It totally suits my current mental state. Want one? Get it from Cafepress.
HINT: Read the red letters first.
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links for 2008-11-21
November 21, 2008 – 8:00 am
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"Beginning in January 2009, Bulletin subscribers will receive the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine in its new digital format only. To save on the steeply rising costs of paper and postage, the Bulletin will no longer produce a print edition of its magazine.
"Through individual Bulletin accounts, subscribers will be able to book mark articles, set up news alerts, browse by subject and author, and more. Starting in 2009, subscribers will also have full, searchable access to the past 10 years of Bulletin articles and source documents."
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"Gays and lesbians — especially gay men — have practically perfected the art of the short-term romance. Even in longer-term relationships, we have a history of leaving them with grace and determination, rather than dragging out unhappy situations for years and years. Again, I think that's a good thing.
"Staying in a relationship is not anyone's duty. Saying so apparently invites pathologization. It hardly needs saying that holding this position is not a medical or psychological problem. It's simply an observation based on my belief that — in the absence of a compelling collective goal — people shouldn't make themselves unhappy if they can avoid it. I see a lot of people in sad, late-stage relationship disintegration, who think they're doing something noble by staying. It's not noble."
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Gmail just rolled out themes today. Here's their help page on that
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Social Semantic Web: Where Web 2.0 Meets Web 3.0, at Stanford in March, is part of this series. "Symposia will be limited to between forty and sixty participants. Each participant will be expected to attend a single symposium. Working notes or AAAI technical reports will be prepared and distributed to participants in each symposium. In addition to invited participants, a limited number of interested parties will be able to register in each symposium on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration information will be available in December.
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By Tim Berners-Lee, 2001. A bit old, but still a good and fairly non-geeky explanation of what kind of difference a semantic web can make.
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Semantic web conference I'd like to attend. March 23-25, 2009
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Upcoming conferences on the semantic web worldwide.
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"But the loss of professional news-gatherers, prompted by technological upheaval and a poor economy, painfully harms Michigan's welfare. The consequences are overlooked because newspapers are lousy at reporting on themselves.
"Consider: It isn't bloggers who put Detroit's mayor behind bars this year. Newspaper reporters did that.
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1. Make sure your tags are relevant to your content. Seems obvious but this takes some thought to get into the minds of users similar to keyword discovery.
2. The more tags the merrier. I see no penalty for using all your available tag space.
3. Spread your tags out among your clips. Adding more tags can help snag some tail.
4. Use adjectives. Remember lots of folks are browsing and they’ll use adjectives to find what they are in the mood to view.
5. Have some category descriptor tags. It’s important to remember YouTube’s default search settings are Videos, Relevance and All Categories.
6. Match your title and description with your most important tags. Basic SE
How to start a Twitter event hashtag
November 20, 2008 – 8:57 am
More and more people are covering live events via Twitter — and usually there are several Twitter users covering the same event. Hashtags are a handy tool for pulling together such disparate coverage.
A hashtag is just a short character string preceded by a hash sign (#). This effectively tags your tweets — allowing people to easily find and aggregate tweets related to the event being covered.
If you’re live-tweeting, you’ll want to know and use the event hashtag. Earlier I explained why it’s important to propose and promote an event hashtag well before the event starts. But where do event hashtags come from?…
Doyle Albee, maven of the miniskirt theory of writing, asked me:
“I’ve used hashtags a bunch, but never started one. If, by some chance, there are two events (or whatever) using the same hashtag, does everyone searching just see both until one changes, or is there some sort of registration or vetting process?”
Here’s my take on this…
links for 2008-11-20
November 20, 2008 – 8:00 am
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"Welcome to the Semantic Web Conference Corpus - a.k.a. the Semantic Web Dog Food Corpus! Here you can browse and search information on papers that were presented, people who attended, and other things that have to do with the main conferences and workshops in the area of Semantic Web research."
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"This morning I posted a few words to my Twitter account about PC Magazine’s decision to cease print publication…
[The environmentalist in me isn't sad to see stuff like this (PC Mag print edition dying)]
"My Twitter posts also get fed automatically to my Facebook account, where Tom Regan, a smart and talented journalist and media thinker I know, posted what I thought was a profound comment:
>“I have a feeling that with the (Christian Science) Monitor and now PC Mag going in the online direction, it’s just the start of a tsunami over the next two years. The current economic situation, more than any other factor, will accomplish what a decade worth of net evangelism has failed to do.”<
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"The Times apologizes for under-reporting the effects and dangers of media consolidation, perhaps due to our own efforts at media consolidation: The Times owns almost two dozen regional newspapers, a number of television and radio stations, and partial shares in the Red Sox and the Discovery Channel. We now recognize this conflict of interest. No newspaper should concern itself with maximizing profits, and the paper of record should be held to an even higher standard than the rest of the publishing industry. Over the next two months, The Times will voluntarily trust-bust itself, thus contributing to the independence of American journalism."
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"One of the new jurno jobs in Webworld is community manager. It’s rapidly becoming a must-hire at news organizations, and it can be an opportunity for journalists to do journalism at non-news organizations. (”Community manager” seems to be the term that’s sticking. It’s also been called “social networking coordinator”.)
"What does a community manager do? That job’s still evolving, so it’s defined by the organization and/or the journalist…."
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A new dream-sharing community launched yesterday called Pillow Patter
Cat rides Roomba: Today’s therapeutic video
November 19, 2008 – 12:51 pm
I am in a foul, foul mood today — doc just confirmed that I seriously messed up my knee. The bills will be the most painful part.
This helps:
Who needs television?
Thanks to Graydancer for the tip on the Laughing Squid post about this.
I’m in desperate need of raucous laughter. If you can help, please post links in the comments!
links for 2008-11-19
November 19, 2008 – 8:01 am
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"For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.
"We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube."
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"Because no reportable consensus was reached at last week’s “API Summit on Saving An Industry In Crisis”, today’s press conference call originally scheduled for 11 a.m. EST has been canceled."
links for 2008-11-18
November 18, 2008 – 8:01 am
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Oooh, I like this! This is me!
"Don’t be afraid of being a “polyconversationalist” (You caught me. I made up this word. For the purpose of social networking, it means one who converses with multiple people simultaneously.)
"You are now part of an asynchronous microblogging world, multiple conversations are a reality. The beauty of it is the expectation that you’ll reply as you have time. When you “find the time” you may find yourself replying to multiple responses at one time. Get used to it…it’s what Twitter is all about."
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Here's what this offer includes. It's not financial freedom, but it's an option.
* You get a free TypePad Pro blog account. It even includes professional support.
* You get enrolled in the Six Apart Media advertising program. These are real display ads, that pay a lot more than simple Google text ads, and you get to keep the revenue.
* We'll promote your new site on Blogs.com. It's a fast-growing directory of the best in blogs, and Blogs.com will be a very effective way for all of your peers in the Journalist Bailout Program to cross-promote and share traffic for your independent sites.
* Lots more. Getting started with Six Apart opens the door to lots more ways to succeed in the future. We can introduce you to our VIP program to help drive traffic to your site, help you connect your blog to your LinkedIn profile, make it easy to manage your site's comments from an iPhone, and even show you how to automatically promote your posts to your Facebook friends. -
"One of the biggest failures in lobbying transparency is the absence of any disclosure of actual meetings. The current state of transparency for lobbyists is poor. Lobbyists only have to file quarterly reports that do not detail with whom they are meeting, what they are meeting about, and what their client is seeking. Lobbyists are also only required to file semiannual reports detailing their contributions to lawmakers. All of this amounts to a less-than-satisfactory system of disclosure providing the public with an incredibly limited view into the workings of their government.
"The idea of far greater transparency in government affairs is spreading fast. How can you tell? Today’s Washington Times carries an op-ed by one of Washington’s top lawyers, Lanny Davis, that includes both a full-throated defense of the lobbying profession and an endorsement for “total transparency.”
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"The summit concluded that cutting staff doesn't reduce costs fast enough to save the industry, and "erodes" the product in the process, according to Steve Miller, executive chairman of auto-parts maker Delphi Corp who spoke at the conference.
"Miller and Shein made several recommendations for the group, including collaboration with outside entities, "leveraging the brand," and being proactive in averting a collapse of the industry.
"Although it may seem that the summit did little more than establishing that there is a "crisis," the API stated that the newspaper industry will probably need "outside help" to halt the slide.
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"Fortunately, the API report on the summit does not mention any consideration of asking for a bailout. Unfortunately, the report does not detail a plan to save the industry. The shortest section of the report is headed "next steps" and the steps are vague. The CEOs agree to meet again in six months. They also will explore more collaboration, invest in research and development and consider sharing information."
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"I love the concept of ‘citizen journalism’ but I find the use of the word ‘journalism’ or ‘journalist’ misleading in this context." Hmmm, this appears to be conflating the practice of journalism (which anyone can do) with the profession…
links for 2008-11-17
November 17, 2008 – 8:00 am
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Interesting critique of Typealyzer's analysis of blogger personality types. Well, tools like that are always more for entertainment value than anything else, I think…
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"Can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena? We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. A pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and found that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.
"During the 2007-2008 flu season, an early version of Google Flu Trends was used to share results each week with the CDC. Across each of the nine surveillance regions of the United States, we were able to accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports."
Baiing out the US auto industry for good?
November 17, 2008 – 7:17 am
As I read the headlines this morning about the proposed US auto industry bailout — the latest version of which is this, according to the Boston Herald:
“Democrats want to use part of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout for emergency loans to help prop up the Big Three carmakers. General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC are seeking an infusion of $25 billion, a figure that several Senate Democrats embraced Sunday.
“Senate Democrats plan to introduce legislation Monday attaching an auto bailout to a House-passed bill extending unemployment benefits. A vote was expected as early as Wednesday.
“There’s a high degree of urgency” for federal action if GM is going to stave off a financial crisis, Rick Wagoner, GM chairman and chief executive, said Sunday in a joint appearance with United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger on WDIV-TV in Detroit.
“‘It’s really time to move on this,’ Wagoner said.”
That gets me thinking: The US auto industry is dying. It’s shown it can’t compete effectively with Japan and elsewhere for the manufacture of the kinds of personal cars people will be buying as the economy tightens.
Meanwhile, the lack of strong public transportation options is a growing problem in many parts of the US — particularly, lack of high-speed passenger rail networks, robust bus networks, and innovative flexible alternatives to car ownership (like car sharing programs and Zip Car hourly rentals). Exurban dwellers are notoriously hard hit by the transportation crisis.
So what if we bailed out the auto industry only if they shifted more of their production to vehicles that would suit these uses?
Yes, this would have to go hand-in-hand with a major shift in transportation policy that would support the expansion of public transit, especially outside urban cores and between non-urban-core locations. And so far local and state governments have been responsible for paying for public transit, and they haven’t had the cash.
Those are big, thorny issues — but they could shift. And if we’re even going to consider an auto-industry bailout, why shouldn’t we use it as an opportunity to fund a more sustainable transit system?
I suspect America’s “love affair with the car” might go the way of our love affair with cigarettes. It’s hard to stay in love with something that’s killing you and cutting off your children’s future.
RonRosenbaum.com? NOT! (Or: Stupid domain tricks)
November 16, 2008 – 8:16 am
On Friday, Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits published a piece by Ken Sands (Congressional Quarterly’s executive editor for innovation) on a current spat in the journo-sphere: Jarvis on the Death of Print: Gloating, or Practical?
I edit the Tidbits blog. As I was producing that post, I was searching for a good, direct link for Ron Rosenbaum — a journalist and author who recently wrote in Slate that media maven Jeff Jarvis has been gloating over the death of print. I discovered that Rosenbaum blogs for Pajamas Media — and I prefer to link to people’s blogs, so they can speak for themselves.
I noticed something about Rosenbaum’s blog that, in the context of the current rancorous debate he sparked over the fate of traditional journalists, strikes me as somewhat sad.
This screen grab says it all:
RonRosenbaum.com: It's just a blog title, not a domain. Really.
The name of Rosenbaum’s blog appears to be a domain: RonRosenbaum.com. But it isn’t — that’s just the name of his blog. Even worse: The domain RonRosenbaum.com currently doesn’t resolve to any site.
This reflects a discouraging level of online-media cluenessness that is so common in the mainstream media mindset…
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