[john p] [[turning it over to dave w]] [dave w] we'll go for as long as there is energy to keep going" ground rules: john asked me to do this the way we do bloggercon... it usually has a bigger room and more people in it. I should probably explain the ground rules a bit... think of the previous session(s) as blogging, and this is a wiki we'll get a chance to step on one annothre's lines a bit, and hopefully not get too hurt. rules: 1) can't repeat yourself [jonathan z : what?] 1) can't repeat yourself [audience: ANNNGH] 2) no commercial messages, don't talk about your products 3) no topic does anyone have anything they want to discuss? we all have mics... when you want to speak, just press the button here. [john garfunkel] civilities.net sorry I didn't show up this morning, but I did post "20 myth and assertions" from day 1... theyr'e on the blog if you want to discuss it... [blog onscreen] [dave w] how about giving us three of them? [jg] 1) conflict, tension... everyone ought to have a blog, a working blog... [dw] are these fallacies/things people said that you think are wrong? [jg] things that were said that went unchallenged. 1) it was said we should expect a future where there are 6billion bloggers [ethan contends against this] 2) it was also said that everyone who reads a blog is also a blogger... [dw] I didn't say that... you're misunderstanding what I Said [jg] rewind the tape! [jpalfrey] I think you (jg) has to find it (the ref), though [[comments about 'listening to the tape'...]] jg - also, big media should link to bloggers jp, dw - doees anyone say that big media *doesn't* link? you media types here, do you link? [jon bonne] I think we don't link enough, definitely if you push people to more information, they become more informed... [dw - lets keep it snappy] jb - no, let me dw - yes, the question is, if you link to it, you own it jb - you can push it to that... dw - yes, and I'm pushing it to that, because I'm the moderator... jp - I want to hear jon, and not just because [he has my name?] jb - do you own it? no. o you popen yourself up? yes, not just legally... you have to go through a vettig proess I notice my counter[arts ffrom other big media websites across the table [saying this] should we link to completely unsubstantiated things? no! prat of the editing process, not just the text but also the links we publish, is ''what can we link to to expand the wodcount beyond what we already have..." dw - I could moderate or not moderate... I don thave to moderate this... but the question is, if you link to it, do you own it? jb - I did respond to that question... ownership is extreme, but we can't just throw something out there and link to everything. [john h] there are two inds of links: one is a link to other people's sites; another is a linkn to a specific post... you've obviusly taken conscious recognition of thta post... we link to instapundit. glenn reynolds may have gone completely off his rocker right now... if you link to a specific post, the question is, what do you say about it? dw - you say there can be consequences, you can be responsible.. what are the consequences? are you really liable for libel? jh - I got libelled by the Minn. STar Tribune, which said our site said sth we didn't say... when we pressed the readers rep to find out, he said, well you didn't say it, but some guys that you linked to said it. my own opinion fwiw as a lwyer, is, in general you are certainly not liable. dw - is linking to your site like referncing your house? (if there are drugs inside) [new question...] [rick heller] I think there is no responsibility in a legal or moral sense... but there could be spin against you if you're involved in partisan struggle. I could imagine in the blogosphere the consensus being that an attack like a tv ad were appropriate, but if a tv ad were to link to a kerry, unpatriotic thing... [dave sifry] no, you don't own the things you link to. there are some quetsions around implied endorsement (esp via blogrolls) third, the great thing about the us is anyone can sue anyone for anything. [dw - cf ? who was gone after for audio and transcript of a bad video... whle the wapo also had the transcript up] dw - any questions from people who weren't at the conference? about what happened? jg - you have to consider who you put on your blogroll... it's like going to the cheesecake factory... and finding 120 things on the menu a model of the [blogroll] form: 10 entries when msnbc is saying they're going to link to bloggers... [dw - well, that's if they write about you... then they must know something about you] jg - big media was aked, why don't they just add links to bloggers? [asked by jay rosen] dw - jay was making a specific point, not a pointless [one] [ethan] one of the points being made, looking for ways to include bloggers in big media, is: you have someone covering a story, they have limited space and language, may not have the culture or context. one of the things [var people] have wanted big media to do, is tgetting to local bloggers who know a story and might have somethig to say about it. if you're reporting iaq as a moslem non-english speaker... you're missing something. that's what I heard. [john p] it's a non-issue, not even a close call. linking doesn't imply ownership. what matters is what you say about it... that seems to me the context in which it happens. not a close call in the law right now... it would be a terrible thing if every time you link to something it means the same thing... dw- here's my proposal for what a link means b/t sites: one site thought an informed person would want to consider the point of view expressed by the person they're pointing to. sj - one of the sad things is that after 10 years, we still don't have anything better than a simple hyperlink to connect two sites... dw - well, we did just get an upgrade to the hyperlinkn just last week [referring to the google-supported "don't index what I'm pointing to" tag] I was involved with this, so I can talk about it... you add an appropriate attribute inside your tag... scoble is the first person I know who discovered that this had a whole nother application... I don't think anyone realized that this was going to be an upgrade... as weinberger said, this is one of those very small things that makes a big change. [robert, jp] how do you defeat comment spam with this 'upgrade'? and for those of us who blog on [fillintheblank platforms] how do we do it? I'd love to do it right now. dw - you'd like to do what? jp - implement it, create such a link right now. ethan - well, if she's a ktiten-eating cyborg, we don't want to give her any more page rank... but we do want to let everyone know jp - well, you make that decision with every link that you type dw - it's true; I'm a big believer in giving power to the users... this has always bothered me: the google guys can write google news... it's like mgical what they do, why can't they figure out what's a coment?' but [instead] they asked for us to put this link in there... [jp notes that IRC is all for this upgrade... and is dubbed the IRC reporter] dw - you have to actually change the software (to do this)... you'll get an upgrde from sixapart... I did it for manila (which the berkman center uses...) I think the googlers are (justifiably) proud of what they've accomplished here; this was an example of our industry people working together, to make the world better for users. even though it seems like the search engine could be smarter, it's good that they cooperated. [robert] when harball put up links and arranged that, they put up links from the dnc and a whole bunch of others, nobody could tell mehow they arranged them... I wanted to know why they didn't pick mine, which is why I asked. they haven't updated the site, and it's still there... some of the links, like one to the Hardblogger? site, are no longer relevant... so they are linking, but have no idea what they're linking to. dw - I have a question for zephyr. firstly, what should the song be? it's always a good idea to sing a song at the beginning of a conference, and also at the end. we didn't sing at the beinning... but the real question I want to ask you is, you got embroiled in a big controversy at the beginning of the conference... and it then got picked up by the wall street journal. I heard about it first from palfrey, put it on scripting news... from my point of view, it came through blogging first. this is interesting: I think what's abent in your criticisms (just now) is you lack of appreciation of point of view; from your point of view, it started in the WSJ and then spread out [[to more bloggers than had picked it up before --Ed]] from mine, it was bloggers first. dw to zephyr - do you have any regrets about what you posted? any thoughts about how you could have done it differently? zt - sure I did. I'm not sure I would say 'regret'... but I wish I had had more time, taken more time... I haven't been a blogger before, save in a very very restricted environment dw - where was that? zt - for the dean campaign... dw - how did that go? zt - it was good... dw - I was a blogger for the dean campaign for a very, very limited period of time ("parting is such sweet sorrow...") dw - lisa williams! podcasting... there are a bunch of people who are regulars of the berkman center on thursdays... you've bene following podcasting and have written some docs and have ideas about how it should evolve. we talked about podcsasting here today; did you listen to it? lw - I can't say what we haven't talked about... how many people in the room have even listened to a podcast? it seems to me like an incredibly minority interest right now... dw - waht's the #1 secret of podcasting that if anyone could know it, should know it? lw - I've been working with a friend... [and when I tried to explain podcasting] he said "I can get this on my ipod?? he downloaded an ipod client, but I don't think he had ever even used an aggregator before. I had to back way up and explain it to him... I'm ctually working on a short film to explain to people how to get set up with podcasting for someone who has never even seen an aggregator, but has an ipod... dw - there's very little connection bt ipod users and anyone who [knows how to have] a podcast. dw - you don't have to go through all those tech steps to experience podcasting, do you? you could manually put it on your ipod and still appreciate it... lw - I like ben walker's Theory of Everything ethan - I actually wrote (re the theory of everything) that weinberger's talk last night was the first instance of stand-up philosophy... which is what I expect from every ex-philosopher [Rmack] I want to ask all of the people on IRC what things they feel have been brought up and what they would like to bring up... one person mentioned that we have tlked a lot about blog credibiliyt, but not about ewb credibility... ("Leaving") the underlying concepts of credibility are authority and verifiability... bloggers vs other online sources only address authority, and not verifiability... it's kind of hard to scroll all the way back and reconstruct the thread... [jay rosen is back] [jg - let's get some feedback from him about what you said before] jg - what I raised in my post about myths and assertions from day 1... more links add value. I've heard that from weinberger beore. I also heard that you need to post as many times as poissible. post drafts. but particularly with links, the more links you have ,without checking what those mean... that doesn't [necc] add value. you should add value with what you say and link to. dw - do you know what you said that he's responding to? that msnbc should link to bloggers... jr - I didn't say that, first ofa ll, I said that msnbc should have established networks of affiliated bloggers; not hosting them at msnbc but linking to blogs that msnbc would not necesarily use, but give some seal of approval or icon to that netowrk, and therefore enable new bloggers to gain a certain basement level of credibility through association with them it would seve as a filter, ffiiating with blogeers it thought were good, responsible, diverse, and [who] add value re: links, its true... if we're simply talking about # of links, good, more better... we're not veing very smart about it. at dinner last night, I noticed that simon waldmans piece at presslinnk, with 13 links right now... they were from very different areas, subcultures of epople. designerblog, someone in IS, someone in journalism. lots of pieces that I 've published aren't like that' - it's a narrow range. the value of links is something you can contribute to. most bloggers are lazy... they don't put effort into important aspects of their blogs. I have a "recommended list" and descriptions next to each blog on my blogroll, so you can get a sense of what they're about [jon bonne] I want to emphasize editing your blogroll, with a heavy hand... but mostly I have a question: with this msnbc network, would this be something that bloggers would apply for, or would msnbc pick? jr - I think if this were successful, there would have to be people on both sides interested who would come together... dw - they would talk over the water cooler; it would be vey obvious who they were reading. it's like, john, how do you cdecide who should get a fellowship to the berkman center? sometimes they come knocking on your door, like I did... or, how did REbecca come? she happened to be on your radar, she was showing up at meetings... then dave weinberger, b/c his name is so close to mine... [jr - great pr for the A-list there, dave] jb - I appreciate what jay said the potential danger to formalizing the process is you say 'sign up, we'll look and put you on it..' jr - the first thing that will happen is, 55 people from each side will tell you why it can't work. and then we'll work it out. dw - they'll put up a form and nobody will ever fill it out... why would they ever want to do it? the first step... then you would, you know. jg - it's obvious they will ome together somehow. editors find writers... dw - sometimes it's good to think, can you imagine a world in which this never happens? jg - the war is over since yesterday... I want to agree with jay. I just want to bring up the theory over the past day: what makes up bloggers... I have ringers, stringers, and wingers... there's no wingers on the internet. none. [john gehry?, live in cambridge, not a blogger] I'm very interested in blogging. I wasn't at the conference, but you asked us to ask aout what happened at the conference... journalism has 2-3 functions: fact gathering, analysing, opinion. it seems to me blogging has taken on an equal level in opinion. you're talking there [jay] about getting msnbc to give their impromatur to bloggers. why? how do you get bloggers to become fat-gatherers? journalism has 2-3 functions: fact gathering, analysing, opinion -- Opinion isn't journalism it's editorializing. take powerline for instance I read you every morning [john h] why is msnbc even needed? just one voice in a bunch of voices, why do the blogs need [such] validity? jr - I think it would be worrisome if most bloggers affiliated (with anyone) I think free bloggers have to remain, and will in many cases ouperform the news media. but one of the things we discussed at this conference was: with this chaos, it's very hard to find these things, these things come up. the reality is, that's how you make something accessible to new users. always, no magtter what the context, how does good work surface? how do people find it? how do you link up interets ato information ? one way is a network of bloggers that is branded in some way. you could brand it with lots of different institutions.. you could say it's the harvard network... the hugh hewitt network.. the msnbc network... the nyu network... obviously people will wnat to associate voluntarily with this group, or not. my belief is, it might be good for msnbc to do this, simply b/c the bloggers will do it on their own anyway new gathering: how would it work? imagine a crisis. you have these blogs in lots of different places around the state, countyr, world, all capable of forwarding reports; instantly your network could spring into action when needed. now if msnbc has no credibility, you wouldn't want to affiliate with them. dw - the fellowship analysis is appropriate... why does someone afifliate with a place like harvard law school//? it helps you do things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. human beings depend on this sort of vetting... I doubt if it would be very profitable... [robert cox] in the course of the context of the conf, it was more about the benefit to msnbc, not to bloggers, helping them to gather facts, and vet them and so forth... that they should look to emrace that. [sj - note about self-organizing respect group] [*^*] any org that isn't dself-consciously conservative becomes liberal over time dw - that's evolution, right? jh - my point is, I don't want rating agencies, portals, organizations who are going to guide the newbie b/c you know what, every one of those groups is gooig to be liberal. google news is liberal.. the people who set it up stocked it with liberal sites... one of our readers compaied to gnews the other day, and said, you've got all this left-wing stuff in there, why isn't powerline in ther? an eventually someone got back to them and said,ok you're right, we'll add them. that's just one small instance of the fact that while most political blogs are conservative, the people who design the tools and work behind the scenes tend to be liberal. [Rmack] I think this is great, since we didn't get together to create a BODY to try to rate blogs, we just got people together to talk about credibility, and the whole blogosphere is outraged that we would even dicsuss this... the idea that the blogosphere would accept any organization that would rate it... also, the left/right issue, and the idea that there was some kind of conspiracy in picking the people woh came... in general, if you asked who voted for whom in this room, we're pretty balanced... [[arlene? name lost]] two things: 1) I can't see the times managing editor giving up that kind of control (over your reprters) via affiliation. 2) we have these things, like technorati, blogdex, people rate these things themselves... ethan - I wnated to get back to my friend from powerline... and ask him to google news "john kerry" and find what I discovered a few weeks ago with the idaea thta google nes was competely biased against liberals... the idea was that there were seraches for "john kerry" rathre than "senator kerry' and that google news caved under pressure b/c they always cave under pressure... the conf organizers were pretty amused that we awere accused of being right-wingers, where genreally we arent', because we invited some people and not others... I find myself thinking of concepts like NPOV on something like this - the fact is any time you're trying to make decisions about this kind of thing, you're going to be accused of bias... [jon bonne] to ?, while chris matthews may have links to all kinds of blogs... we're not even consistently running links one way or another (someone else doesn't have any) [robert c] the thing that was missing before is that gnews isn't all autoatic; they put certain things in there and take other things out. dw - I've sometimes had wars with google... am I not included b/c they don't like me? that doesn't seem to be the way to do it... and why don't they like me? :-) [ethan] robert, I'd like you to support that comment.... as far as actual placement on the page [rc] I'm not talking about placement; google news sources are not automated. [ez] then we're in agreement. [jg] ok, john - the flickr link? "Journalist Credibility" jg - one thing you said, "real media doesn't read blogs..." here's a report: blogs read by the media, blogs read by the elite media... [[which report? url?]] look at the top ... sullivan, reynolds, kos, national review... at least in the top 5, it's pretty heavily weighted conservative. one might say that the top 100,the whole blogosphere would be different... with the exception of reynolds, these are journalists who are moonlighting. re: credibility, whether or not you bleieve in ethics and geenral standards, clearly these guys are doing something right. I want to find out what's good about online writing... (the idea that just b/c someone has a blog they're read, isn't true...) [[interlude: links from RMack in the chatroom a short while ago]] http://www.flickr.com/photos/kombinat/3434617/ http://allied.blogspot.com/2005/01/for-immediate-releas e-blome-pre.html [rick h] as someone who writes at a med-trffic blog, it seems that some people in the media caught the buzz about the blogosphere, and want to benefit from that without contributing to it... the New Republic bugs me specifically: I do think the Am. Prospect does a nice job of linking to some blogs... and I think the national review does [but the NR are getting the benefit of the blog buzz, without contributing] [jay] the thing is, if they get seroius about it when they get serious about it... if msnbc wants to contribute to this kind of journalism, people get together in a room and sit down and figure out how it work. one of the first roblems people would have is, I don'twant to be part of an idealistic network... it won't work that everyo=thing now will have Jim Murphy's stamp on it b/c its involved with this network... that's not the way it works. I can see how lots of peopel wouldn't want to affiliate with msnbc... but when it starts to happen (this change) and you're a new blogger, you might appreciate it. right now, when I try to get my students, young journalists, to blog, this is the biggest problem for them. they don't know "how do I get from my tributary to the mainstream" and right now there are crude ways of doing it, but I'm just saying, if you build those on-ramps, people will rive their cars. that's how you're going to get talented people into blogging a lot of other bloggers will say "oh, you sellout, you wnet the snbc route..." and those people saying that will 5 yrs later doing the same thing... you'll have radicals, independents, and affiliated bloggers.. good, that's the way it should be. [new question] john h said that most significant blogs are conservative.. my feeling is, that it's a more natural outlet [the net, blogs] for consdervatives, b/c they are shut out of the major media... it's like a flood of people is rushing towards [it] test that out, like talk radio, obviously... they go to talk rdio b/c they're shut out [of other channels] dw - do you really call (talk radoi) conservatie, or is it just nasty? [others - it's conservative] in their minds we're stupid, wer're lazy, we can't even control our bladders... [going to lisa now] [lisa] a lot of the things about blogs is re: the ways blogs and trad media copmete. john gerrity (new q'er) said sth about how comentary has shifted the blogs and about how new media don't destroy old media... stories are like water, they flow into where they feel most comfortable. before tv we had radio drama, afterwards we didn't. maybe the op-ed page might end up on the web. the thing I'm actually most interested in is paces where blogs do *not* compete with the media. I thought it was fantastic that bloggers covered the most recent party conventions... somebody said, wow, bloggers could do what CNN could do, and did a pretty decent job... but what is it that blogs can do that media don't and won't do? I personally could provide better coverage in my home town than my paper could, simply by going to every town meeting. and there are tons and tons of lectures you can see for free... never mind by beig a journalist. one of my friends was a [reporter] who went to see the japanese empress and it never even saw airtime... I'd like to see [media] never waste anything again, just put it all on a blog. and have bloggers focus on things that media just can't do... [sifry] I think there are limits. timeliness: in posting a ruor that terrorists are going to bomb blahblablah, there's a tremendous potential for panic if you haven't checked up on that. we should think about [this responsibility] dw - one thing I think would have been good at this conference, was to roll in a tv set and have all of us wath a nightly news broadcast together... our discussions tend to be pretty lofty and theoretical... I wonder if big media say the same kinds of things when they watch TV that we say when we sit at home with our family and friends... (maybe it would be better if the stuff that shows up on tv ended up on the cutting room floor and the other stuff ended up on tv) [sifry] there are a couple of people/reporters [who tend to blog whole interviews when they do a piece...] and I think thta's amazing! I liked that idea a lot... I certanly don't want to see everything... I think a lot of times people might see an interview, or something might come up... that ends up being important later. that's tremendous fodder for bloggers, who might go back to a story 2,3 weeks later... [weinberger? no] dw - I want somebody who hasn hasn't spoken yet... what should the song be? you've been thinking about ths all day. what direct questions should we ask him? [jay r] what progress did you see at this conference? (to dweinb) [weinberger] I think there actually was some progress... I think yesterday we did useful psychological things together... I think this is real, real progress... I'm going to get to the end of portnoy's complaint... at the end it's all him talking to his psychiatrist at the end it's something like "good, now we can begin! " I think we got through a whole bunch of shit. now we can get to the beginning... I think the final thing keeping us apart is, what's going to happen to journalism, it's already happened in journalism -- is gonna happen. In my view, it's less likely to come from the bloggers who think of themselves as doing some form of journalism... there was an artefact of the conference makeup, that blogging did tend to look like something on the continuum of journalism. which I think is essentially not right, but is right for a handful of bloggers... I think the next time we do this, it would be good to try to put the question fo journalism and institutions of journalism in the context of the whole blogosphere. dw - I think this was formed in part b/c, look at the press coverage blogs have bene getting. it started as a trickle, and now a torrent... the preponderance of them have been... will blog completely rewrite the rules of our business? by the end, they determined no, they won't. another thread we never ot to - a little book you wrote with some other people, titled [the cluetrain manifesto] thoughit wasn't about blogs, I think that's what you were really writing about; maybe you wnat to explain? [weinberger] well, first I just want to interject this, following on your first point : when the media people are thinking about weblogs, they're not thinking about the person writing the dickenson weblog that person may turn out to be more important to this intersection than josh micah marshall, who afaict is not only a journalist but a really good one who I listen to every day. that can't have the same affect as this other large, genuine sphere of influence that is so unlike journalism... [jay r] I hear you insisting on the dicontinuity b/t journalism and blogging... [sj] [weinberger] that's right... [sj] I don't know if I agree or not, but if you make those kinds of distinctions, you should allow for more... we mentioned yesterday that blogging software isn't ideal, or the end poroduct, or even an efficient tool for conveying what people want to say... or allowing people to add their information or subtle changes to information in the world... [later spaker: john h] we should thin about how the tools determine what kinds of 'blogging' we get... [dave w ] so how could it be better? podcasting -- enclosure allow you to have this, and to package up other meida... [audience] don't forget rss :) [dave w] [I don't want to focus on specific existing tech.] blogs are basically content, title, description... sorry, title, link description... how could this work? how else? [jay r] I want a magazine blog: cover art... open my blog and ... from a user's point of view, I know blogging software looks perfect and wonderful but I experience it as john does... as a set of constrints on me if it were different, I'd use it in a different way [john h] the cover would be a magazine, where i could shift things aroun d... the right column should be highlights... [jg going to pressthink on the screen] dw: what about the tool you use to write it? suppose the tool was like a word processor... let's say every blog post was a window you opened up and typed into... and any time you wanted to edit it it would be just like a word processor... would it be like that? do you use a wp? [jay r] no, I do it in the software... don't you think it's a little slow? (that last form dave w) jay: yes... [lots of hands now] [madhu] as long as we're doing this wish list thing... is it possible to have a blogging tool that's all voice reg? rec? I hate reading... [after a long day looking through amicroscope] hear it, say it. as long as we're taking this crazy trip... [brendan] one of the things that bothered me when I started blogging: using html and css to get mt to do what I wanted... I wanted to get a magazine, have pieces I liked stick around for a while, but you have to learn mt, and for me a month of being a freelances without gigs allowed me to do it. but I think there's a style of thinking there that forces people to do it. and I found a year ago when nobody knew what a blog was, people would say "what's this? I don't get it?" [dave w] how about an example of a kind of article that scticks around longer... jayr - go to revealer.org or revealer.com "Today | Timely | Timeless..." observations fly by, but sometime I want to actually sit down, and say "here's what I got out of it..." all of tese 6 observations in one piece. I can go to my mt sidebar and figure out how to permalink it in there... for me it's difficult and time-consuming enough to do that, that... I've worked for corporate consulting mgmt, and they buy very expensive tools to allow that kind of expensive manipulaability to their main page. dw - hav you actually used those tools? brendan - no... it was when I was consulting for them [that I found out] dw - maybe the problem that mt is having [speaking as a developer with years of experience] is that it has to be an easy task for the software to make it easy... I want a separate enu for ontrolling my front page... where my permalinks go, and what the style is for them... the stuff thta's more permanent should show up in a place where more perm stuf f shows up. [jon b] I found it really interesting that, what jay's been tlaking about, non-chronological blogging... since that's what we - not so much me any more - spend all their time doing rearranging content into a non-chron heirarchy. I happen to think that's a good model; that's how things worked before the blog form people had to compose pages as though laying hem out. but that takes a lot of time... and kind of changes the equation for blogging. [ingal muschatz? sw dev] interstingf or me as one of the poeople using and consming the blogs: it's going to be increasingly interesting to see how people merge all tse techs; how can I coment on a podcast? integrate it into my text site? if I have lots of podcasts, that's a day's worth of listening. How do I get to the parts that interest me? as a user/producer I'd like to ark things as categorized, people can filter it to consume it... thats what I'm interested in working on. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts about the mm aspects of blogging. (multimedia) [dave w] from being a podcaster myself, they don't *want* you to slice it up into little bits. I've noticed over time that people dont read my blog posts. I've learned to type short 1/2-sentence things max. I don't expect people to read longer things. it gets reidiculous sometimes... there's a reading style where thye just look for buzzwords and go put in adjectives and verbs and respond to that. I could write "css is wonderful tech" and I would be flamed for being a css hater... b/c that's their idea about me... a nice thing about podcasting is that you can't skim it... I like it as a way of communication because people can actually listen to it... have to listen to the sentences... I've talked with adam curry a lot about this and he's adamant that people can't consume his podcasts any other way than from beginning to end [sj] but you can do that already! you can write a script that takes in your text and spits it out once sentence at a time in flash, at a user-modifiable speed... [with some max upper limit] I think one of the reasons that writing has become such an important method of communication is, that it is *so* *skimmable*. [and this is why flah intros are such poor design...] [sifry] it would be nice to offer some thumbs u/down method, linking into mp3 streams... I'd love to see things like that. it's perfetly ok to do it your way too, dave [but choice is nice] dw - iI'm tired of engineers trying to solve all my problems, and that's one fht things I have about jon; I mean I like jon, and I have to say that, or people get the wrong idea about me, but the idea that we can slice things up into chunks and put them together... that's the way an engineer sees things. It's like, you know, scratch your own itch! one of the greatetrs embarrasments (I think) is that we as software developers can't get out of the mindset of scratching our own itch[es] and get on moving with the technology. [brendan] as long as you're aware you're forcing this on the user... film directors have that luxury. as a user I'd like to be able to listen to morning edition... and all of a sudden, one of those tendentious essays starts, and you can tell at the very beginning of that segment, that you're not going to enjoy that bit... I'd love to be able to forward through that. [dw] I know what you're talking about. some days I"m up for a drunk cadence; other days I just want to get on with it. [jg] I happen to have contributed with drupal, great sw, open source; it says, how can we do stuff that blogs do, how can we do stuff that wikis do... when I first read about blogs, and what rebecca blood wrote, she said blogs want open source, community management and comm publishing... john (h) I want to apologize for laughing about your comment aobut conservative blogs... that may be true for blog radio, but across the board, outside a particular elite, it's pretty split. one of the things I've tried to do is look at a cross-section of online bloggers and writers... [[william safire was compared to a blogger (a 'winger' in jg's terminology)]] do they link a lot? do they have sth like a blogroll? is their stuff meant to be read in long-format? thees things are telling. but in this room, we ask: does it have a forum? is it edited? how frequentl edited? does t sound folksy? do they check sources? or what dave said last night, do they believe incompletely in filling in... but I wanted to illustrate with this chart... I'm a part-time researcher with this... there is divrsity. I just wanted to try and group/illustrate diversity. so I hope this is helpful in illustrating the picture. powerline: jeff jarvis, others. the pink one is where I tihnk the future is... the gadflyer... they have aken the easy format for people who want to tune in.. ... media matters. it has a TON of stuff they're overing, and can't possible illustrate this in the log format I think as we get to group publications, people will embrace differnet departments... [sj, a moment back] As for interfaces to large amounts of data, and user content, I want to say that there is a real artto presentation of information, and it's not really recognized as a separate field [of study] in our society yet.. [jg] I agree that this is where tech people and lib science come together, and this was the purpose... bringing people together (responding to sj) [current robert cox q:] there was a big fight breaking out about poynter last night... when things fall down, people really get down to comments about who is this guy, where does he come from, what is his background... [[about which author? what piece?]] dw - that's the first thing I think any time I see someone making strong points [rc] I think that was the interesting thing last night, that only once [he started disagreeing with this guy] did he look up his background to discredit him. [[rather than to judge his authority, and that of others, in general... I think --Ed.]] . [[And.... that's a wrap!]] Dave Winer just called it a conference, palfrey concurred, thanks for coming and being heard :-) I hope you're singing Happy Days with us right now... transcripts will be up before dinner. [that is, transcripts from the afternoon] thanks again .... great job. Wonderful work. Thanks! ^ ^ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2005/01/22#a749 End of #webcredtrans buffer Sat Jan 22 16:07:52 2005