Via S.S. Trudeau we get a link to the Common Census map, drawn not by political boundaries, but by influence. Influence in this case is measured by respondants to the (brief) survey about what you feel is your community.
This is a very interesting map and illustrates a commonly held perception about Michigan; that of the sphere’s of influence within the state. I wonder if this holds true for the other regions of the country.
Check it out and contribute; it’s only as good as people’s input.
BoingBoing, Dan Gillmor, Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, Paul Kedrosky, Mike from Techdirt, and Gary Stein have all weighed in. Can’t wait to see what Jeff Jarvis has to say about this.
Congratulations to Forbes for having one of the most poorly written articles on blogging ever. Daniel Lyons, who obviously falls squarely on the side of the older styles of journalism (those would be nepotism, invective, and abuse), pens a mighty blow against “the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns”, blogs. Here’s a nice sampling:
Often a bashing victim can’t even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory.
“Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality,” says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek…
“I’d say 50% to 60% of attacks are sponsored by competitors,” says Bruce Fischman, a lawyer in Miami for targets of online abuse.
One blog, Groklaw, exists primarily to bash software maker SCOGroup in its Linux patent lawsuit against IBM, producing laughably biased, pro-IBMcoverage; its origins are a mystery.
Google and other services operate with government-sanctioned impunity, protected from any liability for anything posted on the blogs they host. Thus they serve up vitriolic “content” without bearing any legal responsibility for ensuring it is fair or accurate; at times they even sell ads alongside the diatribes.
Ah yes, the sweet sounds of balanced reporting. Welcome to blogging world, Mr. Lyons. I’m guessing your next story will be about the poor quality of the millions of emails you are about to receive. And, not to take the bait too hard, but you are also an idiot, Mr. Lyons. Blogs are more than a cheap product-bashing tool. They are also important tools for communicating to millions of people. Even Presidential candidates use blogs to campaign. Blogs are social barometers. Blogs are ways for companies to talk with, not to, their customers. Companies also put on human faces with blogs (see Microsoft). Oh, and Groklaw is a pretty interesting study in the power of blogs to overcome the disinformation you obviously fell for, Mr. Lyons. (Hot Tip: SCO is going to lose.)
So, the next time you, Mr. Lyons, want to write a story about blogs or anything related to the Internet, pull your head out of you ass (or at least quit kissing the ass of what I’m guessing are sponsors) and try to present the entire story. And if a Forbes editor wants to prevent your brand name from ending up like a blog-bashed diet-pill, you’d do well to sort out Daniel Lyons.
Read the whole article (BugMeNot required; wonder what Forbes thinks of that extension?) and the original story on MeFi.
The comments situation here will continue as I just had a fun peek into my server stats. 22.09% of the requests to my site are to mt-comments.cgi. Oddly, the most bandwidth passes from my Politics category, but that’s another story.
Now, I don’t pretend to be in any way important to the community; this is a vanity site and a chance for me to screw around with a server without nuking one my own machines. Still, I was amazed at the traffic that spammers bring to this back-woods URL. In the last 80 days, 7691 hits were recorded to just mt-comments.cgi. That’s a little under 100 a day. That’s almost, well, 100 times more than the legit visitors I get. (Thanks to AAiOR for continuing to read, BTW; if you’re ever coming to Chelsea, drop me a line. I think I owe you a beer.)
Anyway, as humbling as a stats check was, I’m going to keep the comments open to registered users only. Sorry, but mainland China is a little too friendly to the scum of the internet.
Comedy Central has announced that on November 1, they will launch Motherload, a broadband IPTV service. Yes, it will include The Daily Show because, if it didn’t, no one would have noticed the press release.
This is a cool idea; Comedy Central has decent traction among the high-bandwidth crowd thanks to the Daily Show and they probably realize that they get a lot of publicity from the file trading of clips of the show. They don’t issue C&Ds to everyone who posts them because it gets them more viewers. Motherload gives them the ability to bring those people back to their site (read: more advertising), but also gets eyes on new shows. It’s an incubator for new content.
We’ll see how they screw this up (they have the dreaded “$SERVICE Video player” phrase in the press release, so some kind of wonky DRM is obviously going to be a part of this (WMV? Real Player?) Hopefully it’s not too intrusive.
Hey Comedy Central, chuck some bucks at Odeo and get video enclosures set up for you content so it can get fed right into iPod with Videos. Mmmm…. RSS Tivo.
I take Paypal, bad checks, and whompum.
Hell, at this price, I’ll be busy for the next week setting up Splogspot accounts.
My blog is worth $3,951.78.
How much is your blog worth?
Funny stuff.
“Never mind those. Listen — I can use Google’s logic to get free copies of films, music — anything I want! All I have to do is borrow the CDs or DVDs, downloaded music or video or whatever, copy them, and then offer some sort of ‘fair use’ excerpt index service, just like Google is doing with the books. It’s the perfect gimmick. Maybe I could runs ads with them too — that’s where Google is really raking it in. Hell, if Google can do this sort of thing with one kind of copyrighted work without paying, why can’t anyone else do it too, and why should it be restricted just to books?”
REALITY RESET: “Free for All: The Google Excuse” [via Kottke]
…but I like Anne Rice even less now. She found the Lord (he’s been missing, yah know).
Via Dan Gillmor, we get a link to Dave Winer. I’m not a huge Dave Winer fan, with all that “I did this so you must credit me” crap for technology that is everywhere. We all know that Tim Berners-Lee came up with the web, but we don’t put his name next to every mention (“See our website; thanks to Tim Berners-Lee”). Dave essentially crabs about the same thing with RSS and podcasting (and don’t get me started on Adam Curry).
But, I’m off track. Dave is one of those people that, well, you either know about him or you don’t. He’s got his moments of stupendous annoyance and other moments, like today, where he has flashes of deep insight.
Dave’s target this time is a Silicon Valley behemoth that is forgetting how it got to where it is: Google.
Later this week Google will have their invite-only Zeitgeist conference. It’s as closed as a conference can be. And this is the company we lifted on our shoulders and held up as a shining example of the web at its best. We were wrong to do that, but forgive us for having hope. At some core level Google did understand the web, but there was also a lot about Google that was against the web, and now that’s most of what they are.
And he’s right. From email to IM to information retrieval to micropayments, Google has been telling everyone that they’ve been doing it wrong and Google now has the real answer. Is scanning books to make the searchable bad? No, of course not, but you need to have everyone’s buy in. Google has been making the rounds pissing off group after group with their projects. We, the technorati, laugh at the outmoded industries who succumb to Google’s Better Way, but what happens when they come for your work? What happens when you’re not in on the Way It’s Going To Be meeting? What happens when Google wants to do something radically different instead of just a little different?
We often ridicule Microsoft for being a soulless, stodgy company, a reputation that Microsoft has sent Bill Gates to overcome with his nerdy demeanor and the candor of a marketing VP. Google learned well from that, recruiting the elite from the Web to be their prophets; better a zealot than the cult leader to spread the word. But Google is no different than Microsoft; both are enormous machines that take what they want and apologize later. Both are drains on the local brain trust, an intellectual equivalent of dropping a Wal-Mart in the center of your town. Both are trusted with more information about you and me than we probably realize.
Now Google is starting down the path that feels, well, evil. Web 2.0 is the latest buzz word, the best explanation of which that I’ve heard goes like this: Web 1.0 was a monologue, Web 2.0 is a conversation. Blogs obviously fall here, but so does the Skype phenomenon, enterprise IM (??), and a bunch of other lofty ideas. Sound familiar? The Google Zeitgeist meeting, which is invite-only, happens soon. The Zeitgeist is bascially a list of what’s hot, based on Google searches and indexing. You and I make the Zeitgeist with our blogs and comments, links and photos. Web 2.0 is certainly on the Zeitgeist, but this meeting is closed to all but a select few: the Prophets. Our input is not welcome there, but our data is.
And so, as Dave puts it, “we follow them down into bad years”. It was bound to happen; you don’t flirt with a market value of $100 billion (with a b) and not let it go to your head. The real question is: What’s next? Where does Google go from here? They can’t remain the industry darling without new products or services. Search can only be that good for so long. Logic dictates that some time, probably very soon, someone will do search better. Many already do email better, many already do IM better. Google has ridden it’s name for a long time and the fare is coming due. Let’s hope it doesn’t get too bad.