Entering our third full day here at Lucille Packard Childrens' Hospital with our twins, I have to say I'm impressed with the easy access to high-speed wireless Web. For me, wireless high-speed access is a must, and I don't have much to complain about. Interestingly, the hospital's system, by default, has instituted filters, in theory to protect them legally, and maybe to conserve on bandwidth. This doesn't bother me too much, but as I surf, seemingly with one hand tied behind my back, I find that the sites they've opted to block, and those they've allowed to go through at times have me scratching my head.

I noticed I couldn't log into my Mac Mail via the desktop application right away, but Webmail was fine. I later noticed some sites were blocked when I tried to visit Athletics Nation and follow yesterday's A's game. Safari reported being unable to visit the site. I checked other Sports Blogs Nation sites. Those too, were all down.


A Sample of Approved Sites and Those Blocked

Then, after many on FriendFeed had demanded some early photos of Sarah and Matthew, I tried to take the pictures I had from the last two days and post them to Flickr, feeding the beast. But they were blocked. Then, I tried to log on to my FTP site and upload them to louisgray.com directly. No dice, again.


Sorry, can't upload via FTP!
Luckily, I did find a work-around. By sending the photos via the great Mail2FF program, as attachments, the photos themselves were saved on Amazon's Web Service and archived there. (It's the same way I "cheated" and got FriendFeed to host the graphics in this post for me)

After last night's post on my 10 beliefs in blogging and the Web, I saw someone had posted the story to Hacker News. But I couldn't see who, again, thanks to it being blocked.

IM Blocked: iChat and Google Talk don't get through.
The blocking seems well intended, but random. It makes sense that I shouldn't have access to Fleshbot or AdultFriendFinder (mind you, I just checked them to see if they were filtered), but it makes less sense to have sites like Sports Blogs Nation blocked, when ESPN.com is approved, or to have Hacker News blocked if Techmeme is given a pass.

I'm lucky that I usually don't encounter Web filters. I have free-flowing access at home and at work, and this weekend's experience has been outside the norm. If you are filtered, whether it be at work, at school, or at the library, what sites have you found blocked that you think are wrongly stopped? I'm curious to see if this setup is too aggressive, or in line with your own experience.

Sometimes, when I talk to people about why I blog, and what I set out to accomplish through covering what I do, and engaging where I do, I say that I am trying to help shape the Web, and blogging as a whole, to be what I want it to be - a better community with some strong standards for engagement, ownership, news gathering and innovation. Over time, as the number of posts here has racked up, you can see some of these core elements throughout the site. As an exercise, I thought I'd outline my beliefs, and I'm eager to hear your comments, whether these are shared or we disagree.

1. I Believe You Should Enjoy What You Do

Whether you are are the co-founder of a hot startup, an entry-level programmer at a technology monolith, a blogger, or simply a fan of social networking tools, you should be sure you're doing what you're doing because you enjoy it, and at its core, it brings you happiness. At times, I've seen people succumb to the stress of posting every day, of racing up or down the comparative measures out there, or slog day in and day out at companies because they're too unmotivated to seek an alternative. Even on those days when the work required seems overwhelming, it's worth stepping back and saying, "Are you having fun still?" As Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford University a few years ago, if the answer is no too many times in a row, it's time to think about doing something else.

When you're not having fun, it shows. Your work gets sloppier. Your posts get crankier. You start talking more about how much time it's taking, how much pressure you're feeling. And when that happens... take a deep breath, or take a break. Reevaluate why it is you're doing what you do.

2. I Believe In Supporting and Promoting Innovation

Without an entrepreneurial spirit, change in our technology landscape would be muted. Innovation can be sparked from a single idea, whether creating a new market, or simply improving a new one. When I see potential, I want to highlight it, and work as a partner with the team aiming to deliver a new experience, and fulfilling their dreams.

Often, a rush to call "foul" on a product, to give it a negative label, or call failure, is done more to grab attention than through benevolence. You're not doing the innovator a favor, or their potential users a favor, but seeing the glass half full.

3. I Believe In Trusting First, Looking for Holes Later

For the most part, people don't start businesses or create products with ill intent. New services crop up every day, and the overwhelming number are there to help you learn something new, find something more quickly, or reach peers in a new way. As it can be relatively inexpensive to launch new Web services, or to start blogs, there are, simply put, tons of them out there. Many do very similar things. But at their core, most are well-intended.

For every spammer or troll, content scraper or hacker, there are thousands of others working on the right side of the law. And sometimes, when it looks like a service might be on the border of what's "right" and what's "wrong", I tend to give the benefit of the doubt, so the entrepreneur can explain themselves. I also believe that every service out there, from those a day old, to the market monoliths of Google and Microsoft, has issues. It can be fun to focus on those issues, but unless they completely disrupt the user experience to the point the product is unusable, I feel the product owner is both aware of them, and is working behind the scenes to make the product more robust, faster, and more fully featured.

4. I Believe In Equal Access to Tools and Opportunity

I believe in the availability of free or inexpensive services that enable people to broadcast, share and collaborate. I believe that for-profit institutions should make efforts to spread the availability of the Internet, broadband and wireless access to bring this information spigot to people everywhere, regardless of their financial or geographical status.

5. I Believe In Portability Of Content and Clear Ownership

I believe that products should enable support for open standards, such that data can be simply exported and imported from one service to another. I believe that these open standards should be deployed such that content, be it blog posts, news, comments or other actionable items (be it up/down votes, likes, avatars, etc.) be easily transferred, while retaining clear ownership by the original individual performing the activity. This portability should be developed in such a way that the third-party service, the content creator, and the person reaction to said content, all have the option to approve or disapprove portability or modification.

In those cases where full portability is not yet available, I believe services have an obligation to state their intentions to move toward an API, an open standard, display best intentions, or publicly declare their position to keep data siloed, buyer beware.

6. I Believe In Giving Credit Where It Is Due

I believe in bloggers giving best effort to determining the original source of news, and providing linkage, especially when the alternative is to link internally. I believe in making it clear who the entrepreneurs are behind services, and displaying a human face to what could otherwise be a personless brand.

I believe in displaying clear attribution for the source of quotes, paraphrasing or other use of third-party content, even if it is from what's considered a competitor.

7. I Believe In Supporting The Little Guy, While Not Hating the Leader

I believe in giving a new service or a small company its unfair share of support and coverage, as they make a valid attempt to enter a market. I believe in helping the service clarify their message, their features and benefits to the point they achieve critical mass on par with other market leaders. I believe that this presumed bias can be shown without disparaging leading services, or holding ill will against those already having achieved success.

8. I Believe In Transparency and the Removal of Barriers

I believe that those services who make their intentions, their product plans, and their updates clear to users and partners will achieve a higher level of success and trust than those that do not. I believe that company representatives should be easily accessible through clear methods, and should give best efforts to rapidly respond to feature requests, downtime or other concerns.

I believe that activities or barriers which reduce transparency, reduce access to company representatives and create confusion will be extremely damaging, reducing trust and good will.

Similarly, bloggers should be extremely reachable and should display and pre-existing biases, monetary engagements or sponsorships, be there any.

9. I Believe In The Ability to Disagree Without Ill Will

I believe that it is absolutely possible for multiple people to look at the same data set or service and achieve completely-differing conclusions and perspectives, without meaning either person to be lacking in intellect or experience. In the event that disagreements do occur, I recommend open communication and statement of beliefs will be much more successful at proving a point than labels, one liners or personal attacks.

In parallel, services can expect that not every review will be one they want to print out and send home to mom. If the author's found to not have a conflict of interest, efforts should be made to expose that, but otherwise, it can be assumed there might be some valid points, even in the most vile of screeds.

10. I Believe In Finding New Ways To Find, Share, Manipulate Data

I believe that the creation of data and content is nearing commodity status. New blogs and services debut every minute and die almost as quickly. But each month brings new and exciting ways to manipulate, share or otherwise locate the best data, through the launch of new social networks, aggregators, search engines, or semantic tools. The services we all use today will almost with certainty be different than those we use next year at this time.

It is with these 10 tenets, and likely more, that I look to engage. Through my small voice here, I believe I have been lucky enough to play a role in discussing how blogs give attribution, how they prioritize external links vs. internal links, the growing issue of RSS repurposing and comment fragmentation. I've tried to support the little guys and highlight individuals doing innovation. I've made a small number of negative posts, in contrast to my more supportive posts, and avoided throwing the second stone at times when my views weren't universal. The Web, and our ability in the blogosphere to impact it and play a role, is ever changing and exciting to me.

I'll hope you can excuse my not posting anything here yesterday. You see, yesterday we were somewhat busy. Shortly after 9 p.m. yesterday night, my wife, Kristine, and I welcomed two new arrivals into our home - Matthew David Gray and Sarah Elizabeth Gray. After about 35 1/2 weeks of gestation, the pair emerged somewhat early, and definitely on the small side, but all signs point to them both being healthy and strong, even if we start slow.

In what I believe was a Web first, I tried to chronicle the proceedings, as best as I was able, using FriendFeed and Twitter in combination. Robert Scoble famously covered son Milan's arrival via Twitter and others have followed suit. But with FriendFeed offering me the best community and conversational platform, combined with great WiFi here at Lucille Packard Childrens' Hospital, I wanted to take advantage.

Thursday at 10:40 p.m.

Thursday night, the process kicked off when my wife's water broke. Having passed the 32 week mark earlier, when we knew it was "safe" to have our kids, we knew the time was imminent. We had hoped for a July 1 arrival, around 37 weeks, but we were as ready as possible, if any parents are ever ready.

Dog-sitting in Palo Alto, I had to turn around to Sunnyvale, finish packing her hospital bag, grab some things and turn back around. Somehow I did this without breaking any speed limits or running red lights.

Meanwhile, Kristine had started contractions, and was measuring around 10 minutes apart.

Friday at 12:30 a.m.

After coming back to Palo Alto, Kristine and I headed to Lucille Packard Children's Hospital and checked in. She was monitored, and contractions were definitely present. June 20th was going to be the day the twins were coming.

Friday at 12:53 a.m.

I wrote a quick note, using TwitAbit, to Twitter, saying, "For those who are curious... today is going to be the day. The "Schwag Magnet" twins are coming. Don't expect minute by minute updates."

The twins had often been referred to as "Schwag Magnets" by Cyndy of Profy and others, thanks to my call for them to wear Web-branded apparel at the end of March. There's even a FriendFeed room dedicated to "Schwag Magnets" and parents of all types.

My quick Tweet set FriendFeed abuzz, as you can see here. I tried to post updates every once in a while, saying contractions were 4-5 mintues apart, and that we would be there for a while.

Robert Scoble bet the twins would be "here by noon", and reminded us to "Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!"

I later checked in and said contractions were down to 2-3 minutes apart. But as time went forward, and there wasn't too much progression, FriendFeed got antsy, and of course, so did we.

Friday at 1:30 p.m.

After 12+ hours of early labor, things were not progressing as quickly as we had hoped. I updated people on Twitter again, only jokingly saying, "Twins still not here well after @scobleizer's 12 noon expected deadline. www.blamescoble.com"

Fellow FriendFeeders also noticed I'd managed to work in my usual Web activity between contractions.

While Kristine kept pushing, and contractions kept getting measured, the labor wasn't progressing all that much. Every few hours, the nurses and doctor would come in, only to find dilation was extremely slow. What was expected to go at a pace of 1 cm per hour was more like 1 cm per 3 hours, and eventually, no progression at all.

Friday at 3 p.m.

Superstitiously, I got out of my A's shirt, which I'd been wearing all day, and put on a Disqus T-shirt I got from Daniel Ha in our last visit. Given their success, I was hoping something would rub off. (Again, I updated Twitter.)

Friday at 7 p.m.

Kristine and I soon came to the same conclusion the doctors had - trying to continue with a vaginal delivery wasn't going to work. 20 hours after the water had broken, and 19 hours into the labor, we had stalled. The kids were in great shape, showing healthy heartbeats, but it was time to consider having a C-Section. It was something we wanted to avoid, but to avoid infection, and be sure to see our kids well, we agreed to move forward.

This time, I updated FriendFeed only, and not Twitter, saying only: "C-Section Imminent. Won't be Long Now. (Wish us Luck!)"

Friday at 9:01 p.m.

Matthew David Gray arrived, weighing in at 5 pounds even, measuring 47 centimeters.

Friday at 9:03 p.m.

Sarah Elizabeth Gray arrived, weighing in at 4 pounds, 3 ounces, measuring 47 centimeters.

Friday at 11:00 p.m.

After checking Sarah into the NICU, and Matthew into the nursery, I returned to find Kristine in recovery. Getting her approval, I updated Twitter and FriendFeed, saying: "Baby Grays are here! The boy clocked in at 9:01 at 5 pounds, and the girl weighed in at 4 pounds, 3 oz at 9:02. Both healthy.” (Note I was off on the second time by a minute)

After a long day of waiting, FriendFeed erupted with congratulations, and so did Twitter. See the Summize stream!

Now

It's amazing to imagine how much people care, given our interactions are often so virtual, but I have to impress upon you how appreciative we are.

The twins' small size was expected, but not to such a degree. In fact, our latest ultrasound, 10 days prior, had expected Matthew to already be 5 pounds, 1 ounce, and Sarah at 4 pounds, 8 ounces. But we were near the margin of error. While the kids had all their fingers and toes, and responded to stimulation, Sarah's tiny size has guaranteed her a stay in the NICU. Matthew is in the nursery, and spent the night with Kristine and me, as we alternated holding him and catching some sleep.

I promise we will deliver pictures soon. We have only a few already. The twins' arrival was very visible, and we hope to keep you updated, between feedings, diapers and everything else. It's not like we're the first parents ever to have kids, but it's the first time we've ever done it. I'm glad to have been able to share the experience with you. More very soon.

The foundation of RSS is in its syndication (the second 'S'). A feed, published from one location, can be read in a different location, whether it be a feed reader, a blog widget, a lifestreaming application or any number of aggregation services. The simplicity in sharing has also led some to worry about where their content goes when they hit "Publish", as, often, they lose control over where it can go.

Today, RSSmeme's Benjamin Golub, who has developed a tracker for the most popular shared items on Google Reader, saw one unhappy publisher threaten him with legal action after she had found her feed included in the service.

The RSSmeme service utilizes Google Reader's shared link blogs as its underlying database. Those items that receive the most shares from Google Reader rise to the top, and Benjamin, over the last few months, has updated the service to sort by categories, by languages, and highlight the most active users and tags. But one thing he doesn't do is hand-select the content displayed. That's done by the thousands and thousands of people using Google Reader every day, and sharing new items. So when he received a takedown request by e-mail, he was a little surprised.

Talking with him by phone this afternoon, he said the complainant's feed had only been shared two times, by a single sharer. But she had essentially penned an e-mail saying to "remove all content, or I will send a lawyer."

Not eager to have legal trouble, Benjamin removed the offending shares, and recommended to the publisher that her feeds be set to broadcast as partial feeds, not full feeds, assuming she was concerned her content was being stolen, or used in a commercial way. Benjamin told me that he anticipated such a threat might happen once he posted ads on the RSSmeme site, but said with rising Web hosting costs, monetizing in some way soon became necessity.

"When I started RSSmeme, it only cost $20 a month, and (due to site growth), it doesn't cost that much any more," he told me. Since launch, costs have more than tripled, and the Google-sourced ads are used to offset any out of pocket expenses.

While Benjamin considers his options, at the time, he has globally altered settings on RSSmeme to show only the excerpts of feeds, removing the ability to read an entire blog post on the site, the same approach taken by Shyftr back in April when similar complaints arose.

The issue of how RSS-enabled content is monetized, where comments lie, and who has full control over blog entries isn't going away any time soon. Even if Benjamin never hears back from the woman threatening to take him to court, it's definitely got him rattled, and once again is stirring up discussion, as you can see on FriendFeed.