Colin Charles Agenda

I started using OmniOutliner sometime since 2003. I upgraded to the Pro version in 2006. The software came bundled with a PowerBook I had (so thanks Apple!). This marks my tenth year with the software.

It is an indispensable part of my workflow. I use it daily. The total I’ve had to pay was for upgrades (some $24.95 and $30 – so still much less than the $69.99 fee). I can use it when I’m online or offline as it’s a desktop app! The one thing that always kept me coming back to OSX even when I used Linux daily was this integral piece of software – there were just no good opensource outliners.

I’ve always thought that the one thing I’d like to do in my spare time is write an outliner that lived in the browser. So I could use it on my laptop (online/offline), or on my tablets or my phones.

So it wouldn’t be hard to say that I’m excited by Little Outliner by Small Picture. This is Dave Winer writing an outliner for the web browser! 

However, lately, I’ve been thinking more about depending on tools that I have some control over. I’m getting back to my opensource roots even though I write this on a Mac. Big companies shut services down (look at google reader going away), and small companies have it a lot harder. 

I want to depend on Little Outliner. I would even pay for it. But I’m not sure I’d pay for it in such that I’d stop using OmniOutliner, as there’s a huge TCO gap (even $2/month makes you think desktop software is cheaper than the cloud). And without payment, I’m not sure this is a service that will be around in 2023 (i.e. ten years from today). And thats where I need things to be opensource. 

The New York Times paywall has become less porous. The idea of reading free content is going away and I think this is great for content producers.

I didn’t start paying for the New York Times till sometime last year, and I didn’t start paying for the Financial Times till sometime this year and the reason is simple: their paywalls were rather porous. 20 articles a month with free headlines, the ability to click from social media, etc. 

I love the two publications above and wanted to read it on the go. This is where the subscriptions started making more sense. Believe it or not, I like the physical paper better and do get it at most hotels that I stay at, but for those periods that I don’t, I crave for it. Hence the subscriptions to both.

Monthly/yearly payment options are being tried out by Andrew Sullivan. 

This Week in Startups has the concept of a producer to keep the show alive. This idea isn’t new though – it was probably conceived by Adam Curry on the No Agenda Show. 

Let’s not forget all sites that carry PayPal tip jar’s.

Why do I think its great for NYTimes/FT/etc. to start charging? Because its clear good quality content cannot be provided for and be created for free.

Once Netizens begin to start paying for content from these major players, it will help them understand that they have to pay for content for smaller/niche players. Call this conditioning. It can only mean that more people will enjoy paying for Byliner or Hacker Monthly or The Magazine.

Of course there’s no perfect login solution today. When I find a link from Twitter on my mobile that goes to Malaysiakini (which I also happily pay for), I see a paywall. I know I can head to The Malaysian Insider to find the same news without login details. I expect authentication technology will improve in the near future.

Overall, this is an exciting space to be in these days. Publishing is changing right in front of our eyes with a long-term view on being sustainable.

I was in the library getting my usual feed of newspapers & magazines when I spotted a book that I totally wanted to read – Julian Assange the Unathorised Autobiography. I kind of forgot why I didn’t buy it upon release (read Julian Assange’s statement which tells why this is really an unauthorised autobiography).

It was a wholly interesting read that I can highly recommend. Some points that I would like to take note of:

• Reminding me of 1984 by George Orwell: “he who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.”
• Theodore Roosevelt: “Behind the ostensible government sits an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.”
• “Authoritarian powers knows ow to strengthen itself through conspiracy.” – Julian Assange
• What were the unfakeable metrics in modern journalism? They were sales, hits, take-up and exclusivity. 
• I see that WikiLeaks published Michaela Wrong’s book about Kenya that was banned in the country as a PDF (It’s our turn to eat). Turns out that the author didn’t like this. This is something I myself have long thought about as the list of banned books in Malaysia is amazingly long.
• Its nice to see that he talks about the Malaysian Hack In The Box Conference (which he attended). It’s nice that he mentions he met Anwar Ibrahim too.
• Another George Orwell gem: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
• Disclosure is not merely an action; it is a way of life. To my mind it carries both sense and sensibility: you are what you know, and no state has the right to make you less than you are. Many modern states forget that they were founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, that knowledge is a guarantor of liberty, and that no state has the right to dispence justice as if it were merely a favour of power. Justice, in fact, rightly upheld, is a check on power, and we can only look after the people by making sure that politics never controls information absolutely.
• Information sets us free. And it does so by allowing us to question the actions of those who would sooner we had no means to question them, no right to reply.

“Those who study logic too long may lose sight of reason.” – Daniel Nichter (source)

I’ve always worked from home. I have no objection to an office, and in recent years even have an office, but I always believe in remote work from home/cafes/etc. I still check into an office from time-to-time, meet with my colleagues several times a year, and totally grok remote work.

This is how opensource has worked and flourished. The best minds can be anywhere. I’m playing around with a Hackpad, and wondering if people will contribute to it. Feel free to edit it.

I came home after a long day of activities to find myself locked out of my Google account. I was told that there was suspicious activity and it had decided to lock me out. 

The verification code to set everything going is via a text message to your phone. After that you enter a completely new password. 

Now comes the fun. You have to regenerate codes for all your 2-step authentication authenticated applications. This is a huge pain for me – iPhone, Galaxy S3, Nexus 7, BlackBerry, Mail, Adium, etc. The list is really long. 

Overall this seems counterintuitive. I checked my account history. I did get connected via one odd IP today, but beyond that, nothing. It was me, my mail client connected from that IP.

Saw a bounce. Seems that I forwarded a message from google groups, it got rejected, and automatically it triggered that I might be a spammer. Seems like a bug more than anything.

Overall, I spent about 45 minutes just sorting out this problem. There has got to be a better way considering how important the Google account is to us these days. I didn’t notice a phone number either so if I needed to call someone, I’d probably be quite out of luck.