Sunday, January 30, 2005

Henning: "Think twice about handing over your feed's URL to a service you don't have any control over." 

Ottawa Citizen: "Without visiting all 37 million sites coughed up by Internet search engines, it is safe to assume that most blogs are not worth the cyberspace they occupy. The bulk are boring or offensive self-indulgences produced by those with axes to grind, prejudice to spew, porn to peddle or without the ability to get past the gatekeepers at newspapers, magazines, book publishers and edited online publications." Brrr. 

Rogers Cadenhead adds podcast support to his pinger. 

Michael Gartenberg writes a very rewarding post, even if he doesn't have an award to confer. Thanks. I remember our meeting too, I love a respectful discussion between people who disagree. Michael and I have very different politics, so what, at a deeper level there's a common belief that an opinion, well-stated, has value of its own.  

One year ago, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, confessed that they had covered the Dean Scream wrongly. "We collected some other tapes from Dean's speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage. We also asked the reporters who were there to help us replicate what they experienced in the room." 

From their slide presentation: "He was shouting over the roaring crowd." 

Watching the "coverage" of the Iraqi election a doubt crept into my mind. I wonder if these elections are of any consequence to people in Iraq. The reporters are mostly reporting from windows. When the anchorperson in the US asks for the mood in the capital, how do they know? Then I imagine the tables turned, Iraqi television stars on balconies in Washington. What's the mood in New York, Boston, Miami, Little Rock -- in San Francisco? How do the Americans feel about going to the mosque and praying on this high holy day? We're expecting a large turnout, why are so few coming to give thanks to Allah? Why do they keep asking us to leave America? 

Reuters: "The US government, 40 states and territories, and outside groups from the National Football League to the Christian Coalition of America asked the Supreme Court on Monday to hold services like Grokster and Morpheus accountable for the millions of copyrighted files traded over their networks." 

As bad as the weather was my first week in Boston, it's been absolutely beautiful (so far, knock wood, praise Murphy) in the second. Bright and sunny, in the 30s, you can walk outside without a hat. Not all the sidewalks are clear yet, the snow is still mostly white. Pretty nice compared to the blizzard and the frigid sub-zero temps we were having.