Akkam’s Razor

Sometimes I have great ideas - shame I don't know how to do anything about them…

I read the Politics section of Original Signal, which means I get the finest both hemispheres of the political blogs have to offer, including those to which I am diametrically opposed.

I've noticed quite a bit of "upgrades" and "updates" at LGF (that's Little Green Footballs, and well, I'm not linking to them), and I wonder what they're up to?  The most reason one that caught my eye was a redirect so that visitors from LGF Watch would instead go to the homepage of the Israeli Defense Force.  It's tempting to contemplate skullduggery, but as LGF is a high-traffic site, I was wondering what they were up to.

So let's say one takes the model I power my blog with, pulling in data from delicious, digg, bloglines, flickr, etc., making "my database".  If many people did that, and you had a service that allowed you to take people you know (using your email addressbooks), cross-checking them with a variety of social services, and then allowing you to build a custom database of "your stuff" and "your friends stuff" or your people with the same interests or locality.  It's reasonable that you may get more meaningful results, although you would lose out on valuable contrarian sources and eclectic sites.

In envisioning a community-driven site, users could voluntarily add their blogs, photoblogs sites, music sites, forums, etc., and create a custom search engine (and index).  How relevant would those results be?  Would they be valuable to the end-user?   So, for example, I've used the Google Co-Op to create a custom search engine which aggregates my blog, my Flickr account, my "dugg" items on Digg, the PhillyFuture aggregator, and my del.icio.us account.  You can play with it here. 

I just realized something horrifying…

I practice "Naked Blogging", as defined by Sandy Kemsley:

"Naked blogging" is a term that's applied to living your life transparently on the web through your blog and other social media, like Flickr, del.icio.us, Skype, LinkedIn, Library Thing and Facebook. [If] you're going to get benefit from the network effects of Web 2.0, you need to contribute every bit as much as you expect to get back.

I assure you, I am wearing pants.

Um, what is twitter (maps), and why should I care?

I firmly believe that we should lay out the Bush Years as a comic book using this or the old fashioned way (or the new Web 2.0 way!). We can have people do it in a distributed manner, upload and categorize them with a timestamp, and then vote on panels. Then the "best" panels can be assembled into a timeline, making it a real, distributed graphic novel published under Creative Commons.

Full disclosure:  I have friends who currently work for Tierney, have worked in the past (and were layed off and subsequently "temped" to avoid paying benefits). and know others who have worked there in the past.

I put a poll up PhillyFuture inquiring as to whether the collective Inky-Daily News/philly.com (hereafter referred to as the "Philly Press") have improved since Brian Tierney has taken ownership.

Personally,  my feelings are mixed.

• I'm indifferent as to the rightward-tilt of the new talent and the Sunday Currents section.  As far as national politics are concerned, we've seen how well a Republican Majority has influenced public opinion (as being firmly against having a Republican Majority).  It remains to be seen as to how this will play out in the 2007 Philadelphia Mayors race as well as the 2008 State and Federal Election.
• The constant pimping of condos to the wealthy (endemic of all the media, telling us how wonderfull things are for the creme of society, implying that we should aspire to their lives) seems culturaly irresponsible and ignores the majority of the Philadelphia and greater regions residents in lieu of the economically priviledged.
• My perception is that "bought" wired stories are up as a percentage of content, and original reporting is down.  Again, this seems like an artifact of my second point.  Philadelphia is a 1/10th scale New York - the perspective of the Philly Press seems to be one that focuses on Manhattan and ignores the other boroughs, unless murders are involved.
• The back-page-front-page seems like a good idea, but sources indicate that there are strong opinions that it may compromise some journalistic integrity - How likely would the Inky investigate an advertisers role in loan-making with local politicians and municipalities if they're a major advertiser.  This runs parallel to thoughts that the current Philly Press would NEVER have covered the Priest Abuse Scandal (as Tiernney flacked for the Archdiocese throughout that affair).
• I'll be honest - aside from Will Bunch (online), I haven't read the DN in ages.
• I try to link to Philly.com sources whenever appropriate, even if it's a wire story from McClatchy or the NYTimes, in the hopes of helping a local publication.  It's a shame that the reporting isn't originating here.
• The suburbs - yeah, how about that?  Art galleries and feel good stories?  I could get that from the local paper of record, the Delco Times.  I suspect that it's the same for the other suburban counties as well.
• Flash ads on Philly.com.  You DO realize that they annoy the crap out of people, right?
• I'm not even upset by the rumors of the reappearance of Rick Santorum as a columnist - he'll fit in perfectly with Jonathan Last and Michael Smerconish.  I look forward to more insanity, cheerleading, and water-carrying throughout 2007-2008.
• Web 2.0 stuff - where's the comments?  The trackbacks to the story on Technorati?  The social bookmarking links (add to reddit, digg, del.icio.us, etc.)?  How about automatically ranking stories based on those criteria?

What are your thoughts?  Do stop by the poll and vote.

Karl reports the following at PhillyFuture:

Dan Rubin, the Inquirer's first blogger to engage the local blogosphere, announced the Inky was promoting him into a columnist position, and shutting down Blinq.

Congrats to Dan Rubin for the move, but as I said in his comments thread, Blinq should live - either with a new blogger keeping it on, or with Dan using it as a tool for his new column. The shuttering of the URL, of the community that rose around Dan's engagement at Blinq, is self-inflicted wound.

To which I say Inky management is STUPID STUPID STUPID!

Not quite sure what this Web 2.0 thing is?  This 5-minute video on YouTube (via BoingBoing) lays it out for you.

I've been wondering how LinkedIn makes money.  This BusinessWeek article explains it:

I saw this a while ago on Jessica Haralson's Facebook, and just had someone else forward it to me.

Penn Masala (Wiki), a group of Southeast Asian UPENN students, have successfully rewritten the lyrics to Enrique Inglasias' "Hero" with an ode to Facebook Stalking.  It is VERY well done and delightfully entertaining.