Saturday, July 24, 2004

Today's neat net trick: Pictures from Convention Bloggers. There will be many many digital cameras, so this is just a warm-up. There are already some nipples visible in the flow. If you're under 18, please avert your eyes. It's totally automatic, if a blogger's feed has an image in it and the post that contains it has a permalink, then we include the image on the images page. Click on the image to get to the post. It's a little incentive system to encourage the convention bloggers to include more pics. 

Today's audio blog post, about developing the Convention Bloggers software, pictures from New Mexico and microphones.  

Command Post blogged the big story of the day, not enough toilets for members of the print media at the DNC. "60 serious coffee-drinkers per toilet." Ow that hurts. Someone was obviously channeling this concern to Scripting News yesterday. "I think they should also look into shutting down the public bathrooms. Never know what could happen in a urinal." 

If you're looking for me in Boston, this is where I'll be.  

After much thought I decided to include the NY Times on the Trail among the feeds that are scanned at ConventionBloggers and included in the blogroll. Yesterday, talking with Len Apcar, editor in chief of the Times on the Web, he asked about including this feed. That raised an issue I wanted to think about. I care about their convention stories, I personally subscribe all the NY Times feeds, their methods are certainly different from the bloggers, but in the end thought it's better to be inclusive. If there are other professional news organizations covering the DNC and have a feed that's exclusively for campaign coverage, please let me know. It'll be a judgement call on each one, of course, as it is with the blogs.  

Thanks to Instapundit, Bryan Bell, Political Wire, TalkLeft, Kottke, Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Boston.Com, Tom Watson, Centrist Coalition, Majority Report, Command Post, The Guardian, Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen and so many others, for linking to the new Convention Bloggers site. It's a community and its a blog, and it's great to see it getting so much support. Thanks!! 

Ed Cone: "Will the GOP do anything at all similar next month?" Yes, I hope to do a Convention Blogger site for the Republican convention as well. There's nothing partisan about the software. Like the posters and ads you see around NYC with Ed Koch (former mayor, a Democrat) saying that the Republicans love NY and are welcome here. Same with blogging, same with RSS. Technology doesn't know any political boundaries.  

NY Times: "The question that voters seem to be wrestling with now is not whether President Bush is a legitimate president but whether he is a trustworthy one." 

Dowbrigade: "Downtown, less than a mile from our office, they are buttoning down the Fleet Center step by step. The Secret Service took control of the area last night at 8. The nearby train station and Green Line subway stop are closed." 

A few unpublished driving pictures from last week in New Mexico. 

Jeff Sandquist: XM Radio and XML Encoding. 

Two years ago today: People with Good Hearts. 

Jim Moore reminded us last year on this day that "The fiscal year 2004 Federal budget is $1,731 billion dollars." It's noteworthy, because a campaign for President costs much less, in the neighborhood of $200 million. $1.7 trillion "is a lot of Haliburton contracts," he said. 

NY Times: "Microsoft is considering a sale of Slate because the model of creating a Web magazine of cultural criticism and political analysis to attract visitors to its MSN Network has little business salience in an age dominated by search applications. And the site's small size limits its ability to meaningfully contribute to Microsoft's revenues." 

Jonathan Schwartz: "If you're running Red Hat, and feeling frustrated by their support, exorbitant pricing, or weak security, it's time to look at Solaris, on any of the more than 200 hardware platforms we support." 

Schwartz is President and COO of Sun Microsystems, and uses his blog skillfully. 

It's funny how a brief first trip to a foreign country gets you interested in things you never were interested in before. 

Another thing that's funny is when you hear an old favorite song that you hadn't heard in years and can't get it out of your head.