If you've listened to my podcasts, dating back to late 2007, you know that I'm a true believer in gold. Physical gold that is, not the digital equivalent that is traded through Wall street exchanges.

I purchased multiple ounces back then at about $850 an ounce and have kept it in my posession ever since.

Genrally speaking, throughout hundreds of years, this metal has kept it's value and in fact has increased in value against so called 'fiat currencies' like the dollar.

Any currency that has a central bank is by almost definition prone to inflation by those who control the central banking authorities and can 'print' money, by creating debt or by other means.

I don't intend to have a philisophical conversation about these currencies versus gold metal, but I have become quite interested in BitCoin, as it releates to the aforementioned.

BitCoin is being heralded by some very smart people as a true virtual currency, that has safeguards against all the pitfalls of money.

I've listened to the experts, done my research and it appears to be very real.

Pretty crazy for a gold nut like myself to be saying this, but I'm open to giving it a try.

So I've set up my machines in the hopes they will create some coin for me, and hereby solicit my readers to 'send me some BTC's' so I can try it out.

You see, the downside to this new 'money' is that I can't acquire any with my dollars at the moment, at least not easily, like by initiating a paypal transaction.

I hope to eventually acquire enough of it so that I can disprove my doubts and buy some food or pay my rent with BitCoins. Granted I can't walk into a store and slap down an ounce of gold either, but at least there is an active market that I can access to exchange it for paper. The idea of having something I can soend digitally in it's original form is interesting and in many ways appealing.

Holding onto my gold in the meantime, just in case :-)

My BitCoin address is :1K9zgjrjWq17LD7uSMvziTjtnHQ6Un69av

I must add here that analogous to the early gold prospectors, BitCoins can be 'created' or 'mined'. Long story, but the bottom line is that I know a lot of my readers and listeners have access to extremely big iron processing and probably can do a better job at creating BTC's than my MacBook :-) A great use of 'your' resources to support No Agenda!

Fuck you Ben Bernanke!

(postscript) I'll up the ante here. Upon a total receipt of 100 BTC's, I will do a new episode of the Daily Source Code podcast. Value for value!

5/10/11; 1:15:30 AM by AC

Update: I've received about 35 BTC so far, and to complete the loop I've placed a few orders for 'real world' products that will be delivered to my home. Bath soap and coffee. Payments worked as easily, if not easier than paypal or a credit card. Virtual goods and services is probably a better way to bootstrap this.

My podcast, The Daily Source Code is a 3 hour show. It's quite intense for me to produce it and takes real time and effort. Receiving BTC for this is ok with me, since there appear to be enough online services I can use BTC to pay for. ideally I'd like to use it to pay for a Windows 2003 Server instance and bandwidth. I use other vendors like push.io for my Big App Show pushes that would also be cool to use the BTC's for. I'd consider it a real confirmation of the system working if I could use the value I put into crerating my virtual product to pay for other virtual products I use. TIme will tell, but so far... promising!

5/10/11; 1:06:26 PM by AC

So far the experiment has stalled.

I *know* that there is an audience that will pay for me to produce a show. They have funded $500 for an episode previously through kickstarter.

Incoming BTCs has stalled out at 35 BTC, so only 33% (!) of the value needed to get my ass into the studio.

What's the problem? Assuming the audience does want me to produce a show I can only conclude that there aren't enough BTC's to go around. Not enough value in the chain. Yet.

5/10/11; 1:11:36 PM by AC

Update: As I posted this, another 10 BTC came in.

5/10/11; 1:33:34 PM by AC

Another possible roadblock: The first and only order I made with BTC's yesterday still shows as being 'processed'. If I can't buy real-world goods reliably, what value does BTC have for me?

5/11/11; 4:52:07 PM by AC

OK, time to circle back. As of today, I have received a total of 109.46 BTC in 'value for value' support for me to produce a new episode of the Daily Source Code Podcast. SO clearly there's enough BTC out among the audience to use this currency for a product they want, I in tunr got a confirmation that my coffe and bathsoap payment has been confirmed and products shipped. Conclusion: BitCoin works!

Now to figure out what I will spend my remaining 107 BTC's on :-)

Look for a FUBAR Friday podcast live on the No Agenda Stream

 5/9/2011; 6:43:09 PM.   .

Yesterday I realized that I've become a new category of internet user. A Blorker.

To understand what a Blorker is (and how to become one) you have to understand what Blork is;

"Blork" is Dave Winer's product that I've been helping build with a growing number of developers and users. He explains why it is called this here.

As I was pondering writing this piece, I looked at the name as an acronym, and was surprised how easy it was to reverse it into one:

Blog Linking Outlines Rss Karma

Blork is built around the notion that just about every information source on the internet has an rss feed (even twitter users), and that there is a plethora of applications and devices that understand how to read and display an rss feed.

Blork combines these two functions into one interface, allowing for a flow of feeds that I follow to be displayed, which I can RT, or add my own item. These items are typically a link to something I find interesting, along with a description of what the link is and often a short synopsis.

Sound familiar? It should, because what I just described is 'Twitter for News'. Only, as Dave explains, it doesn't have the company Twitter Inc. in the middle. This is all direct from the sources, and from me directly out to the people following my feed. This includes people who follow me on twitter. Blork has a feature that posts my feed items directly to my twitter account, so I don't lose my followers there, they still see what I'm blorking, they just risk twitter failwhales etc that could disrupt the flow to them.

My Blork experience brings me fresh news 24/7 on my terms. I have a mix of mainstream news feeds I'm following, alternative sources, tweets I care about, new CSPAN videos, Whitehouse press releases.. the list goes on and is obviously endless. (screen shot)

If I want to route a story out to my followers, I just click 'RT' next to an item and it prepares my writing area with the information pre-populated. (screen shot) The best part about this 'Twitter for News' is there's no 140 Character limit :-)

Now, here's the beauty part, besides any app or device that can follow my rss feed, Blork is designed to be a community server, I can create accounts with the click of a button. I have 80 other Blorkers on my server already. Since Blork also fully integrates OPML, I can follow feeds from an other Blork servers, and automatically get new feeds when they are created there. If there's something I'm not interested in I can unfollow of course.

Recently I did an experiment that resulted in the realization that 95% of the people I follow on twitter have no news value to me. I of course follow the relevant 5% in my Blork.

So there you have it. I'm a Blorker. What are you?

 5/9/2011; 11:18:26 AM.   .