Thursday, July 08, 2004

A beautiful summer day at Rockaway near Beach 116th Street. No clouds, temperature in the low 90s. The water was wonderful. This is where we used to go in the summer when I was a kid, with so many family members. As you get older, and you can do anything you want, you know what you end up wanting? To hang out with people who are gone. This is where we used to go, where my grandparents and uncle lived, where my mother grew up. Today Rockaway is rusty, but still there. And the ocean of course is timeless, and friendly. Body-surfing isn't quite the adventure I remember it being as a boy, and driving home with sandy feet and everything all salty is still pretty yucky, but it feels great after a shower, putting clean clothes on top of a fresh suntan. I plan to go ocean swimming a dozen times this month, it's a soul experience for this boy of NY.  

An email from the DNC to Jay Rosen, explaining why some bloggers were invited, then uninvited.  

Wait, the Kooky Buddy meme gets worse better.  

Aaron Bailey says no WiFi at the Fleet Center, apparently it interferes with television, and he says "perimeter access" isn't worth the trouble. My problem is, because I moved, and my mail is being forwarded, I haven't actually gotten my paper invite yet, I was notified by telephone, so I don't know if I have access to the hall, or am stuck outside. The one other blogger invite I have seen has perimeter-only checked. I called Rebecca MacKinnon, ex-of-CNN, to find out if she thought it was worth going if I didn't have access to the hall, and still am not sure. If you have a comment post it over at Aaron's.  

BTW, I feel sorry for the DNC, I have to admit it. All this is being blogged, out in the open, and is probably developing faster than they can deal with it. Welcome to the 21st century. 

27 new feeds from Yahoo: Most Emailed, Most Viewed, Highest Rated. 

Ben Adida: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid. 

Tommy Williams offers a pic of Microsoft's He Ain't Kooky poster. 

Greenspun reviews Clinton's autobiography. "If you're exasperated at the mediocrity of our current President, this book is a nice reminder that George W has no monopoly on mediocrity." 

CBS Marktetwatch: "The DC-based, trash-mouthed gossip and blogger will cover the Democratic National Convention for MTV News." 

Betsy Devine: "Manila design gurus! It needs to be easier to delete unwanted comments." I absolutely agree. It should work like deleting items in Radio's aggregator. A checkbox next to every comment and a delete button at the bottom of the comment window. I agree with Betsy's other suggestions, but this one is the most important, there's too many steps to deleting unwanted comments in Manila. (Of course only the ME should see the checkboxes and button.) 

Nelson Minar: "By taking this single word 'pessimism' and using it to characterize the Democracts, the Bush campaign brilliantly defuses any criticism of the Bush presidency. Even better, it shifts the blame to the opposition who is calling attention to the problems." 

Microsoft poster: "He Ain't Kooky. He's My Buddy." 

On this day four years ago, the first version of OPML was unveiled. I'm sure a lot of people don't know where the O in OPML came from. Here's a story, written in 1988, that explains. 

Dave Hyatt: "A few people have written me expressing concern over the extensions that Apple has made to HTML in order to support Safari RSS and Dashboard." 

PR Week: RSS transcends the clutter of the inbox. 

There was an interesting discussion at Zawodny's about Yahoo's ping-handler, but not much in the way of response from Yahoo.  

Wired: "But usually," he said, "the angry e-mails are from people who just fundamentally don't like me." 

Sun's Jonathan Scwhartz says "the web's full of good ways to engage in dialog," which is totally true. He made the right choice, imho. It's his pulpit, I want to hear what he thinks, people who want to comment can do it in their own space. 

Geek News Central on blogger burnout.  

Dan Gillmor will be blogging the Open Source Convention while I'm at the Democratic Convention.  

A beautiful fresh spam-free Referers page. Won't stay that way for long.  

Eric Rice offers ten free Audioblog accounts for convention bloggers. 

A list of DNC bloggers. Some new names.