August 2004 Archives

Topix.net comments on how general search engines still don't do a good job of keeping up to date with incremental changes (most likely by scanning webfeeds) in The Daily Internet:

The kind of searches I regularly do on Feedster and Technorati just aren't available on Google. No amount of fiddling with the advanced search options, rooting around on their labs site, or searching for obscure options will scan incremental new material from half an hour ago. Yahoo search seems to have surpassed Google with some advanced features, but they don't have an effective reverse chronological "sort by date" either.

I was IMing with Dave Sifry last night (we're both in New York for the RNC - he's credentialed with CNN and I'm going commando). He showed me the new Election Watch 2004 page at Technorati.

It tracks rising and falling mentions of sites, offers blogger commentary of various ilks side by side, and now includes some interesting charts that graph comparisons of site mentions (georgewbush.com vs. johnkerry.com, etc.).

Dave has the rundown on his personal blog:

Life's been a little crazy for personal journaling lately, but the pent-up urge to blog is reasserting itself. I flew into JFK on the jetblue redeye last night and have been holed up in the family compound in Manhattan today drinking liquids and recovering.

Tomorrow I'll check out the Tank and the other liberal bloggers covering the convention. I wasn't tempted to venture out into the protests today. It was too hot and I was too headachey and sleepy.

Haven't eaten all day but not sure I actually need to. A little coffee helped the headache. Time for another glass of water.

According to AP via CNN, Olympians are prohibited from publishing their own stories and pictures. In fact, CNN's headline said "largely barred from blogging", but that implies that preventive measures are being taken; in fact, the IOC says that it hasn't done anything to enforce the ban.

Athletes may be the center of attention at the Olympic Games, but don't expect to hear directly from them online -- or see snapshots or video they've taken. The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other Web sites. An exception is if an athlete has a personal Web site that they did not set up specifically for the Games.

The IOC's rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists -- and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first. ...

The Olympic guidelines threaten to yank credentials from athletes who are in violation as well as to impose other sanctions or take legal action for any monetary damages. But [an IOC] official said the IOC has yet to take any action against an athlete. The IOC distributed the policies to each country's Olympic committee in February.

The story provides only one example of athletes writing firsthand accounts of their time in Athens. Many sportswriters, some spectators, and even a radio announcer, are blogging the games; are athletes writing or photoblogging?

Here are the main heads from Stuart Henshall's Manifesto for Social Networking Required at his Unbound Spiral blog:

• It's my Network
  • I own it.
  • Social networks should empower people.
  • I am my own hub.
  • Ease data exchange
• My Blog is Better at Networking
• Create Markets for Connectivity
• Adopt user centric models Encourage Face to Face
• Integrate with IM / VoIP
• No to Accelerated Spam

Recommended.

[...] Man may not be a political animal, but he is certainly a social animal. Voters do respond to the cues of commentators and campaigners, but only when they can match those cues up with the buzz of their own social group. Individual voters are not rational calculators of self-interest (nobody truly is), and may not be very consistent users of heuristic shortcuts, either. But they are not just random particles bouncing off the walls of the voting booth. Voters go into the booth carrying the imprint of the hopes and fears, the prejudices and assumptions of their family, their friends, and their neighbors. For most people, voting may be more meaningful and more understandable as a social act than as a political act.

That it is hard to persuade some people with ideological arguments does not mean that those people cannot be persuaded, but the things that help to convince them are likely to make ideologues sick - things like which candidate is more optimistic. For many liberals, it may have been dismaying to listen to John Kerry and John Edwards, in their speeches at the Democratic National Convention, utter impassioned bromides about how "the sun is rising" and "our best days are still to come." But that is what a very large number of voters want to hear. If they believe it, then Kerry and Edwards will get their votes. The ideas won't matter, and neither will the color of the buttons.

I'm pretty stuck on Louis Menand's "The Unpolitical Animal" in this week's New Yorker

In the about page at haughey.com, Matt Haughey explains how he wrangled phpwiki into shape to present an elegant, functional, standard-compliant site.

I have even lower standards.

I just want to get the wiki pages currently at x.erio.us to look like the rest of the site, and the templates that create phpwiki pages appear to be distributed among a thousand php files as far as I can tell.

Matt, any suggestions about how to build pages that are mostly plain HTML but summon the necessary php up in the proper newshole for the wiki features?

(Social network note: Matt and I have never met, though I have been a fan of his for quite some time, and I believe I passed him waiting in a drinks line at the first evening of the BlogOn event and we now have a mutual friend in Jessamyn.)

I'm heading to New York this Saturday night so I can cover the Republican National Convention for this (and a few other) weblogs and then, after the Labor Day weekend, help support the official publication launch of the book.

The book will be available in stores starting September 1, but we are timing the publicity release for just after the Labor Day weekend. I'll be in New York at least all of that week, available to do media interviews, signings, balloon animals, and scary-clown photography

Om Malik reports that Technorati has taken a(nother?) round of VC funding: Om Malik on Broadband: Technorati gets fed VC dollars

Over on the wiki tip, Ross Mayfield's been blogging about SocialText's successfully completed round of funding as well.

Remember, as soon as everyone catches on to blogs, you can hit them with "do you have a wiki yet?"

Tantek emailed me to point me to some responses to Clay Shirky's mockery of XFN. I've been meaning to post a follow-up, since my headline was so snarky, and I've been busy working on this website and preparing for my trip to New York for the RNC and it's been getting away from me, but I promise to right the record soon.

In Weblogsky: Divide and Subtract, jonl, who sent me my first invitation into Multiply, contemplates leaving it entirely:

Finally, today, I decided that Multiply really does suck, so I killed some of my data there and tried to find a way out. Finding none, I posted this image as my headshot (and you're welcome to do the same):

In Many-to-Many: XFN Relationships Clay Shirky convinces me that XFN is wack. But can we just pick a model and let people experiment with it? I don't care if it's FOAF or XFN or PeopleAggritude or whatever.

What's the best way to build out and model the part of my network I want to be partly exposed online?

Extra credit question: What was it that was originally proposed as the "simplest database that could possibly work"?

Uh, I should have noted before today that I am speaking at N-TEN : 2004 San Francisco Regional Conference tomorrow (Friday, August 20), on the topic "What is Blogging and Why Should I Care?" or something to that effect.

I;ve got to do a better job of alerting the public about my upcoming speaking events, especially if I can get copies of the book there in advance of the September 1 publication date.

I am adding the event to my upcoming.org feed, but I need to move that upcoming events from the blog page to the calendar page.

Also, need to fix the broken graphics and the unclosed HTML tabs and ask Dierdre to design some more subelements, like quotes within quotes, bolder heads, major side links, etc.

Don't think I want to keep using the Multiply calendar, so I've got to add the RNC to Upcoming too.

While discussing Multiply on the Well, I was prompted to spew out my current thinking on digital identity and portable networks and what I wrote earned a "Nice rant, dude" from bumbaugh so I've included it here for the archives:

Now that review copies have been sent out to the first wave of media we are starting to get calls for in-studio appearances in New York around the time of the book's launch (September 1).

So the book tour is going to start there in New York in the end of August. I'll stay in the city through the Republican National Convention and then probably return home for a San Francisco book party and some down time at home before heading off to Austin in October and D.C. later that month, right before the election.

I've found in the past that planning my travel publicly works well. People who can see that they'll be in New York in early September can let me know in advance and we can try to hook up for socializing or for work, as the case may be.

And to file under Eating our own dogfood, I've posted the transcript from a chat with two guys from EFF-Austin who've offered to help me plan a book release party in Texas (davesnunez and jonl) on the book's wiki.

Apparently there's yet another social network manager now. I received an invitation to join it from 3 people so far. Two of them are male, one isn't and has never evidenced an inclination to be identified as such that I'm aware. The invitation read:

Molly has added you as his contact on Multiply so he can better stay in touch with you, and he told us that he is your Online Buddy. To see Molly's Multiply home page, or start your own, please go to the following address to confirm that he is your Online Buddy

My reaction was basically the same as Biz Stone's: "Hellooo Computer"

(More at MetaGrrrl: Is Multiply simplifying the world? Maybe in one sense...)

(via let's test the robustness of this system, shall we?, a Multiply post by Rebecca Blood)

By Jove, I do believe I'm getting a real feel for this song, Effervescing Elephant, by Syd Barret, played and sung by me, xian. Needs keybs... Cecil? Help me dethickenize the mix!

(Update: Compare with the much more straight-ahead if rushed and frightened sounding take six of this same tune. Need general category.)

Keith Hampton has announced the launch of i-neighbors, a set of free web services for neighborhoods in Canada and the US inspired by the research into the connection between virtual and f2f communities done by himself and Barry Wellman.

With their software you can

• Meet and communicate with your neighbors.
• Find neighbors with similar interests.
• Share information on local companies and services.
• Organize and advertise local events.
• Vocalize local concerns and ideas.

More at Blog.org: Virtual Communities Archives: Neighborhood virtual community software launches...

Cliff Figallo, whom I've met via the Well and our blog conference there (likely to "graduate" from being an independent conference to a featured conference, next month, if current trends hold) is blogging his experience trying to use LinkedIn for business networking, in a Blogger-driven site called Working Linkedin.

The development of social networks on the Web touches countless aspects of our everyday lives. With instant access to people of similar mindsets, near or far, we can readily form partnerships with more people and in more ways than ever before. It's now possible to use Internet tools to organize a rally, energize a political campaign, arrange a date, join a support group, or sell a product, as naturally as we use a phone.

eBay Acquires Minority Interest in craigslist

Craig's take on it seems to be that it's pretty benign.

I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. This sounds big. Let's keep an eye on this.

Update: Commenters on Craig's blog seem to be wavering between hopeful worry and cries of "sell out." My sense is that Craig's idea of checking his own power is deeply correct, but that perhaps the consequences of trusting the individual involved (who sold his "equity stake" to eBay) weren't fully foreseen when the original plan was executed. Again, I'd say this bears watching.

Disclosure: Craig Newmark wrote the foreword for this book and I interviewed him a number of times while writing my analysis of the living web.

Brian Dear wonders who is behind Multiply (brianstorms weblog: Multiply? Subtract 1.):

You know what? A customer should not have to search high and low to find out simple things like this. Of all the kinds of web businesses, SOCIAL NETWORK businesses really owe it to their customers to share some of their information about themselves. I mean, be real - how is a company going to start being trusted by customers without their knowing a thing about who's behind it?

I joined the network myself as it's kind of my job right now to stay on top of these things, but I haven't invited nybody in for exactly the reasons Brian mentions. Why is it so hard to find out who is behind the business? Why not more transparency?

Online Communities in Business: Past Progress, Future Directions is "a survey report focusing on how companies and other large organizations are using community and collaborative technologies."

(via Nancy White)

Routledge has published an academic tome called Democracy Online: The Prospects for Political Renewal Through the Internet:

Taking a multidisciplinary approach that they identify as a "cyber-realist research agenda," the contributors examine the prospects for electronic democracy in terms of its form and practice - while avoiding the pitfall of treating the benefits of electronic democracy as being self-evident. The debates question what electronic democracy needs to accomplish in order to revitalize democracy, and what the current state of electronic democracy can teach us about the challenges and opportunities for implementing democratic technology initiatives.

Wow, $85. Looks like it's targeted at the university market.

Idea for new category: library.

JonL just invited me to join Multiply, which seems to involve social networking, photo sharing, blogging (journaling), a calendar, a place for reviews and recipes,a nd something called Market (I've only started poking around).

Here's my barebones page there: telegraph.multiply.com (xian was taken!).

Looks like an ambitious play, leapfrogging Flickr (although I have no idea how good the photo sharing is and I gather there isn't chatting, so scratch that) and combining a number of other social-network tools of the moment.

On the other hand, YASNS-fatigue has set in for me, and I can hardly be bothered to fill out the extensive multitabbed profile forms. If it could import output from elsewhere, even open source feeds such as a FOAF document or an XFN file, that would be great.

I'll have to poke around to see if they're reinventing the wheel on calendaring, reviews, and recipes, as well. Must... do... some... reporting (starting by asking JonL what he knows about this site).

Multiply's a pretty good name. I'll give them that. And any site that gives you a vanity subdomain has at least one clue.

Uncredentialed bloggers at the RNC now have a headquarters to work from (MyDD :: NYC GOP street bloggers):

the venue is called the tank, and it's located at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater, about a 15-minute walk NW of Madison Square Garden.

the proprietors of the tank have generously offered to open their internet connection and allow bloggers to use the tank as an ad-hoc headquarters.

they will have both wireless and ethernet connections available. i don't know if they will be requesting donations for use of their bandwidth, but i'd certainly recommend that you earmark a few bucks for their tip jar.

...

i will be using the tank as my hub during the convention. i've been recruited to do some street blogging for the majority report during the convention. i know that a lot of you will be going, and i'm hoping that someone reading this entry knows how to set up an aggregator for the nyc street bloggers (kinda like dave did with the dnc convention bloggers). i will be happy to provide the web space if someone with the know-how will volunteer to set it up. also, if you plan on blogging the convention, leave a link to your site so i can start compiling a list for the aggregator.

Zogby Sound Bites! reprints a commentary by alan Bisbort of The Valley Advocate noting that al Jazeera and the bloggers did a better job of covering the convention than the major networks did.

An excerpt:

Before examining this any further, let's take time out for a word from our sponsors: the Bloggers of America, the only news media many of us trust anymore, the only one demonstrably interested in the continued existence of our democracy. Without people like Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and Bill Scher at Liberal Oasis, we'd be sunk. Their fair and balanced coverage of the convention, and pretty much all other political events of the past three years, has trumped the combined efforts of the "professionals" in the Fourth Estate, who sit around pondering comfort levels.

I've curtailed reading American newspapers, stopped watching American news programs. All I need to know about the priorities of the nation's news networks is this: During the Democratic convention last week, Al Jazeera, the Arab world's leading news network, offered five times more live coverage than either ABC, CBS or NBC, and twice the live coverage of all three networks combined. Think about the disgrace in that fact. Arabs are more informed about American democracy than American voters.

Party for America isn't the only organization out there trying to use social bonding as a building block for political engagement and activism.

There's also Drinking Liberally, which is geared towards younger adults. Their slogan is "I only drink with liberals."

Maybe someone needs to start an analogous 12-step program?

Erin Aubry Kaplan takes a look at the DNC and notices the prominent role played by African-Americans there as well as the reluctance to address some long-simmering issues with the party in that community (in LA Weekly: News: Bringin' Da Funk):

The biggest elephant under the Boston big top, almost bigger than the economy and Iraq, was Florida. The Florida vote theft that turned into the national-election theft in 2000 was the first great crime of the century. But the Democrats dared not pursue the crime or the criminals, because it overwhelmingly involved black voters and was therefore too racial for comfort or political expediency. Yet Florida cost the Democrats everything - the presidency, for starters - and Florida is precisely why Bush is in office now and screwing things up all over the world at an astonishing rate, and why everybody’s blood was boiling last week. But it was boiling only in hindsight, which meant Democrats could not talk about Florida without talking about their complicity in the crime by keeping silent. Only in the midst of iterating anti-Republican peeves did convention talking heads raise the Florida issue, and then somewhat gingerly; besides being generally avoided as a black thing, it was surely too "negative" and potentially divisive to pass muster with DNC officials and scriptwriters, who were determined to stay on that message about a united front.

(via the Media conf on the Well)

Somewhat related: I seem to recall a lot of African-Americans - on the stage at least - at the last RNC. Will we be seeing that again? (I'm heading to New York in September to cover the RNC, although I haven't, thus far, been credentialed to cover it as a blogger. Perhaps some news organization would like to credential me?)

Dave Johnson from Seeing the Forest has posted a two-part convention retrospective and promises "more to come."

I've been remiss myself, but I plead visiting family. It's just hard to write long entries about politics and activism when you've got two incredibly darling two-year-olds asking you to draw pictures for them.

I do have a backlog of posts to make, though, and should get through them in the coming week.

Most of this chronology is recounted in Chapter 2 of the book (after all, I interviewed Kos and Jerome Armstrong gave me some crucial last-minute insights and corrections* when the chapter was in galleys), but Kos's brief history of his site is well worth reading to get the story from the horse's mouth.

A few choice excerpts:

There was once a group of political afficionados who hung out at various political forums -- starting with Delphi Forums, then moving on to ones run by a guy named Orvetti. When Orvetti closed shop, they all moved over en masse to Political Wire, which at the time had comments. But in the runup to the 2002 mid-terms, Taegan got sick of the constant flame wars in his comment threads and he shut them down

So everyone headed on over to Jerome Armstrong's MyDD, which is where I entered the picture. Digging the site (which I had found via Buzzflash), I decided to start up my own election-themed site, Daily Kos.....

I had learned my lessons from Political Wire and MyDD's community failures, and immediately shut the door on the Republican commentors who had destroyed the previous sites' communities. I zealously worked to create a "safe zone" for liberal political junkies, despite howls of "censorship" from both liberals and conservatives, and the community grew....

But even back then, the site was no longer about me, it was about the community, discussion, and debate....

OK, this post should bring up the new design (although a few of the links are still not active yet).

We've had stealth mode for this site, then the soft decloak, then the informal prelaunch, and now we're just about ready to launch the site. Review copies are going out this week so it's time to spruce up the site with a design that reflects the book cover. (There will be one more big milestone in September when the book is published and we launch the publicity effort.)

I still have some unposted material from the DNC, including a phone interview I did with a "sex worker" who wasn't able to get anywhere near the convention because of the security cordon. After the four days of nonstop work, sweat, and drinking, though, I had to sleep a lot and take a little time off. This week I'll finish up with my retrospective convention blogging and post an essay on what I think the convention was "for" over at Greater Democracy, where Aldon Hynes did a great job of chronicling the onsite blogging experience last week.