neXtknode

Google Aims at More Transparency with Election Site ... Sunlight Foundation Tie would Make Even More Compelling

2007-09-14T09:46:00.000-04:00

Google launched a new site to follow the 2007 Australian Federal Election, reports TechCrunch. It allows users to track news for specific members of the house of representatives as well as an easy search of the parliamentary record to track what officials have said and where they stand. There is also a nice mash up of You Tube.

I can't imagine this is far from coming the the States. At least I hope so. I, and surely others, are tired of navigating through the maze of horse race politics, and campaign rhetoric to find who the best candidates are. I don't have time to closely follow politics, but I would use a site that put the information I want right at my fingertips.

What would be even more compelling is for Google to open this site up so the likes of the Sunlight Foundation who could incorporate some of the public policy projects they've developed to bring more transparency and accountability to government.

Take Visualizing Earmarks, which graphs how money is earmarked for States and organizations.

Or Louis, whose goal it is to is "to create a comprehensive, completely indexed and cross-referenced depository of federal documents from the executive and legislative branches of government."

Or OpenHouse, a project aimed at "easy ways to begin the process of more effectively using technology to further transparency."

Or OpenCongress, which tracks the background behind each bill.

Check out Sunlight for other great projects.

Obviously, Google and Sunlight could create a powerful way for citizens to easily get smart on candidates to make better informed decisions.

2007-09-12T17:26:00.000-04:00

Doc Searls has a new blog covering his efforts in VRM ... check it out.

2007-07-20T16:17:00.000-04:00

Laurence Hooper, a very talented director of products who was at AOL, is blogging. As customary for bloggers, he takes a stab a defining Web 2.0. He nails it:

If [the] primary value to a user depends on the participation of other users, it's Web 2.0.

That's the most succinct definition of web 2.0 I've seen.

Really Stopping Global Warming

2007-07-15T18:03:00.000-04:00

To me, there is no other issue as important as global warming. While terrorism, education and healthcare loom, nothing is as important to humankind's survival as reducing greenhouse emissions. The Washington Post is issuing a series covering the subject, and is by far the most informative and actionable piece I've seen on the subject. This issue will require a global effort and leadership by the United States on a scale greater than has every been accomplished.

Today's articles are fantastic and includes tangible steps on what it will take to halt global warming. There is also a nice overview of the pieces of legislation under consideration that would require reductions in greenhouse commission. And of course there is a financial cost to all of this, which is all worth it. Track the series here, along with some nice interactive maps further articulating what it will take.

Checking in

2007-06-18T21:01:00.000-04:00

Since I obviously haven't kept my word at staying at this regularly, I started a Tumblelog here. I still plan on getting this blog going again, so swing by now and then.

WebSense Blog Relaunching as "neXtknode"

2007-04-10T13:51:00.000-04:00

It's been far too long since I've posted on this blog. I took a deliberate break over a year and a half ago because of a number of amazing things happening in my personal life and a lack of clarity on what I wanted to blog about. I suppose I didn't find it worth it to figure it out.

But I started getting the itch again. One of the primary reasons I started blogging was to challenge the conventional wisdom at the time around advertising, marketing, media and business, and to contribute to the growing dialogue about the shift from traditional media to distributed media. It would be too simple to call this Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0. It goes beyond what Web 2.0 stands for today. Regardless, the shift started happening in a meaningful way.

That brings us to today. Web 2.0 wasn't even a phrase when I started blogging in 2001. Today its thrown around widely and has many meanings. Whereas my WebSense blog stood for what made common sense on the Web, neXtknode will stand for much of what is next on the web. Some topics I want to cover:

Transparency
Distributed Media
Attention
New advertising models (like VRM)
Journalism
Politics and distributed citizens
Social Search
Distributed Social Networking
Collaborative technologies
Web Services

And in case you were wondering, neXtknode = what's next + Knowles + node. The domain will remain websense.blogspot.com (only because Blogger doesn't let you change domains for blogspot plus domains - a big pain - or transfer posts to a new blog).

BTW, this is a "soft" launch. Expect many more cosmetic changes and tweaks over the next few weeks including an update to my blogroll. My goal is to blog a couple times a week, although if I can get in a few quick link posts, you can expect them more often. I'm also going to be getting rid of comments until I can figure out how to ditch all of the comment spam I've received over the past year and a half.

comScore Study Dissects Blogosphere, Finds Ad Audience · MarketingVOX

2005-08-09T13:26:00.000-04:00

One of the things missing here is an influence measure. Prediction: ComScore buys Inteliseek by end of year (perhaps Technorati, but that doesn't seem as synergistic). comScore Study Dissects Blogosphere, Finds Ad Audience · MarketingVOX

Update: Rick Bruner had a big hand in this (wait, I thought Rick worked for DoubleClick???) and has a deep background on the study (looks like some form of influence was included).

November 7th, 1988 -- worst computer virus outbreak in history

2005-08-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

Jason Kottke points to this hysterical posting on Flickr about the "World's Largest Computer Virus" in the USAToday. From 1988.

November 7th, 1988 -- worst computer virus outbreak in history,
originally uploaded by dunstanorchard.

Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management

2005-07-01T10:47:00.000-04:00

Business 2.o recently gave a snapshot of Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management. Gadgetguy.de has a more complete list, but without the explanations Swanson provides in the article.

You can order a free copy via snailmail from what appears to be Raytheon's website. I placed an order.

There go my Odeo

2005-06-23T09:23:00.000-04:00

Noah Glass and Evan Williams (co-founder of Blogger) new project Odeo has launched in Beta. I haven't played around with it yet, but initially it looks like some good stuff. A new tool to discover podcasts through tagging (and not sure if also collaborative filtering).

2005-04-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

Searching for an article I read a while ago referencing Ogilvy's "I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information" quote. It all relates back to conversations and the ideal that can be achieved through online "marketing." Also, now remembering Howard Gossage as I find this ClickZ article by Jeremy Lockhorn, "The First Interactive Ad Man."
Follow-up article here
Another here
Final Here.

2005-04-18T10:14:00.000-04:00

Burried in John Battelle's weekly recap is this gem: CraigsList/GoogleMaps mashup.

Binded Clarity and Hyperlinked Noise

2005-03-24T17:11:00.000-05:00

Steven Johnson has a thought provoking post on how he approaches writing books versus how he approaches blogging (hat tip: Kottke):

What's great [with blogging] is the remixing, the group mind, the hypertextuality, the fact-checks, the trial balloons. it's an amazing environment, but to me it's directly antagonistic to the mental state you need to make a book work as a reading experience, and not just a collection of facts and ideas. It's like trying to compose a new melody in your head while standing in the middle of a full-throated choral group. And so when I'm immersed in writing a book, I try to keep these worlds separate, even if it feels like I'm betraying the blog somewhat with my silence.

Lazy Email Users Beware

2005-03-22T14:20:00.000-05:00

These large storage free email accounts are making me increasingly lazy. What happens when I hit 99%? Delete all my emails? hmmmmm

2005-02-17T17:17:00.000-05:00

more for me, but the communications school from back at Ithaca College has started a blog to interact with the outside world. They're also creating a digital media cirriculum for Fall 2006. Great to see!

History of the Future

2005-02-15T16:15:00.000-05:00

.... was the name of a blow-off class that turned somewhat interesting when I was a senior in college. Anyways ....

A friend of mine passed along this insightful flash movie which looks at history from the year 2014, where a new mega company, Epic, is created out of the consolidation of Amazon and Google and content distribution is taken to the max from the perspective of a socially networked, personalized, dis- and re- aggregated world with a twist of Orwellian madness.

The news wars of 2010 are unique in that no major news organization is involved.

One of the creators of the piece, Robin Sloan, has a few alternative on the alternative social networking blogs outside the circle of regulars: Large is the New Medium, Snarkmarket, The Chaser (a poynter blog which she contributes to). Mathew Thompson, the other creator, has a website here too.

:UPDATE: trascript of the source of it's inspiration (key note address by Martin Nisenholz). Also, good summary and critique in iMedia Connection. Sounds like this has been getting buzz ... maybe I missed it, or the majors are ignoring it (??).

2005-02-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

Pigskin bloggers, for all your Super Bowl blogging needs.

2005-02-01T17:24:00.000-05:00

Kelsey Group launches a blog to cover local media with all of their analysts as contributors.

Semantic World of Tags

2005-02-01T13:18:00.000-05:00

Since the introduction of Tags by Technorati, there has been much buzz about this new application and the step it takes towards the Semantic Web.

Tags are simply a bottom up way of categorizing websites via keywords. Whereas "Meta Tags," which are a common way for a webmaster to designate keywords to a website, are a top down approach, Tags in the social sense are bottom up and are created by all people. Del.icio.us, Flickr and others enable visitors and webmasters alike to designate and organize tags. For example, I might add "tags," "Semantic_Web," and "Meta" to this entry which would enable others who have labeled other websites with the same tags to see this entry.

While my description above doesn't do much justice to this phenomenon, Shelly Powers (via Strange Attractor) does an incredibly visual and illustrative job of describing tags. Jeremy Wagstaff has a good list of sites that use Tags as well as a good article in the Wall Street Journal.

It's Less Than 5%

2005-01-28T09:04:00.000-05:00

which is part of what Doc Searls argues in comments on a post by copywriting extraordinare Bob Bly on what he feels is the ineffectiveness of the Cluetrain. Interesting to see what the DM'ers are saying now that they have discovered Cluetrain and blogging. Welcome to the blogosphere, Bob.

The End of Objectivity

2005-01-20T13:37:00.000-05:00

Dan Gilmor posts a working document stating that the need for objectivity in jounrnalsim is antiquated. He makes the case for four tenets to ensure the quality and ethical standards journalism:

Thoroughness
Accuracy
Fairness
Transparency

Malcom and James Riffing

2005-01-11T13:05:00.000-05:00

Jason Kottke points to a Slate feature this week that has The Wisdom of Crowds' James Surowiecki and Tipping Point and Blink's Malcom Gladwell riffing on their two newest books. There's a new segment everday this week.

History of Blog Marketing

2005-01-10T09:36:00.000-05:00

This one came through my referrers and is from Google Answers. A writer wants to know the history of blogging from "everyday" bloggers and the answerer stumbled upon this humble site and links to the 2002 post of mine discussing the value of blogs and "marketing."

I think blogging and other forms of C2C communications (...) are the
future of "marketing." (...) And going back to that stat where only
10% of people trust internet advertising, I think customers are
looking for some kind of communication that is lower in the bullshit
and higher in real value. As marketers we need to facilitate this
marketing and ensure its integrity and honesty is upheld above
anything else (including -- and don't jump -- negative commentary).

C2C ... that kind of cracks me up (consumer-to-consumer) ... but hey, you get the point.

2005-01-07T16:28:00.000-05:00

Kevin Spacey is playing Lex Luther in the upcoming Superman remake ... now that's pretty cool.

Long Tail Marketing

2005-01-05T14:38:00.000-05:00

Expect this phrase to pop up quite a bit in 2005. Joshua Wood has created a blog dedicated to the subject. In his 2nd post he examines Google Adwords as an example of Long Tail Marketing. But in my comments to him I say this doesn't go far enough:

Have you checked out John Battalle's "Sell Side Advertising?" It takes Adsense and Adwords to the next level. I think marketing in the long tail will involve a more customizeable approach than what Google currently affords. As a publisher in the new world of disaggregated advertising, one has no control over which ads appear on their sites. Because those of us in the long tail are more engaged with our readers, Sell Side advertising enables us to have a say in what ads are displayed. Which I think is better than an algorithm.