DISQUS

also i just tried to "share this" with twitter
it generated the following link

http://twitter.com/timeline/home/?status=Twitte...

which is no good.

excellent review. i've been using tweetdeck for a minute and am desperate for something else. not only have i been bothered by the inability to customize the notifications (like you said, by limiting them to replies/DMs), but there's been no way to move the notification box from the upper right to somewhere else.

i find that i CONSTANTLY am waiting for that notification window in the upper right to get out the way. it blocks my search bar in safari, tab access and other key buttons for my browswer window. i hope seesmic desktop keeps those notifications in the lower right like twhirl did. much less obtrusive

pinged it everywhere. good luck!

your complaints about comments are obsolete. just shut up and install disqus already! :)

yes it does work.
the one thing that doesn't is visual voicemail

wow i miss paris

@kai, that is messed up dude. just messed up. it's real! I promise!

no i don't. it's a comic which gets close to some of my sentiments, however.

at this point, i have a problem with ANYONE who supports hillary, regardless of their race. i had a particular problem with certain black superdelegates which i explained here

http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2008/04/cnn-...

One. I own one superfly suit, mr. smartass

thanks for the comment, eric.

just a correction on the popular vote. it doesn't matter. the democratic nominee is determined by delegates. the popular vote is a nice concept but completely beside the point. had the goal been popular vote from the start, all candidates would have campaigned differently, focusing on large states like IL, CA, NY, TX

so don't believe the hype on that.

i'd also caution everyone not to believe the hype about dems not supporting obama in november. Democrats are called Democrats for a reason. They vote for Democrats. most people saying they won't support O are talking shit. they're the same folks who threatened to move to canada if bush was electedin 2004.

ha ha. it takes time homey. you don't get admitted to medical school and just start doing triple bypasses after two weeks. and be careful talkin all that smack before you end up in an unflattering story :)

Obama is definitely black though is background doesn't conform to the innercity stereotype and black coming of age ritual assumed to be the standard. Despite having grown up away from mainland USA, having read his first book, I saw my (black, american, male) self reflected in his experience profoundly.

America is special that way forced Obama through many of the same rituals of "blackness" that your acquaintance from the Bronx experienced. And even if Obama didn't go through the exact same things, this society has forced him to answer for them

tim, that is so reassuring. thank you. now i can rest easy

yeah i gotta say of all the online forums out there, the youtube user base seems extremely horrible. you just see the conversation deviate into insanity and spam and ugliness. the full range of humanity is on display there :)

haven't gotten any new info. guess i'll look into a police blotter announcement or something. there was a woman with a ridiculous camera on the scene. those photos would have ended up somewhere, maybe local press

or maybe they are all in on it!

thanks Eric! keep rockin the west side

awesome observation.

hey marianne, thanks for the contribution. Conversations among one another is definitely the more achievable measure of social media political success. It's already happening.

As for campaigns/governments harnessing the ideas of the governed, I have faith that that CAN happen. Whether it will is more up to us than the candidates and politicians.

For it to really work, people have to feel that their contributions are being taken seriously, even if they don't get used. The fact that Obama's offering a comment period on legislation is a heartening start, but I want to see us take it further and more local.

Perhaps people get points or rewards of some sort (as in games) to contribute and for ideas that generate the most agreement or conversation (because even conversation without agreement is valuable. citizens talking to each other).

I also wonder if part of the reason Gore's reinventing Gov initiative didn't go as far as it could was because it came before its time. He had a set group of people looking for opportunities to increase operational efficiency and save money. That doesn't scale with some small committee.

If you employed the citizenry in this task, you'd get a wider range of concepts.

thanks again for coming through. this excites the hell out of me. it's non-partisan and non-ideological as well, so left, right and center should feel open to participating if the system is established well.

thanks for coming through Josh! Your book is high on the list. Trying to finish Zittrain's "Future of the Internet."

I just skimmed the MyStarbucksIdea site, and I see a great potential for this in political/government conversation. Can't wait to see what you're written about it.

If a government can foster this sort of idea generation among its citizens (especially at the local level) and act on even a few of them, people would feel respected. It's the small things that give us a sense of belonging and worth. If I find that an idea I submitted or voted on is under review or actually gets acted upon, I'm just likely to care more about my community.

I hope the Obama campaign/presidency looks seriously at tools like this soon. Thanks again.

Josh Bernoff everybody!!

i agree that the golden rule is a good place to start.

i disagree that your intentions are more obvious online. if anything, i've found that true intent is more difficult to ascertain through text. email, online forums/blogs, SMS. all these tools strip the emotion and true "intent" out of communication, often amplifying misunderstanding

word choice is critical and tone is absent.

as for social media making us good or good people necessarily being rewarded via social media. absolutely not.

there is great potential in this emerging medium, but so was there in written language and books and public education and libraries and television/radio. none of these things, i believe, change the essential nature of our humanity.

some good people will succeed. others will not.
some bad people will fail. others will succeed.

i don't think there's anything inherent in social media that makes us good. we can deceive and manipulate and exploit one another regardless of the tools. "badness" is wired into us as much as goodness.

you can see it in the 419 email scams and false katrina donation campaigns. think it's somehow harder to commit crimes via social media. not at all. many of these tools make it EASIER to be "bad"

the same connectivity that strengthens friend/family relationships and makes the world smaller, makes it an enticing target. fraud flies quickly through the network (look at the international financial system now. distress in asia is felt immediately in NYC and London).

i believe that the emergence of a more distributed, bottom up "social media" holds great potential for empowerment, knowledge-sharing and learning. but the benefits of such a shift accrue to "good" as well as "bad," and I think we make a mistake to expect anything different

dear twitter friend biznickman!

any categorical statement about "blogging" is necessarily false. While I agree with you about television -- 24/7 "news" merely forces a bunch of ignorant, ratings-driven talking heads upon us -- even the mere 24 hour nature of that medium isn't wholly to blame for our low-information tv culture. you have to factor in consolidation, deregulation and shareholder growth objectives.

On blogging, you can't make the categorical statement that it's dead and twitter is better. It all depends on your purpose. If you are narrowly focused on tech/webby/techmeme-thirsty blogging, then sure, that may be dying or evolving to something else.

But i spend massive time on political and personal blogs and they aren't dying one bit. They are growing. Many have moved from the editorial commentary on mainstream media to centers of activism and empowerment and connectivity among citizens. I hardly see that as death, and it's certainly beyond the scope of twitter to focus the energy of a community toward such a common goal (unless that goal is hatred of poorly-run SXSW keynotes :))

i could say more, but i don't want to risk making your blog fun! :) let's carry this over to twitter.

peace

one more thing. please read this

http://www.prometheus6.org/node/20249

joel you wrote

"What’s most concerning about Wright is not his support for Obama but the way in which Obama has handled this.

Suddenly it’s not about his judgment; suddenly it’s about everyone else’s racism. I mean, who calls their own grandmother a racist on national TV?

Suddenly Obama’s waving the American flag. Suddenly he’s admitting he knew about Wright’s views.

There’s just a lack of authenticity here, and I think Obama’s supporters ought to be more worried about it than his opponents."

----

Suddenly?? Obama has "waved the american flag" since his first book which he wrote in his late 20s. There's nothing "sudden" about his love for America nor his recognition of this nation's contradictions.

You are way oversimplifying his speech. I know you're smart and literate, so asking you to read it again won't accomplish anything. I'm actually at a loss for how to respond to this. It's impossible for me to understand how you can say he's being inauthentic when the EXACT opposite is true.

Inauthentic would have been to completely reject and abandon his relationship with this pastor, despite the large role this man plays in his life. I have a hard time believing you'd have been satisfied by that even though you now say that's the preferred response. Had Obama simply said, "I totally reject and denounce Rev Wright" you and other critics would have screamed "INAUTHENTIC!! EXPLAIN HOW YOU KEPT ATTENDING THE CHURCH. EXPLAIN WHY THIS MAN YOU NOW REJECT MARRIED YOU AND BAPTISED YOUR CHILDREN. YOU'RE JUST A SCHEMING POLITICIAN WILLING TO FLIP FLOP WHEN THE PRESSURE GETS APPLIED."

Joel, can you not honestly see that he took the most honest and authentic path available. He not only explained his continued relationship with Wright, but he explained why such a reaction to Wright's limited excerpts represented a failure of information and understanding between the races. The fact that so many WHITE people were shocked by Wright betrays their ignorance of the role of the black church.

I'm stunned that you could oversimplify Obama's 38 minute analysis of American racial tension -- the most open discussion on the subject by a presidential candidate, probably ever -- and reduce it to him making it "about everyone else’s racism."

That is NOT what he said at all.

man joel, i'm more strongly disagreeing with you with every comment you leave son! obama absolutely did the right thing. whether american's can accept that is another question. Rev Wright has preached probably thousands of hours, and a few comments are supposed to undo all of that?

also, it seems easy to forget WHAT he said. what was so wrong?

he said 9/11 was a result of american foreign policy. that is CLEARLY true to some degree.

he said america was founded on racism. again. CLEARLY true.

the standard you're holding obama too is excessive, and i don't see you holding mccain to the same. were your out protesting mccain when he spoke at falwell's liberty university? Falwell, unlike Wright, WAS A PREACHER OF DISCORD in america. he villified entire groups of people yet was embraced. EMBRACED by your chosen candidate

at least try to be consistent in your expectations.