Successful Blog

Net Neutrality 5-23-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

The Internet Inventor Speaks Out!

At one point in the comments, [Tim] Berners-Lee says something that absolutely tickles me!

“Suppose your ISP runs an online auction: is there any reason why it should support traffic to eBay at all, when it has its own auction service? Suppose it runs its own on-demand movies – why should it have to allow through HBO packets? Suppose it has its own search portal — why should it give preference to Google’s packets, when the customer has available its own search service? Suppose the degradation happens now, not only to Skype traffic, but traffic from video sources of stations with particular political views? What happens when your ISP’s platinum partners establish favorable treatment for packets from sites with particular views on evolution? It is a slippery slope, and the bottom end is not nice at all. If there is a way of influencing the browsing choices of people, even slightly, there will be money in it, and when there is money in it there will be unscrupulous people trying to get that control. Do you really want to us to set off down that slope? Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.â€?

User Friendly.org Cartoons

THIS IS USER FRIENDLY.ORG
THIS IS USER FRIENDLY.ORG WITHOUT NET NEUTRALITY.

Vile and Revile

I don’t know how there is no law against this. Also, it’s so pathetically transparent that this group is corrupt when their member organizations include Cingular, the American Conservative Union, AT&T, BellSouth, and so on. A tagline like “Join Us and say NO to government regulation of the environment� is sick. I’m so sick. It’s as bad as using religion to play on people’s emotions for political and monetary gain.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Technorati — Hollywood and International

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Technorati and Paramount Classics

So much going on at Technorati these days, who can keep track of all of it? David Sifry has been signing his name a lot.

Yesterday, May 21 Peter Hirshberg announced on the Technorati Weblog an 18-month “relationship” that joins Technorati and Paramount Classics. The deal will connect up-to-the minute blog posts about a film’s content to each of Paramount’s film sites. The relationship launches with the site for the film, An Inconvenient Truth, a new movie about global warming. The documentary starring former Vice President Al Gore, opens in theaters beginning May 24. Its blog will provide live blogger commentary and feature posts from the Technorati index. The press release went out on May 18th.

Technorati and International Edelman PR

Today, Peter Hirshberg posts that Technorati and Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm, are announcing a relationship that’s all about supporting the international growth of the blogosphere. He goes on to say that Edelman will be providing full support for service to the international bloggers that are now such an important part of the Technorati index.

Whew! What relief! Janice Myint’s team has enough to do.

Mr. Hirshberg ends his post with this sentence.

Both of these developments are testimony to the incredible changes to media, marketing and communication that blogosphere is bringing about— and to the increasing global reach of these developments.

For the life of me, and for all of my years unraveling sentences as an editor, I don’t know what this sentence means.

I do know my link count has finally moved this morning — the first time in almost 4 weeks.

I don’t know what that means either.

Of course, hours and new links later — it’s stuck on the same new number. I guess that means that nothing’s changed. UPDATE: IT’S CHANGED AGAIN. That makes two times in one day.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Technorati Blog Cards
Technorati Still Wonky
It’s Not Your Blog, It’s Technorati
Put Your 2Cents In–What’s Technorati Worth–Without Janice?

Critical Skill 5B: Sparking Spectacular Ideas

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Spectacular Ideas

Future Skills

Do you recognize where we are? We’ve been here before. This is the place where I tell you that ideas are already in your head, that it’s a matter of letting yourself have them — not shutting them out. It’s when I remind you that you can be an idea magnet again. I tell you that ideas are waiting for you. I ask you if you’ve started seeing and hearing them.

Whew! Now that the déjà vu is over. We can get on with sparking spectacular ideas.

Caution: Now Entering Liz Think Zone

[Read more…]

Technorati Blog Cards

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Another Feature

Technorati has rolled out another new feature. It’s sort of like a baseball card for your blog. This is how it looks for Successful Blog.

Technorati Blog Card

To see yours, go to Blog Finder, type in your URL and click search. You’ll see your card and the latests posts indexed for your blog. It’s nice to be able to see whether our latest posts have made it into the index.

It’s a great feature, Mr. Sifry, but could we have a word over here? [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 5-22-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

NET NEUTRALITY – by Gar Lipow on MaxSpeak, You Listen!

You (or your host if hosting is being donated to you) will not only pay your current ISP (who in turn uses part of your money to pay for backbone). You will be charged by your customers’ ISPs – which they already pay for. Perhaps you will be charged a third time, by some of the backbones your ISP and customers already pay for. Alternatively, if you don’t pay this extra ransom, MaxSpeak will suddenly become vvveeerrrry ssllooww for most of your readers. They may start getting time-outs and be unable to read it at all.

Bear in mind that you would not be suddenly paying for something you now get for free. Someone hosts MaxSpeak and pays for the high speed internet access that allows it. Whoever owns the hosting server pays a monthly fee that includes only a certain number of bits. If that number of bits is exceeded, host access will either be shut off, or an additional fee will be charged. (This may not be explicit; but I’ve known people with “all you can eat� agreements cut off when their usage grew too high.)

For that matter; if a road-owner does not like your comments, they may just decide not to deliver them altogether, regardless of what you pay. Right now all the big pipelines protest that they would never, ever, ever do that to you. But we have already have case of e-mail with certain sig lines or key words not being delivered.

Web inventor sees his brainchild ready for big leap

He [Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented and then gave away the World Wide Web] is also concerned about how some Internet providers in the United States have started to filter data, giving priority to premium data for which the operator receives an additional fee. They can do this, because they own the cables, the service, the portals and other key applications.

“The public will demand an open Internet,” he said.

On his blog, at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4, Berners-Lee pays hommage to the democratic principles of the designers of the Internet who decided that all data packets were created equal. “I tried then to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform.”

“It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing.”

Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall May 19, 2006 [via The Big News Blog]

Mike McCurry’s takeaway from his catastrophic effort to spin the blogosphere: blogging is “a primal scream in the darkness.” Like the scions Bourbon Restoration he’s remembered everything and learned nothing. People disagreed with McCurry about the net neutrality issue because people disagree about issues. People got so mad at him precisely because of this kind of patronizing attitude. He was peddling flimsy arguments as if it never occurred to him that the blogosphere is full of people who know a lot about the internet and could handle a grown-up argument (see a non-flimsy, though ultimately unpersuasive, anti-neutrality piece if you’re interested).

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Blogging Life Question 12

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What Would You Do?

For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week, I offer this Blogging Question. It’s NOT Hypothetical, tonight it’s a statement of fact.

More Net users would rather give up their cell phones and TVs than their access to the Net.

Internet users are a loyal bunch. The Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School asked Internet users what they would do if forced to give up technologies. Thirty-nine percent of Net users would first abandon their cell phones, 33 percent would switch off their TVs, but only 28 percent would be willing to give up the Net.

[via A day in the life of the ‘net]

So are they talking about you?

Because, yes they are talking about me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Blogging NOT A Hypothetical Question 11
Blogging Hypothetical Question 10
Bloggy Life Question 9