Wednesday, July 28, 2004

New term: Visibility whip. 

The convention welcomes John Edwards.  

This place is incredibly emotionally charged. More intense than a World Series game. When people say nothing happens here, no news, that's just wrong. Jesse, sitting to my right, says the place is so jammed he saw Rob Reiner and his handlers trying to talk their way into seats. Basically every seat in the place is filled and then some. Elizabeth Edwards is speaking now.  

Micah Sifry: Hidden in Plain View. 

Dewey Beats Truman. "Edwards hits the stage at Democratic convention to build up Kerry." Only one problem -- it hasn't happened yet.  

Dowbrigade endorses Kerry -- The kiss of death? 

Rebecca has a short audio blog post for Scripting News readers. 

Al Sharpton didn't give anything resembling the vetted speech. 

Command Post: "Al Sharpton was to have 6 minutes… he took 20." 

Logical Realism: "Not sure if it carries through on TV or radio, but the crowd is really pumped tonight." True. 

Random Wednesday DNC pictures. 

Blogging pioneers Rebecca Blood and Jesse James Garrett visited. 

PR Week: "Eric Kraus, Gillette VP of corporate communications, called the blog rumors 'an urban myth.'" 

I'm going to be interviewed soon by ARD, German television, for a show called Tagesthemen. 

Senator Dick Durbin will be at the blogger booth at 8:30PM tonight for bloggers who are interested. 

Nancy Pelosi and the DCCC are hosting Blogger Bash at Meze Estiatorio 10PM-2AM tonight. "Invitation only." 

Mike Byron, a delegate and Democratic candidate for Congress (CA-49) is blogging daily on the Byron for Congress campaign blog. 

Dan Bricklin: "Political conventions today are about transmitting a feeling and the press tries to filter that out, leaving something strange and unnatural." This is a kickass must-read piece. Dan is making an important contribution to convention blogging, the off-site guy who reads all the stuff and then thinks about what it means. Here, there is no time to think, there is only time to do.  

David Weinberger: Objective Rhetoric. 

I was just interviewed by Niharika Acharya of Voice of America's Hindi service , broadcast in India. Gaurav Dwivedi is the cameraman. Like most television crews they like you to contort yourself into unnatural positions so that you can't actually type accurately, but it looks good on TV for some reason. So that is exactly what I'm doing right now, as silly as it might seem!  

Ed Cone: "Is Atrios going to be more credible, or more popular, now that we know who lives in the mansion above the Batcave?" 

Jessamyn the Librarian wearing a Blogger™ shirt. 

Am I crazy or does Christian Crumlish look a lot like Marc Canter?? 

Today's audio blog post, began with a question from Teresa Hanafin from Boston.Com, and then drifted into setting the context for tomorrow's Gillmor Gang audiocast. Also look for a 20-minute discussion tomorrow morning at 10:40AM Eastern on WHYY Philadelphia. 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer on two anonymous Microsoft bloggers. 

Philadelphia Inquirer: "Welcome to Bloggers' Boulevard." 

Betsy Devine: "I don't wear broomstick skirts or cowboy boots." 

Dave Johnson: "I think that next week is going to be the week to really read bloggers." 

Dave is right, I think. It's not just that time for writing is scarce (it is), it's also that the mood is pretty edgy because of the security. Last night I cut out early to have dinner with a friend who is not part of the convention. Took a cab down Commonwealth Ave. Downtown Boston is a military encampment. The uniforms were very strange, lots of weird colors, helmets, bullet-proof vests, handcuffs. A motorcade held up traffic, but I couldn't figure out who would be in such a large motorcade, and the special security was unbelievable. Heavy armored vehicles. Snipers on the roofs, armed guards at every public building, and this was several blocks from Fleet. As I left the convention area I felt a real sense of relief. If there's going to be an attack tonight I'm going to watch it on TV, I thought. I don't know how many other people feel like they're at Ground Zero when they're inside Fleet, but I feel it, even though it's not stopping me from having fun and doing new things, not knowing how it's going to come out is preventing me from drawing conclusions.  

NY Times: "If there was anything Senator John Kerry's strategists were hoping to avoid this week, it was the image of a Massachusetts liberal in funny headgear." 

Tim Jarrett: "Reading the convention blogs, one gets a feel of life on the FleetCenter floor that network TV may never again deliver." 

Marc Nozell shot this picture of me on Fox this morning.  

I'm up early to appear on Fox & Friends at 6:45AM Eastern.  

Convention Bloggers is a Yahoo Pick today."This site's front page works as a news aggregator, constantly refreshing its content as convention bloggers update their sites. This site proves that a simple idea can produce an excellent resource for anyone interested in more convention coverage than the cable news networks offer." 

Dowbrigade: "Our bus, like the majority of the others, parks as far away as possible from the fenced in protesters." 

Jessamyn: "Having a women's room that never had a line made up for almost every indignity that we had to deal with." 

Ted Kennedy: "The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush." 

Scoble: "The blogs are better than TV, but one problem is that I don't know where to go for the good stuff." 

Talkleft: Name That Blogger. 

Google: "This page is not yet ready."