CBS News to Simulcast Couric on Web and TV

According to TV Week, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric will simulcast on the Web as it airs on TV and then following the live broadcast, it will remain available online as an on demand program.

It's Katie bar the door now as networks rush headlong to use IP delivery in hopes of meeting up with the audience who's abandoning TV for the PC.

Last time I watched the Network News, the preponderance of commercials for denture adhesive, pills for incontinence, etc. was a tipoff that their ratings with the young audience demos have fallen and they can't get up. Come to the Internet. It's where the young people hang.

Mickeleh's Take: Just because the kids are on PCs, doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna click on the network news. Expect Katie and producers to do their best to liven up the joint with format and presentation changes. Maybe CBS needs to hire Amanda Congdon as a co-anchor.

(Ironically, Amanda today is giving the lie to my rant about young demos by highlighting a clip from YouTube featuring what may be the world's oldest vlogger.)


(tags: CBS, Katie Couric, broadband, TV,YouTube,Amanda Congdon,
Amanda)

Brouhaha about blogging (Nick vs. Mike)

Yesterday I linked to a Nick Carr essay, The Great Unread. I didn't comment because I thought the post stood on its own and I didn't want to dilute or distort a reader's experience of it with too much characterization. If you haven't read The Great Unread yet, it's the homework for what follows. (But nobody is forcing you to do the homework.). Nick’s post was beautifully written and held my attention.

Turns out that Nick hit a nerve. Mike Arrington jumped on it and asked if Nick was really Robin Hood or just an A**hole for implying that the whole game is about soliciting links from more popular bloggers, and concluding that Nick's championing of the little guys was just a well-crafted plea for links back to Nick.

And that kicked off a food fight. about the essence of blogging and the nature of the blogosphere. Is it high school? Feudalism? Self-expression? or Conversation. (More homework: read the comments to both Nick's and Mike's posts.)

Who’s zoomin’ whom here? Is this a real controversy or some elaborately staged pro-wrestling contest? Is this a real battle for the soul of the blogosphere or a cry for attention? Scott Karp gets to the heart of why (some) people blog, Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing. Scott also reminds us that rejection has been the fate of the vast majority of all people who write for fame and money long before blogging reared its Hydra heads. (and tails.)

Why do so many bloggers have to graduate from the Monty Python Argument Clinic before posting?

Just remember that, anatomically speaking, the asshole is still way ahead of the long tail. If that's where Nick sits, he's doin' pretty well. There are plenty of much lonelier slots out toward the end of the tail.

That Mike responded with such vehemence–and that so many are blogging about this–suggests that Nick must have hit a nerve. Just sayin’.

The best tech marketers wrap their wares inside a messianic change-the-world ideology. It’s always some variant freedom, fulfilment, self-expression–the very top of the Maslow pyramid.

Bloggers are no different. The official ideology of blogging is all Woodstock Nation, Global Village, new media vs. old, Let every voice be heard. Yeah, yeah.

But bloggers are people, too. They're also ruled by other classic motivators. Lusts for power, affiliation, admiration—are lurking in there too.

The blogosphere, by virtue of its exponential growth can’t help but be a pyramid scheme. It has to be harder for the late-comers. (Unless, of course, their hearts are pure. And then, like Sir Galahad, Tom Hanks, and Indiana Jones, they'll find the Grail.)

But has there ever been a pyramid built with more chutes and ladders? So many ways to find an audience--if it's an audience you seek. This is as fluid as it gets in human interaction. which makes it easier for newcomers.

For whatever reason, many bloggers find loneliness, frustration, and disappointment. Rather than dismiss them as unworthy, Nick gave them an eloquent voice. So, I paid him with the coin of the realm and linked to him.

Mike asked whether Nick is an a**hole. For that I posted a comment to his site, but offer no link. He doesn’t need one.

From each according to his abilities. To each according to his needs.

Mickeleh's Take: It's all good. Blog if you will for whatever reasons move you and whatever reward you seek. If the reward is slow coming, take courage from Fudd's First Law of Opposition: If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. (Firesign Theatre).

(Tags: Nick Carr, blog, blogger, blogging, Mike Arrington)

Fake Steve Still Funny (if not funnier)

I've been neglecting to check the Fake Steve blog for a while. A big thanks to Nick Carr for mentioning it this morning. And, on the subject of Nick, his post yesterday, pokes through the some of mythos of the blogosphere in a very moving, honest, and helpful bit of prose. (Don't let "prose" scare you off. Click it.). The conversation in the comments is a congenial expansion. Lately I'm viewing everything throug the lens of the Long Tail (don't parse that too closely, please.) I'm avoiding saying much about it, not only because I'm inarticulate and without merit, but also because I think Nick has said it well.

(Tags: Nick Carr, blog, blogger, blogging, Fake Steve)

Om is covering the Comcast story

Om Malik has picked up on AdAge "Comcast wants to be Yahoo" story. And he's taking the modern web party line I predicted yesterday.

How old fashioned! Still, I wonder the wisdom of this move, especially since the company is fighting the triple play battle with politically more savvy phone companies. Shouldn’t that be the focus? I think this is yet another example of “google envy.”
...
With the exception of Yahoo, the portal plays made by all comers have been cash guzzlers. Google for all its reach, or Microsoft for all its might and AOL - all are still a distant second compared to Yahoo, the one true portal.

Mickeleh's Take: Om is right. Comcast will never topple Yahoo! But they don't have to. Take the long tail view of things. There's money to be made farther down the tail. Comcast may also be betting on the end of net neutrality to give them a performance advantage or a new revenue stream. The cable pipe is still the place where TV networks want to be and that gives Comcast huge leverage for content deals.

(Tags: Comcast, broadband, portal, advertising, Om, GigaOM)

AdAge: Comcast's ambitious online goals

The video to the home game continues to get more interesting and more complex.

We've seen the first moves of the program owners are using iTunes, Google video, and their own sitesto route around the walled gardens of the multi-channel providers (e.g. Comcast, DirecTV, Verizon).

We've seen News Corp announce plans to use MySpace as an on demand video store.

Now comes word of broad initiative by Comcast to route around these burgeoning Web aggregators and maximize online video viewing through its own online video walled garden. AdAge has the scoop. Comcast has a lot of pieces already in place

• Audience: they are the country's largest broadband internet provider--and 70% of their customers use the Comcast online portal.
• Content: based on their cable video carriage deals, they have both relationships and leverage to bring high-valued content to the Web
• Infrastructure: By acquiring The Platform earlier this year they have technology for aggregating, managing, and distributing video content in multiple formats
  

Mickeleh's Take: The Web 2.0 gang will be tempted to dismiss Comcast the way they continually misunderestimated AOL back in the twentieth century. I wouldn't. But I would get busy to do everything we can to preserve net neutrality.

(Tags: Comcast, broadband, portal, advertising)

Verizon's multi-room DVR stirs the pot, but has some big gotchas

Verizon is jumping into the multi-room DVR category in a big way. Their Home Media DVR has much to recommend it, but also has some significant gotchas.

On the plus side: the main room gets a two-tuner high-definition DVR with the ability to stream SD recorded content to two additional rooms simultaneously. The other rooms use a standard IPTV set top box. In addition, PC-based music and photos can be streamed to any of the TVs on the system. Verizon will use the advanced capabilities of this system as a competitive advantage to tempt cable customers over to its IPTV offerings. As Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff says, "For the first time, this means that Verizon can compete with cable on features, not just on price." It's not, however, a sustainable advantage. Motorola, who supplies this technology to Verizon is eager to arm the cable industry with identical capabilities.

On the gotcha side: The main unit is HDTV-capable. The client units are not. This means that anything that's recorded on the DVR in high definition can't be streamed out to the other rooms. If you don't have HDTV yet, no problem. But if you do, the system is not as useful as you'd hope. Once people invest in an HDTV display, they vastly prefer HD content over SD.
The Verizon system will force customers to compromise. Do I record the SD version, so I can share it, or the HD version so I can enjoy my delicious new display? The other big gotcha for customers is that the client units don't let you pause, replay, or rewind live TV. DVR users love that function. Will they be happy not to get it at all TVs in what is billed as a multi-room DVR?

We are inevitably marching forward toward a home and portable media vision that was first presented to us in Star Trek TNG. Big screens, hand-helds, desk-tops, (and, of course, the totally immersive holodeck). But we're marching slowly. And nobody has yet delivered an uncompromised whole-home entertainment system.

Mickeleh's Take: Too many gotchas and compromises for a hit product, but it's going to open the category a little wider. Any success will prompt cable and satellite providers to match the Verizon product. TiVo's uphill battle against embedded DVRs gets steeper. There's still room for somebody to get this right. Apple? Moxi?

Disclaimer: I used to work for Digeo, who makes the Moxi multi-room DVR. Moxi has the ability to down-convert HD content so that it can be viewed in another room on an SD set. It also has full trick-mode on live TV in both sets.


(Tags: Verizon, Fios, DVR, Home Media DVR, multi-room DVR, multiroom DVR, IPTV, Cable TV, home networking, Moxi)

Fox TV to sell on demand content on MySpace

The world of TV and movies over the internet just got a lot bigger. And Rupert Murdoch's abilities to monetize the enormous traffic on MySpace (over 100 million registered users) just got a lot clearer.

According to the Financial Times, MySpace (and other sites) are going to sell movies and TV shows on demand from Fox. The deal for customers is reminiscent of what Apple worked out for music and video on the iTunes store: Download to own, transferrable to portable devices, priced at $19.99 for a movie, $1.99 for a TV show.

Mickeleh's take:

1. In general: This is part of an accelerating trend by corporations who control the rights to programs that people want to watch to route around the limits -- and negotiating clout-- of cable TV and satellite distribution. (see Shelly Palmer's Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV for the best 50,000 foot overview)
2. Specifically: Don't be surprised that News Corp (parent of Fox, MySpace, and DirecTV) is by-passing DirecTV in this. The lack of a robust VOD capability is a big competitive disadvantage for satellite vs. cable. Here's one way to route around that. Combine these deals with DirecTV's active bidding for wireless spectrum, and a coherent and powerful strategy begins to emerge.
3. As the big guys develop increasing presence in internet distribution, it's going to force video podcasts, vlogs, and user-generated content farther and farther down the long tail. (good thing there's plenty of room down there.)
   

Marshall Kirkpatric covers the Fox announcement today on TechCrunch.

(Tags: News Corp, MySpace, VOD, on demand Cable TV, TechCrunch, DirecTV)

Shelly Palmer's take on Sony Mylo

Shelly Palmer of the Emmy Advanced Media Committee posts on Sony's nifty omni-media hand-held, Mylo. The grandiose name is short for My Life Online. (as in, "we are what we watch-browse-text-etc.) It's wi-fi based, so its value depends in part on the spread of the wi-fi cloud. He asks whether Mylo will be seen as the Newton or the Palm Pilot of the new era.

Here's the Sony press release. Slated for September launch at $350.

Mickeleh's take: Bye-bye Zune.

Best first peek comes from Gizmodo in this video posted to YouTube"

Gizmodo demo of Sony Mylo



(Tags: Mylo, Zune, Gizmodo)

The Soapbox is Active now

I decided a few weeks ago to split this blog into a tech and marketing side and a political side. It's taken me some time to crank up the political side, but it's going now. The link to Mickeleh's Soapbox is over on the right near the top.

Nick Carr wonders how big Wikipedia can get

While Chris Anderson is focusing our attention to the long tail, other trends keep pushing attention toward the head. Ranking in search engine results, for example, has a huge impact on traffic. The recent scandalous release of search data by AOL provides--in addition to lists of creepy searches--some basis for analysis. Nick Carr points to SEO Black Hat, where they crunched through the AOL data to determine that the result at the top of the list gets an average of 41% of the click-throughs.

Search on anything in Google these days, and a prominent result is likely to be a Wikipedia article. Carr looks at this trend and wonders whether we'll reach a point where people go directly to Wikipedia first. Is Wikipedia a threat to Google?

A typical Widipedia entry has numerous outside links. How often are they followed?

(tags: wikipedia, Long Tail, Nick Carr)

read more | digg story

Kit for using Nike + sensor with any shoe

Now it's a special Nike shoe plust a sensor plus an iPod nano.

Soon it's whatever shoes you want plus Nike plus iPod. Dr. Bott has announced a $10 bit of velcro and neoprene that neatly attaches a Nike+ sensor to any running shoe you favor. (provided it has laces... and most do.) "Available for pre-order." (An odd phrase. Pre-order is what? before you order? It's not available before you order. Quite the opposite. You order it today and they send it to you some time in the future when they start making them. Shouldn't that be called not available yet?)

BTW... I blogged about the Nike plus a while back when I got it. Still use it. Still love it. And I'm ten pounds lighter.

Andy Inhatko: More on Apple's non-announcements

More than a decade back, Frank Casanova's demos and talks for Apple, often had a little rap about how computers weren't nearly as smart as the sinks in the airport. The sink knows when you walk up to it and responds by turning the water on. But your computer has no idea whether you're there or not. (I always thought it would be cool if someone could rig Frank's stage computer so that when he walked up to it for the demo, it would squirt water at him to prove it was at least as smart as a sink.)

It hasn't gotten a whole lot better. My computer still doesn't know whether I'm around until I tap the keyboard or jiggle the mouse.

Actually, it got a little better in 2003, with Jonas Salling's Clicker. While the main purpose or the clicker was to allow you to use a bluetooth cell phone as a remote control for Mac apps, one cool feature is that as you walked your cell phone out of range, iTunes would pause and then resume playing when you came back.

Hmmm. Take that further. What if you had a pocket device from Apple that used Bluetooth to signal your presence? (say, maybe one of those long-rumored new Apple toys like, maybe a phone, or next gen iPod or ???) What kinds of interractions might be baked in to the new OS?

Andy Inhatko in InfoWorld, speculates on some of the possibilities.

BBC: 16-24 yr. olds drive "radical media shift"

UK's Ofcom (Office of Communications) reports rapid and radical shifts in media choices for 16-24 year olds: "spurning television, radio, newspapers in favor of online services." According to a summary on BBC News, 70% of this age group have a social networking site (e.g. MySpace), 20% have their own website or blog. They also spend seven hours less per week watching TV than the population as a whole.

File this with stuff we all knew, but it's nice to have someone go out and measure it from time o time so we can put impressive charts ino pitches.

Nike plus iPod = Wow! Levis plus iPod = Oy!

I mentioned the magic shoes that talk to my iPod a few weeks ago. They look good. They work fantastically. There's a terrific website that tracks your progress. And there are even some very cool looking shirts and jackets with iPod pockets and ear-bud cord managers.

On the other hand, Engadget reveals how badly another iconic American brand has stumbled in an attempt to embrace the iPod phenom. It's been a long time since Levi's was really cool. The iPod pants ain't gonna help get it back there.

The last cool thing that Levi's did was have Spike Jonze direct their TV ads ten years ago. (Agency: Foote Cone & Belding, S.F. GCD/CW: Chuck McBride)


Levi's commercial by Spike Jonze

BTW... To bring this post full circle: Jonze and McBride also teamed for the amazing "Morning After" Y2K apocalypse spot for Nike. (Wieden + Kennedy was the agency)

(tags: iPod, Nike, Spike Jonze, Chuck McBride)

HuffPo: How to hack a Diebold voting machine

Marty Kaplan, on Huffington Post has some remarkable easy, anyone-can-do-it instructions for rigging the totals on a Diebold voting machine. Is he right?

Apple's OS announcements (and non announcements)

Hmmm. So, after Jobs keynote, the stock fell, and Leander Kehney in Wired called it, "the most uninspiring he's given in recent memory" ... "one yawn after another." John Budreau in the hometown paper found an analyst who gave him a money quote: "breathtaking." Om Malik covers the net-centric features destined to suck up even broader bandwidth.

I'll give you Mickeleh's Take on the OS announcements below, but if you want your keynote relatively unfiltered, Ryan Block at Engadget did a fine job posting a richly illustrated report from the Steve Jobs keynote. It's nearly a verbatim transcipt with lots of photos of the of the slides. (Steve always has the world's best slides.) Apple has a streaming QuickTime of the session--but they don't have enough server capacity to meet current demand. So far, I haven't been able to get it to run.

The new HW configs are strong, up to two 3G dual core Intel blah blah blahs. etc. With this announcement, Apple completes it's transition to Intel processors. I expect that a lot of high-end customers have been deferring purchases, waiting for these babies. They will sell almost as fast as they run. (The enclosures look very much like the G5s overall, but they've had major redesign to increase expandability: more ports in front, more drives inside. Actually, they've gone forward to the past: restoring the previous G4 ability to house four internal hard drives and two optical drives.) Plus new Xserve, and lower prices for displays.

The bulk of the keynote was a preview of the next major release of Mac OS X, named for (get ready) a big cat. This time, it's Leopard. (Are they running low on big cat names? Within the Panthera genus, the only one left is Lion. But some of the small cats like are pretty big, like Lynx, and Puma, so we can probably get through the decade before Apple is forced to bid for the Mr. Bigglesworth brand.)

A few bits stand out.

Time Machine looks like Apple finally has done back-up for the rest of us. It is not only painless backup, but it's an infinite undelete. So if you've ever mistakenly thrown away valuable files, or want to revert to some previous version of a file, it's all there. Best visual and motion metaphors for time travel since Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel. (Yes, Microsoft has "previous versions" in Vista. But it's done in Windows style. Feh.)

Mail IMHO is a bunch of tarty features in search of a purpose.

iChat takes video-chat over a new threshold. The videophone has existed in fantasy and science fiction for more than a century, and in technology marketing since 1964. In reality, not so much. Two people staring at each other while they talk--turns out to be much less useful than a telephone. On the phone, we all have Harry Potter's invisibiliy cloak and we love it. (fess up--if only to yourself--what are you actually doing when you talk on the phone?) But now... with desksharing features, photo and presentation features, video-chat becomes more than a telephone, not less. (There's even a version of a feature that was first demo'd in Mad Magazine back in the fifties: phoney picture-phone backdrops.) Now it gets interesting.

Core Animation may be the most dangerous of all the previewed features. It simplifies the process of developing rich, layered animation effects within the Mac environment. Apple used it to support the motion design for Spaces and Time Machine. And now, they're putting this power in the hands of people who may not have quite the same level of design sensibility. Anyone remember Font Abuse?

Spaces is already being tagged as a copy of virtual desktop (versions are built into Windows, Unix, and available for Mac OS X from CodeTek Studios, who can't be too happy to see Spaces.) We'll see. It's all in the details of how it's implemented. Lots of folks who were skeptical about Exposé became fans once they began using it. Good bet that Apple has done this well.

iCal gets slick, rich collaboration features—and interoperability with CalDAV standards (whatever they are), but no mention of interoperability with Exchange.

Jobs announced that he was holding back some of the top secret goodies. Most obvious for its absence was an updated Front Row U-I for ten-foot navigation of media files. Most observers expect Apple to make some very aggressive moves into the portable and home media spaces over the coming year. Although Valleywag got all Valleywaggish over the particulars, Scoble was undoubtedly correct to say that the folks at Apple, "are readying a dizzying amount of new products."

Developers attending WWDC are warned not to blog about any details beyond the keynote.

(Tags: Apple, Mac, WWDC, Jobs)

Apple's Cheeky Tweaky Banners Zing Vista

Apple Insider reports that Microsoft's oft-delayed Vista operating system is royally tweaked by two banners hanging in Moscone for Apple's WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference).
On one end:

Mac OS Leopard: Introducing Vista 2.0

And on the other end:

Hasta La Vista, Vista

(tags: Apple, Vista, Mac, WWDC)

Merc Opposes DOPA (Delete Online Predators Act)

The San Jose Mercury News, today, asks the Senate to kill the DOPA bill, which passed the House last week 410-15.

DOPA is yet another bill with a fine Orwellian name like the “Patriot Act.” DOPA stands for “Delete Online Predators Act.” How can you possibly oppose that? Are you in favor of online preditors? Do you want to put our children at risk? The unassailable name, however, conceals much mischief.

Turns out this bill claims to target predators, but in reality targets technologies that may be used by predators. You know, the way robbers use guns. DOPA would requires schools and libraries to block all websites with social interactions. This from the folks who love to say “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” How many of the sponsors of internet technology restrictions are ready to sign up for tight gun controls if we name the bill SARA (Stop Armed Robbery Act). Well, we know how busy Congress is--they're all up for re-election this year. Maybe they didn't read past the title page of the bill.

House passage of the bill was scarcely covered at all in the mainstream press. You can read more in this post at TechCrunch.

A question for Long Tail's Chris Anderson

If Chris Anderson really believes in the economic power of the long tail, why is he working so hard to make his book into a best seller so it stays at the head? (Congratulations on breaking into the New York Times list at 13 in non-fiction.)

How do you like them Apples?

Jonathan Westerling, founder of Radio Sausalito has a dandy collection of vintage Macs and Apple IIs. When Leslie Stiles pointed me to this video on YouTube I felt a large part of my life passing before my eyes. I was engaged with Apple creative services and advertising for the introduction of most of these. They neatly span the first Steve Jobs era, the interregnum and the Return of the King.



By the way, if you're nostalgic for the old Macs, here's a simulation in Flash of a Mac SE, running System 7. It even includes working applications (MacWrite, MacDraw, Netscape 3, etc.)

Newsvine: Colbert blocked from Wikipedia

From Chris Pirillo comes word that Stephen Colbert's on-air editing of Wikipedia has prompted the user-edited encyclopedia to block the Colbert's account. Stephen was illustrating the meaning of Wikiality:

If enough people believe something is true, it is true--just like on Wikipedia.

By way of compensation, comes a new Colbert-centered wiki, www.wikiality.com.

The news is covered on Newsvine.

Classic trailer for forgotten film: Skidoo

OK, cultural disruption fans, let's take you back to 1968. Then, as now, the Hollywood establishment tried to embrace the new. Back then, we had drugs, we had hippies, we had a sexual revolution. One response was this Otto Preminger movie, surely one of the worst of all times. Another response was electing Nixon president.

Disruption is dangerous. Unexpected consequences abound. Turn the world upside down, and who knows what kind of lint will fall out of its pockets. (Thanks to Woid for the tip.)

Halliwell's Film Guide says of Skidoo:

Abysmal mishmash with top talent abused; clearly intended as satirical farce, but in fact one of the most woebegone movies ever made.

Other reviews: Canby in the Times: "for people whose minds need pressing with a heavy, flat object."
Roger Ebert, "the whole dead weight sits there."

The cast is an amazing melange: Groucho, Mickey Rooney, Frankie Avalon, Carol Channing, Fred Clark and many more, including three Batman villains: Frank Gorshin, Cesar Romero, and Burgess Meredith.

More on Skidoo (with a link to a Torrent download)

What's the secret of Comedy?

Go ahead, click. Hmm... I don't think that gag works as a hyperlink. But when Berle did it, that was funny.

But I wanna tell ya... Speaking of timing, my timing is uncanny in posting the Longtail video to YouTube this weekend. Couldn't have been better. Or worse. Who can tell these days? Open my newsreader today and look who's jumping into the online video game: CNN and Time Warner and a new player Lulu.TV. (Is that an homage to Ed Norton?)

Covered by Marshall Kirkpatrick on TechCrunch, and Om Malik (who figures Apple for the big winner), and Mark Evans.

There are two vectors at play here. The first is that the studios and networks are routing around the choke points of multi-channel providers such as cable and satellite. If you've ever spoken to anyone who has negotiated anything with Comcast, you'll understand why they might want to do this. With online distribution, they can take advantage of all the long tail dynamics that Chris Anderson describes in his book. More titles online. New business models. This vector is about finding new outlets for traditional brands and long-form programming.

The second is the new breed of producers and online aggregators that are creating new niche video content that can find its natural audience through the linking, ranking, recommendation and community mechanisms that are the current flavor of the web. This vector is about creating new brands and favors short clips and snippets.

Best and most comprehensive discussion of these trends--and how they impact traditional TV--is in Shelly Palmer's book, Television Disrupted: the Transition from Network to Networked TV. (with current updates on his blog.)

Stay tuned.

Today on YouTube

This won't last long, but today YouTube features the Long Tail video I did with Peter Hirshberg and Bob Kalsey as the top video on their home page. It has (as of now) over 50,000 viewings. You can scroll down to view it on this blog.

Weight Loss Tips

Chris Pirillo, who dropped thirty pounds in three months has posted a fine, clear, sensible list of what worked. I'm hoping some of it works for me, as I'm on my own quest. (Aided by the wacky shoes that talk to my iPod, I'm down five with plenty to go).

Night of the Living Tail

In celebration of the publication of Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail, I've uploaded a video that Peter Hirshberg, Bob Kalsey, and I did last year. However big the threat, (see Nick Carr for the latest in the debunking and rebunking of the premise), it's clear that something new and unsettling is afoot. Which gave Peter the idea of treating it all as a trailer to a horror picture.

In this case, our premise was that the established mainstream media and software industry was in danger. If Hollywood sees a threat, the first call is to the lawyers; the second call is to the marketing department: maybe there's a movie and a profit in here somewhere. This is the trailer to that movie.

In true Hollywood fashion, this movie is not an adaptation of Chris's book or the magazine article at its core. The movie is simply, "inspired by... "




(tags: Web 2.0, Long Tail, Anderson, Humor, Movies, TV)

Path to a Best of Both Worlds

Mainstream media vs. the blogs is one of those perennials that have already had more reruns than I Love Lucy, Seinfeld, and (tunk tunk) Law & Order combined.

But Jay Rosen is pitching an approach that combines the best virtues of both

Backing up a step... our story so far:

MSM has deep-pocket resources (although that pocket gets shallower by the click), editorial oversight, and training. On the other hand MSM sabotages its cred by addiction to access, feigning objectivity by giving equal weight to the claims of the wicked and the righteous alike (fueled no doubt by deep fear of being called biased by the mighty-righty Wurlitzer). MSM cloaks itself in a self-righteous sense of virtuous entitlement that's pegs the meter at 3.9 Liebermans.

On the other side, the blogosphere has speed, fearlessness, openness (or is it just cliquishness with better PR?), built-in instant corrective mechanisms, through comments, cross-links, ranking. On the other hand the blogosphere sabotages its cred by shooting from the hip, excessive first-name insider code-speak (the clicquish reality behind the open veneer), and nasty tendency (especially in comments) to debate in the style of the Monty Python Argument Clinic (Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, maloderous, pervert!!!). Not to mention a self-righteous sense of virtuous entitlement that pegs the meter at 3.9 Liebermans.

So, here's Rosen's idea;

"In simplest terms, a way to fund high-quality, original reporting, in any medium, through donations to a non-profit called NewAssignment.Net.

"The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable. The betting is that (some) people will donate to works they can see are going to be great because the open source methods allow for that glimpse ahead.

"In this sense it’s not like donating to your local NPR station, because your local NPR station says, “thank you very much, our professionals will take it from here.” And they do that very well. New Assignment says: here’s the story so far. We’ve collected a lot of good information. Add your knowledge and make it better. Add money and make it happen. Work with us if you know things we don’t."

Could work. Just as netroots contributions are changing the game for running for office, TheNewAssignment, could become a new force in journalism.

What am I missing?

Louvre, quick buck? See for yourself.

In my previous post, I wondered whether the Louvre was pimping art for the quick buck. I may have misjudged.

Art on TV (not what the artist had in mind)

Robert Scoble ran into GalleryPlayer in the Redmond Library yesterday. It's a (Windows-only) service for displaying HD art and photography on your HDTV display. The Gallery Player folks have licensed an impressive collection of images from Life, the New York Times, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many others.

But everything in GalleryPlayer is cropped to fit the 16:9 ratio of a widescreen TV. Gee, if only the photographers and painters had known at the time they might have taken better care to frame everything they did at 16:9.

If you hate pan-and-scan on widescreen movies, you'll file GalleryPlayer in the same "not-on-my-TV" folder.

Here's what GP does to the Mona Lisa:

Now let's look at it in what home theatre buffs call OAR--original aspect ratio. And let's change out the brushed aluminum TV frame for the one hanging in the Louvre.


That's a completely different piece of art from the one distributed by PictureGallery.

I'm disappointed that oranizations such as the Met and the Louvre have so little concern for curatorial duty as to license cropped versions of the art in their collections. Guess we're all scrambling for a business model these days.

Look, if the old MGM studio could pretend that the movie business was "art for art's sake," in Latin no less, then I guess the Louvre can do art for a quick buck.


Not that I'm a Mona Lisa purist by any means. In the age of Mash-ups, you can bring me the head--and only the head--of Mona Lisa if you want.

But if you're gonna screw around with Lisa at all, you'd better come up to the level of Mona Gorilla as painted by Rick Meyerowitz in 1971 for National Lampoon. I'm a proud owner of a print, given to me by Neal Stulberg, who was probably glad to be rid of it.

The story behind the painting.

Partisan advantage? World War III

It appears that the new Republican strategy is, well, the old Republican strategy. We're at war. A little rebranding... a little repositioning. This season, it's not the global war on terror, it's World War III. They're counting on the American people to be unwilling to change leadership in the middle of a war. Republicans, on the other hand, had no trouble running against war leadership during the Korean war or the Vietnam War.

Nixon at the 1968 Republican convention

Anybody who wonders how to run against a "War President" can learn from Nixon.

(OK... Nixon wasn't running against the War President (Johnson had dropped out). Nixon ran against the War Vice President, Humphrey, was the candidate. But then again Bush won't be running again either.)

Gonna split

I'm thinking about splitting this blog into a tech blog and a politics blog to each a stronger identity. Thoughts? Advice?

Moon, June, Spoon, Zune

Much virtual ink spilled in the past 24 over Microsoft's opening the kimono a bit on their putative iPod killer, Zune. Gotta love the name. In Hebrew (if you pronounce the "u" as in "tribune") it means "fucked." Which apparently all the vendors who followed Microsoft down the "plays for sure" road seem to be. Om Malik says there merely "zunked." But they pretty much zunked themselves by signing up for a strategy that had less customer value than the iPod-iTunes-Store combo. This time, the Microsoft strategy is to offer more, not less. New wireless, community, and discovery features outlined in Engadget, potentially make the getting, uh, er, Zuned even better than what iPod offers. It's all in the details, which we'll have to wait to experience.

Newseek, Wired News, and many more cover it. Zune team member blogs about it at Zuninsider. According to Technorati, it's already in nearly 2600 posts (probably more by the time you read this). So, they're certainly not having trouble getting attention--and that's before any advertising hits.

Will they make headway against iPod? There are signs that iPod sales growth has slowed--but maybe that's because, Apple hasn't released any droolworthy new iPods in more than nine months. Safe bet that some new and stunning entertainment announcements are coming from Cupertino. How will the next iPod fare vis-avis Zune?

Meanwhile, the real threat to the iPod isn't Zune at all. According to Tomi Ahonen it's phones. Tomi explains it in depth and with saintly patience for the flood of Apple fanatics who dispute him. Worth reading. (And thanks to Robert Scoble for the pointer.)

(tags: iPod, Microsoft, Zune)

A gem within the new ZE

The new Ze Frank has a wonderful gem on how President Bush approached vetoing his first bill.

See the new iPod plus shoe thingy on video

I mentioned the new iPod plus shoe thingy the other day. Jeff Graham of USA Today just posted a video podcast where you can see it (and him) in action.

The Bush Potty-mouth transcript

I'm seeing lots of excerpts and video clips on the overheard Bush-Blair dialog. Adam Boulton on Sky News has the most-complete transcipt I've seen. Anybody have more?

Any thoughts on the new Yahoo home page?

Yahoo has redesigned their home page. I rarely go there. But if any of you are Yahoo home page users, what do you think? (And I'm talking to you, anonymous.)

Mike Arrington covers it today on TechCrunch.

(tags: yahoo, techcrunch, web 2.0, ajax, web_2.0)

Supply your own egg puns

Ed Martin in MediaVillage.com says CBS is planning to advertise fall shows by laser-printing ads onto eggs. They're counting on four impressions per egg. Once when you inspect the carton at the supermarket. Second, when you unpack the eggs onto the egg rack in the fridge. (oops, I leave mine in the carton). Third, when you take the egg to cook it. Fourth when you throw the egg shell out. (assuming you haven't destroyed the ad in the process).

And this is why I'm proud to be in marketing.

My bet is that the first impression will be the last. Ick, these eggs have been tampered with. I'm calling the manager.

Of course, if this campaign runs through Halloween, there's a whole new set of impressions that can come into play.

iPod and the magic shoes

Last week Nike began shipping the shoes and doohickies that work with iPod nano. Here's the idea: you make a playlist (or buy one from Apple, heh, heh) to accompany your running (or in my out-of-condition condition, walking).

You wear the magic shoes that contain an electronic pedometer that tells your ipod how fast and how far you're going. Tap the iPod, and a pleasant voice tells you how much time you've been running, how far you've gone, etc. Set goals by distance, time, or calories burned.

It works. It's fun. And, it turns out you don't need the Nike shoes. You can buy the transmitter and receiver separately and here's out how to hack the transmitter onto any shoes you own. (hint: velcro).

Lots of insidious marketing angles here: you can upload your workout logs to a server on Nike and find virtual work-out support groups--and give up lots of private data that may some day be subpoena'd by an insurance company. Just saying. And, of course, the iTunes store has a gazillion workout playlists to sell you.

Me, I'm staying clear of that stuff. But loving the basic product.

Freebie: iTunes download from Bright Eyes

Not new. But not a day older than when it first went up on iTunes. Bright Eyes muses musically about what actually gets said, "When the President Talks to God." It's a free download.

Review: NewsFire--best Mac RSS Aggregator

For Mac users: NewsFire is my favorite tool for browsing RSS web feeds (including blogs, news sites, podcasts). It's from Dave Wattanabe, a Mac developer who has done a series of absolute gems (including CoverFlow that brings to iTunes the lost pleasure of flipping through album covers)

Let me get one annoying item out of the way first, NewsFire is nagware. Obnoxiously so. For me, it was well worth the twenty bucks Dave is charging, but I'll bet he'd get a lot more buyers if he toned down the nags.

On to the good stuff: have it your way and switch at whim. Want a flat list of articles? (what Dave Winer calls a "river of news"or conveyor-belt sushi)--or do you prefer folders (a la Scoble)? NewsFire lets you switch at a click.


You can even set up smart feeds that aggregate feeds based on any criteria you want—source, date, title, content, keywords. The NewsFire "river of news" is actually a pre-defined smart feed called "New items" which aggregates all new items into a single list. You can sort by time or by feed. Easy. Powerful. It's a floor wax. It's a dessert topping.

Setting up your own smart feeds is similar to making a smart playlist in iTunes. Add as many criteria as you need. Choose "match any" or "match all" and you're done.

For example, I work for a company that makes a DVR. I have a DVR folder that pulls in any mention of DVR, PVR, or any of our major competitors. When I click the folder, I can view by time or by source with a simple click.

Clicking through to an article will open a new tab in Firefox or Safari behind the newsreader.

Current release is 1.3, but Dave has just put up a beta of 1.4 which includes the ability to watch videos within the newsreader.

(Meanwhile, on the Technorati Weblog, Kevin Marks says, surprise, that Technorati will serve both river fans and folder fans.)

BTW, if Windows users want a peek at Dave's style, check out the beta of his instant search site, Inquisitor.

(tags: bloggosphere, RSS)

From AmericaBlog--Rahm-alahm-a-ding-dong

I'll source this to AmericaBlog, where I swiped it. But I won't force you to link to it. It's too good. Go Rahm. Go Rahm.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

White House paying $100,000 salary to "Director of Lessons Learned"
by John in DC - 7/12/2006 11:25:00 AM

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) offers a few more lessons learned:
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

"Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.

"Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you're going to war without enough troops.

"Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it's time to demand a little accountability.

"Lesson 3: When you've 'turned the corner' in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

"Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

"I would also ask the President why we're paying for two 'Ethics Advisors' and a 'Director of Fact Checking.'

"They must be the only people in Washington who get more vacation time than the President.

"Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony."

(tags: Rahm, Rahm Emanuel, White House, Katrina, Iraq, Congress, Politics)

How to lose the War on Terror

Bob Burnett on Huffington Post lists ten steps that the U.S. can undertake to lose the War on Terror. Oh wait. it's a summary of the Bush strategy.

Nazis in the US Army? That can't be good.

This report from the Southern Poverty Law Center is not comforting. I'd link to the coverage in the New York Times, but it's destined to be locked up behind the Pay Web Times Select barrier.

We used to have a zero-tolerance policy for accepting racists and members of hate groups in the U.S. Army. But with quotas going unmet, the standards are dropping.

So, Iraq turns out to be not only a training ground for Islamo-terrorists, but for home-grown U.S. advocates of race war.

I'm starting to feel a little queasy about bringing all the troops home.

(BTW, Paul Krassner has something to say about this over on Huffington Post.)

That's right, I'm not from Texas

But I love Lyle Lovett anyway. He's in town for two dates at Chateau Ste Michelle Winery, the first of which I attended tonight, the second of which you should try to catch tomorrow. (Who knows, I might be back.)

He brought His Large Band, including the amazing Francine Reed of Atlanta, who has also recorded with my bud Jez Graham. (See also this morning's entry).

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band bring a little church, a little country, a little blues, a little bluegrass, a little jazz, a lot grace, a lot of class, sly lyrics, and a stage full of great musicians from L.A., Nashville, Atlanta, and Texas. A fine show. It may be coming to your town soon. It's a dilly.

(tags: music, Lyle Lovett, concert, Francine Reed, blues, bluegrass)

Etch A Sketch Gallery

Michael Witlin sent a tip to an amazing gallery of portraits--some of which took 60 to 70 hours to complete--all created on an Etch A Sketch by George Vlosich III. Mainly sports heroes, but not exclusively so.

People see the end result but do not understand the years of practice, hours of planning, and the frustration that gooes along with not being able to make mistakes

Superman vs. Superman vs. Superman...

The best promotional artifact created to pump up ticket sales for the new Superman movie is a cable show running on the National Geographic channel under the name "The Science of Superman." The putative science isn't what's cool here. What's cool is that the show cuts together most of the instantiations we've seen of Superman— from the comics, the Fleischer cartoons, the fifties TV series, the Christopher Reeves movies, Lois & Clark Smallville, and, of course, the current effort. There's a sequence on each of the iconic super powers (flying, bullets bouncing, x-ray specs, missing the door and coming through the wall)--and we get to see each era's visualization of that power.

If I were the current players in the roles of Superman and Lois, I'd have tried to stop this shot-for-shot comparison with actors who did it much better.

(There are a few broadcasts remaining, so set your Moxi--or lesser DVR if you have one).

BTW: in 1978, Christopher Reeve, the guy playing Superman was billed third (behind Brando and Hackman) and Margo Kidder as Lois was billed eighth (behind Trevor Howard as 1st Elder—1st Elder?!). Boy did she have a crappy agent. And, yes, George Reeves had the biggest "S" and the biggest ass.

(tags: Movies, Superman, Superman Returns, Lois, Bryan Singer, Margo Kidder, Brandon Routh, Christopher Reeve, Kate Bosworth, Smallville)

Jez has a new post

My bud Jez has just posted about some recent gigs to his blog. Jez is a musician who loves music and other musicians so much that just reading about his experience of playing is inspiring in its own right. Better, of course, to hear him play. He has some jazz piano solos posted here. (I mentioned these one before. But they're still good.)

(tags: music, jazz, jez, jez graham)

Who's got the brand? The Boom or Amanda?

Or both.

The Web 2.0 (or New Web) world just got its first big dose of the complexities of show biz branding. Last week Rocketboom was the hot brand in video blogging. Quirky, perky, Amanda Congdon won fans far and wide as the on-camera host. Rockeboom scored deals with Akimbo and TiVo. But as of now, Amanda and Rocketboom are splitsville. Both Amanda and Rocketboom are now in the midst of their Technorati boomlet as the vlogoshpere (where do we get these words?) churns away at the story. This isn't about that.

What this is about is where is the brand value going forward? Does Amanda walk away with the franchise? Does Rocketboom retain its cachet going forward? Is this mitosis? or a dissolution? Showbiz brands are multi-layered. Psycho is a brand. But so is Hitchcock. So is Janet Leigh. 24 is a brand. But so is Jack Bauer. And so is Kiefer Sutherland. Would the Superman movie carry as much weight in the movies without the Bryan Singer brand?

So who's got the power brand in this split--the Rocketboom or Amanda? One thing is clear--at least if you go by Technorati--her ex-partner, whathisname, who has the majority interest in Rocketboom is not a brand.

No prognosis from me. Just a hope that we wind up with two powerful, quirky, entertaining brands. I hope neither side winds up tucking their long tail between their legs and slinking off to the sunset. Maybe the Ninja has anything to say about this?

Best bits to come out of this are from Jason Calcanis who tries to hire Amanda, and Robert Scoble, who tries to hire Jason. Dave Winer has the antidote for anyone who's going through Rocketboom withdrawal: Ze Frank.

(tags: Amanda Congdon, Rocketboom, Ask a Ninja, Scoble, Calcanis, Ze Frank)

New Yorker just posted the new Seymour Hersh

The Cheney administration has Bush rattling sabres over Iran's nuke policy. But this time the sabres are rattling back. Hersh has ferreted out a surprising (to me) amount of military push-back on the option of taking out the Iranian nuclear capability with a bombing campaign.

Steve Soto in the Left Coaster has some additional comments from one of Hersh's sources, retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner:

This has to be seen as a watershed event. The military have challenged the White House. It was more subtle than MacArthur in Korea, but still it is a major challenge. They have been stage props for photo ops for too long; they are saying enough is enough.
...
The White House has made the case that you can't challenge the President on National Security because of the supposed unusual circumstances of the time. In less than a week, that notion has been broken by the Supreme Court. Now the military have broken it.

What the Air Force knows about Blogging

Josh Marshall alerts us to a $450,000, three-year program to help the Air Force mine the world of blogs for important information. Several choice quotes in the summary. Including:

"Blog research may provide information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting the war on terrorism."

and

"Blog entries have a different structure,"[Dr. Brian E.] Ulicny said. "They are typically short and are about something external to the blog posting itself , such as a news event. It’s not uncommon for a blogger to simply state, 'I can’t believe this happened,' and then link to a news story."

I can't believe this happened.

Carville & Penn Pimp Hillary in WaPost

James Carville and Mark J. Penn argue that Hillary is strong, smart, and a fighter. She plays to win. And she won't be swiftboated. They're right. What they leave out is that she's also an inauthentic, calculating triangulator. Her support of a futile anti-flag-burning statute (when flag-burning is practically non-existent) is pandering of the crassest and silliest sort. Anybody expect Hillary to raise her smart, strong, voice in defense of a free press? Hillary won't be swift-boated, but she'll keep her head down while the NYT and LAT are under assault. It's not enough to know that she'll fight for herself. I'm looking for someone who will fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Consitution.

Laura on Lakoff

George Lakoff (oops, I'm already thinking of an elephant) has a new book. Laura Miller has the Cliff Notes on Salon.

Lakoff's newest political stuff is on the web through Rockridge Institute. Worth keeping up with (which would be easier to do if they added RSS).

Olbermann: "not too SWIFT"

If the New York Times did not exist, the Bush administration would have to invent it. Bush has gotten more value from the Times than Stalin ever got fom Pravda.

The Times helped Cheney and Bush build up the fiction of Saddam as a nuclear threat by funneling exclusive coverage of Chalabi bullshit through Judith Miller to the front page.

And how does the Bush team show its gratitude? By casting The Times in the role of dart-board for the latest episode of the long-running series, "If you ______, you're helping the terrorists."

Bush, Cheney, Tony Snow, and a chorus of Republicans in the Senate and House over all expressed shock and outrage that the Times blabbed about a state secret. It's a secret that White House hid in plain sight in this 2001 press release: President Announces Crackdown on Terrorist Financial Network. And SWIFT, the agency that provided information to the U.S. Government, has long acknowledged their cooperation on their own website:

As you may know from the User Handbook and swift.com, SWIFT has a longstanding history, beginning in the 1990s, of cooperating with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and international organisations such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in their efforts to prevent misuse of the financial system. Our members support this policy.

Keith Olbermann's team put together a fine set of clips on this. Crooks and Liars has it.

Boehlert: Why did they score it for Bush?

Eric Boehlert, author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, looks into the widespread MSM (mainstream media) comments that Bush "won" the week on Iraq following the killing of El Zarqawi and the sneak-in, sneak-out state visit to Maliki, and the Republican "stay the course" House resolution.

Boehlert cites some of the fawning coverage in a guest column on Eric Alterman's blog.

As you may have noticed, Iraq violence hasn't abated—the foe has thrown some horrific new throes at Iraqis and U.S. troops, two American soldiers were brutally tortured and mutilated, and the public strongly backs the Democratic proposals for withdrawal.

The most innocent explanation (excuse?) for the press behavior is that "Bush down in Polls" isn't news anymore, but "Bush Bounces Back" has a bit of the "Man Bites Dog" in it. Imagine if you can that Bush's poll numbers actually did rebound and missed calling the turn. Embarrassing much? Oh, yes.

Surely it's more embarrassing--nay, a source of professional shame--to fall for Rove's feints again and again and again and again? The press apparently enjoys playing Charlie Brown to Karl Rove's Lucy and can be counted on to kick at the disappearing football.

Just once, I'd like to see them play Rocket J. Squirrel to Rove's Bullwinkle. "But that trick never works."

Boehlert notes with surprise that right wing MSNBC bloviator, Chuck Scarborough managed to see through the Rove Reality Distortion Field: "This sound like a complete loser for Republicans come this fall."

How many throes are left?

Cheney sticks to his assessment that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes." I'm sure he's right. But would that be the last two or three throes or the last hundred throusand throes?

Doing Stand-up until the Republicans Sit Down

Over on HuffPo Jerry and Joe Long report,

GOP Congress To Live Like Average Iraqis
"WASHINGTON...In a stirring display of non-binding election year necessity, House and Senate Republicans vowed to spend the remainder of the War On Terror living under conditions similar to those of average Iraqi citizens. (more)

Five words from NPR

At the Webby awards, acceptance speeches are limited to five words. NPR.org accepted thusly: "The democracy needs more truth."

But, given, the nature of their mandate and funding, they're not really in a position to present truth per se. They are the poster child for: "this side says A and that side says B."

Which means that half of everything they broadcast is a lie.

Unless you believe that the truth is the average of two lies.

A Fine Commencement Address

We're all commencing the rest of our lives today. So, for those of us who are far, far from our graduations, who haven't reached them yet, or who have suffered through lousy commencement addresses, here's an opportunity to read a good one from Victor Navasky. Want proof if its excellence before clicking? It should suffice to know that Navasky quotes Groucho (as that eminent academician, Professor Quncy Adams Wagstaff of Huxley College). Or you can skip the speech and go out and watch Horse Feathers. It's all the same to me.

Maria Cantwell votes no on Hayden

Sen. Maria Cantwell was one of the 14 Democratics to vote Nay along with sole Republican, Arlen Spector on the confirmation of Gen. Michael Hayden to head the CIA. Sen. Barbara Boxer of CA didn't vote. Maybe this will help warm up Washington progressives to get behind her campaign. Details and a good sermon over at the Northwest Progressive Institute.

Here's the roll of Nay votes.

Bayh (D-IN)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Obama (D-IL)
Specter (R-PA)
Wyden (D-OR)

"I was wr... wr... wr... wr..."

Bush, whose inability to admit error exceeds Fonzie's, stunned the world by coughing up a short list of Iraq war missteps at his news conference with Blair, yesterday. I hope it's a trend. On the other hand, the list is meager, misleading, and one item was not a mistake at all. It was a deception. And still is.

Bush regretted saying, "Bring it on." On that, I'm in agreement. It was a foolish, childish and false bit of cowboy bravado that did nothing but endanger our troops. Guys in the movies can say, "bring it on," because the outcome is rigged, that is, scripted. But the U.S. has misunderestimated what we would face inside Iraq from the get go. (Except that we misoverestimated Saddam's ability to project a threat beyond his borders--which was the rationale given or the war.)

He also regretted saying he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive." Why? The pledge to get bin Laden was a good thing. My regret about that pledge is that Bush lacked the ability, the will, or the desire, to deliver. Turns out that bin Laden at large has been an invaluable ally of the Bush-Rove fear-mongering. It can be argued credibly that bin Laden's election eve comments provided Bush with the margin of victory in a tight race.

As for the third Bush admission, that abu Ghraib prisoner abuse hurt us, he's right. But as for his claim that the perpetrators have been punished, well, only the lowest-level perpetrators... and most of them were punished minimally. The real perpetrators of the abu Grhaib abuse are as much at large as bin Laden.

Now playing on Huff Post: Glenn on Sec'y State

A couple of posts bacl, I plugged Glenn Lambert's post on the California Secretary of State race the other day. It's been picked up by the Huffington Post. At stake in the race is protection of California voter's rights (against frivolous technical challenges to registration, against porous Diebold voting machines, etc.) Glenn has covered the issue well in his post. It's good to see it finding a broader audience. Cali folks, if you haven't read Glenn's post yet, please do. And please vote for Debra Bowen in the primary on June 6.

I'm sticking to my wording. Or Germaine's

A colleague today told me that he saw a quote on Google from Dave Barry, "You can only be young once. But you can always be immature."

This is very close to something I have been quipping for years. (I don't know how many. And I don't know when Barry coined his version.)

But I think my version is punchier: "You're only young once. But you can be immature forever."

But, yikes, I find that version attributed to Germaine Greer. I'll cite her the next time I quip.

Germaine is older than Dave. (How immature of me to mention it.) But I don't know if her quote is older than his.

California voters rights under seige

In California, The guv's guy, McPherson is recertifying Diebold voting machines and bouncing new voter registrations on flimsy technicalities.

State Senator Debra Bowen has made voters' rights her top issue. If you're a Californian, she deserves your vote in the primary, June 6.

I was alerted to this issue by my bud, woid who has an excellent post on this on on Howie Klein's DownWithTyranny blog.

Bless you, Jane Hamersher

Just go read it on Firedoglake. It's a perfect post. Anything I said here would make it less perfect. See for yourself.

Got my Monday nights back

The following post is written between 7:00 A.M and 8:00 A.M

(It contains spoilers for those haven't seen the conclusion of this season's 24.)

Whew! 24 wrapped up. Now there's only one evil weaselly president in my life.

Add my non-member-in-the-Academy votes for Jean Smart and Gregory Itzin for Emmies. What richly nuanced and powerful performances. Totally captivating. Very gratifying for the writers to give Martha the key role in bringing down Charles.

On the other hand, not gratifying to let Miles slink away without a comeuppance.

My, those Chinese work fast... whisking Jack away, getting him into that nasty beat-up pulpy-face makeup, stashing him in the cargo hold of a slow boat to China, and getting the boat out on the high seas all in the space of a couple of minutes. (Maybe they helicoptered out to the boat?). If they can move that fast, we could have next season done in 12.

As for Jack taking the call from "Kim"from a land line in a deserted building ... it's of a piece with neglecting hour after hour to upload the incriminating evidence to some other device. These guys whip files around from device-to-device as a matter of routine. Except, of course, when it will further the plot not to. Get over it.

I was using Moxi to skip most of the commercials, but I'm glad to have caught the undead President Palmer selling me insurance before he got back into the coffin ahead of the sunrise for the last act.

An old chestnut, done well

As long as there are elevator speeches to be written, memorized, and recited, there will be a need for tools like this.

Mac-head unhappy with Apple's Current Ads

Apple's current "I'm a Mac" campaign is getting a lot of praise (including from me). Mac fan Derek Powazek, on the other hand, has a complaint.

Reich's Four Narratives

This is important. Maybe I'll get to commenting later. I was eferred to Reich by Jeffrey Feldman on The Thom Hartmann Program on Air America this morning.

"Just when I thought I was out..."

It was back in the first season of The Sopranos (episode two) when we first heard Silvio Dante (Steve Van Zandt) do his impression of Michael's emblematic line from Godfather III "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." (For comparison, here's Pacino's even hammier original version.)

This season, the theme is back. But with a much darker twist. Now there's no "they" there. Now when you try to get out, you simply hang a youie and head back in. On your own.

We see the old pattern in the opener of the current season, Eugene Pontecorvo requests early retirement. Tony pulls him back in. Gene manages to get his family out at an extremely high personal cost. And I'll leave it dangling there to avoid spoilers.

But that was before Tony's come-to-Buddha coma. Since his great awakening, Tony has loosened the reins. It doesn't make things any easier.

When Christufuh wants to go to Hollywood to rise above the petty crime of New Jersey, Tony okays it. But Chris falls back into his coke and booze addictions and winds up mugging Lauren Bacall for a goodie bag. No Way Out.

When Vito Spatafore (a great earner, by the way) is discovered dancing in a gay club and flees, Tony lets him go. Other associates want to pull him back in and put him down, but Tony lets him go.

By the happy fate of an auto mishap, Vito finds himself in a gay-friendly New Hampshire town. He falls in love. Becomes a hero in his new community. And can't stand it.

Just when we thought he was out, he pulls himself back in and heads back to Jersey. On the way, by the damning fate of a second auto mishap Vito finds himself doing a gratuitous murder of an innocent, law-abiding citizen. (The staging is reminiscent of Vito's Season Three whacking of Meadow's beau, Jackie Aprile Jr., outside the Boonton Projects.) Love doesn't conquer all.

The moral bookkeeping of David Chase is as relentless and confining as Larry David's. It just grinds more slowly.

(And a tip of the Hatlo Hat to Wikipedia's Sopranos Timeline)

That didn't take long

I posted this morning asking what else the government might do with it's shiny phone database toy.

Here's what: They're using it to catch leakers. (says a source. says ABC News).

Makes the Nixon Plumbers look positively stone age.

My first spam and the NSA phone database

The first wave of spam to hit my inbox came in the wake of the first dot com bubble.

In good faith, Company A collected my email address, and in good faith, I gave it to them in return for a service.

Times change. In a last, desperate scramble for cash, Company A sold off their email lists.

And before long, I'm getting mail from Companies B, C, D... Z who waste no time sending me offers for sex, drugs, and Nigerian fortunes. (If only the Trustees and Executors of my Nigerian would-be benefactor had bestowed the fortune on Company A, I might have been spared the offers of sex and drugs.)

Digital assets take on an afterlife of their own. Do you think that when he first worked up his light saber routine, the Star Wars Kid had any idea that one day Google would turn up more than 18 million references to him in .18 seconds?

Fast Forward. Now the NSA has the worlds largest database with trillions of records that can trace calling patterns to keep us safe from terrorists. It's anonymized (until someone chooses to do a reverse phone lookup and remove the veil).

Let's say it's all legit. Today. (Although given the Adminstration's track record for telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that's a preposterous and irresponsible premise. But nevertheless, let's say it.)

Let's say the database has a legitimate purpose. Is that its only purpose? In the black ops favored by this administration, how can we know? Back in the day, Elliot Ness was untouchable. But this is the day of the very touchable Kyle "Dusty" Foggo.

What might Nixon have done with such a tool and a penchant for the enemies list?

This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration, Stated a bit more bluntly —how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies. (Memo from John Dean to Lawrence Higby, August 16, 1971)

For that matter, what might Cheney, Rove, and Bush do? No wonder we mustn't know. No wonder there's no judicial oversight. No wonder its all done by presidential fiat and not Congressional authorization.

The polls are already shifting on this issue.

C|NET has a FAQ on NSA DataMining

excerpt:

Q: What about Internet communications, such as Internet telephony or e-mail messages?
Much of the Internet traffic that's transmitted in the United States traverses just a handful of switching centers owned by big communications companies, such as Verizon. The busiest are MAE East (Metropolitan Area Exchange), in Vienna, Va., and MAE West, in San Jose, Calif. The NSA has access to those switching centers, Bamford says.

In addition, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered broadband providers to build in back doors for electronic eavesdropping.

What's next?

I watched Keith Olbermann last night with my roommate. Keith spent about half the show on the NSA phone database. Quoth the roomie: "This is probably just a diversion from something even more outrageous." Paranoid much, are we?

Probably just a realist. Think Progress gives us this cheery thought for the weekend:

CongressDaily reports that former NSA staffer Russell Tice will testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee next week that not only do employees at the agency believe the activities they are being asked to perform are unlawful, but that what has been disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg.

Any guesses? Hint: Watch the skies. They're probably watching you.

It's okay, we didn't tell them your name

Got some time today? Call your phone company.

In the wake of yesterday's USA Today story. I recommend that everyone who is a customer of AT&T, Verizon, & Bell South engage their customer service representatives in a polite conversation about whether your phone records have been turned over to the NSA. (Jessica Holzer in Forbes considers the legality, noting, "it is striking that the three telcos, AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, handed the information over sheep-like to the spooks without pressing for warrants or court approval. Only Qwest Communications (nyse: Q - news - people ) balked, in spite of the NSA's arm-twisting.")

My carrier's rep tried to reassure me that it's okay because only the phone numbers have been revealed, but no personal information such as names and Social Security numbers. (What an outrageous answer! Even I can do a reverse phone number lookup over the Web. Surely the scary-looking bald general has that technology.)

I have three questions:

1. Anyone know whether their violation of the 1934 Communications act is grounds for me to end my contract early without penalty?
2. Can QWEST, the sole hold-out against the NSA request, possibly have enough capacity to handle the folks who will now want to establish service with them?
3. Skype, anyone?

(cross-posted and attracting comments in my Kos Diary)

Request for Routine: Lily Tomlin, where are you?

I'd love to hear Ernestine's take on the NSA phone records story.

Maybe for our own protection we'll need to take her up on her original taunt:

"Why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string. We don't care. We don't have to. (snort) We're the Phone Company."

I remember when they taught me in school that one of the awful things about totalitarian governments like the Soviet Commies was that they spied routinely on their own citizens. That was then. This is now. Reach out and datamine someone.

Zack Exley: Two questions for Dems to ask

Domestic spying is once again in the news, thanks to the confluence of two events:

1. The revelation that it wasn't just calls with overseas Al Qaeda agents but tens of millions (i.e. between 20,000,000 and 100,000,000) of Americans who's call records were being data-mined
2. Appointment of Gen. Michael V. Hayden (who oversaw the program at NSA) to run the C.I.A. replacing Porter Goss--requiring, heh, heh, confirmation hearings.

Last time domestic spying popped into the news, Sen. Russ Feingold tried to focus some clear attention on it through a Senate resolution—from which most Democrats ran and hid.

This time, however, Zack Exley at the Huff Post offers some easy tactics to keep the issue clear and crisp—even in the face of the predictable chaff that the White House will throw out and the mainstream media will, in Colbert's phrase, type down.

Learn these two questions and ask them relentlessly and repeatedly

1. "Bush ALREADY HAD the freedom to spy on anyone he wanted - he just had to tell a secret intelligence judge AFTERWARDS, a judge who was sworn to secrecy. So what was he trying to hide from that judge?
2. "WHO WERE THEY SPYING ON? We need to see a list."
   

Excley follows those simple "Do's" with the following "Don'ts"

Don't use complicated names of things people have never heard of before like FISA (it sounds like a tax for crying out loud). Don't talk about breaking the law. Don't talk about civil liberties. Don't talk about personal privacy. Don't talk about the Patriot Act. Don't talk about investigations or hearings or special task forces. And for goodness sakes, don't talk about "warrantless wiretaps." Warrants and the bureaucracy that goes with them are what prevent Eddie Murphy from getting the villain in Beverly Hills Cop, or Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, or - should I go on? Do you really want to run in 2006 as that old, depressed, coughing Sergeant who stands in the way of justice for the sake of rules and regulations?

Is that so hard?

As if that's a bad thing?

Ken Mehlman is trying to energize the base (Arabic: Al Qaeda as we should never tire of remembering) by warning that a Democratic majority in either house of congress will investigate Bush (with subpoena power) or maybe even impeach him. And this must be avoided, why?

"We'll have to leave it there." Marty Kaplan explicates

Marty Kaplan on the Huffington Post explicates the implications of standard opens and closes for TV and radio interviews.

"We'll have to leave it there," so many of them say, wrapping it up. They mean it to refer to the sad truth that the time alotted for the segment has run out. But what it really communicates is the futility of contemporary journalism. We'll HAVE TO leave it there. There's nothing else we can do -- we can't draw conclusions, we can't figure out which of you screamers is a truth-teller and which a lying nutjob, we can't sort out facts from opinions, all we can do, folks, is just leave it there.

Before leaving it there, myself, I'd like to credit this important insight to its original seer: Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of show Business. Postman focuses on an earlier formulation, "Now... this." The fragmented report, the sudden switch to a new topic have been inherent in television news since the beginning.

Kos: Hillary's Legacy from Bill

Markos Moulitsas has an oped piece in the Sunday Washington Post that reminds us how the Clinton legacy harmed the Democratic Party. (And, no. It wasn't the impeachment or even the blow job).

Despite all his successes -- and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at -- he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president's personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than before it. The Democratic Party atrophied during his two terms, partly because of his fealty to his "third way" of politics, which neglected key parts of the progressive movement and reserved its outreach efforts for corporate and moneyed interests.

He goes on to assert that Clinton's legacy to the party is, "the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.'

Hillary has shown a strong penchant for the calculated triangulation of policy and the netroots blogosphere is not buying it. I'm not buying it. For me, the quintessence of the Hillary dance was her co-sponsorship of an anti-flag-burning bill by Bob Bennett (R-Utah). Note, not an amendment (too far to the right), but a statute (ah, just right). Not even banning all flag burning, but only burning intending to "intimidate any person or group of persons."

Even if Hillary is embraced by the Democratic establishment, she'll have high resistence from the base. Her claim to the 2008 nomination is far from assured.

Apple's ads: funny, brilliant, but what about the beachball?

The best Mac vs. PC ads ever. Simple. Clean. Brilliantly cast. Funny.

Except for the one where the PC keeps freezing while the Mac chugs along. As if no Mac user had ever stared helpless at the spinnning beach ball of suspended animation.

Hilarious: Anthem sung in Spanish, when?

At the first Bush Inaugural. That's when.

So, it turns out that Bush was for singing "The Star Spangled Banner" in Spanish before he was against it. Details at Think Progress. But wait! There's more. Bush himself used to sing the anthem in Spanish when he was on the campaign trail.

Of course, my favorite morsel in this whole episode is Bush saying the other day, "I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English." Goes for people who want to be a president of this country too, dontcha think?