Saturday, July 31, 2004

Brian Buck has been through hell, but he's still alive. Whew. He posted in May that his cancer took a turn for the worse, he was going back on chemo, and then, no updates. Every so often I wondered what became of him. Then this evening, an update!  

Saw The Manchurian Candidate this afternoon. "This is rich people funding bad science to..." I liked it but I'm not sure how it ended. Really. If you saw it and know what the ending is, please let me know.  

Ed, the Congressional Dems are all over blogs. That's probably why we were there. The local press doesn't cover their races. So they are doing what Scoop Nisker advises. "If you don't like the news go out and make some of your own." This is a very clever phrase because it captures the duality, making news is something news makers do, of course, but it's also something news reporters do. If the pros only want to cover the Presidential race, no problemmo, we can do it ourselves. To paraphrase a famous American patriot, The blogs are coming, the blogs are coming. They get it, they're excited, and we are too. 

Longfellow: "Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere," 

John Perry Barlow: Revolution with a Smile.  

New Republic: "The national press corps spent the better part of 1999 and 2000 insisting that George W. Bush was a centrist, because he kept repeating slogans that suggested as much. Reporters could have avoided this misinterpretation had they spent less time following Bush around the country and more time sitting at their desks doing Nexis searches, where they could have unearthed old Bush quotes like this one from 1996: 'The Republican Party must put a compassionate face on a conservative philosophy.' Surely that would have told them more about how Bush was actually planning to govern than the number of times he described himself as 'compassionate' or was filmed with black or Hispanic children." 

Goddard on Reagan on Bush. 

Here's the interview I did with The Gillmor Gang on Thursday. 

NY Times: "Political conventions are like 19th-century novels; they benefit from an omniscient narrator." 

Here's a site we will certainly add to the rotation at the Republican version of Convention Blogers, coming soon to a browser near you.  

The Campaign Institute trains people to be paid campaign staffers. They're doing trainings in Cambridge in August.  

Tim Jarrett is doing a cross-country road trip from Seattle to Delaware. 

Friday, July 30, 2004

Essay: What the bloggers should have done at the DNC. 

Google's IPO bidding site is live. Does that mean the IPO process has started? 

Oy I'm dealing with another round of spyware. Sometimes this stuff is amazingly insightful. Click on a link, up pops "Do you think marijuana should be legal, yes or no?" I don't dare click on that baby for fear of what will pop up. (FYI, the answer is yes, of course. Something like one-third of the people in prison are there for marijuana offenses. That's just ridiculous.) But get this I had clicked on the link to a blog whose author is certain to be a stoner. How did they know? And how do I get rid of these. I've run Spybot, Adaware, countless times. Updated Windows. Yeah I know, switch to a Mac. Use Firefox. But what does Microsoft, with all its fancy patents, think I should do? Hey now that we're friends, what does the DNC think?? 

Okay, let's critique one of the critiques. He didn't give us a list of blogs he read so we could see if his judgment was based on breadth, or maybe he was just too lazy, or picky, to find the good stuff.  

Heard in the airport lounge: "I haven't eaten a vegetable in a week." 

Rogers Cadenhead: "Weblogs represent a mass consumer revolt against the giant electronic media and the bottom-line fixated, risk-averse, synergy-loving infotainment cesspool that it has become." 

Michael Feldman has a two-word message for his media friends. 

Jim Moore, not just a talking head, calls Kerry's speech a home run. 

Okay reporters say the bloggers didn't break any news. I wonder if they read Micah Sifry's report on the money behind the Democrats that was hidden in plain sight. For a brush-up on how the mind works, try Don's Amazing Puzzle. It's amazing because it so clearly illustrates how your mind mostly sees what it expects to see.  

The job of a blogger is to stay steady even when they say you're stupid, unqualified, inexperienced, irrelevant, biased or self-obsessed. Maybe even report on them saying it. Let the reader draw his or her own conclusion as to why they do this. I have a lot of training, because people in the tech blogging world say all these things about me, and have been doing so for years. In the end it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. My flow keeps going up, I keep getting better at what I do, and there's always more juicy bits to point to.  

I'm at Boston's Logan Airport, using their WiFi. It's $6.95 for 24 hours of access. Two major irritations at modern airports I always forget to mention (because I rarely blog in airports I guess). First, people sitting behind you in the waiting area talking on their cell phones, saying very mundane personal things that I really didn't want to know, at full volume. I guess the conversations are especially irritating because you can only hear one side. You wonder if the person at the other end is really interested, or is as irritated as you are. The second thing that bothers me is how you get separated from your wallet as you go through the screening. There it is, sitting out in the open, waiting for anyone to pick it up. The guy in front of me complained about his $6000 Rolex watch being so vulnerable, so they went and got it for him. I mumbled my wallet is worth more than $6000 to an identity thief. Did they get it? Nahhh. This goes along somewhat with the lax security at Fleet, where people got in without any kind of matchup between their ticket and their ID. I'm not any kind of security expert, but I think we got off easy this week.  

An observer noted that I tend to write Flint Center when I really mean Fleet Center. The former is the place where Apple Computer did its famous rollout of the Macintosh in 1984, an event surely as memorable as this year's DNC. Let history record that Fleet Center (whose name is likely to change now that Fleet Bank has merged with BofA) was where the 2004 Democratic National Convention was held.  

Casting note. CNN's Tucker Carlson could play Young Steve Jobs in Steve Jobs, The Movie. No doubt this will be the bit everyone quotes from today's Scripting News. 

Steve Rubel interviews convention blogger Matt Stoller. 

Charles Cooper: "Most of the credentialed bloggers came off like cyberhayseeds in the big city." 

Cooper quoted Rick Heller, without linking to the post he was quoting. Heller responds. 

Something I noticed too. There's a lack of discipline among the pros which has deformed discourse in all areas including science, technology, economics, medicine (areas where accuracy really counts). The practice of quoting out of context, if you don't want to be made to look like a fool, turns opinions into mush. I got quoted out of context quite a few times this week, I knew it would happen when I posted the item about how boring the convention was on Monday. I published the bit anyway, because communicating with my readers is more important to me than potentially being made to look like an idiot by professional reporters. This is something I'd like them to look at. If you're really an idealist (and many pros are) you have no choice but to try to convey the meaning of the people you quote. To do otherwise would violate rule #2, saying something you know is not true. 

Paul Krugman: "Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates' policies, and turned instead to trivia." 

Lance Knobel: Security 101 and the DNC. 

Orange Mike, who made an appearance on Convention Bloggers on Wednesday, appears mysteriously in a Time photo-essay on the DNC. 

Wired reviews The Manchurian Candidate, which appears to be must-see. 

Thursday, July 29, 2004

As Dowbrigade reported, the net access from the blogger blockade on the seventh floor was pretty bad, so I went to dinner with Nico who I know from the Dean campaign, and then watched the speeches back at my hotel. I was less glued to the keyboard, and nodding out at times. It's been an exhausting week and it finally caught up with me. A few notes before signing off for the day... 

First it wouldn't be a Democratic convention if we didn't run a picture of Michael Dukakis in the tank. I've been looking for a way to sneak that in. Gotcha. About the Kerry speech, it was so hard to watch. I wish I were watching it on TiVO so I could hit pause and catch my breath as he moved from topic to topic at utterly inhuman speeds. This guy is a very unnatural public speaker. It looks like they worked on getting him succinct, now they have to get him to work on the breathing. The crowd kept wanted to be part of the event and the candidate simply wouldn't let them in. Oh well, anything's better than Bush. 

Jay Rosen writes that he is not an official RNC blogger, he's going to be part of the Knight-Ridder team. I suspect many bloggers (such as myself) will wrangle an invite in this fashion. I got the news from Jay while I was still in the press filing room. One of my deskmates who works at a BigPub said his organizatioin hadn't been contacted by the RNC yet, so there's still time. Good. I want to be there. It would be a shame not to be able to contrast the two conventions. One difference I already know about, there's a dress code at the RNC, apparently. I've been wearing jeans and nice shirts and shoes, which is pretty dressed-up for me. On the first two days I wore a blazer. That caused John Palfrey to gasp with surprise. Dave -- blazer? Well I actually own a few, but you would never know it based on how I dressed at Harvard.  

CNN is waxing about how well Kerry spoke. Come on admit it. Those choppy hand movements were almost other-worldly. What was he thinking? Anyway, he's the only guy to vote for in 2004. Dubya? Only if you want more wars.  

Jack Hodgson is blogging the Oshkosh air show.  

Jay Rosen says, via email, that he's been given permission to blog the Republican National Convention.  

Globe and Mail: "Bloggers are rushing in to fill a void, one that was once held by local newspapers." 

Behind the scenes in the press filing room at the DNC. There's a point to these pictures. How different do these people look from people you'd meet at a blogger's conference? They have a passion for information, take pride in their craft, are competitive, and are always trying to do better. They laugh at the same kinds of jokes we do. Like the bloggers at the DNC, these tend to be the good ones, the ones who care.  

Walking from Copley Plaza to Fleet Center on a hot Thursday.  

The same walk on a sub-zero Sunday in February 2000. Today it was a bit warmer, in the mid-80s and quite humid.  

Just heard that Willie Nelson is on stage now. I'm working in the Press Filing Room where I have access to a land (phone) line. 

2PM: Arrived at Fleet Center. Walked here from Copley Square, taking lots of pictures. As I arrived at the hall, Carol King was rehearsing for her performance tonight, singing You've Got A Friend. She's amazing. I got a couple of pictures. 

From France: "Les bloggers, guest stars de la convention democrate." 

Next event, my live interview on WHYY Philadelphia. I love saying that. It's what Terry Gross says just before (or after, I can't remember) Fresh Air, in her Jonathan Schwartz-like faux-sincere radio-voice.  

Matt Stoller, a convention blogger, mildly criticized Democratic wunderkind Barack Obama, who gave a brief and totally uninspiring talk at the blogger's breakfast. Apparently, this comment caused the DNCC to "sever its affiliation with Stoller and remove his name from the blog of the committee's Web site." As a volunteer for the DNCC, Matt was instrumental in getting us to Boston, acting as a go-between for the bloggers and the DNCC. I don't know the details, but it's sad that such an innocent comment could be made so important. Obama was flustered when he spoke to the bloggers, Matt actually got it right, whether or not they want to work with him. 

I just got a voicemail from Matt Stoller saying "This is just a journalist looking for controversy." According to Matt it's not true.  

AP: "As a member of the traditional media, I don't believe I need to look for a new job yet." Same old story. Lead: Are bloggers going to change everything? Twelve graphs. Whew. Turns out my job is safe. But tell me this, why should readers care if your job is safe? And they say bloggers are self-obsessed.  

Why can't the press get the URL of this site right? I've seen all kinds of variants in the last few days, some of which are real pages on one of my sites, but are not my weblog. In the write-up on the WHYY interview above they break new ground and list an address that's 404. Reminds me of the old days when we would typeset manuals, and the print designers would insist on typesetting the screen shots. Of course they'd introduce errors, and the users, who didn't use typeset computer screens, must have felt a disconnect. Eventually, I fired the typesetters and we ran actual screen shots. Advice to our brothers and sisters in print, radio and TV, you gotta test the URLs, and it helps to have a mailto icon that goes directly to someone respoinsible for the content so errors can quickly be corrected. Imagine the diligent WHYY listener who wants to visit my blog before hearing my BS. I suppose they would Google me. Okay that works. Sighhh. 

Another dirty little secret from Kos. "One person collects all their credentials, walks out the Fleet Center, and returns with a whole new group. Lather. Rinse. Repeat." That's how the Fleet gets so over-full.  

Matt Haughey notes that Fox only shows small parts of convention speeches, without context. They are able to do this because like all press at the show, they get advance copies of the speeches. Maybe this is why the Dems shouldn't distribute advance copies. All reporters have laptops. The whole thing could be webbed and distribution would be instantaneous. It would also defeat the Dewey Beats Truman stuff we saw yesterday. The Dems should go to a Steve Jobs event and see how they do it at Apple. There's an art to making dull announcements seem exciting. I bet Steve could have rolled out the program Edwards launched yesterday with a lot more sitting on the edge of the seats than we saw. (But Steve could probably learn a few tricks from the Dems. They have a lot more users.) 

Want another dirty little secret? Of course you do. You can't hear what the speakers are saying from up in the blogger cocktail lounge on the seventh floor. It's all mumbled and fuzzy. Rebecca, Jesse and I read the transcript of the Edwards speech while he was giving it, he didn't deviate much, but he didn't read the exact speech either. All the other speakers were totally jumbled. To hear what they actually say I have to try to catch it on C-SPAN after the show back in the hotel room. This leads to my second feature request. How about a live audio webcast, on the LAN in the convention, so we can put on headphones and hear the speakers' actual words in real-time. We've tried using the C-SPAN webcast, and it works (though not well on the flaky WiFi setup) -- but here's the problem -- there's a five-ten second delay. So the crowd is erupting while we're hearing the buildup. Not very good. Eventually I gave up on that approach, and just tried to figure out the mood by watching and listening as best I could without technical assistance.  

We got some excellent swag at last night's blogger's party hosted by Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader. Usually you get worthless crap but these guys know how to spend money. First a hand-held WiFi dectector, something I had heard of but never used. Instead of having to boot up your laptop to find out if you're in range of a WiFi router, with this guy you just press a button and if the light goes on, you have a signal. Very useful, goes in the knapsack for sure. The other cool thing is a little USB disk drive. How nice I thought, I wonder if they put any MP3s on it. Well they did, but not the Grateful Dead or Sting or Stevie Wonder. They put speeches from various Representatives. Okay it's not music but it is creative. Someone put some thought into it. Coooool. 

One more time: The Blogger's Theme Song. 

Minnesota Public Radio: Kerry Nominated. 

Kaye Trammell passes on a cartoon from a pro who wonders about the qualifications of bloggers.  

Danah Boyd: "More and more, journalists are thanking bloggers for new slants. The competition between journalists and bloggers for readers' attention results in more diverse and compelling coverage." 

US Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." 

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

New term: Visibility whip. 

The convention welcomes John Edwards.  

This place is incredibly emotionally charged. More intense than a World Series game. When people say nothing happens here, no news, that's just wrong. Jesse, sitting to my right, says the place is so jammed he saw Rob Reiner and his handlers trying to talk their way into seats. Basically every seat in the place is filled and then some. Elizabeth Edwards is speaking now.  

Micah Sifry: Hidden in Plain View. 

Dewey Beats Truman. "Edwards hits the stage at Democratic convention to build up Kerry." Only one problem -- it hasn't happened yet.  

Dowbrigade endorses Kerry -- The kiss of death? 

Rebecca has a short audio blog post for Scripting News readers. 

Al Sharpton didn't give anything resembling the vetted speech. 

Command Post: "Al Sharpton was to have 6 minutes… he took 20." 

Logical Realism: "Not sure if it carries through on TV or radio, but the crowd is really pumped tonight." True. 

Random Wednesday DNC pictures. 

Blogging pioneers Rebecca Blood and Jesse James Garrett visited. 

PR Week: "Eric Kraus, Gillette VP of corporate communications, called the blog rumors 'an urban myth.'" 

I'm going to be interviewed soon by ARD, German television, for a show called Tagesthemen. 

Senator Dick Durbin will be at the blogger booth at 8:30PM tonight for bloggers who are interested. 

Nancy Pelosi and the DCCC are hosting Blogger Bash at Meze Estiatorio 10PM-2AM tonight. "Invitation only." 

Mike Byron, a delegate and Democratic candidate for Congress (CA-49) is blogging daily on the Byron for Congress campaign blog. 

Dan Bricklin: "Political conventions today are about transmitting a feeling and the press tries to filter that out, leaving something strange and unnatural." This is a kickass must-read piece. Dan is making an important contribution to convention blogging, the off-site guy who reads all the stuff and then thinks about what it means. Here, there is no time to think, there is only time to do.  

David Weinberger: Objective Rhetoric. 

I was just interviewed by Niharika Acharya of Voice of America's Hindi service , broadcast in India. Gaurav Dwivedi is the cameraman. Like most television crews they like you to contort yourself into unnatural positions so that you can't actually type accurately, but it looks good on TV for some reason. So that is exactly what I'm doing right now, as silly as it might seem!  

Ed Cone: "Is Atrios going to be more credible, or more popular, now that we know who lives in the mansion above the Batcave?" 

Jessamyn the Librarian wearing a Blogger™ shirt. 

Am I crazy or does Christian Crumlish look a lot like Marc Canter?? 

Today's audio blog post, began with a question from Teresa Hanafin from Boston.Com, and then drifted into setting the context for tomorrow's Gillmor Gang audiocast. Also look for a 20-minute discussion tomorrow morning at 10:40AM Eastern on WHYY Philadelphia. 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer on two anonymous Microsoft bloggers. 

Philadelphia Inquirer: "Welcome to Bloggers' Boulevard." 

Betsy Devine: "I don't wear broomstick skirts or cowboy boots." 

Dave Johnson: "I think that next week is going to be the week to really read bloggers." 

Dave is right, I think. It's not just that time for writing is scarce (it is), it's also that the mood is pretty edgy because of the security. Last night I cut out early to have dinner with a friend who is not part of the convention. Took a cab down Commonwealth Ave. Downtown Boston is a military encampment. The uniforms were very strange, lots of weird colors, helmets, bullet-proof vests, handcuffs. A motorcade held up traffic, but I couldn't figure out who would be in such a large motorcade, and the special security was unbelievable. Heavy armored vehicles. Snipers on the roofs, armed guards at every public building, and this was several blocks from Fleet. As I left the convention area I felt a real sense of relief. If there's going to be an attack tonight I'm going to watch it on TV, I thought. I don't know how many other people feel like they're at Ground Zero when they're inside Fleet, but I feel it, even though it's not stopping me from having fun and doing new things, not knowing how it's going to come out is preventing me from drawing conclusions.  

NY Times: "If there was anything Senator John Kerry's strategists were hoping to avoid this week, it was the image of a Massachusetts liberal in funny headgear." 

Tim Jarrett: "Reading the convention blogs, one gets a feel of life on the FleetCenter floor that network TV may never again deliver." 

Marc Nozell shot this picture of me on Fox this morning.  

I'm up early to appear on Fox & Friends at 6:45AM Eastern.  

Convention Bloggers is a Yahoo Pick today."This site's front page works as a news aggregator, constantly refreshing its content as convention bloggers update their sites. This site proves that a simple idea can produce an excellent resource for anyone interested in more convention coverage than the cable news networks offer." 

Dowbrigade: "Our bus, like the majority of the others, parks as far away as possible from the fenced in protesters." 

Jessamyn: "Having a women's room that never had a line made up for almost every indignity that we had to deal with." 

Ted Kennedy: "The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush." 

Scoble: "The blogs are better than TV, but one problem is that I don't know where to go for the good stuff." 

Talkleft: Name That Blogger. 

Google: "This page is not yet ready." 

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Centerfield: "I understand now why Tom Brokaw didn't seem to be paying attention to Clinton's speech last night." 

Matt Gross: "Do you see the man behind the curtain yet?" 

Dan Gillmor: Why not to bid on Google IPO. 

Happiness is blogger buttons. 4 of em! 

More pictures from the show floor. Peter and Paul of Peter, Paul & Mary. Judy Woodruff (CNN) and Dan Rather (CBS). 

Pictures from the show floor, Wolfe Blitzer/CNN, the DNS office. 

Audio interview with Minnesota candidate for the House, Patty Wetterling. I did the interview with Natasha Celine of Pacific Views. We're in the Democratic News Service; they are "dedicated to getting great stories for the bloggers." 

Second audio interview with Don Means, senior political advisor at Meetup.Com. Again my co-hort is Natasha from Pacific Views. 

Michael, for a thoroughly researched but dark view of Microsoft, nothing beats Breaking Windows by David Bank. 

Paolo Valdemarin: Calibrating Points of View. 

National Journal: "Who would waste a cannoli?" 

Michael Markman, a longtime reader of this site, writes: "It looks like the bloggers at the convention have very little to say except, 'Look! we're blogging at the convention. I just got credentials." I respond: It's just the second day, and the first convention. Of course the first comments are going to be It works! And maybe that's all there is to it. We'll find out. You can't hurry love. 

Berkman exec director John Palfrey wonders, perhaps, if the bloggers may be sorry we asked for creds at the DNC, noting my "boring beyond belief" post. First, it got more interesting, and second, while it was really boring at 5PM, no regrets. I recalled watching conventions as a youth, probably the Ford-Carter conventions in 1976, and the ones that nominated Mondale and Dukakis. I go back as far as Nixon-McGovern in 1972. In all cases, you could tell, watching it on TV, that the people at the convention totally weren't paying attention to the speeches, even though the cameras were focused on them. I remember feeling, at the time, what a waste. Now the networks have figured that out and aren't bothering to cover the speeches that are so dull even the delegates don't bother. On the other hand it was a good move for bloggers to be included, and a good move for us to come. The convention proceeds at a pace that's more amenable to our style of reporting. We're getting the hang of it. I expect to be writing about this convention for weeks, months and years to follow, Murphy-willing, of course.  

Lance Knobel pulls a quote from a Jay Rosen piece about political consultants at Harvard's Institute of Politics, and how they set expectations for candidates. There is something seriously wrong, if our political system were working, candidates would be judged by how well they represent the interests of voters, not how well they meet the expectations of political insiders. The tech industry went through the same thing, it was called a bubble, and it popped. This one will pop too.  

Hollywood Reporter on convention bloggers.  

Today's Boston forecast: "Highs around 70." Ahhhh. 

On the bus back from the convention last night I sat next to two bloggers from The American Street, both from Oregon, which I learned is a swing state. I took some pictures but I have to get some coffee before I procede with processing. 

Monday, July 26, 2004

Good night. See y'all tomorrow, bright and early! 

NY Times: "The Republicans have temporarily transplanted their 'war room' to a bunker just two blocks from the FleetCenter." 

Reviews of the Gore speech: NewsHounds, Salon, NY Times. 

They're giving out these cool blogger visors. 

Michele Catalano of Command-Post is credentialed for the RNC. I'm jealous! I want to be there.  

I'm being interviewed by CNN right now, Jeff Greenfield, and they want a shot of me typing something into my weblog.  

Hey they really like Hillary Clinton here. The NY delegation is waving NY heart Hillary signs. 

Jim Moore stopped by the blogger's desk for a portrait. That's Matt Stoller in the foreground. If you're in the neighborhood we're in section 319-20 on the 7th floor. Happy to do portrait photography. Don't expect great conversation. During the less interesting speeches I'm listening to music on iTunes, and sometimes I have much better background music than everyone else. I've got a great Tears For Fears song playing right now. Followed by Blondie singing Heart of Glass. We bloggers make our own entertainment. Then the Dems crank up a great tune, I Am Everyday People. Which is consistent with the blogging theme, which is We're Just Folks, Come As You Are. "Different strokes for different folks." Yeah. "We gotta live together." 

Al Gore just gave a kickass speech. Full of good vibe and reasoning.  

Talkleft: "And the no longer anonymous Atrios is here!" 

Hearing that I got out of my seat, introduced myself to the Talkleft blogger (she said on her blog that she's sitting next to David Sifry who I know, of course), she pointed out Atrios, I asked if I could take his picture, and he said yes. Now there officially has been news at the DNC. The uncloaking of a blogging super-hero.  

Reuters picks a good quote off Scripting News.  

Reinvented: What are the bloggers browsing? 

By 7:30PM the floor is full, people are posed for a picture. Then they play Dancing in the Streets and We Are Family, and it becomes a dance floor. We're weaving and humming up on the 7th floor too.  

Convention Bloggers has had 30K hits today. Not bad for a site that didn't exist three days ago. 

Jim Moore: "These jets come out of the North American Defense Command, but are now under the direct control of the Secret Service." 

New header graphic to go with the current locale. 

Daniel Berlinger asks for a colophon of tools convention bloggers are using. Answer, for the most, they're using their normal laptops. I'm using my ThinkPad. Other stuff: The new Nikon Coolpix, USB cable for the camera, two mikes, two headphones, a Radio Shack line splitter (so I can plug in two mikes at once, but it doesn't work), a power strip, USB mouse, cell phone, business cards, and that's about it. I deliberately emptied my backback this morning, a dry-run yesterday proved I was carrying too much weight, no need to bring the iPod (my laptop has iTunes and all the music on the iPod). Don't need my crossword book, or my passport or checkbook and all the other miscellaneous michegas that's accumulated in my knapsack. Amazing how much weight all that adds up to. (PS to Adam, I got a big heavy-duty mike from Radio Shack.) 

Well, the convention has started. It's boring beyond belief. It can only get better. Everyone on the floor is mulling around, chatting. Can't understand what the speakers are saying. It sounds like this: blah blah blah John Kerry blah blah Kerry Edwards blah blah values values values blah blah John Kerry blah blah blah standing at a crossroads blah blah. There's a din in the room. I had to go get a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee to stay away. Zzzzz. Blah blah K-E-R-R-Y blah blah Kerry Edwards and you. Thank you very much. 

Some big news. My picture is on John Kerry's blog. Hey I'm smiling.  

BBC: "A computer virus appears to have hit net search engine, Google, crippling its search service." 

News.Com: "Major Internet search engines were crippled Monday morning by a variant of the MyDoom worm, rendering Google inaccessible to many users and slowing results from Yahoo." 

NY Times: "The popular Internet search company, which is planning to sell shares to the public in an unconventional auction, said today it expected its shares to sell for $108 to $135 each." 

Today's audio blog post includes an interview with Matt Gross, formerly of Dean For America, and now chief blogger for North Carolina Senate candidate Erskine Bowles. 

Matt Gross has a picture of me blogging in the Fleet.  

We just got a paper copy of the National Journal Hotline. Very interesting crib sheet on the news of the day from the Washington perspective. They're also on the Web.  

Pictures from the blogger's breakfast in Boston. 

WBUR: Bloggers in the Bullpen. 

Barack Obama, who's running for the Senate in Illinois, spoke briefly at the Blogger's Breakfast. He's an up and coming star of the Democratic Party, according to David Weinberger, he'll be President in 12 years. 

Patti Labelle just came on to do an equipment check. She's just awesome. There are bloggers all around me on the blvd, the connectivity kind of sucks, I'm the lucky one, I've got a line. Behind me Dave Weinberger says "I've got no signal." 

I'm back from the blogger's breakfast, in the convention center, seated at a great desk on something called Blogger Boulevard. The breakfast speakers were Walter Mears, an ancient AP reporter who came out of retirement to do a blog of the convention, and then Howard Dean, who talked about how blogs were really important to the future of politics. There were two dozen print, radio and television reporters there, checking us out. I think we did pretty well.  

Adam Curry: "If Dave had been working for a radio broadcast organization, and filed this report he would've been looking for a new job within 5 minutes." 

Convention Bloggers is #1 on Blogdex and Daypop. Excellent. The aggregate picture is important, it helps people find what the bloggers are doing, as opposed to the head-pats from the bigpubs. And it helps the bloggers find new readers. Win-win. 

Command Post has the DNC schedule of events that are open to press. 

The official word on WiFi from Mike Liddell at the DNC. 

WSJ: Meet the Bloggers. 

BBC: Bloggers go mainstream at US conventions. 

NY Times: Year of the Blog? 

Josh Marshall: "The whole thing is mystifying to me." 

Morning pre-coffee notes 

Setting the scene over at the Fleet, we're way up high, in section 319 on the seventh floor. There's a section of seats that have been cleared out for the bloggers. We're told there will be tables and chairs so we can update from there. There is ample power, I brought a power strip. Last night Matt Stoller called to say that they had gotten the WiFi working. That's good.

This is the view of the stage from our space.

Right behind us, within touching distance is CNN's blogger booth. Not sure what they have planned there, I wish they weren't quite so close. I mean are they going to let bloggers hang out in their studio? I guess this is what you get when you aren't paying for the space.

This morning at 10AM is the official bloggers breakfast. From there we'll shuttle over to Fleet, wait in a huge line, go through security again, and then go upstairs to get set up, hopefully fully powered, with wifi.

Shea Staduim 

A picture of Shea Stadium from an airplane yesterday as we were taking off from LaGuardia Airport.

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Major major: NPR has RSS. I'm all over this! 

David Appell: "There's no journalist on the staff of the Boston Globe or the NY Times whose take I'm particularly interested in hearing. They're all basically one and the same to me. But the bloggers I read--Dave Winer, Kos, Josh Marshall--have, to me, individual voices that, I'm realizing, I'm interested in hearing from. Even if they've covering the same old convention as everyone else." 

Sunday Democratic National Convention pictures. 

Today's audio blog post, recorded while traveling from the Westin hotel in Copley Plaza to Fleet Center. Interviews with people along the way. Some very rough audio at the beginning with one quite large silent spot, but some really good stuff I think. Designed to go with the pictures, above.  

I'm in Flint Center, it's been an incredible ordeal to get in here. Lots of mazes to walk, a big security check, up on the seventh floor looking down on the floor of the convention as they're testing and rehearsing stuff. The WiFi doesn't work, and there's no place to plug in for power. I'm uploading this via a Sprint wireless modem. BTW, I remembered to bring a power strip with me.  

Another BTW, you heard it here first, the song of the convention is Johnny B Goode. Get it? John Kerry, John Edwards. Go Johnny go! 

Also thanks to Russ Beattie for insisting that I get the Sprint wireless modem.  

Arrived in Boston. Uneventful trip. Cab ride went right by the Fleet Center. Traffic not too bad. First I'm getting settled in, going to rest a bit then head over and try to get my credentials.  

I'm meeting Michael Feldman for dinner at 6PM at Mary Chung's in Central Square. Easy to get to, on the Red Line. It's the east coast version of spicy noodles (not as good, sorry). Let's make it a blogger's dinner, open to one and all. 464 Mass Ave. 617-864-1991. Spitting distance from the 8PM party. Maybe Wes Clark will come.  

How to get your credentials.  

I'm putting together a schedule for blogger-related activities at the DNC. If you have an event to add, please post a comment here. 

Pet peeve: Non-smoking rooms that smell like cigarettes. Yuckers! 

Aside from adding a few more blogs to the Convention Bloggers site this morning, I also added a weather feed for Boston, and have added the NPR top stories feed, and one for WBUR, the local Boston public radio station. I am so pleased I can't possibly explain. So this is not only a software exercise, it's an act of curatorship. While this is the first time I've published an aggregated site, it's not an original idea. Jim Moore has been talking about this for a long time, and Taegan Goddard at Political Wire has been doing it. The cool thing about curatorship in RSS now is that there's critical mass. There are enough different feeds, different points of view, that it's possible to be artistic. BTW, the weather in Boston is going to be pretty good. This time of year it can be brutally hot. It'll be rainy, but quite cool. That's something to be thankful for, believe me. 

BTW, part of the Convention Bloggers project has been pretty depressing. The variability in formats creates huge problems for users, on both sides. In this context, I am a user of RSS, of course. Then I see the NPR feeds and I'm smiling again. While the blogging tools vendors have generally played pretty dirty with the format, the pros and the big technology companies have played pretty fair. There are a small number of problems, but mostly their feeds just work. That's worth a lot. 

Jay Rosen in Newsday on convention bloggers.  

NT Times editorial: "If the delegates were not far outnumbered by the media, we would worry about why nobody wanted to come." 

Matt Stoller and Westin Kreibel did a video blog post of the inside of Fleet Center. Then Matt did a photo tour. The amount of information I have about the convention just went up by 800 percent. Thanks!  

WSJ: "The Boston Democrats' platform, which will be adopted this week without dissent, mentions President Clinton only three times, but the entire 37-page document is an ode to his record." 

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Today's neat net trick: Pictures from Convention Bloggers. There will be many many digital cameras, so this is just a warm-up. There are already some nipples visible in the flow. If you're under 18, please avert your eyes. It's totally automatic, if a blogger's feed has an image in it and the post that contains it has a permalink, then we include the image on the images page. Click on the image to get to the post. It's a little incentive system to encourage the convention bloggers to include more pics. 

Today's audio blog post, about developing the Convention Bloggers software, pictures from New Mexico and microphones.  

Command Post blogged the big story of the day, not enough toilets for members of the print media at the DNC. "60 serious coffee-drinkers per toilet." Ow that hurts. Someone was obviously channeling this concern to Scripting News yesterday. "I think they should also look into shutting down the public bathrooms. Never know what could happen in a urinal." 

If you're looking for me in Boston, this is where I'll be.  

After much thought I decided to include the NY Times on the Trail among the feeds that are scanned at ConventionBloggers and included in the blogroll. Yesterday, talking with Len Apcar, editor in chief of the Times on the Web, he asked about including this feed. That raised an issue I wanted to think about. I care about their convention stories, I personally subscribe all the NY Times feeds, their methods are certainly different from the bloggers, but in the end thought it's better to be inclusive. If there are other professional news organizations covering the DNC and have a feed that's exclusively for campaign coverage, please let me know. It'll be a judgement call on each one, of course, as it is with the blogs.  

Thanks to Instapundit, Bryan Bell, Political Wire, TalkLeft, Kottke, Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Boston.Com, Tom Watson, Centrist Coalition, Majority Report, Command Post, The Guardian, Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen and so many others, for linking to the new Convention Bloggers site. It's a community and its a blog, and it's great to see it getting so much support. Thanks!! 

Ed Cone: "Will the GOP do anything at all similar next month?" Yes, I hope to do a Convention Blogger site for the Republican convention as well. There's nothing partisan about the software. Like the posters and ads you see around NYC with Ed Koch (former mayor, a Democrat) saying that the Republicans love NY and are welcome here. Same with blogging, same with RSS. Technology doesn't know any political boundaries.  

NY Times: "The question that voters seem to be wrestling with now is not whether President Bush is a legitimate president but whether he is a trustworthy one." 

Dowbrigade: "Downtown, less than a mile from our office, they are buttoning down the Fleet Center step by step. The Secret Service took control of the area last night at 8. The nearby train station and Green Line subway stop are closed." 

A few unpublished driving pictures from last week in New Mexico. 

Jeff Sandquist: XM Radio and XML Encoding. 

Two years ago today: People with Good Hearts. 

Jim Moore reminded us last year on this day that "The fiscal year 2004 Federal budget is $1,731 billion dollars." It's noteworthy, because a campaign for President costs much less, in the neighborhood of $200 million. $1.7 trillion "is a lot of Haliburton contracts," he said. 

NY Times: "Microsoft is considering a sale of Slate because the model of creating a Web magazine of cultural criticism and political analysis to attract visitors to its MSN Network has little business salience in an age dominated by search applications. And the site's small size limits its ability to meaningfully contribute to Microsoft's revenues." 

Jonathan Schwartz: "If you're running Red Hat, and feeling frustrated by their support, exorbitant pricing, or weak security, it's time to look at Solaris, on any of the more than 200 hardware platforms we support." 

Schwartz is President and COO of Sun Microsystems, and uses his blog skillfully. 

It's funny how a brief first trip to a foreign country gets you interested in things you never were interested in before. 

Another thing that's funny is when you hear an old favorite song that you hadn't heard in years and can't get it out of your head.  

Friday, July 23, 2004

ConventionBloggers.Com went live today. It's got the freshest posts from bloggers who will be on-site at the DNC next week, including delegates with blogs, not just the credentialed bloggers. I could definitely use some link-love for this site. It's built to take hundreds of thousands of hits a day, maybe more.  

Thanks to Bryan Bell for a kickass theme design. It's a real eye-catcher. 

I should have seen this coming. I'm a fan too. Now the question is, will it go to his head? (Yeah, of course it will.) 

Techweb says that open wireless networks are a security threat. If they're going to shut down all the wireless LANs in the Fleet Center area, I think they should also look into shutting down the public bathrooms. Never know what could happen in a urinal. The pipes connect all kinds of buildings underground. Do you think a terrorist could take advantage of that? Think about it. Seriously. 

Heart this: 1. Spend five hours converting a big piece of code to run in a new environment. 2. When done with the first pass, say out loud, What The Hell. 3. Click on Run. 4. It doesn't blow up in your face.  

Lance Knobel: "Both America and the world would be far better for having a Davos man in the White House." 

One of the early mottos of Scripting News was "Watching them watch us." It would go to ridiculous extremes, there would be times of Watching them watch us watch them watch us. That was before we had the term Echo Chamber to sum it all up. Well, as Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter, There you go again. During the convention Dave Sifry from Technorati will be on CNN, helping CNN viewers watch us. Since I'll be there at the show, I won't be able to watch them watch us. So if someone else watching at home could watch them watch us, and report about it on their blog? And then I'll watch them watch CNN watch Sifry watch us. You see why blogs are so appealing to The TV Generation? There's lots of watching going on! 

Jim Moore: "This is the first time such a move has been made by the US Congress during the actual committing of a genocide." 

Wired: "A plan by TiVo to let its users transfer recorded TV shows to other devices is running into opposition from Hollywood studios and the National Football League, which fear their copyright content could get loose on the Internet." 

Finally a great soundbite from John Kerry, I don't recall the exact wording, but I'm sure we'll hear it 18 million times before the election. "I don't think we should be building fire houses in Baghdad and shutting them down here at home." It's perfect. In the same report on NPR, they say Bush no longer wants to be known as The War President, he now wants to be known as The Peace President. Heh. Yeah sure, try to wiggle out of that one. BTW, it's even worse than it appears. Not only is Bush spending our money to build those Iraqi fire houses, he's spending money we don't have. We're going ever-more-deeply into debt for Iraq. If the Dems could find some way to get that through to the voters, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan, Ann Coulter, et al, aren't telling them that, for some reason.  

On the first day of my New Mexico trip, I took a brief visit to the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. I had never been to Mexico. Unlike Canada, which looks like the US, this place was different. I told a friend it was like Toon Town in the Roger Rabbit movie, but then I realized that didn't quite cut it. It's actually like my spam-filled In Box. The communication is jumbled and low. If you had to live there, life would be dangerous and confusing. But since you don't, it's just very very strange. Later I found out, in a report on NPR, that they're having a serious murder problem there.  

Ron Reagan, the former president's son, was on Fresh Air yesterday. He raised a question that should always be asked of a candidate -- What qualifies you to hold this office? He asked that question about the now-president George Bush, and came up with no possible answer other than he kicked an alchohol addiction. Asked if four years later he'd like to change his appraisal, he said no. He's speaking at the Democratic National Convention about stem cell research. 

This morning's audio blog post.  

Conventional wisdom says that nothing ever happens at political conventions in the US. I thought about it, then realized you could say the same thing about a lot of other things that command public attention. For example, the Super Bowl, or the World Series. Or the inauguration, or even perhaps Election Day. Because people say it, does it mean it's true? Well, in some sense, nothing ever happens. Just ask a Buddhist. I mean really. We live, we die, we assume it makes a difference, but how do we know? So the conventional wisdomers are asking a very deep question. While they're examining this, I'm going to go to Boston with my digital camera, microphone, outliner and content management system, take some pictures, and share them.