I’ve been buried in work since my last post and have a half-dozen, half-baked articles in the queue, but after going through my feeds this morning, a handful of links seemed to gel and I thought a quick post was in order.
Hack The Debate
The next debate on October 15th is going to feature a live Twitter stream. I have mixed feelings about this, but I’m curious to see what this will look like. On one hand I think it’ll devolve into fart jokes, but since it’s a managed event there’s the possibility of some actual interesting comments from the online peanut gallery.
Two Proposals to Make Elections Better
My buddy Craig had a post on his blog today about two options to change how we vote and how the town hall debates. Although I like the idea of knowledge based voting somewhat, it’s very elitist (which I am) and I think would scare away too many voters. “What! There’s a test?” I definitely like the idea of changing the debate structure so that the candidates could really drill down on the issues. Makes me think the “Hack the Debate” idea has more merit than I originally thought.
Obama ‘08: The Official iPhone Application
I downloaded and installed this application over the air during breakfast this morning and I have to say that I’m VERY impressed. Regardless of which candidate you plan on voting for, this is a brilliant use of technology. The app is a concise distillation of Obama’s position on the issues and is very engaging to boot. I had to sit back and give my best Joey Lawrence “Woah” when reviewing the “Call Friends” feature
Call Friends: A great volunteering tool that lets you make a difference any time you want by talking to people you already know. Your contacts are prioritized by key battleground states, and you can make calls and organize results all in one place.
Suddenly I’m pulled from the sidelines and being asked to take action. I’m not going to lie, it scared the shit out of me. Absolutely brilliant.
John McCain: Economic Disaster
The Obama campaign released this on YouTube on Tuesday, but made no mention of it during the debate, which kinda pissed me off. If you’re going to lob a grenade like this, don’t ignore it. The video, although somewhat boring, does illustrate McCain’s involvement in the S&L scandal quite well, which many people were too young or simply don’t remember. Of course there’s a clear parallel drawn between today’s financial meltdown and the debacle of the past.
Of course take it with a grain of salt, because the video clearly has an agenda and this is not a pure documentary.
Make Believe Maverick
OK, I don’t get my news from Rolling Stone magazine and there’s no doubt that their perspective is pretty far to the left. That being said, there’s a great deal of detail and quotes from those that were there and it did make me rethink some of what I like about McCain. But again, take it with a grain, or two of salt.
CNN Fact Checker
This site is one of the best things to come out of the 2008 political pageant — and yes, don’t think for a minute that this isn’t a pageant. Anyway, both parties are slinging digs into each other as to why the other’s plan is crap and given how the debates are so structured and dare I say it, neutered, I like that there’s a news source that’s publishing their fact checking.
The only thing missing is a tally showing just how truthful each campaign is being. In my cursory review, I’m seeing a lot of “True” and “Partially True” on the Obama side and a lot of “False” and “Misleading” on the McCain side. Regardless of which side you’re rooting for, when you break down all the rhetoric and decisive personal belief issues, you have to focus on the facts.
FactCheck.org
Ok, just one more. In composing this article, I decided to see if I could find a “Truth Tally” to the CNN link above, I came across this site. I need to dig a little deeper because there is a TON of detail, but I love this site!
For example, take a look at The Second Debate and you’ll see what I mean. They go point-by-point checking each fact that was presented and then providing sources at the bottom of the page. Great stuff.
Well so much for a quick little article, but hopefully you’ll find some of these links interesting and feel free to comment about them!
Tags: politics
I’ve been using Twitter for about a year now and more recently Identi.ca. If you haven’t heard of either of these services, not to worry, because they are relatively new. If I had to give them a label, I’d call them tools for micro-blogging. If that sounds completely weird and foreign to you, then I highly recommend that you check out the video by Common Craft called, “Twitter in Plain English.
Although there are “new media” tools that have appeared in recent years, such as blogs and podcasts, we’ve had clear lines when it came to content. There are blogs and content management systems for articles, thoughts and other bits of text and then there are communication tools such as e-mail, instant messengers, IRC, etc. When writing an article, like this one, it’s primarily a broadcast medium. I write something, you read it and if I’m lucky we can talk about it via comments. With an instant messenger, like iChat, or AIM, I’m having a discussion with other people and the content evolves as the result of a conversation.
Enter Twitter
When Twitter came on the scene, there was a collective “huh?” to figure out where it fit in with what we already know about about content and communications. Since it’s only 140 characters and asks the basic question, “What are you doing?” micro-blogging seems to be a nice comfortable fit. I “tweet” a 140 character post that says “I’m eating a ham sandwich” and I’m done. However people don’t always use your tool as you define it and users began using the “@” symbol as a method of responding to other people’s tweets.
So I tweet “I’m having a ham sandwich” and one of my followers tweets back “@mashby what type of bread?” and now we have a conversation. No longer is this a primarily one-way broadcast of information, we now have a two-way discussion. Luckily, Twitter added support for the “@” and it’s become a standard within the service.
Enter Identi.ca
Identi.ca is the new kid on the block in the micro-blogging space and seems to be getting some real traction. People seem to like it because it’s open, has the potential of being distributed. So instead of one single service having to support millions of users (ala Twitter), there can be a multitude of federated Identi.ca systems all working in tangent.
It works fairly reliably and most importantly is a lot like Twitter. I like it a lot and the network of people that I follow is still growing, but I continue to use both Twitter and Identi.ca because everyone I follow on Twitter isn’t on Identi.ca yet.
Enter Steve Gilmore
One of the people I follow, Pete Prodoehl, posted the following,
“raster: so besides @stevegillmor who will leave identi.ca/laconica if it goes more than 140 chars?”
My first thought was “Huh?” and then I responded to the discussion and asking why this was even an issue. Well, it would seem that to be compatible with Twitter, SMS and the like, there are a contingent of people that feel that the 140 character limit is the cornerstone of micro-blogging. One of those people who definitely feels strongly about the subject is Steve Gillmor.
Steve has a large audience through his blogs, his former gig at ZDNet and one of the pioneer podcasts, “The Gillmor Gang” He may not be EF Hutton, but suffice to say that when Steve talk, people listen. I didn’t know that Steve was even on Identi.ca, so following raster’s link, I found his profile page and back tracked to find the conversation and make some sense of what was happening.
From what I deduced, Steve posted the following,
And from that post, there was a ton of chatter going back and forth about how Identica was changing and what key points were deal breakers for Steve. Most of his tweets were along the lines of “@jessestay if replies are turned off I’m gone”, and “when wull that version be released so I can plan my departure?” and a lot of back and forth over several technical issues.
Enter The Confusion
It was really difficult trying to follow the conversation. It’s one of the limitations with the “@” shortcut and it was near impossible to find any coherent thread. On top of that issue, everyone participating in the conversation is limited to 140 characters, so each reply was one short burst after another.
At one point it felt as if Steve Gilmore was on some sort of rant and I @replied as much. His response was “mashby rant?” and that’s when it hit me. It wasn’t that Steve was ranting per se, it’s just that the medium is so sparse that it quickly devolves into what appears to be a rant.
It’s hard enough to convey feeling and intentions in an e-mail. How many times has someone taken something you’ve written the wrong way? E-mail provides us plenty of room to write and get the message that we’re trying to convey, now truncate that to 140 characters and it’s even more difficult. That was the case with Steve Gilmore’s comments on the Identi.ca changes. He was posting individual points, but from the receiving end it came across as an angry rant.
So this begs the question, is microblogging really a conversation medium, or is it nothing more than shouts across a crowded room?
If you haven’t been following the news of recent, Nashville has had a gas shortage for well over a week now. I’ve been having flashbacks to the 1973 oil crisis as we’ve seen lines around the block for people trying to get gas at a station that actually had gasoline. It’s been a bit nuts around here to say the least.
To give you a glimpse of just how crazy it’s been, Jim Ridley of the Nashville Scene has uncovered a video of what it’s been like inside Metro Government.
There’s this little routine that my business partner and I go through every time he comes into my office. He walks in and asks me to pull up a web site. I open a new tab, or page and lo and behold I get the spinning beachball of death. Without fail, this happens nearly every time. Normally I dismiss this problem to having to much open — which is usually true — but today I didn’t have that much open, so I resolved to see what was causing this holdup.
The reason for the beachball of death is that my computer’s system resources are maxed out, so I fired up “Activity Monitor” to see what was happening under the hood. Looking closely, the offending application was Safari. My browser was gobbling up the majority of my resources and by creating another tab, or window, I was simply adding to the load.
So that got me to thinking… “what is the best lean and mean browser for Mac OS?”
From just the nominal searching that I did, there seem to be people lamenting the bloat of both Safari and Firefox. Opera might be a contender, but since it doesn’t work with 1Password, it’s a non-starter. The only other browser I came across that seemed to fit the bill is Camino (think Firefox engine with a true Mac OS UI).
So I’m playing with Camino for the time being, but what do you think? Is there a browser out there that you’d recommend?
Yet another post inspired by FiatLux. It was hard not to edit the photo before posting, but what the hell…
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.
I just came across this video of Craig Ferguson from his opening monologue from his show The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (tip of the hat to FiatLux, by way of GearBits), and I have to say that he really hits the nail on the head. He’s recently become a naturalized American citizen and without taking one side or the other, Craig masterfully sums up what’s happening in our culture in regards to the Presidential Election and yet does so with wit and panache.
I just stuff like this where someone speaks from the heart and tells you honestly how they feel. Having them feel the same way as I do is a nice bonus!
There’s other videos of Craig, such as his unscripted monologue regarding his own struggles with alcoholism, but don’t bother going to CBS to watch them. You’ll need RealPlayer to watch them. Seriously? RealPlayer? 1998 called and they’d like their broke ass media system back.
While I was in the process of switching from MovableType to WordPress, I opted to move my domain to a new server. Nothing like learning to move a WordPress install two days after my first install. 
Anyway, if you run into any issues with the blog, please let me know!
Since 2003, when I started this blog, I’ve used MovableType as the Content Management System (CMS) but I’ve decided that it’s time for a change. Beginning today, I’m now using Wordpress as my CMS tool for mashby.com.
Why the change? Well, it’s nothing dramatic, or awe inspiring — I simply wanted a change. The grass is always greener on the other side and I’ve been wanting to get my hands dirty with WP for quite some time.
I don’t know if this will mean that I’ll post more often, but at least it’s nice to have some new digs!
I came across this courtesy of Kayray via Identi.ca and it’s my new favorite toy. This site is brilliant!
| Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj | ||
Saw this on Brighthand today:
“Orange has confirmed that the Samsung smartphone running on the Access Linux Platform, originally planned for later this year, has been cancelled… The Samsung i800 was the first and only device announced that would have run the Access Linux Platform since the operating system’s release in early 2007.”
Let me make sure I have my facts straight.
- 2002: Palm, Inc. decides to split into two companies , thus creating PalmSource which was the OS side of the Palm PDA. Later that year, PalmSource releases OS 5 aka Garnet.
- 2004: PalmSource announces a new OS called Cobalt which, over time, no one licenses.
- 2005: PalmSource is sold to Access who promptly drops Cobalt and instead announces their plans to release a Linux based OS called the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP). Just rolls of the tongue doesn’t it?
- 2007: ALP is “released” to licensees and developers.
- 2008: [February] Samsung announces that they will release the i800 on the ALP platform for Orange (UK)
- 2008: [July] Orange’s PR firm announces they’ve changed their mind
So if I carry my 1 and drop the sarcasm, then that would mean that it’s been six YEARS since there has been a major update to Palm OS. FFS! Even Microsoft got out an OS in less time than that.
Of course Palm, Inc., which used to be just the hardware side of things, bought up what they could from Access and has been going their own way with a Linux based OS called Palm OS II which they’re planning on releasing in 2009. I’m sure that OS will r0xors on the Treo’s circa 2003 design. By the time they get a new device out, it’ll be cool again because it’ll be retro!
I just have to hang my head in shame as I watch a product that I so dearly loved circle the drain like this.
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