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Many geeks (and I mean that term as a compliment) are focused on the burgeoning world of RSS, aggregration, blogs, and the swirling flux in the center of these phenomena. The question I have — and I really want to answer this — is whether the geeks are right to focus so much on this intersection. Will all of this interest, attention, and energy spread to a more general audience, beyond the parties involved? Beyond those who not only know what a newsreader is, but have a favorite? I’m in the niche. I want to know if/when/how this clustering of interests and technology will break through to an audience that does not subscribe to 71 feeds in a dedicated client. An audience that doesn’t feel obsessed with keeping up with the flow of information, an impossible task. I think the search for another name for RSS misses the point. It’s not about the format, it’s about the data. Yes, I’m paraphrasing Willison, who was borrowing from Ruby while commenting on Zawodny’s mention that My Yahoo support Atom right alongside RSS (“it took 30 minutes”).

Readers care about reading. Publishers care about reaching those readers. The technical linkage between publishers and readers should be invisible to the readers, at the least — and most publishers don’t care to spend much time on the mechanics, either. So what does all the technical blather boil down to? That’s what matters… and I think we’re still waiting for the dust to settle.

Don’t connect to the VPN at the same time as publishing a blog entry. It doesn’t work. Eventually had to restart Radio to get these two most recent tiny posts live.

OK, now News.com Alerts are really something visible. At least, I think that a header link on every single page on the site might be seen by a few readers. We’ll see. http://alerts.news.com/

Hacking TiVo to display RSS feeds on your TV. Andrew Grumet did it. Why? A question I can’t answer.

Last night we ambled around the northeast quadrant of San Francisco for the Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt. An “urban sleuthing adventure,” the treasure hunt is a great excuse to get out and see the city, at ground level. Maybe ‘level’ isn’t the right word in San Francisco — we traipsed up and down various hills searching for the answers to certain clues, with mixed success. Held on the same night as the Chinese New Year Parade (Happy Year of the Monkey to you all), the treasure hunt helps add to the chaos, confusion, and glee going on in downtown San Francisco on this February evening.

What was telling to me is how rare it is that people fill the streets downtown after working hours. Maybe most downtowns in the 21st century empty after work, but if the energy of a city keeps pulsing after dark, well, then it’s a city in more than just name. I’m hardly one to comment with authority on the nightlife, but part of choosing to live in a city is the knowledge and expectation that there is always something going on. San Francisco does fit that description most of the time, but for all its geographic compactness (the famous 7×7 miles), the city breaks up into distinct zones very dramatically, and you have to actively seek entertainment in areas distinct from where most people live. That’s not unexpected, nor all bad — few of us want to try and sleep next door to a nightclub. However, it does feel like a bit of waste to have so many people flow in, and then out, of the downtown each workday. Without events like last night’s festivities, the downtown is a beach at low tide most evenings.

For those that haven’t tried the Treasure Hunt… give it a shot. The clues, even at the beginner level, are no slam dunk (see example below). But the combination of shared brainpower (this is a team event), a brisk walk (there is a time limit), and studied nonchalance (when you find the answer, you try not to give it away to other teams lingering nearby) energizes everyone. That energy carried us through 3+ hours of criss-crossing the city, before a fun dinner to recharge our batteries. (Note: Steps of Rome Trattoria, in the heart of North Beach, was lively, but the food is nothing special.)

Actual clue from last night:

You are a Saint, my amigo, and then some. I would follow you to the very end, where I will find a house that is not for squares, and will face five choices for parallel thinking. But I must get past them, and though I seem to be “off track,” I am merely between them. For I seek love and an evening meal, though I must look down and watch my “belt line.”
How many miles did they cover?

This was the second clue we tried to solve. And we failed. I’m looking forward to the answer being posted online, so we can learn what we did wrong. For those whom this seems impossibly cryptic, the conventions are that the clue will lead you to a location in the city, and then you will find the answer at the location. The answer we need was the last underlined bit. I’m pretty sure we started at the right general area (where Sansome meets Market Street), but zeroing in from there proved too difficult in the time we allotted.

There were 16 clues, and we found 7 answers… I hope we got all of those right. 😉

I’ve submitted my blog to a few of these resources, but not all. Looks like RSS is starting to gain attention in the way search-engine optimization grew a few years ago.

Vin Crosbie gives us an update on his progress on the 21st-century business plan for newspaper publishing. Curious to see how it reads for those of us without print editions, too. Stay tuned, I guess.

How often do you get a first-hand take on recent history? The Fog of War, which we saw two nights ago, is a fantastic film. Robert McNamara has a story to tell and it’s fascinating to listen to a significant participant in some of the most tumultuous moments of the 1960s. I don’t kow what his motives are for telling that story now, and why he agreed to sit down with Errol Morris, but I’m glad he did. I’ve read a little bit about Vietnam, and seen a lot of the multi-part PBS series on the war (and its precursors) while in high school, so I felt mildly informed. But this first person narrative, combined with various clips from the era being discussed, was great. Non-fiction is powerful stuff when it’s so vivid.

I can only believe the parallels between the McNamara as Secretary of Defense and Rumsfeld in that same role are coincidental. Morris doesn’t make any obvious connections, and I’m not clear about the timing of these interviews, and whether current events played a role in the creation of this film. I don’t think so. But the common shared perceptions of intelligence and arrogance are obvious, and while Iraq is not (yet?) Vietnam, it’s clearly going to be a part of the American story internationally for years (decades?) to come.

I have not seen Morris’s other films, like the much-acclaimed The Thin Blue Line. But I’m adding that one to Netflix right now.

Psssttt… http://alerts.news.com is now open for (beta) business. Use the feedback form to suggest improvements.

I’m a casual user of Omni Outliner. I never found Radio Userland’s outliner to my liking. But I do like the organization imposed by outlines, so I found my way [via Scripting.com] to this oh-so-in-depth survey of outliner user interfaces. I need to sleep more than I need to read this right now, but I admired (as I’ve said before) focused obsession. It doesn’t hurt to put sentences like this near the top of the very long essay.

Good user interface details are like fresh air and bad ones are like a minor toothache you haven’t quite noticed yet.

We all like breathing fresh air, don’t we?