connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by DaddyNewt)

While I compared blogging to the advent of the printing press back in April, it was only a gut feeling based on the potential change that could occur through the power of open discourse in the information revolution.

Hell, I admit it, I was wishing out loud.

Today, Kurt Opsahl posted a brilliant printing press parody to the Forbes.com “Attack of The Blogs“ article.

(via BoingBoing)

Get away from the business of corrupt government. Bouncy balls in San Francisco.

(via Boing Boing)

From the sound of his press conference today, it seems as though he’s ready to wrap up and move on, as his investigation was compromised by Libby. How bad do I want him to be the Eliot Ness to clean up this administration? I think he knows, as he kept asking the public to sit back and let the process of justice run its course.

Fitzgerald made an interesting analogy today when talking about the indictments served to Libby. He waxed poetic about a pitcher in baseball hitting a batter in the head, whether it was on purpose or the ball slipped. He mentioned that since the catcher kicked sand in his eyes (referring to Libby’s lies), as a prosecutor, he would have to interview people in the dugout to understand the mentality of the pitcher when the act occurred. Interestingly, he didn’t talk about finding out whether or not the manager ordered him to bean the batter.

I know this might sound strange to some "Americans," but this investigation is clearing up a lot of my blockage in trusting the ethical, moral state of our justice system. "Scooter" Libby lied for a reason, either his own or one from the administration. Fitzgerald handed down these lesser felony charges, because Libby committed a crime (perjury, obstruction and false statements) directly to his face regarding a breach of National Security.

As this errand boy is taken care of the truth will bubble to the surface… one way or the other.

(originally uploaded by monkeyc.net)

Either they want to get a piece of the blogosphere action or they want to shut it down. It’s the only way suits think: M&A with synergistic bottom line results or a hostile takeover to sell off business units.

One way or the other, it’s all about market disruption, marginalizing competition and turning a profit… within the current structure of corporate power and operations, of course.

Think I’m being a bit dramatic? Read this Forbes article titled, Attack Of The Blogs. Once you get the taste of corporate bile in your mouth, read the Fighting Back article. It’s enough to make you question our common humanity.

After absorbing the tone of Daniel Lyons article, you can see what this kind of advice does for the C-Levels who maintain the status quo profit structure. With all of the progressive business thinking going on in today’s world, it’s actually a pretty sad and sick relationship if you ask me.

A few weeks ago I posted about Technorati getting into bed with Edelman PR. Dave Sifry, the CEO of Technorati, commented within an hour of it going live. Now, I perceive that to be an example of a smart CEO tracking his brand in the blogosphere, joining conversations to provide transparency. But now, after reading the Fighting Back article, I’m actually wondering whether he came back at me with the first play from that playbook:

MONITOR THE BLOGOSPHERE. Put your own people on this or hire a watchdog (Cymfony, Intelliseek or Biz360, among others). Spot blog smears early, before they can spread, and stamp them out by publishing the truth.

On a personal level, I don’t know Dave Sifry from Adam, but the guy gave me his cell phone number at the end of his comment (since removed), so I’d like to believe that he’s on the right side of the revolution.

I guess this Forbes article is giving me corporate employment flashbacks, as it completely represents the old business model philosophy of mainstream, conservative, corporate America: stiff, pragmatic, rooted, closed and “we’ll take out your kneecaps if you fuck with our way of life.”

Joe Trippi, the Cluetrain Gang and Stuart Butterfield are all spot on. It’s beginning to look like Forbes and company all went through the No Child Left Behind program — they can’t understand the potential of extrapolating the philosophies of sharing.

UPDATE: Frederico is upset about this as well. And I found another one of these “corporate boys are scared as hell” articles. Check out The Mercury News article, An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening.

(articles via Boing Boing and Crossroads Dispatches)

Actually, Ofoto was purchased by Kodak a while back, so I guess I’m just being a Web 1.0 romantic. Either way, flickr’s recent announcement of printing capabilities — including partnerships with QOOP (coffee table books and posters), Englaze (photo DVD’s) and Zazzle (customized photo stamps)—just launched them (Yahoo!) straight into the forefront of Web 2.0 business models. The Long Tail possibilities with this service is almost endless.

I had always wondered how an open format like flickr would be able to provide hard prints outside of *your photos* from a legal perspective, but with a simple printing preference setting (the same type of setting you use to make your photos private or public in the first place), to a non-lawyer’s naked eye, it seems like that sticky issue is solved. Of course, you can always still download other people’s “protected” photos, upload them as private images and print them from your set of photos, but that’s true across the web — CafePress provides even more copyright infringement possibilities. I just ran that exact scenario on a photo that I wanted as a poster, but I only did so because it had a “Some Rights Reserved” Creative Commons license attached to it. I’m sure the guy will add a print preference to his images that matches his CC license one of these days.

As for the user experience, the QOOP interface uses interaction elements from both flickr and Yahoo! (great collaboration between teams), making it really easy to use. I had a bit of a problem when I tried to create a poster with multiple images, as the preview seemed to randomly choose which images to use from my selected images, but I’m sure that functionality will be tweaked soon enough as it’s (all together now) in forever beta mode! My only complaint of the service is that the QOOP and flickr logo (above) is automatically appended to the bottom of the poster. Branding an automobile is one thing, branding a poster is a bit tacky.

All in all, it’s some really nice work from Stuart Butterfield and team. I’m eagerly looking forward to more print customization features in the near future.

(via The Republic of T)

America, can we all put down our Coors Light and X-Boxes for a moment?

Thanks.

Now let’s dig back into our collective Cowboys and Indians past and pretend that every injustice in American history didn’t occur.

That’s right, every atrocity from the Vietnam War to the destruction of the Native American population never happened; no Tuskegee experiment; no slavery; anti-women suffrage; industrial age child labor, etc.

Did you find your happy place yet?

Good.

Now let’s wallow in our newly formed self-righteous goodness as a nation and take a look at the chant we were all required to recite in school, specifically the last part of our Pledge of Allegiance”

“…one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Are those words now fresh in your gray matter?

Good.

So, as an absolutely righteous nation with a Godly pledge, let’s take a look at one way our government reacted to the mother of all terrorist attacks.

So Much For “Indivisible”

Patrick Fitzgerald — the man who took down the 1993 WTC bombers, the 1998 bombers of the US embassy in Africa and John Gotti of the Gambino mafia family — is quite possibly going to hand out indictments to a chunk of the current administration for crimes of treason, including cover up perjury and obstruction of justice.

This is not an isolated case of misdoings; these charges have everything to do with the war in Iraq, and are even more telling of our government’s character.

For those of you that have been enjoying all the freedoms that this country provides, but with blind faith and limited involvement regarding our government, take a moment to review the following time line of our divisive leadership:

2001: An Italian intelligence report had Iraq purchasing uranium yellow cake from Niger, in defiance of United Nations sanctions. Dick Cheney contacted the CIA to look into its validity (since then, it’s become public knowledge that the report was forged)

February 2002: Unbeknownst to Dick Cheney, former-US ambassador Joe Wilson is dispatched by the operations unit of the CIA to Niger in order to verify the report provided by the Vice-President

March 2002: Wilson briefs the CIA and the State Department African Affairs Bureau to his findings, which turned out to be a complete contradiction of the forged Italian report; no such uranium sale had been made

September 2002: The British government publishes a “white paper” asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger, citing Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium from an African country

December 2002: The State Department publishes a fact sheet that mentions the Niger case

January 2003: Bush follows up his lies to Congress by addressing the American people and the world, stating that there was explicit evidence that Saddam had purchased yellow cake uranium in Niger

March 2003: The United States of America invades Iraq via Shock and Awe

June 2003: Discovered in October 2005, Scooter Libby’s notes show that Dick Cheney asked George Tenet — the post-9/11 decorated former CIA Chief — about Joe Wilson

July 6 2003: Joe Wilson writes an op-ed piece in The New York Times entitled What I Didn’t Find In Africa, which contradicts the administrations entire version of the Iraq, yellow cake and Niger story

July 14 2003: Directly following the printing of Wilson’s op-ed, Robert Novak identifies Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative in column titled, Mission To Niger. He attributes “senior administration officials” as his sources.

September 14 2003: On Meet The Press, Dick Cheney denies receiving any brief about Joe Wilson’s findings, adding “I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson.”

October 1 2003: Joe Wilson tells Ted Koppel on Nightline that Washington reporters told him that senior White House adviser Karl Rove said his wife was “fair game.” Wilson “plans to give the names of the reporters to the FBI,” which is conducting a full-blown investigation of the possible leak.

Outing the identity of an unofficial covert CIA agent is not only a threat to the lives of the agent and his/her colleagues, but it is an explicit act of treason, as it potentially threatens our National Security.

So here we have an administration espousing American values left and right, yet crafting false evidence to justify war with a sovereign nation. The same administration then attacks Wilson’s wife — and our safety as a nation — because Wilson made it crystal clear that the administration disregarded his official briefing in order to back false evidence and rally support for the war.

Bully tactics, plain and simple.

Back to the anthem; where exactly does the term “indivisible” fit into the equation here? How about that “one nation” concept? I can see “under God,” “liberty” and “justice for all” at work over in Iraq…

There’s a lot riding on Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation.

Holding individuals accountable for treason, perjury and obstruction of justice will begin to show American citizens and people around the world that the promise of the American Republic is still alive. Exposing the motivation behind these actions would go far in exposing the criminal cabal responsible for launching this war.

Look, I’m a realist, I know accountability is tougher to score than a 70-yard field goal. Unfortunately, I’m also at a point of my life where I perceive the motivations of the federal government as being one and the same with corporate America: short-term growth at any cost.

So while the potential reality of my perception of our government could be dangerous to the environment, individuals rights, the national economy and the shores of any sovereign nation with natural resources, the perception itself is even more disconcerting; for it is this perception of reality that rages as the unlimited and intangible natural resource that powers terrorism from oversees.

I stopped crossing my heart and blindly chanting the American jingle a long time ago for these exact reasons.

Haven’t you?

So the right wing fanatics over at the Media Research Center have started their own Media Matters for America with a few "subtle" differences:

1. Newsbusters is going after a "Liberal media bias," while Media Matters goes after "Conservative misinformation in the media." The difference between bias and misinformation is huge, with the former being a caddy conversation while the latter is fact based.
2. Apparently, comedians and actors are going to be held to the coals in this revue of bias

Look out Al Franken, David Letterman and George Clooney, you’d better stick to a serious discussion of the news, brought to you straight from the Fox Broadcasting Channel. No sarcasm, sardonic humor, satire or narrative stories about actual historical figures, or the Newsbusters are going to bust your ass!

How much do you want to bet that each of these losers have toy Ghostbuster hearses resting on top of their cubes. They probably had a launch party in full Egon Spengler gear with DJ Don “My Wife Is Still Hot” Surber flipping 8-Tracks.

Check out Al taking out a Colorado Righty. Okay, okay, it’s only a bit for his new book, "The Truth (with jokes)."

You gotta love a bookstore with a sense of humor.

(forwarded by blather)

This post is being pushed to my TypePad server through Flock’s integrated UI and API. I’m kinda digging this. Flock actually allows me to add tags to my post (unlike the flickr blog interface). Unfortunately, I can only hope that these tags match up with my current library of TypePad “category” tags, as my TypePad set isn’t displayed in the blogging user interface (as in the del.icio.us or flickr style for tagging information objects). That addition would be put this blogging feature over the top.

Back to test-driving this puppy. More later.

———-

Okay, I’m back. A few things I’m not digging here. When I tag entries in TypePad by choosing categories (one or many), Technorati automatically reads the categories assignments as "tags." So when searching/browsing tags in Technorati, my posts are already being indexed. Now, when tagging through the Flock interface, the tags are added to the actual post and preceded by the phrase “Technorati Tags.” While I appreciate advertising and adding to the Technorati mix, when I tag my “information objects,” I have explicit intent:

1. If my readers appreciated a post, they can simply click on the “posted within” category list at the base of the post to view an index of my content tagged with a particular label.
2. The category/tag navigation that I’ve chosen to expose on my blog is automatically updated with this new post.

Neither of these concerns are addressed with this blogging feature. My suggestion? Add value to TypePad’s current category/tag display by providing choices for viewing tag indexes (so on click of my tag list at the base of the post, provide a choice to view, say, Web 2.0 on connecting*the*dots or Technorati. If this is too complex for Flock to deal with (collaborative development), then I’m sorry, but I’m sticking to my core blog interface.

———-

I’m back in my TypePad interface, adding the category tags for this post.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, innovation

Delay, overheard on his cell phone, seconds before this shot was taken:

"Yeah! There’re gonna be a bunch of cockroaches where I’m going. I’m gonna make me a mint! Yee-haw!"

(via The Smoking Gun through blather)

Hopefully, free from the airwaves… soon.

O’Reilly would probably classify this post as another “attack post” to mount it on the cross he’s bearing on his current media tour, which began the other night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Apparently, Bill is tired of being the “warrior” for good. He’s tired of having to deal with the hatred that "famous news broadcasters" face. I know, O’Reilly and "news broadcaster" in the same sentence is pretty humorous.

O’Reilly’s second stop on the path to martyrdom was The Today Show. Once his complaining and self-aggrandizing came to a pause, Couric wondered out loud, why not try a different approach to help reduce the antagonism and stress of the job, maybe "an intelligent discussion" of the divisive issues? Bill’s response served as the pillar for his self-fulfilling prophesy of being driven to a ball of stress and hatred:

…If I start to go in there and be Mr. Rogers, no one is going to watch me…

In other words, loud, venomous, “entertainment” sells. There’s a market out there that needs to be served, and by hook or crook, Bill O’Reilly and Fox Broadcast Channel are going to serve them. But man… this hatred stuff takes a toll on the mind and body.

Well, Mr. O’Reilly, now that I understand your predicament, I feel it’s my duty to help you spread your deceitful hatred to my small neck of the woods. Your buddies at Media Matters did a great job documenting yet another of your "intelligent discussions" of a divisive issue; Border Control. Your selective quoting of Macarena Hernandez, and your historical perspective of illegal Mexican immigrants as being vessels of death is a clear example of your "intelligence" and "righteousness."

Good luck with your growing security detail and stomach ulcers.

The Onion is too good!

(via MacLiberals)

Noam Chomsky is the most self-deprecating “intellectual”… ever. When told that he was voted “World’s Top Public Intellectual,” Chomsky probably let out what amounted to an uncomfortable sigh.

You see, Chomsky actively participates in the world through the construct of language, which is highly relational and contextual, not hierarchical. This is why his political views are so unpopular with the American power elite; he’ll play along with their restructuring of nature’s flax matrix of relationships to fit their greedy motivations, while simultaneously challenging their authority by insisting that they must be held accountable to the consequences of their explicit actions within this structure of authority. Crazy notion, eh?

This award is a hierarchical assignment, obviously something Chomsky doesn’t believe in. If his fervent supporters and lobbyists would recognize this perspective and his core point about intellectuals using (completely paraphrasing from “Understanding Power“) “big words to explain concepts in confusing ways just to remain intellectuals,” maybe they’d be better equip to challenge more hierarchical structures in our quickly changing world.

This highly oxymoronic intellectual stratosphere should be reserved for Christopher Hitchens and the ilk.