Dave Winer posts a great explanation of the economic reality behind the corporate adoption of weblogs:
There will come a day when there has been enough experimentation, and a CEO of a company that's not in software will have a weblog that makes a big difference in competition in a market that's not Internet-related. It could be the CEO of Ford Motor Company. Last week Steven Levy asked if I meant that Ken Lay would have a weblog. No, Ken Lay will not have one. But the next generation CEO will. His replacement will. Why? Because shareholders will demand it. Because there will be a competitive advantage to direct communication without middlemen.Good stuff.
Dan Gillmor is at it again - writing a clear, cooncise piece of journalism about some of the silver lining in today's tech world, and it is about customerism rather than consumerism.
CUSTOMERS AWAKEN: Everyday people are starting to realize that they are not just ``consumers'' but customers -- that is, they are becoming serious participants in the marketplace of goods and services. This is a crucial distinction.Kudos, Dan.A consumer's role is limited to ordering what's on the menu and paying for it. A customer wonders what's not on the menu, asks for something he or she actually wants and then negotiates the terms.
This awakening takes many forms, but a common one is the customer's empowerment. Technology is the catalyst.
Prospective customers ignore press releases and product pitches. Instead, they are heading to Web sites where they can research the reality and see what current customers have to say.
Journalism organizations watch, mostly dumbfounded, as weblogs and other multidirectional media bring new voices to the conversation. They offer new choices to what I call the ``former audience,'' the people who are now becoming part of the journalism process itself -- to the ultimate benefit of everyone.
Even the all-powerful ``intellectual property'' regime is feeling the heat of customer-ism as opposed to consumerism. Customers are starting to understand that copyright owners are stealing customers' rights -- legal and traditional -- with laws and software designed to capture absolute control over distribution of music, movies and, I fear, even words.
But they keep overreaching. They're stifling speech, threatening research and scholarship in addition to curbing customers' ability to make personal use of what they've bought. And in the process they're poking what I believe -- I hope -- is a slumbering giant.
It is TOTALLY the wrong app to do things like input text, jeez.
I wonder if anyone else has done this before. Looks like here's someone who created something using the Blogger XML-RPC interface. Dave Winer and his Radio team have put together a new tcp.im interface as well, which incorporates textresponder functionality, but I think my interface is cleaner. I don't need tocontrol the entire operation of my site through IM - just a 1-to-1 mapping is best - the Subject line becomes the title of the entry, and the message is the text. No subject line, the entry has no subject, and it reads like an extension of the previous entry.
I have thought about redoing the code in the Blogger API and XML-RPC - this would remove the Movable-Type-specific nature of the code and would mean that anyone could post to their blog via IM. Oh interesting, there is a project on jabber.org called Jogger, subtitled, "a Jabber powered weblog". - I guess it is a proof of concept, because it is listed as more of a service to allow you to post to the jogger server... Cool to see all these projects out there; I'll have to release mine up on the world soon.