on A udible and how they have a new R SS feed, which is great.
I was initially thrilled and then a little disappointed when I actually subscribed to it.
I subscribed to the technology feed and I’m like, “Oh, Neil, I ’ll be able to download and listen to some previews of the latest technology books, like maybe they can give me the first five minutes of the latest Science Friday, or if there’s any previews of the latest Brian Green book or whatever, that would be really neat. " But it’s just text, and it’s unfortunate because they’ve got a lot of great content, they’re not exposing any of it to the types of books.
It’s funny because they clearly put a lot of thought into their RSS feed, so they must have talked about that.
Do you think there were maybe DRM issues with it? I actually don’t think it’s DRM issues. I think it might come down to talent contracts of how they pay some guy to read the books or whatever, and it’s like, “Hey, we can’t. " It’s like actors and movies, and I don’t think they can do it, but maybe it’ll change.
What about looking ringtones out of MP3s? That was one of the things that we were just talking about.
By the way, I find it’s not a good idea to try to recap what we talked about before.
That’s what we talked about.
You know what, the second time I learned this in doing trade secrets with Adam is that basically the second time you tell a story, it’s really stale.
And everybody can tell what you told it before, especially when you have to refer back to the parts that you didn’t do. It’s like … Number one? Exactly. It’s better just to say, “Okay, that’s all behind us,” and whatever.
Well, some of the stuff I’m working on now is the… I don ’t know what I’m going to call it, but maybe the Open Jamster project. It’s going to point out that people are paying too much money for ringtones.
In fact, when you buy a CD or when you buy a song online, you should basically be able to turn it into a ringtone.
I think so, yeah.
I mean, there’s no reason. If you buy a CD, you can rip the MP3s onto your computer, put it on your iPod, that’s fine.
You can do all sorts of stuff with it for private use.
But for some reason, people have been tricked into thinking that if they like Snoop, they need to buy Snoop on their phone, and if they own a CD, it’s something different.
And so there’s this company called Jamster that they run the commercials all the time.
And anyone who has an insomnia like I do, as soon as it hits 11 o’clock on the side-byte channel on Comedy Central MTV, there’s these commercials that just like, “SMS, this number, get this ringtone,” and they have five or six different bands and really big names like P-Ditty or Snoop or whatever.
And what happens is they start charging you every month, a couple bucks, and they’re being investigated now for doing that when they’re not supposed to, or it’s like, “How can they not resist?” It’s like the Book of the Month club or whatever.
But wouldn’t it be great to actually start making these? Are there tools to make this? Yeah, there’s tons.
In fact, every time I talk to someone, and these are like, all of us are like programmers or hardware hackers.
No, no, you are. I’m totally all folks.
I mean, that’s why your gadget freaks, your guys who are allocated, gadget freaks like yourself are people with really good hardware karma, and guys like me have an absolutely negative hardware karma.
If you want something broken, just give it to me and I’ll take care of that.
So there’s this incredible synergy, symbiosis between people like me and people like you.
Basically, like, “Here, I want to show you something. You said you wanted to see this. " Yeah, you got the new Arcos, the Linux one, yeah.
Oh, you see the smooth reaction .
I bought the very first Arcos video player, the AV3 company.
Now, this one has Wi-Fi in it, so you could actually pick it up on the net right here.
This is the one that’s the PDA as well as video player, right? It’s basically got everything, including the kitchen sink.
But it also runs out of memory, too.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it’s a real Linux machine .
Any external storage? So, no external storage.
I was leaving for external storage.
No, but it has USB.
Yeah, I mean, it has USB both ways, so that can be a hard drive or you can attach a hard drive to it.
So, let me finish up about the ringtones, and then I want to talk about that.
Actually, I also want to ask you about Engadget.
Are you still working on Engad get? No, I’m pretty much doing make and popular science.
See, that was confusing to me.
All of a sudden, one day, you were showing up there at some other website doing something else.
Yeah.
And I don’t even know what Eng adget is.
I mean, Engadget’s still really good.
I like Engadget.
Yeah, I check it religiously every five minutes, because it ’s still great.
It’s a great gadget blog.
But how does it work without you? I didn’t get it.
I always thought it was all you .
No, no, no, no.
Whatever was? No, no.
Peter Rojas, he founded Gizmodo a long time ago.
Okay.
Then he went from Gizmodo to start Engadget.
And then, actually, Beth, believe it or not, played match maker probably a couple years ago.
I was invited to a conference, and Peter was invited to a conference.
She said, “Hey, you should sit next to Peter. " And this was maybe like a few months after that, I was looking to cut down my role at an advertising agency and write a lot more and just do a lot of things in technology to keep my hands dirty.
And I started writing with Eng adget.
And I thought, wow, this is a neat opportunity, because I thought that all the gadgets blogged out there didn’t do the most important thing, which is actually tell you how to use some of this stuff.
Engadget at the time had lots of links.
You know, gadget sites are pretty much press releases in some way, with 20 commentary.
I mean, the good ones are like the daily show.
Is that how you do it? They don’t actually get every one of the devices that they’re writing about? No, no, no, like if you look at any of the gadget blogs, most of it is here’s something new that just came out last week or whatever, and they point to a lot of the reviews.
But they generally don’t do them themselves.
Engadget, I think, has probably more reviews.
Was there anything like Engad get before it came along? I mean, where did they send the press releases before? Well, Gizmodo.
No, no, I understand.
But what I mean is before the blogs, I mean, where did the press releases go? I would say they probably went to your traditional newspapers and, you know… So they just created a new channel, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
In fact, I think there’s a checklist now if you’re probably in PR.
In fact, I know there’s a checklist in some PR agencies.
Like, make sure you talk to the following sites.
For gadgets, you know, Gizmodo and Engadget is always one of them.
Has this had any effect on the product development cycles in the industry? Do they go faster now because they can get the word out? Well, I’ll say this.
They get immediate feedback when they do something great and they get immediate feedback when they do something bad.
And so, when companies have different revisions of hardware , the smart ones start to talk to people earlier.
And there’s all sorts of reasons to do that, but the best reason is let’s do a sanity check with the people who see every gadget.
And let’s do a sanity check with the people who actually use these things on a day-to- day basis.
Now, the thing to watch out for , in my humble opinion, is the day when one of the editors of the gadget blog feels that they can become an manufacturer themselves.
That will happen.
I think they’ll see a need that the manufacturers you and I have been over this, actually.
Yeah, we corresponded about this.
Yeah, and when I said it before about the cube, you know, how it was easier for a user to become a manufacturer, that made sense, right? But it still works for gadgets, too.
It’s starting to change.
Because application is becoming easier to do.
I could design a much better iP od than Apple.
I’m not a practical designer of things of that size, shape, or even that genre.
I’m not a hardware designer.
But I can tell you, as a user, certain things that that thing is no good at.
With the Arcus, you have Linux running on it.
Potentially, you could make a different operating system.
Yes, yes, yes.
I mean, I have different pieces of an operating system to do different things.
I want Frontier running.
But you could make your own kind of loosely connected podcast aggregator that, as it found Wi-Fi that was open all the time, it’ll go You got it. That’s what I want.
So totally understand.
This would be a fun weekend, but you could probably do it in a weekend if you really tried hard and, you know, really bang ed at it.
And then to turn it into a real product, probably, you know, sometime.
In my world, there’s an example of that related to software, which is, I don’t know if you ’ve heard of the MMO game called “The Boardcraft. " Yeah, I’ve heard of it.
It’s huge.
It’s huge.
There’s like 12 million people on it.
Millions of players.
So one of the things that World of Warcraft did at launch was they completely opened up the interface.
So you could create modules for your in-game play.
So, for example, one of the things in the game is that you can buff other players.
So you make them stronger or whatever.
Somebody created a module, a little widget that you could plug in at the beginning when you launched the game that would show you the buff that much time was left.
Other people created modules for, like, map waypoints.
But the point was, after the first couple releases, there were a couple really popular mods.
There was CT Mod, and then there was another one.
At any rate, the third major upgrade, Blizzard actually implemented into the code some of the more popular user-c reated mods.
And so I thought it was really brilliant at Blizzard because now they have a community of, like, a million, two million developers making their product better, and then they put it into the, you know, functional main product.
And they’re like, “Look, you know, all these people are…” A million, two million developers. It’s Microsoft- sized, by the way.
It’s awesome.
I mean, that’s, you know, it’s going in the right direction, too.
Yeah, but I just thought it was really, it’s awesome because I ’ve seen in the tech industry times where there’s almost this resistance by the manufacturer or the software developer to just, because it came from the community, they almost are resistant to it for some odd reason, in a defensive way.
Yeah, the first time I heard that one.
In this case, they embraced it.
Sherpa Pascal was a juggernaut in the mid ’80s.
And Philippe Kahn, who was the head of Borland, said basically , you know, “You want to make good software has to be written in assembly language. " And I thought, “Well, what a missed opportunity because all these people, most of them kids, are learning about a program in this incredibly easy programming environment. " It actually, turns out, did produce commercial applications .
And, you know, so, I mean, it’s always a secret.
It’s like, anytime you produce a commercial product, it should also have the ability to create , you know, if it’s playing back content, it should have the ability to create the content, too.
Because then, while a very small number of people, you know, potentially, are going to actually use it for that, that’s where the whole thing starts.
That’s the Apple II.
Yeah.
That was the secret of the Apple II.
They didn’t triple it.
They were thinking about, like, “Oh, we’re going to create a product that people could, you know, make software on. " They put basic in there, thinking, “Well, you know, nobody’s really going to make real software. " But people did.
It’s like hypercard.
Like, we all said we do hyper card.
Exactly.
But it’s a secret.
You always, wherever you do your part, and it doesn’t have the ability to create content in it, then that’s thing them on it and help them see that they need to be able to do that.
I like the iPod when I install Podzilla on it, because I can record high quality audio, better than I like the iPod when I just get it out of the box.
It’s a version of Linux that runs on an iPod.
Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Install it.
Oh, yeah.
Instead of just recording it a killer.
Well, turn it into an Arcos.
Turn it into an Arcos.
Yeah.
And so I tend to like those types of products.
Like, exactly like you said, that not only is it a passive viewer, but it’s a content creator.
And, you know, imagine from the start, every person who had an iPod, was there 25 million or so now? Imagine if every single person had a high quality audio recorded device.
Well, that’s what I’m saying.
What would the world be like? Well, it would be great.
I mean, like, everyone would be doing what we’re doing right now.
Like, great conversations.
Well, no, of course not everybody.
Oh, well, maybe everybody would .
You know, it’s always… It’s not like a blog, like, live journal.
Some people don’t like live journal, but… No.
But who cares? Because like, the people who do it in their little community, they like it.
No, if you love great art, then you have to allow… You have to allow, you have to make it easy for everybody to do it.
So the 1% of the stuff that’s really wonderful has a chance to actually happen.
Right? You know, and that’s, you know, absolutely.
I also don’t believe in ideas like grassroots, because that says, well, you know, I’m like, you’re in the grassroots, right ? I mean, not too many people talk about grassroots.
Imagine that they’re down in the grassroots, right? So it’s like, you always want to create a level playing field .
You don’t want to create a new league.
And that’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe in podcast ing being white commercial radio , or like any of the centralized media that we’ve seen before.
And that’s the big thing that’s happening in, you know, our lif etimes is that, you know, media, I mean, we’re of different generations, you and I, but we were both born in the 20th century.
And in the 20th century, everything was centralized.
That was the big deal, right? And in the 21st century, everything’s totally flowing apart.
And it was just technological necessity that made it that way .
In order to create, you know, mass media, you had to have a huge printing press or a huge broadcasting statement.
Yeah, there’s a barriers of entries.
We’re so high.
So you and I, this could be, if we said something that was so brilliant that it set the world on fire, there would be no limits to anybody actually building here.
And not that we’re going to do that.
And with bits weren’t coming along.
And I was talking to Beth about this.
I just did an interview with some guys who make software that lets you make your own comic books.
And they’re on my Skype buddy list.
And literally, the spur of the moment, they just released their latest version.
It’s really great.
And I said, hey, you want to hop on Skype and do a recording and let’s talk about how people make their own comics.
So there we have a conference call over Skype for free.
And I recorded it.
And within a half an hour, it was up on the web.
People were downloading it and someone downloaded the application, listened to the podcast, installed the app, made a comic , sent it to me, sent it to them and put it on a Flickr site.
And that couldn’t have happened five years ago.
How did you create the reporting from the Skype phone? Well, no, that’s always true.
I have a friend over in the UK, Casso, who has that completely down.
Yeah, he’s my buddy.
He sent me Oh, really? Yeah, we correspond all the time.
Oh, he’s my buddy too.
He does a lot of great flash work.
Can you talk like James Bates? I’m sorry.
He did his little This is like Pokemon for people .
What? Oh, yeah.
Casso’s a big card, by the way.
Yeah, he is.
Yeah, he is.
Let’s go over there.
Let’s have a Casso developer conference over in London.
He’s doing a lot of so I did a lot of flash work in my Oh, OK, you’re flash-enabled.
com.
Yeah, so I wrote it was the name of one of the books that He’s a flash guy.
That’s the comic.
So I know well, him and I kind of know each other from the flash days.
But he did this really cool app that I’m running on a tablet PC that we’re going to put in in our kitchen, so I can watch and listen to podcasts.
The tablet’s going to hold down from underneath the counter, so I can watch dishes and look at a podcast or What do you mean, look at a podcast? Well, I could look at my Flickr stream, like photos going on, and maybe there’s a soundtrack that goes along with it.
Maybe there’s one of the video blog stuff.
Maybe there’s, you know, an RSS screensaver.
You know what just occurred to me that Oddblog, the thing that became Odeo, right? Oh, yeah.
That they could.
Of course, I think Skype is probably going to do this, right? The save to MP3 function, obviously.
Yeah.
It’s got to be something that they facilitate.
They do voicemail now, but it’s a different format so we can’t really Well, what we want is, ideally, I think, is just a checkbox that says, “Save this to my local hard disk in MP3. " But in the meantime, there are phone numbers you can dial that will create a recording of the conversation.
Yeah, I have that for the Make Podcast.
They can dial 206. 888.
All right, so here’s how you do it.
This is the simple way for everybody to do this.
Maybe.
We have to try it out.
But it is, okay, when you’re doing a conference call, just conferencing one of those services.
And then call that number.
Like, I have that every year.
They have it for free.
Yeah.
Eric Rice’s audio blog software that he has, you could call.
So Eric Rice, then, if he wanted to, could create a position for himself that he would.
I mean, because that’s the, you know, when I ask the question, how do you make a degree out of it? Yeah, it’s like Yeah, like, that’s the whole deal.
Yeah, so here’s the thing.
I just finished up an article that will be in our second issue of Make that’s like 15 pages of Podcast ing 101.
And it has everything I could I started out I used all free software.
So there are some limitations.
But basically what I used, I have There’s a couple of ways on a PC and a couple of ways on a Mac.
Here’s the way that I’m doing it right now.
There’s a Mac that is running a software called Linin and a software called WireTap.
And so basically the Skype call is started.
Yeah.
Sorry, Linin takes the microphone and the headset feed and puts it into one channel.
And then WireTap records that.
So it combines the microphone and the headphones into one stream and then records it to an MP3.
So I just add it into my audio editing software.
That’s the way I do it on a PC.
On a Mac.
On a PC, there’s virtual audio cable.
And there’s applications that do the same thing.
But it’s a piece of software that you have to install.
Some Windows machines or sound cards have a little checkbox called SoundMixer.
And you can route it all to Aud acity.
I do that on a Mac, too.
So Audacity.
But what happens if the machine has This is something I had early on with this machine.
Is that if it has a process on there that is particularly CBU- intensive, you’re going to screw something up.
You get clips and you get all sorts of things.
The other way that you can do it, and this is the way I recommend it into a lot of folks, because I ’ve written stuff on podcasting, so I always get a lot of emails , is you can have another computer that is just set up to be the conference call computer.
Like this one.
Yeah.
Or you can plug in a separate one.
Or you can do three Skype sessions.
So the person you’re talking to , you, and then a third computer .
And that third computer, all it does is record.
Right.
And that’s all instead of what you do.
And then you can plug in an external device to that and just record the reactor.
Or you can just record to Aud acity or whatever.
Or it could be a phone number.
Anything that can connect to a phone number is good enough.
There’s Skype, but Skype quality is hit or miss, too, I find.
It’s like, maybe half the phone falls.
It’s just unacceptably low quality.
I’ve been pretty lucky.
So far, I’ve been talking to people that have good wired connections.
We both have good USB headsets.
And it’s been better than, you know, telephone quality.
You like USB headsets, really? I do.
I do.
I’ve found that analog is the only one that really has, that really works.
I like the Plantronics Gamer headsets.
Or you would know.
Yeah.
Well, you know what it is.
I try to avoid having like an audio studio that no one else can have.
Yeah, you want to do that.
I like the podcast.
Yeah.
I like your setup because it’s just like laptop and microphone .
Well, I also won’t do any editing because I had to do the intro at the beginning in real time.
Otherwise, it ain’t gonna happen.
Yeah.
I don’t want to do it.
I’m all about like, if it, like I said before, I’m the, like I would, you know, 18 thumbs.
I can’t do any of the stuff, you know? But I can create a podcast.
That’s, you know, I think that gives some encouragement to a lot of people up here.
Yeah.
Because if I can do it, some of the same thing.
I think so.
And like, I try to keep my shows, and I, it’s a weird term .
I try to keep them pure, which means anyone can go and have a PC or Mac and do the same thing I did.
And that’s pretty much it.
Why are you laughing? Thursday night, I was sitting on the couch and Phillip goes, we just got a new car.
And we picked it up on Friday and it’s an Alexis hybrid that just came out.
Oh, really? Yeah.
And so Phillip goes, “Hey, Ben, you want to come over and talk about the car tomorrow?” And so we just did a podcast, you know, in our PJs at 11. 30 at night.
Yeah, that was great.
And it was great.
It was, you know, because thinking about it, I don’t know , it’s like when can you capture real-time and experiencing having, and then you kind of share it out within 20 minutes.
And now, you know, we get feedback from other owners or questions.
And it’s just the ability to share information in real-time now is incredible.
And I kind of like that, you know, there was no script or anything.
I mean, literally, Ben kind of sprung this on me.
She was like, “We’re getting a new car. " You know, here we go.
And I’m like, “Okay, why are we getting a new car again?” And then I said, “Oh, wait, let ’s record this. " Yes, exactly.
The moment everybody likes about it is that you get, it’s a, you know, we’re social species and, you know, look, the programming that’s devoid of any humanity makes us less human.
You know, when I was growing up in New York in the ’60s, the W LR radio had a few shows that were reported in people’s living rooms.
And these were socialites, okay ? They were like the, you know, the people you’d read about in the gossip columns.
And they would have their friends over in the coffee in the afternoon.
And they had their living rooms .
They literally was in their living room.
And they had the living rooms mic’d up in the studio.
And it would be live on the air .
So they’re the first podcasters .
They were live on the air.
I mean, they weren’t using RSS.
Yeah.
I mean, it’s like, but, but yeah, I mean, that’s kind of where, you know, that’s the benchmark.
And the radio used to be like that.
I mean, of course, they were, you know, putting on airs.
And they weren’t really telling their stories.
And of course, they weren’t waiting for jobs.
Although, for all we know, they weren’t.
Yeah.
They could have been naked, actually.
The thing I would like to see is, we’re in a Starbucks.
The thing I would like to see is we have XM satellite radio.
And I think one of the things that could be really possible is if XM created a public access channel for satellite radio, where people publish their podcasts, and then it would just stream all day.
I think that’d be fun.
That’s why I say that too, is that it isn’t medium dependent.
No.
Or distribution.
It’s medium.
There’s a difference between a distribution mechanism and a medium.
Yeah.
I mean, podcasting’s a medium, but it can be distributed over podcasts.
I don’t know if they’ll do that .
I think it’d be interesting.
You know, the thing that XM and Serious Radio doesn’t have is a technology show.
They really don’t.
And so, most of the, many of the podcasts that first came out, you know, the Engadget one that I did and now the Make Audio one, it’s technology-centric.
And I think, you know, if I can keep up the work and keep it interesting, that would be kind of a fun thing because there’s really not, like, there’s, I think there’s been a demise of technology shows on television.
And I think, unfortunately, you know, G4 went to a gaming network, and that’s fine, you know, that ’s what they decided to do.
But there really isn’t the science and technology shows for anybody out there.
So what if we could use XM as- Well, there’s Kim Commander.
Yeah.
She’s not bad.
She’s actually pretty good.
You know, I’ve done a lot of driving cross-country.
AM radio sometimes is all there is, and Kim Commando is something I’ve looked forward to, and, believe it or not, like, the right-wing Republican so- called conservative, you know, Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, I used to hate Rush Lim baugh.
Actually, now that I’m a, like, radio guy, you know, like, I do this stuff, I can sort of, like, appreciate his techniques, or actually- I like Ira Flado.
I got lucky, and I actually was on Science Friday.
You’re right, Ira Flado.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I find him, like- Oh, no, I love that guy.
True.
So I got lucky, and I was on the show talking about when we released Meg.
I got to talk to him, and we talked about stuff, and what we see was all these people who called in, and they’re like, ‘cause we invited, you know, callers.
And the neat thing is, and this is what we’re gonna have in the future shows that I do, you know, when people call in, they’re like, “Hey, I have an old PC. What can I do with it?” “Hey, I have an old cell phone.
What can I do with it?” So what we decided to do with Meg Audio is allow people to call into our Skype voicemail or our voicemail service.
Right on.
And so people leave questions.
So today I got one that said, and I get them delivered on my phone or whatever device I have .
Well, this is your first podcast.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And so people are like, “Hey, I ’ve got this- I got a Trio 650, and I want to use it as my full -time computer.
What software do I need to use ?” I got all these negatives from my camera.
Should I print them real, or should I do them- You love that, right? Oh, it’s great.
You love that, yeah.
It’s great because there’s all these people who, and the one that I like the most is, so I bought a portable video player.
How do I get my DVDs on it? And that’s the big thing.
It goes along with what we were saying before.
Yeah, I kind of have that problem myself.
It’s a huge problem.
So for me to put a video on- I got a PlayStation portable, and if I want to put something off of a DVD on my PlayStation portable, I have to put it into a DVD player that- can I talk about this? Yeah, sure.
Why can’t- why might she not be able to do that? Well, so here’s the thing- We have a DVD player that strips the macro vision.
That lets you record from it.
Most DVD players don’t want to.
Well, everybody must have all the ones that show up on Victor .
Yeah, yeah.
So I don’t know if that’s a bad or not, but I take it and I transfer it to my ARCOS to make it into an ABI file, and then I put it on my laptop, and then there’s a freeware app that I transfer it to the format for the PSP.
So at the end of the day, after I go through all that, it’s like screw it.
You could have watched the movie.
I could have watched the movie like a million times.
So that’s what I found here, too.
It wasn’t worth the trouble to get it.
Yeah, it just breaks my heart.
So this is the type of emails and voicemails I get left now.
It’s like- it’s a mob who has kids, and they have a little portable video player, and they want to use that instead of DVD s or something.
Every one of your programs is in anachronism for years now.
Basically, you know, you’ll have to explain to your kids why DRM existed and how the record industry- you know, how we assassinated them.
The interesting thing is, though, the people have been trained to take a CD and put it on their computer, and they can put it on their iPod or whatever.
Now that people aren’t getting portable video players, they want to take the DVD and Tony, I should- Well, we were raised on the VCR , so it’s just still hard to understand why you cannot record your own video.
And we have a special DVD player that you enter in a code , and it’ll let you record whatever’s playing from the DVD player.
And that’s how we get our movies onto our portable video devices.
Which means for personal use.
Yeah, it’s not like we’re not- No, I’m the same way. I mean, I pay for everything I use, and to me there’s nothing worth more than something that I find uplifting or happy.
I mean, I’d love to spend it on things like that. You know, there aren’t enough ways to spend it.
Like, I have 2001 Space Odyssey , and I really like that movie, and I watch it probably a few times a year just because it’s a fun airplane movie if I want to trap it on the flight.
And I’m not going to use the same DVD. I have all these players and these portable devices that are better to view videos on.
These are familiar arguments, believe me.
Yeah, and it’s just funny because I get all these emails from just regular people, and it’s funny their process when they’ll send me an email and say, “Hey, I tried to drag my DVD onto my portable video player, and I thought that would copy it over just like I do with iTunes or whatever. " And they just know you actually can’t do that, and there’s all sorts of things, and I send them links and all that.
And so they’ll reply, you know, “Thanks for your help,” and everything, but when they reply , they say, “I’ll just do a Google,” and I found this program called Kizah, and it says “Download Free Movies,” or I heard about this thing called BigTorn or whatever.
So now there’s, you know, the soccer mom going out downloading software that might build a spiral.
So we have to be really careful about calling the criminals. We ’re trying to pick up the industry hype when you do that.
No, I don’t think they’re criminal. I’m just saying that ’s it.
Okay, so we should put that in quotes.
Sorry, criminally in quotes.
In quotes, double quotes. You put two fingers around it.
There should be an audio sound that everyone agrees on that’s the sound of quotes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
When I was a, I ran a software company in the 80s, and the copy protection was sort of the convention at the time.
Lotus had put copy protection in 133, and so we were all doing it the same way that they were doing it.
And then the users understood, finally figured out that software didn’t have to be that way.
That you could do it without those having to insert the key disk when you want to run the software.
And so I started getting letters from users saying, basically, well, you know, you ’re going to lose me as a customer if you don’t provide me with it.
And then with a way to do this without that, then Central Point Software came out with an utility that would do that, you know, basically for every good software, you know.
And then the users said, well, I don’t see why I should have to buy another utility to do this.
So then they started sending me floppy disks cut up in mail, and they weren’t running a campaign against the software.
And that was something at that moment there, you couldn’t ignore that. I mean, if you had a mind, a brain, and you were running a company, and people were sending your products back to the store, then you’d probably say you got a business issue going on here, and that you might want to take some place of attention to this .
I don’t know if I want to check the mail tomorrow if I’m getting the money.
Well, I had to check it. Yeah, we weren’t that profitable to begin with.
I had another experience. We were talking about people falling in. I was on a show on Vermont Public Radio, and they were, you know, typical, they were trying to present blogs as instruments of war.
And basically, we were all, like, warring with each other.
And, you know, I accepted the gig anyway. It was at Dan Gil more, it was an hour-long show.
And so the fallen people who called in, and we kept saying both me and Dan kept saying, " No, it’s not like that at all.
We’re not fighting with each other, basically. " Yeah, sometimes we do, but it’s not about, it’s not like, you know, facing off, it’s not life and death.
And so the callers, we had, like, five callers, and they all called in with all the constructive uses they were having with blogs that it was just delightful.
You know, they were just saying , you know, we have a small blog in our community in small town in Vermont, and we’re using it to keep an eye on the Public Ut ilities Commission, you know, and we’re getting all kinds of information.
You know, the Citizen Functions , Stony Brook Farms, you know, they have a corporate blog, the woman who runs the blog called in, and so I asked her, you know, “What are the constraints ? What do they tell you you can write about?” She said, “The only thing I’m not allowed to write about is our corporate secrets. I’m not allowed to, like, break non-dis closures. Otherwise, I can do anything I want to. " And Stony Brook Farms has actually gotten a good reputation because of that.
So it’s, you know, then at the end of the show, everybody, it was like Woodstock, basically.
Except the reporters still kind of wanted to make it, you know, because they’re going to view the world that way.
That’s when we know, when that is no longer the predominant way of looking at the world, then we’ll know that, okay, it ’s over with no longer doing next thing now, you know.
So tell me about the Sarcos, because I haven’t played with one yet.
No, no, no. Tell me about the Sarcos. You’re the expert on this stuff.
I’m not like, you know, I’m just the sort of like, Casso told me to get this, basically.
That’s what happened. So you blame him, basically.
So I haven’t got a chance to play with one of these yet. So what’s been your primary use for this? Well, I just got it. I mean, I left from Florida.
No, I didn’t turn it on.
Oh, okay. Well, you turned it on by pressing the button and then holding it down.
Oh, did you not get it on? No.
Oh, okay. You were sitting there falling, though. I thought you were crying.
I was a guy.
Yeah, you need to get the pen.
I felt like it was a nice Q- test and I was feeling miserable .
Really? Oh, I figured that one out.
Oh, it has a touch screen as well.
I wanted to try recording something.
Oh, it’s terminal. Let’s go.
I haven’t tried that yet.
Oh, I was going to say, can you SSH with it? Yeah, sure.
And you can also, it has Wi-Fi.
I mean, you could sign onto the Wi-Fi.
If you go down the bottom of the screen, you should see the … Yeah, I think ARCOS is incredible. They’ve just led the way on these devices and they’re still just kind of viewed as a small player.
Yeah.
Well, from the start, they’ve always had recording, you know, they’ve always had, they’ve always been, I think, ahead of the game.
Yeah.
It’ll be kind of interesting to compare that to the recording of the PC that we’re seeing right now.
Yeah, where is… There’s a sound recorder app.
Oh, well, I can’t see what you ’re doing, so… Yeah, let’s turn it around.
If you want to, right, the way to get to all the functional ities through this menu down here.
Right there? Down in the lower left corner.
Yeah.
No, no, you’re in that area, yeah.
Right, and then, so if you want to do pocket media system, would be where the recorder is, because that’s a media thing.
Okay.
And then that’s your video player, your music player, photo viewer.
Audio recorder.
Well, I wanted to go through it for the folks at home.
Yeah.
File browser, I’m not sure what that does. Video recorder, well , we don’t have the equipment to do that.
And so for video recorder, does it just go firewire or does it go and have a live, because we have… Oh, it has it… We have a camera attachment for our audio recorder system.
It has a, what do you call it, cradle, basically, that you drop it into.
And then it connects up to your … Can record it from TV or whatever.
Yeah, the idea is to record the West Wing.
And this is the Tivo, basically .
Yeah, yeah.
It’s not, obviously, the user interface is nowhere near as convenient as Tivo is.
Mine just has a little attachment on the side.
But of course, with software, it probably could be that.
But you have a shot, because you could probably write some applications for this.
Right, and they’re coming out with an SDK, and… That’s good.
Yeah, I need to get, in all seriousness, you know, we’ve made Frontier open source, and we need to get port to Linux.
That’s one of the reasons why I made it open source, so that we could get it on to something like this.
Once we do that, I’m going to be right now, so this thing for sure.
So, yeah, so you see the… Yeah, this is nice.
You’re recording stuff.
You’d have to actually hit this to start recording right here.
Little circle? Yeah.
There you go.
So this is a test.
Hello.
For the next 60 seconds, this … Yeah, you see the numbers going up? Yeah.
This is a test for the next 60 seconds.
The station will record it.
It will, you know, whatever.
And it looks like you have 44 kilohertz, 128K, and it looks like it’s probably 16 bits stereo.
So this is… That’s pretty sweet.
And the microphone is incredibly sensitive.
What I did was, I was sitting in the airport in Atlanta, the airport, a few days ago, and I put the headphones on and turned it on recording, and I could hear conversations that I couldn’t hear.
I’m just sitting there, and it was scary, actually.
That’s interesting.
Yeah, my hearing isn’t that good, I guess.
So, you know, the only thing I would say is, and this could be possible now, but I don’t see a port for it, is if this were to have a external microphone plugged in, then you pretty much have your little NPR station to go.
I mean, you can even do mixing and mix in intro music.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
This is the podcasting machine.
I mean, this is… You can’t stop it.
Yeah, you can’t stop.
And then what happens is you don’t have to save it.
And you connect the thing up via USB to the laptop, and it’s already in file, and the recording… It shows up as a USB drive or whatever, and so it’s all just straight up file format.
Yeah, it’s really high speed.
I mean, I was able to copy, you know, a movie across.
It’s pretty good.
You know, less than a minute makes big.
This kind of reminds me, it could be like the OQO almost.
What’s an OQO? That’s the really small PC.
Oh, but was that a PC on your wrist? Well, that’s a spot watch.
Oh, this is actually a fun thing.
So, yeah, here’s something that you’ll get a kick out of.
Take it off and see.
Sure.
Take it off.
We’re still close.
Yeah.
You’re taking my watch off.
Take it off.
So that gives me… What are all the buttons here? It’s in glance mode.
Is this a Windows machine? Yeah.
It’s a little . NET app.
Yeah, it’s a . NET app.
And I actually, I like spot watch a lot.
When it was released, a lot of people are like, “Oh, you know, this isn’t going to go anywhere . " But believe it or not, the most recent development with Spot is the most interesting thing.
And it came from outside of the company.
And you can actually get RSS feeds on it now.
So I have RSS feeds to get sent to my watch.
And I get headlines.
Because the problem with the Sw atch, I think, or not the Swatch , but just the Spot technology in general, you can only get news and content from the MSN sources.
So you can pick 10 or 15.
But you know what, if you’re a technologist and you bought a watch that gets wireless data, you know what you want? You want RSS feeds to all the blogs out there.
Where am I? You know how much I love hearing that.
Yeah.
Well, it’s exactly… So I’ve talked to Microsoft a lot of times, and they know it.
It’s the first thing that I heard as soon as the watch released, like, “Can I get RSS feeds?” Because everybody who is interested in this… That’s exactly the type of person.
Yeah.
Somebody who’s, like, capped in to the end of the grade.
Yeah, they don’t care about Britney Spears.
They care about what’s on /dots .
And then she could subscribe to your feed.
So that way you would have… Yeah, we have that set up now.
Yeah.
So that’s an easy way for you to get a quick message.
Well, what’s interesting to me is I’ve actually, probably in the last year, any major sort of breaking news item, I’ve gotten over my watch .
Because I’ll be… What’s an example? Like Pope Benedict… Well, when Martha Stewart got convicted, when they picked the Pope, when Condoleezza testified, you know, in front of the Senate committee, because I’ll be in a meeting, I could be in line at the grocery store or whatever, but it makes a noise or it buzz es, and it says News Flash, and then I push it, and, you know, when I see that.
But I’m addicted to the glance mode.
I mean, if you have kind of a … I hate hostage time.
If I’m not interacting with something, I get really kind of itchy and so… You call that hostage? Yeah.
Like when you don’t have an e- mail thing in front of you? Yeah, you know, waiting to go in to see the doctor? How are you doing right now? I’m actually… Well, I’m entertained, so I’m fine.
Well, we’re kind of like an RSS feed right here.
Yeah.
We’re a human aggregator.
Like this one.
I’m interested in, for example, craft-sued over alleged Javalia spayow.
Small California internet service provider has sued craft foods, and alleging the firm is responsible for thousands of illegal spam messages.
Is craft-sued the ones who make spam the meat product, or…? Well, that would be ironic.
That’d be funny.
But see, that makes me… And people say, “Well, how can you get news on your watch?” But what that does is it says, “I want to know more,” so then that leads me to go and search… It’s a notification system, more than anything.
So, like, I have a couple of blogs set up to send to my watch, and it works out great because, like, throughout the day, especially if I’m on a bus, or if I’m doing something where I ’m not going to pull out my cell phone, or I’m not going to open up my laptop, it’s just a different funnel of information.
Yeah, it also synchronizes… Well, what’s that product called, actually? It’s called MSN Direct.
Is the service… But the watch is called… The watch is… There’s swatch makes one, fossil makes one, sento… Where do you go to find that more? I think it’s MSN Direct. com.
Yeah.
But what’s nice is it also synchronizes with Outlook, and a lot of people say, “Well, I have my calendar on my phone, or my BDA,” but I tell you, when I walk into a building, and I can just go like this to see the office number, it rocks .
I mean, I know… I think I kind of have the Japanese philosophy around convenience, which is if it’s even one level more convenient than the other, it’s bonus.
Yeah, I think you have to do that.
Yeah, keep moving me to the most convenient thing.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I walk, you know, so… You know, having my calendar on here just has been a really cool thing.
What’s your time situation? Because we’ve been doing this … Well, we’re gonna bail in a minute.
We gotta go visit our folks.
You know what’s perfect about it? It’s just 39 minutes and 28 seconds.
40 minutes, I’m determined.
It’s the long time.
It’s the long time.
It’s a perfectly podcast.
It’s actually the jogging time, too.
And I remember I was listening to you when you kind of coined that.
It’s like, it’s the perfect time from door to door.
Exactly.
And I’m like, you know what? That’s how long I like to jog.
Because it ain’t longer than that, you know, my knees start burning.
40 minutes is great because at 25 minutes is when you hit your set point.
It’s when you really start burning the carbs or the fat off your body.
Yeah.
And to be fair, anyone who wants to learn how to make their own ringtones, just check out magazine. com.
I’m finishing up the article.
So that’s why it was fresh on my mind.
So that’ll be on there.
So this morning, coffee notes for, let’s say, April 23rd, 2005.
Beth goes out and filter in and Dave Winer did it from the Starbucks in Kirkland, Washington.
Thanks, everybody.
Bye.
Bye.
That’s fun.
That’s fun.
So where were we? I guess I can kind of resume the conversation that we were starting.
We were both commenting on A udible and how they have a new R SS feed, which is great.
I was initially thrilled and then a little disappointed when I actually subscribed to it.
I subscribed to the technology feed and I’m like, “Oh, Neil, I ’ll be able to download and listen to some previews of the latest technology books, like maybe they can give me the first five minutes of the latest Science Friday, or if there’s any previews of the latest Brian Green book or whatever, that would be really neat. " But it’s just text, and it’s unfortunate because they’ve got a lot of great content, they’re not exposing any of it to the types of books.
It’s funny because they clearly put a lot of thought into their RSS feed, so they must have talked about that.
Do you think there were maybe DRM issues with it? I actually don’t think it’s DRM issues. I think it might come down to talent contracts of how they pay some guy to read the books or whatever, and it’s like, “Hey, we can’t. " It’s like actors and movies, and I don’t think they can do it, but maybe it’ll change.
What about looking ringtones out of MP3s? That was one of the things that we were just talking about.
By the way, I find it’s not a good idea to try to recap what we talked about before.
That’s what we talked about.
You know what, the second time I learned this in doing trade secrets with Adam is that basically the second time you tell a story, it’s really stale.
And everybody can tell what you told it before, especially when you have to refer back to the parts that you didn’t do. It’s like … Number one? Exactly. It’s better just to say, “Okay, that’s all behind us,” and whatever.
Well, some of the stuff I’m working on now is the… I don ’t know what I’m going to call it, but maybe the Open Jamster project. It’s going to point out that people are paying too much money for ringtones.
In fact, when you buy a CD or when you buy a song online, you should basically be able to turn it into a ringtone.
I think so, yeah.
I mean, there’s no reason. If you buy a CD, you can rip the MP3s onto your computer, put it on your iPod, that’s fine.
You can do all sorts of stuff with it for private use.
But for some reason, people have been tricked into thinking that if they like Snoop, they need to buy Snoop on their phone, and if they own a CD, it’s something different.
And so there’s this company called Jamster that they run the commercials all the time.
And anyone who has an insomnia like I do, as soon as it hits 11 o’clock on the side-byte channel on Comedy Central MTV, there’s these commercials that just like, “SMS, this number, get this ringtone,” and they have five or six different bands and really big names like P-Ditty or Snoop or whatever.
And what happens is they start charging you every month, a couple bucks, and they’re being investigated now for doing that when they’re not supposed to, or it’s like, “How can they not resist?” It’s like the Book of the Month club or whatever.
But wouldn’t it be great to actually start making these? Are there tools to make this? Yeah, there’s tons.
In fact, every time I talk to someone, and these are like, all of us are like programmers or hardware hackers.
No, no, you are. I’m totally all folks.
I mean, that’s why your gadget freaks, your guys who are allocated, gadget freaks like yourself are people with really good hardware karma, and guys like me have an absolutely negative hardware karma.
If you want something broken, just give it to me and I’ll take care of that.
So there’s this incredible synergy, symbiosis between people like me and people like you.
Basically, like, “Here, I want to show you something. You said you wanted to see this. " Yeah, you got the new Arcos, the Linux one, yeah.
Oh, you see the smooth reaction .
I bought the very first Arcos video player, the AV3 company.
Now, this one has Wi-Fi in it, so you could actually pick it up on the net right here.
This is the one that’s the PDA as well as video player, right? It’s basically got everything, including the kitchen sink.
But it also runs out of memory, too.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it’s a real Linux machine .
Any external storage? So, no external storage.
I was leaving for external storage.
No, but it has USB.
Yeah, I mean, it has USB both ways, so that can be a hard drive or you can attach a hard drive to it.
So, let me finish up about the ringtones, and then I want to talk about that.
Actually, I also want to ask you about Engadget.
Are you still working on Engad get? No, I’m pretty much doing make and popular science.
See, that was confusing to me.
All of a sudden, one day, you were showing up there at some other website doing something else.
Yeah.
And I don’t even know what Eng adget is.
I mean, Engadget’s still really good.
I like Engadget.
Yeah, I check it religiously every five minutes, because it ’s still great.
It’s a great gadget blog.
But how does it work without you? I didn’t get it.
I always thought it was all you .
No, no, no, no.
Whatever was? No, no.
Peter Rojas, he founded Gizmodo a long time ago.
Okay.
Then he went from Gizmodo to start Engadget.
And then, actually, Beth, believe it or not, played match maker probably a couple years ago.
I was invited to a conference, and Peter was invited to a conference.
She said, “Hey, you should sit next to Peter. " And this was maybe like a few months after that, I was looking to cut down my role at an advertising agency and write a lot more and just do a lot of things in technology to keep my hands dirty.
And I started writing with Eng adget.
And I thought, wow, this is a neat opportunity, because I thought that all the gadgets blogged out there didn’t do the most important thing, which is actually tell you how to use some of this stuff.
Engadget at the time had lots of links.
You know, gadget sites are pretty much press releases in some way, with 20 commentary.
I mean, the good ones are like the daily show.
Is that how you do it? They don’t actually get every one of the devices that they’re writing about? No, no, no, like if you look at any of the gadget blogs, most of it is here’s something new that just came out last week or whatever, and they point to a lot of the reviews.
But they generally don’t do them themselves.
Engadget, I think, has probably more reviews.
Was there anything like Engad get before it came along? I mean, where did they send the press releases before? Well, Gizmodo.
No, no, I understand.
But what I mean is before the blogs, I mean, where did the press releases go? I would say they probably went to your traditional newspapers and, you know… So they just created a new channel, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
In fact, I think there’s a checklist now if you’re probably in PR.
In fact, I know there’s a checklist in some PR agencies.
Like, make sure you talk to the following sites.
For gadgets, you know, Gizmodo and Engadget is always one of them.
Has this had any effect on the product development cycles in the industry? Do they go faster now because they can get the word out? Well, I’ll say this.
They get immediate feedback when they do something great and they get immediate feedback when they do something bad.
And so, when companies have different revisions of hardware , the smart ones start to talk to people earlier.
And there’s all sorts of reasons to do that, but the best reason is let’s do a sanity check with the people who see every gadget.
And let’s do a sanity check with the people who actually use these things on a day-to- day basis.
Now, the thing to watch out for , in my humble opinion, is the day when one of the editors of the gadget blog feels that they can become an manufacturer themselves.
That will happen.
I think they’ll see a need that the manufacturers you and I have been over this, actually.
Yeah, we corresponded about this.
Yeah, and when I said it before about the cube, you know, how it was easier for a user to become a manufacturer, that made sense, right? But it still works for gadgets, too.
It’s starting to change.
Because application is becoming easier to do.
I could design a much better iP od than Apple.
I’m not a practical designer of things of that size, shape, or even that genre.
I’m not a hardware designer.
But I can tell you, as a user, certain things that that thing is no good at.
With the Arcus, you have Linux running on it.
Potentially, you could make a different operating system.
Yes, yes, yes.
I mean, I have different pieces of an operating system to do different things.
I want Frontier running.
But you could make your own kind of loosely connected podcast aggregator that, as it found Wi-Fi that was open all the time, it’ll go You got it. That’s what I want.
So totally understand.
This would be a fun weekend, but you could probably do it in a weekend if you really tried hard and, you know, really bang ed at it.
And then to turn it into a real product, probably, you know, sometime.
In my world, there’s an example of that related to software, which is, I don’t know if you ’ve heard of the MMO game called “The Boardcraft. " Yeah, I’ve heard of it.
It’s huge.
It’s huge.
There’s like 12 million people on it.
Millions of players.
So one of the things that World of Warcraft did at launch was they completely opened up the interface.
So you could create modules for your in-game play.
So, for example, one of the things in the game is that you can buff other players.
So you make them stronger or whatever.
Somebody created a module, a little widget that you could plug in at the beginning when you launched the game that would show you the buff that much time was left.
Other people created modules for, like, map waypoints.
But the point was, after the first couple releases, there were a couple really popular mods.
There was CT Mod, and then there was another one.
At any rate, the third major upgrade, Blizzard actually implemented into the code some of the more popular user-c reated mods.
And so I thought it was really brilliant at Blizzard because now they have a community of, like, a million, two million developers making their product better, and then they put it into the, you know, functional main product.
And they’re like, “Look, you know, all these people are…” A million, two million developers. It’s Microsoft- sized, by the way.
It’s awesome.
I mean, that’s, you know, it’s going in the right direction, too.
Yeah, but I just thought it was really, it’s awesome because I ’ve seen in the tech industry times where there’s almost this resistance by the manufacturer or the software developer to just, because it came from the community, they almost are resistant to it for some odd reason, in a defensive way.
Yeah, the first time I heard that one.
In this case, they embraced it.
Sherpa Pascal was a juggernaut in the mid ’80s.
And Philippe Kahn, who was the head of Borland, said basically , you know, “You want to make good software has to be written in assembly language. " And I thought, “Well, what a missed opportunity because all these people, most of them kids, are learning about a program in this incredibly easy programming environment. " It actually, turns out, did produce commercial applications .
And, you know, so, I mean, it’s always a secret.
It’s like, anytime you produce a commercial product, it should also have the ability to create , you know, if it’s playing back content, it should have the ability to create the content, too.
Because then, while a very small number of people, you know, potentially, are going to actually use it for that, that’s where the whole thing starts.
That’s the Apple II.
Yeah.
That was the secret of the Apple II.
They didn’t triple it.
They were thinking about, like, “Oh, we’re going to create a product that people could, you know, make software on. " They put basic in there, thinking, “Well, you know, nobody’s really going to make real software. " But people did.
It’s like hypercard.
Like, we all said we do hyper card.
Exactly.
But it’s a secret.
You always, wherever you do your part, and it doesn’t have the ability to create content in it, then that’s thing them on it and help them see that they need to be able to do that.
I like the iPod when I install Podzilla on it, because I can record high quality audio, better than I like the iPod when I just get it out of the box.
It’s a version of Linux that runs on an iPod.
Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Install it.
Oh, yeah.
Instead of just recording it a killer.
Well, turn it into an Arcos.
Turn it into an Arcos.
Yeah.
And so I tend to like those types of products.
Like, exactly like you said, that not only is it a passive viewer, but it’s a content creator.
And, you know, imagine from the start, every person who had an iPod, was there 25 million or so now? Imagine if every single person had a high quality audio recorded device.
Well, that’s what I’m saying.
What would the world be like? Well, it would be great.
I mean, like, everyone would be doing what we’re doing right now.
Like, great conversations.
Well, no, of course not everybody.
Oh, well, maybe everybody would .
You know, it’s always… It’s not like a blog, like, live journal.
Some people don’t like live journal, but… No.
But who cares? Because like, the people who do it in their little community, they like it.
No, if you love great art, then you have to allow… You have to allow, you have to make it easy for everybody to do it.
So the 1% of the stuff that’s really wonderful has a chance to actually happen.
Right? You know, and that’s, you know, absolutely.
I also don’t believe in ideas like grassroots, because that says, well, you know, I’m like, you’re in the grassroots, right ? I mean, not too many people talk about grassroots.
Imagine that they’re down in the grassroots, right? So it’s like, you always want to create a level playing field .
You don’t want to create a new league.
And that’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe in podcast ing being white commercial radio , or like any of the centralized media that we’ve seen before.
And that’s the big thing that’s happening in, you know, our lif etimes is that, you know, media, I mean, we’re of different generations, you and I, but we were both born in the 20th century.
And in the 20th century, everything was centralized.
That was the big deal, right? And in the 21st century, everything’s totally flowing apart.
And it was just technological necessity that made it that way .
In order to create, you know, mass media, you had to have a huge printing press or a huge broadcasting statement.
Yeah, there’s a barriers of entries.
We’re so high.
So you and I, this could be, if we said something that was so brilliant that it set the world on fire, there would be no limits to anybody actually building here.
And not that we’re going to do that.
And with bits weren’t coming along.
And I was talking to Beth about this.
I just did an interview with some guys who make software that lets you make your own comic books.
And they’re on my Skype buddy list.
And literally, the spur of the moment, they just released their latest version.
It’s really great.
And I said, hey, you want to hop on Skype and do a recording and let’s talk about how people make their own comics.
So there we have a conference call over Skype for free.
And I recorded it.
And within a half an hour, it was up on the web.
People were downloading it and someone downloaded the application, listened to the podcast, installed the app, made a comic , sent it to me, sent it to them and put it on a Flickr site.
And that couldn’t have happened five years ago.
How did you create the reporting from the Skype phone? Well, no, that’s always true.
I have a friend over in the UK, Casso, who has that completely down.
Yeah, he’s my buddy.
He sent me Oh, really? Yeah, we correspond all the time.
Oh, he’s my buddy too.
He does a lot of great flash work.
Can you talk like James Bates? I’m sorry.
He did his little This is like Pokemon for people .
What? Oh, yeah.
Casso’s a big card, by the way.
Yeah, he is.
Yeah, he is.
Let’s go over there.
Let’s have a Casso developer conference over in London.
He’s doing a lot of so I did a lot of flash work in my Oh, OK, you’re flash-enabled.
com.
Yeah, so I wrote it was the name of one of the books that He’s a flash guy.
That’s the comic.
So I know well, him and I kind of know each other from the flash days.
But he did this really cool app that I’m running on a tablet PC that we’re going to put in in our kitchen, so I can watch and listen to podcasts.
The tablet’s going to hold down from underneath the counter, so I can watch dishes and look at a podcast or What do you mean, look at a podcast? Well, I could look at my Flickr stream, like photos going on, and maybe there’s a soundtrack that goes along with it.
Maybe there’s one of the video blog stuff.
Maybe there’s, you know, an RSS screensaver.
You know what just occurred to me that Oddblog, the thing that became Odeo, right? Oh, yeah.
That they could.
Of course, I think Skype is probably going to do this, right? The save to MP3 function, obviously.
Yeah.
It’s got to be something that they facilitate.
They do voicemail now, but it’s a different format so we can’t really Well, what we want is, ideally, I think, is just a checkbox that says, “Save this to my local hard disk in MP3. " But in the meantime, there are phone numbers you can dial that will create a recording of the conversation.
Yeah, I have that for the Make Podcast.
They can dial 206. 888.
All right, so here’s how you do it.
This is the simple way for everybody to do this.
Maybe.
We have to try it out.
But it is, okay, when you’re doing a conference call, just conferencing one of those services.
And then call that number.
Like, I have that every year.
They have it for free.
Yeah.
Eric Rice’s audio blog software that he has, you could call.
So Eric Rice, then, if he wanted to, could create a position for himself that he would.
I mean, because that’s the, you know, when I ask the question, how do you make a degree out of it? Yeah, it’s like Yeah, like, that’s the whole deal.
Yeah, so here’s the thing.
I just finished up an article that will be in our second issue of Make that’s like 15 pages of Podcast ing 101.
And it has everything I could I started out I used all free software.
So there are some limitations.
But basically what I used, I have There’s a couple of ways on a PC and a couple of ways on a Mac.
Here’s the way that I’m doing it right now.
There’s a Mac that is running a software called Linin and a software called WireTap.
And so basically the Skype call is started.
Yeah.
Sorry, Linin takes the microphone and the headset feed and puts it into one channel.
And then WireTap records that.
So it combines the microphone and the headphones into one stream and then records it to an MP3.
So I just add it into my audio editing software.
That’s the way I do it on a PC.
On a Mac.
On a PC, there’s virtual audio cable.
And there’s applications that do the same thing.
But it’s a piece of software that you have to install.
Some Windows machines or sound cards have a little checkbox called SoundMixer.
And you can route it all to Aud acity.
I do that on a Mac, too.
So Audacity.
But what happens if the machine has This is something I had early on with this machine.
Is that if it has a process on there that is particularly CBU- intensive, you’re going to screw something up.
You get clips and you get all sorts of things.
The other way that you can do it, and this is the way I recommend it into a lot of folks, because I ’ve written stuff on podcasting, so I always get a lot of emails , is you can have another computer that is just set up to be the conference call computer.
Like this one.
Yeah.
Or you can plug in a separate one.
Or you can do three Skype sessions.
So the person you’re talking to , you, and then a third computer .
And that third computer, all it does is record.
Right.
And that’s all instead of what you do.
And then you can plug in an external device to that and just record the reactor.
Or you can just record to Aud acity or whatever.
Or it could be a phone number.
Anything that can connect to a phone number is good enough.
There’s Skype, but Skype quality is hit or miss, too, I find.
It’s like, maybe half the phone falls.
It’s just unacceptably low quality.
I’ve been pretty lucky.
So far, I’ve been talking to people that have good wired connections.
We both have good USB headsets.
And it’s been better than, you know, telephone quality.
You like USB headsets, really? I do.
I do.
I’ve found that analog is the only one that really has, that really works.
I like the Plantronics Gamer headsets.
Or you would know.
Yeah.
Well, you know what it is.
I try to avoid having like an audio studio that no one else can have.
Yeah, you want to do that.
I like the podcast.
Yeah.
I like your setup because it’s just like laptop and microphone .
Well, I also won’t do any editing because I had to do the intro at the beginning in real time.
Otherwise, it ain’t gonna happen.
Yeah.
I don’t want to do it.
I’m all about like, if it, like I said before, I’m the, like I would, you know, 18 thumbs.
I can’t do any of the stuff, you know? But I can create a podcast.
That’s, you know, I think that gives some encouragement to a lot of people up here.
Yeah.
Because if I can do it, some of the same thing.
I think so.
And like, I try to keep my shows, and I, it’s a weird term .
I try to keep them pure, which means anyone can go and have a PC or Mac and do the same thing I did.
And that’s pretty much it.
Why are you laughing? Thursday night, I was sitting on the couch and Phillip goes, we just got a new car.
And we picked it up on Friday and it’s an Alexis hybrid that just came out.
Oh, really? Yeah.
And so Phillip goes, “Hey, Ben, you want to come over and talk about the car tomorrow?” And so we just did a podcast, you know, in our PJs at 11. 30 at night.
Yeah, that was great.
And it was great.
It was, you know, because thinking about it, I don’t know , it’s like when can you capture real-time and experiencing having, and then you kind of share it out within 20 minutes.
And now, you know, we get feedback from other owners or questions.
And it’s just the ability to share information in real-time now is incredible.
And I kind of like that, you know, there was no script or anything.
I mean, literally, Ben kind of sprung this on me.
She was like, “We’re getting a new car. " You know, here we go.
And I’m like, “Okay, why are we getting a new car again?” And then I said, “Oh, wait, let ’s record this. " Yes, exactly.
The moment everybody likes about it is that you get, it’s a, you know, we’re social species and, you know, look, the programming that’s devoid of any humanity makes us less human.
You know, when I was growing up in New York in the ’60s, the W LR radio had a few shows that were reported in people’s living rooms.
And these were socialites, okay ? They were like the, you know, the people you’d read about in the gossip columns.
And they would have their friends over in the coffee in the afternoon.
And they had their living rooms .
They literally was in their living room.
And they had the living rooms mic’d up in the studio.
And it would be live on the air .
So they’re the first podcasters .
They were live on the air.
I mean, they weren’t using RSS.
Yeah.
I mean, it’s like, but, but yeah, I mean, that’s kind of where, you know, that’s the benchmark.
And the radio used to be like that.
I mean, of course, they were, you know, putting on airs.
And they weren’t really telling their stories.
And of course, they weren’t waiting for jobs.
Although, for all we know, they weren’t.
Yeah.
They could have been naked, actually.
The thing I would like to see is, we’re in a Starbucks.
The thing I would like to see is we have XM satellite radio.
And I think one of the things that could be really possible is if XM created a public access channel for satellite radio, where people publish their podcasts, and then it would just stream all day.
I think that’d be fun.
That’s why I say that too, is that it isn’t medium dependent.
No.
Or distribution.
It’s medium.
There’s a difference between a distribution mechanism and a medium.
Yeah.
I mean, podcasting’s a medium, but it can be distributed over podcasts.
I don’t know if they’ll do that .
I think it’d be interesting.
You know, the thing that XM and Serious Radio doesn’t have is a technology show.
They really don’t.
And so, most of the, many of the podcasts that first came out, you know, the Engadget one that I did and now the Make Audio one, it’s technology-centric.
And I think, you know, if I can keep up the work and keep it interesting, that would be kind of a fun thing because there’s really not, like, there’s, I think there’s been a demise of technology shows on television.
And I think, unfortunately, you know, G4 went to a gaming network, and that’s fine, you know, that ’s what they decided to do.
But there really isn’t the science and technology shows for anybody out there.
So what if we could use XM as- Well, there’s Kim Commander.
Yeah.
She’s not bad.
She’s actually pretty good.
You know, I’ve done a lot of driving cross-country.
AM radio sometimes is all there is, and Kim Commando is something I’ve looked forward to, and, believe it or not, like, the right-wing Republican so- called conservative, you know, Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, I used to hate Rush Lim baugh.
Actually, now that I’m a, like, radio guy, you know, like, I do this stuff, I can sort of, like, appreciate his techniques, or actually- I like Ira Flado.
I got lucky, and I actually was on Science Friday.
You’re right, Ira Flado.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I find him, like- Oh, no, I love that guy.
True.
So I got lucky, and I was on the show talking about when we released Meg.
I got to talk to him, and we talked about stuff, and what we see was all these people who called in, and they’re like, ‘cause we invited, you know, callers.
And the neat thing is, and this is what we’re gonna have in the future shows that I do, you know, when people call in, they’re like, “Hey, I have an old PC. What can I do with it?” “Hey, I have an old cell phone.
What can I do with it?” So what we decided to do with Meg Audio is allow people to call into our Skype voicemail or our voicemail service.
Right on.
And so people leave questions.
So today I got one that said, and I get them delivered on my phone or whatever device I have .
Well, this is your first podcast.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And so people are like, “Hey, I ’ve got this- I got a Trio 650, and I want to use it as my full -time computer.
What software do I need to use ?” I got all these negatives from my camera.
Should I print them real, or should I do them- You love that, right? Oh, it’s great.
You love that, yeah.
It’s great because there’s all these people who, and the one that I like the most is, so I bought a portable video player.
How do I get my DVDs on it? And that’s the big thing.
It goes along with what we were saying before.
Yeah, I kind of have that problem myself.
It’s a huge problem.
So for me to put a video on- I got a PlayStation portable, and if I want to put something off of a DVD on my PlayStation portable, I have to put it into a DVD player that- can I talk about this? Yeah, sure.
Why can’t- why might she not be able to do that? Well, so here’s the thing- We have a DVD player that strips the macro vision.
That lets you record from it.
Most DVD players don’t want to.
Well, everybody must have all the ones that show up on Victor .
Yeah, yeah.
So I don’t know if that’s a bad or not, but I take it and I transfer it to my ARCOS to make it into an ABI file, and then I put it on my laptop, and then there’s a freeware app that I transfer it to the format for the PSP.
So at the end of the day, after I go through all that, it’s like screw it.
You could have watched the movie.
I could have watched the movie like a million times.
So that’s what I found here, too.
It wasn’t worth the trouble to get it.
Yeah, it just breaks my heart.
So this is the type of emails and voicemails I get left now.
It’s like- it’s a mob who has kids, and they have a little portable video player, and they want to use that instead of DVD s or something.
Every one of your programs is in anachronism for years now.
Basically, you know, you’ll have to explain to your kids why DRM existed and how the record industry- you know, how we assassinated them.
The interesting thing is, though, the people have been trained to take a CD and put it on their computer, and they can put it on their iPod or whatever.
Now that people aren’t getting portable video players, they want to take the DVD and Tony, I should- Well, we were raised on the VCR , so it’s just still hard to understand why you cannot record your own video.
And we have a special DVD player that you enter in a code , and it’ll let you record whatever’s playing from the DVD player.
And that’s how we get our movies onto our portable video devices.
Which means for personal use.
Yeah, it’s not like we’re not- No, I’m the same way. I mean, I pay for everything I use, and to me there’s nothing worth more than something that I find uplifting or happy.
I mean, I’d love to spend it on things like that. You know, there aren’t enough ways to spend it.
Like, I have 2001 Space Odyssey , and I really like that movie, and I watch it probably a few times a year just because it’s a fun airplane movie if I want to trap it on the flight.
And I’m not going to use the same DVD. I have all these players and these portable devices that are better to view videos on.
These are familiar arguments, believe me.
Yeah, and it’s just funny because I get all these emails from just regular people, and it’s funny their process when they’ll send me an email and say, “Hey, I tried to drag my DVD onto my portable video player, and I thought that would copy it over just like I do with iTunes or whatever. " And they just know you actually can’t do that, and there’s all sorts of things, and I send them links and all that.
And so they’ll reply, you know, “Thanks for your help,” and everything, but when they reply , they say, “I’ll just do a Google,” and I found this program called Kizah, and it says “Download Free Movies,” or I heard about this thing called BigTorn or whatever.
So now there’s, you know, the soccer mom going out downloading software that might build a spiral.
So we have to be really careful about calling the criminals. We ’re trying to pick up the industry hype when you do that.
No, I don’t think they’re criminal. I’m just saying that ’s it.
Okay, so we should put that in quotes.
Sorry, criminally in quotes.
In quotes, double quotes. You put two fingers around it.
There should be an audio sound that everyone agrees on that’s the sound of quotes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
When I was a, I ran a software company in the 80s, and the copy protection was sort of the convention at the time.
Lotus had put copy protection in 133, and so we were all doing it the same way that they were doing it.
And then the users understood, finally figured out that software didn’t have to be that way.
That you could do it without those having to insert the key disk when you want to run the software.
And so I started getting letters from users saying, basically, well, you know, you ’re going to lose me as a customer if you don’t provide me with it.
And then with a way to do this without that, then Central Point Software came out with an utility that would do that, you know, basically for every good software, you know.
And then the users said, well, I don’t see why I should have to buy another utility to do this.
So then they started sending me floppy disks cut up in mail, and they weren’t running a campaign against the software.
And that was something at that moment there, you couldn’t ignore that. I mean, if you had a mind, a brain, and you were running a company, and people were sending your products back to the store, then you’d probably say you got a business issue going on here, and that you might want to take some place of attention to this .
I don’t know if I want to check the mail tomorrow if I’m getting the money.
Well, I had to check it. Yeah, we weren’t that profitable to begin with.
I had another experience. We were talking about people falling in. I was on a show on Vermont Public Radio, and they were, you know, typical, they were trying to present blogs as instruments of war.
And basically, we were all, like, warring with each other.
And, you know, I accepted the gig anyway. It was at Dan Gil more, it was an hour-long show.
And so the fallen people who called in, and we kept saying both me and Dan kept saying, " No, it’s not like that at all.
We’re not fighting with each other, basically. " Yeah, sometimes we do, but it’s not about, it’s not like, you know, facing off, it’s not life and death.
And so the callers, we had, like, five callers, and they all called in with all the constructive uses they were having with blogs that it was just delightful.
You know, they were just saying , you know, we have a small blog in our community in small town in Vermont, and we’re using it to keep an eye on the Public Ut ilities Commission, you know, and we’re getting all kinds of information.
You know, the Citizen Functions , Stony Brook Farms, you know, they have a corporate blog, the woman who runs the blog called in, and so I asked her, you know, “What are the constraints ? What do they tell you you can write about?” She said, “The only thing I’m not allowed to write about is our corporate secrets. I’m not allowed to, like, break non-dis closures. Otherwise, I can do anything I want to. " And Stony Brook Farms has actually gotten a good reputation because of that.
So it’s, you know, then at the end of the show, everybody, it was like Woodstock, basically.
Except the reporters still kind of wanted to make it, you know, because they’re going to view the world that way.
That’s when we know, when that is no longer the predominant way of looking at the world, then we’ll know that, okay, it ’s over with no longer doing next thing now, you know.
So tell me about the Sarcos, because I haven’t played with one yet.
No, no, no. Tell me about the Sarcos. You’re the expert on this stuff.
I’m not like, you know, I’m just the sort of like, Casso told me to get this, basically.
That’s what happened. So you blame him, basically.
So I haven’t got a chance to play with one of these yet. So what’s been your primary use for this? Well, I just got it. I mean, I left from Florida.
No, I didn’t turn it on.
Oh, okay. Well, you turned it on by pressing the button and then holding it down.
Oh, did you not get it on? No.
Oh, okay. You were sitting there falling, though. I thought you were crying.
I was a guy.
Yeah, you need to get the pen.
I felt like it was a nice Q- test and I was feeling miserable .
Really? Oh, I figured that one out.
Oh, it has a touch screen as well.
I wanted to try recording something.
Oh, it’s terminal. Let’s go.
I haven’t tried that yet.
Oh, I was going to say, can you SSH with it? Yeah, sure.
And you can also, it has Wi-Fi.
I mean, you could sign onto the Wi-Fi.
If you go down the bottom of the screen, you should see the … Yeah, I think ARCOS is incredible. They’ve just led the way on these devices and they’re still just kind of viewed as a small player.
Yeah.
Well, from the start, they’ve always had recording, you know, they’ve always had, they’ve always been, I think, ahead of the game.
Yeah.
It’ll be kind of interesting to compare that to the recording of the PC that we’re seeing right now.
Yeah, where is… There’s a sound recorder app.
Oh, well, I can’t see what you ’re doing, so… Yeah, let’s turn it around.
If you want to, right, the way to get to all the functional ities through this menu down here.
Right there? Down in the lower left corner.
Yeah.
No, no, you’re in that area, yeah.
Right, and then, so if you want to do pocket media system, would be where the recorder is, because that’s a media thing.
Okay.
And then that’s your video player, your music player, photo viewer.
Audio recorder.
Well, I wanted to go through it for the folks at home.
Yeah.
File browser, I’m not sure what that does. Video recorder, well , we don’t have the equipment to do that.
And so for video recorder, does it just go firewire or does it go and have a live, because we have… Oh, it has it… We have a camera attachment for our audio recorder system.
It has a, what do you call it, cradle, basically, that you drop it into.
And then it connects up to your … Can record it from TV or whatever.
Yeah, the idea is to record the West Wing.
And this is the Tivo, basically .
Yeah, yeah.
It’s not, obviously, the user interface is nowhere near as convenient as Tivo is.
Mine just has a little attachment on the side.
But of course, with software, it probably could be that.
But you have a shot, because you could probably write some applications for this.
Right, and they’re coming out with an SDK, and… That’s good.
Yeah, I need to get, in all seriousness, you know, we’ve made Frontier open source, and we need to get port to Linux.
That’s one of the reasons why I made it open source, so that we could get it on to something like this.
Once we do that, I’m going to be right now, so this thing for sure.
So, yeah, so you see the… Yeah, this is nice.
You’re recording stuff.
You’d have to actually hit this to start recording right here.
Little circle? Yeah.
There you go.
So this is a test.
Hello.
For the next 60 seconds, this … Yeah, you see the numbers going up? Yeah.
This is a test for the next 60 seconds.
The station will record it.
It will, you know, whatever.
And it looks like you have 44 kilohertz, 128K, and it looks like it’s probably 16 bits stereo.
So this is… That’s pretty sweet.
And the microphone is incredibly sensitive.
What I did was, I was sitting in the airport in Atlanta, the airport, a few days ago, and I put the headphones on and turned it on recording, and I could hear conversations that I couldn’t hear.
I’m just sitting there, and it was scary, actually.
That’s interesting.
Yeah, my hearing isn’t that good, I guess.
So, you know, the only thing I would say is, and this could be possible now, but I don’t see a port for it, is if this were to have a external microphone plugged in, then you pretty much have your little NPR station to go.
I mean, you can even do mixing and mix in intro music.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
This is the podcasting machine.
I mean, this is… You can’t stop it.
Yeah, you can’t stop.
And then what happens is you don’t have to save it.
And you connect the thing up via USB to the laptop, and it’s already in file, and the recording… It shows up as a USB drive or whatever, and so it’s all just straight up file format.
Yeah, it’s really high speed.
I mean, I was able to copy, you know, a movie across.
It’s pretty good.
You know, less than a minute makes big.
This kind of reminds me, it could be like the OQO almost.
What’s an OQO? That’s the really small PC.
Oh, but was that a PC on your wrist? Well, that’s a spot watch.
Oh, this is actually a fun thing.
So, yeah, here’s something that you’ll get a kick out of.
Take it off and see.
Sure.
Take it off.
We’re still close.
Yeah.
You’re taking my watch off.
Take it off.
So that gives me… What are all the buttons here? It’s in glance mode.
Is this a Windows machine? Yeah.
It’s a little . NET app.
Yeah, it’s a . NET app.
And I actually, I like spot watch a lot.
When it was released, a lot of people are like, “Oh, you know, this isn’t going to go anywhere . " But believe it or not, the most recent development with Spot is the most interesting thing.
And it came from outside of the company.
And you can actually get RSS feeds on it now.
So I have RSS feeds to get sent to my watch.
And I get headlines.
Because the problem with the Sw atch, I think, or not the Swatch , but just the Spot technology in general, you can only get news and content from the MSN sources.
So you can pick 10 or 15.
But you know what, if you’re a technologist and you bought a watch that gets wireless data, you know what you want? You want RSS feeds to all the blogs out there.
Where am I? You know how much I love hearing that.
Yeah.
Well, it’s exactly… So I’ve talked to Microsoft a lot of times, and they know it.
It’s the first thing that I heard as soon as the watch released, like, “Can I get RSS feeds?” Because everybody who is interested in this… That’s exactly the type of person.
Yeah.
Somebody who’s, like, capped in to the end of the grade.
Yeah, they don’t care about Britney Spears.
They care about what’s on /dots .
And then she could subscribe to your feed.
So that way you would have… Yeah, we have that set up now.
Yeah.
So that’s an easy way for you to get a quick message.
Well, what’s interesting to me is I’ve actually, probably in the last year, any major sort of breaking news item, I’ve gotten over my watch .
Because I’ll be… What’s an example? Like Pope Benedict… Well, when Martha Stewart got convicted, when they picked the Pope, when Condoleezza testified, you know, in front of the Senate committee, because I’ll be in a meeting, I could be in line at the grocery store or whatever, but it makes a noise or it buzz es, and it says News Flash, and then I push it, and, you know, when I see that.
But I’m addicted to the glance mode.
I mean, if you have kind of a … I hate hostage time.
If I’m not interacting with something, I get really kind of itchy and so… You call that hostage? Yeah.
Like when you don’t have an e- mail thing in front of you? Yeah, you know, waiting to go in to see the doctor? How are you doing right now? I’m actually… Well, I’m entertained, so I’m fine.
Well, we’re kind of like an RSS feed right here.
Yeah.
We’re a human aggregator.
Like this one.
I’m interested in, for example, craft-sued over alleged Javalia spayow.
Small California internet service provider has sued craft foods, and alleging the firm is responsible for thousands of illegal spam messages.
Is craft-sued the ones who make spam the meat product, or…? Well, that would be ironic.
That’d be funny.
But see, that makes me… And people say, “Well, how can you get news on your watch?” But what that does is it says, “I want to know more,” so then that leads me to go and search… It’s a notification system, more than anything.
So, like, I have a couple of blogs set up to send to my watch, and it works out great because, like, throughout the day, especially if I’m on a bus, or if I’m doing something where I ’m not going to pull out my cell phone, or I’m not going to open up my laptop, it’s just a different funnel of information.
Yeah, it also synchronizes… Well, what’s that product called, actually? It’s called MSN Direct.
Is the service… But the watch is called… The watch is… There’s swatch makes one, fossil makes one, sento… Where do you go to find that more? I think it’s MSN Direct. com.
Yeah.
But what’s nice is it also synchronizes with Outlook, and a lot of people say, “Well, I have my calendar on my phone, or my BDA,” but I tell you, when I walk into a building, and I can just go like this to see the office number, it rocks .
I mean, I know… I think I kind of have the Japanese philosophy around convenience, which is if it’s even one level more convenient than the other, it’s bonus.
Yeah, I think you have to do that.
Yeah, keep moving me to the most convenient thing.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I walk, you know, so… You know, having my calendar on here just has been a really cool thing.
What’s your time situation? Because we’ve been doing this … Well, we’re gonna bail in a minute.
We gotta go visit our folks.
You know what’s perfect about it? It’s just 39 minutes and 28 seconds.
40 minutes, I’m determined.
It’s the long time.
It’s the long time.
It’s a perfectly podcast.
It’s actually the jogging time, too.
And I remember I was listening to you when you kind of coined that.
It’s like, it’s the perfect time from door to door.
Exactly.
And I’m like, you know what? That’s how long I like to jog.
Because it ain’t longer than that, you know, my knees start burning.
40 minutes is great because at 25 minutes is when you hit your set point.
It’s when you really start burning the carbs or the fat off your body.
Yeah.
And to be fair, anyone who wants to learn how to make their own ringtones, just check out magazine. com.
I’m finishing up the article.
So that’s why it was fresh on my mind.
So that’ll be on there.
So this morning, coffee notes for, let’s say, April 23rd, 2005.
Beth goes out and filter in and Dave Winer did it from the Starbucks in Kirkland, Washington.
Thanks, everybody.
Bye.
Bye.
That’s fun.
That’s fun.