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February 14, 2006
The Bush administration spent at least $1.6 billion on public relations and advertising campaigns over 30 months, said a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
—Arizona Star
I believe when the government does it, it’s called “propaganda.”
Rebecca MacKinnon blogs about Yahoo!’s new guidelines for dealing with totalitarian states. [Tags: rebecca_mackinnon yahoo china politics]
The Wall Street Journal aggregates the late night jokes about Cheney shooting a friend in the face. The most trenchant, not surprisingly (and in my opinion): The Daily Show. [Tags: dick_cheney jon_stewart humor]
February 13, 2006
Paul English at GetHuman in his blog muses that we should come up with a standard phone tree, such as:
0 for operator, 1 for customer service, 2 for sales, 3 for billing questions, etc. Then I would never have to listen to the stupid “Your call is important to us” nonsense. The * key might always mean go back and the # key might always mean confirm. Or something like that.
He proposes a company that conforms to this to-be-invented phone tree could play a little musical sequence at the beginning of the call to let us know that we can just punch the standard numbers.
Cool idea. [Tags: paul_english customer_service gethuman]
Glenn Fleishman is going to be interviewing Martin Varsavsky, the founder of Fon, tomorrow morning and is soliciting questions. This should be a helpful, vigorous and clarifying interview.(Disclosure: I’m on Fon’s board of advisors.) [Tags: glenn_fleishman martin_varsavsky fon wifi]
I think the interviewed just happened.
WickedIndie.com, my daughter’s production company — three Emerson College students — created a humorous video for Paul English’s GetHuman project. (GetHuman lists tips ‘n’ tricks — um, I mean hacks — for reaching human beings at various companies.) Since I am one of the two Actors in it, this is a rare chance to see me exhibiting my finely honed thespian abilities, assuming one discounts the constant faking of my way through life. [Tags: leah_weinberger film gethuman paul_english]
Global Voices runs a round-up of Syrian bloggers upset about the violent reaction to the cartoons.
As usual, there’s an amazing spread of voices and places at GV this morning, including a report from Bahrain that discusses, among other things, bloggers’ reaction to the much-televised ritual in which bloodied men march through the streets. And there’s a post called “African women’s voices this week,” voices I’m guessing a lot of us don’t hear enough of. [Tags: global_voices globalvoices syria cartoons africa bahrain]
Remember when hackers were people who were able to circumvent the safeguards of a system to get it to do what they wanted and were sometimes played by the adolescent Angelina Jolie?
The Boston Globe today on the front page promises to show us how to “hack” our iPods and other devices. The article, by Hiawatha Bray, continues the trend of weakening the term “hack” so that it means tips ‘n’ tricks. For example, the article suggests two ways to “hack” Windows XP: Use the text-to-speech capability built into the system and manage the programs that automatically start up by using the built-in Windows’ utility designed for the job.
Q: What will we call the hacking that subverts and circumvents (for good or for evil)? Extreme hacking? X hacking? Xacking?
A: If Congress has it’s way: Terrorism. [Tags: hacking language hiawatha_bray]
February 12, 2006
Once again, Joho has been ignored by those who choose the Netdiver Best of the Year design awards.
I am forced to conclude that Netdiver has a bias against orange. [Tags: netdiver awards design orange]
February 11, 2006
Last night, at the end of her lecture, Miriam Udel Lambert read a sonnet by Robert Frost that I found moving and beautiful:
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent
So that in guys it gently sways at ease
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everyone on earth the compass round,
And only by one’s going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
Jeez, that guy can write! [Tags: miriam_udel_lambert robert_frost poetry]
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