Jul 28, 2004

A few photos from the convention

A few photos from the convention so far.

posted by Jason at at 3:45 PM | 0 Comments Links to this post

The DNC so far

Wow. It's been a fascinating time already. Goldman covers the bizarre route that we took to actually obtain our Convention credentials and other hilarity. Hands down best moment of last night was our 20 minute conversation with Michael Moore. He promised more blogging soon on his site. The discussion turned to the terrible state of copyright law and I asked if he knew Larry Lessig. He didn't so we brought him up to speed on the Creative Commons movement and talked Sonny Bono Act for a while. I think we may have talked him into doing a movie about copyright. We'll have to see. We were also treated to Michael's version of what he feels Barak Obama's campaign song should be. Replace 'Barak Obama' in place of the Bam ba bamba lyrics in La Bamba and there you go. Song or not, I would vote for him. He had the crowd going like no other speaker. Just superb.

In other news, we visited Bloggers Boulevard. We spoke with Dave Pell, David Weinberger, Dave Sifry and we called any bloggers that we didn't know Dave just to see if they would respond. Sifry told me he was going to include the DNC Scroller in his nightly wrap-up on CNN. Did anyone see it?

I did get a text message this morning from Sarah Hatter who told me that she saw Goldman and I hanging out in our convention skybox on CNN Headline News. Nice! Yesterday while watching from our seats on JetBlue, Headline News did a feature on Campaign Blogging. I was too slow to get a shot of them showing the Blogger homepage and our dashboard. No chance anyone has a clip of either of those to share?

This post should be accompanied by many photos that I took last night, but alas I left my card reader and even worse my large Compact Flash card at home. I'll see what I can do. Dear camera manufacturers - please make Bluetooth and WiFi cameras soon.

We will be at the Blogger Bash later tonight and should have some good stories from that soon.

posted by Jason at at 9:36 AM | 3 Comments Links to this post

Jul 27, 2004

Audiopost: During Dean's speech at the convention

posted by Jason at at 6:15 PM | 0 Comments Links to this post

Jul 26, 2004

Blogger: Live from the DNC

So we've been working on this thing...dnc.shellen.com.If you have ever visited the Blogger offices we call it the post scroller. We have an LCD projector pointed at the wall that displays a post at random from the Blogger database. In essence, our team gets to see on a daily basis what bloggers are talking about and how they are using Blogger. It's very cool. We've always wanted to do a version that everyone can see and enjoy - and this is a step in that direction.

This version of the post scroller has been customized to track posts from the blogosphere about the Democratic National Convention. It's not just from Blogger users (nor just Democrats)! It's very alpha and I hope it doesn't fall over. It's definitely not official. I showed a few folks at the BlogOn conference and they liked it so we decided to let you in on the fun. Enjoy.

A few additional notes:

• The posts should cycle about every 7 seconds
• You can pause it (I love this feature). Hit 'p' while the scroller is running. Go back by hitting '[' and forward by clicking ']', unpause by hitting 'P' again.
• This pulls feeds intelligently every 5 minutes and caches them. If a feed hasn't changed it's not downloaded.
• We've tried to include all the credentialled bloggers, additional politiblogs and some blogs have been included based on a content filter.
• What to bookmark: dnc.shellen.com
• More info on convention bloggers in Biz's Blogging from Boston article.
• Questions, comments, feedback and cold hard cash should be directed to our summer intern Pete Hopkins who whipped this up. Of course, Wetherdeal made it pretty - and he's not even done yet. Clearly my effort was in eating Ring Dings and gesticulating wildly at the screen from my position on the chaise, and it still didn't turn out too bad.

posted by Jason at at 10:49 PM | 3 Comments Links to this post

Watching them watch us

KRON News parked in the bike lane outside the office.

It's been a weird day at work. I'm not in Boston until tomorrow, so I've had a front row seat to more than one news camera crew ogling our workplace.

Posted by Hello

posted by Jason at at 7:06 PM | 2 Comments Links to this post

Jul 23, 2004

BlogOn and blogging on in Boston

I've been a little busy. When I get busy I usually forget that I have a readily available channel to tell people about all the cool stuff that going on. I have got to turn that around and do a little more sharing! I'll be at BlogOn . Apparently so is the rest of my known universe. Unfortunately, my friend and co-worker danah was going to be on a panel but is now hosting a germ party in her head. Strep, bronchitis, you name it - she looked like a good host body and the bugs gate crashed . We hope you feel better soon danah, but be a good host and offer the guests something to drink.

In other news, it's off to the Democratic National Convention! That's right, Jason Goldman and I are hitting the road. We're off to see the true story of thirty-four strangers, picked to live in a house (or congressional district) to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The Real Convention! Also I hear that Puff Daddy will be having a party. Puffy, you know my email address dawg. You know there is a Blogger t-shirt in your future.

I will be blogging and taking photos as much as possible, does that make me a journalist? Would a press pass make me a journalist? Does keeping a journal with a private key and a sparkly pen make me a journalist? Does my 'I'm blogging this.' t-shirt make me a blogger? Either way, I can't wait to see the credentialled and uncredentialled bloggers alike.

I'm hoping Boston has been blanketed in a free wifi net since my last time there. Please no hogging the wifi. More info on our trip soon and please let me know if you are going to be out there, we should do coffee or I guess in Beantown - tea.

posted by Jason at at 1:03 AM | 0 Comments Links to this post

Jul 15, 2004

Know HTML... who cares

Big news today for Blogger users... WYSIWYG editing. Please note that this does not mean one should start using horrible color choices, just because one can.

posted by Jason at at 2:43 PM | 6 Comments Links to this post

Jul 14, 2004

AlwaysBlogging

I'm at the AlwaysOn Innovation Summit today. Ev and I are here with blogger passes, which somehow turned into press passes. On the way in the door to the 'Battle for the E-Home' session, we bumped into Dan Gillmor. I showed my press pass to him joking, 'See. We are further blurring the line between blogger and journalists.' His reply: 'What line?' Then he handed us a copy of his new book, 'We the Media'. Cool. I guess it's going to be that kind of day. More soon.

12:30pm: Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Motorola is speaking. She's laying out the vision for Motorola's future innovation. Their buckets of interest are moving, living, driving and working. In the driving bucket, she spoke about an idea that I've thought of for a while - the ability to sync your stereo, iPod, whatever hard drive of information you have in your vehicle wirelessly while you have access in your garage.

In other words - maps, mp3s, video and such could be moved to your car while you are sleeping and your car is parked. What a great way to have an ever changing jukebox in your car. Physically touching your iPod is out - wireless syncing in!

posted by Jason at at 11:32 AM | 2 Comments Links to this post

Jul 13, 2004

Blogg?

Ev just stumbled across blog as a bar drink in USENET archives. Meanwhile, I've been meaning to post the above image of a BLOGG creature dreamt up by Dr. Seuss in The Shape of Me and Other Stuff. Perhaps there are other future product names in this list of all Dr. Seuss creatures.

Posted by Hello

posted by Jason at at 4:16 PM | 1 Comments Links to this post

Jul 12, 2004

Allison's 30th birthday

My lovely bride Allison is turning 30 today. When she turned 20 I went around town with a video camera and recorded birthday greetings from all her friends and family. The golden moment however, was when three construction workers outside of 7-11 volunteered to sing 'Feliz Cumpleaños'. If I were some sort of video stud, I would have that digitized and linked their song from this very post. Alas - no. Perhaps some other time.

No - today dear friends, because I have blocked Allison's IP address at home - I ask you to wish her a happy birthday as well. She won't see this until tomorrow so unleash whatever artwork, audioblog, mp3, comment to this post,link, subdued humble e-greeting or tasteful e-card in honor of her day. I'll link the best one's here tomorrow if you want to address them to me. Let's see how this goes. I would love another golden moment for her 30th.

Yes, I know that her 20th birthday was ten years ago, clearly we started dating shortly after we lost our baby teeth. Happy birthday Allie!

posted by Jason at at 5:16 PM | 3 Comments Links to this post

WNBA player acknowledges she's gay

PlanetOut reports:

Michele Van Gorp, a center for the Minnesota Lynx, has distinguished herself off the basketball court by being the only active player in the WNBA to publicly acknowledge that she is a lesbian.

The ONLY one in the WNBA! That's hard to believe. The article continues...

Certainly more than two lesbians have played in the WNBA, but the fact that only two have publicly acknowledged being gay underscores the pressure on professional GLBT athletes to remain in the closet. In the world of team sports, coming out carries many risks, including physical harm from anti-gay players and loss of commercial endorsements.

I guess I find this appalling from the standpoint that I associate women with being more accepting and rational where this stuff is concerned. There is certainly enough male homophobia to go around but I had hoped it wasn't shared to such a degree by our female counterparts. May the Van Gorps of the world continue to rid us of locker room hysteria about what one does in the privacy of one's own futon.

posted by Jason at at 5:02 PM | 1 Comments Links to this post

Jul 9, 2004

I read it for the articles... about Britney's engagement

I'm back from Lake Tahoe after a little extended 4th of July vacation. I always read something interesting on vacation, usually a book or two. Sadly, it was the July 12th issue of People magazine this year. I blame my sister-in-law. Perhaps I can convince you that reading it was work-related? I'm still shocked every once in a while when I see blogging creeping into the mainstream. The photo above is a shot of the 'Cool Etcetera' section of People. It says:

BLOG Defamer.com's scorching Hollywood gossip holds the famous's feet to the fire.

Between this and Ana Marie Cox / Muffin Witchwood joining MTV News to cover the Democratic convention Gawker Media is on a roll. By the way, Ana Marie, MyPornName.com recommends Brandy Sinn. Just a thought.

Aside from the blog research I did on vacation, ahem, I also discovered that Lindsay Lohan landed a 'Major Record Deal' with Tommy Mottola. Yup. Vacation. Good to be back.

posted by Jason at at 9:58 AM | 0 Comments Links to this post