Here’s a fascinating idea from Dave Winer via Michael O’Connor Clarke, regarding political candidates’ conference calls as publicly accessible MP3 files.
By the way, I’d be happy to show them how to add ID3 tags so that their files display properly. I’m just sayin’.
I'm taking a sick day today, which means I'm still working, but I'm wearing sweats instead of real clothes.
Thank goodness there's a ray of brightness, however, amid the tea cups and Kleenex. Ze Frank is back! Bless you, BL Ochman, for alerting us.
If you want to experience excellent writing, brilliant pacing, and the smart use of a single camera for video, watch the master in action.
Dave Fleet, who blogs at Fleet Street, does an excellent job of analyzing the use of new media in the communications around the terrible wildfires in California. Those who work in the public sector can learn a lot from Dave and from the other sources to which he links.
(Hey, Dave, maybe you could cover new-media crisis communications at the Talk is Cheap unconference in Toronto next month?)
Now here’s a completely ridiculous idea: tax iPods. Hey, tax hard drives while you’re at it, too, Canada. And maybe force me to shell out a few bucks when I hum a Snow Patrol tune while I wash the dishes.
The assumption is that we’re all stealing music and we have to pay the price.
Um, please look at my iPod. It’s fully loaded with podcasts. There ain’t any music on it. Not one song. But if the Copyright Board of Canada proceeds as planned, I’ll have to pay a stiff tax, as will everyone else using portable media. This is nuts.
What do you think?
I’m excited by the concept of The Real News, a nonprofit news network that will be totally funded by viewers who’ll pay $10 per month. Rather than hear me pontificate on this, check out the video on You Tube.
What do you think?
Thanks to a Twitter post by Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, I learned this morning of a government employee in the United States trying to use a “grammatical” defense in her testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Unfortunately, she confuses tense and mood and pretty much fails in her attempt to obfuscate.
Is this a first? (Hmm, I just remembered Bill Clinton’s question about the definition of is, but I suppose that’s vocabulary and not grammar.)
Last week, a 20-something friend asked for advice. She’d been invited to participate in a group parenting blog, and wanted to know if I thought it was a good idea. I know she loves to write and has her own personal parenting blog. My answer to her was: Go ahead, join in. Just be sure that you never write anything that you wouldn’t want a future employer to read.
I think this is sound advice for everyone. We’re continually seeing evidence that the Internet has become our “permanent record,” or a way for anyone anywhere to find out about what we are doing now, and what we might have done in the past. Last week, I read about a Canadian who was denied access to the United States because he experimented with LSD 30 years earlier. He was never charged with a crime. In fact, he wrote about his drug use in a peer-reviewed journal that appeared online. Apparently border guards are Googling us now.
My friend Dave Traynor pointed to coverage of this Canadian case as well as a young woman in the U.S. who was denied a teaching degree because of her My Space photo.
We’re all publishers now and it seems everything we say can and will be held against us. What do you think? Scary stuff?
Thank you, CBC, for not airing the Virgina Tech killer's videotaped messages.
According to Tod Maffin at the Inside the CBC blog:
"[We will] report the essence of what the killer was saying, but not do what he so clearly hoped all media would do," CBC news chief Tony Burman said in his most recent blog posting. "To decide otherwise in our view would be to risk copycat killings."
This is a smart decision. Why make this mass murderer more of a media star than he already is?
What do you think?
My, how the humble “letter to the editor” has changed. Not too long ago, you thoughtfully wrote or typed a letter, dropped it in the post and waited for it to appear. Maybe. Now that they can communicate instantly with newspaper editors, readers are sharing their thoughts quickly. And often. Check out this item from the San Francisco Chronicle, and see how one reader’s eccentric comment has spawned not just other comments, but videos too. Fascinating stuff.
Hat tip to Canuckflack Colin McKay.
It doesn’t matter that the Ontario government Family Responsibility Office calls its new site Good Parents Pay. I think everyone will refer to it as the Deadbeat Parents site.
Ostensibly, the site is supposed to encourage the public to reveal the whereabouts of neighbours and co-workers who’ve fallen behind on their support payments. Of course it will also serve to embarrass any of these non-paying parents who are capable of embarrassment.
Here’s some unsolicited advice for fertile women in Ontario and elsewhere: don’t hook up with a guy who sports an alias.
