BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

December 30, 2002

President Hillary Clinton
: The great thing about the right-wing demonizing Bill Clinton is that they only ended up beatifying his Mrs., Hillary Clinton -- or at least making her sympathic and human. They set her up for her Senate victory. They set her up for her run for the White House.
Laugh if you will. Ignore it if you try. But the Hillary bandwagon is starting to roll.
A week ago, she topped a Time/CNN poll of possible Democratic candidates for the presidency.
And now a Gallup poll says she is the most admired woman in America (edging Mrs. Bush and Ms. Winfrey).
Sure, some people hate her. But they're going to hate her no matter what -- and their hatred only endears her to Democrats.
But plenty admire her, clearly. Many sympathize with her. And many actually agree with her (every damned time they have to deal with idiotic, wasteful, even deadly practices by insurance companies and doctors).
Could it be Condi Rice vs. Hillary Clinton in '04 or '08?

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More VLOGS!
: Just what you've been hankering for: two more VLOGs (video weblogs).
One counts down year-end media cliches.
The other examines the fading fortunes of fast food.
Both of them are up at my screenblast showcase: www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine.
By putting them there, instead of on my server, I don't have to worry about bandwidth constipation. So go ahead, Instapundit, link away: You can't bring me down now!
I'll post more about them -- and complete transcripts -- along with a summing up of where I am after my first five VLOGs tomorrow....

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Blog imperialism
: Freenet.de, a German homepage service, now offers easy weblogs. My test: Buzzmachine auf Deutsch.

: As recent links would indicate, I'm finding a lot of good weblog work in Germany lately.
When technology was hot, I found that the Germans waited about six months until we'd worked some bugs out and then took over a technology and smoothed it out. Same pattern now with weblogs.
Some of the better veblogs:
: Der Shockwellenreiter -- by Jörg Kantel; sort of a German cross of Glenn/Doc/Cory.
: randgänge -- by Thomas N. Burg, who's organizing the BlogTalk conference in Vienna next spring.
: Ein Blog -- by Hanjo Iwanowitsch
: Fliegen von Ferne -- by Andrea Janßen.
: Dienstraum -- about media.
: Industrial Technology & Witchcraft.

: All of this is an effort to break into new weblog neighborhoods. I love my neighborhood with Nick, Glenn, Ken, Matt, Elizabeth, et many al but you remember high school when you wanted to hang out with some new kids once in a while, just for the variety. I find it fascinating to break into a new group and find all their links and likes. It's all about discovering parallel universes -- just like watching the Bizarro Seinfeld episode.

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Moblogging in the new year
: From Joi Ito's blog:

We're going to have an open moblog for people to post pictures to on New Year's Eve to welcome 2003. It is "open" but please use common sense when sending stuff. The URL is http://www.bloggers.jp/. The email address to send stuff to is mailto:misoka@bloggers.jp. The site and the email address will be running between GMT 2002/12/31 0:00-23:59.
Send jpeg images as attachments with the title of the item as the subject. The template will resize the height to 120 pixels. 120x120 is probably the best size.
Pass it on. ;-)
"Misoka" comes from "Omisoka" which means New Year's Eve in Japanese.

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Asked and answered
: A researcher from the University of Montreal, Sébastien Paquet is conducting a survey on the usefulness of weblogs and wikis for sharing knowledge. I took it. You should, too. The more information we as a community gather about what we do and what value it has, the better.

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