Sunday, July 25, 2004

Major major: NPR has RSS. I'm all over this! 

David Appell: "There's no journalist on the staff of the Boston Globe or the NY Times whose take I'm particularly interested in hearing. They're all basically one and the same to me. But the bloggers I read--Dave Winer, Kos, Josh Marshall--have, to me, individual voices that, I'm realizing, I'm interested in hearing from. Even if they've covering the same old convention as everyone else." 

Sunday Democratic National Convention pictures. 

Today's audio blog post, recorded while traveling from the Westin hotel in Copley Plaza to Fleet Center. Interviews with people along the way. Some very rough audio at the beginning with one quite large silent spot, but some really good stuff I think. Designed to go with the pictures, above.  

I'm in Flint Center, it's been an incredible ordeal to get in here. Lots of mazes to walk, a big security check, up on the seventh floor looking down on the floor of the convention as they're testing and rehearsing stuff. The WiFi doesn't work, and there's no place to plug in for power. I'm uploading this via a Sprint wireless modem. BTW, I remembered to bring a power strip with me.  

Another BTW, you heard it here first, the song of the convention is Johnny B Goode. Get it? John Kerry, John Edwards. Go Johnny go! 

Also thanks to Russ Beattie for insisting that I get the Sprint wireless modem.  

Arrived in Boston. Uneventful trip. Cab ride went right by the Fleet Center. Traffic not too bad. First I'm getting settled in, going to rest a bit then head over and try to get my credentials.  

I'm meeting Michael Feldman for dinner at 6PM at Mary Chung's in Central Square. Easy to get to, on the Red Line. It's the east coast version of spicy noodles (not as good, sorry). Let's make it a blogger's dinner, open to one and all. 464 Mass Ave. 617-864-1991. Spitting distance from the 8PM party. Maybe Wes Clark will come.  

How to get your credentials.  

I'm putting together a schedule for blogger-related activities at the DNC. If you have an event to add, please post a comment here. 

Pet peeve: Non-smoking rooms that smell like cigarettes. Yuckers! 

Aside from adding a few more blogs to the Convention Bloggers site this morning, I also added a weather feed for Boston, and have added the NPR top stories feed, and one for WBUR, the local Boston public radio station. I am so pleased I can't possibly explain. So this is not only a software exercise, it's an act of curatorship. While this is the first time I've published an aggregated site, it's not an original idea. Jim Moore has been talking about this for a long time, and Taegan Goddard at Political Wire has been doing it. The cool thing about curatorship in RSS now is that there's critical mass. There are enough different feeds, different points of view, that it's possible to be artistic. BTW, the weather in Boston is going to be pretty good. This time of year it can be brutally hot. It'll be rainy, but quite cool. That's something to be thankful for, believe me. 

BTW, part of the Convention Bloggers project has been pretty depressing. The variability in formats creates huge problems for users, on both sides. In this context, I am a user of RSS, of course. Then I see the NPR feeds and I'm smiling again. While the blogging tools vendors have generally played pretty dirty with the format, the pros and the big technology companies have played pretty fair. There are a small number of problems, but mostly their feeds just work. That's worth a lot. 

Jay Rosen in Newsday on convention bloggers.  

NT Times editorial: "If the delegates were not far outnumbered by the media, we would worry about why nobody wanted to come." 

Matt Stoller and Westin Kreibel did a video blog post of the inside of Fleet Center. Then Matt did a photo tour. The amount of information I have about the convention just went up by 800 percent. Thanks!  

WSJ: "The Boston Democrats' platform, which will be adopted this week without dissent, mentions President Clinton only three times, but the entire 37-page document is an ode to his record."