25 Will Enter, 5 Will Leave (with Books)

From around 25 entries received in the book giveaway, four copies of Radio UserLand Kick Start were mailed today to Rod Kratochwill, Ole Olson, Gary Secondino and Nick Starr.

Steve Kirks is working with UserLand Software on Radio 9, a major upgrade to the software. Though I suspect that the upcoming release will affect weblog publishing features covered in early chapters of my book, Kick Start emphasizes two aspects of Radio that are important to learn and unlikely to change much in the future: the object database and UserTalk scripting language.

A fifth copy of the book will be sent to Marinus as soon as I find one. I accidentally gave away more copies than I own.

Publishing · Radio Userland · 2005/05/13 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Weblog Comments Near and Far Out

I'm coding this weblog myself in PHP and MySQL, writing software that I will eventually release under the name Wordzilla. A new recent comments sidebar on Workbench makes it easier to follow active discussions on old weblog entries.

Running a weblog with open comments attracts some unusual discussions when people using a search engine find familiar names in an old entry. For two years, Workbench has hosted an ongoing soap opera between the current and former spouses of Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ron Martz.

The sidebar also will show how much comment spam I have to weed out, even though I refuse comments with three or more links and actively ban senders. In the last six months, I have banned 1,263 IP addresses used by spammers. They haven't gotten the message -- an additional 21,043 attempts have been rejected from those addresses.

Wordzilla · Php · Mysql · 2005/05/12 · 11 COMMENTS · Link

Bob's Mother Won't Talk to Me

Ten years ago Melinda French Gates was a manager on Microsoft Home products such as Bob, Encarta and Expedia. Some reporters even claim that Bob was her baby.

Because bloggers are being hyped to the gills by the mainstream media, I figured it was a good time to start making interview requests of people who are ordinarily far too important to talk with the likes of me.

I began with Melinda Gates, hoping to clarify her role on social interface software like Bob. I even prepared a Mike Wallace question for the end of the interview: Why did you allow Bob to die in 1996 -- didn't you know anyone at Microsoft with enough pull to save the project?

My request was rejected, but I regard the speed of the reply -- under 48 hours -- as a recognition of the importance of the blogosphere.

"Melinda is not able to participate in this particular opportunity," according to a publicist. No reason was given, but I suspect that she may be preoccupied improving the lives of millions of people through charitable giving on a scale unprecedented in human history.

Microsoft Bob · 2005/05/11 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

My Needs are Modest

Newsweek gives me special recognition for missing out on the booming multimillion-dollar market in Internet domains:

When a Florida man, in anticipation of the naming of the new pope, registered the Web site BenedictXVI.com, the Vatican was in luck. Rogers Cadenhead, who has since used the site to publicize a nonprofit organization and plans to transfer control to the Vatican, could have been an investor looking to get in on a booming business: the domain market. Indeed, owners of similar sites such as Benedict16.com and PopeBenedict-16.org, are looking to sell to the highest bidder.

A few relatives share this view, believing that the cash value of your Catholic grandmother's love is paltry recompense against a 50,000 percent return on a $12 investment.

But so far, the financial windfall for non-altruistic pope domain registrants has been mixed. The owner of PopeBenedictXVI.Com auctioned his domain for $6,100 on eBay to a buyer using it for pay-per-click papal search results. The seller told me in an e-mail that if eBay had not cancelled the original auction during the press frenzy over the domains, he had legitimate bidders on the hook for as much as $30,000.

The Italian selling Benedict16.Com apparently waited too long to auction it, so he's having trouble finding a buyer. (I'm crying on the inside for you, Jacopo.)

On one level, it's nice to be recognized for my error in judgment, which I blame on watching too many ABC Afterschool Specials in my formative years.

I have my wife, my kids, my health, and my hair. I don't need a fully loaded 2005 Ford Mustang GT, Sub-Zero refrigerator, or enough money to send my children to the same Ivy League college as Katie Couric's kids. I can live without the Hewlett Packard Windows XP Media Center PC with the built-in DVR capabilities and the detachable Tablet PC monitor. I'm not bothered in the least by paying off student loans 14 years after graduating from a modestly priced state school. I can live without HBO until The Wire comes back next year. A perfectly good meal can be based around Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Some of the store-brand colas are delicious.

Even if I had earned enough to join the Sawgrass Country Club and knock a few in the water at TPC 17, can you imagine my discomfort when my new moneybag friends started talking about how we made our fortunes?

Donald: "I made my money in real estate development."

Thurston: "My family is in investment banking."

Me: "I was a popesquatter."

Domains · Jacksonville · 2005/05/11 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Slip the Surly Bonds of Epcot

Took the family this weekend to ride Soarin', a new movie-based flight simulator at Disney World Epcot that zooms over the state of California:

Guests are lifted 40 feet in the air over an 80-foot domed projection screen. Wind effects and gentle tilting of the seats create a simulated flying sensation totally unique to Disney. Scents released at key points during the five minute presentation enhance the experience.

I had the mistaken impression that this was going to be similar to Peter Pan's Flight, but it's more like a smelly, breezy IMAX movie filmed by Superman.

Disney copied this attraction from the California Adventure theme park, and the ride makes the point that California may be the most topographically interesting state in the U.S. That's an odd thing for a Florida-based attraction to do, but I would pity the Imagineer who had to make a similar film about this state, which has a highest point only 345 feet above sea level.

The ride was worth the 30-minute wait, especially when the smell of orange groves and pine forests wafts by as you travel past them. I was a little disappointed that the urban flyover of San Francisco didn't include the scent of bum urine, which always brings me back to a 1989 visit that included a brisk stroll down a rough stretch of Turk Street.

Florida · 2005/05/11 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Boy Meets Girl, Girl Seeks Bob

An e-mailer asks Workbench for relationship advice:

... it's me and my boyfriends anniversary coming up and he always seems to somehow mention it and say how he wants it and I thought it would be a great thing to give him, no matter how weird it sounds. But I think it would be something he would enjoy, or like at least. I've looked around in all shops that could have a chance of selling older software but there aren't many where I live, I've looked around on eBay too but have had no luck, do you know where I could get it?

I don't know who's luckier -- the guy whose girlfriend would hunt down a copy of Microsoft Bob for their anniversary, or the woman whose boyfriend has such great taste in social interface software.

I'm one of the only people who has gone on record with my love for Microsoft Bob, the mid-'90s product that has unjustly come to be known as one of the greatest disasters in software history.

The only place I can find him is eBay, where a few go on sale each month and usually can be nabbed for under $25.

Over the last eight years, I've used eBay to find the original software, the Bob Plus Pack, Great Greetings for Bob and the only two computer books written for the software: At Home With Bob and Microsoft Bob. A third book, Microsoft Bob for Dummies, was cancelled by Wiley prior to publication, robbing technical literature of a book that would have been an enduring classic.

I also acquired some great swag on eBay -- a Bob coffee mug, key chain, long-distance card, T-shirt, pin, and baseball cap -- and nearly talked a former Microsoft freelancer into selling me the documentation for companies developing Bob add-on products (he feared, perhaps correctly, that it would constitute industrial espionage).

The swag auctions higher than the software, because I am not the only imbecile willing to blow as much as $50 on Bobabilia.

Publishing · Microsoft Bob · 2005/05/09 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Take a Bite of the Apple

Michael Moore is swimming in money after Fahrenheit 9/11, according to a Slate analysis that describes how the filmmaker and Disney rode the controversy over the movie all the way to the bank:

Under normal circumstances, documentaries rarely, if ever, make profits (especially if distributors charge the usual 33 percent fee). So, when Miramax made the deal for Fahrenheit 9/11, it allowed Moore a generous profit participation -- which turned out to be 27 percent of the film's net receipts. Disney, in honoring this deal, paid Moore a stunning $21 million. Moore never disclosed the amount of his profit participation. When asked about it, the proletarian Moore joked to reporters on a conference call, "I don't read the contracts."

I loved Roger & Me and TV Nation, but over the years Moore's penchant for dramatic embellishment and sloppy facts made it hard for me to enjoy Fahrenheit. He produces great diatribes, but documentary filmmakers are one of the last remaining groups who believe in the quaint notion that facts matter. If we lose them to spin, all we'll have left are reference librarians, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Bob Somersby.

I'm not surprised that Moore exaggerated Disney's actions in refusing to distribute the film, nor that Disney found a way to profit handsomely from a project it was ostensibly refusing to release. Their relationship is a lot like Tom Cruise publicly grouting the esophagus of Katie Holmes right before both release summer blockbusters.

The same cynical game appears to be at work with the new Steve Jobs biography iCon: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. The book's print run was doubled after Apple, at the presumed behest of Jobs, banned the publisher's books from Apple stores.

I haven't spoken about this with anyone at Wiley, a company that also publishes one of my books, but I have trouble believing that a marketing genius like Jobs took this action without knowing it would send book orders through the roof. The guy runs a company with so much hype you'd never know it sells fewer desktop computers than also-rans like Acer and Lenovo. Apple's marketing is difficult to resist. I own five computers and a laptop, and I'm still convinced I need a Mac mini.

Memo to self: Find a way in next book to anger Steve Jobs.

Publishing · Politics · Movies · Journalism · 2005/05/06 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

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