Follow Me Follow (We Are The Hollow Men)

BBC

The BBC is using Twitter to provide alternative links to its content. For example

• Ouch (a disability magazine), The Magazine (a general magazine)
• Test Match Special (a sports unit)

See also

• Flickr and Twitter on BBC Sport

But there are also some twitter feeds that appear to be simple replicas of the BBC's existing RSS feeds, apparently all set up by a developer called Mario Menti.

• BBC, BBC News
• Mario Menti's blog
  

For my part, I don't quite see why would anyone want to follow these via Twitter, when surely any Twittish gadget can follow the RSS feed directly?

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The Magazine on Twitter

A link on the BBC website invites us to "Follow the Magazine in 140 characters or less via Twitter." As some readers have pointed out, the word "less" cannot refer to the 140 characters, because the correct word there would have been "fewer". [See BBC World Service: Learning English.] So it must either refer to the word "follow" or the word "magazine". In other words, following the magazine properly, or (via Twitter) less-than-following something less. So this must have been intended by the sub-editor as a sly dig at Twitter and the Twitterati.

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Follow, Follow, Follow

HOST: Follow me, lads of peace; follow, follow, follow.

SHALLOW: Trust me, a mad host. Follow, gentlemen, follow.

ROBIN: I had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man than follow him like a dwarf.

FALSTAFF: Follow your friend’s counsel.

PAGE: Follow him, gentlemen; see the issue of his search.

Shakespeare (Merry Wives of Windsor). See also Edward Vielmetti (Vacuum).

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Mix06 Keynote

A fascinating keynote speech by Bill Gates at Mix06, without any slides. (He's obviously been reading the blogs about his use of PowerPoint). Some great presentations by mySpace and the BBC, followed by a conversation with Tim O'Reilly.

Tim tried to push Bill into supporting Web 2.0. Can we find some examples of collaborative, bottom-up emergence in the Microsoft/Windows experience? Bill's answers all seemed to be about Microsoft controlling things better, putting in better security features and so on, based on install volume (what economists call "learning by doing") and user feedback. I don't think this was really what Tim was pushing for.

Tim also asked about competition from companies with different business models - Google, Apple - and Microsoft competing with telcos. Bill evaded these questions, and talked instead about Microsoft moving away from a device-centric model of computing towards a user-centric model of software. Your user preferences are available (though services) to any device you happen to pick up - including (if you are authenticated to use it) your friend's phone. This looks like a very important development, which is related to the context-based services I've been talking about on my SOAPbox blog.

This is relevant to the competition with Apple, because the Apple solution remains proprietary and tightly controlled - especially in terms of DRM - and this gives some credibility to Microsoft's attempt to position itself as more open and interoperable. As a representative of a major content provider, the BBC speaker was positive about Microsoft's DRM position.

The keynote lasted longer than I had expected, so I had to leave before the end. I'll try to catch the rest on the Internet later.