Timothy Falconer — who has been working on ways to knit people, pictures and words together for a while now — blogs an edge-of-an-epiphany idea that somehow we, collectively, are going to invent new ways to tell stories.

Here’s what I know so far: there will be a new art form, a new way to tell our stories, a new way to entertain and enlighten each other. Its defining characteristic will be interconnectedness. It won’t be sequential, but it won’t be haphazard. It won’t be some kind of “you choose the ending” lame-o branching crap either. It’ll be engaging, involving . . . geniunely creative.

I wonder about the sequential part. The narrative form has been persistent. Even if you tell the story backwards, as in Memento or Betrayal, the story unfolds forwards, so to speak. Ultimnately, narrative shows how the end was contained all the time in the beginning, which is why “you choose the ending” is lame-o. So, how much room is there for change? How deep can it go in the newly connected world? I dunno. I guess, as Timothy says, we get to invent it…

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In 1992, I had this idea that someone ought to make a palm-sized device for transporting data from household appliances to computers and back again. That way I could use my computer to configure, say, my thermostat. I thought about patenting this idea and actually got as far as thinking about it.

We could now do it right. We could even use our Palms or cellphones for the GUI. Or why not have a dedicated Universal Remote that can talk to all of the electronic objects in our lives? It’s a million dollar idea, I tell you! Go ahead and build it, and then send me a million dollars when you’re done. Really. I trust you.

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I’m flying back from California all day today after a product advisory board meeting. The day was under non-disclosure, but I feel free to tell you what I learned from 3-3:30am this morning: One Crazy Summer is the stupidest movie ever made.

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“Flash Mobs” has made it into the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, according to Smart Mobs. Maybe it’ll be able to get its smarter cousin inducted soon…

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Yahoo has added a new link to its search results: “Add to My Yahoo.” Click and the page’s RSS feed is added to the list on your My Yahoo site, the personalized portal from Yahoo.

Then, if you’re at, say, About.com, you’ll see an “Add to My Yahoo” button that does the same thing.

Yahoo reports that the pickup of this new feature has been excellent…

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So, it turns out the Clive Owen is not the same actor as Jason Statham, although he is the guy who played the driver in those online BMW movie shorts, which I was sure was the same guy who starred in The Transporter (= Statham).

I frequently get certain actors confused, as in the old Saturday Night Live sketch that featured Fernando Lamas, Ricardo Montalban and/or Cesar Romero. But usually they have more in common than being British and having once driven a car.

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Mark Fiore‘s animated editorial cartoon for 7/7/04 is pretty funny.

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Shelley wonders how many of the bloggers credentialed are women. Good question.

How many women applied? Did the credentialers notice or care? And was political position one of the considerations? And where’s the list of those who got credentialed? We really need more transparency from the folks who did the credentialing…

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RageBoy has fallen in love again. This time with a book. If you read only one book review this year, make it this one.

And then Frank Paynter responds, perhaps I should say amplifies, or is it analyzes? And Kalilily gets on a bus with Frank to wonder whether authentic voice cannot be contrived.

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CyberJournalilst.net is keeping track of which bloggers were credentialed for the Democratic Convention. So far, we do seem to be a homogenous lot — I believe we’re all likely to vote for Kerry, but with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Cyberjournalists asks, if the media are not credentialed according to their beliefs, why are bloggers? But is that the case? I’ve heard that 35 bloggers were credentialed. Do we know of any unfriendlies (so to speak) who were turned down?

Mike Lidell, in an article in the Washington Post article, does not list viewpoint as a criterion:

It is not clear how the Democratic Party will decide among the more than 60 bloggers who have applied for credentials. Convention officials said they are considering three criteria: the size of the blogger’s audience, the “professionalism” of the site and the amount of original material it includes. It is subjective and a little vague. But then again, Liddell said, no one has tried this before. “We don’t have a guide to go by,” he said.

Since we are unlikely to get a list of the 25 bloggers who were turned down, I don’t feel I can have an opinion about the possible vetting of bloggers by viewpoint until we see a longer list of who was accepted.

Of course I’m bothered by the skew towards the A-List. How great would it be for bloggers with smaller readerships to function as hometown reporters of a sort? I understand the convention planners thinking that they can’t just let anyone in who has set up a blog somewhere. But are we at the point yet? Yo, credentialing committe, how about some transparency about the criteria? How about blogging about it?

In any case, the credentialing process is further evidence that blogging is forming a continuum, filling in the gap between professional journalists and people writing letters home. Inevitably, the Big Time media pay too much attention to the side of the spectrum where bloggers are like journalists and columnists without portfolio, missing the vast bulk of the blogosphere where blogs are forming a new network of thought, conversation, identity and community.

Jeez, I could have sworn that I blogged a whole bunch more after that original posting, appending it here, including more from Jay Rosen and Dave Winer’s community blog for people attending. But now it’s gone. What the hell happened to it? Or am I just dreaming it?

Anyway, here’s more from Jay. Search for “Schnure” on his page to see the DNC’s response to the question of whether they vetted bloggers according to their political slant.

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