Category: Paleoblogs

  • The eerily missing word

    Even if you slept through most of Social Studies in high school, the word “Extraterritoriality” was almost impossible to avoid. It was going to be on the test. Yet, in the weeks since the mass slaughter by Blackwater in Baghdad, it has been absolutely eerie in its total absence from the news. It referred to…

  • Enumerating social media patterns: a work in progress

    At BarCamp Block earlier this year I led a discussion of social media design patterns. The slides I posted were really more just about patterns and how we deal with them at Yahoo! But the group exercise was to brainstorm a huge list of social media and social networking activities that could be described and…

  • Set the terms of the debate

    TechPresident, a project of Personal Democracy Forum (which I used to write for), in cooperation with the New York Times and MSNBC, has launched a site called 10 Questions where anyone can suggest a question for the presidential candidates and anyone can vote the suggested questions up or down. It’s a kind of more open…

  • Do these people even read what they write?

    This was in a letter from my credit-card company: “So that you have no surprises, know that your APR’s, fees and other terms can change at any time.” –I guess they mean no surprising surprises.

  • RE: Join my network on LinkedIn

    This is a quandary for me….

  • Oakland for Obama?

    Just got a call from an organizer named Barbara with the local Barack Obama for President campaign, telling me they are opening a new Northern California campaign office in downtown Oakland….

  • Sisters are doing it for themselves

    At BarCamp Block I first heard about plans for She’s Geeky, a tech (un)conference for women by women. Immediately, I was intrigued. It sounds like a great idea, I love the title, and the organizers are some of the coolest folk I’ve met on the geek circuit. One of the prime movers is Kaliya Identity…

  • Shining a spotlight on money in politics

    I’ve written about MAPlight before but from time to time I feel the need to post an update about the amazing work it’s doing. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to this nonprofit, although my direct involvement is limited.) Since the last time I mentioned MAPlight it’s gone from just documenting donations to California politicians to…

  • Getting fired up for IDEA 2007

    I regretted not being able to attend the first-ever IDEA conference last year in Seattle and I was thrilled when the organizers decided to hold the second IDEA conference in New York City, my home town, at the legendary Parsons School of Design. IDEA has already in one year established a reputation for bringing big-idea…

  • Looks like Mash is in beta

    Yahoo! Mash (né Mosh) is open to non-Yahoos on an invitation-only basis. If you want to try it out, and you know me (or at least have some connection to me that you can tell me about), leave a comment and I’ll send you an invitation. Oh, my profile there, for people already in Mash…

  • Happy Rosh Hashana! L’Shana Tovah! Happy New Year!

    May your name be inscribed for good in the Book of Life! I understand there is another New Year, celebrated on January 1, but I think we need all the New Years we can get. The Jews actually have two. One is the start of the first month of the Jewish Calendar, in the Spring,…

  • Reputation and Patterns at SXSW

    Here’s my obligatory plug for my South by Southwest proposals. I’ve got two panels in contention at the cool-but-unwieldy Panel Picker, so I thought I’d provide some shortcuts here. A lot of folks feel that there are too many panels at SXSW and not enough solo presenters. I tend to agree, but I think the…

  • Build your own search robot at Searchbots

    Back in February, Mark Zeman, Lecturer and Subject Director in Digital Media, College of Creative Arts, Massey University, New Zealand, tipped me off to a search agent research project called Searchbots. I tagged it as something to blog about in my email and then, well, I got busy with my new job. I’ve finally checked…

  • Terrorism and Appalling Taste

    “After Mr. Qaddafi’s renunciation of terrorism and his agreement to end programs to develop unconventional weapons, the United States last year removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.”

  • Deadline Approaches. Bush Unconcerned.

    “President George W. Bush and his Democratic foes…fire the opening shots in a long-brewing clash likely to seal the fate of US war strategy….set[ting] the stage for Bush’s critical progress report,…due by September 15.” AFP DKo: So, why is Bush so unconcerned about this deadline bearing down? The answer, say confidants, is he plans to…

  • The Ticking Time Bomb

    “They would put people naked for up to 40 days in cells where they were deprived of any kind of light.” “History Will Not Absolve Us,” Nat Hentoff, the Village Voice, August 28th, 2007 DKo: Why does it go on and on? For one thing, they frighten us with stories of the “ticking time bomb.”…

  • Concerning Vampires

    From the promo for a play I’m going to see, “DRACULA,” Bram Stoker, “We think you’ll find it nothing less than epic…” I can believe it. There certainly must be something fundamental about the Vampire. There’s not much that competes with it for perpetual fascination. There used to be the gunfighter; I remember watching 15-20…

  • BarCamp virgin here – be gentle

    Two years after the first BarCamp (an ad hoc unconference formed initially in response to O’Reilly’s Foo Camp, I’m finally planning to make it to one, this weekend’s BarCampBlock, headquartered at SocialText’s offices in Palo Alto. According to what I just jotted on the Sessions page on the wiki, I’ve just volunteered to lead or…

  • Sifry steps down as Technorati CEO

    Maybe everyone else in the blogosphere knows this already but I just read that Dave Sifry is stepping down as CEO of Technorati: Technorati Weblog: A Change In Seasons Looks like Tantek’s timing was impeccable. I first met Dave during the dotcom bust when blogging was booming (again) on the backs of a lot of…

  • The Straitjacket of Socialism

    It would be mighty convenient if everybody put the “Printer Friendly” button in the same place on their Web pages. But that’s exactly what the communists would do!

  • Lawful Combatants, but not POWs

    US changes status of 14 detainees, AP, 8/10/07 “…Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Commander Chito Peppler said the proceedings….do not distinguish between lawful and unlawful combatants.” DKo: So, we took lawful combatants prisoner in the War in Afghanistan and they were not Prisoners of War. –Probably a bunch of unpaid parking tickets.