This techie version of a "bear hug" involves deploying powers of annoyance rather than shareholder proxies. "Dave Winer used the bearhug to wrap his arms around Netscape’s version of RSS and not let go until a merged RSS was born," muses an unusually wistful but incomprehensible as always Gillmor. "The time may be here to bearhug Twitter."

Gillmor's immediate goal is to create a standard for identifying every utterance made on the new microblogging services — not just Twitter, but Jaiku, Plurk, and the rest. This will serve to make it easier to cross-reference your own bon mots, self-promotional stunts, and hookup attempts. Never mind the architectural details of Gillmor's mostly-gibberish plan: What he's really trying to do, as Winer did with Netscape, is attempt a credit-nicking takeover of Twitter's best ideas.

He's unlikely to succeed. Bear Hug Camp will certainly be an opportunity for the Old Men of Blogging to stroke each other's egos, and more. But Twitter should remember: It's not a hug Gillmor wants to give them. It's an attention grab that leaves a bad-touch feeling and a permalink in its wake. Better to let Gillmor and his gang beat their man drums in the woods, alone, together.

The time it takes before the main text and/or images load matter, too, because most readers will start reading the page as soon as there's something to look at, rather than waiting for everything to settle into place. Dave Winer's Scripting News is a living lesson in speed over flash. I hit Dave's site once a day because I know it'll take under 10 seconds to load the page, scroll down it for Valleywag-grade dirt, and then move on to another site. Yet for whatever reason, I've never been able to personally convince anyone to lighten up a heavy front door. Oh, everyone who cares uses RSS now. Tech people have the best excuses for laziness.

It's not that amazing. As CenterNetwork's Allen Stern first pointed out, each time a new user signs up for FriendFeed, the site suggests the new user becomes friends with "Popular FriendFeeders." On the list: Bret Taylor, Fred Wilson, Scott Beale, Michael Arrington, Loic Le Meur, Jason Calacanis, Dave Winer and Leo Laporte — despite, as Stern notes, the fact that many of these "popular" users don't actually use FriendFeed very often. Why? We haven't asked anybody at FriendFeed because the answer is obvious: So that the whole bunch of easily ego-fluffed blog blowhards will blog about how amazing FriendFeed is, without bothering to figure out why, exactly, it seems to be growing so much faster for them than everybody else.

2001 and 2002: With the emergence of "the warbloggers" post-9/11, as they were called, everyone feuded with everyone. Seriously. Everyone! (N.B. that account includes some serious misreading.) It was sheer chaos, a mass freakout that distended psychoanalytic space and time. There were even Denial of Service attacks. Dave Winer, the feudiest of all internetters, took on the world, briefly.

You won't click all those links, so just read the one where Instapundit agrees with Denton.

(Photo via Wonkette)

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas didn't confirm or deny the plan to BroadbandReports, only saying "Comcast is currently evaluating this service and pricing model." Earlier this week, the company ditched the proposed "P2P bill of rights" it was developing with file sharing startup Pando. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

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Had the bet been structured around commercial vs. noncommercial content, and they had chosen an average ranking system (which actually seems to answer the question being asked more clearly), commercial content would have won by a factor of more than four.

From: Dave Winer (dwiner) Date: 1994-08-17 17:52:00 Conference: singles Topic: Personal Ad experiences

Well, here goes — my first message on The Well. I've just been lurking for the last few days, trying to figure out what's going on. It's pretty daunting, but maybe I'm getting the hang of it... You all seem like VERY nice people.

Photo by Kris Krüg on Flickr

Anyway, I wrote a personal ad last week, and sent it via email to a bunch of friends, most of them women, for their reaction. Here's the ad:

SWM 39, 6'2", athletic build, Bay Area, software entrepreneur turned massage therapist, gentle hands, romantic, emotionally developed, born-again hippie. Loves gardening, road trips, walking, skiing, writing. Looking for a great gal who's ready to create a safe space for love and lots and lots of play. Send email to: mailbox12@aol.com.

One of my friends had a pretty animated response:

"You're going to find a nurse or a chiropractor. Why? The self-description sounds too needy, as if you're looking for succor. Anyway, i never describe you that way to anyone i know. Your description entirely omits your shining INTELLIGENCE — you're a genius; you assimilate new ideas like most people consume their morning cereal. You see shapes when there are only nebulae. You're also kinetic, always soul-searching. grounded and yet ready to leap. You're body's pretty irrelevant, but obviously you want to be of athletic build (for what sport, exactly, would your body be considered athletic? no offense, but REALLY). As long as you've got some hair left and your sexual organs, your body's functioning, or do you really want to be a combination of Yogi Berra and Albert Einstein? — Love, Sylvia"

Of course I liked Sylvia's version of the ad better. ;->

Dave

PS: I'm a great skier. Definitely athletic.

To be honest, I was sure the Times would win. But I'm enjoying Cadenhead's assessment that Wikipedia wins the bet — isn't that the sort of twist any Webhead would want? Cadenhead has exposed the flaw in my genius idea: I presumed there were only two sides. That's journalist math. Any real techie knows there are never only two values to anything in real life. Even the 1's and 0's inside your CPU depend on where you draw the line between a 0 and a 1. Part of what makes the Internet so fascinating is it constantly proves there are potentially infinite outcomes to any story.

She's buying!

Anyone talking to media knows that telling a journalist something "off the record" ... clearly means that the comments aren't to be used a primary source. The point of "off the record" is to steer a journalist the right way so they can dig in deeper and get the real story from a real source, on the record.

Here's how it really works: If you don't want your blabbermouth rumor quoted by Michael Arrington, me or anyone else, then shut up. It's that simple. I side with grizzled newspaper critic Dave Winer: "Too much is made of whether someone is a journalist or not." To presume that talking out of turn to a reporter binds the scribe to a different ruleset than anyone else is asking for trouble. Professional pundits like Arrington make the same goofs as anyone, only to much larger audiences. As Winer said about the guy, "You can make a mistake and still have integrity." But a gossip is a gossip.

When Irelan persisted — acting like a child himself by trying, unsuccessfully, to delete and edit Winer's Wikipedia entry — Winer retaliated by cybersquatting on the domain name NickIrelan.com. This could be a real problem for the inventor of RSS — it's not only childish, it's potentially illegal. If Dave were a mensch, he'd apologize and let go of the domain name.

Update: Dave Winer has informed me that he has released the domain name nickirelan.com. He also suggest that he registered the domain name nickirelan.com within 24 hours of arguing with Nick Irelan "for no particular reason."

Both Calacanis and Winer need to stop taking themselves so seriously — hah! — and pop their self-created bubbles. The best way to do this? Turn on the boob tube and take a lesson from "Last Comic Standing."

In the reality show, which aims to select the best up-and-coming comedian, competitors must hone their chops by heckling one another. They also have to show they can handle being heckled. The hecklers, knowing who they'll face going into the competition, come prepared. They take notes on their opponents. The heckled are at a disadvantage, but if they are on their game, they can turn a heckle into a bigger laugh for themselves and come away the winner. The comedian usually leave the stage amused and stronger from the abuse.

Now, back to our pair of blowhards: Was Winer actually surprised by Calacanis's presentation? Has he been asleep for the past decade? When has Calacanis not promoted himself and his latest company? If that's so offensive, why were Winer and Calacanis ever "friends" in the first place?

Of course, Winer was certainly stirring the pot, trying to drum up attention for himself. But "You're spamming us!"? That's the best heckle he can come up with? Do your homework, Dave. Calacanis is a treasure trove of heckle material. You can do better.

And Calacanis? Calacanis will frequently indulge in a blogging feud with copious non sequiturs and ad hominem attacks, but in this case, he couldn't come up with a humorous rejoinder to keep his presentation moving and show he can take criticism. Disappointing. The man who successfully talked the Valley's top VCs into investing millions to start an also-ran search engine, can't extemporaneously respond to a lame comment from the back of the room. It's not as if Winer doesn't come loaded with plenty of his own ammunition.

This blogfight, sadly, has devolved into an all-too-serious bitchfest. Calacanis and Winer both could have shown that they are aware of their personal foibles and willing to address them. Instead, they showed they cannot function without their tactical crutches— Winer, the conference-panel ambush and blog retort; Calacanis, Twitter hysteria. The art of the heckle is lost on these two oversensitive blowhards.

Imho, the next step after that, I hope, is the professional media fully embracing the new media, no longer see it as a threat to their continued employment. See amateur public writing, the former audience who is no longer silent, as sources who can get attention for their ideas without going through an intermediary.

While there is real disdain from a vocal minority from each camp towards the other, there is already cross-pollination and blending between the professional and amateur, and this "embracing" continues to grow. Online newspapers are embracing comments, using blogs as sources, recruiting blogger talent. Blogs have developed sources, formed larger networks with paid writers and higher standards. Moreover, all media has always formed a spectrum of the amateur to the professional; homogenization occurs in the middle but isn't desirable for an entire community of creators.

Of course, there is a real debate about the standards and methods of creating content, real threats to old media, and real concerns with the blogosphere. However, misapplying trite valleyspeak to that debate does nothing to advance the old media's appreciation of the new. It merely adds to the disdain... even from the blog side of the spectrum.

He's so...what's a word that's almost but not exactly the opposite of dreamy? Actually, there's some hipster charm to that tousled-haired boy genius known as Bill Gates. What do you think is going through his mind as he gazes at the camera with bedroom eyes?

I won't pretend that venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, who invested in Hotmail, Skype and other companies after working at HP and Apple, is chagrined by a photo that he uploaded himself. Even if he looks like Star Trek ensign Wesley Crusher on summer vacation.

Before Sergey Brin founded Google, apparently he was one of those sitcom characters who dresses in drag for an episode, leading to a wacky adventure in which some burly guy thinks he's a hot woman. As well as that dress fits, Sergey is no Bugs Bunny.

Even exhibitionist tech pundit and former Tech TV star Chris Pirillo eventually got embarrassed over this shot of him baring it all in Alaska. At least he has the best ever argument for shrinkage.

Philip Kaplan of FuckedCompany, however, has no such shame. That's why, if Marshall McLuhan is the patron saint of Wired, "Pud" is the patron saint of Valleywag. The man who danced around the ashes of the dot-com crash waltzed around with two girls in a live webcam stream. Try sticking that on YouTube.

You can tell Michael Arrington is not sure what he's doing in this photo with marketer Tara Hunt, but even after he learned, the TechCrunch blog founder pulled the shocker back out months later.

Why are 37signals founder Jason Fried and the founders of San Francisco web-dev house Adaptive Path so embarrassed by this bathtub shot by Maggie Mason? It reveals them for the sexy city slickers they are. Besides, in San Fran, just be thankful they were wearing their swim trunks (though for all we know, Jason could skinny-dip in the tub).

Microsoft staff, 1978. Bill Gates is actually proud enough of this photo to keep it on his corporate biography page.

I can understand the topless photo of bloggers Robert Scoble and Shel Israel: they were pulling a stunt for their book Naked Conversations (back when Scoble spent more time getting naked and less time being a dick). But the naked-with-laptop shot? Dude, maybe it would have worked if you didn't flop your tits over the screen.

I've always felt that RSS guru Dave Winer had some latent cause for all the aggression that makes him abuse so many people. What could that possibly be? He looks happy here in this sauna full of naked young men. Aha, obviously there's Dave's hidden passion: he's a closet lover of hot...sweaty...climates. That dirty Californian rainforest-botherer.

Don't be fooled by these guys' low-flying Alexa charts. Anyone who's anybody in the Valley reads them — or pretends to. So should you.

Mark Cuban, Blog Maverick

• Day job: Owner, Dallas Mavericks basketball team.


• Claim to fame: Web 1.0 billionaire from now-forgotten Broadcast.com.


• Blogs incessantly about: The Internet biz, NBA inside basketball, lying-sack-of-shit reporters.


• Best-known post: "I still think Google is crazy."


• Fail-safe banter about Cuban: "If all reporters are liars, why doesn't he just stop talking to them?"

Chris Anderson, The Long Tail

• Day job: Editor in Chief, Wired magazine.


• Claim to fame: Author of The Long Tail, which posits that because of digital distribution, there's more money to be made selling an infinite number of non-hits than a handful of megahits.


• Blogs incessantly about: Because of digital distribution, there's more money to be made from, say, photofinishing an infinite number of ...


• Best-known post: "What would radical transparency mean" for his own magazine?


• Fail-safe banter about Anderson: "He's brilliant, but just once I'd like to see him go nuts on somebody."

Fred Wilson, A VC

• Day job: Partner in Union Square Ventures, investor in del.icio.us and Feedburner.


• Claim to fame: Made a killing on dot-coms. His house is worth more than your company.


• Blogs incessantly about: The quotidian concerns of a wildly successful investor.


• Best-known post: "Is the traditonal Venture Capital model broken?"


• Fail-safe banter about Wilson: "I'm convinced he's mocking us, 'Here's how to get as rich as me, but you'll never pull it off.'"

Dave Winer, Scripting News

• Day job: Scripting News.


• Claim to fame: Unofficial alpha noodge for Web standards including RSS, podcasting, stuff we forgot.


• Blogs incessantly about: How he never gets enough credit.


• Best-known post: September 11, 2001 when his site didn't crash along with the entire mainstream media.


• Fail-safe banter about Winer: "I can't stand him. Especially when he's right."

1. Amanda and Andrew go ballistic: "I apparently have been unboomed," said Amanda Congdon, host of Rocketboom, outing a behind-the-scenes feud with her producer Andrew Baron (video below). Critics (including me) thought the whole ordeal, with both Amanda and Drew slinging accusations and legal threats over the show's ownership, made these Internet stars a laughingstock. But at least it bought them some publicity while Baron found a more experienced host (who quickly won converts) and Amanda chatted with media companies and landed at ABC.
2. Google buys YouTube: 1. Start site for cool legit reason. 2. Let a bunch of people use it to post Family Guy clips. 3. Pants dangerously close to being sued off. 4. Hop on Google's white horse, cut deals with those who almost sued you, hint at paying users in the future. Profit!
3. HP promotes Mark Hurd: Hewlett-Packard tapped the CEO as chairman, replacing Patricia Dunn, dumped for her involvement in a spying scandal. Hurd quickly forgot all he'd learned before that point.
4. Dave Winer quits blogging: Enemies cheered the promise that technologist and RSS innovator Dave Winer would stop blogging at Scripting News. But so did friends, who knew that if Winer stepped back from his constant updates and the fights they sometimes bring, he'd finally be able to return to the important work of — sorry, wait, he's staying until April. Turns out he does this all the time. And maybe that's clever, since it always fools those of us who haven't spent the last ten years reading this Armchair Everything.
5. Mike Arrington throws a party: The TechCrunch founder threw parties before, but this year they finally broke the capacity of his ranch house. Arrington says he pulled in over $50k from TechCrunch 7, a long schmooze held at the offices of investment firm August Capital. Good thing his parties are so profitable, because that blogging thing ain't working out.
6. Jason Calacanis ruins Netscape: AOL put the cocky Weblogs, Inc. founder in charge of its dying Netscape.com portal. No one's been able to keep the site's traffic from falling. Neither has Calacanis, say outside reports (which he and employee C.K. Sample dispute), but that's not what matters. Calacanis turned Netscape into a clone of social news site Digg and paid top users with AOL's money, thus turning a failure into a high-profile failure (did anyone know Netscape.com was even still up?). The gig kept Jason on the radar long enough to let him prepare his next project — outside AOL.
7. Craigslist stays poor: "Poor" here means "raking in millions." Craigslist's founder and CEO have said (again and again and again and again) that they're not selling the company or milking the site for ad dollars. Instead they'll pull in mere tens of millions for their 22-person operation. After all, the billionaire life is for the fake humble, not the truly humble.
8. Yahoo keeps Terry Semel: The CEO looked so close to retirement that when Valleywag heard the company was announcing something big, our publisher posted an obit for Semel's career. Too soon, it turns out, as Semel is still in charge of the newly reorganized Yahoo. Or at least he'll stick around until the changes are made. It's a lot smarter than putting a new CEO (read: CFO Susan Decker) in charge while the company's still on shaky footing; by the time Decker rises to the top, the exec team (including Decker, who will oversee one of the company's three divisions) will have sorted things out.
9. Apple doesn't reinvent the iPod: Every time Steve Jobs stands in front of more than five people at a time, he's expected to finally introduce the iPhone or the full-screen iPod. The time may come for those products, but this year the iPod only gained a few gigs, went micro on the low end, and dropped the glassy look — nothing that renders a pod from January obsolete. Why wait? To give Microsoft's Zune some time to wallow before crushing sales with a new player early next year.

— Beth Gottfried

• Ex-Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble may miss out on Burning Man, but he'll have fun visiting the Googleplex today with Googler Matt Cutts. Insert cruel "don't empty the snack room" line here, and send phonecam pics of Scoble to tips@valleywag.com. [Matt Cutts, photo by ~C4Chaos]
• Jason Calacanis tells everyone in the Internet industry, blog or die. Somewhere, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is pumping his fist and shouting "Yessss!" [Calacanis.com]
• RSS pioneer Dave Winer says an army of unnamed people are pissed at publisher Tim O'Reilly. (And it's totally not Winer's bitter recrimination for not getting an invite to last weekend's exclusive "Friends of O'Reilly" Camp, nor the two men's ongoing battle since 2000.) [Scripting.com]

Probably because it's a user conference and because Seattle is so close to British Columbia, this year there were lots of Canadians at Gnomedex. They're different from us, but you can't tell from looking at them, because they look exactly like us, unlike black people who usually have darker skin.

It's like hearing Mormons talk in front of non-religious friends — you're not quite offended, but you think maybe it'd be best if they stopped saying words.

Inspiration from new places [Scripting News]

• Segway (founded by Dean Kamen, funded by VC John Doerr, patronized by Segway polo player Steve Wozniak) announced two new vehicles: a street model and all-terrain model of the next generation of the Segway Scooter. They'll build villages and hamlets around them, respectively! [NYT]
• Microsoft launched a desktop-run blog-writing tool, which like every piece of software was invented by Dave Winer years ago. [Windows Live; Winer's blog]
• The PC turned 25 years old, spurring PC World to live in the past with another damn "history of __" story. [PC World]

• Pictured: Blog cartoonist Hugh Macleod, somehow able to make fun of all his colleagues deftly enough that they link to him when he does it, this time mocked blogger Dave Winer for gushing about the "chicks" at the recent BlogHer conference. [Gaping Void]
• Bloggers didn't get laid at WordCamp, the conference for users of the WordPress blogging platform, but they did a good job pretending so. [Blog Herald]
• Nerds everywhere geared up to cream their pants today at Steve Jobs's keynote for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. [Technorati]
• The juvenilely-named CalacANUS.com wrapped up the story so far for "Kevin Rose and Digg vs. Jason Calacanis and Netscape." [Calacanus.com]

Wow. Way to go, Dave! He's like Jerry Garcia at the Lilith Fair.

Dave Winer's blog for July 28 [Scripting News]