BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis

November 30, 2003

Treo 600 geeking
: Dan Gillmor is planning to buy a Treo 600 and that's good news for the rest of us Treogeeks, for he will write about any shortcoming he finds as Palm, if its smart, will fix it. In that line, I lobbied him with all my wishes when he asked me about using the Treo as a modem for my laptop (alas, it won't work for Dan because he's on Mac). Dan suggested that I post my wishlist and so, for those who care, click on more...video 3gp freedownload

Dan,
This works like a charm: It's called PDAnet. You install it on the Treo (make sure you get the
600 version) and the PC; connect via the Treo; the PC looks on it as a
modem that has dialed out. I love it.
I got the Sprint version of the Treo because it is supposed to be faster (the GSM
version is said to have longer battery life).
I love the Treo and agree with you that it comes closest -- so far -- to
the right combination.
A few points:
1. I am dying to buy music from any of the legal services and play it on
my Treo; I bought a 512meg SD card just for that. But here's the
problem: I cannot find a player for Palm that plays WMA files and all
the legal services use WMA instead of MP3. If you start lobbying....
2. I tried to use Audible on the 600 and I cannot get it to work and
could not get the slightest customer service out of Audible. They
advertise that it will work; it doesn't.
3. I have been able to blog using the browser. I did just find a limit:
The text window that opens will take only so many characters. I wonder
whether I can use another browser.
4. I just ordered the travel cable that allows you to sync and charge
via USB because using the modem thing with PDAnet does drain the battery
on the phone pretty quickly. You might want to consider this.
5. I also just bought the keyboard to play with it.
6. I have been using the RSS reader you blogged; it works pretty well.
7. I use SnapperMail and it works well with my POP accounts. (The only
problem is that it bypasses my spam protections. But that will come.)
8. The phone interface isn't the best but I'm not complaining.
9. I can't wait until Movable Type gets mail-to-blog working at last!
Then I can moblog.
I do love the thing. Changes life.
Sorry for blathering; ask a simple question and this is what you get.
Werbach is great at the 600 too.
video 3gp freedownload

The leftist who can't laugh
: The utter humorlessness of Noam Chomsky never ceases to amuse me.
The Observer interviews him on the release of his latest book (in which he says, 'No president in that time, judged on the principles of Nuremberg, would have escaped hanging' -- with, of course, a straight face) and it begins with this exchange:

I start tentatively enough with a question about a remark he made recently in the New York Times about the fact that he continued to live in America, because it was 'the greatest country in the world'. In what sense did he believe this?
He starts, too, as he means to go on. 'I have to first of all give a background,' he says, already a bit exasperated. 'That interview never took place. It is rather interesting, interviews like that never take place.'
The New York Times made it up?
'It was a senseless contraction of an hour-and-a-half telephone conversation in which I explained question by question why I am not going to answer this question or that question, because it is not a sensible question.' Right.
'And the published interview was contracted from the original questions and sentences extracted from my often lengthy explanations of why I was not going to answer. There is no country in the world where interviews like these would happen. Where these kind of trivial questions would be asked.'
What a blowhard.video 3gp freedownload

Blog scandal!
: There's a scandal in the blogosphere but it's not about sex (we're all too damned geeky and dull for that); of course, it's about links and traffic. Clay Shirky reports on Truth Laid Bare's discovery that the Ecosystem is being manipulated with multiple Sitemeter counters.
Hey, I'd be happy if Technorati would once and for all and finally get me into the Top 100, where I belong!video 3gp freedownload

You are a network
: The BBC just licensed some cool technology that will let correspondents broadcast live over the air from their laptop and any Internet connection. The company that created it calls this Laptop News Gathering.
The barrier to entry keeps falling and falling. Anybody can be a publisher. Anybody can be a network. [via Live Remote]video 3gp freedownload

: Meanwhile, Stuart Hughes in Cambodia perfects the art of vlogging. video 3gp freedownload

Google "news"
: Google "News" won't put up weblogs of good repute but it does list this as if it were a legit news. Huh?video 3gp freedownload

: It gets worse. I just found this from antiwar.com. News?video 3gp freedownload

If GoogleNews wanted to have a separate opinion scrape, that would be good and useful. But I'd recommend a hundred weblogs before I'd recommend the two sources linked above -- two sources that happen to exhibit the same slant. So is GoogleNews slanted? video 3gp freedownload

Iraq: a liberal cause
: Tom Friedman, bless him, finally comes out today and says what I've been saying for a long time:
The ouster of the tyrant Saddam Hussein was a liberal and humanitarian cause.
And the rebuilding of Iraq is a liberal cause.
But liberals don't know it.

...this war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. The primary focus of U.S. forces in Iraq today is erecting a decent, legitimate, tolerant, pluralistic representative government from the ground up. I don't know if we can pull this off. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start. But it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot....
On Iraq, there has to be more to the left than anti-Bushism....
For my money, the right liberal approach to Iraq is to say: We can do it better. Which is why the sign I most hungered to see in London was, "Thanks, Mr. Bush. We'll take it from here."
Try telling that to the liberals running for president.video 3gp freedownload

: UPDATE: Jack Balkin, good liberal, agrees with Friedman that we must fix up Iraq but then he cops out, saying that Bush will not listen. Jack, when did that ever stop anyone from putting pressure on? That's what we should be doing. Instead of continuing to carp, we should be demanding the best path to democracy in Iraq:
: Putting pressure on to have more troops, not fewer, to bring security to Iraq.
: Putting pressure on the U.N. to send more troops from more nations to show support for democracy in Iraq.
: Putting pressure on companies to be ready to invest in Iraq.
: Putting pressure on Arab nations to disavow the terrorism -- yes, terrorism -- that is targeting Iraqi civilians and not only military but also civilian workers from other countries.
Rather than just carping, liberals should be demanding that the president -- but first, their presidential candidates -- do more to grow democracy and civilization in Iraq and the Middle East.
There's plenty we can do, Jack, plenty.video 3gp freedownload

The speed of blog
: Way back on Nov. 19, Hit & Run's weblog broke the silly master/slave meme (in which a doofus California bureaucrat who should be unemployed by now sends out a memo instructing people involved with computers not to call devices masters or slaves because it violates the supreme law of the age -- it's offensive).
The story finally got picked up by the AP -- and, in turn the Chicago Tribune -- today.
See, guys, if you'd been reading weblogs, you could have stolen that story far sooner.video 3gp freedownload

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