The Gillmor Gang — Phil Windley, Craig Burton, Robert Scoble, and Kevin Marks — debate Google sidewiki and identity politics. Recorded live October 1, 2009.

Full transcript below the video, courtesy of Simulscribe.

Mr. STEVE GILLMOR: Hi. Welcome to the Gillmor Gang. I’m Steve Gillmor and we’ve got some – of the usual suspects and some of the way older Gillmor Gang regulars such as – let’s talk first to Craig Burton. Craig, welcome.

Mr. CRAIG BURTON: Hi, Steve. Thanks.

Mr. GILLMOR: Thanks for showing up here and somebody I – I don’t know whether Phil’s been on the Gillmor Gang or on the News Gang in the past.

Mr. PHIL WINDLEY: News Gang.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, I know you’re on News Gang. But I’m trying to remember – I think you were on a – the original identity gang show back in 1987 I think it was. No…

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Fourty-three.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah, back when rocks were new and we were talking about identity.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, exactly. So I think you were on the Gillmor Gang then.

Mr. WINDLEY: Mm hmm.

Mr. GILLMOR: So welcome back, Phil Windley.

Mr. WINDLEY: Thank you.

Mr. GILLMOR: And joining us from his bomb shelter in Half Moon(ph) Bay, Robert Scoble.

Mr. ROBERT SCOBLE: Hey, what’s up?

Mr. GILLMOR: OK. We’re waiting on Kevin Marks who seems to be green now. So let’s see if we can bring him in. We’ll just keep it a little lose here for a second. Sorry about the delays but – that’s very nice. OK. Kevin, give us video, please.

Mr. SCOBLE: It’s Google Wave.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. We’re going to talk about that as soon as I bring him in. Here’s your audio. And of course, Kevin Marks, the inscrutable, indecipherable, Kevin Marks.

Mr. KEVIN MARKS: Unintelligible. That’s me.

Mr. GILLMOR: That’s right, frequently or amazingly. So you – have you – we have to figure out some sort of methodology for having you to be able to proof the transcripts.

Mr. MARKS: Yeah, here we go.

Mr. GILLMOR: So that you can at least indicate that it wasn’t you who said that.

Mr. MARKS: Right. Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK.

Mr. MARKS: It’s an interesting thing. It is.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right. So let’s see. Let’s have a two shot with Scoble and Kevin for a second. Just before you, you got here, Kevin, you – Scoble was showing Google Wave. What’s the whole point of this, Robert?

Mr. SCOBLE: It’s like I am an email, had sex and had a baby. And so you have these waves that you can start and you can invite people in. So like this wave that says hello there. I could invite Kevin Marks in too and then we could have a real time conversation there and I could drag in photos and videos and other things. It’s almost like FriendFeed but coastered to email than FriendFeed was. FriendFeed and Twitter are meant for really public conversations. These are meant for working in a small group like, you know, at work. That’s how I would (unintelligible).

Mr. GILLMOR: All right. Well…

Mr. MARKS: That’s – yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Kevin, what’s your take on the…

Mr. MARKS: What’s my take on it?

Mr. GILLMOR: On Google Wave.

Mr. MARKS: I’m at…

Mr. GILLMOR: Now that you’re not at Google allegedly.

Mr. MARKS: What do you mean allegedly? I don’t know…

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, I’ve got something that I’m going to point out in just a second which will tend to…

Mr. SCOBLE: We all work for Google though.

Mr. GILLMOR: Cast incredible doubt on your credibility. But let’s go ahead.

Mr. MARKS: So for me, I think Wave is primarily about document editing and we have the (unintelligible) on top of that. So what it does is it lets you edit documents in real time which we’ve sort of had with Google docs and we’ve had with – somebody thread it and need a patent on these thing. But what it was, they take – they took that method into infrastructure and put a bunch of other things on top of that. So the sort of emailey(ph) IME behavior is actually on top of document editing. And that’s why this structure is quite different from Twitter or FriendFeed because there is a core document that you’re editing at any given moment and you switch between them, it isn’t just a flow of separate events that you stitch together afterwards. So that the – the world view is the other way up. Everything is a document with edits in it rather than lots of little messages that you’re trying to correlate and make sense of.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right, well the reason that I wanted you to sort of relate that to a more abstract or activity stream notion of what is – that we’re in – talking about here is…

Mr. MARKS: OK.

Mr. GILLMOR: The reason that we have Craig Burton and Phil Windley on the show and I’m going to get to Phil in a second because he kind of started this with a rather inflammatory post. But…

Mr. MARKS: Since (unintelligible) like Phil at all.

Mr. GILLMOR: And we all like – and we like it when Republicans get inflammatory. But Craig, you – what’s your take on this hijacking if you will of the email space on the part of Google? Do you feel threatened by this project?

Mr. BURTON: Wave?

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah.

Mr. BURTON: Well, you know, I’m not even going to say until I get to play with it. I doubt I’d feel threatened by anything that Google would do at this point. There seems to be a lot of concern about Google but you know, I don’t think they could figure out anything to really threaten me but, so bring it on.

Mr. GILLMOR: So – all right, let’s get Phil in here and he can sort of state the thesis and then I think Craig, you have a sort of a little object lesson in why you’re not so threatened by this stuff.

Mr. BURTON: Well I was talking more about Sidewiki than WaveW

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. Well, so let me get Phil in here. Let’s see. Get a two shot of Phil and Craig. Phil, very briefly. Would you discuss your Sidewiki post and why you feel what you feel about that technology?

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah. I actually wasn’t – I mean, I knew Sidewiki came out. Wasn’t paying much attention to it really but then, you know, there was some Twitter commentary about oh, you know, Google’s defacing web sites, they’re putting graffiti on the web and I started thinking about it and I sent a tweet back and said, well, you know, it’s not actually – they’re not putting the comments on your site. They’re talking about your site. It just so happens that the browser is displaying them both concurrently and people seem to not buy that argument or not like it and I think the issue is one of metaphor. I mean, when we think of web sites in terms of land and property, then the only metaphor we have is a graffiti. But in fact, I think there are different metaphors we can use and I’m not threatened by people commenting about my site somewhere else on the web and the browser bringing those up side by side and – so I put up a post that kind of described my point of view and ended it with a – I don’t know, what do you call these things? You know, like, you tack them to the church door.

Mr. BURTON: Manifesto.

Mr. WINDLEY: There we go. So anyway, I…

Mr. GILLMOR: It’s a Windley bowl. I think that’s how they described it in the old days.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Not the same genera…

Mr. SCOBLE: Hoax so…

Mr. WINDLEY: What I said was I claimed the right to mash up, remix, annotate, augment and otherwise, modify web content for my purposes in my bruiser….

Mr. BURTON: Bruiser.

Mr. MARKS: Bruiser or your browser.

Mr. WINDLEY: I was reading. I had a tool in my browser using any tool I choose and I extend the same privilege to everyone else. If you want to take my content and fiddle with it in your browser, go ahead.

Mr. GILLMOR: Now I think you were reacting to some comments by Dave Winer about you know, his contention that this was part of a Google takeover of, you know, that Google is essentially the new Microsoft and that we all should need to be afraid Google.

Mr. BURTON: Which is so hilarious, you know?

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah and I think it’s important to separate out the idea of can you take content and in your own browser, mash it up in some way that’s useful to you and whether or not Sidewiki is a good idea or whether or not Google ought to be doing this. I mean, those are different questions from do I have the right to take two different web feeds and put them next to each other which is essentially all I’m doing when I installed Google’s toolbar and have Sidewiki running.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right. So Craig, you have an analogy.

Mr. BURTON: Well, and to preclude my analogy, I’ll say that what we’re in the midst of is shifting from content scheme to context scheme and what Sidewiki is letting us do is create a context between what someone else said and what other people in a row say about it and context is much more powerful than – depending on context. I get a – you know, I’m watching Doc Searls ambivalent piece on Sidewiki saying, well, I’m not sure I like it or don’t and there are people weighing in on both sides in this – I can only say to the people who keep saying that it’s evil. Have a look at it. They don’t know for sure what it is and when I was going through it with Doc, I found out that he hadn’t quite looked at it yet either. So…

Mr. GILLMOR: So he was vociferously defending his right to be semi-ignorant about the subject.

Mr. BURTON: Right. Well, and it comes – it turns out that what he was really against was Google having something that put that’s near my page and as a (unintelligible) you know, let’s drop the vendor and you know…

Mr. SCOBLE: What I’m against with this…

Mr. BURTON: Step away from the product.

Mr. SCOBLE: This is Robert Scoble. What I’m against with this and I have Sidewiki up on my screen is that with other commenting technologies, you had to go to your site to read your opinions or you had to go to wiki or you had to go somewhere else. You had to go off of my site if I didn’t allow comments to see your opinions. This gives your opinions distribution on top of my content and that I find…

Mr. WINDLEY: You know what I’m (unintelligible)

Mr. SCOBLE: Mixed in your content.

Mr. WINDLEY: You don’t have to look at your content is to decide…

Mr. BURTON: You don’t have to look at it. Turn it off.

Mr. SCOBLE: No. But now everybody has a tool that they can use to find other people’s content and I have no way to remove these things or control them…

Mr. MARKS: Exactly. But we shift that that with techno already five years ago. This isn’t anything particularly new. It’s just another blogging service from Google. I mean…

Mr. BURTON: Exactly, exactly.

Mr. WINDLEY: Ever used by anybody.

Mr. GILLMOR: What do you mean and what do you mean that you don’t have any way of being able to remove it? I mean, you could, you know, go downstairs to the electric box and shut down your house. I mean, it’s like…

Mr. SCOBLE: No. But it’s still there and my page is giving distribution to these things.

Mr. GILLMOR: No. That’s not true.

Mr. MARKS: No, it isn’t.

Mr. SCOBLE: It absolutely is. You come over to my page with Sidewiki and you get so see everybody’s crap. If somebody puts a hateful, you know, Nazi thing there. Well, it’s there for everybody to see and there’s nobody is controlling…

Mr. GILLMOR: But Robert, Robert, Robert, if everybody’s putting crap on, then what is the value of that service to anybody and why would they continue to use it? If it’s a stream of crap, you know, or spam, it’s not going to do well for Google or anybody else who tries this. I don’t understand why….

Mr. MARKS: Robert, do you realize how much you sound like an old school newspaper person complaining about blogs there?

Mr. WINDLEY: Orally.

Mr. MARKS: Listen to yourself.

Mr. SCOBLE: Absolutely. You know what?

Mr. MARKS: It’s a new blogging system.

Mr. SCOBLE: There is still – in this world, there is still the right of a copyright holder to control his content and to be there…

Mr. GILLMOR: Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on.

Mr. SCOBLE: Decide who gets distribution.

Mr. GILLMOR: You’re putting it on the – you’re putting it on the web.

Mr. MARKS: You want to control how my browser renders your content.

Mr. GILLMOR: You’re controlling what you release but you’re not controlling how people use it. I mean, it’s like saying that if somebody says something, you know, I’d like to have Craig give the analogy that he was – that he told me. It’s just so that we can frame the discussion a little bit more in terms of something other than the alleged hijacking of the page. Go ahead, Craig.

Mr. BURTON: Yeah, I remember, you know, when we used to go to conferences, (unintelligible), attendees would sit in the audience while the speaker’s going on and hoping at the end for – to be able to stand up and say something at the mic and we may have collected our thoughts or had a good enough question to do that and then I remember very distinctly with some of the people in this group including Dave Winer, who is not in this group, of course but, you’ know, this whole conversation and Doc Searls and going to a conference in particular, Esther Dyson’s conference in instant messaging was now – everybody was up on the instant messenger and there was this huge back channel going on behind the conversation of the speakers and – so by the time the speakers got done and somebody got up to ask a question, the amount of conversation that’s going on in the background was huge and to me, Sidewiki is just a back channel for your content. If you, you know, how you – you can’t stop it. It’s going to go on anyway. The fact that you’re a carrier for it is the same as if you went to the conference. You’re a carrier for the back channel, you know? If you put it out there – there is…

Mr. SCOBLE: The difference there is the back channel at all these conferences usually wasn’t up on stage. You had to find it and go somewhere else to find it and to participate in it.

Mr. BURTON: Oh please. You’re saying that the….

Mr. SCOBLE: Or plus it up my stage.

Mr. BURTON: Effort to go find it is what this thing – what this is?

Mr. SCOBLE: It’s what’s this thing – the content. It wasn’t on top of the content that was being presented on stage.

Mr. WINDLY: Robert, you really believe that in the era of web technology that we can create artificial barriers by having friction or having people not be able to find stuff?

Mr. SCOBLE: For the last eight years we have.

Mr. WINDLEY: I mean, come on. That’s what the web is all about.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. MARKS: Maybe so. This is…

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, we haven’t had health care reform for the last eight years and we’re going to get it now.

Mr. SCOBLE: You’re still sure about that?

Mr. GILLMOR: Uh-huh. Yeah. Pre-existing conditions.

Mr. SCOBLE: We’re going to get some reform. We’re not going to get what we want.

Mr. GILLMOR: Are going down. Sucker. They’re going down. Pre-existing conditions, keep your job.

Mr. MARKS: OK.

Mr. GILLMOR: Leave your job. You still are covered. Yeah. That’s changing right now, next six weeks.

Mr. MARKS: Well let’s hope so. OK, Sidewiki at – it’s a blogging system. What it does is it looks for comments and shows you them. Now I wrote something that does this five years ago with a bunch of other people called Technorati that help you find people talking about your stuff on their blogs. Sidewiki does this, too. In addition, they added the ability for you to post your own comments to another blog that happens to be on your Google profile and draw those in as well. So it took the – showing me what people have said about this page which we’ve had the Technorati plug in, the sphere plug in, there’s 20 of them that you can put in your browser does this. They’ve done that as a toolbar. But the second, I mean, it’s the ability for you to post comments back into that system and show them there, too. Now people missed the first part of sharing comments. If you’ve got Sidewiki, go to oneforty.com because that’s a good example of this, you know, go to the site oneforty.com. If you look at that and hit Sidewiki, what you see is all the blog posts that were about oneforty.com last week when it was launched and you see the blog post from TechCrunch and Master Bowl and so on that were writing about it because Sidewiki said, oh, this is about this side. I’ll show you it there which is very like the old who’s writing about me thing we did at Technorati. Yeah?

Mr. BURTON: Yeah.

Mr. MARKS: And so you can see those. You can also go in there and add your own comment to the page and have that pop up there, too. So it’s actually doing this cross web correlation thing that, you know, that we were doing in Technorati but they’re doing – with Google scroll which is probably more thorough than ours is.

Mr. GILLMOR: More context.

Mr. SCOBLE: Now, wait a second. I never remember having a Technorati toolbar that showed them on the page when I went to oneforty.com like…

Mr. WINDLEY: Well, there is one. There’s no one.

Mr. MARKS: Yeah, we built one. Yeah. We built one. We may have not installed it. The difference here is Google would have (unintelligible) pay attention.

Mr. GILLMOR: Right. This is the theory that because Google is successful, that somehow what they’re doing is bad as opposed to somebody else who doesn’t get the leverage…

Mr. MARKS: The other subtle thing that (unintelligible) he does. Now, this is the really fun one. If you comment on a block of text, it correlates the comment with that block of text. If it sees the same block of text somewhere else, it shows the comment there too. There’s a (unintelligible) to show you this. But I commented on the Douglas Adams piece that I’m always closing. Hang on, I’ll put it in the chat room. There.

Mr. GILLMOR: Oh, wait a minute. You can’t put it in the chat room because that’s a foreign, you know…

Mr. MARKS: I’ll put it in wave.

Mr. GILLMOR: Same information.

Mr. BURTON: Oh, yeah, you bring that…

Mr. GILLMOR: On Building 43 it’s right alongside this is…

Mr. WINDLEY: Something might have a plug in showing that FriendFeed next to their blog and that would be awful.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, we’re being hijacked by FriendFeed.

Mr. MARKS: If you look at that Douglas Adams page and there’s a comment from me there on a piece of it. Now, let me find the other link, hold on.

Mr. SCOBLE: You guys are pretty funny because FriendFeed, you would have to know about FriendFeed to find the chat room.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, Robert, you better stop taking about FriendFeed then because there a lot of people who know about it now.

Mr. SCOBLE: How do…

Mr. GILLMOR: You’re not just part of the problem, you are the problem Robert…

Mr. SCOBLE: How do they got…

Mr. MARKS: Robert, really is always the problem there.

Mr. SCOBLE: Somebody has to really (unintelligible) in here. Arrington is not on yet.

Mr. MARKS: So you see that one, hang on.

Mr. GILLMOR: Arrington agrees with us as far as I can tell. I read that article. I don’t know what…

Mr. SCOBLE: Although you did complain about all the comments on TechCrunch, he did make fun of that, you know.

Mr. MARKS: Some of it. You look at that one as a comment for me, right?

Mr. GILLMOR: He make fun of it…

Mr. MARKS: On the sidebar. In the Sidewiki.

Mr. SCOBLE: For what? For web, for oneforty?

Mr. MARKS: For that thing I just sent you. Oh, did you not get it? Hang on.

Mr. SCOBLE: I don’t know where I am supposed to be looking.

Mr. MARKS: (unintelligible)LY/DA.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, when we grow up we’re going to actually – we can put web pages on the screen but – we’re just having a fun with four people right now.

Mr. MARKS: Well Robert was pointing it, he’s pointing his camera at the screen.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, I know, I understand the technology. I didn’t say…

Mr. SCOBLE: Where did you send it because I didn’t get anything. Where did you send it to?

Mr. MARKS: I put it in the FriendFeed chat.

Mr. SCOBLE: I’m not in the FriendFeed chat.

Mr. GILLMOR: Go to Building 43, Robert. Have you heard about that?

Mr. BURTON: Now, Robert if you point that camera in your screen…

Mr. MARKS: (Unintelligible) put it away here. I’ll put it away for you if you like because…

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, I can’t. Can we get to the FriendFeed chat because I wasn’t in the FriendFeed chat because I’m trying to pay attention to what’s going on in real life here.

Mr. GILLMOR: So you know, competition is leading to ADD because we have so many choices now. I can’t tell which is worse, having choice or not having choice.

Mr. MARKS: It’s a way again

Mr. BURTON: And I got to open it.

Mr. GILLMOR: Hey, Craig, what are you doing?

Mr. MARKS: Oh, Microsoft has gone away. It’s going to be some of that, Google now…

Mr. WINDLEY: Yes, Steve. I tell people that I have it, Attention Surplus Disorder and in today’s day and age, that’s a real liability.

Mr. GILLMOR: So what is that ASD, ASD?

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah, ASD. Attention Surplus.

Mr. SCOBLE: How do you know that so?

Mr. GILLMOR: Well Kevin and Robert I’m having fun with you.

Mr. MARKS: OK, the system has usually gone astray(ph). Anyway, let me explain, tell you what it does rather than showing you, showing is the outline, how it works. What it will do is if I select a piece of text and put the comment on that, if it finds that same piece of text somewhere else as someone quoted that page, it will show the comment next to that as well.

Mr. BURTON: Wow, that’s cool.

Mr. MARKS: So if there’s a (unintelligible) speech or a comment in one place, that same comment can show up somewhere else.

Mr. BURTON: How do you know it did that? I like that…

Mr. SCOBLE: I’m on that page right now. What am I supposed to look? I see your comment here, Douglas Adams got it right.

Mr. MARKS: Somewhere I had that same text on another blog post. I found this. And then I got…

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah, it’s down lower. It’s down lower. If you scroll down with Sidewiki, what you’ll see is there’s a little…

Mr. MARKS: It says A, other places or something.

Mr. WINDLEY: Conversation, yeah, Sidewiki entry about this part of the page and then when you click on it, it will actually highlight the text that the comment’s about.

Mr. MARKS: But it also says, also shown on seven other web pages. Now, of course we don’t do silly which – seven other web pages…

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. MARKS: There you go. Because this has been quoted a lot because you know, I quoted you know, this is – if you haven’t read this, that was on the speeches, read it. It’s beautiful. It was written 10 years ago and it’s all still true.

Mr. GILLMOR: Just trying to interject something, Matt Valenzio is saying I don’t even understanding the concept of chat gathered around the Gillmor Gang anymore. Do they mean the comments on this post. Yes. Where you’re typing is what we’re talking about.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: You go to Building43.com/realtime. You’ll see it’s displayed next to the streaming video of this show.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. MARKS: I didn’t know that. I’m just using it in FriendFeed. I need to slow down. Is this why I’m unintelligible?

Mr. GILLMOR: Well you know, it’s a trade off because we can understand it, but it also helps the sales in quotes of the YouTube video. And then of course the SimulScribe transcribers are going insane at the moment or will be in a couple of hours.

Mr. MARKS: They just mark me as unintelligible and they’re done right there.

Mr. GILLMOR: It’s reductive, I think. What was the thing next in the tapes where…

Mr. MARKS: Reductive, yes. No, expletive deleted.

Mr. GILLMOR: There it is.

Mr. WINDLEY: So to Kevin’s point that he made about this comment that he left here on the Douglas Adams site. I made a blog comment just a little bit ago about you know, the China censorship where they’re talking. I don’t know if you saw this. But they’re requiring a positive identification with real ID, real names of people before they can comment on new sites in China now which obviously is an attempt to do a way with dissent, right. Make you think twice before you leave a comment because we’re going to know who you are. Things like Sidewiki, not just Sidewiki, I mean anything. Technorati does the same thing. It totally showed the futility of that.

Mr. MARKS: I think, I mean, that’s… there was an assumption awhile back that you can control the conversation about your stuff. And this hasn’t been true since we had blogs. Suddenly if some of these blogs the comments down the discussion move somewhere else, move that term to the wider web and it spreads out. So when Seth Godin(ph) did his, I’m going to take your brand and charge you $400 a month to maintain it on the web thing last week on his blog, people discussed that elsewhere on the web, wrote about it and he had to back down. And yet, they were using Sidewiki to comment on his blog. But mostly they were writing blog posts elsewhere and discussing it on Twitter and connecting back and forth. So the thing, the point, is the conversation is always going along in parallel and Sidewiki is just another way of servicing that. So I’m fairly saying, I think it’s interesting, the couple of things that they’ve done there of correlating the words is really interesting and that will be quite hard for anyone other than Google to do because Google is the only one across(ph) almost everything. So that’s them providing a service for us, from their (unintelligible) that’s already going on.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right, Robert Scoble. Why don’t you read what you just typed?

Mr. SCOBLE: I just said the difference between Sidewiki and Echo and discusses that – discuss an Echo, give control over what gets displayed to the blog owner. So if somebody writes a, erased his post on Building43 or something, I can – as the blog owner I can delete that post. On Sidewiki, I don’t believe I have any control to delete things.

Mr. WINDLEY: You can mark it as abuse.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, and then what happens? Somebody in Google has to see it.

Mr. WINDLEY: But Robert, I think it’s interesting that you think you have to have control over the conversation about what you write.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah. I do. More and more now that I’ve been on the Internet, I think you need control.

Mr. MARKS: You can’t control what people say about you.

Mr. BURTON: You don’t have it. You’re never going to have it Robert. Forget it.

Mr. MARKS: I mean, you just can’t have it.

Mr. SCOBLE: I absolutely do right now. Well I don’t…

Mr. MARKS: Well, you absolutely don’t right now.

Mr. SCOBLE: Sorry.

Mr. GILLMOR: Robert, you never had it…

Mr. MARKS: People are talking about you everywhere.

Mr. SCOBLE: In scobleizer.com, I can delete your comments.

Mr. GILLMOR: Robert, what do you have on my screen right now?

Mr. SCOBLE: I can create and I can delete your comment on my items.

Mr. GILLMOR: Robert, what do you have on my screen right now?

Mr. MARKS: You can’t delete it from my blog.

Mr. SCOBLE: What’s that?

Mr. GILLMOR: What you…

Mr. MARKS: You can’t delete it from my blog. You can’t delete it from Twitter.

Mr. GILLMOR: What do you see on my screen right now?

Mr. SCOBLE: No. No. I don’t give distribution to you. Nobody can find you from my blog. If they’re following me, they can’t click on the links next to you.

Mr. WINDLEY: Oh, that…

Mr. SCOBLE: They can use – there’s plenty of tools.

Mr. WINDLEY: You’re not showing the comments. Google is showing the comments in a separate frame in the browser. You’re not giving distribution to anything. All the – I mean, techno…

Mr. SCOBLE: Wrong. Wrong. Sorry, when you’re using Sidewiki I am giving distribution to those comments because you come over to my blog. You type in my blog address and now obviously you see everybody’s comments. And I now no longer have control on those comments.

Mr. WINDLEY: They’re typing your blog address to Technorati and see everybody’s comments that they wrote on their blogs.

Mr. SCOBLE: That’s you but how many people actually knew about Technorati?

Mr. BURTON: What do you think? Everybody. What do you talking about?

Mr. MARKS: We were very famous(ph) at one point.

Mr. SCOBLE: Give me a break, nobody even knows Technorati.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right. Hold on. Hold on a second. Hold on. Hold on.

Mr. BURTON: So, you’re saying if nobody knows about it, it’s OK?

Mr. SCOBLE: No. You can find it somewhere else, you’re in control of that space..

Mr. BURTON: That’s ridiculous.

Mr. GILLMOR: It’s simple than this. First of all, Robert, why do you support FriendFeed, because it does exactly the same thing that you’re talking about Google doing that you don’t like.

Mr. BURTON: Well because nobody knows about it.

Mr. GILLMOR: This FriendFeed conversation…

Mr. SCOBLE: If I start a note, I can delete comments underneath my notes.

Mr. GILLMOR: You can delete comments if you start a note, right.

Mr. SCOBLE: That’s right. That’s my brand. I started a note. I started the conversation, I could control that. Now if you started a note, I have 47,000 or 49,000 followers. You have how many followers, I don’t know. But my followers, I’m giving distribution to certain things to. And I decide what those people are going to see out of my stuff..

Mr. GILLMOR: Out of your stuff.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, if you’re only following me, I decide what you’re going to see.

Mr. GILLMOR: So in other words, all the comments that flow through on any other system to my machine while I’m watching your site are somehow under your control.

Mr. SCOBLE: No. Anything under my name, under my – in FriendFeed, what’s there in FriendFeed. If I start a note, I control all the comments that happened in my note. So if you’re only following me, I have control of almost everything you see except for when you get pulled stuff into a friend of a friend or what not.

Mr. GILLMOR: Right or any of the other programs that I’m running, that flash information. Right now…

Mr. SCOBLE: That’s separate from my note. You had to choose to go there. I didn’t take you there.

Mr. GILLMOR: No, I’m going – I’m choosing to go to your site and I’m sitting there in your side. And now, what you’re telling me is that everything else that’s on my screen is somehow you would prefer that it was under your control.

Mr. SCOBLE: No, if you go to the Huffington Post, a Huffington Post has control of what you’re seeing.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK. All right. So now I understand and this is I think what Phil talks about when he talks about the, well, I’ll call the politics of location. Is that true?

Mr. SCOBLE: Right.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK. So this is the notion that your site is a location that you control.

Mr. SCOBLE: Right.

Mr. GILLMOR: Which flies in the face of everything that I do on a daily basis with my computer, nobody has control of what I look at except me.

Mr. SCOBLE: That’s so… but I have control of that view port when you go to scobelizer.com, that’s me. That’s not….Kevin Rose, that’s Leo Laporte, it’s not Amanda Chapel, it’s me.

Mr. WINDLEY: Well, Robert. It’s my browser Robert I have control over the view port.

Mr. SCOBLE: Absolutely. In your browser you have to enter Amanda Chapel in or you have to enter kevinrose.com or you have to enter Leo Laporte to go to those things. If you choose to come to me, you’re asking your browser to display me and my brand to you.

Mr. WINDLEY: Robert, you’re stuck on browsers, how browsers have worked in the past, not how they might work in the future, in the same way that RIAA will stock…

Mr. SCOBLE: I’m also stuck on copyright and my ability as a communicator to control my voice and my vision and say this is mine, this is my little space and nobody gets overrated and (unintelligible) and steal it…

Mr. GILLMOR: You can say that but Robert when you post something on the web and you allow other servers to flow that data through and deliver it to requests from people on the web, you don’t control it anymore. You as a copyright issue is completely bogus. It has nothing to do with copyright.

Mr. BURTON: You’re living in lala land Robert to think that you can maintain control of your little space.

Mr. GILLMOR: Got it.

Mr. WINDLEY: So can I, can I, like (unintelligible) a little bit. So the fact of the matter is the web has – doesn’t have locations, it has resources. And it has uniform resource locators which are used to locate those resources. Now we call them addresses but their not really addresses, they’re just unique identifiers for a resource on the web. All that Sidewiki is doing is taking that unique identifier and finding all of the comments about that unique identifier and giving me as a user the choice of saying show me all of the things that people have written around this unique identifier. Now the fact that you created the identifier or the fact that you attach to it to resource doesn’t meant that somebody else can’t write about that same resource using the same identifier.

Mr. SCOBLE: True. But if you right about something, you have to find your own distribution. You don’t get to get access to my distribution channel that I built up over time.

Mr. WINDLEY: Your distribution.

Mr. BURTON: Robert, it already happened. Why are you arguing what you can’t control? It’s done. It’s over.

Mr. WINDLEY: This is actually a critical point because Robert is making a critical…

Mr. BURTON: Are you gonna sue them?

Mr. WINDLEY: Robert’s claiming it’s his distribution but it’s not Robert’s audience. The audience is everybody who has a Google toolbar installed. It is Google audience. Google is the one that’s distributing the toolbar. Google is the one that’s convincing people to do that. It’s Google’s audience, not yours Robert. Your audience are the people who come to your blog, the people who see Sidewiki are the people who have Google toolbar. You don’t own that audience, that’s Google’s audience. And you’re not providing them distribution, Google is providing the distribution by getting people to download the tool bar.

Mr. SCOBLE: OK.

Mr. BURTON: If you think you can control it, you know, I’d like to see how…

Mr. GILLMOR: I’m hearing the apology coming. Just kidding.

Mr. SCOBLE: No. no.

Mr. GILLMOR: I know, it’s not an apology. I wanted to keep it going.

Mr. BURTON: I’d love to see how you’re going to do it Robert.

Mr. SCOBLE: Why don’t I just give you guys my WordPress log in password so you guys can read(ph) my content.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, I mean, you give us – you give everybody your phone number so why not.

Mr. WINDLEY: Well, I don’t need it. I don’t need your WordPress log in. I can use Google Sidewiki.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yes, exactly.

Mr. WINDLEY: Anything you know.

Mr. GILLMOR: And also you know, while you’re at it, turn off your comments because you know, you’re giving control to – you know, random lunatics all around the universe.

Mr. SCOBLE: No, actually on my comments I’m discussing the Echo and that was the point I was making, I do have control. I can delete you if you’re racist or if you just piss me off.

Mr. WINDLEY: And you can, which means that people who come and do these things on your site which are clearly under your control, you can control. But people who (unintelligible) things somewhere else on the web, you can’t. I think it’s just fascinating that three or four years ago we were having this same discussion about the RIAA and why their business model was old and they couldn’t see how things were going to change and now it’s the bloggers that are having exactly the same problem.

Mr. BURTON: It’s my copyright.

Mr. WINDLEY: That’s many more than the RIAA…

Mr. SCOBLE: Oh, I’m sorry, I never said that you’re – with music, that you should be able to stick whatever you want on top of music and use somebody else’s work and make money off of that.

Mr. MARKS: I’m sorry, where did the money come from?

Mr. SCOBLE: What’s that?

Mr. MARKS: Where’s the money?

Mr. BURTON: A mash up, a mash up

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah, but…

Mr. SCOBLE: That’s illegal

Mr. BURTON: It’s not illegal.

Mr. SCOBLE: (Unintelligible) that you’re able to do that

Mr. BURTON: (Unintelligible) Let them have at it.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, but he just – he came up with creative comments. If he sticks something in a creative comment go for it, you know.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah, but – but the – there’s a – every metaphor as Doc points out is at its core wrong. That’s why I got a metaphor(ph), right. And so, the only thing that Sidewiki is Sidewiki. And so, all of our metaphors are going to be run – we’re going to find problems with it. But the point is, I don’t have to debase your site. I don’t have to change your content. I don’t have to do anything to it in order for Sidewiki to work. All I have to do is download it exactly the same way that you’ve given me permission already to download it and then download something from Google and put them side by side in the same browser. That’s all I have to do. I’m not doing anything to your copyright. I’m not changing your site.

Mr. SCOBLE: Okay. I disagree. I disagree. But that’s fine.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, what I like to…

Mr. BURTON: And my point is it doesn’t matter if you disagree, it’s over.

Mr. SCOBLE: That is true. I will agree on that point.

Mr. BURTON: It doesn’t matter.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right. So…

Mr. SCOBLE: Although I remember Microsoft came out with a something that added something like a (unintelligible) what do they call it? They got it in the early 90s. They put a little box on top of links and that got killed and got taken out.

Mr. GILLMOR: Right. And some of he people, I remember Dave Winer, myself and others were opposed to that because essentially that was rewriting the text under the control of Word or Office which at that time was at a monopoly. Kevin, would you like to (unintelligible) down or stand up, yeah, one or the other?

Mr. MARKS. Sorry.

Mr. GILLMOR: Thanks.

Mr. MARKS: – looking at my reflection.

Mr. GILLMOR: No, it’s you know, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Mr. MARKS: I just (Unintelligible) like that.

Mr. GILLMOR: That’s much better. Yeah. We – I think we are all opposed to that because we had no choice in those days.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: There was no Google. There was no – I think Winer’s thesis today however is that Google is the new Microsoft and I think that’s patently incorrect. We are – we’re using on this experience, whatever you might want to call this.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Or a combination of technologies. We’re using the Facebook Monopoly. We’re using the Google Monopoly. We’re using the – if you go to our News Gang app which is going to come out in beta hopefully in the next day or so.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: We were using (unintelligible) monopoly, Microsoft Monopoly. It’s a – it’s a – it’s a symphony of monopolies that we’re using.

Mr. MARKS: Silos.

Mr. SCOBLE: The other difference between that earlier technology was this doesn’t change my content. It just gives distribution to other people’s content. So, it’s like a lot cleaner.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, but there’s a – like a small station?

Mr. SCOBLE: If Google actually went in and changed my links and added ads or something like that, you know, I think everybody would be a lot –

Mr. GILLMOR: I mean, I think we should. I think we should round up the guy that invented the widget and have him shot because, you know, what happened was, is that the web page started to be come a much more malleable experience.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Right. So, are we going to roll that back?

Mr. SCOBLE: No.

Mr. GILLMOR: You know, the Republican Health Care Reform which is – don’t get sick and if you do get sick then die quickly. So, are we going to apply that to the widget crisis? Let’s you know, don’t use them and if you do then…

Mr. SCOBLE: I’m actually not that upset about this because what you guys will find…

Mr. MARKS: Skype has its desk panels or widgets.

Mr. SCOBLE: If this site (unintelligible) actually gets pretty popular and I don’t think it will because it only works on Firefox right now and personally all my web surfing is…

Mr. MARKS: (Unintelligible)

Mr. GILLMOR: And like Gmail that didn’t get popular. It only worked on a thousand machines to begin with.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, exactly. But let’s say it does get popular. People will use it to try to get distribution for their ideas and IE it will get spammed to death really quickly.

Mr. GILLMOR: I –

Mr. WINDLEY: That’s the business model issue.

Mr. SCOBLE: No, it’s – not…

Mr. GILLMOR: But I think that’s exactly right.

Mr. SCOBLE: (Unintelligible). You’ll come over to TechCrunch and all you’ll see is damn spam ads and people.

Mr. MARKS: The best interest you need for me is – is – it moves to the (unintelligible) question, on which comments do you see, which is the interesting problem, and that’s where they could learn something. So, what they’ve done so far is that they’ve done a – with Google, we know how to – how to write (unintelligible)

Mr. SCOBLE: Twitter, man where we can see just the people’s comments that we want to see.

Mr. MARKS: Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. So, if Sidewiki looked at my social graph and said OK, here’s the comments from the people you care about on that site, that would be useful. That would really be valuable.

Mr. SCOBLE: Although I really don’t want to see your comment on my porn sites.

Mr. MARKS: We’ll I don’t like visiting your porn sites, Robert. So, don’t worry about it. So, no commenting.

Mr. SCOBLE: This is where I get serious. There was a company. It’s in Boulder, Colorado. It’s now called One Right(ph) but there used to be a browser plug in that you could surf the web together with your friends. I tried it and it was just really weird. I don’t think normal people are going to use that. And they failed in the market.

Mr. MARKS: Charlene Lee(ph) was the only one at least a year ago that did this.

Mr. WINDLEY: So, let me – let me – part of the hypothetical (unintelligible) and hopes of making maybe – maybe making the conversation keep being argumentative. Robert said something about…

Mr. GILLMOR: We haven’t had a lot of trouble with keeping that documented…

Mr. WINDLEY: They were changing my clients(ph) and putting ads on my site then I’d really think that was evil. So, let me ask you a question. Here’s a hypothetical, supposed that I created an extension to a browser that when you went to Amazon, would show you whether or not the book you were looking at was available at your local library. In Texas, I need a library lookup bookmark with one step further. Is that evil? Is that evil?

Mr. SCOBLE: It’s useful. It’s useful and it’s -

Mr. WINDLEY: And it exists. Yeah.

Mr. SCOBLE: I’m sure if you were at Amazon it would be evil. You know, when I ran a retail store –

Mr. WINDLEY: I’m saying…

Mr. SCOBLE: We kept – We would take pictures of our prices to keep the competitors from matching them. Yeah, somebody would find that evil.

Mr. WINDLEY: If that’s useful and it’s serving the purpose and I’m installing it why does anybody have the right to say I can’t?

Mr. GILLMOR: You know coming from a Republican that’s a really interesting question.

Mr. BURTON: A Republican – don’t bring that up.

Mr. GILLMOR: The stereotype of a Republican is they would all get into your bedroom and this about getting into your digital bedroom basically. I mean what right is it of anybody to tell me how to use my computer. I mean, it’s just outrageous.

Mr. MARKS: We’ll I think that’s his point.

Mr. GILLMOR: I agree. I was amplifying it. It’s called a show.

Mr. MARKS: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: We’re putting on a show.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, it’s called entertainment.

Mr. BURTON: Really and I find it so curious that Robert Scoble is saying that being able to have a back channel on your blog is evil. You know, I don’t get it.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, let me ask a – a technical question since we have strayed into drama suddenly, you know, which require speed on doing anymore. Right, Robert?

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: It’s much more fun without drama. But still it’s a soporific as well. Phil and I think Craig you’re involved in Connect Stix as well.

Mr. WINDLEY: Kinetics.

Mr. GILLMOR: Kinetics. Could you guys explain what you’re doing there because I think it’s somewhat obvious that one of the reasons that you’ve jumped all over this is because it might have to do with your business model.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah, well in – in – yeah – in light of full disclosure, I’d have to say that one of the reasons that I was interested in this and was – and may have thought about it before now is that that’s exactly what kinetics allows people to do, is create browser extensions, the various ways of doing that but essentially create browser extensions that modify the user’s experience inside the browser. You know, I gave the example of library look up on Amazon and said it was hypothetical but actually it’s not hypothetical .I have a demo that does that right now. And so, that’s exactly what kinetics is doing, is allowing developers to create those kind of what we call purpose-centric experiences for users inside the browser.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK, this comes out of the, you know, the work that you’ve been doing and lot’s of other people have been doing around identity for quite some time, and just to know – by way of disclosure why don’t you describe the internet identity workshop and its relationship to this discussion.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah, so the internet identity workshop is a – a number nine right now. It will happen again in November from the third to the fifth and it’s been a really good collection of people getting together to talk about internet wide identity not – not enterprise kind of identity issues but things like open ID, card space, those sort of things, information cards are all – have all been part of the conversation and continue to be. The reason I think it’s connected to this or what connection to this is the idea that in order to create a cross side experience one that uses contents from multiple sites, you have to be able to have some kind of identity. You know, in the case of Sidewiki, Google is doing that trough the toolbar. The fact that you have a tool bar installed is essentially the identifier and then the second piece of identity that Sidewiki uses, as I mentioned earlier is the URL that identifies the content and matches it up. And some having internet-wide identity is critical to being able to create this cross-side experiences

Mr. GILLMOR: All right. So, Craig, what’s your – I know that you’re really the godfather of this whole thing. So, you want to explain why?

Mr. BURTON: Sure. I’ve been doing infrastructure since 1989. So, for 20 years I’ve been an advocate of freedom of choice infrastructure and, you know I built systems and help customers build systems that what people have freedom of choice of how they use that infrastructure. And I think that we’re moving to the next era where freedom of choice is going to go beyond the silos that someone like Robert – would like it and Robert Scoble would like to keep you in. He’s silos is broken. He can’t control you anymore. And the customer is going to have the freedom of choice of who they look at and how. And you know, it’s over for your Robert, you know. You’re no longer in control of that audience.

Mr. WINDLEY: You know, what’s interesting about was…

Mr. SCOBLE: I already do that that’s why I give up my blog this year pretty much.

Mr. BURTON: Well, you know, too bad – it’s too bad for the industry, I think because I think the blog is great.

Mr. GILLMOR: Robert is doing pretty well.

Mr. BURTON: And the fact that you’re scared because someone is going to put someone – other’s fortune because it’s – it would only enhance it.

Mr. GILLMOR: I know but you’re fighting in the last war now, Craig. We just won this war about 10 minutes ago and you’re going back to…

Mr. SCOBLE: You’re so 10 minutes ago, man.

Mr. GILLMOR: Exactly.

Mr. BURTON: I know if I just look at my Sidewiki I would have known.

Mr. WINDLEY: You know, the risk of going back to the war that’s already been won. You know what Craig just talked about with silos Doc is not here, unfortunate, it’d be…

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, Doc was trying to be here but he’s answering the call of a hungry client.

Mr. WINDLEY: Well, let’s hope he’s…

Mr. GILLMOR: Money comes first even for Doc’s service.

Mr. WINDLEY: (Unintelligible) relationship management program and what I’ve been trying to talk to Doc about is how much DRM relies on this ability for people to mash things up in their own browser, not change people’s content and redistribute, but just on their own browser take things from their various silos and put them together. That’s what DRM is all about. And without the right to do that, we’re all going to be at the essentially the behest of the vendor because they’ll claim the same thing Robert says. You don’t have any right to take…

Mr. SCOBLE: Hold on, you know companies can’t claim as strong a copyright as individual people can, right? You know…

Mr. WINDLEY: They are stronger.

Mr. BURTON: First of – but they do…

Mr. WINDLEY: People do…

Mr. SCOBLE: But you know, and also there’s a difference between you putting a browser plug-in on your site that does something – versus, you know, a company like Google doing it so…

Mr. MARKS: So Google can’t write about plug-in…

Mr. SCOBLE: There is gradation of evil there.

Mr. BURTON: You know that because Google is involvement is more evil than if someone else would have but…

Mr. SCOBLE: There are gradations of evil, I mean, you know…

Mr. MARKS: Robert, Robert if you – I want downstream control of my concept, though existed we wouldn’t have Google. Google works because its goes around that were pretending to be a browser and then making a database from it instead.

Mr. SCOBLE: Look at this way, Apple doesn’t let you come in to their store and setup a – you know, a little shop in their store. There are rules and laws in business and what you are allowed to do in your place of business. And so, you’re going to have – it’ll be interesting to see where the fights come up between the…

Mr. BURTON: Once again, you’re metaphorically making us a location and this is not a location conversation.

Mr. MARKS: Yeah, exactly.

Mr. GILLMOR: Can you expand on that Craig?

Mr. BURTON: Yeah. As Phil was saying before, this is about resources and control of virtual things, not a place. You’re not going to a place. It’s – It’s not a place for business.

Mr. SCOBLE: I think if you try to – our use that in front of a jury of 12 people, normal people, you would have a really tough time because they would look at this rule that over location…

Mr. GILLMOR: Normal people, in other words, nobody who’s other – on this who were listening to this show.

Mr. WINDLEY: Robert, that’s only…

Mr. BURTON: But they look at that one.

Mr. WINDLEY: But that’s only…

Mr. GILLMOR: You think that’s not going to happen so – so what?

Mr. SCOBLE: Well, the IRAA has successfully beaten up grandma’s who, you know, their kids were stealing music.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, how is that going for them, the IRAA, who pays their bills? The record company cartel which is in a debt spiral?

Mr. SCOBLE: I’m not saying its right. I’m just saying, you know, legally the law is written, you know, for yesterday’s technology.

Mr. GILLMOR: The law is written by lobbyists who are paid by the record company cartel to try and stave off the innovations that have been developed by among others Steve Jobs. So, you just site it.

Mr. SCOBLE: Absolutely.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK. So, the – Steve Jobs is part of – I mean, this all goes back to the web services thing. The first minute that Microsoft started to support services was the death now for the idea that there is such a thing as a page. Pages are an interactive bunch of bits which are through AJAX and through XML conduits can change parts of the page without changing, without a refresh of the whole page. That is the new architecture and this is what we are seeing in on top of it.

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah we’ve called this things websites and we’ve given them addresses and we talk about going to them but that doesn’t mean that that’s what they are. That’s just a metaphor we used to help people understand it. That metaphor is going to change.

Mr. BURTON: You know, the travel and location metaphor for the internet has got to shift – the one that thought I’ve been working on to think about this is one of purpose-based or, you know, instead of location-based where I’m going to go somewhere and do something, what I want to do is – how do we say it – Phil…

Mr. WINDLEY: You want to accomplish…

Mr. BURTON: Be in know as opposed to go and do, and when I’m in the process of being knowing, I don’t care about what location is being abused or not, because it isn’t a location.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right. So, I’d like to try and sort of get a little bit out ahead of this conversation. So I think we’ve explored the both sides. When we put up the interactive game, which will allow you to be able to vote for side Ron Hudson will says, this is about as useful as wave, and he has left the conversation. So, there will be three dens, you will be able to play along at home by voting for unlimited freedom, draconian lock-in on the part of visible brands. In other words, stow away.

Mr. SCOBLE: You can’t have my word press password.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK. I – but trust me. I got my own problems. And then the – so they’re base is going to be three different alternatives here. What’s going to shake out here over the next few months? I noticed on Doc Searl’s Post he’s at the raft of them. He and Cliff Gerrish and others have been sort of bouncing around some of these ideas in an increasingly interesting way, and he cited, and I’m not sure whether this was before or after the discussion about Sidewiki, Craig, he talked about your comments, your open letter to Steve Ballmer. Do you want to review what you said to Steve and what’s that about?

Mr. BURTON: Sure. We – the stuff that connects us doing is brilliant in a couple of ways. One is that it leverages some identity infrastructure, mostly the identity metasystem selector, which of course the first instance so that was card space and Windows. However, the current card space implementation doesn’t let you do contacts automation because it needs to mature a little bit. So, can Cameron invited us to go up and explore that a little bit, and in those meetings it came down to the fact that it would take maybe three or four hours of work for Microsoft to fix the problem and probably won’t be released for two years or better because of the way Microsoft releases infrastructure in the operating system release.

Mr. GILLMOR: And that that’s controlled ultimately according to whoever was talking about this by Steve. He is the guy that it has to go through in order to…

Mr. BURTON: Yeah. I don’t want to name any names but it’s – his initials are Conrad. Anyway, what can I say?

Mr. GILLMOR: Can Conrad – how does that got to do with the health care? I’m not sure I understand.

Mr. BURTON: Sorry. It’s like you’re not him, the project manager. But, you know, basically, what happens is that Steve won’t let in bound or – sorry, in band changes to the operating system go out on the Tuesday releases. They have to go in the operating system. So, if you make a new infrastructure change to Windows out of band, no one will download it, it never gets to anybody’s desktop. So the only way you can really get something on the desktop is if you’re in band and you get released with the O.S. or with the service pack.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK. So, do you think that this just to sidestep the, you know, the specific road block of Steve Ballmer, do you think that this is something that is not in Microsoft’s interest and that’s why it’s not going to happen?

Mr. BURTON: Oh, that Microsoft would love to resolve this because, you know, they need this kind of technology to do their next advertising metaphor to try and – if they could only catch up with Google and with bling, you know. They need us in a bad way and they can’t do it. They’re constantly…

Mr. GILLMOR: So, they are being held back by who?

Mr. BURTON: Steve Ballmer.

Mr. GILLMOR: But why is he – does he think that this is disruptive to some aspect of Microsoft’s…

Mr. BURTON: See, I don’t think he even knows that his policy – he doesn’t know that his policy is stopping this.

Mr. GILLMOR: I couldn’t hear what you said, Phil, could you say it again?

Mr. WINDLEY: I said it’s not that he is holding back this specific thing, there’s just a policy of how operating system style releases get done versus other releases and the policy is essentially what holds them back.

Mr. GILLMOR: OK. So that it’s Steve Sinofsky who is holding it up.

Mr. BURTON: Well, no. I mean, Ballmer gets to say what goes. It goes up beyond Steve Sinofsky, I mean.

Mr. GILLMOR: What I heard Phil Say is that it’s a process issue and Steven, he runs the trains. So, Steve Sinofsky runs the trains. So…

Mr. WINDLEY: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Steve Sinofsky runs the train.

Mr. BURTON: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah.

Mr. BURTON: Well…

Mr. GILLMOR: I mean I’m just trying to understand. I mean, a few years ago when Kim Cameron and I were talking about some of these issues, the guy that we felt at the time was going to be like Godzilla and Bambi, do you remember that movie?

Mr. BURTON: Oh, yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Was going to be Jim Olson. Now Jim Olson is not there anymore, so what I’m asking is whether or not there’s a new Jim Olson on the scene. Is there somebody who is the enforcer who comes in and says, no we’re not going to do that because it’s disruptive on some level to the Microsoft agenda. I think if Dave Winer is right, that Google’s the new Microsoft them Microsoft is the new Google, and they are the good guys here, and maybe this is a congenital problem not something that’s been acquired.

Mr. BURTON: Well, you know, I guess it really doesn’t matter the way Microsoft does this is relegated insignificance in this conversation anyway, and I don’t think they’re going to fix the problem in any way soon. So…

Mr. GILLMOR: So you think Google…

Mr. BURTON: It doesn’t what – it doesn’t matter what they do.

Mr. GILLMOR: So, Google is going to run with this?

Mr. BURTON: Oh, Google is – see, no, Google is completely off their radar. It’s the, you know, Sidewiki aside, they are not involve with it. There’s not an organization inside Google that I know of that even has it in the radar except the identity guys and they’re, you know, still worrying about single sign on. It’s – they are not catching up.

Mr. GILLMOR: Kevin?

Mr. MARKS: I think I’ve lost the thread there a little bit. So…

Mr. GILLMOR: We’re talking about is the…

Mr. BURTON: Contacts automation.

Mr. GILLMOR: Contacts automation, in other words the role of identity in managing the new infrastructure.

Mr. MARKS: Right. I think that’s kind of what I was saying about how Sidewiki can be better as well. I think identity alone single sign-on wasn’t that compelling. But when you combine that with he is who my friends are, here is my activities then it gets interesting. And that’s the pieces that we’ve been putting together at last PUIWs moving from just open ID to open ID plus (unintelligible) plus portable contacts, and now I think an activity is strains as well. So, that is bringing these contacts from across the web, bringing you a sense of friends to one place to another, bringing the flow of events across and feeding it back again. And that we’re halfway through that tipping. We’re at the point now where some sites do this. You know, FriendFeed does it par excellence obviously. Other sites are starting to do this and people are start interest, oh, you mean, I can sign in and not to type a whole bunch of crap? I can sign in and decide who know I am and who my friends are already and give me content that make sense to me? That’s nice. And that’s where a little way along that path, and we’re starting to standardize that stuff so you can do it in lots of places and I expect we hear a lot further along that part over the next year. So that’s my take on how the two tie together.

Mr. BURTON: Yeah. And the thing that you’re leaving out, I think, is the role of the selector in the whole identity conversation which Google seems to still be a little confused about. Because open ID in (unintelligible) just by itself aren’t going to cut it. You’ve got to have the selector on the operating system as the framework for the identity conversation to occur, without it the exposure is so huge. So, even with the selector we have problems but it’s a lot better than the other mechanism we have so far and, you know, I would love to see Google and what you’re working on get the understanding of the importance of the selector.

Mr. MARKS: So, what do you mean by the selector? I’ve not gotten the – you raise that idea to me again…

Mr. BURTON: I probably not – I probably don’t want to dive in the selector this is too much, but if you go over to the information curve foundation there is a white paper on the selector techno…

Mr. MARKS: Yeah. You mean the information card selector?

Mr. BURTON: Yeah, the information card selector.

Mr. MARKS: Oh, I see. OK.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right…

Mr. BURTON: Now Card Space was the original information card selector.

Mr. GILLMOR: Well, we’ll explore this in a future episode.

Mr. MARKS: So, I think – yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. Now, I remember the metaphor now. So, I see what you’re getting at with that. I think that they fact were doing that by choosing which ID to log in with. That’s the way we’re using selector at the moment. We’re saying OK, our log in to this site with my Facebook accounts. I log into this site with my Google account. I’ll log in to this site with my Google, I’ll log into site with my other account. That’s…

Mr. BURTON: You see, the selector is not involved with that.

Mr. MARKS: OK. I’m still missing because the role of the selector was the point of…

Mr. BURTON: The selector is a specific technology, I mean, it’s a…

Mr. WINDLEY: I think one key idea here, Kevin, about selector that Craig is making is the selector lives on a client, and fundamentally there’s a difference between (unintelligible) do everything on the server and doing things with the help of the client and, you know, like Steve said that’s probably a different discussion because it could go on for awhile I’ll bet. And there will be some good debates there I’m sure. But if that’s really the issue, is do you need help by clients in order of accomplishments.

Mr. MARKS: I mean, this is the thing we called the NASCAR problem in the open ID world which is there are too many buttons for me to log in I don’t know which one to use. So, you were saying that the value of putting in a client is that it can know which one you should use and pick that out for you.

Mr. BURTON: Well, you know the NASCAR problem is really a symptom of the problem of the identity components being in the relying party or on the server and not in the client. But, there are other big huge problems that you would get other symptoms of by not putting it in the client in the selector, bigger than NASCAR problem.

Mr. MARKS: Yeah. I mean, but what you lose if it’s in the client is you lose the ability to move from machine to machine, which is valuable.

Mr. BURTON: No. You don’t lose that.

Mr. MARKS: So, you know, if it has to be in the client.

Mr. GILLMOR: If that was true, if you lost it then what is Google using a profile for if it’s true that you lose it by moving from client to client? I mean, you got the profile, the collector of those types of preferences?

Mr. MARKS: Right, but that’s not mediated by the client. That’s mediated – that’s on a server somewhere with an ID that you log into.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. But if you establish a server somewhere as the repository for the preferences that you store on the client, when you log on with a client, you suck down that information and therefore you have no issue.

Mr. MARKS: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: O.K. So, that’s kind of the VRM strategy as far as I can understand it, which is you gain control through the use of your tools of what you want to express as your interest in gathering information from the network.

Mr. MARKS: Yeah. I think we sort of approach the same thing with different angles. I think to say that the selector has to be in the client, is basically asking for a lot of change. Whereas if we can do parts of it serve aside and then fit that together with stuff and the clients I think it proves the experience I think that’s where it fits together. So, I don’t think we’re disagreeing on ends we’re just disagreeing with on which order you do things in.

Mr. WINDLEY: I think you’re right, Kevin, because ultimately open ID is going to be most useful if there is something build into the browser or somewhere else that helps manage it.

Mr. MARKS: Right. Or, if it just managed it into invisibility, you know. If you’re using open ID to log in you don’t realize it because it just work, which is something we’re assigned to see now.

Mr. GILLMOR: I don’t know why you’re looking at me.

Mr. WINDLEY: It’s your show.

Mr. GILLMOR: I’m going to wind this down. Robert?

Mr. SCOBLE: Got nothing else.

Mr. GILLMOR: How is your page going?

Mr. SCOBLE: My page?

Mr. GILLMOR: Are you filling it up with a copyrighted material that nobody can span?

Mr. SCOBLE: Absolutely.

Mr. GILLMOR: Excellent. And you won’t be on FriendFeed anymore because they are co-conspirators in this, you know, spreading the information around – in Widget form.

Mr. BURTON: That’s right. If they can’t be in control I’m not going to blog anymore.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SCOBLE: Now I…

Mr. BURTON: They don’t let me control…

Mr. SCOBLE: You misunderstood me. I gave up and I went to FriendFeed and Twitter because I knew it was over.

Mr. GILLMOR: Oh, it’s capitulation.

Mr. SCOBLE: Capitulation, baby.

Mr. GILLMOR. Excellent.

Mr. SCOBLE: I also don’t have a page for your model to protect so there you go.

Mr. GILLMOR: I know. You’re sort of the poster boy for this new model.

Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.

Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. It’s like where’s Scoble today? I don’t know. He’s all around.

Mr. SCOBLE: By the way, my photos are in the public domain. Take them and steal them, mash them up, cut them up. Do whatever you want. Videos it doesn’t matter because they’re so big, you know, if you can download them and re-mash them you probably going to get a job somewhere anyways so…

Mr. GILLMOR: Go ahead.

Mr. MARKS: That’s for fixing that but I think (unintelligible) with a…

Mr. SCOBLE: Well, exactly. And if you want download videos you got to hose them somewhere so I got a small little company in San Antonio, Texas to help you with that.

Mr. GILLMOR: Oh, well. Speaking of which, as always I want to thank you Rackspace for their sponsorship and their support on the technical as well as the creative side. Rob Ligess(ph), in particular, has been a remarkable source of information and insight, and that’s two Republicans that I’m thanking today. I’d like to thank the other one, Phil Windley, for making the transition. We’re going to have to do another show. I mean, all of these shows are about the fact that RSS is dead so, you know, it’s really one thing…

Mr. WINDLEY: RSS is dead.

Mr. GILLMOR: Not your son. Your new son is not dead.

Mr. WINDLEY: Content is dead not RSS.

Mr. SCOBLE: Our content is just getting started.

Mr. GILLMOR: No, our content is just started.

Mr. SCOBLE: But, we’re taking your content, we’re going to mix it up.

Mr. BURTON: That’s right. That’s context.

Mr. GILLMOR: Knock yourself out. I want to thank Craig Burton for making an appearance and we’ll have to – I still don’t understand this selector stuff either, so we’ll have to have our remedial workshop in order to do that. When is the next IIW, by the way, Phil?

Mr. WINDLEY: Soon.

Mr. BURTON: November 3rd.

Mr. WINDLEY: November 3rd to the 5th at the Computer History Museum, and love to have everybody there.

Mr. GILLMOR: Right. And Kevin Marks, you’ll be there, of course.

Mr. MARKS: I’ll be there, yes. I’m going to try, see I haven’t(ph) bought a ticket yet but I will be there.

Mr. GILLMOR: All right, and I would like to thank Kim and his support and as always, this show is Tricast using the incredible New Tech Tricaster, and we want to thank them for their support and you will be hearing about some interesting things that are starting do up here coming from that company, perhaps some other companies that are going to be involved in lighting this kind of real time experience. We start to move out across the network where we stitch together multiple ideas and information on what appears to be a single page. This is Steve Gillmor and this has been the Gillmor Gang. Thanks to everybody who showed up and especially those who didn’t. There will be a next time. Bye-bye.

Mr. WINDLEY: Thanks, Steve.

Mr. BURTON: Thanks, Steve.

Mr. SCOBLE: Thanks, Steve. Bye.

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