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It was one of the most unpleasant surprises that the people of California reversed their state’s position on gay marriage. That state has been on the forefront of changing attitudes towards gays and lesbians. I am greatly disappointed that its citizens let themselves be swayed in the wrong direction by groups pandering to their fears. What was the most unexpected was that so many people were fearful that their children would be taught about homosexuality in school. People who were swayed by such arguments simply don’t understand that children learn everything of their social ideas from their friends. There is no way to prevent the transmission of social information once a child goes to school. Sadly, that information is often skewed and incorrect, whereas when it is taught in school it is usually monitored and correct.
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Eric Blair lived an interesting life. It should come as a surprise to no one that this life was noted, recorded and dissected into the daily pages of a journal. Now into the blogosphere come daily notations made by the man who would take the nom de plume George Orwell published 70 years to the day after they were first penned. From the Orwell Diaries:
From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries.
This entry got me all hot and bothered about the daily life and philosophy of Blair. This was the man who believed the destruction of language is an essential part of oppression, laid bear in the creation of Newspeak for 1984. And I had reason to be excited; when the Orwell Project first posted, they teased us with one of Orwell’s most famous quotes from 1984: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” Oh man, this is going to be good. Read more »
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Jerry Lewis was stopped in the Las Vegas airport last week after airport screeners found a handgun in his luggage.
Reuters tells us the octogenarian funnyman was on his way to a one-night only, one-man performance in Mount Pleasant, Michigan when folks at the airport found the unload .22 pistol in his bag.
Seeing as how carrying a handgun in an airport is generally frowned upon, airport officials detained him for a bit, before releasing him on his own reconnaissance with a citation for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. As for the gun, well the airport fellas hung on to that for Lewis. If he wants it back, he’ll have to appear in court.
The Reuters story then goes on for about four paragraphs about all the stuff Lewis did in the past. This is apparently for the readers who just emerged from a 60-year stay in a bomb bunker.
Dean Martin was unavailable for comment. (Most likely because Dean Martin is no longer with us).
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We are near the point where very sophisticated content management systems are going to put “enterprise publishing” (e.g. the technology behind NYTimes.com) within reach of nearly everyone, and business bloggers are catching on.
Steve Rubel points to InfoWorld report suggesting that the information management power of blogs could easily replace expensive corporate content management systems. Steve also hypes his client simplehuman, which built its press room using TypePad.
I love the idea, but I’m surprised that so many public relations and marketing bloggers hype TypePad and MoveableType. These certainly are not the tools that spring to mind when I think of a sophisticated content management system.
I’m much more interested in the opensource offerings that are becoming increasingly powerful and userfriendly, like Mambo and Drupal for content management, and WordPress for blogging. The pace of innovation in the open source community is staggering and it makes expensive proprietary systems look clunky by comparison.
Within the next year we should see an easy-to-use, opensource, publishing platform that combines standard CMS features with blogging, wiki, and bulletin board functionality. Right now an experienced network admin could cobble together a system like this by using various applications in tandem. Soon this publishing power will be available to everyone. Will it revolutionize personal publishing like the blog did? Can we handle this much power? It waits to be seen.
To take any available opensource CMS software for a spin, check out opensourceCMS.com.
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The power, the money, and the glory go to those who unify. So, who is going to unify the blogsphere? Technorati seems to be the clear leader of the moment - the Google of the blogsphere - but it has a myriad of competitors. Further, it would seem natural for the big search engines like Google, Yahoo!, or MSN to launch a search function that tracks blogs, but that has yet to happen. Yahoo! is currently testing a blog search.
So, where is the blogsphere headed? I’ve noticed that there are relatively few high quality blogs in any given topic area, and all bloggers list and link to the other good blogs in their particular sphere, so we have developed a very high quality social network that is already completely linked with itself. A search engine like Technorati merely exploits this preexisting network to create a comprehensive compendium of millions of blogs.
Today, bloggers working together can very quickly create a comprehensive network of high quality content. Given this fact, it seems that a network model - yes, sort of like TV and old media - might reemerge, as teams of bloggers get together under the umbrella of a larger organization, which can provide the structure and power needed to win big advertising dollars.
We can see the beginnings of this trend with Gawker and Corante, which offer a select and high quality group of blogs that readers come back to again and again. It is my casual observation that most blog readers only read a very small group of blogs on any kind of a regular basis. If this is true, there is a huge possibility for consolidation in the blogsphere. Yes, eventually most of the power will be concentrated in the hands of a few, just like with old media. That’s the way of the world.
