On May 17^th, I’ll be at the regional Online News Association Conference in Madison participating in a panel discussion on how to prepare reporters and students for a changing media landscape.  Among the things we’ll be talking about are how to adapt news rooms to produce a constantly updated, online product and what skills journalists need to develop to produce dynamic material that can reach audiences through a variety of platforms.

I’ll try and get a post up right after the conference with a summary of the discussion and reactions to the other presentations.

Also at the conference will be The Politico’s Ben Smith, CNN producer Scott Anderson, and Democratic consultant Joe Trippi.  For more information, see the press release on the event at wispolitics.com.

There have been tons of articles over the last year written about how politicians are using Facebook, but it has yet to be determined whether the social networking site is an effective tool for political communication or just another way for college kids to find out about this weekend’s kegger. There are tons of questions that have yet to be answered, including:

• Do Facebook members really engage in politics or are they just putting the equivalent of cyberspace bumper stickers on their profiles?
• Will Barack Obama’s superstar status on the Internet translating into real grassroots support?
• Does Mitt Romney even know that he has a Facebook profile?

The paper, “Expanding the Public Sphere: The Impact of Facebook on Political Communication,” examines these questions and focuses on the ability of Facebook to facilitate political communication between members and extend the messages of political campaigns to a younger audience.

Below is an excerpt from the analysis. Read the full paper here.

Beneva Schulte, a spokesperson for Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd’s Democratic presidential campaign, said, “We’re not waiting for them to come to us; we’re finding them where they live. College students, unless they’re overtly political, don’t go to political Web sites and attend political rallies, so we’re meeting them on college campuses at Harvard and Howard — on Facebook and YouTube.” Facebook’s ability to integrate political communication into a broader social network is what separates it from a campaign web site or Howard Dean’s online organizing efforts. If a candidate’s Web site is like a campaign rally that college students can drive to, then a candidate’s Facebook page is like a campaign rally held right in the middle of campus. The campaigns are bringing their message to where college students live and an increasing portion of the general population is already interacting online.

Even if millions of young Americans are identifying themselves with political groups and taking their political discussions online, none of it matters if they do not take the next step and participate in the real world. Real world political participation can include making financial contributions, participating in political rallies, and, most importantly, voting. Historically, young Americans are the least likely to vote. In 2004, only 46.7 percent of eligible voters ages 18-24 cast ballots, compared with 63.8 percent of all eligible voters. [1] Whether increased political communication on Facebook will actually increase voting rates among younger demographics remains to be seen.

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[1] Current Population Survey, U.S. Census Bureau, November 2004, http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p20-556.pdf.

Sustainable energy isn’t going to become the standard until it makes economic sense for people to turn from fossil fuels to renewable sources. One way to bring down costs is to use economies of scale to produce energy from renewable sources in large proportions.

The idea is similar to the way we produce energy from fossil fuels right now. People don’t have coal-burning generators behind their homes; they are connected by wires to a power plant. There are definitely more opportunities to capture clean energy in small batches via solar panels, but there’s no reason that communities can’t take advantage of large-scale energy production projects. The costs of individual solar panels or a wind turbine are still prohibitively expensive and geographically unfeasible for most people. A central source of renewable energy makes sense can make sense for individuals, communities, businesses, and institutions.

In today’s New York Times, Matthew Wald takes a look at large-scale alternative energy projects.

It’s all about the economics.

I don’t usually write about advertisements, but this one’s too good to ignore.

I’ve seen plenty of Web sites that try really hard to be “viral” advertisement for some product.  They usually have flash animations or games that are usually pretty poorly produced.

www.clearification.com centers around the random, hilarious musings of comedian Dimitri Martin.  It’s fairly basic - just a simple animated Dimitri rambling on.  It features a few videos and plugs Dimitri’s upcoming comedy tour.

The most interesting thing is that the whole site is really an ad for Windows Vista.  There’s a small, but noticable Vista logo at the bottom of the screen and Vista is featured in each of the video shorts.

Or maybe I just like it because I think Dimitri Martin is funny.

If you can survive it, there are real reasons not to use air conditioning.  Number one?  Air conditioning might keep your house cool, but it heats up the earth.

From Slate.com:

All over the country, power consumption is breaking records, and air conditioning is a huge reason why. We use about one-sixth of our electricity to cool ourselves. That’s more than the total electricity consumption of India, a country whose population exceeds 1 billion. To get the electricity, we burn oil and coal. We also run air conditioners in our cars, which reduces urban fuel efficiency by up to four miles per gallon, at an annual cost of 7 billion gallons of gasoline.

More burning of oil and coal means more greenhouse gases. Based on government data, Stan Cox, a scientist at the Land Institute, calculates that air-conditioning the average U.S. home requires 3,400 pounds of carbon-dioxide production per year. The effects of this are particularly bad at night. Over the last five summers, very high minimum daily temperatures—those that score in the top 10 percent historically—have been far more widespread in this country than during any other five-year period. This is what’s killing people. Outdoor air used to cool at night, allowing us to recover from the day’s heat. Now it doesn’t. To fuel our own air conditioning, we’re destroying nature’s.

Now I feel a little validated for suffering the recent heat wave.

HT: Bru

Slate - The deluded world of air conditioning

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) is known for the “listening sessions” that he conducts in each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties each year. He’s also been conducting them as he travels to states like Georgia and New Hampshire, exploring a 2008 presidential bid. Today marked Feingold’s first national on-line listening session, where he responded to questions and comments from people around the country.

An excerpt:

Meryl_From_NYC:

do you plan to seek our party’s nomination for President?

Russ_Feingold:

Meryl – Thanks for the question. I’m still trying to figure that out. I have truly been so consumed with my work on Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Intelligence and Budget Committees, as well as going to places like Colorado and Vermont to try to elect Dem members of Congress, that I think its best for me to evaluate whether I am the right guy for 2008 sometime after the November elections. I am thoroughly enjoying doing my 72 Listening Sessions in WI but let me assure you that I am absolutely determined to have a Dem President in 2008.

Feingold has some major challenges to overcome if he’s going to make the top tier of presidential candidates, but he’s also the most unique figure in the field. He’s also gaining major support from the netroots, in part thanks to attempts to reach out to the online community through chats, podcasts, and blog entries.

As I was riding home on the bus the other day, I was thinking the role that the Internet has played in my life (at least in the last year or so).

• I’m currently doing an internship in DC that I found and applied for online.
• Most of my internship is done doing online research.
• The apartment I’m living in, I found posted on craigslist by my roommate.
• I’m making some extra cash by doing web design for someone in Madison, WI.
• Every couple of days I get a new movie in the mail from Netflix.
• I use Skype, Gmail, Facebook and AIM to communicate with my friends and family back home.
• I check how much money I have in my checking account online.
• I’m in a NCAA Tournament pool with friends from home at CBS Sportsline.
• I get practically all of my news online.
• I’m currently in a frisbee league with people I found on Meetup.org.
• I navigate the DC Metro/Bus system using their Web site.
• Most of the TV I watch is downloaded with bittorrent.

Essentially, without the Internet I’d be unemployed, poor, homeless, socially isolated, and bored.  Or something like that.

For the first time in history, Hillary Clinton, Tony Perkins, and prostitutes are all on the same side of an issue.

An organization of prostitutes, the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), is protesting the video game Grand Theft Auto, saying that it promotes violence toward ladies of the night (ok, that’s my term, not theirs).

“Citing a 2001 document from the National Institute on Media and the Family’s David Walsh, SWOP is calling “on all parents and all gamers to boycott Grand Theft Auto.’”

The surprising thing: Sex workers have an organization?!?! With a website?!?!

(I bet they’re damn good at lobbying though)

Gamespot.com: Prostitutes call for ban on GTA

hat tip: Slashdot

Bonus!

Forbes: The Economics of Prostitution

So Wal-Mart is taking over the world and Craig’s List is putting local newspapers out of business… May it’s not all so bad.

Posted as a comment over on BuzzMachine, the following is one guy’s story of how Wal-Mart, Craig’s List, his credit card, and e-mail helped him get on his feet after Katrina:

So Wal Mart sucks. And Craig is a dirty capitalist. Bravo guys.

As a New Orleans native and Katrina victim all I can say is thank God for Wal Mart, Craig’s list, Google, credit cards, and e-mail.

After sitting on my roof for 8 hours and getting totally drenched by the 14 feet of water under me it was remarkably edifying to get to a Wal Mart in Baton Rouge, take out my credit card (most places did not want the wet money in my wallet) and buy some dry clothes. I could even change in the men’s room. Seemed there were no local haberdasheries open after 10pm, and most of the locals were price gouging anyway. Wal Mart had sales on essentials, and had them in stock. Guess there’s always time for dumpster diving.

I used Craig’s list and Google to find apartments in BR, Lafayette, Seattle (for my son), St. Louis (another son), and Houston (yet another). Exactly how would the fabled print media have helped with that. By the time any print ad could be processed the places were gone….

So wake up, pull the head out of that dark place, and join the 21st century. Just because other people are now making the money you used to make does not mean society is jeopardized. Believe me, someone will go to the freaking zoning meeting. To quote my youngest, “You guys are just so OVER.”

Thanks Wal Mart, and Craig, and Bill Gates, and AOL, and Steve jobs, and all of the other folks who were innovating for a better future while the old guard was sitting on their hands and collecting self generated awards for stories of the past. I cannot imagine what it would have been like without you. I would have had to read a newspaper; in a shelter.

I’ll take the net, Craigs list, and the blogs. You take FEMA, the local daily, and the hard wired phone. Best of luck. You may find yourself dumpster diving.

It’s appears that new voting systems can be hacked into and the results changed.

The Washington Post reports that optical-scanning voting machines produced by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems.

Four times over the past year (Ion) Sancho (an election supervisor in Leon County, FL) told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques.

Sancho’s most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the “memory card” that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine.

Diebold took a dim view of the experiments. On June 8, a senior company lawyer faxed Sancho: “You have willfully and intentionally allowed the manipulation of memory cards related to your elections. . . . We believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act.”

That’s an interesting reaction by Diebold. It seems to me that anyone who would be looking to to manipulate an election would be foolish and irresponsible. That’s exactly the reason that voting systems be resisting to tampering.

More than 800 jurisdictions use Diebold’s technology.

hat tip to Mark Kleiman

• The people have spoken and Google has answered. Last week, Google added a “delete” button to Gmail. Gmail has prided itself on the fact that, with over 2GB of space, you’ll never have to delete an e-mail, but instead archive them all to search through later. But, I really don’t want to keep an infinite library of NY Times headlines in my e-mail. Now I don’t have to.
• In other Google-related news, the search giant refused a subpeona from the U.S. Gov’t for millions of search records for use in reviving “the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 federal law that seeks to ban Internet sites from displaying content that the government deems ‘harmful to minors.’”

  “The Supreme Court has ruled that the law can’t be enforced unless the government shows less intrusive measures such as Internet filtering are inadequate. The government hopes to use search results from Google and other companies to show that Internet pornography is so pervasive that only a federal law can protect children from it.”

  Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft complied with the subpoena.

  Boston Globe: Google subpoena roils the Web

• The new Intel iMac crushes the G5 iMac in boot-time. Video

Look out Tim Allen, you’ve got competition in this year’s Christmas light display competition.

Carson Williams from Mason, Ohio has a little too much time and money on his hands and created a professional quality light show synched to heavy metal. It’s kindof creepy that the lights in the windows look like eyes. I’m sure glad I don’t live next to this guy.

From: Alek’s Christmas Lights and Decorations

Hat Tip: Rocketboom

Wired Magazine has announced that they will no longer be capitalizing the words “internet,” “web,” or “net”. Why does this matter? Because capitalization signifies some sort of ownership, like a brand or a specific object or place. But the internet is a medium, just like print, radio, and television. It isn’t owned by any individual or group, it’s just out there. And it’s more accessible to the average person than are print, radio, and televison.

I think the word has been problematic because it’s often referred to as “the Internet” or “the Web”, as though it’s a singular system that can be turned off all at once. It’s much more decentralized than that.

I’ve already done this to an extent, but from now on I’m going to deviate from the AP Stylebook and follow Wired’s cue in dotting the “i”.

Just one less time I have to hold down the shift key.

My prediction is that over the next decade, personal computing will go beyond laptops to become more portable and useful. Yahoo has an article on flash drives, a technology that has grown quickly over the last couple of years and allows you to carry files and software with you from computer to computer. Really, the only things I need on my home computer are music and video… things that I only want to have at home anyway.

I’m on the computer much more at work or at the library than I am at home. It’s great to be able to sit in the library for a half-hour and chat on IM, check my e-mail, post to my blog, and write an assignment for my next class. Web applications are gaining ground on normal software… soon we’ll be able to use a browser to do pretty much everything we need. You can already log onto AIM using a browser. Rumor has it that Google will soon introduce a type of “Google Office” complete with word processor and spreadsheet applications.

One development that hasn’t gone mainstream yet is truly mobile Internet. I’m talking about a mobile browser that looks and acts exactly like it does on a PC. I want to be able to have a small phone/computer with me at all times so that if I’m looking for information, I can use Google or check my e-mail easily to find it. We do have Blackberry’s and other forms of searching Google and looking at altered forms of certain Web sites, but they’re both too expensive for my purposes and limited to certain tasks like checking sports scores and the weather.

With the expansion of (hopefully free) wi-fi networks in urban areas and the development of communication software (think Google Talk Mobile), we’ll be able to type, e-mail, talk, search and surf from the palm of our hand for practically free.

Eventually you’ll only need your home PC as a file server to store files and larger programs like games. Almost everything else will be available on an Internet browser.

Welcome to the latest incarnation of “The New Vernacular”. The new site (with its new URL: www.thenewvernacular.com) is built with WordPress, a free blogging platform that is a little more complicated than blogger, but it also has many more features. It’s being hosted by A Small Orange, a smaller hosting company based in Atlanta.

Some of the advantages of a unique domain and WordPress:

• The New Vernacular is finally Internet Explorer friendly
• I’ve can create unique pages. So far I’ve got “about”, “contact”, “portfolio”, and “syndicate”.
• There are many more design options.
• It’s easier to search and navigate.
• I can get my own e-mail address “…@thenewvernacular.com” (haven’t set that up yet).
• Posting is faster.

There is already new content not posted on the old site so scroll down and take a look.

I’ve still got a lot of work to do on the site, so there may be portions that aren’t quite ready or “under construction”… but that’s really the nature of the web. Always updated, never static.

Feel free to leave comments or send me an e-mail.

A week ago, CBSnews.com launched “PublicEye”, a blog that attempts to give transparency to the reporting process at CBS and provides a forum to discuss the role of the “4th Estate”. Transparency is especially important to CBS after the “rathergate” scandal over forged documents questioning President Bush’s National Guard service last year.

It’s still too early to tell how PublicEye will develop. Because CBS doesn’t have a 24-hour television news network, it important for the organization to build their Internet newsroom and create/sustain an audience without being about to direct TV viewers to their website. So far, it seems like the folks at CBS are doing a decent job, but they’re still trying to figure out some of the more technical aspects of blogging, such as regulating comments. Jeff Jarvis over at Buzzmachine shares his take on the topic.

Some notable PublicEye posts from the last week:

Outside Voices: Jay Rosen’s Open Letter To CBS

The Morning Meeting

Note: I know it’s a little long, but I recommend reading this entire post if you’ve got the time.

Maybe this is blasphemy, but I’m not so sure that higher gas prices are a bad thing. I know that the price spike affects virtually every aspect of modern convenience, boosting the transportation costs of food and other products, but it could be what is needed to force what I’m going to call “gas reform”. It should probably be “fuel efficency reform with an emphasis on the research of renewable energy sources”, but that’s a little long.

It’s kind of like tort reform, but everybody wins. Well, at least in the long run.

Right now America has a bad habit of carelessly guzzling gasoline. Increased fuel prices force a change in habits. In manufacturing habits, in buying habits, in driving habits.

From “Gas prices too high? Try Europe” in the Christian Science Monitor:

“Societies adjust over decades to higher fuel prices,” says Jos Dings, head of Transport and Energy, a coalition of European environmental NGOs. “They find many mechanisms.”

Chief among them, say experts, is the habit of driving smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. While the average light duty vehicle on US highways gets 21.6 miles per gallon (m.p.g.), according to a study by the Paris based International Energy Agency (IEA), in Paris, its European counterpart manages 32.1 m.p.g.

“European consumers are very sensitive to fuel economy and sophisticated about engine options,” says Lew Fulton, a transport analyst with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). “European car magazines are full of comparisons of fuel costs over the life of a vehicle.”

When demand changes, manufacturers need to deliver. The Detroit-based auto makers will be forced to produce smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles that exceed the fuel-efficency of today’s hybrids and rival luxury cars with their comfort and style. The first step: don’t make hybrid cars so damn ugly. The Honda Civic hybrid (Japanese, of course) is a good start. American auto makers aren’t making more fuel-efficient vehicles because they don’t have to.

Higher gas prices should also make cash-conscious drivers drive more slowly and safely.

“There is really good evidence that higher prices reduce traffic,” says Stephen Glaister, a professor of transportation at London’s Imperial College. “If fuel prices go up 10 percent … fuel consumed goes down by about 7 percent, as people start to use fuel more efficiently, not accelerating so aggressively and switching to more fuel-efficient cars. It does change people’s behavior.”

The US authorities, however, “are unwilling to use resource price as part of their strategy” to conserve oil, says Lee Schipper, head of transportation research at the Washington-based World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank.

“The biggest hole in our policy today is fuel taxation,” he adds. “Tax increases are something Americans should do but don’t know how to do, and I wonder if they will ever be able to.

Some additional thoughts:

The gas tax holiday for Wisconsin is a bad idea. It’ll save individuals a couple bucks and cost the state millions that could and should be used for other things, such as education. See previous post: Treating what’s ailing Wisconsin

Hydrogen cars are the stupidest idea ever. Hydrogen is essentially a battery. It can’t be harvested, it has to be created in process that splits the hydrogen from oxygen in a water molecule. For the process to occur, it has to be powered by electricity. How do we get electricity? From fossil fuels, such as coal and gasoline. That should probably proceed any article on the future of hydrogen cars, yeah? Oh, and it’s expensive as hell.

The same thing goes for Ethanol. It’s made from corn… great! Except that to grow corn you need to transport fertilizer and water. You’ve got to use machines to plant and harvest… machines that run on gasoline. And you’ve got to run a refinery to extract the ethanol from the corn. A refinery that, unless there’s some new technology I’m not aware of, will run on electricity. And not electricity produced by wind turbines. In total, you’re using a lot more energy to create the ethanol than you’ll ever get from the final product.

Really, it doesn’t help anyone except subsidy-receiving farmers. So, how about taking those subsidies and spending that money on education so that someone in state government can think to call someone who knows something about science and maybe create some public policy that actually helps people.

And well we’re at it, maybe someone could tell a reporter to ask a couple questions when they’re doing stories on renewable energy because we all know that these blog things are just a fad anyway

In addition to taking over for Tom Brokaw on NBC’s The Nightly News, Brian Williams is also heading an NBC blog called “The Daily Nightly”. The blog provides a transparent view into some of the decisions made in the NBC newsroom and an account of the news-gathering process, as well as a daily roundup of stories featured on the tv program.

Williams’ latest post describes how the NBC crew is covering hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:

We’re about to attempt to get a few hours sleep from our 10th floor hotel rooms. Our wake-up calls will come insanely early, and the few “down” hours we’ll have can’t really be called sleep.

New Orleans is ready and worried. Bourbon Street is desolate — the first time in my memory. This great, different world of a city is transformed by this approaching monster with a 32-mile-wide eye. We’ll technically have to violate the curfew and take temporary leave of our senses to make the two-mile drive to our satellite truck. Weather permitting, we’ll report for the Today show every hour on the hour.

But for now we’re in a rain band, the wind is starting, there’s brilliant lightning and we’re under both a hurricane warning and a tornado warning. I will, like everyone else, have a flashlight at my side all night. The power will go out… it always does. We’ll see what Katrina does to this sunken city, and we’ll do it safely. See you on the air.

NY Times article: An Anchor by Evening, a Blogger Any Time

On a different note… this is The New Vernacular’s 100th post!

Imagine how great this blog would look on eight 20″ flat screens.

Although I’m sure no one cares, this Dell supercomputer has dual Xeon 3.2 GHz processors, 4GB 266 MHz DDR SDRAM, two 146GB 10K RPM SCSI drives, 8X DVD+RW/+R and 16X DVD, and two Colorgraphic Xentera GT 4 Video Cards.

Original Engadget post

Google launched “Google Talk” today, an Instant Messaging client similar to AIM and Yahoo Messenger. Google raises the bar by including a phone-call type feature that lets you speak to others with Google Talk for free (I haven’t tested the program yet so I can’t comment on the quality). Also, in true Google form, the client lacks any sort of advertising besides the Google logo sitting atop the program window. The program seems similar to DeadAIM, the bare-bones 3rd party version of AIM that I use at home.

I really hate the pop-up windows and ads that AIM tries to make you view, and all of the stupid buttons and features that they try to include. I just want to talk to people. I have an internet browser for all that other stuff.