Here’s C-SPAN’s page on the Library of Congress series I talked at last night. The link to the stream of the session isn’t working for me:

rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/digital/digitalfuture111504.rm

But that could just be a problem with my verkochte setup. But, then, what isn’t a problem with my verkochte set up? And does anyone know how to spell verkochte?

(By the way, the decision to list me as a former advisor to the Dean campaign was C-SPAN’s. I’m proud of getting to work with that campaign, but listing me that way vastly inflates my role in the campaign.)

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Every day a different city, so long as those cities are DC and Providence…

Although it requires me to drop all pretense of modesty, I should probably remind you that I’m live on CSPAN tonight, 6:30-8:00 EST. I’m talking about how the digitizing of information is causing changes in the basic principles by which order and classify stuff, which is affecting the nature of knowledge. Ulp.

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Three years too late to protect his reputation and three weeks too late to have saved us from Bush’s reelection.

So, which tough-talkin’, big-stick wagglin’ fasco-utopian neocon is W going to install? One shudders to think…

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Rebecca MacKinnon blurted out an idea at Bloggercon III:

…socially conscious members of the blogging community (of all political persuasions) might want to organize a “Blogger Corps.” Through it, bloggers could donate their time to help poorly funded activists or non-profit groups to figure out what blogging tools are right for them, set up blogs, and develop effective blogging strategies.

Now she asks for comments about how to go about it. Go to her site to join the discussion.

(My comment: It might be appropriate to have a blog for the corps. Unfortunately, it looks like “bloggercorps.org” is being squatted. LATER: Rebecca says it’s owned by a friend.)

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Micah Sifry on Open Source Politics at The Nation. He starts with a Dean anecdote I’d never heard before, and barrels on through the topic. Good piece.

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The FCC has clear jurisdiction over the equipment used for radio and wire transmissions. Now Susan Crawford of the Cardozo Law School has discovered that in its brief supporting the Broadcast Flag, the FCC claims the authority over, well, the Internet.

To support the Flag, says Susan, the FCC claims it can mandate

…the use of “authorized” content protection technologies by virtually every consumer electronics product and computer product…

…this rule doesn’t merely affect TV receiving equipment. It affects everything that RECEIVES digital files from TV receiving equipment as well — every device inside any home network. It affects the open-platform PC. It’s a sweeping rule. And now FCC’s jurisdiction to enact this rule is being argued in sweeping terms.

This is another serious step toward commercial totalitarian control over speech and culture. Won’t someone please do something about it? Thank you.

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I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but there are a couple of little features I’d like to see in Thunderbird. (I’d try to do them myself if I could find any documentation on how to extend it via JavaScript.) (Aha! I just found Roachfiend’s tutorial and it looks promising.)

First, when I hover over an entry in my inbox, it’d be great if I could see the first n characters of the message in a tool tip fashion. That way, when I’m doing a multiple select (ctrl-click), I’d have more to go on than just the subject line.

Second, I’m as confused about TB’s contact list and address book as I was about Outlook’s, but I think I’d like a way to add to my address book (contact list?) any address I’ve just typed into the “to” field in a message. Outlook lets me do that and it’s handy.

And I wish every message had an URL (sorry, URI) so I could link to it in other apps like my calendar. But that I suspect would take more than a simple little extension.

Oh, is there no end to my neediness?

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Now playing at the AMC Fenway in Brookline:

Alfie
Saw
Ray
Birth
The Grudge.
Shall We Dance?

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Ethan Zuckerman queries Overture to learn which terms our aggregated searches tells us we associate with particular localities. Snippet:

What do web users think about Brazil? That’s an easy one: we want to visit, and we’d like to see some naked women. (No word on whether that’s why we want to visit.) The top 20 search terms associated with “Brazil” include “travel”, “tour”, “hotel”, “vacation”, “carnival”, “visa” and “beaches”… and also “girl”, “woman”, “sex”, “porn”, as well as “Mike”, who appears to be visiting Brazilian beaches with a camera, meeting lots of naked women.

The Canadians, on the other hand, can keep their clothes on. We want their drugs – “pharmacy” and “drug” both rank in the top five search terms – and we’re thinking about moving there. “canada immigration” is the 12th associated search term, followed closely by “jobs in canada”. (The keyword selector tool offers some help there as well – if you can’t get a job in a Canadian pharmacy, consider Sears or Wal Mart, both of which rank in the top 20 associated search terms. (The Overture data set is updated monthly, so these results reflect October searches – I look forward to seeing how these figures change in November.)

Pretty durn fascinating.

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Microsoft schmoozed me, but I’m still googling.

The beta of the MSN search engine is pretty good, but after poking around, I’m not falling in love. And that’s what it’d take to get me to switch my habits and loyalty from Google.

I can’t do a full head-to-head evaluation of their raw strengths as search engines. I’m not qualified. But after using the two of them for a couple of days, I’m finding what I need more easily with Google. For example, a search for “thunderbird msf blank inbox” gets me to information about why messages are disappearing from my Thunderbird inbox. MSN’s doesn’t get me to a useful page as quickly, even though it found 97 pages compared to Google’s 69. Or maybe it does, but their page summaries are more obtuse. Plus, MSN doesn’t offer access to cached files, a feature I use frequently.

There’s stuff to like in MSN. Local searches are a couple of clicks closer than at Google. The slider interface that lets you adjust three parameters is, I suppose, cool although I didn’t find myself actually using it. The search builder builds a complex search query for you, but oddly doesn’t skip the step where you see the complex search query.

As Dave says, “We desperately need a two-party system in search.” We need competitors. When you’re going up against an institution like Google, something that has in effect become part of the infrastructure, being as-good-as isn’t enough. You can’t wave us over your finish line. You have to give us a good solid kick. And that’s exactly what the MSN beta doesn’t do.

But here’s the thing to remember about Microsoft: They don’t have to get ir right the first time. They don’t have to get it right the second time. They just have to last long enough to get it right eventually. And that’s what they frequently do. Furthermore, is there any reason to think that the current crop of us hardcore googlers are really who they’re going after?

(By the way, MSN Search doesn’t lay out right in Firefox; try resizing the window horizontally or go to Search Builder > Results Ranking and you may see what I mean.)

Jason Dowdell suspects MSN Search is using Google as a source of URLs to spider. It’s so fiendishly clever that it’s almost admirable! (The article is slashdotted here.) (Thanks to Greg for the link.)

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