This is a batsignal to all No Agenda producers who are skilled at open source development.

Our community has grown worldwide to such an extent that the tools I have been using to maintain the massive flow of information are in need of an upgrade.

The tools run on the Frontier platform, which has binaries available for Windows and Mac. In order to scale effectively to the next level of community growth and information flow, this platform must to be ported to linux.

It would enable us to open up the system I have carefully constructed, based on decades of Dave Winer's work, to hundreds of thousands of 'producers' who need accounts on the system and the capability to hook into a whole new architecture on the internet.

This is an open source project. The sources and documentation are already available.

Full Executive Producer credits will of course be given on the show and the system itself. But more importantly, you will be directly contributing to freeing up more of my time to watch CSPAN and assasinate the main stream media, as well as improving the quality and quantity of the information on the network and throughout the community.

Some examples of the output of the system to dat can be viewed at the No Agenda News Network, the Shownotes archives, the Podcast network that is streamed 24/7, and our domain forwarding initiative, which will take on an entirely new life if we succeed in the port to linux.

In the past few years I have seen many wonderful and productive open source projects blossom in the community. How many podcasts can claim to have a community that built an entire pbx system for the community? I only know of one.

I should also mention that another result of this project will be tools that will enable full on community programming of the No Agenda Stream in a decentralized fashion, that would make me feel comfortable enough to return to a mix of talk AND music.

My commitment to the project will be total immersion, and the return of The Daily Source Code podcast, where I will provide the user feedback loop, very similar to the early days of podcasting. In fact, podcasting was born on an earlier version of this very platform.

Just like that period in my life, Dave Winer and I have been working together again. This entire architecture is his brain child and I believe in some ways his life's work. I can't speak on his behalf, but am certain he and several other long time Frontier developers will be intimately involved if the No Agenda Developer Community hits this will full force.

Humbly, your Lone Wolf

AC

(ps) There are several developer mailing lists, I am a member of all of them.

(pps) This plea is bound to illicit a lot of comments about alternative platforms. Pease don't waste your time. I've been drinking the Frontier/OPML Kool-Aid for too long for this to affect me.

 10/29/2011; 1:43:35 PM.   .

I just finished reading my courtesy copy of the book "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution"

It legitimizes what I've always said about MTV: The coolest shit on MTV never aired.

At a little under 600 pages, this is a big book. It is equal parts chronology of MTV as it is of the music video as an art form and a business. The story is told by the 'cast of characters' themselves, with an introduction by authors Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum at the top of each chapter.

This sometimes makes for a somewhat tiring read, as even I had to reference the 'cast' list in the back of the book several times to remember the person a paragraph or quote was attributed to. This style also allows for a very credible version of history. Co-author Rob Tannenbaum visited my house last year in Los Angeles and recorded over 5 hours of conversation, followed by numerous emails. My quotes are precisely as I recall saying them, so I assume the same is true for all participants.

Anyone who watched MTV and music videos in the 80's and 90's will enjoy this book, as it details the evolution of a revolution from all the angles. It filled in a lot of gaps for me, in particular about the making of the videos themselves. Many stories I had heard or witnessed personally, but the majority I hadn't.

For me the book also filled in a number of gaps of how and why certain events took place during my 7 year tenure at the channel. I now know with certainty that Axl Rose and Doug Herzog were responsible for replacing me as the host of Headbangers Ball. For that I say, fuck you very much. That show was my passion.

There's a lot of laundty airing in the book, which makes it exciting and fun to plow through, but also recalls fond and sweet memories of a time when a generation was coming of age. I'm definitely missing a lot of stories, characters and angles, but their omission in no way detracts from the documentarian's mission.

Speaking for myself, but I'm sure others will agree, as MTV slowly dissolved into the all-snookie-no-music-channel, it brings closure to the era and the people that lived it.

Music Television is over. Stick a fork in it, its done and it ain't coming back.

I'm grateful to the creators of this book for documenting an important time in my life, and for making me the coolest Dad every to my 21 year old daughter and her friends.

 10/29/2011; 8:15:58 AM.   .