David Berlind writes a long piece about fact-checking that concludes:

…as the established media community picks up the pace, there are those of us in it who would prefer to keep constant the number of chances we’re taking. But if the PR community doesn’t also reinvent itself to keep pace with the media revolution by responding to the fact checkers on blogopshere time, it will leave those writers with no choice but to take more chances. I don’t know about you, but if I were a PR professional, I sure wouldn’t want to be the guy that blew that one opportunity to contain the story that snow-balled into a disaster for the company I represent.

Yup. [Tags: DavidBerlind berlind blogs journalism media]

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Continental Airlines has been offering free wifi in its Presidents Club lounge. Logan Airport doesn’t like that because, according to an article in the Boston Globe (link will break soon), it interferes with security devices:

Last month, a Massport attorney warned the airline that its antenna “presents an unacceptable potential risk” to Logan’s safety and security systems, including its key card access system and State Police communications.

Massport told the airline it could route its wireless signals over Logan’s WiFi signal, at a “very reasonable rate structure.” In response, however, Continental said using Logan’s WiFi vendor could force the airline to start charging its customers for the service.

Oddly, the complain to the FCC doesn’t mention the hit on Logan’s $8/day wifi service.

(Note: Apparently you don’t actually have to be a president to join Continental’s lounge. I think that really devalues the Continental lounge.) [Tags: wifi fcc]

David Berlind, an actual journalist, gets some actual facts about the situation.

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Frances Jacobson Harris, a librarian at the University Laboratory High School at Illinois, has written a guide called I Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online:

…readers learn, for example, how teens use online jargon like “Leetspeak” to jockey for status; blogs to display their wit and uniqueness; instant messaging to exclude others but also to collaborate on homework projects.

David Teten and Scott Allen have written The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, which is about what its subtitle says.

I haven’t read either book.

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Liz Lawley found a feature of Google that I can’t reproduce, but she’s got the screen capture to prove it. Maybe it’s in beta, or maybe Google likes Liz more than it likes me. Anyway, for a search Liz did that had 34 million returns, after the fifth item Google suggested an altered search query and listed the results for it. Sounds like it could be useful. (And Liz’s screen capture is much clearer than my description.) [Tag: google]

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Rick Santorum says something sensible about “Intelligent Design.”

Bob Novak walks off “Inside Politics” and gets suspended by CNN.

One more such event and I’m going to start preparing for The Rapture. (In my case, that means buying heavy weapons and downloading all the music I want.) [Tags: RickSantorum BobNovak]

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From Philipp Blom’s Enlightening the World about the 18th Century French Encyclopedia: The article on cannabalism is cross-referenced to “Eucharist, communion.” (p. 154) [Technorati tags: taxonomy EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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I’m reading Philipp Blom’s Enlightening the World about the 18th Century French Encyclopedia put together by Diderot and D’Alembert, an amazing project. The passages from the Encyclopedia highlight one of the things I miss about Wikipedia: Style.

The Encyclopedia entries are frequently witty, lively, highly-styled. Wikipedia’s commitment to a neutral point of view tends to drive style out of the articles so they talk in a matter-of-fact, affectless, voiceless tone of voice. I guess that’s the price we pay for Wikipedia’s approximation of neutrality.

Blom’s book is largely about the Encyclopedia as a political tract into which Diderot smuggled anti-authoritarian messages. For example, its choice of topics put more emphasis on manufacturing and craft techniques than on aristocratic and theological concerns. Wikipedia, on the other hand, surfaces and removes smuggled messages. There’s obviously good reason to do so, but it removes the double edge so conducive to great writing.

Not a complaint. There are lots of places on the Web where you can get all the voice and opinionatedness you want but precious few where you can get what the Wikipedia gives us.

If you want to read some of the Encyclopedia in English, there’s a collaborative translation project underway. And don’t miss Benjamin Heller’s translation of the Map of the System of Human Knowledge. As Blom’s book points out, putting Theology under Science of God, and having it lead to superstition, divination and black magic could not have made the French establishment very happy. (Wikipedia has a good article on the Tree.)

BTW, it’s interesting to see which of the articles have been translated so far: I didn’t see any on manufacturing, but lots on big abstract nouns. [Technorati tags: wikipedia EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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Dave Sifry has been posting data Technorati has gathered about the size and nature of the blogosphere, at least the big chunk of it Technorati knows about.

The latest post (3 of 5…here are 1 and 2) is about tagging. Very interesting. E.g., almost a third of posts use tags or categories. (Technorati counts categories as tags.) (Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Technorati.) [Technorati tags: technorati blogosphere]

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Yesterday I got to catch up a bit with Oliver Brown, Wikipedian and singer, a family friend all of his life and almost all of mine. (I’ve got a few years on him.)

Oliver Brown

Among Oliver’s many many contributions to Wikipedia: He started the “Father/Mother of…” page. About becoming an “admin” he writes:

I became an admin 16:15 May 12, 2003 (UTC); at that point I had 3,944 edits and 75 days experience. Before being an admin, I averaged 55 edits a day. After becoming an admin, that average dropped to 28 a day. Fabiform says the decline is because of IRC. I became a Bureaucrat February 28, 2004.

His songs have become family favorites.

Great to see him… [Technorati tags: OliverBrown wikipedia ukelele]

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While I’m on the topic, Thomas Friedman today in the NY Times has decided that muni wifi is a good thing, that Andrew Rasiej by implication would do good for NYC, and that Howard Dean was onto something with that Internet stuff. [Technorati tags: wifi AndrewRasiej nyc]