Joel Patrick

Open political season

When John Stewart appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Bob made a crack about the Daily Show's audience of "stoned slackers" a flurry of articles and blog entries ensued.

Coast to coast

Tnis is really clever:

More IT in Politics

There is a great new "IT Talk Radio" called IT Conversations. For the most part this seems to be a one-man show by Doug Kaye. Doug has managed to create a remarkable strategic information service in about 18 months.  There are a lot of things on the site already, but few are more compelling than the information on the impact of the Internet on politics. Steve Gilmour's "Gilmour Gang" covered the DNC bloggers (see also RNC bloggers). One of the most interesting spots was the presentation by Joe Trippi Howard Dean's former campaign manager. Regardless of what one thinks of Howard Dean, the accomplishment of the campaign in raising money and grass-roots enthusiasm surpassed all previous presidential candidates.

The Techpoint summit meeting this week is something closer to home that shows that Indiana is tuning into the importance of IT in politics. Take note, the entry fee for students is only $25 (and they feed you lunch).

Some tricks

What is the basis for ranking the blogslist on the left side. Like Google's PageRank, I can only say that this is based on a dynamically evolving (and somewhat simpler) algorithm. One really, really, big factor for being near the top is recent posting. Although there are other factors, you can be sure that the freshest material is going to be near the top.

One other point is the spell checker link at the right. A couple of people have asked for this feature in the blog. While I think this is a good idea, I have not yet been successful in implementing the spell-checker plug-in as part of the editing system. So for now you are left with the possibility of clicking on this spellcheck link to open a spellcheck window before you get into editing your blog. Not optimal but it may be better than not.

Shaking out the site

I have hopefully fixed a little bug that has caused some bad linking from the blog list on the left side of the page. People have been adding descriptions and new names to their blogs. Great stuff, but my SQL + PHP was not handling the different titles well, so I am not putting these in the links any more. Not a great loss, especially if it keeps things straight.

I am linking to a great photograph from Badr's entry on falconry in the Arabian penninsula. It's a great image. It's been great to see the good use of images in so many of the blogs. It's a great way to add interest. The nice thing about a well sized and interesting image is that it makes the page memorable and attractive. Sweta's story on diamonds, and Ken's piece on videoconferencing use photos to good effect.

One thing you may notice with the links I am making to the articles here.  I am not just linking to the weblog but to the specific article.  Each article has its own page that you can access by clicking on the time when the posting was made.  By using this page, you avoid having your link point to the wrong thing when the user updates his or her weblog.

No time limit, no copyright

A New York federal judge Judge Harold Baer, Jr has struck down a copyright law that was designed to prohibit the sale of bootleg recordings of live performances. His conclusion that the law "could not stand" was based on the fact that the law placed not term on the copyright granted to the live performance-unlike other copyright law that places limits on the terms of copyright guarantees (even if those terms have been increased radically by Congress in the past few years). Not surprisingly, Internet copyright wonk, Larry Lessig is on this as well. He posts a link to a copy of the decision. (I swear I wish I could do my career all over again and be an Internet attorney; I could probably pay cash for my BMW.)

Don't delete that Blog

A couple of folks have been trying to delete some weblog entries and have ended up deleting their weblog. Ouch. I am working to restore things, but there may be some things lost. To avoid this happening to you, be aware of the right methods for working with your entries.

Above all do not chose the "Delete Weblog" option. You will be prompted before your weblog is actually deleted, but avoid getting to that point.

Do chose the "Edit Weblog" option. Within that option there are two ways to delete an entry.

1. You can chose edit entry and once the entry is open chose "Delete Entry" at the bottom of the editor.
2. You can chose "Power Editing" and use the delete checkboxes to chose which entries will be deleted.
   

I have begun making backups of the database to minimize what might be lost, but in the case of problems, please alert me or Jeff Litten or Matt Smith as soon as possible so we can work on the solutions quickly.

Posted by cicsadmin at 04:44 PM

Weblogs under way

This is the first of the weblog digests. Hopefully, Jeff Litten and I will be able to keep up with the weblog action this Fall. Visitors to the project site will notice that there are now links (on the left) to the active weblogs. As weblogs are updated and as the number of entries accumulate, you will see the listings change. In general, the latest postings are on top. Later on we even might try adding the Google page ranking for each weblog. (Check a page rank here.) If you have been writing but your weblog has not showed up on the list, it may be because you have not changed your posts from DRAFT to PUBLISH.
There are a few more links in the Quick Reference and Links categories that are intended to help webloggers with their efforts. This includes a link to a how-to document on putting links on your web log and one on changing the style. Also ther is a link to an exchange forum system we will try to use to post more specific help. If you have a question that you think that others might also be asking, try posting it there. You may need to register to post.
Several of you have customized your weblogs and there is a lot of new content. Dr. Gillette even posted to his weblog from China. A great start.

Linking entries

Chin-gi asked me how do I link my site with Google.  I like this question because it gives an opportunity to show how this is done. I can even link to other weblogs here like this one.
Here's my Gilletticism of day as found in Google.

DMCA Ruling + Links to blogs

If this were the semester for 642 (Regulatory) this case would definitely be an item for the agenda.  Right now copyright is about as hot as anything in regulatory matters can get. The Chamberlain vs. Skylink ruling has not made the news very prominently, but it promises to be very important.

On another subject, here is a link to a page where I have collected links to some prominent blogs.  One of the definitive lists for political blogs is from Technorati.