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February 20, 2004

Fans?
: Technorati is trying to clean up its user interface (at ETech, Dave Sifry was quite self-deprecating about it). So instead of unclear words like "cosmos" to get you to a site's report of inbound links, there's now an unclear blue, oval icon (but at least it's cleaner). But here's the odd thing: Instead of saying that you have so many inbound blogs, you now have so many "fans" and instead of so many inbound links, you now have "inbound references."
But they're not fans. Some of the people who link to me (and vice versa) are, instead enemies. And what's wrong with the word "link?" It's clear and short.
Cleaning up is a good thing. But sometimes you can try too hard.

: UPDATE: Nevermind. I caught them playing. Now it's all back to normal. Life is a work in progress and I love watching it.

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Good-bye, Iraq
: Adam Curry finishes his week on the air in Iraq and takes in local customs:

Lots of customs and traditions to follow during this high-level meeting.We all sat with our legs folded and never ever made the mistake of pointing our feet toward anyone in the room, a major insult. We were served tea in small shot glasses filled halfway with sugar, followed by tiny cups of coffee goop. Unless you politely tipped your cup from left to right the brew would keep on comin. I was able to stomach two cups. Hardcore stuff.

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Citizens report... in Korea
: I've been waiting for this for a long time: OhMyNews, the amazing citizen-powered news site in South Korea, now has an English-language edition. From the welcome exactly four years ago:

Four years ago today, Oh Yeon Ho, CEO and the founder of OhmyNews logged on OhmyNews server and declared the birth of new journalism. It was the first step of saying a final goodbye to 20th century journalism....
Born in the spring of the new millennium, OhmyNews declares it is making a complete departure from the media culture of the 20th century. We are going to change the culture of how news is produced, distributed, and consumed, all at one time.
Every citizen's a reporter. Journalists aren't some exotic species, they're everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them into writing, and share them with others....
Our weapon is the proposition that "every citizen is a reporter." We intend to achieve a "news alliance of news guerillas." We will be unfolding a second NGO (news guerilla organization) movement.
We have three main tactics.
-Abolish the threshold to being a reporter.
-Break down the set formula for news articles.
-Demolish all walls that separate media....
OhmyNews is changing the culture of news consumption. Readers will be able to add their views to each and every article. And for the first time anywhere, readers will have the authority to determine much about how much news guerillas are paid for their articles.
More than anything else, OhmyNews is changing the way people think about what's newsworthy....
*OhmyNews currently has over 35 dedicated staff reporters. On any given day, more than 30,000 citizen reporters post their stories on regular basis.

Finally, with some of OhMy in English, we can learn from their remarkable success.
Here's a NY Times story on OhMy. And here's a Dan Gillmor column about it. [via SmartMobs]

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Monsieur Dean
: Loic Le Meur helped a likely candidate for the presidency of France to start a blog.

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A gathering of brains
: So as I mentioned below, I ran into David Isenberg today and he is getting his WTF (let it stand for what you want) nonconference conference together for April 2-4. He's getting a good crowd of smart folks and wants more. The hotel rooms are running out (though you can stay at other local venues). I'm trying to wrangle a scheduling conflict to go. If you are interested in the future and the power of stupid networks (David's expertise) and all the cool things they can and will do, then go.

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More from Iran
: The BlogIran newsletter proclaims:

Reports from most Iranian cities are stating about the massive popular boycott of the Islamic Clerical regime's sham elections. Millions of Iranians have stayed home and far from official ballot boxes in order to show the rejection of the Islamic republic in its totality.

: Keep reading the citizens' reporting on Persian blogs, translated here: Great stuff, very local. A few excerpts here and also a few posts below.

: Here's a nice post from a Persian blog on media manipulation...

eehum: Tehran 14:00pm - TV's channel 2 is showing images of people voting in different cities across the country. Images of city of Tabriz [north-west of Iran] show a long queue of people waiting to vote. However, looking carefully in the images, you can see there are a lot of people wearing short-sleeve shirts and not wearing warm clothes. I would like to ask my friends to find out the temperature in Tabriz. There is no doubt that these films are taken in a warm season.
Later in this blog: A friend told me that Tabriz is almost 8 degrees celcius above zero [which is indeed cold and not suitable for summer T-shirts].

" More media moments:

Iran and World News: This morning, on 10:30, around 50 people gathered around a minibus — a mobile polling station — in Revolution (Enghelab) square. A foreign journalist was busy interviewing an old lady in black veils who was constantly talking about sacrifice for the revolution and its leader. She said: I wish the flag of Islam rise all over the globe; as a proof of globalization of Islam, you see that women in France also wear head scarves.
This lady deliberately stayed in the short lane of voters until 11:30 and repeated all those words again for a journalist from Aljazira [TV]. The Aljazira journalist — who could speak some Persian but with an Arabic accent — interviewed anyone who volunteered to talk; and with no exception all those people (who were interviewed) said that they were voting just to kick America's ass!
Further down, in front of University of Tehran in Revolution (Enghelab) street, some people quickly gathered around a female journalist from Los Angeles Times who was busy interviewing a guy. All of those people were talking about punching America's face while her translator quickly translator everything to English. Obviously frightened, she told the crowd that she is Australian and not American. Then some of the crowd started comforting her and told her that they have problems not with Americans but the American government. Some other guy said: You are not American but you're an LA Times journalist. Finally the journalist decided to stop her interviews.

Isn't this great: We have our blog reporters reporting on the reporters. New perspectives.

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Surprise
: New York's amazing. I ran into Jay Rosen on the street today as I headed to an MBA conference, where I was blathering on a panel. Then he emailed me to let me know that he and Anil Dash were speaking at noon at the Information Law Institute about how weblogs are changing the world. In the lobby on the way in, I met the famous Zach Rosen, Jay's nephew, who built much of DeanSpace (along with Jay's mother). In the room, there's David Isenberg, expert in stupid networks (whom I just saw at ETech and who's holding his own confab in April... update in a minute). So I'm here and I'll blog.

: Anil is taking the crowd -- many PhD candidates, a journalism teacher from Moscow, Red Burns of NYU's ITP, a stellar crew -- on the basics of weblogs.
He shows Glenn Reynolds blog and links from there to mine and says this page is a triumph of content over presentation. Anil truly hates this undesign. And he's right.

: Anil shows the top story on Blodex for the Grey Tuesday music protest. A prof asks whether there has been major-media coverage. None.

: Michael Weiksner, a founder of e-the-people, is talking now. His blog.
E-thepeople sounded like a good idea when it started (I tried to do a business deal with them) but it never quite took off. It was a one-size-fits-all space for any cause, any grassroots effort to start a petition or a movement. Deanspace, on the other hand, exploded, as did MoveOn.org. That tells me that the tool is just a tool; it's the movement that draws the people.

: Now Jay Rosen is up. "I called it Pressthink because that's what I do... I didn't want to do it until I had the perfect title and this is the perfect title." That is how Nick Denton thinks, too; he won't start a site until he has the ideal name.
Jay says that when he asked people advice on starting a weblog, everyone said the same thing: Make it short. And that's why he didn't.
Jay says he has his own magazine in his weblog, but "it has an outlet to the sea."
He says the weblog lets him to be an online equal to, say CJR.org.
Jay's saying many smart things that I'd dilute if I tried to summarize them. Just go reread his seminal post on what's radical about the weblog form in journalism; that's what he's going through now.

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Blogging the White House
: Here's blogger and publisher Rex Hammock's blog report on his meeting with George Bush (see yesterday's post for background). Great stuff:

The President sat with us at a conference table between me and a young stay-at-home mother of two whose husband is a police officer (and, like me, a expat Alabamian). Across from the three of us sat two other young women and an older man, an apple farmer from Gettysburg, Penn. One of the women was a single mother of two who works full time and takes graduate school classes online. The other was a mom who works fulltime.

There were a few staffers around the edges of the room, including the logistics and policy people who had planned the event and a White House photographer. Andrew Card sat at the end of the table as a quiet observer,

Each participant had a name card in front of us and the Prersident was quick to use our first names in chatting with us about our work and families, especially asking us about how we had used any tax refunds or incentives. Only a few people knew I was going to do this, but more than one asked jokingly if I thought the President would give me a nickname. I'm happy not to disappoint them. He did. He turned to me once to ask a question and said, “How 'bout you, Hammock Man?”...
The President looks and sounds exactly like the guy on TV. He knows, I'm sure, that we all think we know him. He is charming and was as hospitable as anyone I’ve ever met. He made us feel that he was grateful to us for coming to visit him (like we would turn him down) and was genuinely comfortable in both the chit-chat and the policy talk. He especially enjoyed talking with the apple farmer as he was able to talk about the trees he is growing on his ranch in Crawford.
He shared with us an anecdote about a recent dinner he had with Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi during which the conversation turned to North Korea. He said that during the conversation, the thought occured to him that it was special that the U.S. and Japan, one-time enemies, are working together to solve a complex situation that threatens world peace. He said the experience made him curious about what future leaders in the U.S. and the leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan might one day 50 years from now be trying to solve together.
He listened intensely to each of us, making notes that he referred to later in his public remarks. I mentioned how it was hard to make plans in business during times of uncertainty, a remark he picked up as a theme in his public remarks. He had a command of the issues we were discussing and had spent time looking over the notes about us. He took notes (using a Sharpie pen) as we talked and then used those notes in the remarks he made. While he had a few pages of prepared notes, he spoke extemporaneously.
He is definitely not a wonk, but he knows clearly what he believes needs to happen for the country and its eocnomy to prosper. I don't think the circular arguments regarding "what ifs" and "what abouts" interest him. Nor me, for that matter.

Read it all. It's as if we all have a friend who just met the President and he's telling us all about it.

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Cut the crap, Kerry: Debate!
: Edwards is, of course, itching for a one-on-one debate but on the radio this morning, Kerry's side was still playing coy, saying a debate should include all candidates.
Crap. Don't play with us. A lot of Americans are now trying to make an earnest and well-informed decision between these two candidates and we have the right to hear them without the distraction of the sideshow candidates.
At this stage in a campaign, nobody with, say, less than 5 percent of votes should be debating.

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Dean 'nuts'
: A top labor leader calls Howard Dean "nuts:"

One of Howard Dean's most powerful labor supporters, Gerald W. McEntee, said on Thursday that he had decided that Dr. Dean was "nuts" shortly before he withdrew his support for Dr. Dean's candidacy and begged him to quit the race to avoid a humiliating defeat.
Mr. McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, defended his decision to abandon the campaign, saying he told Dr. Dean that he did not want to spend another $1 million of his union's money "in order to get him a couple of extra points in Wisconsin."
"I have to vent," Mr. McEntee, the often blunt leader of the nation's largest public service union, said in a leisurely interview in his office here. "I think he's nuts."

The voters figured that out before you did, sir.

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Citizens report from Iran
: Hoder is translating Persian weblogs on the election:

Zeitoon: Yesterday at the public swimming pool, two middle-aged ladies were chatting by the shallow end... I had also gone to that area... Near where the filtered water is returned to the pool... People like to stand around there... It feels a bit like a Jacuzzi... The older woman who was also a bit heavier was saying; "I'll be forced to vote on Friday... because I'm a retiree... I'm worried that if my ID card doesn't show the election stamp, they may stop my retirement pension... And my daughter is also a university student and it my affect her too..." The other woman who was wearing way too much make-up replied somewhat irritably; "What is all this talk? I'm on a pension too but the section on my card for election stamps, is cleaner than a Mullah's rear-end" ...

: More citizens report here.
: And here is where Iranians are submitting their reports in Persian.

: More citizens' reporting:

Ramshad Shadman: It's 16:30 in the afternoon, and I have prepared another report for you. My observations show that the number of voters differ a lot, from one polling station to another. The participation is very low in general; in one polling station — apart from the big group of security forces and watchdogs — there are not even 2 voters (mostly in schools which have been turned to polling stations). In some other venues you see more people (for example, in a mosques that has been turned into a polling station - probably because the senior clergy in charge of the mosque is relatively popular among the people in that area). The clergy told me that the rate of participation of people is between a third or a quarter, comparing to the presidential elections of 1997 [which brought the reformist president to power].
I would reiterate that the majority of participants are old women and men, and some youngsters who are voting for the first time in their life. The latter are not particularly supporters of the conservatives, I guess they are voting due to their lack of experience and immature political vision, and probably under the effect of round-the-clock TV programs encouraging people to vote.
It's also important to point out that the majority of voters enter the stations holding the list of 30 right-wing candidates (the conservative Abadgaran party), and write all those 30 names on the ballot. This shows an important fact: only a small fraction of the society support the conservatives, but they are very organized and act in a systematic way. The 30-long list of Abadgaran (supported by the Leader) has been distributed among all of them and they were advised to vote for all 30 of the candidates.

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The memorial competition
: The 9/11 memorial jury just put up all 5,201 entries to the competition.
Mine is here.

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Iran's "election"
: Pedram reports sparse traffic in Tehran on "election" day.

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This morning
: Off to speak (through half a voice) at a panel for a few hundred MBA students this morning. Back later.

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