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What the conniption is going on over at the Podshow silo? Since when is not providing complete descriptions of shows or show notes acceptable? I wanted to find out what Trucker Tom was up to on his last few shows and all I see are a few words in the show description followed by ellipses. I zoomed over to iTunes and the show description fields are incomplete over there too.

After playing with open standards for a couple of years, it seems the spicy curry from which Podshow was formed has been re-worked by an American family restaurant. Too bad. And too bad for some of the good shows over there that now have their show notes and extra features neutered by a dysfunctional, glam site. Is this what you wanted Mr. Gillmor Gang? (I would link to you but, well, you know...) Shame on you Doc Searls for taking part in this bland reinvention of American radio. Welcome to Myspacification 2.0.

Years from now, they will be even more morally hide-bound, intellectually weaker, cowed and even more fearful. We will look at them and think about how they failed to separate religion and the state, how they violated their own rules and regulations, their willingness to suspend cherished rights, their admiration for the inward looking, their call to old-time values. We will think about them when we should remember the fallen. We will think about them and we will not know who we are thinking about.

"Activity or Action?" stems from my frustration with a lack of forward thinking and planning in much of the current internet and application software spaces. In particular, the internet space has become replete with the usual badging and baggage. No more needs to be said about the white-washing of Web 2.0 with AJAX. Nothing much is happening in the current application space aside from the rediscovery of software we already have. In particular, a class of software -- the database -- is getting a re-vamped work-out in a public network, client-server environment (ie: the browser and the web). The zealots will excoriate me. Big deal. Web 2.0 seems more to be about the emulation of inelegant software on server farms, with fewer features no less, than about new ways of relating our data to inter-related contexts.

Here's an example. If I'm typing an email to a customer that makes 3 specific commitments in a relative timeframe, then why do I have to then re-enter each of those items into a calendar and/or a task list with the relevant absolute due dates? It doesn't matter whether I'm using Outlook or Gmail with some combination of on-line calendars and task managers. The outcome is the same. I enter data and I have to do all of the context management. In the example I cite, that data entry may require 5 or 6 discrete tasks. That's why luddites and many really busy people don't use computers to their fullest extent. That extent, even after 60 years of useful computer hardware advance, has not yet come into view.

Software is uniformly mediocre to awful. What have the innovations been in the last few years? RSS is routinely cited but it is mangled, misunderstood and been poorly implemented by developers. Open source is touted and yet a preponderance of OS software seeks only to emulate commercial programs, often with hilariously misguided interface "enhancements". Usability is not usually a part of a web application's feature list. Take a look at fundamentally useful apps like dotProject and tell me if you think you can use the interface for several hours a day without screaming? You cannot, I have already tried. Office suites keep inflating feature sets and nibbling at the margins of innovative interface development; I'll withhold judgement on Microsoft's "ribbon" concept. Tell me why, after numerous iterations of Microsoft Office, there are at least two letter key strokes for picking Categories ("i" and "alt-g") in different parts of Outlook? This kind of obtuse and careless attention to functionality is the hallmark of most software today; I'm not picking on Microsoft Office, I'm merely using it as an example. There are too many to relate.

Where is the emphasis on adaptive customization? Why do I either have dumb macro recorders that routinely mix up relative referencing with absolute or complex embedded programming systems that require extensive programming knowledge. What we need are applications that do a better job of learning than simply offering fewer menu choices. Most so-called adaptive programming is currently used to try and dumb down feature sets rather than to open them up to less savvy users. Here's another example. If I want to make sure that I assign a Category to a Microsoft Outlook item, it's all up to me. If I forget, then that item does not get a Category unless I notice it at some later time. Wouldn't it be great to install some discipline in the program without having to design a new form, write code and install it in all of the instances where it needs to be located? Why not have flexible criteria for data entry in any program's form?

I have noted before that the table view in Outlook should just be Microsoft Excel. Have you noticed that OneNote has no extensibility as an editor or word processor? Where's the option to "add" Word-like features to OneNote? I would pay for that. Why do I need two applications with all the attendant awkwardness to get data between the two? Why not one application and a bunch of extensible feature sets? This is not a question of making a move that would limit future revenue -- pricing could be adjusted so that it was revenue neutral or in fact revenue positive -- no, it seems it is not done because the current application model just will not accept innovative upgrading.

Software and its relentless revision cycle seems more about activity than action. It's time to challenge the norms and start extending our stagnant model of applications into real data management enhancers.

A fluffy bundle of tough. A faithful friend for fifteen and a half years. A parvo and cancer and stroke survivor that never winced or whined. She was a loud-mouthed life guard and an incredible frisbee player.

She showed the other poodles how to hunt; and, having caught something for herself, she spit it out and immediately retired, never to hunt again. She ran alone and she ran with us. She never ran away. She always knew her limits and her boundaries.

She always wanted to take the fall and take the weight off our shoulders. She was under foot and always around and never a problem. She wouldn't stop licking and she loved doughnuts. She was there for our family and we will never forget her.

It is autumn now for Tudor Rose's Spring Promise, our Calypso, our Cali. How could we forget you? You were just a dog.

And a note about Cali... er... Kali from Jan:

Never can say goodbye

Tip of the hat to Boris for pointing to this awesome site on home improvement for women; BeJane.com. Built with drupal, I defy anybody to tell me that the drupal CMS belongs in the same category as Wordpress and TypePad.

The sight is still short of some content in places but I'm bookmarking it for my "inner Jane".

Bob Dylan is not one of my favourites. I remember seeing him in the 80's at a Hamilton concert. It was a short, perfunctory, noisy and unintelligible wash of indiscernible nonsense. Not even the "hits" were recognizable. I wondered at the time why he bothered; whether he even cared anymore. Still, the guy has a heart and head for recorded sound that is legendary. Dylan moved musical styles and changed tastes. While the Dylan I saw live was abysmal, another Dylan thought about the construction of his records. He has and continues to work on the complete package -- music with words, words and sound.

Dylan on sound from a recent Rolling Stone interview:
"You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really. You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like -- static."

I have been thinking, feeling and talking about this for the past couple of years. Current recorded music is really awful. People under 30 look at me like I'm insane. In some small way I wonder if this is one of the motivations behind "Big" music being so aggressive with their back catalogs; the current stuff is just so badly recorded it has a shelf life measured in months.

Recently JFB sent me a David Gray CD for my birthday. Gray's songs are interesting, his voice is curious and the music may be moving. The problem? The sound on the record -- the production, the editing, the mix, the tonal balance -- is positively chainsaw-like.

The last great pop/rock record that was made was U2's Achtung Baby. Ironically that record was made with the intent of deliberately using "bad" sound. Lanois and Eno played with the concept of making harsh sounds work. Initially the group thought they could capture the big sound of the Berlin Hansa studio in the record but the only thing that came out of that session was "One"; their greatest song. Back in Ireland it was all electronics and distortion. The real secret of why that record works is how they used electronics. Lanois loves analog reverb (check out what he's done with Emmylou Harris) and he understands analog recording from his days working with Doidge; first in the basement in Ancaster and then later at Grant Avenue. Eno worked with analog tape loops on some of his strangest sessions with Lanois at Grant Avenue. Achtung Baby is avant garde experimental sound married to pop band power. It was the high watermark for pop recording and all these years laters stands as a marker for the end of great production in popular music. The concept was so effusive that it lent itself to visual art and effects that became the greatest concert spectacle of its era, the ZooTV tour.

What Dylan so plaintively expresses is nothing short of the end of an era. Not only is "good" sound dead; but so too is rock and roll. We are on the other side of the "Rock Era" and we have no sonic landscape to replace it with.

More to come...

If you have more than fond memories of your past then perhaps you are not particularly good at looking forward. The past is a great learning tool and we've all heard the old saw about history repeating itself blah, blah, blah. There is, however, a great distinction to be made between respectful admiration of our past and delusional desires to get back to it.

From an AP dispatch today by Brian Charlton that quotes Ed "Punch" Andrews, manager for both Kid Rock and Bob Seger -- both of whom continue to resist release of their music to mainstream on-line services --

"We're hoping at some point albums become important again like they were in the past 30 years."

(A version also found here)

Here's what I'm hoping. That Seger's forthcoming album might be good for a change. Of course I won't be listening until I can legitimately download two or three songs first. Sorry Punch, sorry Bob.

I'm a Hollywood Nights '70's guy but I don't listen to "albums" anymore. Good on you Bob for approaching your album making in a sincere way but you know what? Cave paintings are interesting too and nobody is doing it anymore. You may be waiting a long time.

Calgary to Minneapolis to Providence, RI today... and the most obnoxious person I experienced? The Canadian sitting nearby at a restaurant along the way. Now that's world class.