Month: June 2005

Notes from Dave Winer's Keynote

Post ImageHere are some notes I wrote down during Dave Winer’s keynote:

  • Both Marc Canter and Dave agree that the web allows multiple little islands, instead of big continents
  • Dave remarks on the Microsoft announcement expected later today – “we can all participate, but none of us get to be the platform vendor”
  • According to Dave, technology control is behind us, and doesn’t think that the W3C has been effective, mainly because there was a single vendor that had the power to decide what lived and what died on the net
  • RSS is great at sharing news, but it doesn’t do a very good job of distributing information that isn’t news
  • Dave says that outlines and similar structures are the future of the web, and may be just the thing to supersede the HTML web
  • Shared a demo of the open source OPML Editor
  • To Dave, a blog is a document, that’s his perspective
  • The song they chose is Yellow Submarine, and the entire auditorium sang along! Definitely find a podcast recording…it’ll be worth it.

Is it just me, or does it seem like Dave’s who “unconference” concept is really just about him having control of the talk? First he says it’s all about a discussion, instead of just having a speaker. Then he says that he should control who gets to talk, and for how long. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as though Dave keeps coming up with ways to maintain control of the talk while telling us that he’s giving us control.

Read: Gnomedex

Gnomedex is underway!

Post ImageSomehow, we managed to make it here on time! We just finished listening to Chris Pirillo give his welcome address, and up next is Dave Winer with the first keynote of the conference.

The Podbot seems to be working quite well, though the wireless seems rather slow at the moment. Then again, if you could see all of the computers in this auditorium, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that. Some people have already snapped photos of the Podbot, so be sure to watch Flickr, and the blog sites like Technorati for more.

For those of you who knew the Podbot before Gnomedex, we added the ability to take pictures using the webcam last night. Unfortunately it doesn’t automagically upload them to Flickr, but I will be doing that manually when we get some good ones!

Read: Gnomedex

Announcing the Podbot!

Post ImageI’ve been waiting to post this for quite some time now. I am very happy to introduce to you, the Podcast Wizard Robot, or Podbot for short. You may have heard rumblings about a podcasting robot already, and if so, you heard correctly!

The Podbot is exactly that, a podcasting robot. It moves around like a mini car, and is controlled wirelessly. It’s equipped with a webcam and of course, a microphone. The Podbot has a Tablet PC on board, to act as both the interface and brains of the robot. We control movement, recording, and other functionality remotely using another Tablet PC connected over Wi-Fi.

All of the software is written in .NET. The control software which handles communication with the Podbot and functionality like movement was written specifically for the Podbot. The podcasting software is actually Podcast Wizard, our upcoming podcasting tool. Our podcast is hosted at Podcast Spot, and all of our episodes are tagged with Podcast Tags.

As you’ll see from the website, the Podbot was created by myself, Dickson, Andrew and Ashish. Above all, it was a fun project, and we all learned a lot. Thanks to Andrew and Ashish for all of the hard work you did – the Podbot just wouldn’t exist without you!

You can check out the website for more information on the Podbot, or if you’re at Gnomedex, come see it in person! You can listen to our first podcast with the robot here.

Read: Podcast Wizard Robot

Seattle Trip Day 2

Even though we were awake and working til past 4 AM last night, we decided to get going relatively early this morning. We made it out of the hotel on our way to eat around 11 AM. We found a bagel shop near the harbor, and had a sandwhich there. Then we decided to walk through the very busy harbor area for a bit, past the original Starbucks which we took a quick look at. It was much, much busier than the last time I went.

Then it was back to work. Eventually we went in search of a food court for lunch, and found one in the second mall. Unlike Edmonton, there seem to be quite a few very upscale shopping centers in downtown Seattle. And of course, the downtown area is always full of people.

Tonight we went to the Gnomedex registration, and then for dinner at the restaurant here in the hotel. I think we ordered too much food, but it was quite good. The conference starts tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to that.

Gnomedex Registration

Post ImageTonight was the registration for Gnomedex, but really, it was an opportunity to mingle. The actual registration took about 30 seconds. In addition to the fairly standard lanyard, we were given a Google basebcall cap.

It was nice to connect with some people that I hadn’t seen since Northern Voice. The Canadian delegation at this conference is actually quite large, so we felt right at home. I also met some new people, some completely new, and some who I knew only digitally. That’s the best part of these conferences – putting a face to the name/blog/podcast.

Tomorrow should definitely be an interesting day, with some very interesting people scheduled to speak. I’m especially looking forward to Dean Hachamovitch’s keynote address in the morning.

Microsoft to make RSS announcement at Gnomedex

Post ImageThere will probably be quite a few Gnomedex-related posts over the next few days, so I figured the new graphic would be a good idea. I’ll use it for any post related to the conference – that way, if you’re less interested in the conference and more interested in what Dickson and I are up to in Seattle, you’ll know which posts to read and which to ignore.

It has been rumored for some time now that Microsoft is making a big announcement this weekend at Gnomedex, but this News.com article is the first mainstream press to pick it up (that I have seen anyway):

Microsoft plans to announce on Friday that it is expanding its support for the Web publishing standard Really Simple Syndication.

Microsoft is proposing an extension to RSS that would allow it to better support ordered lists of information. Today, RSS feeds are sent and read merely as a stream of messages, with the order being determined according to the time the messages were sent. Microsoft is proposing a way to add ordering information so that an RSS feed could better handle things like an e-commerce site’s list of best-selling items or calendar information ordered by the date of an event rather than when the appointment was created.

Sounds pretty interesting, and the article quotes Dave Winer, which probably means he’s not against the proposed extension. I guess I’ll be able to post details from the conference 🙂

Read: CNET News.com

Seattle Trip Day 1

Post ImageAs I posted earlier, Dickson and I arrived in Seattle this morning. I don’t know why we decided we’d go for such an early flight – leaving at 6:45 AM is not something I want to do ever again. Especially considering we didn’t sleep last night. Anyway, we made it across the border fairly easily.

We took the Airporter to our hotel, and were surprised to find that they already had a room ready for us. Being only about 8:30 AM, we figured we’d have quite a bit of time to kill before we got the room. We brought all the luggage up, and then decided to venture out. After some breakfast at McDonalds and a Starbucks for me, we set about solving the Internet problem we had discovered upon entering the room.

The hotel has wireless, but it is not free. And at $10 USD per machine, we’d be spending about $150 during the trip. However, the hotel does have two machines in the lobby that are free to use, and these are not wireless. Seeing an opportunity, we went to Office Depot and bought a router. We also went to Northgate Mall (yes they have one too) to Best Buy to purchase a firewire PCMCIA card so that we can transfer video to our tablets. Once we got back, we were going to hook up the router, but someone was using the computers, so we went to kill some time. Both of us were tired, so we decided a nap would be a good idea.

Around seven hours later, Dickson woke up, and then woke me up. I guess we needed some sleep. Before going back to setup the router, we decided to eat first. We tried to find a Denny’s, but couldn’t, so we gave up and went to McDonalds again (though a different one than this morning). Instead of walking all the way back to the hotel, we took the Seattle Monorail – very cool! It actually goes quite fast, so it doesn’t take very long to get from one end to the other at all. The other neat thing we discovered today is the Metro. They have an entire underground bus terminal, and the big transit stops all have electronic signs with the status of your bus. Very neat.

Since getting the Internet working, we’ve been busy programming and updating and testing. I am in the lobby right now, sitting by the fireplace. I am sure the hotel staff thinks we’re nuts, awake at this time. Little do they know, it’s just par for the course!

Happy Birthday Sharon!

This birthday wish comes to you all the way from Seattle! Hope you enjoy your day. I’d direct folks to your blog to leave you a birthday comment, but unfortunately, you don’t have one. Now that you’re another year wiser, maybe you should start one 😉

Arrived in Seattle

We arrived safely in Seattle very early this morning! I am happy to report that it was relatively easy to make it through customs and security, even though Dickson got harrassed a little by the customs agent. I think she just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Unfortunately it’s raining pretty good outside today, so I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere. We have some work to do anyway, so maybe an indoors day is good. I did get a Starbucks already, so I feel like I really have arrived in Seattle. We’re still trying to figure out our options for Internet – the wireless in the hotel is not free, but the two computers we’re using in the lobby right now are.

Andrew and Ashish: the package made it here safely, but it had to be scanned at security. We have not yet tested to make sure everything is still operational.

I’ll post an update again later, hopefully when we have a plan for Internet access.