Public Hearing on Internet Communications

The FEC has been holding hearings to try to sort through how to regulate the Internet in regards to campaign finance rules.

So far, blogs have been the main topic, but as blogger Kos pointed out, looking at blogs only narrowly addresses the problem. New technologies on the horizon can and may have the same impact in future campaigns as blogs did in the past election cycle.

One proposed idea is that bloggers should be given a press exemption. Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet points out that such an exemption could open an unforeseen flood gate. Corporations and unions could spend endless amounts of money to exert political influence by just simply calling their activities a blog and proceed without regulations. It would take away the voice of the little people and give it to people who have large amounts of money. According to Kos and many other bloggers, that is the simple beauty of a blog, the little guy gets a chance to speak and people listen.

NPR had a great recap of yesterday’s hearings.

iTunes 4.9 was just released!

iPod fanatics, now you can seamlessly add podcasts to your pod. Just browse, sample, subscribe, and listen. iTunes even updates your podcasts automatically. Check it out.

Ohio, Oh No

In class tonight we watched a video about the troubles people had voting in Ohio. It was crazy… some people waited in lines for over two hours; only to find out they were in the wrong line and had to begin again. Why on earth would you put someone through that!?

As Flanders would say, it is all about your user. Make it easy on your user. Only think about the user.

Why on earth would the same not apply to voting stations? Why wouldn’t we want to encourage people with a seamless quick process instead of discouraging voters?

And we wonder why turnout is low... we are driving away people who activity try to vote.

The MGM-Grokster ruling

Today the Supreme Court ruled against Grokster on the MGM-Grokster case. MGM sued Grokster for creating a p2p program. MGM argued the Grokster's practices were tantamount to encouraging infringement, and hence not analogous to the Betamax case.

(I should disclose that I'm in no way a legal expert.)

Before the verdict was announced, the EFF (who represented Grokster) posted some guides about what the case was about. Also, Corante has a large list of online resources discussing the issue.

The decision stated, "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties." Initial reaction (from the Grokster camp) is that this verdict narrowly addresses the particulars of the Grokster company. The EFF hoped the decision would answer broader questions about file sharing, such as 'how is the Betamax decision interpreted for digital media?' and 'What exactly constitutes vicarious infringement?'

I agree with the EFF that until these laws are clearer, innovation is curtailed since programmers and entrepreneurs don't know if their company will be sued by Hollywood.

I also think it's important to remember that the computer and telecommunications industry is like a hundred times bigger than Hollywood. If a technology is moderately good for the telco industry and really bad for Hollywood, it's still a net gain in social wealth.

Good articles on RSS

Two recent articles about RSS and other spiffy buzzwords are: Why RSS and Folksonomies Are Becoming So Big and Wikis, Weblogs and RSS: What Does the New Internet Mean for Business?

RSS relieves pressure to publish

(This is very probably not an original observation. In fact, I think I've read this myself somewhere, but I can't remember where. But it's important and not said enough, so I'll repeat it.)

Conventional web-publishing wisdom says that the way to grow and maintain your audience is to publish often. This is in part because people actually have to remember to visit your site. If each time a visitor comes to you site she sees new content, she's more likely to have a good experience with the site, and thus remember to visit the site again. If you don't publish for a few weeks, the site isn't maintaining it's value to people, and your traffic tapers off as visitors visit less frequently (if they remember to visit at all).

Publishers thus experience a pressure to create new content all the time. Every moment you're not posting to your blog you're risking losing visitors. This pressure, I believe, is one of the driving factors behind blogger burnout. It also causes people to post crap. It's better to post drivel than to post nothing at all.

An unsung benefit of RSS changes that. If all your readers are subscribed to your RSS feed, they don't have to remember to check your site. This means that you can go for months without posting anything. Checking for updates no longer requires mental capital. Particle Tree puts it nicely:

For those of us that have adopted RSS feeds, gone are the days of wasting time making the rounds through over 100 bookmarks just to see who might have said something new.

This means you can post only when you want to, only when you feel you have something really important to say, and your audience will still be there. Isn't that super-fantastic!

BIG CAVEAT: Not that many people actually use RSS feeds, so the conventional wisdom of posting often to maintain traffic still applies. But as RSS technology matures (i.e., as feed readers become easier to use), more people will use it, and the more pressure it will relieve on publishers to write frequently.

In the long run, I think blogs that publish infrequently and don't currently get much traffic will be the publishers who really benefit from RSS. This contrasts with major news media like the BBC, CNN, or the NY Times who were pioneers in offering RSS feeds. Everybody knows they publish articles every few minutes, so there's not much of an advantage to having an RSS reader alert you to new CNN stories.

Forget paying with your phone… just use your finger

Forbes magazine reported that the grocery chain, Piggly Wiggly and Pay By Touch are going to provide just that for their customers, the ability to pay by touch. Customers' fingerprints would be scanned at the checkout counter and the scanned image would then be pre-linked to their checking or credit card accounts.

I can hear the privacy-crazy people now: "You mean they keep a record of your fingerprint?" Well, not exactly. Here's how it works: When you first enroll, the system uses an image of your fingerprint to find between 35 and 40 points of distinction on the fingerprint to create a unique mathematical algorithm--essentially a string of numbers. That algorithm is then encrypted and sent to a secure data center run by IBM. The only time it's retrieved is when you present your finger to pay again.

I am a big proponent of voting online. Many critics are cautious about this because they are worried about fraud. Well, if every computer had a touch screen and the ability to distinguish fingerprints, why wouldn’t we vote online? And for those who still don’t have computers in their homes or that feature on their computers, they could go down to the voting station and use a similar machine there. It would really speed up the process and I think increase turnout because it would be just too easy. Again, making it easier on the user will make them more willing to participate.

Democracy, Freedom and Human Rights, Oh My!

The Chinese government and Microsoft have teamed up to prevent free speech by Chinese citizens on blogs.

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities -- such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

"Prohibited language in text, please delete," the message says.

It’s really a shame to see the Internet so restricted for some users. It seems like with every new technological development comes a whole stream of questions. How far is too far? Is it okay that I can see the IP Address of everyone that comes to my site? Is it okay to say I do not agree with a government policy online? Is it okay to blog about my job? Is it okay if I write a blog about a candidate I like?

Get Ready to Throw Out Your Power Chargers...

MIT’s Technology Review reported the development of an atomic battery .

It's called the Direct Energy Conversion (DEC) Cell, a betavoltaics-based "nuclear" battery that can run for over a decade on the electrons generated by the natural decay of the radioactive isotope tritium. It's developed by researchers at the University of Rochester and a startup, BetaBatt, in a project described in the May 13 issue of Advanced Materials and funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Because tritium's half-life is 12.3 years (the time in which half of its radioactive energy has been emitted), the DEC Cell could provide a decade's worth of power for many applications. Clearly, that would be an economic boon -- especially for applications in which the replacement of batteries is highly inconvenient, such as in medicine and oil and mining industries, which often place sensors in dangerous or hard-to-reach locations.

Though, currently it is not powerful enough to replace our current cell phone batteries, I would imagine similar long lasting batteries are in the works. If we don’t fix this battery life problem, we won’t be able to throw out our wallets just yet. If we want to have a truly mobile campaign, we need better battery life.

BadApple

Looking to easily listen to podcasts and simply cannot wait for the new iTunes to be released? You’re in luck! BadFruit has developed a plug-in (BadApple) you could use in the mean time.

BadApple makes it possible to access thousands of podcasts directly from within iTunes. There is no need to install and learn new software programs. Just launch iTunes, click the podcast option and podcasts will be added directly to your Library.

Crazy about new technologies and free September 28th and 29th?

MIT is hosting its Emerging Technologies Conference.

In its 5th year, this unique two-day event brings together world-renowned innovators and leaders in technology and business for keynote, panel and breakout discussions that center on the transformative technological innovations certain to better our lives, create opportunities and fuel economic growth.

gcensus

This is a pretty cool site I took form Aaron’s del.icio.us list. It combines Google Maps and census information. Check it out.

The Next Generation of Wikipedia

Because Wiki has become a reference used quite often in class and because it is an example of group think at its best, I thought I would share this post by Russell Buckley with you.

Russell brilliantly comes up with the idea of making Wiki interactive with cell phones.

Let's look at how this might work.

You're in London and are standing in a pleasant, sunny street in Camden Town. City life is going on around you and you fancy the idea of knowing a little more about where you are right now.

Using your phone, as if it was a PC mouse, you uncover snippets of information from the world around you. You click on an old house in the road and a wealth of digital information comes onto your phone screen. Some contain video and audio links.

You learn that the house is on the site of one lived in by Charles Dickens' wife after their separation. You're interested in Dickens so you poll the area and find that there's actually a tour of Dicken's Camden Town that afternoon.

Out of curiosity, you look up how much this kind of house would be worth, what local rates and taxes are. And you read a review of a local citizen's view of schools in the area.

Know Your User

I came across a very interestingly designed webpage this evening and thought I would bring us back to the topic of site navigation. Take a look at this site and let me know what you think.

Is clicking just a habit? Does this site make you feel uncomfortable? Did you click?

Believe it or not, over half of the unique visitors clicked the screen.

I think it’s great when people think outside of the box and come up with new website techniques… but I am not convinced that sites should be in the habit of breaking people’s habits. When working on a campaign site, be aware of common, almost brainless, user habits and accommodate them. Another useful piece of knowledge is knowing where the user’s eyes look on websites. Take a look at these two studies:

1. Using Eye-Tracking Data to Understand First Impressions of a Website
2. The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

Sound familiar?

"The blogs give us a chance to communicate between us and motivate us to write more. When we publish on our blog, people from the entire world can respond by using the comments link. This way, they can ask questions or simply tell us what they like. We can then know if people like what we write and this indicate[s to] us what to do better. By reading these comments, we can know our weaknesses and our talents. Blogging is an opportunity to exchange our point of view with the rest of the world not just people in our immediate environment."

This was stated by a Fifth grader in Canada who is in a class that blogs, just like ours.

Also, check out the Educational Bloggers Network . It is a group of teachers and organizations who support and use blogging as a learning tool. Maybe Emi should add our class to their membership.

Long day...

It has been a long day and I needed a laugh, so I am assuming you do too...

Toothpaste for Dinner

friendhamster

hey everyone

the inter who

RSS Newsletters

As with any database system, a campaign simply must continuously update its records, this includes email addresses.

As pointed out by Amy Gahran, the nice thing about RSS newsletters is that:

• there are no databases to be updated
• the users are expecting to read some sort of newsletter when going through their reader

When targeting through email, if you get through the spam blockers, you must then deal with an unsuspecting reader. If there are more important emails to attend to, most likely your message will be skipped over. The only hard part of a campaign would be getting people to subscribe. Once that is done, you are home free.

Time on money v. Time on votes

It is not the candidate who has the most money that wins; it’s the one with the most amount of votes. But, can a candidate focus on getting votes without money?

This past election cycle displayed the Internet’s amazing fundraising abilities. Both campaigns took full advantage of this development, but Kerry raised a substantial amount more than Bush online.

I think Jakob Nielsen’s conclusions as to why Bush did better than Kerry on email newsletters are surprisingly correct.

“As this analysis shows, Kerry supporters were bombarded by repeated fundraising requests, to the extent that many of them probably tuned out the newsletter in the final critical days. Although the Internet is great for collecting money from the masses, there is a limit. Kerry exceeded it.

Bush sent more messages than Kerry asking supporters to get other voters to go to the polls and vote for him. This is a more appropriate use of the newsletter medium because it connects emotionally with subscribers. Being treated as an active participant in the civics process is more motivating than being regarded as an open wallet”.

Kerry raised nearly $82 million from online contributions while Bush raised a mere $14 million. Bush had the luxury of relying more heavily on large donors and did not need to work as hard at fundraising. No doubt, Bush’s strategy was more personal, but I am not sure Kerry had much of a choice. It could be argued that Kerry was behind Bush in fundraising and needed to play catch-up instead of the who has better grassroots efforts game.

Kerry won the battle of online fundraising while Bush won the war or the election.

Class Trip

We are all going to BlogFest, right? Our favorite Russell Buckley will be there!

A mWallet Case Study:

Paybox

Paybox was the first and only mobile payment method that allowed consumers and merchants to send and receive payments through cell phones. It was started in 1999 by Mathias Entenmann. The service started in Germany and expanded worldwide, servicing 750,000 consumers by May 2002.

How it worked

No new technology was required, but a yearly £14.99 payment by the consumer was. Instead of handing over a credit card, consumers handed over their phone numbers. The clerk then entered the number into their register and the consumer either confirmed their PIN number through a text message or through the phone (Paybox would call the cell phone). A few seconds later, a confirmation text message was sent.

Disadvantages

• The BBC reported that “the only disadvantage I could see of paying with a mobile for tickets is that it takes a little longer than cash”.


• Only select places accepted this form of payment.

Why It Failed

In 2003, Paybox closed down its mPayment services. In Paybox’s own words there was

“no possibility for a single mPayment provider to develop the industry lone in the current industry conditions, especially amidst the discord between the other important market players (banks and telecommunications companies). The necessary growth and profitability can only be reached with many active market players, which have so far failed to appear."

Napster leading the way, again

Napster and Ericsson are joining forces to create the first digital music service for cell phones.

Could this mean podcasting will finally catch on? Will someone actually listen to Newt’s recordings?

I May be Moving Soon...

My parking and coining woes are over… in Miami, Santa Barbara, Dublin, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, and Australia.

"The automated system allows drivers who subscribe to simply dial in from their cell phone, punch in the number assigned to their parking spot, and the required costs — plus a 25-cent usage fee — will be billed to their credit card. When leaving, subscribers call back and end the billing cycle.

The Miami suburb began offering the system this month on its 4,573 meters; so far, more than 250 people have subscribed"(Reuters).

The Sweet Would Not Be as Sweet without the Sour

Today identity theft will be on the minds of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Federal Trade Commission.

“According to the FTC, about 10 million Americans were victims of identity theft last year, a crime wave that costs companies and consumers an estimated $50 billion annually. Thieves used to satisfy themselves with Dumpster diving for credit card receipts and instant credit applications in order to ride roughshod over a victim's good credit rating. Now, in some cases, they've replaced Dumpsters with databases and don't even need to get their chinos scuffed to steal thousands of identities at once.”

Before you know it, the scene in this cartoon from The Economist will be next.

The Economist: Dreams of a Cashless Society

When the US adopts the m-wallet system, will we be equipped to handle it? Should the Senate begin to consider the implications now?

EFF's Legal Guide for Bloggers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (which is kinda like the ACLU for the Internet) recently published a Legal Guide for Bloggers. It's full of simple guidelines to avoid getting sued as a result of your blog.

Of particular interest might be the section on intellectual property (for those who tend to dabble in the darker gray areas of p2p technologies) and election law.

And in a few years when you want to gripe about your job and not get dooced, you'll want to brush up on blogging anonymously.

Cash is so Passé

You finally found a parking spot and you're still glowing by the fact it only took you one try to Parallel Park. You get out of the car and open your wallet only to discover that you have no change for the meter. Friends, this is the story of my life. I simply never have cash on me. I hate carrying it!

Most of us experience a cashless society briefly everyday on our commute in and around Washington, DC with our Smart Trip cards for the Metro system. Smart Trip is only a glimpse into something far larger, m-wallets.

A Japanese company by the name of NTT DoCoMo has been working on the idea for years and after testing it in Japan on small purchasing through vending machines and convenience stores; they are finally ready to take the leap into making cell phones full-fledged credit cards.

In Engadget, “DoCoMo launches mobile wallet cell phones” they anticipate that

“In addition to making payments at shops that have e-money terminals installed or using your phone as a train pass, you can buy tickets online and swipe your way through into concerts and cinemas, check in for international flights, and so forth. Most of the major banks and credit card companies are in on the act, too. There’s also a real estate company planning to let residents use phones as apartment keys; you will apparently be able to get e-mail notifications telling you who’s just got home, and even to e-mail a duplicate key to others. DoCoMo’s planning to shift 10 million FeliCa handsets in the first year and a half, which we presume means they’re going to chip pretty much every new phone they release from now on”.

What this could mean is a change entirely in the way political candidates accept campaign contributions. Forget cash and checks… it will be all about passing your phone over a kiosk at an event or even syncing your phone to your computer so you don’t have to fill in all of those fields in online contribution forms. Either way, I think the more convenient the transaction, the more transactions will occur. And let me tell you, it is so much easier spending money you never see pass through your hands… one just may contribute far more than they thought they could.

Surprise, Surprise… Some Things Never Change

It amazes me that after thousands of years of evolution, sometimes the most primitive way of doing something remains the most effective. For example, when a plane entered the no fly zone in DC, people were told simply to run. And that piece of advice, need I remind you, has come after billions of dollars and countless man hours invested in our Nation’s homeland security.

The same can be said of word of mouth. As illustrated in The Influentials and The Tipping Point, people accept, respect, and follow the advice and suggestions of others. Word of mouth suggestions are product placements or candidate endorsements given with a personal and meaningful Seal of Approval.

As Seth Godin stated, two centuries ago it was all about farming. One century ago it was all about building efficient factories. This century, it is ideas.

“Ideas are driving the economy, ideas are making people rich, and most importantly, ideas are changing the world… An idea that just sits there is worthless. But an idea that moves, grows, and infects everyone it touches… that’s an ideavirus”.

This way of thinking reminds me of why people enter into the stock market… to make their money work for them. Similarly, an ideavirus does all of the work as opposed to a marketer, and frankly, does a better job of that. The imprint on the market is no longer done through interruption ads that are impersonal. It instead has progressed to a deeply convenient and personal approach. “That’s why focusing on a geographic, demographic, or psychographic group is a common practice among successful idea merchants”.

With that said, my best piece of advice is make it local, make it personal, make it effective, and do it cheaply; target Influentials and make your idea work for itself.

AIM: Kathie4Prez

Walk into any college dorm and you'll inevitably hear the chime of incoming and outgoing Instant Messages. During my time at Uni, IMing was the main source of communication, sometimes even between me and my suitemates while of course within voice proximity of one another. Why you might ask... well, it was discrete, easy, gave the ability of multitasking without seeming rude, and it was easier to share files.

I came across an article in Wired about people in Hollywood using IMing to find employment and realized, wow, what a great untapped resource for campaigns. IMing would be such a great way for constituents to contact the campaign directly. And supporters could easily share their support with their online buddies by putting in links to campaign donation pages in their profiles and away messages. The campaign could even set up a bot like AOL's smarterchild that answers FAQs. Another big plus is that most mobile phones and sidekicks support these applications. As Dina Piscatelli, a production manager for Errol Morris said:

"It really is something that you use nonstop," she said. "I have a Sidekick and I'm on instant messenger when I'm not at work. If I'm on location and I'm on-set and I need to talk to somebody, I immediately open my instant messenger. It's quicker than text messaging. It's quicker than e-mail."

The only main downside is that "less than 10 percent of all business people use IM, roughly 20 million worldwide. But that number is increasing steadily".

PS. that is NOT my real AIM name, so please don't IM it.

Friendster for your Nokia

A few weeks ago my old college roommate came into town. In the typical SUNY Albany fashion she forced me to pick out a boy I wanted to talk to at the bar and she brought him over. Simple as that. But what am I to do when she is not in town? Well, lucky for me, Nokia has come out with a sensor for its phones. ;) It allows users to create personal pages and upload photos to it. You then scan for others near you that also have the sensor, view their personal pages, and then send them messages if you feel like talking to them. What a way to break the ice! You’re not face to face so it’s more candid and the line “Hey, I know you… you are from the city, right?” will never have to be used again.

As I have said time and time again… MoSoSo, learn it, love it, spread it.

Check out this Ap if you have a Nokia 3230, 6260, 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6681, 6682, or the 7610. It’s free and looks super cool. Honestly, the possibilities are endless with it.

Is group think better?

The Internet is known for bringing like minded people together.

Are you a single girl in DC with no friends? No Problem, Meet-Up has 20,645 members they can connect you to in the DC area.

Want to buy something on ebay, but question the reliability of the transaction? No problem, the seller has 1,000 positive feedback comments.

Want to watch a movie, but not sure which? No problem, Netflix can align your likes and dislikes with others who are exactly like you and recommend movies they liked.

Have you ever wondered if Eight was really Jenny 8. Lee’s real middle name? No problem, Wiki has assembled a conglomerate of p2p information for you about her.

Though, I must admit, I cant help but wonder if this sheep like herding is hurting us. Is it hindering society outliers? Can people still think outside the box when group think is in nearly every part of ones life? Would this stifle minds like Einstein and Darwin? Or would it actually help them by providing a place for them to exert their thoughts to the world through blogs and websites? Is there really such a thing as a Smart Mob or do you agree with James Surowiecki when he says “The more we talk to each other, the dumber we can get”?

YAY!! Afleet Alex Wins the Belmont!

CONGRATULATIONS JEREMY ROSE!!!! The Belmont is a hard one to win!

PS... it is my goal to meet Jeremy Rose this summer in Saratoga... if anyone has a connection, let me know.

The Email

Kos has posted about the email threat and I wanted to share with you a few comments posted on his site about the matter.

Thirdparty: "Very unprofessional".

Kos: "I wasn't trying to be professional, obviously. This isn't a professional disagreement, it's a very personal one.
As for Darr "telling on me" to the FEC? Also unprofessional. Why wwould she do that? Because the disagreement, once again, isn't professional. It's personal".

propagandism: "Markos' response was fine, even-handed and professional. But what the hell was with that angry first letter? Do you honestly expect her not to be a little pissed? It was completely unprofessional and well below Markos' abilities and standards. I'd expect a threat e-mail from Markos to actually educate me on some important point I'd missed, or some vagary or nuance I'd overlooked. That e-mail sounded like nothing more than the threatening rant of your typical GooPer.

And beyond that, did you not expect a backlash? Did you think the e-mail would just disappear? We live in the information age people. You can't just throw out random threats and not expect them to come back and bite you in the ass later. There is always a record. Always.

Unlike the comments Dean is taking heat for in the press and from weak-kneed Dems, I think Markos e-mail was ill-conceived and will do more to damage his identity and credibility than it will to help it. Pray it doesn't do any damage to the issue".

The line! Where did it go?!

Where is the line when disagreeing with the point of view of others? Is there even a line at all on the Internet?

As I am sure my avid blog readers have noticed on the blogosphere, there has been a bit of a riff between Markos from Daily Kos and Carol Darr, the Director of The Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, aka my boss. He completely disagrees with her suggestions to the FEC and not only blogged about it but also sent someone here an email threat!

I think blogs are a great way to get your point of view out there and it’s perfectly okay to disagree with someone. But threatening… hmm… Not so Kosher… Not so professional… Not so respected.

Blogosphere on NPR

Today on NPR (90.9) at 2pm, Odyssey will be discussing the Blogosphere . Check it out if you have time.

"Whether romanticized as the free voice for all or demonized as the destroyer of print journalism, blogs are getting lots of hype. But how do blogs really relate to society, the academy, and other forms of media"?

Read You Me

I just read a very interesting article about flirting (thanks Aaron for the article). It states that "When you first meet new people, their initial impression of you will be based 55% on your appearance and body-language, 38% on your style of speaking and only 7% on what you actually say".

I don't think flirting is always between people who like one another. I think you could describe the way a charismatic politician speaks to an audience as flirting. Politicians of course need to have that amazing ability to captivate an audience. I am willing to venture and say it is not so much by what they are saying, but how they are saying it that earns them such adulation.

Granted, on our blogs, we are by no means flirting with people we adore, but there is something about keeping our readers' attention and making our actions seem genuine that we seek. On my blog, you are not able to see my subtle winks, or hear my sarcasm, or even see me put my hands on my hips. You have no idea how I intended the statement through inflection or facial expressions. The reader is forced to rely solely on the words I write. Is this affective enough? Are we missing something greater? Are vlogs the solution to this?

Laugh! It's good for you!

Here are a few of my very very favorite Toothpaste for Dinner drawings.

keyboard number two

graduate school

wireless internet

ralph nader prayers

to the internet

10 types of people

The Lawrence Lessig Licenses, Now Say It Three Times Fast

You may or may not have noticed a minor addition to the Klegg blog… far far down the page, at the very bottom, next to the Site Meter, is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

What is a CC License?

A CC License expands and shares people’s work. My specific license allows all users to copy, distribute, perform and derive from my work.

Why bother?

Lawrence Lessig, the founder and chairman of Creative Commons, started the organization as a method of achieving the goals of his Supreme Court case, Eldred v. Ashcroft. (In the 1998 Congress extended the length in time a work may be held after an author’s death with the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). Eldred v. Ashcroft ruled that that Congress acted within its authority and did not transgress constitutional limitations in placing existing and future copyrights in parity in the CTEA).

Lessig provides free licenses that copyright holders can use when they release their works on the web to encourage sharing and therefore opening up their work for others to draw inspiration from if the work has no market value itself.

Consider adding it to your blog and have an open Creative Commons and an open society.

We All Have Our Purpose

Hands down, one of my favorite articles in The Economist is “Crowned at Last” in April 2nd, 2005's issue. The article talks about how the consumer is gaining more and more power through research on the web prior to purchasing. They are walking into Ford dealerships with the exact car specs they want and know that the car is in stock because they checked it all online before hand. Of course, this trend affects the advertising world and Internet websites by changing how they are marketed and designed.

Just to further back up that point, in an earlier article in The Economist, “Buying the Future” March 31st 2005, they state that "A quarter of the people using search engines to get information about consumer electronics and computer products bought a product in the end—and 92% of those shopped offline, according to a joint study by Overture, a marketing company owned by Yahoo!, and comScore Networks, a firm that monitors consumer behavior”.

This change in online behavior just proves Flanders' point in “The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004”. People, messages, and businesses need websites up and running if they want to be successful. And I do not mean just any old site, but one that users are actually able to find answers to their questions on. Flanders points out that “The only reason my website exists is to solve my customers' problems… Nobody cares about you or your site. Really. What visitors care about is getting their problems solved”.

It bothers me too no end when I happen upon useless sites… perhaps a candidate has no issue positions stated, or no way to contribute on their site or similarly that the Watergate Salon has no prices posted for their pedis and manis. If it weren't for an outside source, I would have no idea that their policy positions matched mine or that their prices are pretty remarkable.

My advice, make it easy on your user. We all have our purpose.

Bloggers v. Traditional Journalists

Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, has an insightful post on why he prefers good blogs to most traditional journalism (in certain subjects). I’d like to reproduce his reasons here, with my commentary. (The juicy one is #4.)

1) They respect their readers enough to open their comments.

This is hugely important: the web is fundamentally a many-to-many, peer-to-peer medium. Unlike many other popular media, which are one-to-many (i.e. broadcast media: TV, radio, newspapers), the same technology to view a web page is also the technology to create a web page. Even if bloggers didn’t open their comments, people could still respond on their own sites.

2) When they make mistakes, they tend to correct them.

Right, on the Web it’s a lot easier to make corrections.

3) They understand that every factual statement that can be linked to its source, should be.

Hugely important feature of the web #2: it’s hypertext. The greatest way to organize ideas since indices and tables of contents. You may be interested to read about the history of hypertext.

4) Because they have little default institutional authority, they go overboard backing up what they say with evidence. Unsourced assertions are frowned on. In this way, paradoxically enough, blogs are often more rigorous than traditional journalism, because they have to earn their readers’ trust, not just assume it.

I disagree that they have little institutional authority. Virtually all bloggers that I consider ‘A-list’ are either academics (e.g. Volokh, Lessig, Instapundit) or respected experts in their field (e.g. Joel on Software, Zeldman, the B.B. crew). These bloggers often have more expertise than traditional journalists who must cover a wider range of subjects. My point segues so nicely into Anderson’s next point that I think he’s contradicting himself:

They’re often written by practitioners, not just observers, and as a result they tend to get the details right.

Right. Practitioners, academics. Two sides of the same coin.

If their information source is some random, unverified bar conversation or even just their own opinion, they’re usually big enough to admit it.

Um, incredible sources are a bane of bloggers and journalists. But blogging is a comparatively new medium and nobody has established themselves as the paragon of the blogging empire. Everybody’s doing it for the first time and making mistakes, and that requires a certain humility. Also, while newspapers only have to publish that tiny little ‘corrections’ box when they’re wrong, an overzealous blogger can quickly incur the wrath of hundreds of angry bloggers.

Following the Leader…

Someone else is following in the footsteps of Google and this time it is AOL. AOL is now offering members unlimited email space!

Go Google, so many others are emulating your style. It rocks to be you.

PS, welcome to DC.

A Bit More Sharing

I couldn’t help but noticed that Wikipedia has become this huge huge resource. In our class alone, so many blogs have links to Wiki pages.

I am not sure if you guys have heard of !Cellphedia, but its like Wiki on the go. It is a sort of hybrid between peer edits on Wiki and the ease and convenience of Google SMS. Check it out.

We Should Just Share

I often let my thoughts run away with the possibilities of new technology and the usual catalysis of that is my favorite blog, Mobile Technology. Russell Buckley posses an interesting idea… sharing music with friends through Bluetooth Technology with your cell phone. Wow, he is onto something there and I think the hardware is actually ready for such a thing too.

SONY is coming out with this fabulous phone that acts as a cell phone, camera, and a mp3 player and I think this is just the start of such devices. Why carry your ipod, your phone, your PDA, your laptop, and your camera everywhere you go when you can have just one device with all of those functions? It is brilliant and it sounds like it accommodates my love for carrying little bags.

Now, where the politics come in... As Emi said in class with the asbestos video, hill staffers send videos and emails to one another in a viral way. Imagine taking it a step further and providing a way for them to send the video directly to one another's phones through Bluetooth.

Maybe my friends and I are dorks, but I can totally see us out at a bar talking about a funny ad we saw, then bringing it up on my phone, and all standing around my little 1.5 X 1.5 inch screen watching it.

On Trust

Emi asked, “Do you think that new media will tend to undermine universities and scholars as arbiters of what kinds of information and knowledge are authoritative?”

No. The most valuable service that academia provides is the imprimatur of expertise. When you graduate with a degree from say, GWU, your potential employers can trust that you know something about political management because they trust GWU to only give degrees to capable people. That is, rather than quizzing each job applicant about political management, employers trust academia to do a good deal of that screening for them. (This is closely related to the idea of “market signaling”, for which Michael Spence won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. See his book Market Signaling: Informational Transfer in Hiring and Related Screening Processes. In short, the value of your degree indicating to employers that you're capable is greater than the value of any skills you learned in class that may apply to your job.)

This academic imprimatur is the reason you can read an article in an academic journal and believe what you’re reading. You don’t have to collect the data and run the analysis yourself because the journal staked their reputation on it. And the university that employs the author staked their reputation on it. Because you trust the journal and the university, you can trust the author. Likewise in journalism, I don’t have to interview politicians, file FOIA requests, and employ fact-checkers because I trust papers of record (NY Times, WaPo, etc.) to do it for me. Because I (more or less) trust them, I can (more or less) trust what I read.

(By the way, this issue of trust is why academic and journalistic institutions basically have to flip out over plagiarism: their reputation is their lifeblood.)

Many people fear new media because they tend to disintermediate people (‘to disintermediate' isn’t actually a word, but it totally should be. It means ‘to cut out the middleman’). For example, computer word processing disintermediates secretaries, and Amazon.com disintermediates brick and mortar shops. While this sucks for the middleman, there’s a net gain in social wealth.

As new media give people access to unprecedented amounts of information, academia’s job of mediating that information, organizing it in useful ways, and stamping it as authoritative, is more important than ever. What good is more information if there’s no way for consumers to filter out contradictory data and find valid analysis? Currently, and for the foreseeable future, academics are the best people for the job. And indeed, they’ve staked their jobs on doing it well.

The FEC and Bloggers

The Online Coalition has an online petition for the FEC. Their petition “protects freedom of speech on the Internet” which would encompass our blogs for Politics and the New Media. In a nutshell the petition states:

• Bloggers should not be included in the definition of public communication. Instead, the FEC should focus on the form of communication instead of specific types (blogging, podcasting, text messaging) in order to write a rule that can not only apply today but 10 years from now.

• The FEC should reconsider its current plan to fight SPAM by requiring a disclaimer on all unsolicited emails sent to 500 or more recipients. The Coalition believes that the rule would be unenforceable against true spammers. They suggest instead that disclaimers would be put on unsolicited email expenditure of $25,000 or more.

• Bloggers paid by candidates should not have to add disclaimers to their blogs because it is not unusual for people who receive payments from the campaigns to appear and express their views on cable televisions new shows, or radio, or on the op-ed pages of newspapers and magazines. Why would blogging be the exception to this?

• The FEC still thinks of the “press” as a conventional professional media establishment, such as newspapers, magazines and periodicals, not in terms of online print. The Coalition feels it would be better served to instead exempt “news, opinion, or commentary” regardless of mode of dissemination or the press or media bona fides of the speaker from instead of simply the traditional “press.”

If you are interested, sign it here. It takes just a few seconds.

Also, the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet held a discussion panel on this matter and the full video may be viewed online. The Center for Democracy and Technology also has a nice page dedicated to the matter.

PS. what did you think of the logo on IPDI's FEC page?

Blog Fire Panel

The Campaign for America’s Future is currently holding its Take Back America 2005 Conference.

From 8 until 10 tonight they are hosting a panel about Politics and the New Media. They are encouraging bloggers to come with their laptops and they have some pretty cool people speaking on it like Ana Marie Cox and Sam Seder. If you have time, check it out!

A Website Bible

I have read both the advice of Nielsen and Flanders on web design. Both kindly tell you what they think about web design and what they consider good and bad, but they by no means are omniscient about the matter. I feel that site designers should simply think about what audience they are targeting and design the page for them.

I think generally, bands are not going to convert new listeners by having a site that is easy to navigate. One of the best examples of "mystery meat" navigation is found at the Explosions in the Sky site. I think they might be better served with this site set up, because its cool and people, like me right now, will pass it along for that sole fact. As far as I am concerned, that’s the best they could ask for.

In class last night we kindly ripped an old MoMa site apart. Yes, I full heartedly agree that the site was hard to navigate, but just like with modern art, let’s step back a bit and look at it for what it is worth.

The MoMa site was designed for those interested in the museum… those interested in that museum would be those interested in modern art... those interested in modern art don’t necessarily like things spelled out for them… those who don’t like things spelled out for them tend to like visually appealing and creative web work… those who like visually appealing and creative web work would clap for the MoMa’s site design.

From where I was sitting in class, I could not tell if they had a site map or not. If they did not, they should, for more logically inclined web viewers, to compliment their site that appeals to right brained people.

Now, by no means, am I arguing that cool looking hard-to-navigate sites are the way to go. As Emi said, a political site should NEVER be difficult to navigate. I just want to point out that web design is by no means universal. What might work for one product or idea push will not necessarily work for another. Please don’t take any one single person’s thoughts on what a good website consists of, but instead step back and think about who your audience is and tailor it to appeal to them. Nielsen and Flanders did not write Website Bibles.