RSS and Attention

Nick Bradbury challenged readers to write about Attention. To boast a little, I’ve written about Attention before and think the article in Wired was one of the best pieces I’ve ever read there. So I’m taking up the challenge.

Steve Gillmor wrote this article in Znet “Waiting for Attention… or something like it”. This is xmling the Wired article meme, the best I can tell after a first read. So I’ll have to do more reading about attention.xml. Looks like there is something there.

My view is that attention is not just a matter of time. A thousand monkeys has something to do with it. Those thousand monkeys have the same amount of time to prduce what looks like quality. Attention is value added time. Thusthe  attention stream is knowledge.

Now this gets tricky. Celebrity is a product of attention. We have only so much attention to give. Apply some network theory and you get celibrity. So is celebrity.xml next? I believe we must study celibrity if we are to understand attention.

Obviously, lots more to read and study.

We and Moyers Deserve Better

The conservative attack on the media continues. Bill Moyers has a two page "ad" in the Washington Post today. New York Times uncovered secret effort by chairman of PBS to have conservative watchdog monitor Moyers' show. This effort to control the media is ugly and the headlines are probably hidding even more abuses. Weren't we just talking about Watergate recently? This is scary stuff.

OPML

Getting more practice writing XSLT for OPML. Testing Dave Winer's OPML Editor and enjoying the company of a small group of testers. More will cove out at Gnomedex, which I can not attend.

Vacation and Broken Hard Drive

What a struggle it can be when the laptop hard drive crashes. Hours and hours trying to restore, looking for CDROMs, learning old software. Hope you don't know the experience, but that is what's happening. Now a few days at the beach.

Nixon Loyalists Tell All

In all the many articles I've read about the importance of Deep Throat recently, David Broder's piece in the Washington Post says it best. In reviewing the comments by Nixon loyalists Chuck Colson and Pat Buchannan, Brodeer points out we "can learn everything [we] need to know about the dangerous delusions of the Nixon era. The mind-set that created enemies lists, the blind loyalty to a deeply flawed individual, the twisting of historical fact to turn villains into heroes and heroes into villains - they are all there".

He also interviewed a much braver and more patriotic man than the Nixon loyalists. Elliot Richardson resigned rather than fire the Watergate special prosecutor. Richardson in reference to Mark Felt said, "But if you see the White House and the head of the FBI interfering with the investigation, what are you going to do?" Because Mark Felt was brave and care about his country, he became a whistle-blower.

"The republic was saved and the public was well served. That Colson and Buchanan still don't get it speaks volumes about them." And tells us what we need to remember about Watergate. Brave men like Felt ,Richardson and many others saved the republic.

The iPod market should make you think

The decline of US economic power continues and is examined by a series in Salon by Andrew Leonard. This is a look at the economy of the ipod which itself is a microcosm of globalization.

Critics are worried about trade deficits, job numbers, and even national defense. They are convinced the U.S. has sown the seeds of its own decline by shipping jobs and technological know-how to future super powers like India and China.

With every new startup having an Indian on the team, we should not be surprised that business is moving to East Asia. First steel. Now silicon. There is a global economic war going on and most people don't realize that the US is no longer the super power.

If you want more about waning US economic power, listen to the Marketplace Morning Report for June, 2005.