Lisa Williams over at PressThink breaks the news:

Over the weekend, the Watertown TAB of Watertown, Massachusetts, revamped its website. The result is, for now, strikingly bloglike: a wide center column with items in reverse chronological order. And at the very bottom, a small silver badge with a line of text that reads: “Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license.”

Our local paper, the Brookline Tab, has done the same. Frankly, I never thought I’d say the Brookline Tab is cool, but, dang it all, they just turned their Web site from a glass-based front page to a place with some local life. [Tags: cc creative_commons tab newspapers blogs lisa_williams pressthink everything_is_miscellaneous]

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Hans Mestrum has posted a from-the-audience video (Windows Media) of my talk at Le Web 3. It’s twenty minutes of me supposedly on the topic “Blogging Our Way to Democracy.” It consists of several small riffs, loosely joined. And I don’t think I stick the landing. [Tags: leweb3 politics me_me_me vcasts]

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Le Web 3, which I thought was an outstanding event and a very good conference—great for networking and community, with excellent speakers trapped in a traditional conference framework—is now enmeshed in a controversy that confounds me.

If two of the three leading presidential candidates came to a US tech conference to talk for twenty minutes each about their Internet policies, it’d be considered a coup. At Le Web, however, some attendees feel cheated and betrayed.

In part, perhaps it’s because Le Web was a genuinely international conference. I happen to enjoy politics, so I was happy to hear from the French politicians (even one who I thought treated us like pommes de terre de couch). Others obviously don’t share my interests, so perhaps it felt to them as if two soccer stars bumped other speakers to promote their books. (But the candidates were talking about Internet policies, so the analogy isn’t exact.)

Some apparently resent the intrusion of the traditional media. They came in with the candidates, elbowed people aside, and left with the candidates. On the other hand, one of the candidates, and Loic, pushed back on them. Le slap across the media’s face.

Then there’s a personal layer. Loic Lemeur (Disclosure: I count Loic as a friend. Plus Le Web paid my plane and hotel expenses) has blogged in favor of one of the candidates. He was quite gracious to the other candidate, but some have accused Loic of inviting the candidates in order to advance his own career, and perhaps to advance his company’s interests. If you see no other value in having the candidates attend, then I suppose personal motivations become the best available explanation. And how could any of us not be tempted by the opportunity to be noticed by possible future presidents? But since the candidates’ appearances at the conference seemed to me so obviously a positive, I don’t need to resort to Loic’s inner motives.

None of this has been helped by the post-event conversation, much of it quite angry, and further fueled by an ill-tempered, late-night response from Loic, for which he quickly apologized. Frankly, the swirling path of anger is too exhausting and unpleasant for me to follow.

Finally, there’s the possiblity that there’s simply a cultural divide here, and I’m just not getting something. Perhaps there’s a subtext or a history. My own understanding—it may well be deficient but for now it’s all I have—leaves me feeling bad that a first-class event is being torn down for what I thought was a net (and Net) positive. [Tags: leweb3 loic_lemeur politics france]

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The Velveteen Rabbi‘s take on latkes (co-invented with her husband, the Velveteen Geek, Ethan Zuckerman) is the focus of an article in the Boston Globe. Even more interesting than her use of non-traditional ingredients is the following:

“Recipes are like sacred texts passed down on yellowed index cards,” says Barenblat, 31, who believes that the study of scripture has a lot in common with cooking.

Rachel gives a bit of the backstory here. [Tags: velveteen_rabbi rachel_barenblat recipes jews latkes chanukah ]

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Slashdot has a thread about a debate over whether Internet abuse counts as a true addiction. (Yet another taxonomic question!) Here’s what I posted in response. Since it was rated 1 (out of 5), you’re not going to stumble across it unless you have your filter set to “Masochist.”

Thank God!

I myself have been showing disturbing signs of being compulsively human. I’ve noticed that I feel an urge I simply cannot control to be social. This really began to scare me when I tried not to talk and found that after a mere seven hours – seven hours! — I said, “Howya doin’?” to the bagger at the supermarket. I didn’t want to. It just slipped out. I couldn’t control myself. Ever since, I’ve given in to my urge – yes, I know, I’m sick – answering the phone when it rings, responding not only to questions but to mere pleasantries, and even initiating conversations when they weren’t strictly required.

It’s a nightmare. And it gets worse.

it’s not just that when I’m with others, I – ugh! – participate in destructive social rituals like caring what people are saying. Even when I’m alone, kind thoughts about other people invade my consciousness. I feel an impulse to wonder what they’re thinking and what matters to them. I try to focus on computing pi or to remember the 1955 Dodgers starting lineup, but I just can’t shut out those images and feelings.

Sometimes – and I’m so ashamed to admit this – I use the Internet to sate these shameful urges.

Admitting all this in public is, I can only hope, the first step towards healing. [Tags: internet addiction humor everything_is_miscellaneous taxonomy ]

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Glenn Fleishman writes in the NYT about T-Mobile’s combined cellular and wifi phones and plans. Glenn writes: “In my own testing, I found the service a reasonable first draft of what could become a reliable alternative to both all-cellular networks and an emerging set of Wi-Fi-only phones.” [Tags: wifi telecom glenn_fleishman]

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Zack Exley—Kerry’s Internet manager, co-organizer of the RootsCamp a couple of weeks ago, and co-organizer of the New Organizing Institute that’s putting young’uns into the field as political organizers—wants a revolution.

It’s not that he’s calling for the overthrow of the government or death to capitalism. In fact, what he’s really callling on us to do is to expand our vision past wondering whether we should have a single-payer health insurance or whether we should stop serving macaroni and cheese in school cafeterias. So, there are no specifics in his call, beyond a passing light reference to tri-lingual kids breathing fresh air. But, I know from having had dinner with him a week or so ago that he wants us to be thinking about how radically different the world can be now because of the confluence of historic factors. We can work far less. We can enjoy far more. We can do so much more good.

So, Zack is calling for a revolution in vision. I like it.

Hope is the new fear. [Tags: zack_exley politics]

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I don’t know who came up with the name “Iceland,” but it’s a marketing disaster. Surely such a beautiful and interesting nation deserve better! And you’re just the folks to do it. So, put on your marketing caps (and make sure they’ve got earflaps) and come up with a name that better represents the Iceland brand. E.g.,

“Winterwonderland”

“Frostia”

“Disney Presents Iceland”

[Tags: doep puzzle marketing iceland]

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The conservative candidate for the presidency and Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, comes to address the conference. He talks quickly and I’m taking notes on the simultaneous translation, and not keeping up.

He begins by saying the Internet is important. He focuses on the need for France to catch up in Internet as a business opportunity and culture. The government should make the France a leader in Inteornet. It should have boosted things. The miracle is that we nevertheless have people like you, Loic, were able to invest in Internet despite the lag. The lag is also cultural because we did not build the tools for the Internet. We had a difficult debate on IP rights. I was very much in favor of protecting IP because there’s no creativity without protection. But law enforcement isn’t the only possibility. There are win-win solutions that I wish we had spent time devising. The Internet must be one of the four or five priorities of our R&D efforts. France recently set up several global centers of excellent in IT, but France is not investing in the Internet. We are last but one in the effect of the Internet in boosting our economy in Europe. We need e-government, Internet in education, in medicine. I want to invest in free sites for the public. We’re thinking of digitizing our archive. What is private must be respected but what is public must be genuinely public. I want broadband coverage. We should learn from what works in the US.(“That doesn’t mean there’s only one culture,” he quickly adds.)

I plan to restore investor confidence in our country. More accountable, more transparent. Greater confidence in employees. I want France to stop being the country that enriches Switzerland, Belgium the UK, putting to the edge those who want to make money. My message is simple: We need your capital, your intelligence in France. I want us to have a major higher education reform. Our young should be in the level playing field. Universities should be viewed as tax-exempt areas. Encourage young people to take patents. Tax breaks for young people creating companies.

Huge possibilities. Internet breaks down distances. It’s sort of university campus on a global level. Generates intelligence. Brings people closer together and can be an instrument of emancipation. I’m thinking of China. I’m thinking of poor countries. Anyone can disseminate their movies in place of Hollywood. Anyone can be a journalist. Anyone can post his goods. A new area of freedom of expression opens.

It’s a means of cultural diversity. It cannot be a single culture or economy. It must derive its creativity from the multiplication of small companies that innovate. Some become monopolies that inhibit innovation, and we must not that happens.

The dissemination of anti-Semitic information is not ascceptable. Not everything is permitted. I’m not afraid of the word “internet regulation.”

Internet makes school and education even more necessary because of the flow of knowledge that needs interpretation and assessment.

Let us make the new Internet continent the continent of new liberties, that includes rather than excludes. Let us make the Internet continent of the transmission of knowledge, and not the transmission of lies. The continent of sharing of cultures, not of the leveling of values. [Wow. Does he know he’s contradicting himself sentence after sentence?]

You have in your hands the liberty and progress of the world. Realize you must think of what others might do who do not share your values and ethics. The liberty the Internet serves must be that of universal rights. Internet with rules. Huge responsibility on your shoulders. The new citizen of the world is aware of his responsibility and his liberty is bound by values.

He leaves without any questions. And Esme Vos, who I am sitting next to, says Sarkozy speaks perfect English.

I feel like i’ve been lectured by a guy who has no actual understanding of the Internet. I don’t know about French politics, but personally, I sort of hated him. (This is not a well-grounded opinion.) [Tags: leweb3 france politics sarkozy]

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Marko Ahtisaari, formerly of Nokia (and a remarkable person), talks about Blyk, which is building a “pan-European free mobile operator funded by advertising.” Free cell service for teenagers!

He says there are two billion mobile subscribers. He says your children won’t believe there was a time when to make a phone call, you had to change next to a wall.He points out that had been a collective object (“the family phone”) became a personal object. Because of its social function, it pulls other functions into it: It becomes a watch, an alarm clock…

He points to five obstacles:

1. Reach – reaching the next two billion will drive changes in the infrastructure.

2. We are not doing a good job of tuning out communication.

3. They need to be hackable.

4. The future will be around social functionalities, e.g. gifts (Palm beaming), photostreams (Flickr), signaling (Jaiku), real identity (LinkedIn)

5. Freedom – making communications free or at least transparent pricing.

Q: What type of ads will you be serving?
A: We aren’t saying yet, but they will not be interruptive. [Tags: blyk movile telecommunications marko_ahtisaari leweb ]

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