Something tastes funny

Just an FYI — we’re in the process of investigating a nasty tasting bug that’s sitting somewhere between Flock and Delicious.

Apparently Favorites are disappearing (*gasp!*) without a clear reason. Lloyd thinks that it might be something on Delicious’ end, but we’re still looking into it. Rest assured, no existing data is being lost — however, creating new favorites is definitely flaky (possibly because of interactions on the server side).
Keep an eye on Bug #2919 for details. To report any issues you run into, drop a bug report to feedback (at) flock dot com. We’ve got our best people on this, so I’ll let you know the outcome as soon as I get word.

FOX bought…

Popist Hotlist

NewRoo? Well that’s one down.

Did they also buy or consider buying… Popist? While we have a solid answer to that burning question… is it possible that their shopping didn’t include a second company? According to one discussion I had today, this was at least a very real possibility at one point. As I understand it, Preston even hit the nail on the head as to why they’d be interested at all.

So as Ruport Murdoch proclaims that “A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it”, it’s clear that FOX will be moving rapidly into social media and the subpop press ever more fervently.

Giving companies what they want

A friend gave me a bit of wisdom today: companies don’t give a shit if you eat or not. They want deliverables. Something to keep in mind as I ponder this idea: I just want to make enough to pay my rent and have something eat…

Seems in line with something Calacanis said at ETech: “You’ve got to produce.”

Which fits in with that old saying that “talk is cheap.”

So it doesn’t matter how smart, how clever, how nifty the things you think or say are; you’ve gotta put those things to work and become a generator — of physical, tactile, in the real results. Something to show for it, yeh yeh.

I dunno, I’m just rambling now. But it’s a stark reminder: your priorities, though nobel and just, probably don’t mean shit to anyone else unless you can impact their bottom line. Hey, reality bites. There was a movie about that. Look it up. Might be something worth knowing in there.

Quickgooglesilver?

Google Quicksearch

As Google takes its privacy-exploding eponymous Desktop Search app out of beta, it seems to have picked up an idea or two from Nicholas Jitkoff’s classic world-bending launcher, Quicksilver:

Three months ago, I came up with an idea that makes it easier for users to find what they’re looking for: a search box in the middle of the desktop. It’s very accessible — all you have to do is press your Ctrl key twice. After some experimentation, people are telling us they like it and use it.

Tomas Gunnarsson, Google Desktop Software Engineer, Official Google Blog

The jaywalking podcast (GlitchNYC)

Jaywalking podcast - photo by Miss RogueBarcamps NYC and Austin veteran Eric Skiff captured a pretty decent interview with me touching on Flock and microformats while we made our our way back to SXSW from the Spaghetti warehouse yesterday. Give it a listen and then subscribe to GlitchCast. Good stuff — and really good audio quality given the circumstances!

Flock 0.5.13 released with 100% more Photobucket

Flock 0.5.13.2 released

Though we’re still struggling with speed issues on the Mac, we were able to squeeze in our second photo service for uploading and browsing photos: Photobucket! Download the latest release and check it out.

To give this new functionality a go, do this:

Open up Flock’s Preferences dialog, click the Web Services tab, choose Photo Sharing and then select Photobucket from the dropdown menu.

Switching photo services requires Flock to be restarted, and you’ll be prompted to do this after making your selection. After switching services, the Photo Browser and Uploader interfaces will change to reflect the feature set of the new service.

Oh, and we also took care of a nasty bug that would mangle title, description, and tag fields when using multibyte UTF-8 characters in the Photo Uploader.

EFF this, I’m moving to France

EFF the RIAA (clean)

PARIS (Reuters) – France is pushing through a law that would force Apple Computer Inc to open its iTunes online music store and enable consumers to download songs onto devices other than the computer maker’s popular iPod player.

Under a draft law expected to be voted in parliament on Thursday, consumers would be able to legally use software that converts digital content into any format.

It would no longer be illegal to crack digital rights management — the codes that protect music, films and other content — if it is to enable to the conversion from one format to another, said Christian Vanneste, Rapporteur, a senior parliamentarian who helps guide law in France.

French plan would open iTunes to other devices — by Astrid Wendlandt

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion related to DRM and Creative Commons (especially this morning’s Commons-based Business Models panel). If France moves forward with this kind of law, I think it’s only going to make this situation better, more open, more transparent and actually… better for Apple.

While perhaps not hugely impactful over the long term (in a globalized world, one country’s laws really don’t make a massive difference in WTO-scheme of things), setting the example (especially given the path to darkness France was previously on) will be tremendously didactic for the various and soon-to-be-obsolete DRM industries (ok, "soon" as in 5 to 12 years).

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What’s the secret?

20x2 in red (photo by Tara Hunt)Well, I did my thing. And talked serious. And answered, or something, the question: “What’s the secret?” for 20×2.

What’s the secret?

ugh, the secret. the secret. something that other people don’t know. something that presumably i know that you don’t.

a secret? a secret. what the fuck is the secret?

alright. ya know, i’ve thought about this for a long time. it’s been on my mind forever. i always want to be so clever and unique. i want to be didactic and interesting and prophetic.

but i’ve thought about it too long. too hard. the secret is something simple. something i can’t just make up. it’s something obvious. something that, well, isn’t secret at all.

so first: i’m a privileged white male. i have so much privilege that i don’t really even see it all the time. i’m all but blind to it sometimes. but i know it. that’s not a secret.

second, and this is the secret that shouldn’t be secret: free will. i stand before you a privileged white male. with free will.
with free will.
with free will.
i have no excuses for i have free will.

third: love. look, i thought about it too much. but it’s obvious. love shouldn’t be a secret and so when you want to know, “what’s the secret?” there’s only ever going to be one answer. wanna know why? fuck it, because love is really the only secret worth keeping.