Scripting News

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 19:34:39 GMT

Audio blog post with a sneak preview of a new site. ";->"

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 01:23:07 GMT

David Czarnecki announces a new podcasting plug-in for Blojsom. Bing!

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 04:39:40 GMT

Business Week RSS feeds.

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:43:33 GMT

Time: "Republican pollsters have long warned that Bush cannot allow his approval ratings to fall below 47% and still expect to win a second term."

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:56:24 GMT

John Palfrey: Electoral-Vote seeks backup.

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:56:49 GMT

LA Times article on podcasting. "They follow in the footsteps of blogs, from which podcasts were born."

Shaking the tree for BloggerCon

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:41:44 GMT

Just 18 days to BloggerCon III at Stanford Law School. We're still short on money for food, facilities, refreshments, wifi and webcasts.

Thanks to John Miller, Peter Blackshaw, Scott Mace, Doc Searls, Matthew Mullenweg, Betsy Devine, Don Park, Robert Sayre, Paul Boutin, Mike Liveright, Scott Rosenberg, Susan Mernit, Cole Jolley for their generous and spirited financial contribution to the success of the upcoming con!

We need a few more generous souls to part with some of their hard-earned cash so we can have the great time we all deserve. That, and good weather, and spicy noodles! ";->"

Should reporters listen to users?

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 11:05:58 GMT

Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN Crossfire was a big hit in the weblog world. His wasn't a Republican or Democratic point of view, it was a passionate plea for reporters to do better work. They couldn't hear what he was saying, wouldn't even let him finish a sentence.

We've seen the press take control of our political lives, as a result we went to war without deep support from the people. The Dean candidacy was swamped with coverage of a scream, and shortly after he was out of the race, some of the reporters acknowledged that the story was based on poor reporting. They control us, and as a result we're confused, voting for candidates based on very incomplete, even incorrect, information.

I asked some people who are participating in BloggerCon, or who have participated in past BloggerCons, to comment on what I thought was a very simple proposition, that reporters should listen to their customers. A similar idea gained some traction in academia, that students' success should be considered as a goal of the university's work. In journalism, an equivalent goal would be to provide the customers with good information on which to base a decision. Maybe if the reporters thought of us as customers they would care more about serving our interests.

This issue is at the core of Stewart's dissatisfaction with the press, and mine, and maybe yours. They tolerate lies, even lie themselves, we know it, but they seem to have lost sight of this, and we stopped caring, if we ever did. Do you care now? Could a news organization that really listened to its customers provide better service? Or would you just ask for more Lacey Peterson coverage, or Kobe Bryant, or the Dean Scream or (the latest) Marygate.

Should reporters disclose conflicts of interest?

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:51:13 GMT

I watched a CNN reporter this morning say over and over that newspaper endorsements don't influence voters.

Should she express a personal opinion on this, without reminding the viewer of her conflict of interest (she works for a television network).

Interestingly, they omitted that Kerry had gained endorsements from all the major Florida newspapers. Pretty remarkable. Not newsworthy? Why?

A famous puzzle

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 11:14:55 GMT

I was struck, in the first N comments, at how few people even tried to answer the question I asked.

Instead people respond with their favorite story, even if it was completely not responsive. It's as if they were on Meet The Press, spinning, fighting to say nothing that could be used against them in an attack ad run by their political opponent. In other words, the sloppy discourse of television is the discourse of daily life, even among intelligent, accomplished people.

My goal for BloggerCon is that for one day we all get out of that bubble, that we question what we believe, and see if another point of view might add something to our intellectual lives. That BloggerCon, by making speech easier, lets us relax a bit about listening, so some of it actually happens. ";->"

Anyway, if you want to see how good your intellectual vision is, here's a puzzle that's works for many people. I only know two people who got it right the first time. Most people don't get it right even when they know the correct answer! (I am one of those people.)

Nicely designed site for sharing commercials

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 11:05:44 GMT

A new site, p2p-politics rolls out today.

Nicely designed, easy to use, it lets you send links to political ads that are released under the Creative Commons to anyone you like.

So far they only have Kerry ads.

Larry Lessig, who is promoting this project says: "We've gotten lots of cooperation from the Kerry people. Can't seem to get a response from the Bush or Nader people yet.

"The content can come from anyone, so long as they donate a copy to the Internet Archive, which makes it available under a CC license."