The trouble with NDAs
“About two conversation-starters, non-disclosures, what I can and can’t tell you. Advertising in RSS and turning the conversation around in drive-time Bay Area.”
Dave reflects on the excitement and energy around new technologies like the web in the 1990s, and how that same sense of possibility exists with podcasting today. Winer also criticizes the model of public radio, arguing that it is not truly “public” as listeners have little ability to influence the content. He expresses satisfaction that podcasting has enabled more direct, unfiltered communication from individuals, using the example of a commuter podcasting his drive-time thoughts. However, he’s is unable to share details on two new “conversation starters” he had planned to discuss, due to non-disclosure agreements with other parties involved.
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Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated.
Good morning everybody. It’s
Dave Winer here. It’s May 17th
2005. This is morning coffee
notes
today, I had hoped to be
talking about
two
new what I call conversation
starters
for people who are interested
in
syndication
And I call those people I call
that team RSS
Well, I can’t even tell you
where the I
Hate non disclosures. Oh,
anyway, um, I can’t tell you
where the name team RSS came
from
but it’s a killer idea and
I think I can pretty safely say
here’s the idea. This is the
idea
Basically these days
there are lots of organizations
and
companies and people who are
vitally interested in
really simple syndication or R
SS and
And
In our interests are kind of
the same
Whatever company we work for or
whether we work for a company
or don’t
That’s not to say that we don’t
have the interests of our
employer and our own personal
interests of art
But there are some things that
we have in common because like
for example today
I’ve got the announcement of a
great site called public radio
feeds calm
which is done by Todd Maffin
and
Todd is a Canadian and a guy
who works in public radio in
Canada and
Public radio feeds calm. He
calls the most comprehensive
list of public radio
Podcasts on the internet and it
’s great stuff. It’s really
unbelievably
complete much more than I
thought was there and
Just exciting to have somebody
following that for us and of
course
Up in the right hand corner
Is a opml. It’s the white on
orange XML sign and it points
to
An opml file and the opml file.
Let’s just go do a fetch on this because it’s not coming through in the browser So I have a script here in frontier that gets it does an HTTP request for me sure enough There is An opml that has all of the information in it so it could be turned into a directory and I’m gonna do exactly that I’m gonna link to this from podcast www. podcatch. com and and I’m going to Include it there, so And then probably some other directory stuff coming there - I contrast this to Google who announced that they have a beta of AdSense for feeds which Well, you know, I Wanted I don’t know what I wanted to say is like Oh, come on. Give me a fucking break. Okay, great. You got AdS ense feeds but I’ve been hearing about this for months and Actually, it was pretty well leaked three weeks ago or four weeks ago when it started showing up in some, you know, the I think it was in gadget that’s using it And I think they’ve got some kind of a deal a distribution deal with feed burner and you know Okay, so you’re gonna put ads and RSS feeds and You know, you want to know what I think about that and I’ve said this so many times before But I’ll say it again is that R SS itself is an advertising medium and the idea of putting ads in ads is pretty repulsive to me and You know, I’d like to see people be more creative about it. Give you an example In gadget, which is like my favorite example for this. I Like the engadget feed and Jason Calcanis says Dave you like it so much You either have to accept ads in it or you have to pay me money to read the feed and And you know, but before I pay you money, which is like the last thing that I want to do because you know it’s my money is like I think it’s pretty expensive money for you Jason because I’ll tell you why because I’m a blogger and When I read your feed There’s a pretty good chance that I’m gonna point to something from that feed in other words, I’m just gonna do a right click on the link to the story and Copy shortcut and then go over into my outliner that I edit scripting news in and paste in, you know type a little, you know thing engadget colon and then the title of the piece and then Select the title and then choose link to from my menu and boom It becomes a link and I save it and I put it out on scripting news and then However many people read the link and they see the name oh engadget and then the thing and then about two or three thousand of those People well on a good day on a not so good day a thousand people then click on the link, right? And read the article or skim it and are impressed by the ad, okay? And you get to charge your advertiser for a thousand views of the ad and however many click-throughs That’s not my problem, but I brought you a thousand two thousand readers and I think that for that I ought not have to pay to read your feed. I think I’m paying for it. So Consider that your feed to me as a blogger and I am a blogger and I do insist that you think about that, okay? That I’ve paid for it whenever I link to it now Of course I can’t promise that I’m gonna link because there goes my editorial integrity because I have a rule about when I link to Something I link to it when I think an informed person would want to be aware of That piece of information or point of view or both I mean it could be both an information and a point of view so I kind of and I and I have found that now from a cognitive standpoint and yes I do have a mind, you know, that’s I’m that’s the bad news for you advertisers is that I’m not just a highball I also have a or I actually have two eyeballs. I’m not just a pair of eyeballs, but I also have a mind and My mind goes through cognitive dissonance. In other words, I lose my suspension of disbelief when I get two different messages from one unit of text in other words I’m reading along actually almost always skimming because The content of engadget I make I’m interested in gadget gadget ry, but I’m not a gadget freak I’m not like coso for example coso has a picture of all the gadgetry He he carries with him and that ’s how he stays so skinny. He’s a really skinny guy He’s always working out because he’s carrying about 50 pounds of gadgets with him and but I’m not like that I but I you know, this is 2005 and like the I can’t go with anywhere without my cell phone without my camera Without my arcos. What else do I carry with me? I have a little Wi-Fi detector thing Who knows what else that’s probably about it. I carry a laptop almost always Unless I’m just going out to the supermarket. I almost always bring my sony via with me So I’m interested in this stuff , but I’m not gonna buy it all that frequently, but when I do you know, well my cell phone is It was supposed to be $60 a month, but it’s turning into about $200 a month They found all these ways to ding me the camera was $200 in total, which probably was about the best deal of it all The computer was $3,000 So you get an idea that basically when I buy something here, it’s it could be a lot of money, you know I’m gonna buy a car and I’m getting ready to buy a new car.
It’s been six years. The old car is I still runs great But you know, I could buy cars by the way to these days or gadgets So, you know, I get a chance to to buy some more gadgetry in this one This piece of gadgetry is gonna cost not three thousand, but at least twenty three thousand dollars That’s how much cars cost these days Anyway, why do you care about this? So I’ll tell you why you care because You have an opportunity to sell me one of whatever it is that you’re writing about, okay? Now there you’re walking on some some like sort of weird Ethical grounds and I and I want you to do the right thing Jason I don’t want you to start running editorial because you can make money on the ads for it But that’s where your separation of church and state comes in and and publications have had to deal with this kind of issue all the time in other words, you let your editorial people choose the The things to cover and then you the publisher through something algorithmic I would hope so that you don’t actually have to sit there hunting for ads all the time, you know on the occasion when you have An ad for the product that’s being written about in other words Give me a way to get more information about the product or to close the deal in other words on the one time in a Thousand or maybe ten thousand that I read something on Engad get and I want to go from that to purchase Facilitated and get your piece get your cut from that you’re entitled to a cut you sold it Okay, and I still I insist that you give me the truth. I want you to tell me I buy every product I buy has flaws I know it, okay, and like I’m shopping for car now and And I’m using cars that yahoo.
com To do it last time I bought a car. I did it with MSN cars calm and this time. I’m doing it with yahoo And it’s wonderful. I mean and what what is the first thing take a guess. What’s the first thing I jump to? When I’m you know considering a model or a make or a manufacturer I Go read the reviews and the reviews are starting to get people are getting really good at writing these reviews and It sort of goes back to the the the piece of podcasts that I did Which I really hope everybody if you’re if you’re listening to this podcast And you haven’t listened to the piece of podcast yet I would say throw this one in the trash and go go to morning coffee notes calm and and look for the leading tower of Pisa and go go listen to that one because it’ll put it all together. This is this this podcast in comparison You know this is just like chatter compared to that one that one sort of is like the anthem This is the this is a movement or or not even a movement. This is an application of that anthem It’s a it’s a song and the anthem is the manifesto. So Anyway, where was I? Right so so the the reviewers on yahoo are doing a great job and they’re they’re helping me make the decision so one of the cars I’m thinking about is the Honda element and You know the the reviewers there are in love with that car I mean, it’s not you know, it’s kind of hard to find a negative review But you have to I mean all the cars that I’ve been looking for are looking at are very very well-reviewed cars but There’s more to it than just whether or not they liked it because they tell you what the experience of owning the car is going to be like and I have validated this because I go back and read the reviews of the RX 300 Lexus RX 300 which is what I’m driving right now and You know, that’s one that I’ve been driving for six years. Is it six years? Yeah, it’s six years almost exactly and Yeah, I mean, I know what the pros and cons of the car are a very few cons It’s a really well-made car and it drives beautifully and it’s it’s powerful That’s I’ve only really come to appreciate how powerful car it is In the last few years when I’ve been the last couple of years particularly like last this year when I was driving around in The southern US and you know when you have to pass a car on a too late highway in Alabama This this car has got the power and you can just go, you know Put the foot on the pedal and go to the floor and like lean back and the thing takes off like a rocket I mean, it’s amazing pretty sure the car that I get to replace it will not be one of those Unfortunately, it’ll get better gas mileage though. And so there’s your trade-off anyway So there’s information available and I’m sure yahoo would do a deal with you Okay, for any product that is that they have in their database I’m sure that they would be willing to link pay you to link to their Their section on that because I gotta believe they makes they ’re gonna make some big bucks off this deal When I buy the car because I’m getting the dealer and I’m including them in it because I think it’s only fair You know when I go to get a price quote I’m clicking on the link in the yahoo site and I’m and I’m pretty sure that they’ve they ’ve now got me linked in To that sale and that whether I buy a Chevy Astro, which I’m really interested in that looks really nice And it’s a it’s a better size for me than the element is Or if I buy an element or I buy a Toyota Sienna or a Honda Honda Odyssey or a Dodge Car avan or Whatever I think they’re gonna get considerably large I Hope they get a large cut. They deserve it I’m doing my shopping. I’m going to the dealerships to do test drives, but I’m doing my shopping using using yahoo and and Jason I think that a cut of that is available to you, too And and I would like that much better as a user that just feels that that feels like you ’re helping me and that Rather than like here. I’ve just read an article about some really cool device like PlayStation 3 or whatever Vaguely aware that there’s a kind of there’s a conference going on a gaming conference going on all the gadget guys are there And right and so like on that one there’s an ad for bandwidth or something like that come on We can do a lot better. This is 2005 and and the relevancy of these ads, you know, it’s pretty sucky I Like it if they’re exactly about the thing that I just read about then I don’t have two topics proposed I have one and my my poor little brain loves likes that better and then and an important thing that all you advertisers I want y’all to remember. Okay, is that I’m not just a bunch of I pair eyeballs I’m also a brain and I and and I want you to respect that brain and I want you to feed it . Okay all right, so I want to like tell you a little story and this is something I wrote about today on scripting news and I want to try doing this now verbally not just in writing I mean, I I spent a lot longer writing this than I’m probably going to spend telling the story But but I wanted to try I Wanted to try telling the story verbally. It’s gonna it’s gonna take me Less time to do it, but it’s gonna take you more time to hear it Which I think is kind of interesting. Anyway, um So anyway, I got a call yesterday from Benny who was a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle and he was writing a story about KYU and They had their debut yesterday and I was their debut podcaster . This is a station that is broadcasting podcasts and I had a great talk with Benny and It reminded me of the kind of talks that we were having in 1994 It’s especially in the Bay Area , but I imagine it in other places too Where like people were discussed. They’re discovering the web and the web was this wonderful exciting right wide open space just really cool and This had all this potential and when when you’re lucky enough to be around when something like that’s happening You know, it’s it’s it’s there ’s an energy to it. It’s it’s really hard to describe in words But it’s a shared energy. It’s something that you get off on by sharing it with other people who are also getting that Hey, it’s a pretty exciting time to be alive. That’s how podcasting feels like right now Anyway, 1994 I was working on the San Francisco strike paper and you’ll see if you go back into the archive of Dave net which is Dave net dot scripting comm you’ll see There’s at least one article there where I tell the story of how this How this happened and what the experience was like and it was one of those great experiences and and But what was cool about it was that the reporters I’m a quick study, you know, and I learned the protocols and formats of the web in the first in the end of the summer of 1994 and the early fall my study HTTP HTML FTP TCP IP, you know, I’m a I’m a programmer and I’m excited about, you know What was exciting about these things was that they were so breezy. There was so much air and it was so easy to understand There were so lightweight. That was the cool thing about it and lightweight. We know is how you build really big standards and That was the experience I was a you know, UNIX programmer in the mid to late 70s when UNIX was at the stage that podcasting is at now I mean, you know, can you imagine and UNIX? this is before there was an Apple 2 before there was an IBM PC or Macintosh or It was when the internet was booting up to there wasn’t much of an internet at that point It was it was all happening right then and that was the really cool thing about UNIX and by the way was the when it was the cool thing about the IBM PC and the Apple 2 and You know, it’s funny. I’m Intersected my my path and Eric Raymond’s path intersected some time after XMRPC came out and When it was being adopted by the Python community and being and I say adopted I mean, it was really adopted by Python basically baked into To the distribution so that everybody that got Python after a certain point got an XMRPC stack in there as well and Eric wrote about it in his book and what he noted was is that it was a very UNIX-y sort of thing and It’s true. It is very much a UN IX-y sort of thing and I think that a lot of the UNIX guys Would be surprised to know that that the that the desktop computers that are, you know, so popular at their deep core deepest core Underneath all those Microsoft software, which I don’t know how it’s architected to be fair I have never actually seen the source code of a Microsoft product which I guess it’s kind of telling, huh? Isn’t it? I’ve been using their software for a long time And and and using a lot of it, but I’ve never actually seen the source code to a Microsoft app So I don’t really know I kind of suspect that it’s not airy on the inside that it’s kind of a little bit like a like ratty Which I believe me I’ve got a fair amount of that stuff myself although I find that that at some point it’s a good idea to rewrite the code if it gets to sort of Complex or difficult to understand anyway, I digress Well, let me just finish that one off because Eric noticed that it was so that it was so UNIX like and I thought boy I wish I could just explain to you how you know, we’re UNIX UN IX sort of forked and And I went with a fork that that wasn’t called UNIX and it was called the Apple - and Because I was one of the and we were there weren’t many of us But I was one of the UNIX guys who who thought user experience was was where it was at and that We needed to figure out I wanted to figure out how to make this stuff work for people because I’d had the thrill of Seeing people actually using UN IX systems and and I was one of the hippies who you know We were kind of rare, but but then we weren’t so rare that You know that we saw computers as a liberating thing not a corporate thing and and It took some guts at that point I think to to go that route with your life Because like everybody in my graduating class at the University of Wisconsin. I Can’t say everybody but everybody that I knew went in the direction of getting a job working for a mini computer company or a mainframe company but instead I went to Silicon Valley and Became an Apple to programmer and that that’s a short version of the story of course Anyway, Betty told me about About The programming on KYU during drive time yesterday one of the things he told me is that I was on in place of Imus and I thought that was kind of ironic. They took an Imus off the air and put put me me on and Thought, you know, it’s funny because I miss I was one of my heroes when I was a college student I used to go back to New York.
I don’t think he was national at the time. He’s on WNBC. I think in New York and And I would record I miss in the morning and bring it back to me to college to listen because I just thought the guy was so cool It’s kind of like Coors beer was then it was a kind of a rare thing and you know, you’d kind of like cherish it I don’t know it seems weird to think about that I would you know do that but I miss was kind of a hero of mine and Well, there you have it. I said to Benny all things must pass, you know So anyway, he told me a story about this guy who was recording a podcast every day on his morning commute in the Bay Area and and I thought this is wow what a turnabout because you know, you think about people being caught in traffic in the morning and And you know there they are sort of listening to flipping the dial on the radio Have you ever been here because like I’ve been there you flip the dial on the radio and you ’re sort of touring through this desert wasteland of Moronety It’s more stupid every time you every new station you go to get stupid or they’re always like zoos and they have all these guys that are like You know, I don’t know girl.
They always have a woman too.
It’s not just guys Anyway, so here’s this guy who says flips it around and says instead of listening to the trash I’m gonna create my own and he’s talking about the awake that he went to and his own mortality and And I said to Benny I said, you know Benny this is what we’re all thinking about all the time This is basically the human condition Yes, and he has the guts to actually name the tune and I thought well What a wonderful thing and I told Benny the story of time when I was caught in traffic in Boston listening to Wbur FM pledge drive Wbur is one of two public radio stations in in Boston the other is WGBH and You might think WGBH is the big public radio station, but it’s not BUR is and I think BUR stands for Boston University Radio and And so they had a pledge drive and well I was thinking about was could we come up with some technology that would know that I had already paid and You know cut out the pledge drive and just give me the programming because why the hell should I be listening to this pledge drive? right now had already paid and Then Jane Kristo comes on Jane was the station manager at the time. I don’t think she is anymore and She said something that would be repeated many many times in the days ahead She said this is your station.
You’re the owners. We depend on you to pay the bill pay to pay the meeting I’m reading I see you can tell I make this stuff up as I’m Because this is me reading from the text. He says This is your station. You are the owners. Okay, we depend on you to pay our bills That way we are responsible only to you blah blah blah and on lot Which was total bullshit? Because you know they take money from all kinds of different places You can hear the commercials at the end of all the shows. They have sponsorship and they have advertisers I mean, you know, they like to say that’s non-commercial radio , but hey, they got ads. That’s commercial So anyway, so I was thinking she said that you own the place So I called when I got into the work I called them up and asked to speak with miss Christo and They asked who’s calling. I said my name is Dave Winer and by the way, I’m owner of the station and Nobody got nobody got the joke I don’t think they listen to their own pledge drives. I guess or they don’t see the irony in it So I didn’t get to speak to Jane, but I did get to speak with the vice president and I asked the question you know, what can I do with my ownership and Basically turns out what I can do is I can Pay that’s one of my things and I can listen. So there are two things that I get to do as owner I get to listen and I get to pay and But I don’t get to talk I Don’t get to share my thinking So basically the public radio model is that you pay and you listen, but what do you think they don’t care? They don’t care so That was just a couple of years ago And I realized that that’s the flaw in public radio. It isn’t public They do as they put talking heads up there to talk put experts and the experts may know something about the field I’m not saying they don’t know but they rarely tell us everything because they have to be politically correct because they have sponsors too and They have to not say things that those sponsors don’t like You know think about it. I mean one of the reasons I get into so much trouble is is that I don’t have Sponsors and I can say what I think and I and I know that I’m gonna piss people some people off when I say this or that because you know They don’t have very thick skins or they don’t want to be talked about that way and some of the people I do that with their powerful people and so they punished me for it and so that when you hear something like well Dave Winer has got a personality flaw or He’s a jerk or he’s difficult These are people who heard something that I said that they don’t like and they don’t like get that that’s part of like my job That’s part of what I do. I mean I’m trying to set some kind of an example I’m trying to be a pipe piper for other people so that they feel that it’s not without precedent They wouldn’t be the only one who actually said what they think So I felt a certain sense of victory when I heard about this guy who was Broadcasting who was podcasting his his drive commute and Then that got broadcast and I thought well We’ve closed the loop in such a short period of time and and I thought about a really unique way of saying that at the The installation was done. We hit it the software was installed. It was running and And in Apache they say when you install, you know Apache what they say then is they they come up with a Page that says it worked and that’s the way I felt when Benny was telling me this story I was saying Benny man. It worked. We got there. I said I can die a happy man now and That’s and I Do mean it. It’s like it’s a great thing I know I don’t have to do anything more because now I’ve done everything I need to do because things like that are happening and I didn’t have to do anything to make them happen And so I feel good about that Anyway to the that’s the end of that story. I think it reads better I you know what when you when you put the time in to write something. So if you go to archive dot scripting com slash 2005 Slash O5 slash 17 if you scroll to the end you’ll see a section called it worked There’s a picture of a guy with an accordion there and sit down take five minutes to read it I think it reads better than than it does when you when you try to narrate it, especially when you’ve already written something Anyway, if you made it this far I owe you an explanation and I unfortunately I can’t give you the explanation and I really feel bad about that for why the the two conversation starters are delayed It it isn’t you know, I guess what you can infer here is is that there are other people Involved with this and then they didn’t want this thing discussed publicly at least not yet. So That’s all I can say so Unfortunately, I wish I could say more. I wish I wish didn’t have to be quite so mysterious But I do owe you an explanation and I won’t forget that and there will come a time Hopefully not in the two distant future when I will be able to give you that explanation and if I were to tell you when Well, that’s even something I can’t say so Yeah, life sucks doesn’t it anyway, so I guess that’s it. Let’s see how much time I’ve used 31 minutes you see my podcast aren’t 40 minutes anymore. They ’re 30 minutes There you have it. It’s a 31 minute podcast. It’s May 17th 2005. This is morning coffee notes My name is Dave Winer and I’ll see you again real soon everybody [BLANK_AUDIO]
Let’s just go do a fetch on this because it’s not coming through in the browser So I have a script here in frontier that gets it does an HTTP request for me sure enough There is An opml that has all of the information in it so it could be turned into a directory and I’m gonna do exactly that I’m gonna link to this from podcast www. podcatch. com and and I’m going to Include it there, so And then probably some other directory stuff coming there - I contrast this to Google who announced that they have a beta of AdSense for feeds which Well, you know, I Wanted I don’t know what I wanted to say is like Oh, come on. Give me a fucking break. Okay, great. You got AdS ense feeds but I’ve been hearing about this for months and Actually, it was pretty well leaked three weeks ago or four weeks ago when it started showing up in some, you know, the I think it was in gadget that’s using it And I think they’ve got some kind of a deal a distribution deal with feed burner and you know Okay, so you’re gonna put ads and RSS feeds and You know, you want to know what I think about that and I’ve said this so many times before But I’ll say it again is that R SS itself is an advertising medium and the idea of putting ads in ads is pretty repulsive to me and You know, I’d like to see people be more creative about it. Give you an example In gadget, which is like my favorite example for this. I Like the engadget feed and Jason Calcanis says Dave you like it so much You either have to accept ads in it or you have to pay me money to read the feed and And you know, but before I pay you money, which is like the last thing that I want to do because you know it’s my money is like I think it’s pretty expensive money for you Jason because I’ll tell you why because I’m a blogger and When I read your feed There’s a pretty good chance that I’m gonna point to something from that feed in other words, I’m just gonna do a right click on the link to the story and Copy shortcut and then go over into my outliner that I edit scripting news in and paste in, you know type a little, you know thing engadget colon and then the title of the piece and then Select the title and then choose link to from my menu and boom It becomes a link and I save it and I put it out on scripting news and then However many people read the link and they see the name oh engadget and then the thing and then about two or three thousand of those People well on a good day on a not so good day a thousand people then click on the link, right? And read the article or skim it and are impressed by the ad, okay? And you get to charge your advertiser for a thousand views of the ad and however many click-throughs That’s not my problem, but I brought you a thousand two thousand readers and I think that for that I ought not have to pay to read your feed. I think I’m paying for it. So Consider that your feed to me as a blogger and I am a blogger and I do insist that you think about that, okay? That I’ve paid for it whenever I link to it now Of course I can’t promise that I’m gonna link because there goes my editorial integrity because I have a rule about when I link to Something I link to it when I think an informed person would want to be aware of That piece of information or point of view or both I mean it could be both an information and a point of view so I kind of and I and I have found that now from a cognitive standpoint and yes I do have a mind, you know, that’s I’m that’s the bad news for you advertisers is that I’m not just a highball I also have a or I actually have two eyeballs. I’m not just a pair of eyeballs, but I also have a mind and My mind goes through cognitive dissonance. In other words, I lose my suspension of disbelief when I get two different messages from one unit of text in other words I’m reading along actually almost always skimming because The content of engadget I make I’m interested in gadget gadget ry, but I’m not a gadget freak I’m not like coso for example coso has a picture of all the gadgetry He he carries with him and that ’s how he stays so skinny. He’s a really skinny guy He’s always working out because he’s carrying about 50 pounds of gadgets with him and but I’m not like that I but I you know, this is 2005 and like the I can’t go with anywhere without my cell phone without my camera Without my arcos. What else do I carry with me? I have a little Wi-Fi detector thing Who knows what else that’s probably about it. I carry a laptop almost always Unless I’m just going out to the supermarket. I almost always bring my sony via with me So I’m interested in this stuff , but I’m not gonna buy it all that frequently, but when I do you know, well my cell phone is It was supposed to be $60 a month, but it’s turning into about $200 a month They found all these ways to ding me the camera was $200 in total, which probably was about the best deal of it all The computer was $3,000 So you get an idea that basically when I buy something here, it’s it could be a lot of money, you know I’m gonna buy a car and I’m getting ready to buy a new car.
It’s been six years. The old car is I still runs great But you know, I could buy cars by the way to these days or gadgets So, you know, I get a chance to to buy some more gadgetry in this one This piece of gadgetry is gonna cost not three thousand, but at least twenty three thousand dollars That’s how much cars cost these days Anyway, why do you care about this? So I’ll tell you why you care because You have an opportunity to sell me one of whatever it is that you’re writing about, okay? Now there you’re walking on some some like sort of weird Ethical grounds and I and I want you to do the right thing Jason I don’t want you to start running editorial because you can make money on the ads for it But that’s where your separation of church and state comes in and and publications have had to deal with this kind of issue all the time in other words, you let your editorial people choose the The things to cover and then you the publisher through something algorithmic I would hope so that you don’t actually have to sit there hunting for ads all the time, you know on the occasion when you have An ad for the product that’s being written about in other words Give me a way to get more information about the product or to close the deal in other words on the one time in a Thousand or maybe ten thousand that I read something on Engad get and I want to go from that to purchase Facilitated and get your piece get your cut from that you’re entitled to a cut you sold it Okay, and I still I insist that you give me the truth. I want you to tell me I buy every product I buy has flaws I know it, okay, and like I’m shopping for car now and And I’m using cars that yahoo.
com To do it last time I bought a car. I did it with MSN cars calm and this time. I’m doing it with yahoo And it’s wonderful. I mean and what what is the first thing take a guess. What’s the first thing I jump to? When I’m you know considering a model or a make or a manufacturer I Go read the reviews and the reviews are starting to get people are getting really good at writing these reviews and It sort of goes back to the the the piece of podcasts that I did Which I really hope everybody if you’re if you’re listening to this podcast And you haven’t listened to the piece of podcast yet I would say throw this one in the trash and go go to morning coffee notes calm and and look for the leading tower of Pisa and go go listen to that one because it’ll put it all together. This is this this podcast in comparison You know this is just like chatter compared to that one that one sort of is like the anthem This is the this is a movement or or not even a movement. This is an application of that anthem It’s a it’s a song and the anthem is the manifesto. So Anyway, where was I? Right so so the the reviewers on yahoo are doing a great job and they’re they’re helping me make the decision so one of the cars I’m thinking about is the Honda element and You know the the reviewers there are in love with that car I mean, it’s not you know, it’s kind of hard to find a negative review But you have to I mean all the cars that I’ve been looking for are looking at are very very well-reviewed cars but There’s more to it than just whether or not they liked it because they tell you what the experience of owning the car is going to be like and I have validated this because I go back and read the reviews of the RX 300 Lexus RX 300 which is what I’m driving right now and You know, that’s one that I’ve been driving for six years. Is it six years? Yeah, it’s six years almost exactly and Yeah, I mean, I know what the pros and cons of the car are a very few cons It’s a really well-made car and it drives beautifully and it’s it’s powerful That’s I’ve only really come to appreciate how powerful car it is In the last few years when I’ve been the last couple of years particularly like last this year when I was driving around in The southern US and you know when you have to pass a car on a too late highway in Alabama This this car has got the power and you can just go, you know Put the foot on the pedal and go to the floor and like lean back and the thing takes off like a rocket I mean, it’s amazing pretty sure the car that I get to replace it will not be one of those Unfortunately, it’ll get better gas mileage though. And so there’s your trade-off anyway So there’s information available and I’m sure yahoo would do a deal with you Okay, for any product that is that they have in their database I’m sure that they would be willing to link pay you to link to their Their section on that because I gotta believe they makes they ’re gonna make some big bucks off this deal When I buy the car because I’m getting the dealer and I’m including them in it because I think it’s only fair You know when I go to get a price quote I’m clicking on the link in the yahoo site and I’m and I’m pretty sure that they’ve they ’ve now got me linked in To that sale and that whether I buy a Chevy Astro, which I’m really interested in that looks really nice And it’s a it’s a better size for me than the element is Or if I buy an element or I buy a Toyota Sienna or a Honda Honda Odyssey or a Dodge Car avan or Whatever I think they’re gonna get considerably large I Hope they get a large cut. They deserve it I’m doing my shopping. I’m going to the dealerships to do test drives, but I’m doing my shopping using using yahoo and and Jason I think that a cut of that is available to you, too And and I would like that much better as a user that just feels that that feels like you ’re helping me and that Rather than like here. I’ve just read an article about some really cool device like PlayStation 3 or whatever Vaguely aware that there’s a kind of there’s a conference going on a gaming conference going on all the gadget guys are there And right and so like on that one there’s an ad for bandwidth or something like that come on We can do a lot better. This is 2005 and and the relevancy of these ads, you know, it’s pretty sucky I Like it if they’re exactly about the thing that I just read about then I don’t have two topics proposed I have one and my my poor little brain loves likes that better and then and an important thing that all you advertisers I want y’all to remember. Okay, is that I’m not just a bunch of I pair eyeballs I’m also a brain and I and and I want you to respect that brain and I want you to feed it . Okay all right, so I want to like tell you a little story and this is something I wrote about today on scripting news and I want to try doing this now verbally not just in writing I mean, I I spent a lot longer writing this than I’m probably going to spend telling the story But but I wanted to try I Wanted to try telling the story verbally. It’s gonna it’s gonna take me Less time to do it, but it’s gonna take you more time to hear it Which I think is kind of interesting. Anyway, um So anyway, I got a call yesterday from Benny who was a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle and he was writing a story about KYU and They had their debut yesterday and I was their debut podcaster . This is a station that is broadcasting podcasts and I had a great talk with Benny and It reminded me of the kind of talks that we were having in 1994 It’s especially in the Bay Area , but I imagine it in other places too Where like people were discussed. They’re discovering the web and the web was this wonderful exciting right wide open space just really cool and This had all this potential and when when you’re lucky enough to be around when something like that’s happening You know, it’s it’s it’s there ’s an energy to it. It’s it’s really hard to describe in words But it’s a shared energy. It’s something that you get off on by sharing it with other people who are also getting that Hey, it’s a pretty exciting time to be alive. That’s how podcasting feels like right now Anyway, 1994 I was working on the San Francisco strike paper and you’ll see if you go back into the archive of Dave net which is Dave net dot scripting comm you’ll see There’s at least one article there where I tell the story of how this How this happened and what the experience was like and it was one of those great experiences and and But what was cool about it was that the reporters I’m a quick study, you know, and I learned the protocols and formats of the web in the first in the end of the summer of 1994 and the early fall my study HTTP HTML FTP TCP IP, you know, I’m a I’m a programmer and I’m excited about, you know What was exciting about these things was that they were so breezy. There was so much air and it was so easy to understand There were so lightweight. That was the cool thing about it and lightweight. We know is how you build really big standards and That was the experience I was a you know, UNIX programmer in the mid to late 70s when UNIX was at the stage that podcasting is at now I mean, you know, can you imagine and UNIX? this is before there was an Apple 2 before there was an IBM PC or Macintosh or It was when the internet was booting up to there wasn’t much of an internet at that point It was it was all happening right then and that was the really cool thing about UNIX and by the way was the when it was the cool thing about the IBM PC and the Apple 2 and You know, it’s funny. I’m Intersected my my path and Eric Raymond’s path intersected some time after XMRPC came out and When it was being adopted by the Python community and being and I say adopted I mean, it was really adopted by Python basically baked into To the distribution so that everybody that got Python after a certain point got an XMRPC stack in there as well and Eric wrote about it in his book and what he noted was is that it was a very UNIX-y sort of thing and It’s true. It is very much a UN IX-y sort of thing and I think that a lot of the UNIX guys Would be surprised to know that that the that the desktop computers that are, you know, so popular at their deep core deepest core Underneath all those Microsoft software, which I don’t know how it’s architected to be fair I have never actually seen the source code of a Microsoft product which I guess it’s kind of telling, huh? Isn’t it? I’ve been using their software for a long time And and and using a lot of it, but I’ve never actually seen the source code to a Microsoft app So I don’t really know I kind of suspect that it’s not airy on the inside that it’s kind of a little bit like a like ratty Which I believe me I’ve got a fair amount of that stuff myself although I find that that at some point it’s a good idea to rewrite the code if it gets to sort of Complex or difficult to understand anyway, I digress Well, let me just finish that one off because Eric noticed that it was so that it was so UNIX like and I thought boy I wish I could just explain to you how you know, we’re UNIX UN IX sort of forked and And I went with a fork that that wasn’t called UNIX and it was called the Apple - and Because I was one of the and we were there weren’t many of us But I was one of the UNIX guys who who thought user experience was was where it was at and that We needed to figure out I wanted to figure out how to make this stuff work for people because I’d had the thrill of Seeing people actually using UN IX systems and and I was one of the hippies who you know We were kind of rare, but but then we weren’t so rare that You know that we saw computers as a liberating thing not a corporate thing and and It took some guts at that point I think to to go that route with your life Because like everybody in my graduating class at the University of Wisconsin. I Can’t say everybody but everybody that I knew went in the direction of getting a job working for a mini computer company or a mainframe company but instead I went to Silicon Valley and Became an Apple to programmer and that that’s a short version of the story of course Anyway, Betty told me about About The programming on KYU during drive time yesterday one of the things he told me is that I was on in place of Imus and I thought that was kind of ironic. They took an Imus off the air and put put me me on and Thought, you know, it’s funny because I miss I was one of my heroes when I was a college student I used to go back to New York.
I don’t think he was national at the time. He’s on WNBC. I think in New York and And I would record I miss in the morning and bring it back to me to college to listen because I just thought the guy was so cool It’s kind of like Coors beer was then it was a kind of a rare thing and you know, you’d kind of like cherish it I don’t know it seems weird to think about that I would you know do that but I miss was kind of a hero of mine and Well, there you have it. I said to Benny all things must pass, you know So anyway, he told me a story about this guy who was recording a podcast every day on his morning commute in the Bay Area and and I thought this is wow what a turnabout because you know, you think about people being caught in traffic in the morning and And you know there they are sort of listening to flipping the dial on the radio Have you ever been here because like I’ve been there you flip the dial on the radio and you ’re sort of touring through this desert wasteland of Moronety It’s more stupid every time you every new station you go to get stupid or they’re always like zoos and they have all these guys that are like You know, I don’t know girl.
They always have a woman too.
It’s not just guys Anyway, so here’s this guy who says flips it around and says instead of listening to the trash I’m gonna create my own and he’s talking about the awake that he went to and his own mortality and And I said to Benny I said, you know Benny this is what we’re all thinking about all the time This is basically the human condition Yes, and he has the guts to actually name the tune and I thought well What a wonderful thing and I told Benny the story of time when I was caught in traffic in Boston listening to Wbur FM pledge drive Wbur is one of two public radio stations in in Boston the other is WGBH and You might think WGBH is the big public radio station, but it’s not BUR is and I think BUR stands for Boston University Radio and And so they had a pledge drive and well I was thinking about was could we come up with some technology that would know that I had already paid and You know cut out the pledge drive and just give me the programming because why the hell should I be listening to this pledge drive? right now had already paid and Then Jane Kristo comes on Jane was the station manager at the time. I don’t think she is anymore and She said something that would be repeated many many times in the days ahead She said this is your station.
You’re the owners. We depend on you to pay the bill pay to pay the meeting I’m reading I see you can tell I make this stuff up as I’m Because this is me reading from the text. He says This is your station. You are the owners. Okay, we depend on you to pay our bills That way we are responsible only to you blah blah blah and on lot Which was total bullshit? Because you know they take money from all kinds of different places You can hear the commercials at the end of all the shows. They have sponsorship and they have advertisers I mean, you know, they like to say that’s non-commercial radio , but hey, they got ads. That’s commercial So anyway, so I was thinking she said that you own the place So I called when I got into the work I called them up and asked to speak with miss Christo and They asked who’s calling. I said my name is Dave Winer and by the way, I’m owner of the station and Nobody got nobody got the joke I don’t think they listen to their own pledge drives. I guess or they don’t see the irony in it So I didn’t get to speak to Jane, but I did get to speak with the vice president and I asked the question you know, what can I do with my ownership and Basically turns out what I can do is I can Pay that’s one of my things and I can listen. So there are two things that I get to do as owner I get to listen and I get to pay and But I don’t get to talk I Don’t get to share my thinking So basically the public radio model is that you pay and you listen, but what do you think they don’t care? They don’t care so That was just a couple of years ago And I realized that that’s the flaw in public radio. It isn’t public They do as they put talking heads up there to talk put experts and the experts may know something about the field I’m not saying they don’t know but they rarely tell us everything because they have to be politically correct because they have sponsors too and They have to not say things that those sponsors don’t like You know think about it. I mean one of the reasons I get into so much trouble is is that I don’t have Sponsors and I can say what I think and I and I know that I’m gonna piss people some people off when I say this or that because you know They don’t have very thick skins or they don’t want to be talked about that way and some of the people I do that with their powerful people and so they punished me for it and so that when you hear something like well Dave Winer has got a personality flaw or He’s a jerk or he’s difficult These are people who heard something that I said that they don’t like and they don’t like get that that’s part of like my job That’s part of what I do. I mean I’m trying to set some kind of an example I’m trying to be a pipe piper for other people so that they feel that it’s not without precedent They wouldn’t be the only one who actually said what they think So I felt a certain sense of victory when I heard about this guy who was Broadcasting who was podcasting his his drive commute and Then that got broadcast and I thought well We’ve closed the loop in such a short period of time and and I thought about a really unique way of saying that at the The installation was done. We hit it the software was installed. It was running and And in Apache they say when you install, you know Apache what they say then is they they come up with a Page that says it worked and that’s the way I felt when Benny was telling me this story I was saying Benny man. It worked. We got there. I said I can die a happy man now and That’s and I Do mean it. It’s like it’s a great thing I know I don’t have to do anything more because now I’ve done everything I need to do because things like that are happening and I didn’t have to do anything to make them happen And so I feel good about that Anyway to the that’s the end of that story. I think it reads better I you know what when you when you put the time in to write something. So if you go to archive dot scripting com slash 2005 Slash O5 slash 17 if you scroll to the end you’ll see a section called it worked There’s a picture of a guy with an accordion there and sit down take five minutes to read it I think it reads better than than it does when you when you try to narrate it, especially when you’ve already written something Anyway, if you made it this far I owe you an explanation and I unfortunately I can’t give you the explanation and I really feel bad about that for why the the two conversation starters are delayed It it isn’t you know, I guess what you can infer here is is that there are other people Involved with this and then they didn’t want this thing discussed publicly at least not yet. So That’s all I can say so Unfortunately, I wish I could say more. I wish I wish didn’t have to be quite so mysterious But I do owe you an explanation and I won’t forget that and there will come a time Hopefully not in the two distant future when I will be able to give you that explanation and if I were to tell you when Well, that’s even something I can’t say so Yeah, life sucks doesn’t it anyway, so I guess that’s it. Let’s see how much time I’ve used 31 minutes you see my podcast aren’t 40 minutes anymore. They ’re 30 minutes There you have it. It’s a 31 minute podcast. It’s May 17th 2005. This is morning coffee notes My name is Dave Winer and I’ll see you again real soon everybody [BLANK_AUDIO]