About the recent Web 2.0 Service Mark Controversy Tim O'Reilly writes:

The flap about the Web 2.0 Conference trademark has shaken my faith in the collective intelligence of the blogosphere. Of all the hundreds of people who commented on this issue, only a few touched base to do a bit of fact checking. The New York Times, by contrast, was all over doing due-diligence. They talked to everyone they could get their hands on before publishing their story.

It looks that while the blogoshere is growing at an amazing speed and the collective intelligence is not keeping up, getting diluted in the process. More and more people seem to be happy jumping from cluetrains to bandwagons. Apparently being part of the mob feels good, especially there are tomatoes (or sometimes stones) to throw at some very visible target.

Considering that we are social animals, this is a pretty logical evolution. I think that our challange is figuring out how to improve this on-line environment while it grows, still keeping all small pieces joined loosely.

While I was writing the post below, I wanted to link my shared OPML page on SYO. I didn't found the linkable URL for my page instantly, but I did. Now that I did, I like the idea of linking that page, it's an evolution of a blogroll.

So I made an icon to link it.



Please, take one.

SYO is a very cool application. I enjoy browsing other people reading lists and it's a great way to find new interesting content.

As every good net citizen should do, I share my OPML file, but, at least for me, this is not a very easy task. Here's what I'm currently going trough:

1. Export my OPML file from Bloglines and save it locally on my hard disk
2. Edit it with BBEdit in order to duplicate the <title> field into the <text> field (Dear Bloglines: even if what you are producing might be valid OPML, since there's also an application named OPML Editor it would be good for your karma if you could make your OPML file usable with the OPML application, thanks).
3. Open it with my OPML editor (I use Radio) and remove a group of feeds I prefer to keep private
4. Upload it to my blog

To keep my page on SYO up to date, I should do this every time I edit my subscription list, which happens quite frequently. And this list doesn't include podcasts I subscribe to (I use iTunes for podcasts, I know I can export the OPML from iTunes, I don't want to go there).

Now, wouldn't it be nice to have a web 2.1 application to:

• maintain my OPML file on a server and edit it with a nice UI
• route subscription to new feeds instantly in my OPML file
• use different applications to subscribe to different parts of the opml directory (or maybe have different OPML files): i.e. Bloglines for news, iTunes for podcasts
• set privacy on some parts of the file (or, again, different OPML files)

Of course, the tricky part would be to get all RSS readers supporting this system. But I'm ready to move if somebody finds a way to handle this mess with a little grace.

Tags: OPML, RSS Readers, SYO

My copy of Radio has just stopped doing useless stuff it has been doing for a couple of years. threadAnalyzer ;->

It's been some time since my last visit in the UK. I'll be spending the next afternoon and night in London, back tomorrow. I'm happy to go there, I feel much more comfortable in London than, say, in Milano where I end up about once a week. There won't be time to meet any of my friends in London this time. But I'll be back to London twice in the next two months. We should organise something...

Tags: London

I like the new MacBook, 13" seems like a very good screen size and the line of Mac laptops, from regular to pro, makes a lot of sense.

I have a pretty old 12" PowerBook which will have to be replaced sometime soon. I have always likeed the small footprint of the 12" (I also have a big G5 and a big screen for heavy design work) and I was waiting for a new small laptop but... the MacBook is made of plastic.

I have no doubt that it's good plastic, but in my experience plastic laptops don't age very well. After 3 years my aluminum PowerBook looks almost new. Plastic laptops tend to wear on the corners and scracth easily, especially if you travel a lot with them (or even simply bring them home every night).

I will have to see them live before deciding, but right now it looks like my next laptop will have a 15" screen.

Tags: MacBook

Apparently you can post to a blog straight from Word 2007 via metaweblog API or ATOM API. Kinda cool.

For some reason I was expecting this to happen about 3 or 4 years ago, at the beginning of the SOAP development era. I kept telling people that very soon they would have been able to use their favourite writing tool to write directly on the web.

Better late then never. :-)

Today Mr. Romano Prodi has named the new Italian Government. Paolo Gentiloni, the newly appointed "Communications Minister" is also a blogger. Sounds like good news.

Tags: Paolo Gentiloni

It's great to see Share Your OPML having all this success. I wonder if the quality of the top 100 list is increasing with the increasing number of participants or is becoming every hour more like any other top 100 list, just the confirmation that everybody reads Scoble and Engadget ;-)

The really interest part is surfing other people's reading lists: there's a lot of value in this little site imho. I'd love to know how many people already subscribed, how about a counter on the home page?

Tags: OPML, Share Your OPML

After nearly 10 years of good service my old Apple 21" monitor decided to retire. Today I replaced it with an Apple 23-inch Cinema Display. Not a very big screen real estate upgrade from 1600x1200 of the old monitor to 1920x1200 of this one, even if that those 300 pixels on the side are actually somehow useful.

The real improvement is the sharpness (especially compared to the old CRT) and brightness (I have kept trying to add brightness to my PowerBook screen for the whole day). The USB hub is somehow limited: the old monitor had 4 ports while this one only has 2. A very nice new toy :-)

Tags: Apple

Check out these images of a breakdown van which yesterday tried (unsuccesfully) to break Bulgari's windows in Rome. Reminds me of the 3M glass advertising in San Francisco.