Monday, November 24, 2003

NY Times: "Gen Wesley K Clark's campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, which has gone for seven weeks without a campaign manager, announced on Monday that it had hired Paul Johnson, the manager of Senator Bob Graham's short presidential campaign, to fill that role." 

Palfrey blogs Volokh's talk on Crime-Facilitating-Speech. 

Powazek says the Globe got his quotes wrong too. It's a new world ladies and gentlemen. In the old days, the BigPubs would put words in your mouth, and what could you do? Today each of us have a platform to tell our own story, so when they screw it up, we can run a correction, immediately. 

k-collector is an "enterprise news aggregator that leverages the power of shared topics to present new ways of finding and combining the real knowledge in your organisation." 

The Crimson reports that Derek Slater will not be disciplined. That's great. Derek sent an email saying that he didn't even have to tell them about it, they found out by following his weblog. It's starting to work. Next step, getting the Crimson on board with RSS support. 

Michael Jackson's newsroom, with a list of stories in reverse-chronologic order. He's starting a weblog so that his story can get out directly from the source.  

John Palfrey on the Federal anti-spam law that just passed the House. 

Jim Moore is looking for Iowa weblogs. 

A picture of Uncle Vava in front of a picture of an ancient ancestor of ours from The Old Country. He's Hershe Schechter, from Ukraine. So much time passed, so much technology. Sent to me by my uncle's friend Clay Stratton of St Augustine, FL. My brother has a picture of our grandfather, Rudy Kiesler, wearing a cowboy hat, posing with some southern cops outside an old Eastern Airlines prop plane, from the 1950s. It's a total trip. I've asked that it be scanned for the archive. 

Much ado about Google 

Oy I was afraid when I spoke with Hiawatha Bray that he'd get it wrong. The direct quotes are accurate, I did say what he quotes me as saying. But when he paraphrases he puts words in my mouth that I don't agree with. I'm not scared Google is going to "crush" UserLand. What an ugly word. I think their approach is more likely to hurt Google itself than anyone else.

Bottom-line, I said Google screwed up by putting Blogger on the toolbar, a few weeks after promising they wouldn't do anything to favor Blogger. It made it impossible to trust them, and their business is built on trust. Google could have helped the whole blogging community, and it's not clear why they didn't -- it's not as if they make any money off Blogger, it's a freebie. They did the small, selfish thing. That's why I think they don't have what it takes to be a leader.

About Hiawatha Bray, the Boston Globe and professional journalists in general, this piece is a perfect demo why I hold them in such low regard. He's really writing a column, he thinks they pull "stunts" and "crush" small competitors, but instead of having the guts to say it himself, he puts the words in my mouth. He should become a columnist, write opinion pieces, or become a software industry leader, and test his ideas in the market.

Two Jewish Guys Joke 

First a disclaimer, I am Jewish.

Two Jewish guys were walking down the street and passed a Catholic church.

A sign out front says "Convert to Catholicism today and we'll pay you $100."

One guy says "That's it, I'm converting now."

The other guy says: "What do you mean, you'd throw out your faith, your people, just for money?"

He says: "It's a lot of money."

So he goes in the church. His friend can't believe it so he waits outside. When he comes out he says "Is it true, did they give you the money?"

He says: "Is that all you people ever think about?"