Here's my Janurary 2003 primer in the Online Journalism Review: News that comes to you. RSS feeds offer info-warriors a way to take the pulse of hundreds of sites.

After the article came out, Dave Winer of Scripting News wrote: "RSS is not just for geeks anymore."

Dave also wrote: "JD does something extremely cool, on his weblog he provides full transcripts of the interviews he did for the piece. Much more interesting. Very nice. Someday all reporters will do this."

Here are the extended transcripts of comments by interview subjects on RSS.

Here's my article in the Online Journalism review on Tools for the info-warrior: RSS readers ride to the rescue of heavy news grazers. A look at RSS news readers (such as FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, Bloglines), other RSS news services, RSS feeds, and software tools such as ActiveWords and HotBot Desktop.

No blogging (or email) for the next week. We'll be on vacation in San Diego and out of reach of the Internet. Have a good week! Back on July 5.

The madness continues. From Larry Lessig: At Amazon.com, you can purchase an electronic version of the Constitution, fitted very nicely to a Microsoft Reader (not Mac compatible), and protected quite completely with DRM. The description says you’re not permitted to print it.

Joe Conason in Salon: Bill Clinton. The former president blasts the Bush-Cheney rush to war, explains why Gore lost in 2000 and tells how Kerry can win in 2004.

From the Daily MisLead:

Bush administration lied about secret Saudi flight

The Bush administration and its right-wing allies are launching an all-out assault on Michael Moore and his new movie, attempting to discredit the film before it opened.

Now the smear campaign is focused on creating the public illusion that Moore lied about a secret Saudi flight that was permitted after 9/11 when most U.S. airspace was closed. But, according to one new report, the Tampa International Airport "confirmed that the flight did take place" -- despite three years of Bush administration denials.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, "two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men (including one thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family) and flew to Lexington, Kentucky. From Kentucky "the Saudis then took another flight out of the country." As the newspaper reported, "for nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports" about the flight. But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (9/11 Commission), the Tampa International Airport acknowledged the flights happened. For its part, the Bush administration "is still not talking about the flights."

According to the St. Petersburg Times, the Commission has now sent a formal letter to the Tampa International Airport asking for more information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001" The commission "appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight." Meanwhile, former FBI agent Manuel Perez, who accompanied the formerly secret flight, said the order to allow the flights "must have come from the highest levels of government."

Just published a photo album of shots I took at Supernova on Thursday. Some other good coverage and/or photos here: Phil Windley, Matt, Jason and, of course, the Supernova blog.

Also, here's the first half of the first draft of an article on the goings-on that I just filed. Mindjack has just published the full story.

Blogging, social software (for better and worse), and collaborative work tools from the edges of the network were the stars of 2004 Supernova.

The third annual tech-in-the-workspace conference -- legend: "Where the decentralized future comes together!" -- drew more than 150 technology thought leaders, software startup CEOs and other heavy hitters (alas, fewer than 20 of them women) to the Westin Hotel in Santa Clara, Calif., on June 24-25.

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I met Michael Sippey (managing director of Quris) at Supernova for the first time earlier today. He had the best posting of the day on the Supernova blog, so I'll reproduce it here:

Where's the rip, mix & burn?

So I walked in a bit late and may have missed the Big Ideas, but from the 2nd half that I heard the syndication panel just blew it. We need to wake up to the fact that RSS does not equal blogs. If we keep talking about RSS as the equivalent of blogging, then of course we'll be stuck in the same old boring conversations about adoption curves, audience size and whether Jane or Joe blogger will ever be able to have an ad- or subscription-supported business model. What, is this 1996 all over again? We've been down this road before.

What I had hoped to hear was some discussion about how XML-based content syndication can create recombinatorial media. As I'm sure everyone here knows, the trend in media consumption is hyper-fragmentation. Cable, web, gaming, music distribution, etc. With time- and context-shifting technologies people are able to create their own real-time media mix -- whether it's the random function on the iPod, or the Tivo to-do list, or the bookmark file, or the email subscription list, or, yes, the XML syndication client.

If XML-based content syndication is only about creating another vehicle for single channel content distribution (and ad distribution, etc.), then YAWN. Formats like RSS & Atom create the possibility for recombinatorial media. If all the RSS/Atom proponents want to use these feeds as a replacement for email, then good luck. You have a hard road ahead. What's needed is some new thinking about rich clients that enable users to create NEW things out of the pub/sub network.

Rip, mix, burn, baby.

Common Dreams progressive newswire: In Major Victory for Localism and Diversity, Federal Court Overturns FCC Decision on Media Ownership. I was going to link to this Forbes article on same, but the ads are just too intrusive.