Hubdog adds OPML support Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Hubdog is a... it's a... I don't do Pocket PC so I'm not sure. A media thingamajigger. Anyway, the aggregator piece of it now imports OPML files -- and URLs! -- and exports feeds as OPML.


What the unwired don't get Permanent link to this item in the archive.

  • We don't like a hype-ridden story in Business Week.
  • We don't like pictures of smiling models on a web page.
  • We don't like to see "order today!" in the subject lines of our e-mail.
  • We don't like to see the word "free" in all caps.
We wired types -- and that's beginning to be everybody -- we won't be carried along by contrived enthusiasm. We not only don't like hype, we will actively turn against the purveyors of it by placing their wares on our blacklists. Why is that such a hard concept for most of the media and marketing world to grasp?

I think we're never going to be able to count on the Cluetrain ethic trickling up. It has to bite people in the ass somehow, but I haven't figured out a way to make that happen. There's something already in a person that's ready to resonate with the book and its ideas, or not. If they're not ready, as I've learned first-hand, you can't even get them to listen to the audiobook if you put in in their hands. So how do they get ready? I'm discouraged.


When it's OK to help discipline strangers' kids Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I think you help parents, in certain situations, when you butt in where manners dictate you shouldn't, and reinforce the parents' urgings to behave well in public.

Couple weekends ago my little guy and I were seated just behind a family with two little girls, maybe 6 and 8. The mom kept asking them to keep their voices down, and the one kid was pretty obnoxious, really, at one point screaming to the mom, "You're making me talk loud." That's what made me think the kid wasn't getting the idea that this particular "don't" of the hundreds she heard that week wasn't just another of the mom's little whims. The mom was don'ting on my behalf and the others in the car on the 6-hour train trip.

Finally, I risked helping out, stood up, leaned over the seat, looked right into the eyes of the loudest little girl, and said she should believe her mother when she says they are bothering the other passengers. I tried to give the mom a sympathetic look to show that I was trying to help and didn't really blame her. The kid was terrorstruck. It did work for about an hour. Then it worked for another half-hour when I got up one time and gave the kid another look on the way back to my seat.

I remember those days when my kids were little and I got so tired of telling them not to do this or that when they were learning how to be civilized in a transient social situation like a train or plane trip, or even standing in line at a store. I think I'd have appreciated some testimony from one of the strangers I was trying to protect from my children. Is a train car a temporary village?


I'm with Rex Permanent link to this item in the archive.

He's over there talking about gestures and not getting not linking.

I really like what the Gillmor Gang does in aggregating some wonderfully interesting and erudite voices into songs I care about. I listen to them instead of regular music on my commute. I even get some of Steve's more out-of-the-way theories, but I can't get with the idea of not linking. It's what the web is all about.

The irony is the stance backs Steve into kind of an awkward corner as he's giving up his blog address. What if nobody linked to wherever he's going to write now?