Introducing…Mark Melief

My good friend Mark is relatively new to the blogging scene, so he’s got approximately 23 years of bottled up opinions to share. He’s doing it (well, I might add) over at “From the Dark Recesses of Mark’s Mind.” Today, he’s got a great post up about how he’s sick of negativity in politics. I’m with you there, bud.

Mark is also the newest hire at LexBlog, a blogging services company. CEO Kevin O’Keefe is a frequent speaker at The Blog Business Summit and someone I admire very much.

He told me not to link to him until he got the ball rolling on his blog, but I think he’s definitely ready for wider readership. I think you all will really enjoy reading what he has to say. So yeah, go check him out!

In Which I Lose Confidence in Howard Dean Over Government Media Regulation

Howard Dean used to be one of my favorite people in the whole wide world. Working on his campaign was a privilege. I remember being very impressed with his willingness to talk policy with me. Most candidates don’t give college-age supporters the time of day. Governor Dean gave us a lot more than lip service.

I was also impressed with his approach to gun control as a state’s rights issue. “Here’s a guy who is willing to abandon the expedient party line in favor of a balanced, informed, novel approach to policy,” I thought.

Now it seems that I was either very wrong, or the job of being Democratic Party Chairman has changed Governor Dean. Either way, I’m deeply disappointed in his advocacy of government regulation of the media.

Democrats are lobbying hard for a re-institution of the Fairness Doctrine, which until 1987 required that media outlets give “equal time” to all sides of an issue. How many sides there were, and what constituted equal time was left up to the government.

We need look no further than PRAVDA to understand why government control of the media is a terrible idea, if not downright unconstitutional here in the good ol’ U.S.A.

And even if government control of the media were a good idea, we live in a world where anyone with a modem can start a blog and start expressing his opinion. The government couldn’t possibly exercise control over the neutrality of all media, so why even try?

As George F. Will so aptly put it, any successful political party will need to “compete in the marketplace of ideas” in order to succeed with the body politic. The Democratic Party’s newfound obsession with the Fairness Doctrine demonstrates their lack of confidence in their ability to appeal to the masses.

The best approach is to scrap the Fairness Doctrine entirely and spend our time having a frank discussion about how American public schools prepare the next generations of Americans. Critical thinking skills and a basic understanding of economics, history, and politics should be absolute prerequisites for high school graduation. We need to empower people to sift through the sea of information, synthesize the facts, and come up with their own well-informed perspectives.

Government-enforced “fairness” couldn’t possibly compare to that.

Shame on you, Chairman Dean.

Our Friends at PodTech Kicked Ass at CES

At the risk of sounding like a dork, I just want to comment on the recent data that my boss posted about the post-CES blogosphere buzz.

As we already knew, our friends at PodTech did exceptionally well. Their BlogHaus blogger lounge landed them in the top ten companies mentioned at CES. Nice job, gang!

I was also impressed with Apple. They didn’t even exhibit at CES and still, they were the second most mentioned company by bloggers attending CES behind Microsoft.

What the Hell is Up with Akismet?

Has anyone else noticed that a lot of spam has crept through today?

Why MeanKids.org Failed

Some very cruel things were said in the blogosphere this week about a friend of mine. When I read them in Google’s cache of the now defunct Meankids.org site, I nearly lost it. I can only imagine how she, her husband, and her family felt.

When faced with genuine human goodness, some people can’t handle it. They attack and belittle it because they simply can’t understand it. They try to sully it and tear it down to their level. And they fail every time.

The people behind those very cruel posts on Meankids.org and its offshoots can’t handle Maryam Scoble, Kathy Sierra, or any of the other people they targeted. Their only hope in the face of brilliance, decency and honesty is to tear down and belittle. They are no better than sixth grade bullies. Their jealousy and bitterness erupted sideways and exposed them for the pathetic cowards they truly are.

Some say that Meankids.org casts shame on the entire blogosphere, but I don’t believe we should give them that much power. They’re simply not worth it. They failed because they can never permanently tarnish the people they set out to attack. They can hurt, and they can instill fear. But hurt and fear can last only so long before righteous anger and growing strength take their place.

Robert Scoble wrote that we should spend the next week talking about how to fix the culture of misogyny and cruelty in the blogosphere. The solution is in our ability to stand up for one another and call the perpetrators of death threats, hate speech and viciousness on their disgusting pettiness. It’s in making genuine human connections paramount.

The rest is just details.

Expressing Support for Kathy Sierra

I need to get to sleep soon, but I wanted to quickly express my support for Kathy Sierra in the face of some truly devastating behavior from some truly deranged individuals in the blogosphere.

Kathy’s blog about creating passionate users is one of my favorites. She’s obviously intelligent, and she contributes a lot to the conversation. But even if she had nothing interesting to say, she wouldn’t deserve the kind of treatment that has been leveled at her. Nobody deserves what Kathy has gone through this past month. She has recieved death threats that include blatant sexually violent imagery. She’s been harassed all over the Web, and it’s wrong.

Kathy, I hope you will blog again. Your ideas and your involvement in social media have been an inspiration to me. I’m proud to be one of your readers and I hope that you will emerge in due time and continue to share your ideas with the world. That said, you’ve earned a break from the online world. Go take care of yourself for a while. You’ve earned it.

Sick as a Dog, but Upgraded to Ella

I’m a miserable wreck today. I think I caught Andy’s cold :(.

But somehow, I still managed to upgrade the Wordpress install that runs this blog to Ella — the 2.1 version of Wordpress.

It’s quite the procedure, but I did it…

And now, I’m going to go collapse in a heap.

Three Cool New Widgets

I never get tired of implementing cool new “Web 2.0″ technologies on my blog, particularly when those technologies focus exclusively on sharing ideas and building community. This time around, I’ve made three additions to the site:

1. The Pacific Northwest Topic Hotlist
2. MyBlogLog and…
3. CoComment

For those of you who remember my old TypePad blog, the Pacific Northwest Topic Hotlist should be a welcome return. It’s run by my bloggy friend Daniel Kirkdorffer. The hotlist is a great place to put your finger on the pulse of political bloggers from around the Pacific Northwest. A while back, Drew Meyers posted that he wished he knew where to find great political blogs. This topic hotlist is a great place to start!

The second widget is something I’ve known about for a while but just got around to implementing today. It’s a MyBlogLog widget, which tracks who in the MyBlogLog community has been reading my blog. That way, even if you don’t leave a comment, I’ll be able to check out your blog and what you write about. It’s another great way to find the blogs of people who share your interests and to further build a community. This is one of Drew’s favorite widgets and my friend and colleague Jason Preston implements it, too!

The last widget came to my attention only in the last 24 hours, when I ran across it on Steven Hodson’s blog after he posted about my battle with the fundy PR flack. CoComment basically allows you to track the conversations associated with comments you have made across the blogosphere. It also provides a handy widget that allows you all to see where else I’ve commented. I assume that if you’re reading my blog, you find at least some of what I have to say interesting. It stands to reason that you might want to see where else I’m saying things because that stuff might interest you, too.

So there you have it. Three new community-based widgets in one day! Don’t say I never introduced you to anything interesting.

So Much Freakin’ iPhone Buzz

Perhaps I should have thought twice before setting my RSS reader up to monitor for the iPhone tag. But now that I’ve gone and started monitoring the buzz, it’s impossible to stop. After all, just about everyone I like and respect has a perspective on this new device.

There’s a lot of skepticism out there, which is only proper given that the device won’t be available until June. In the absence of opportunities to go out and buy one, make an unboxing video, or post a review, all the bloggers can do is speculate rampantly.

Some are wondering if the phone will work for business, especially for people who do business on PCs. Michael Arrington thinks PC users should just switch to Mac already.

Of course, TailRank is already reporting that an intrepid geek has developed the iPhone UI for Windows Mobile. Does this remind anyone of something? Vista, perhaps?

Meanwhile, Tim Moynihan at CNet’s Crave has a scintillating article detailing thirteen reasons to doubt the iPhone hype. He makes a great point about all the additional data services that may be necessary to support the iPhone’s various functions. Users who want the full package could be looking at a $200+ cell phone bill each month. He also laments the lack of 3G support, but Josh Bancroft indicates that it may be 3G upgradable.

Robert Scoble is dismayed at the iPhone’s lack of GPS, while Eric Rice says that GPS is better suited to use in cars. After all, Americans are fat and lazy and never go anywhere without our cars anyway.

Personally, I was dismayed to learn that there will be no third-party developer option for the iPhone. I was really hoping for an XML-RPC widget that would allow me to blog. Apparently, Jobs is worried that some third-party software will “gum up” Cingular’s network. I’m sure there’s a way around such concerns, and having an open API for widget development would stifle critics’ worries about not being able to blog from the thing. I know it would be a huge value-add for me.

Steve Hodson thinks that people are making way too many stupid observations about the iPhone. He poo-pooh’s Michael Arrington’s suggestion that the whole world just switch to Mac already, which makes sense when you think about it. I think the winner for stating the obvious goes to Glenn Fleishman for his observation that the iPhone’s true beauty lies not in its power as a phone, but in its seamless integration of multiple devices into one pretty little package.

My bottom line: The iPhone isn’t perfect. No phone is perfect. The fact that people expect “the perfect phone” from Apple only indicates how much respect they have for Jobs and his team. What Apple has created here is a marvelous user interface that integrates their most popular product (the iPod) with the functions of a smart phone in such a way that people don’t need to read the manual to use the thing.

I know I’m stating the obvious here, but the iPhone is a digital life device, just like all of Apple’s products are digital life devices. They can be used for business or pleasure, but they’re optimized for human beings. I’m a fan of their products and will continue to be until one really, really disappoints me. So far I’m still pretty jazzed about buying an iPhone, but it’s a long slog until June. Between now and then, will the buzz die on the vine?

Introducing RSS Feeds for Individual Categories

Last week on the Blog Business Summit blog, I gave Matt Ward some advice about the when to provide RSS feeds for categories. In a nutshell, I told him that category feeds were better on blogs that covered a wide range of eclectic topics.

And then I realized, “TeresaCentric covers a wide range of eclectic topics. It should have category-based RSS feeds!”

It took me a while to find the proper PHP string and even longer to figure out how to style it so that those pretty little orange RSS buttons pop up next to all the categories, but now that I’m done, I’m pretty darn pleased with myself.

So for all of you non-techie types out there going, “PHP? CSS? I’m lost…” here’s the deal:

Let’s say you think Andy and I are geniuses when it comes to politics. You don’t give a shit what we have to say about baseball, but you LOVE our political writing. You could subscribe to the feeds for only the categories that interest you and ignore all the rest. That way, you only get information in your RSS reader that you find really, really interesting.

I hope this is useful to those of you who view this site through an RSS reader.

UPDATE 1/3/07: Matt Ward suggested that I replace the orange RSS buttons with little plus signs because they’re a little less assaultive on the eyes. Thoughts?

On Sharing Items in Google Reader

I absolutely love the shared items feature of Google Reader, which I learned about through Robert Scoble. Now Robert (and Steve Rubel and others) is saying that Google Reader is the next Digg and I’m, pretty much on board with that statement.

After all, there’s so much cool stuff out there that I don’t always have time to blog about, but I can at least hit Shift+S and share it on my link blog.

What I really wish is that they would allow you to create more than one shared page per reader account so that I could share some articles to a professional feed, some to a personal feed, and some to both.

Introducing the TeresaCentric Store

I’ve built a store using Amazon’s Affliate Program. If you see a book (or anything else) mentioned on the blog and you’d like to buy it, chances are, you can click on over to the store and it will be there. The other upside is that you pay the same price, but I get a percentage of what you spend, so it’s a great way to support the blog.

Happy shopping!

The Difference Between Negativity and Critical Thinking

There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere recently about the possibility that we’re all just a bunch of complainers. They say that blogworld is an overwhelmingly negative place. We ought to try to be more optimistic and less cynical, they say. I couldn’t disagree more.

Does this highly democratic medium lend itself to unfettered self-expression? Absolutely. Is unfettered self-expression sometimes less than perky? Most definitely. Is it realistic? On the whole, yes.

Here’s a factoid for you. People diagnosed with clinical depression tend to correctly estimate the amount of control they have over external situations, while people who are not depressed tend to overestimate their level of control over those same situations. In other words, our society calls realism unhealthy while holding up delusional positive thinking as a model of health and functionality. How sane is that?

Now, there’s nothing wrong with enthusiasm, optimism, passion or any of the thousands of other things that make a blog truly readable–and life truly livable–day after day. But there’s also nothing wrong with thinking critically and being skeptical about the world. There’s nothing wrong with seeing hypocrisy in a public figure and pointing it out. If we don’t acknowledge problems, what hope have we of solving them to any real degree?

This mush about negativity is the same complaint that we used to hear about the mainstream media. “Doom and gloom sells newspapers,” they said, “so the media paints an inaccurately grim picture of our world.” But if that were true, then bloggers–who do not have the same economic compulsion to fixate on the distasteful–would not be as “negative” as the media.

We write about what we see. And what we see troubles us. After all, we’ve had an incompetent president and a do-nothing Congress for the past six years. North Korea has the bomb and Iran is pursuing it. Microsoft is releasing a new version of Office that is incompatible with previous versions. There is a genocide going on in the Sudan. Dell has bad customer support. Let me see you put a positive spin on any of that and still do right by your readers.

That’s not to say that the world is all doom and gloom. There’s beauty and joy to leaven the complexity and bitterness of this life. But we need to take off the rose-colored glasses and press on. Knowing where things really stand inspires us to work for a better future. A healthy dose of skepticism and self-doubt enhances our efforts because we don’t automatically assume that everything will go as we plan. We must remain skeptical of solutions–be they political, spiritual, social or economic–that seem too good to be true. It’s called critical thinking, and it’s time that we started using it again.

Richland Wine Tasting Redux

Andru Edwards has put together a hilarious montage of our day wine tasting in Richland, WA. We flew over on planes provided by Greenpoint Technologies and dined at the fabulous Hedges Cellars.

All I can say, now that the video of Halley and I singing French drinking songs is public is, “oui oui oui!” all the way home.

War on Blogs: What the F*** is John McCain Thinking?

Until about half an hour ago, I was very seriously considering giving John McCain my support in the 2008 presidential election. That is until I read about his new pet legislation which would place an undue burden on bloggers to take responsible for everything written in our comments section.

If passed, the legislation would also require social networks to take responsibility for preventing sexual predators from having membership on their sites. This would include blogs like the Daily Kos and WashBlog, both of which use Scoop to allow multiple users to set up diaries on the site.

If McCain is looking to take himself out of the running for 2008, he just succeeded. He’s gone and pissed off a very influential group of folks.

The Addition of Shared Links

I’ve finally given in and started sharing my favorite links using my Google Reader. You can also subscribe to them via their RSS feed, too. If you’re into that kind of thing.

Robert Scoble Says I Look Hot in HD…

…personally I think Maryam looks hotter. I wish I knew her secret for looking awesome in every shot. I think maybe it’s the inner glow, or maybe it’s that lipstick. Whatever she has, I want it!

But what I really want to know is what happened to the video of Halley and I singing French drinking songs?

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