Unicode support for Bubbler

We are in the final testing stages of rolling out proper Unicode support for Bubbler so you can post in whatever language you like (I think; we've tried some German and French but we're not too good at typing in Chinese or Turkish or Greek).



I have to say that Unicode support on Windows is quite bizarrely implemented, with #ifdef _UNICODE and having to distinguish between "wide" characters and regular ones and all sorts of things that shouldn't be necessary. The Mac is not that far ahead of Windows, or slightly behind Windows, in many areas, but Unicode and multi-language support is WAY ahead. It "just works".

Blogging for people who have nothing to say

This phrase was going to be our tagline at one point. It seems that a lot of people sort of want to start a blog, because they think they're missing out on something, but they just don't have anything to say! Or at least they think they don't, which amounts to the same thing.

We've been thinking about this because the line is blurring between blogging, which is more of a social phenomenon than a technical one, and personal web publishing which is basically what you have if you're using blog software but you're not really "blogging" as much as just putting stuff on a web page.

So if you're worried about being called a "blogger", just think of it as the easiest way in the world to put a photo, or a Word file, or anything else, up on a web site so people can come and get it.

Directions to your house.

A party invitation.

A file that is too big to email to somebody.

Your resume.


Give it a try. You don't actually have to have anything to say!

Our live demo at the DEMO conference

We demo'ed the first public beta of Bubbler today onstage at the DEMO conference, which gives you a 6-minute slot to show off new products.



We took live photos of the audience and presenters, captured some live audio on an iPod ("podcasting"), and entered live text, and brought up a full multi-media blog in 58 seconds.



We then stepped back, showed off the page a little, played the audio clip, brought up a photo, then turned on a bubble machine to pump bubbles into the room. Total elapsed time under 2 minutes. We were done.



We were awarded the coveted DEMOgod award tonight at the awards banquet, which was a really wonderful experience.



The page we put up during the 58 seconds is still there, untouched, at this url: http://bubbler.net/demo if you want to see it. Note the A-list bloggers in the audience (Robert Scoble, Buzz Bruggemann, Renee Blodgett). It was a great time.

Our live demo at the DEMO conference

We launched Bubbler yesterday at http://www.demo.com/demo2 in Arizona. I'm just now starting my new blog with our own software.

My new Bubbler blog

Check out my new Bubbler blog over on bubbler.net/glenn.

Bubbler!

We launched our new Bubbler technology and blog hosting service today. I'm at the DEMO conference in Scottsdale where we're doing the launch. It's a busy day!

Wild about Wikis

A while back I said to a Red Herring reporter that I thought that wikis were "a fad - nothing more, nothing less."

Tonight I met Ross Mayfield and he mentioned it, or perhaps called me on it.

Okay, so I was caught up in the rush of actually having a Red Herring reporter ask for my opinion so I was a bit brash. What Ross and Socialtext are up to is very compelling and cool and bringing into a corporate setting makes a lot of sense for collaboration.

What I meant by "a fad" was that it has a lot of buzz right now but really is an evolutionary step along a path toward something much bigger, which is a two-way web. Maybe I"ll coin that term: 2WW :) And what I meant by "nothing more, nothing less", is that the "nothing less" part is not to be overlooked: fads are powerful and shape our culture more than almost anything else. So it was, in a backhanded sort of way, a token of respect. I should be so lucky to be surfing the cresting wave of a bona-fide fad (I'm not coining that tongue-twisted phrase).

It's about time that the network topology of the web evolved to be more push-me-pull-you instead of "posting forms" as a way of pushing things upstream.

So anyway I publicly take back my criticism of wikis, and I appreciate the intelligent, diplomatic, thoughtful conversation I had with Ross Mayfield. Thanks, Ross.