Mark Pilgrim continues to lead the parade on the element, which he's calling RSS Auto-Discovery, which seems like an appropriate handle. Glad we can get a cross-blogging-tool effort going. That's more of a new thing than many people might realize, and far more important, imho, than any single feature. This is a tough time to be in business, and we have ambitious goals. It's nice to get some help. Thanks. [Scripting News]
people have been stealing into this country in the dark of night, seeking asylum, becoming citizens and contributing to the growth of the finest experiment in democracy that civilization has ever known. Those labeled "poor" in the United States have a standard of living that surpasses middle class in some places. You'd think Castro would catch on. Imagine what Cuba could become as a free market tourist destination!
Castro Rejects Bush Democracy Ideas. In a blistering speech before hundreds of thousands of people in a drenching rain Saturday, President Fidel Castro said the democracy President Bush wants to see in Cuba would be a corrupt and unfair system that ignores the poor. [AP World News]
Trust Mark Pilgrim to introduce a cool new feature like RSS auto discovery when I'm having a brief sojourn in Paradise, at Bob Burns' beautiful house on a mountain top a hundred miles south of Sydney. If I get tired of eating delicious food, drinking Scharers' Lager and excellent red wine, listening to one Rounder CD after another (currently playing: The Music of Ed Reavy), and looking at Ming's paintings, I may get around to updating my Movable Type template. Otherwise it will have to await my return to Sydney. [Jonathon Delacour]
The reasons I enjoy playing (somebody might even call this working) with UserLand's software is that it allows me to do all kind of tricks without being a programmer, and that this is a great community. Yup, I'm not a programmer, I could not write a 4 lines script, I have never learned and most probably I would not be good at it because I don't have the kind of discipline that is necessary for this job.
I work with a lot of incredibly smart and skilled programmers and together we have created some very good stuff, imho. However, with Radio I could turn a static piece of graphics into a dynamic template for outline-driven presentations in minutes, just cutting and pasting a few macros.
It's true that I am a power user, but I see people doing this kind of nerdy stuff every day, it is a great way to empower people. But there also is people who don't want to see this stuff. In the last few days I have helped a few friend to get on-line with their Radio weblogs. They can use a computer, but they have no clue about what an html tag is. This allowed me to see where there is still room for improvement. The main issue is with images and links: there is a lot of people out there who is just scared by code, they don't want to use it. This is especially true for Mac users who don't get the wysiwyg text editor in the browser, so we need a solution for these users. I guess that now I know what our new tool will be about. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]
Amazon Memoir: The Oft-Told Story. Yes, it's another dot-com memoir. Yes, it retells an old story. But Mike Daisey's 21 Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon.com is also a pretty good read. Review by Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
More Than Two of the Pas de Deux. In one way or another, the pas de deux was at the heart of nearly all the dances presented by the New York City Ballet on Tuesday night at the New York State Theater. By Jennifer Dunning. [New York Times: Arts]
