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March 31, 2005
File-Sharing, Conversation Tracking...and Terri Schiavo
The same week that the Supreme Court took up the legality of downloading songs and file-sharing software that makes it possible, former Talking Heads singer David Byrne launched his own Internet radio station to feature music he likes.
BlogPulse is celebrating this week, too, as its extra-cool Conversation Tracker capability emerged at the No. 16 spot among Tuesday's top links. It's a great tool for discovering the threads that emerge and branch from a single blog post. Speaking of tracking, Bloglines now allows users to track FedEx, UPS and USPS packages in transit.
Terri Schiavo's death today will certainly continue to be discussed by bloggers. In the last week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson began appearing among BlogPulse's key people as he nudged his way in front of the cameras at the last minute (something he excels at, according to those who know him), and Schiavo's parents (even before her death) agreed to sell the names of donors to their daughter's cause to conservative advocacy groups for fund-raising. Bloggers also are starting to pay attention to Pope John Paul II, who this week began receiving nourishment through a nasal feeding tube.
Meanwhile, former U.N. ambassador John Danforth, an ordained minister and former Missouri senator, feels that the Republican party is letting itself be hijacked by conservative Christians He writes in a New York Times opinion piece: "At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another."
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: How and where do you find our news? BlogPulse compared blogs vs. mainstream media vs. cable news and found some interesting trends.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:48 AM | Permalink
March 29, 2005
Big Emotions, Big Findings, Big Food, and Bigger BlogPulse
A quick count shows that Terry Schiavo has remained in the No. 1 spot among BlogPulse's daily "key people" list since Friday, March 18, the day that her feeding tube was removed. Links to news stories about her situtation, and key phrases that refer to her condition, however, have begun dissipating in the past few days as bloggers turn to other subjects.
One of those topics is House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who took a public role in Congressional efforts to intervene in Schiavo's case. Now bloggers are discussing this week's Los Angeles Times revelations that DeLay's family in 1988 removed life support from his father, who was seriously injured in an accident at his home.
The entire Terry Schiavo episode is emotional for all people, which raises the question: When bloggers talk about emotions, which ones do they talk about most? Seems love wins handily:
Use BlogPulse 2.0 for link search:
BlogPulse announced new features this week, including the daily stats page (upper left corner) and improved search and graphing capabilities. Remember that BlogPulse's search function allows users to search not only for key words but also entire links or URLS to track blog posts. Type in the entire link for BlogPulse, for example, and you'll get all blog posts that mention this site. Type in your own blog, web site or favorite URL...and see what you find!
Big food
Today's top link is the best example of why the country's obesity problem isn't likely to melt away soon: a 730-calorie breakfast omelette from Burger King. Fries with that?
And bloggers already have been actively following the latest earthquake to hit Southern Asia. The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, which played a key role in covering the December 2004 quake/tsunami, jumped into action again just minutes after Monday's quake hit.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Speaking of tsunamis and earthquakes, here's a graph that tracks natural disasters.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:38 AM | Permalink
March 28, 2005
BlogPulse 2.0 Is Here: Faster, Cooler Features and More Than 9.3 Million Blogs Identified!
In case you haven't already noticed, BlogPulse underwent some major improvements over the past week. The highlights include access to six months of blog posts for URL and keyword searches, a daily count of blog activity on the home page, and the ability to create customized trend graphs that cover 1, 2, 3 or 6 months of data.
A nice example of a new six-month trend graph comparing four terms -- war, peace, disaster, politics -- (see below) comes from Steeph's blog.
And that's not all! BlogPulse 2.0 is also faster and now has identified more than 9.3 million blogs; in the last 24 hours, it analyzed data from 301,320 blog posts. In that same time frame, BlogPulse discovered 38,817 new blogs.
Many of these improvements are the result of suggestions from loyal BlogPulse users, and the entire BlogPulse team sends a big "thanks!" and the encouragement to keep 'em coming!
Key highlights of BlogPulse 2.0:
• Deeper index: BlogPulse users now have access to six months of blog data instead of the previous 60-day archive.
• Better search capabilities: Users can search through six months of blog posts AND visualize results with a one-click "trend this search" icon that appears next to search results. For a sample, check out this search for "Star Wars" and then click on the icon next to "Search Results" to visualize the buzz.
• Time-frame options for graphs: Users interested in creating visual graphs that track/compare blog "buzz" can choose from one of four time frames -- 1, 2, 3, or 6 months.
• Better link search capabilities: Previously, BlogPulse users who searched an entire link/URL received results only for that site's home page; now, search results cover the entire site/URL.
Engineering upgrades also added some zip to BlogPulse's performance.
Thanks to the entire BlogPulse team -- CTO Sundar Kadayam, senior researchers Natalie Glance and Matthew Hurst, engineer Mark Reed and graphics guru Cecilly Van Dyke -- for some awesome work, even greater ideas and very cool plans for future upgrades. Stay tuned!
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:13 AM | Permalink
March 25, 2005
Academic Freedom...or Academic Inteference?
Perhaps, like many issues in today's red-blue atmosphere, academic freedom depends on who defines it. In Florida, legislators are considering what they call the "academic freedom bill of rights" which claims to " stamp out "leftist totalitarianism" by "dictator professors" in Florida universities.
I don't know about you, but it's been a long time since I sat in a college desk, a few years since I taught a college class. Isn't this going a little too far? Are these the same conservatives who want to get lawyers out of everyone's hair? Isn't education about opening minds to others' ideas? (Personally, I wonder: is the world getting stupider or something? Are we being sucked collectively into a El Nino of Intolerant Dumbness?)
Speaking of the conservative movement, recent efforts to inject the federal government and politics into the Terry Schiavo case (she continues to rank as BlogPulse's top person this week), and are being scrutinized and examined by bloggers under the banner of "How Far Will They Go To Kill Conservatism?"(14 citations today among top links). A Glenn Reynolds MSNBC interview on the issue also shows up today among top links. Polls show continued support for the Florida woman's right to die in peace.
Other BlogPulse discoveries:
For the light-hearted at Easter, check out the Bunny Rap video (today's No. 20 top link). Yahoo! seems to be on a roll with this week's release of its Creative Commons search engine, and iPod lovers keep coming up with new ideas for the gadget.
Blog Bizarreness
The story of the woman who found a human finger in a bowl of chili at a fast-food restuarant is being shared liberally among bloggers, as is the name of the health inspector called in to investigate.
Passings
Fans of the Seinfeld show are mourning the death of Barney Martin, the actor who played Morty Seinfeld (Jerry's father) on the show.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: It's easy to see where seasonal attention if focused: spring break fever.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:23 AM | Permalink
March 24, 2005
Easter Treats, Troubled Kids, Sneaky Artists and Conspiracy Talk
References to Easter are beginning to appear in BlogPulse, and that means it's time again for Peeps Research, a tongue-in-cheek site by Emory Univeristy scientists, who this year detail delicate surgery to separate cojoined Peeps quintuplets (I found the link to it off a medical blog).
And for the answer to "which Easter candy is the favorite?"...I turned loose BlogPulse's trend-graphing tool to come up with this:
Today's gutsy move -- and today's top BlogPulse link -- comes from the Wooster Collective, a project whereby an artist named Banksy, dressed as a British tourist in trenchcoat and fake beard, managed to sneak into major New York musuems and hang his own art -- unnoticed. (Maybe he can find "The Scream"?). Second-gutsy move is today's No. 7 top link, The Credit Card Prank, whereby a credit card user tests the limits of credit-card security, and totally flunks (from a security standpoint) but with flying and funny colors.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere, the news is more serious, with the nation and courts continuing to address the saga of Terri Schiavo. And then there's another difficult and emotional issue, that of teen Jeff Weise, a troubled teen who this week shot and killed 9 people before killing himself on the Red Lake reservation in northern Minnesota.
The Schiavo case, and Congress' intervention in the issue, turned bloggers' attention to a New York Times article about divisions within the Republican Party about the definition of "conservative" and the role of the federal government in state issues and private family affairs. Key observers, including Rep. Christopher Shays, the Hoover Institute's David Davenport, and Harvard law professor Charles Fried appear among today's burstiest people for their opinions on what the philosophical divide might mean for conservatives.
Meanwhile, where Tom DeLay smells a left-wing conspiracy, IMAX moviegoers are treated to what looks like right-wing-influencedcensorship over the issue of evolution.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: The sixth Star Wars film is set to invade the planet sometime in May, and buzz is starting to build as fans watch trailers and catch tidbits of the latest installment. Somewhere in the back of my college-age son's closet, I'm sure there's a light saber he won't let me donate to Goodwill...
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:31 AM | Permalink
March 22, 2005
Health-Care: Personal, Political or Judicial?
Awareness vs. wakefulness...living vs. existence...consciousness vs. brain-stem reaction. The case of Terry Schiavo continues to dominate blog discussions, with 20 of the day's top 40 links and 9 of the top 15 key phrases somehow related to the Schiavo case. Schiavo herself has overtaken President George Bush among key personalities, and Florida Judge James Whittemore emerged at No. 2 among bursty people for his Monday ruling allowing Schiavo's husband to honor his wife's wishes not to be kept alive artificially.
BlogPulse tracked references to the phrases "right to live" and "right to die" in blog postings and found this trend:
Politics has surely entered the debate, as bloggers keep track of Congressional votes for the weekend bill that allowed federal court intervention in the Schiavo case, to distribution of a GOP memo calling Schiavo's case "a great political issue" sure to rally the conservative base, to discussion of previous Bush-passed bills in Texas that give hospitals the right to terminate life support, even against a family's wishes, for patients unable to pay for long-term care in cases where there is no hope of revival.
Meanwhile, polls show Americans decidedly against federal intervention in what they consider to be private matters for families and their doctors.
Other BlogPulse tidbits of curious and notable interest: Internet buzz about a new resource called Our Media, (heavy traffic, so the site may or may not work), step-by-step instructions from 3-M (the Duct Tape folks!) on how to make a Duct Tape wallet (No. 33 link) and the winner of the worst-news-judgment award for today. No comment.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Basketball buzz is certainly in the air, and the NCAA is starting to show an upward trend as March Madness continues.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:48 PM | Permalink
March 21, 2005
The Right to Live, the Right to Die
If there were ever a case for every American to have a living will and a durable power of attorney for health care document his or her possesion, the story of Terry Schiavo is the ultimate example. Caught between a husband who wants to allow her to die with dignity and parents who want to keep her alive at all costs, she's now become a judicial and political pawn, and her case is one of the leading topics of discussion among bloggers.
The Abstract Appeal blog, focusing on Florida law, has an authoritative roundup of the issues without taking sides. And blogger Mark Kleinman discusses other similar cases that are just as difficult but not receiving nearly the publicity as the Schiavo case.
In general, who are bloggers writing about most in this entire affair? To date, her husband and the Florida judge who has consistently ruled in Michael's favor to remove her feeding tube are capturing most of the attention.
Personally, twice in the last 18 months, cousins, aunts and uncles have had to make the wrenching decisions involved with hospice care and feeding tubes, and both times, an aunt and uncle, respectively, experienced good, dignified, peaceful and painless deaths, surrounded by the people they loved. Thank goodness no politicans were circling outside like the opportunistic vultures that they seem to be.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Yahoo has purchased Flickr, the photo-image-sharing service many bloggers use. Blogger Jeremy Zawodny provides some perspective.
On the foreign policy front, the Washington Post claims the U.S. used misleading intelligence (hmmm, imagine that!) in its stepped-up efforts against North Korea.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Today's graph examines discussion among bloggers about the leading causes of death for American adults.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:25 AM | Permalink
March 18, 2005
Springy Stuff, And A Wake-Full Kind of Day
Is the TV turned on where you work? Is the NCAA tournament distracting coworkers? Are company meetings being scheduled between games?
One of BlogPulse's most intriguing capabilities is its ability to plot trends or issues graphically, so we put spring sports to the test. And March Madness, it seems, isn't as front-and-center as it might seem.
I never know which names will burst into consciousness in the blogosphere each day that I check BlogPulse, and today's bursty people" list includes the names of several folks who passed away this week (and several far earlier in time, in fact).
Burstiest person is the late Andre Norton, whose real name was Alice Mary Norton, author of the "Witch World sci-fi series. She died at age 93 this week in Tennessee. Also on the list, at No. 3, is former Red Sox pitcher Dick Radatz, who died from head injuries after falling down the steps at his Massachusetts home.
And then there's this oddity: a tribute to the late Jesus Christ, in a strange, aromatic sort of way. Out in South Dakota, Bob Tosterud and wife Karen are selling candles that they claim smell like Jesus. (How do they know???)
And of course, partiers are still talking about St. Patrick's Day and all its associated nectars, traditions and history. The truly warped will enjoy The Onion's Irish Heritage Timeline.
Here's a question that's puzzling scientists: is religious behvaior genetically influenced?
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Spring arrives officially on Sunday, and not a second too late for anyone who's endured the incessantly gray weather of the Midwest or the torrential rains out West. Bring on the daffodils!
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:15 AM | Permalink
March 17, 2005
More Technie News, and a Squeaker Vote on Alaska Oil Drilling
Yahoo! and Apple users seem pretty excited this week.
Yahoo! has announced Yahoo! 360 a single source for social networking that allows users to create a blog, send text/photos froma mobile phone, post phots, recommend favorite stuff and post reviews. It's today's No. 8 link in BlogPulse.
And Apple users are hearing rumors of an updated Airport and (egad!) two-button mouse, according to AppleInsider, today's No. 4 link.
And it's no surprise to newsmakers that conservative Bush advisor Paul Wolfowitz jumped 38 spots among Key People overnight and placed tops on Bursty People list, now that he's been nominated by President George Bush to head the World Bank. Convicted murderer Scott Peterson also made jumped in people-related blog rankings based on his death-penalty sentence Wednesday for murdering his pregnant wife, Laci.
Normally, I don't spout off much on topics, but it galls me that the Senate on Wednesday snuck through on the budget bill an amendment that allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (read those words again...."oil drilling" and "wildlife refuge" and scratch your head) in Alaska. But I'm spouting off. Why?
My husband, in the 1970s-early 80s, flew nearly every inch of the ANWAR area by helicopter during the heyday of the construction of the Alaska oil pipeline to Barrow. He air-ferried geologists who were looking for geologic formations that would indicate the presence of oil. And guess what? They found none, which is what today's critics predict. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Which leads me to believe this current "exercise" in oil drilling is more for the tax credits that a certain Texas president's buddies stand to earn than any actual solution to domestic energy production and conservation. Besides, I've been to Alaska. It can't be described (not enough superlatives), and it's too awesome for photographs (no camera lens can do it justice). Some places should not be fouled up by humans, and that's one. Off my soapbox now.
And here's an interesting question being discussed in the blogosphere. Are bloggers too un-diverse? Too much of a white guy's club to be representative?
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: How do you like your job? Hmmm....
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:07 AM | Permalink
March 16, 2005
A Day for Cool and Curious Techie Stuff
BlogPulse is full of curious and interesting techie discoveries today, most of them interspered with news of MCI WorldCom head Bernard Ebbers' guilty verdict for fraud charges on Tuesday (burstiest person) and continued discussion of Judge Richard Kramer's decision this week that found California's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional.
First cool discovery is Amaztype (today's No. 5 top link), which lets you search through the Amazon.com database in a very graphical, beeping and techno way. Give it a whirl.
Second cool discovery probably isn't all that new, but Skype is getting more and more attention as a Free Internet phone service.
Third cool discovery isn't highly recommended, but Command Tab (specializing in Macs and geekery) offers instructions for adding a 40G Toshiba hard drive to an iPod that was dropped on the floor and went kaput.
Having trouble solving Rubik's cube? Let Legos do it. (That's the No. 4 cool discovery).
And the final cool discovery comes from a Wired story about the "building in a bag" created by London engineers. Click on the image on the left to see what it looks like.
But wait! There's more....such as A9's new open search feature and step-by-step instructions on colorizing your own images/movies.
In a little bit of blogger trickery, bloggers are trying to push Wikipedia to the top search term for "online poker" as their way of fighting spam.
And for those who need some news to make their tax-paying stomachs churn yet again, the Houston Chronicle reports that Haliburton subsidiary KBR charged the Pentagon $27.5 million (with an M) to rush-deliver $82,100 of cooking and heating fuel to Iraq. Their version of "overnight shipping" charges, we presume?
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Enough talk about today's President. How do the country's living ex-Presidents stack up?
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:14 AM | Permalink
March 15, 2005
Did You Ever Get That Strange Sensation of Deja Vu?
This week, a Reuters study found that the 2004 Presidential election coverage was more negative toward President Bush than challenger John Kerry, and suddenly, it's as if the blogosphere has time-traveled to last November.
There's talk of California Judge Richard Kramer's decision that overturned California's ban on gay marriage. The Democrats are still going after House Majority Leader Tom Delay over ethics issues involving fund-raising and lobbyist activities. Emboldened right-wingers continues their attack on Darwinian evolution in science classes, and Bush confidante/advisor Karen Hughes is officially back in the administration fold as an Undersecretary of Diplomacy. Meanwhile, charges continue about manipulation of the news media by canned "news segments" issued by and paid for by government agencies. Is Thanksgiving just around the corner or something? Sure feels that way.
(One more time: Intelliseek senior researcher Natalie Glance, has co-authored a paper, The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog, with Lada Adamic of HP Labs. It examines the posts of 40 "A-list" conservative and liberal blogs in the two months leading up to the Nov. 2004 Presidential Election and includes a one-day snapshot of more than 1,000 political blogs).
In the blogosphere, the call is going out now to nominate favorite blogs for the 2005 Bloggie Awards. (Hint: all you BlogPulse devotees? Knock yourselves out on the nomination forms....). Technorati CEO David Sifry summarizes the state of blogging, and blog buzz (and criticism) hasn't abated over AOL's terms of service ("we own all content, you have no privacy rights") for its popular instant messenger service.
Anticipation corner: Macintosh users are starting to hear more and more about the spring release of OS X 10.4 Tiger...perhaps in April? And X-men fans seem pleased that Matthew Vaughn has been chosen to direct the X-men 3.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Have you ever been driven nuts by business jargon? Wanted to hand someone a dictionary and say, "Here. Speak English, please." A recent list of overused business phrases finds that "at the end of the day" takes the cake over "win-win" and "think outside the box."
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:58 AM | Permalink
March 14, 2005
Slick, Packaged News....Direct from The Bush Administration
Want to know what everyone's talking about in the blogosphere today? The Sunday New York Times expose of the growth of "packaged news" stories issued by the Bush Administration and various federal agencies.
References to the article appear as Nos. 2-5 among today's top links, and a whopping 14 of today's 15 burstiest people are administration officials, news directors or critics of the practice who were interviewed by the Times. According to the newspaper, video news releases produced by federal agencies are increasingly aired on TV stations nationwide as "real" news from "real" reporters, even though they are in actuality public relations videos moderated (without conflicting opinion, of course) by staffers/actors posing as "reporters." While the practice isn't new, the Times notes that it's used more frequently by the Bush White House than any previous administration -- often without viewers knowing that their "news" is promotional, not reportorial.
The other issue dominating the blogosphere today is a rash of links to America Online's terms/conditions for its popular AIM/instant message system -- and an equally large number of bloggers encouraging users to find alternative IM sources because of this condition: "You waive any right to privacy." Among others. Slashdot has a few observations, while others are recommending Jabber as a replacement.
Celebrity sightings? Michael Jackson's bizarre trial continues to create equally bizarre buzz, and filmmaker Peter Jackson says it'll be at least three years before he films "The Hobbit," the precursor to the Lord of the Rings Series. (Hurry, please?)
And if you missed it last week, don't forget to download the latest blog research from Intelliseek senior researcher Natalie Glance, who co-authored The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog, with Lada Adamic of HP Labs. It examines the posts of 40 "A-list" conservative and liberal blogs in the two months leading up to the Nov. 2004 Presidential Election and includes a one-day snapshot of more than 1,000 political blogs. As part of the project, Adamic and collaeage Eytan Adar have also have posted an interactive tool for exploring Figure 3 in the paper, which illustrates the network of the most cited 20 liberal and 20 conservative blogs.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Democracy in the Middle East has been a long-term, seemingly unreachable goal. But now there's democratic movement, discussion, rallies and reform in key Middle East countries.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:59 AM | Permalink
March 09, 2005
Political Influence of the Blogosphere
Natalie Glance, one of BlogPulse's senior researchers, has co-authored a fascinating paper that examines the degree of interaction and behavior among top conservative and liberal political bloggers during the November Presidential election, and the findings are quite revealing.
The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog, written with Lada Adamic of HP Labs, examines the posts of 40 "A-list" conservative and liberal blogs in the two months leading up to the Nov. 2004 Presidential Election. The study also includes a one-day snapshot of more than 1,000 political blogs. Highlights?
• Coverage by political leaning was fairly balanced. Of 1,494 blogs that met the researchers' definition of influence, 759 were liberal and 735 were conservative.
• Even though numbers of blogs were fairly balanced, conservative blogs showed a greater tendency to link to other blogs (84% linked to other blogs, 82% received a link) compared to liberal blogs (74% linked to other blogs, 67% received a link). That behavior is captured in the following graphic from the paper, which illustrates the division between liberal (blue) and conservative (red) blogs. Orange links go from liberal to conservative, purple links from conservative to liberal. The size of each blog (indicated by a circle) reflects the number of other blogs that link to it.
• Conservative blogs also linked to more numbers of blogs (15.1 average) than did liberal blogs (13.6 average). In the single-day snapshot analysis, the most linked to liberal blog had more links (Daily Kos at 338) than the most linked to conservative blog (Instapundit at 277), although Glance and Adamic found that "the distribution of inlinks is highly uneven, with a few blogs of either persuasion having over a hundred incoming links, while hundreds of blogs have just one or two."
• Conservative blogs tended to rank higher overall than liberal blogs, with the top 20 conservative blogs falling in the 44 most-cited blogs while the top 20 liberal blogs fell in the top 77 most-cited blogs.
• Liberal and conservative bloggers also had clear preferences for mainstream news sources that they cited. Fox News (89%) and the National Review, (92%) for example, received most of their links from conservative-leaning blogs. By contrast, 91% of Salon.com's links came primarily from liberal-leaning blogs. Top right-leaning political bloggers tended to refer more frequently to the New York Post, WSJ Opinion Journal and the Washington Times, while left-leaning political bloggers linked more frequently to the Los Angeles Times, New Republic and Wall Street Journal. The New York Times, Google News and Washington Post tended to received equal numbers of links from both sides.
• Who were bloggers writing about? Curiously, 59% of the mentions of John Kerry came from right-leaning bloggers, while 53% of the mentions of George W. Bush came from left-leaning bloggers. Not surprisingly, some of the top political figures mentioned during the campaign, including CBS' Dan Rather, film maker Michael Moore, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others -- continue to be discussed as "key people" in the blogosphere today.
The current paper by Glance and Adamic bolsters BlogPulse's previous examination of bloggers' impact on the 2004 Presidential election, a special online report called Campaign Radar 2004. It and other special contributions are available in the BlogPulse Showcase section of the web site.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:45 AM | Permalink
March 08, 2005
Bloggers at the White House, Changes in the Board Room
Garret Graff may be the answer to a Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy! question in a few years, but today, the man behind the fisbowl DC blog is happy to be the first official blogger to receive press credentials to the White House press room (a dilapidated space, he points out in his first post). Seems his presence there created as much news as he covered. Or more.
Among the news emanating from Washington, meanwhile, is the appointment of John Bolton as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, an organization Bolton has managed to disparage in recent years. In a similar vein, the former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy asks a few pointed/disaparaging questions of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in a open letter in the Winnipeg Free Press.
In Iraq, conflicting stories of what happened when U.S. soldiers fired on a car carrying a recently freed Italian journalist to the Bagdhad airport, killing the intelligence officer with her. A Christian Science Monitor' reporter's first-person account of passing through U.S. checkpoints in Iraq has been picked up by bloggers. Also in military news, U.S. Army recruiters are having a hard time filling their quotas, reports CNN. So are reserve and National Guard units. Seems pesky parents want in on the process and are asking hard questions that 18-year-olds sometimes don't think about (been there, done that).
In the world of big business, burstiest person Harry Stonecipher, recruited as the IBM CEO charged with returning ethical behavior to the company, has been fired for having an affair with a female executive, while over at Sony, the first Westerner, Howard Stringer, has taken the reins at the Japanese electronics manufacturing company.
Technies are noting that the beta version of Google's Desktop Search is no longer in testing; it passed and already has been added to the regular Google lineup.
Being added to the shredder bin at today's No. 7 link (Shredding Demonstrations) are computers (click on "Shred of the Day"). How many times have you wanted to do THAT to a particularly obstinate, constantly crashing machine?
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Even if they can't agree on a plan, people are definitely talking about Social Security reform more than any other domestic issue. (Gee, remember domestic issues? It seems so long ago...)
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:33 AM | Permalink
March 07, 2005
Friends, Funerals and.....
A service called Friendditto got tons of traffic and blog buzz over the weekend, so much so that it's now been put on hold temporarily while certain user/legal issues are being ironed out, apparently. Not associated with LiveJournal, Friendditto archives/archived LiveJournal posts based on certain keywords it found, and some users are now issuing warnings about privacy concerns.
In other parts of the world, mourners are discussing the death of a respected British rock DJ Tommy Vance, today's burstiest person and credited with interviewing more than 10,000 guests during his on-air tenure.
The death of an Italian intelligence officer, shot by U.S. troops as recently freed Italian journalist-hostage Guiliana Sgrena was being driven to the Bagdhad airport, is again raising calls for Italy to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Italian officials are demanding a full U.S. investigation into officer Nicola Calipari's death.
If you're squeamish about the "f" word, DON'T read today's top link, a LiveJournal posting from a woman sounding off about today's state of affairs for women's reproductive rights. In a bizarre kind of way, it's a modern-day version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Martha Stewart's stock (and buzz) are both rising now that she's been sprung from prison. See how Martha stacks up against other headline-grabbing women.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:31 AM | Permalink
March 04, 2005
Can You Feel the Blog Paradigm Shift? (And Happy Birthday, Yahoo!)
Really? Federal Elections Commission fines for bloggers who forward campaign addresses or provide links to candiates' web sites? Is that what's ahead for politics and blogs?
The biggest buzz in the Blogosphere today involves this CNET interview with FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith, who argues that elections rules eventually must be applied to the Internet, and that means more scrutiny of (and fines for?) bloggers and their ubiquitous links to campaign sites, information, fund-raising sites and more. Says Smith: "One thing the commission has argued over, debated, wrestled with, is how to value assistance to a campaign...The commission has usually taken the view that we value it by the amount raised. It's still going to be difficult to value the link, but the value of the link will go up very quickly."
Blogger Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit chimes in, as does Redstate.org and a lot of other bloggers.
Speaking of red states, the Elko Daily Free Press has coverage of a red-state speech given recently Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev).
On the party front, the Internet's marking Yahoo!'s 10th anniversary, with a 10by10 retrospective and a link to the original 1995 Yahoo! home page. A long way, indeed....
Speaking of long ways, Virgin Atlantic has an entire web site devoted to Steve Fosset's Global Flyer and the around-the-world solo flight that finished Thursday afternoon in Salina, Kansas.
Other interesting finds, access to the New York Public Library's digital image archive and (just what the Internet needs more of) sleeping cat pictures. And oh yeah, a Tawney Peaks breast implant for sale on eBay.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: What's happening in the world of Internet browsers?
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:47 AM | Permalink
March 02, 2005
Blogs: A Hot Topic....And BlogPulse's Youngest Fan
Just got back from the Jupiter Search Engine Strategies conference in New York City where blogs were hot -- blogs for public relations, blogs for marketing, blogs for advertising, blogs as media. Everybody was talking about blogs and their impact.
At Intelliseek's BlogPulse headquarters, everyone's talking about
 BlogPulse's most youthful fan (pictured at right), the daughter of senior research scientist Matthew Hurst. She's sporting the latest in spring fashion gear, the BlogPulse.com T-shirt.
Microsoft's Bill Gates will soon be sporting something new -- a royal title. He's being given honorary knighthood status by Britan's Queen Elizabeth for his contributions to the business world. Elsewhere on the computer scene, Yahoo announced some new Web Services this week, and a bunch of computers were allowed to operate on the Internet unprotected.
In the land of scientific experimentation, how about a global jump? A bunch of scientists have organized World Jump Day for July 20, 2006, a day when everyone's supposed to jump at the same time to throw the earth slightly off orbit. It's today's 27th most shared link. (I'm scheduled to jump at 4:39:13...I'll wear comfortable shoes).
And not to brag or anything, but I took the Commonly Confused Words Test, today's top link, and scored "Advanced." (Sister Mary Protasia, rest her soul, would be proud).
Legal eagles are also getting plenty of traction among bloggers today, including speculation about the the bizarre Chicago deaths this week of the mother and husband of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefko, recently the target of a murder plot by white supremacist Matthew Hale.
Other are discussing this week's Supreme Court ruling that declared unconstitutional the death penalty for juveniles under 18. The Roper vs. Simmons case was based on the murder conviction of Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he murdered a woman -- and apparently bragged that he could get away with because of his age.
BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Post-Oscar buzz shows a slight uptick for best actress winner Hillary Swank, and although Jamie Foxx took hom the trophy, Johnny Depp (no doubt a favorite among LiveJournal teen bloggers) still gets most of the attention.
Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:04 PM | Permalink
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