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Weblogs & Political Campaigns

I find it quite fascinating how bloggers have brought 'politics' closer to the masses. Unlike the editorials of newspapers who are controlled by the mainstream media giants, bloggers can bang out their feelings and insights into a candidate's chances for election, strengths and weaknesses, and mannerisms at events. Often bloggers can just tell it like it is.

I am not sure but I suspect that each Democratic candidate has a crew of bloggers on staff pushing the messages of their leader. I try to follow some of the blogs just to see how the campaigns are going and to get insight into the minds of political bloggers.

Blogging is either going to have a major impact on this year's elections or not. Dean's camp has already shown that bloggers and the internet can play a major part in the campaign: The internet is a very inexpensive forum to push one's messages and raise much-needed funds. I guess it's very much a grass-roots mobilization for candidates.

Come November we will understand how much of an effect blogging and the internet had on this year's elections. (AlwaysOn.)

Joi Ito: I'm a Blogger

Excellent way to introduce oneself! (See Jan 23, 2004 entry.)

Jamis [Buck's of Woodside]: Vegan?

If you get a chance, you really need to read this blog written by Jamis about the Christmas, oops, I mean Holiday - Season. Very funny and makes one think a bit about others in the world. I don't think I could ever give up eating poultry but I did give up eating beef for 14 months. It was tough. My period of a non-beef diet coincided with my no-alcohol period. I lasted a bit longer with my pledge of no alcohol: I went for 18 months without a drop of the stuff.

Too Tired to Blog

I am too tired to do any bloggin tonight.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wonderful: Nick Denton making money off blogs!

Another smart person has found a way to make cash off of weblogs. Hats off to the guys at Gawker Media. (Related story.)

Friday!

Finally, the weekend is here. I am so tired and am in serious need of a lot of REM. My eyes are so tired and puffy from getting only 3-4 hours a sleep a night. No matter how many hours in a day, I am usually five or six hours short by the time I need to sleep and recharge my batteries. I hope to spend much of tomorrow blogging and reading other people's blogs. I feel like the whole world is passing me by and I am still stuck on the elevator.

The Yin Blog: Ivy League Universities

Very interesting blog about the disparities in school funding across the board. According to Professor Yin, the elite schools are receiving an unfair portion of state monies in order to help students attend their schools. While helping needy students is a 'social good', the Ivy League schools are basically sucking up all the funds from the pool. This creates less money for the poorer schools. Have a look at the blog and the link to the source of the story. Very interesting. (Yin blog.)

Great day off!

I had a wonderful day yesterday. Just stayed at home and worked on a few business reports and did some research. I am looking at putting more money in the US markets later this month. I expect the US economy to turn itself around by the middle of the next year. Hopefully, we can see a 3,000 Nasdaq and a much higher Dow soon.

Corporate Weblog Manifesto via Scoble

If you are a corporate warrior and blogger, you should read Scoble's blog. (Scoble)

Yin@law: Blogger being sued/silenced???

Warning! Warning! Danger! Danger! Bloggers beware! Bloggers be warned! Read this blog by a law school professor about, yet - another lawsuit filed against a blogger in order to silence that blogger. I hate it when people have to seek legal remedies through our already overcrowded and overworked court system. Bloggers should repost the initial blog and drive the 'fighter against free speech' back into his corner.

d2r blog: MS & Scoble

If you have time, check out this blog from the other side of the world (remember - I'm in Japan). It takes an interesting look at MS, the people at MS, bloggers at MS, the people behind MS, how people at MS see people outside of MS.... you get the general picture, right?

Wirefarm: Joi and Mizuka?

Blogger Jim O'Connell gives a teaser of some wonderful news headed into the blogging world. It has got to be something good! (See Wirefarm.)

Ping! Ping! Ping! Weblogs.com

The constant pinging is a wonderful sound. The pings of bloggers. The pings signal the sharing of thoughts and information. The pings mean someone out there is complaining again! I wonder how many pings are recorded per minute? (See site.)

A weblog by any other name is...

just a bottle of great Scotch. Or according to my buddy, Snopper, 'a blog is a bottle of Chivas Regal'. Fun to play. Better to drink. Exciting to share. But, perhaps you'd like someone else's definition of it? Try Dave Winer's definition at Harvard Law School.

PDC Bloggers??

Interested in finding out how the 'better half' live? Want to know what they talk about? Check out this web site.

Pierre [email protected]

He finally blogged again. It has been a long time since he blogged last. Check out the comments on his blog of 21 October 2003. SPAM - COOKIES - TROLLS. Good reading!

Wirefarm.com Blog

Very good blog about yet another person who had a rather unpleasant experience at the airport. I sure hope the US government does something soon to improve the travelling experiences of all law-abiding passengers. I have been to the USA three times since 9/11. While I was not subjected to outright rude behaviour from the airport staff (inbound or outbound), I did witness others get the 'once-over' and 'twice-over' and 'thrice-over'. It is sad that in order to protect the Republic the people hired and trained to ensure the safety of the skies are so darn rude at it. Everyone's bad experiences at US airports only serve to upset businesses and keep them from returning to the US. Perhaps, Canadian companies will begin hosting meetings up in the 'Great White North' for US-based, Canadian Regional Offices instead. They should begin setting up US offices right along the border in cities such as Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. (See blog:See the October 28 blog. .) Fly into Canada and have a much more pleasant meeting experience!!!

eBayization of People

Tony Perkins, formerly of Red Herring and now of AlwaysOn, has coined a unique word, 'eBayization'. Great pools of online groups assemble into much larger groups. Those gigantic groups merge with other gigantic groups. Suddenly, we have mega-groups or metropolis-size groups of millions of same-interest people.

Trying to monetize the metro-groups will be a challenge. With new businesses focusing on the 'social networking' of the net, I can see fast-buck artists trying to cash in on the new trends. Let's hope that people and VCs are much smarter this time. I want to look beyond the eBayization of large masses for direct commercial benefits and look at the political clout such groups would have in a direct democracy.

Can we imagine what a self-interested group of netizens could do with a voting bloc of 10,000,000 people? How about a bloc of 50,000,000??? Would politicians 'sit up straight' and take notice of us?? You bet your last wooden nickel they would.

Perhaps, we should start building blogging communities around central themes or group interests. It might get us one step closer to having a true democracy.

American English: A Blogger Tells All

Yes, I would have to agree with this blog: English is getting much simpler and easier for everyone. I guess blogging is also having an impact on how we write nowadays. I find that I use much simpler sentence structures and often don't mind breaking a few grammar rules from time to time just to sound 'different'. If elected officials use shorter sentences in the world of '10-second sound bites', I am sure more and more people will speak in the same manner.

A colleague of mine just taught me a very important concept: TMI. Too much information. For some people, TMI causes mental process breakdowns. Perhaps, TMI leads to a complete brain shutdown for the tired and weary. I guess GW is playing to that side of the room. In the example given in the above blog, GW's short and to-the-point exchange had a very clear and concise message. While I wish GW spoke in eloquent sentences, that would probably drive reporters and newspaper editors crazy. The way GW speaks is much easier to 'paste' onto the front page of a news daily.

BlackFive - Me and My Muslim Neighbors

Read about a personal experience a blogger had with a close friend of his from school about the recent thoughts about 'the Jews controlling everything in the world'. Something which was uttered out of the mouth of a certain leader's mouth recently at the APEC Meetings. While I am sure there are many who see some kind of conspiracy in the dark, I sure hope the 1.6 billion zealots (mentioned in the blog) will not begin crashing planes, trains, cars, boats, bicycles, and motorcycles into large office towers and blame the Jews for it. I found the blog by blackfive via ricjames. (See original source for this blog.) IMHO, the Jews are not running the world regardless of what the Muslims may think.

Blogger Whiz Kid Interview

Great interview with Blogger Evan Williams at CNET. The part I found quite interesting is how Google lets employees blog at work, about work, for work, etc. I wish more companies would allow their employees to blog about work. And 'NO' - I don't think companies need to tell their staff not to blog about secret projects, internal communication, etc. If employees haven't figured that out by now, they should be fired immediately.

Stand up at your desk and scream out at the top of your lungs: "Hear my roar! Let me blog!"

Microsoft Culture Shift: Blogging all the way!

This comes by the way of Gen Kanai who blogged about an article penned/keyed by Erin Joyce about Microsoft and the contributions of in-house bloggers. Very good piece of writing and quite informative. How I wish my company was filled with bloggers. I don't know if anyone blogs around here. I don't know why blogging has not taken off yet in Japan - especially in the corporate world. Kinda gets lonely around here when I have to explain the 'benefits of blogging' to everyone I meet in the hallways.

So far, so good.

The features and functions of TypePad are quite easy to understand. I am so glad that the team behind TypePad understand the needs of bloggers. I have tried so many other blogging services and find this one, by far, the easiest one to use.