Author Archives: Karl

It’s MIT’s Fault

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The Boston Globe: In sanctum Santorum:

Today, I’d like to take a few moments to express profound thanks to Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the US Senate. In fact, all Bostonians should thank him for sharing his incredible wisdom and insight about this city and its depraved ways.

Specifically, here’s what Santorum wrote about the church pedophile scandal on a religious website called Catholic Online. ”When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

So thank you, senator, for setting us straight about the problems with the clergy. Thank you for letting us know that all those pedophilic priests and the church leaders who covered up their crimes are the fault of every Bostonian.

…I asked a Santorum spokesman whether the senator still believed what he said about Boston. I mean, guilt might be our greatest natural resource, but do we really have to fall on our collective sword over wayward priests?

“It’s an open secret that you have Harvard University and MIT that tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases,” said Robert Traynham, the Santorum aide. “I think that’s what the senator was speaking to.”

Of course. The whole thing is MIT’s fault.

Media Prediction on Rove

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On news that Bush’s personal credibility rating with the American public is falling, I bet that “leaks” from the Whitehouse, on who they plan to nominate, will move Rove from featuring prominently in the news. Push it right off the map. Bush Co. is very good at changing the subject.

Actually, this prediction comes from a friend – he doesn’t have a blog – so I claim the prediction 🙂

In related matters: BuzzMachine… by Jeff Jarvis:

…Now the question remains whether I care. Sorry, but if I went to a party and heard one group dissecting Plame/Rove and another group dissecting War of the Worlds, I’d join the latter conversation. In a blog, it’s hard to feign interest.

Parsing that raises interesting questions.

“What wins? Attention.”

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ZDNet: Steve Gillmor: “Information will search for you”:

…the news is out. How to say this kindly? Here’s one for Ed Brill: Like Notes, print is dead. And like print, page views are dead. Like Notes, print and the page view model will go down fighting. It will take a long time, as everyone still locked into Notes can tell you.

What wins? Attention. Who, what, and how long. It will take on, supplement, and eventually, supplant search. Information will search for you, not the other way around. How many people, once they switched to AOL on Live8 Day, went back? The same number who switched back from RSS. My friend still hasn’t fired up Bloglines, or Rojo, or iTunes for that matter. But he will. That I’m sure of. It’s a matter of time.

more at Roland Tanglao’s.

Wired on Technorati

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Wired News: Technorati: A New Public Utility

The number of posts on blogs tracked by Technorati increased 30 percent, from about 850,000 a day in July to 1.2 million on the day of the attacks. Nine of the 10 most popular search requests involved the unfolding tragedy in London.

If you think about it, Technorati has become a public utility on a global scale.

While Google didn’t invent the internet, it made it easier to navigate by organizing billions of web pages. Today there are about 12 million blogs, with 10 new ones created every second. Since March, the number of posts has increased 40 percent a month, from about 350,000 a day to 850,000 a day.

At its essence, Technorati may be a search engine, but its approach is vastly different. Google, for instance, views the web as the world’s largest reference library, where information is static. Instead of the Dewey Decimal System, Google employs its PageRank technology, which orders search results based on relevance. Google uses words like web page, catalogs and directory, which are more than just words: They convey an entire worldview.

In contrast, Technorati sees the internet as a stream of conversations. This makes it much more immediate. Google requires two to three weeks to input a site into its search engine. (Although it does post frequently updated content from news sites.)

…”With Technorati, you know what is being said, when it is said, and who is saying it,” Sifry said. You can track the metamorphosis of an idea, not only who commented on it last but who came up with it first.

…Sifry believes when you stop thinking of the web as pages and documents, you begin to understand it’s all about people.

“I like to think of a blog as the record of the exhaust of a person’s attention stream over time,” he said. “You actually feel like you know the person. You see their style, the words they use, their kids, whatever there is.”

…Someone has to cut through all the contemporaneous smog, however, and that would be Technorati, which includes information about every poster in each search result. That way you can gauge bloggers’ “net attention” — calculated by the number of people who link to them — so you can locate the most authoritative views. Or stick to the default mode, which lists blog entries chronologically starting with the freshest.