WeBlog

There Is No Crisis: Protecting the Integrity of Social Security

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:24:00 GMT

The RNC is re-uniting the BC04 team for their assault on Social Security. Right-wing groups are raising an estimated $100 million dollars for the campaign. There has been a war declared upon Social Security.

Let's stop this fraud. BlogPAC is joining the battle -- and we hope that all of you join us. BlogPAC is a collection of Democratic bloggers and blog readers.

One year of blogging...

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:26:00 GMT

Almost missed my one year anniversary of bloggong. My first blog on this site was posted on September 8, 2003.

Happy blogging to me,
happy blogging to me,
happy blogging to meeee,
happy blogging to me.

sphpd... (me blowing out the candle...)

RSS Calendar - My Calendar in newsfeed format

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 16:31:00 GMT

Here's an interesting new “news feed“ service that uses RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to deliver a personal calendar into a news reader or into a web page. You can see mine embedded in the Jumano home page at:

http://www.jumano.com

You can go to the site and set one up for your self at:

http://www.rsscalendar.com/rss/

Glenn's book is finally out

Chris Jefferies — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 23:01:00 GMT

The Politics of Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction

I had ordered my copy from Amazon.com about a month ago, and finally it arrived. You can order it here:

Here's my review:

While this book is titled “The Politics of Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction” it is above all about freedom.

Glenn breaks freedom into two primary categories. Freedom to will, he says, imposes restraints on others. Freedom to experience is a more extensive kind of freedom that, while limited at the boundary where others’ liberties are encroached upon, also calls for responsibility to find common ground within our various differences.

From his experience in political campaigns he shows how political advertising is calculated for maximum psychological effect and that even those who are aware of its manipulation are not immune from its persuasion. If you remember, for example, a childhood memory of holding Bugs Bunny's hand at Disneyland then you’ll be interested to read the chapter on televised ads.

Glenn answers the question of “What is to be done” and foresees the internet and the emerging social media web sites such as web logs (blogs) as a means of democratizing the political process by encouraging broader participation.

I recommend this book for those who want to understand the deceitful manipulations of the political machine from a political insider who has a profound command of varied philosophical and scientific perspectives.

Copied to the forums for discussion at:
http://www.jumano.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=48

Blogon 2004 - the conference

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:55:00 GMT

On Friday, I attended the BlogOn 2004 conference that was held at the Haas Business School on the UC Berkeley campus.

The morning started with a session titled “Defining Social Media“ which was moderated by Ross Mayfield of SocialText. The panel had some insights that I found interesting. One idea was whether social software is a product, or a feature of other products. In the HR space, it seems that blogs and wikis could be an addition to the portal which enhances corporate communications.

Another idea was that the load of media from digital cameras will fuel a need for blogs as people look to fulfill a need to express themselves with their new media.

Reid Hoffman (CEO of LinkedIn):

“Any large company, if they're not searching the blogs for what people are saying about their products and organizations, are fools. If you don't have some kind of blogging strategy -- much less response -- you need to think about that.“
“Brand value and trust will evolve completely. Individuals will become brands.“

The second session was titled the “The Dark Side of Social Media“. Danah Boyd was the moderator and was philosophical about this subject by thinking of the “Dark Side“ as being like the Dark Side of the Moon or “that which light has not yet been shed upon“. We should be vigilant and watch for the abuses possible in blogs and wikis. Another concept of the dark side was the fear of corporations who may feel that they are losing control of their corporate message. Here are some tidbits about how corporations should deal with social media:

watch and learn - fear shows deeper corporate problems - lack of transparency and flexibility
evolve what you're doing - Tickle vs LinkedIn - different users, different functions
copyright is dead, long live copyright - copyright to protect creators and encourage distribution
fan fiction - variations on Harry Potter stories by youngsters
corporations start with a deficit of credibility - social media helps build credibility

The final morning session was titled “Business Transparency“. It included a demo of the Microsoft Channel9 site by Jeff Sands and Robert Scoble. It is a forum that includes blogs and wikis and is a mechanism for Microsoft to provide corporate transparency to it's clients. Channel 9 is the channel used on airplanes for passengers to hear what the pilots are up to; hence the site name. Another form of transparency for the passengers. The second half of the session was about SixApart's customer relations nightmare that was eventually resolved by the use of blogs (which they market as Movable Type).

The afternoon sessions were about the business of social media and included the tried and true models of user subscriptions vs advertising. There was some discussion about the technologies of RSS news feeds and filtered content, but these discussions seemed to drift into standards issues.

The final closing session was titled “Who's Investing in Social Media?”. It was a panel of investors who talked about what they find interesting in the social media business. While most of them seemed to say that the social media firms were already in place, there was a ray of hope in an idea that would bring focused information from my friends on a local basis. Some examples were allconsuming.net and weatherbug.com. They also said there was too much money chasing too few companies.

BlogOn 2004

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:02:00 GMT

I attended the opening reception and a panel discussion for the Blogon 2004 conference this evening. It was held at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club. I got there about an hour early and took some time to read the conference notes in the Faculty Club bar. $2.50 for a pint of beer. I think I'll stop in there again at some point in the future.

The panel discussion set the tone for tomorrows sessions by positing issues of concern in the field social media.

Moderators were:

Chris Shipley - Executive Producer, Blogon
Susan Mernit - Partner, 5ive

The panelists were:

Scott Gatz, Yahoo
Tony Perkins, AlwaysOn
John Roberts, CNET Networks
Bill Schreiner, AOL

The issues ranged from business models of blogging sites to branding and forms of advertising.

An interesting point was made by someone in the audience that branding used to be pre-defined and was delivered as a finished concept. Now, it develops as users respond to the product. Branding is no longer a promise, it is a fulfillment.

There was a general consensus that, just as CNN cable news slowly sapped the traditional networks of viewership, so too will independent journalism in the primary form of blogs take away readers of traditional news channels.

The opening session tomorrow starts at 8:30am. A bit early for me. I think it indicates that we have more business types than techies running this show .

Jumano Forums

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:30:00 GMT

I've set up a web forum for discussion threads at: http://www.jumano.com/Forums

Please visit the forums and start up or join a discussion.

Nova Spivack: The Future of the Web

Chris Jefferies — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:08:00 GMT

originally from Creative Chaos - Dina Mehta's Blog

http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/2004/03/10.html#a388
http://www.drsnet.org/preoccupations/2004/03/nova_spivack_th.html
http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/03/the_metaweb_is_.html

Nova Spinack's vision of the future of Social Networking Software:

Content : Lifelogs” & Personal Portals - All information about a person and their experiences is automatically logged for their personal use. Semantic routing of content delivers relevant information to interested parties automatically – everyone gets their own portal.

Communication : Universal Communications -Persistent identity and relationship management across all devices, software, and networks enables seamlessly integrated synchronous and asynchronous communications.

Collaboration : Group Minds - Anyone can know what everyone knows; everyone can know what anyone knows. New levels of collective intelligence are enabled by fusion of Semantic Web with distributed agents and knowledge management tools.

Community : Emergent Communities - Communities spontaneously emerge and self-organize around memes (hot topics). Communities are decentralized; no longer “hosted” in any single location or controlled by any single service provider

Commerce : Intelligent Marketplaces - Intelligent commerce agents interact semi-autonomously in a decentralized global marketplace. Self-optimizing trading networks

In the second article, he ties this evolution into implications for the Metaweb, along a matrix of degrees of information connectivity and social connectivity.

"The Metaweb is emerging from the convergence of the Web, Social Software and the Semantic Web."

A larger image can be viewed here.

Texas Legislature Mapping

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 11:12:00 GMT

Sean McCullough has a TouchGraph page that shows the relationships between the Texas legislature and financial contributors at:
http://www.banksean.com/TXLegislature/Senate.html

From his blog:

banksean - asymptotically approaching an understanding of it all
http://www.banksean.com/weblog/2004/2/26.html

Image Gallery fixed

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 00:12:00 GMT

The blog images are working again. It should be no problem uploading images.

Have fun...