I just transcribed a podcast on Mechanical Turk. 40 minutes long, and really badly recorded. What I heard was interesting, because it was a speech by a man called Paul Rusesabagina, who ran a hotel in Rwanda and helped protect over 1,200 people from being killed during the Rwandan genocide back in '94. He has a book out and Indybay has some pictures and an MP3 (of much higher quality) available. This is raw morality, this is what should be at the forefront of our minds when we discuss moral education, not the whims of popes. 
I missed linking to this the other day, but Suw Charman has an absolutely kick-arse rant about WeMedia. James Cox has some equally angry, kick-arse video. From what I've read and heard and imbibed and has osmotically transferred to me, the basic consensus is "They didn't give a toss about what we had to say". This is almost for the best. We are going to win, whether they want us to or not. Only now we are going to take down the television companies without them really looking. Bloggers, podcasters, video producers, internet music kiddies: put your ninja outfit on and start publishing, syndicating, aggregating and wearing your favourite pyjamas. We've got some bins to empty.
Brian Flemming: "Remember how confused you were when you heard about the iTunes Music Store? Wait, you thought, the company that created that store is Apple Computer. Does that mean that Apple Corps Ltd., the British company that owns the rights to music by the Beatles, is the company that created iTunes? What exactly is going on here? You were probably paralyzed by this marketplace confusion for days. Maybe you still are."
Congratulations, Dave. A toast to OPML is in order. Hip hip hooray!
Can anybody translate? I mean, when faced with a language that I can't comprehend, I usually just go "ooh, this is interesting". When I see Welsh I just go "eek! People speak this?!"
Neville Hobson: "But if using OPML files as a means of sharing is to take off more broadly, it all must be a lot easier." We're building the pieces, yes, you and me.
Chris Cactus: "Colbert has the ability to be funnier, but the brilliance was in his bravado. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Colbert must wear some great big pants to hold his giant balls."
Fark have a nice cynical reaction to MyBBCSpace 2.0.
Are you using Adblock on Firefox? Want to improve your Internet experience a lot? Add the following to your Adblock filter: "http://lads.myspace.com/music/*".
This method really helps with the whole "open in new tabs" thing that we're all doing now.
Matt Mullenwegg on SYO: "I still think moving OPML around is too hard, it would be nice to have some sort of OPML normalization service that could log into different accounts at places like WordPress, Bloglines, and Google reader, grab your file, auto-discover any feeds for entries that don't have a xmlUrl, and merge everything together using the updated attribute." Keep your eyes peeled, kids.
Why you shouldn't send me Word files. 
Let's Kill MySpace Pt. 1: Music 
One of the few good things about MySpace is the promotion that it can give musicians. Independent artists and bands promote themselves via MySpace. It's time we produce an open source version. And OPML is here to do it.
On the right hand side, I've got a Grazr box, which links through to the websites of a handful of (mostly) independent artists.
This could quite easily replicate the functionality that MySpace is providing for artists.
It requires Grazr to simply tweak the rendering process for OPML.
We need a method by which if one links to an MP3 in an outline, it'll bring up a flash player, as it does for podcasts.
That way, artists can produce a static set of songs in an OPML feed, with other material (including links to buy songs, links to RSS feeds for gigs and to their website).
This is a far less obnoxious way of implementing what MySpace has for bands. An OPML band for each musician with MP3s built in! Come on, we need this in Grazr!
Then we could use technology similar to Share Your OPML to aggregate music tastes. Perhaps share.opml.org/music...
The Internet is here to free us from the horrible taste of record executives. Let's not waste that freedom on the horrible design of MySpace.
Another OPML Hack
Here's an annoying little bug that happens for me with NewsRiver and Firefox. I like to tab through the checkboxes of the stories in NewsRiver, hitting space when I see a story I want to delete.
This works fine in Safari, but not in Firefox on the Mac or on other platforms. This rather spoilt it all for me.
Today I fixed that too. It's simply a matter of adding a tabindex on the checkboxes.
You can see the code here. Load it up in the Editor in the usual manner.
Share Your OPML
So you can now use Share Your OPML to, well, share your OPML. People like Steve Rubel and Mike Arrington are talking about it, as is Alex Barnett.
Dave has stated that there will be per-feed privacy options.
Don't wait for it. I've already written a script that will do it for you.
I've just updated the script to make it more reliable (having had my opml.root wiped out by my own incompetence!).
Once you've got an OPML Editor install set up, load this up and follow the instructions.
