Sleeping Angels held its 2006 Beef & Beer fundraiser on Saturday. It was terrific hanging out with so many friends for a good cause. Pictures at Sleeping Angels and over at my brother Dante’s blog “The Mountain View”.
If you weren’t there… I missed ya.
Whadda week!
Jeff Jarvis called it “The death of Eeyore”, sharing the optimism and passion he noticed at the conference.
But it had to happen. Someone had to go back to that tired fiction,that tired lie – that of a ‘fight’ between blogging and journalism. This time it came from a blogger – Mike Arrington, of Techcrunch – who talks about it, from his point of view on his blog.
It’s clear that from Jeff’s perspective, and Staci’s at paidContent,Arrington turned it into a polarized circus, and helped make bloggers look bad.
Mike Arrington doesn’t speak for the rest of us folks. Take note of Staci’s and Jeff’s reactions. We gotta continue to build bridges of understanding – not walls.
Amy Webb was there and thought that papers might be looking to hard at video as a savior.
Hey – what’s a Norg? And there was an unconference you say? Uhuh. And an ongoing conversation. We need to get our site rolling.
I’m happy to share that eRobin and her Fact-esque is our latest featured blog at Philly Future. Fact-esque has a strong focus on election reform issues, including electronic voting machines, and local Bucks County politics and news.
Craig Newmark doesn’t plan to cash in on the current tech media bubble: “We both know some people who own more than a billion (dollars) and they’re not any the happier. They also need bodyguards.”
Michael Kinsley in Time asks Do Newspapers Have a Future?.
Seth Finkelstein in the Guardian writes why you might not want a Wikipedia piece on yourself. Leads me to comment on his blog, “I feel craven and souless – but I *want* someone to care about what I’ve done so much as to contribute to Wikipedia article on me and Philly Future. But I’m not *notable*. Just an average Joe. And as some would say (Ben Franklin I believe) – I guess I haven’t done anything worthy of being written about yet.”
Newsvine plans to expand into local news coverage according to Mike Davidson in a thread at paid Content having to do with the economics of local news coverage and an interesting article at The Seattle Times on Citizen Journalism.
Does Bob Woodward have enough juice left to influence the debate on Iraq? Or will his book be looked at as just another partisan hit job (ridiculous considering the other books he’s published painting Bush in a positive light)? Do facts matter anymore? Or is all that matters in this post-modern me-media age is our own points of view?
I’m starting to see technologists waking up to the political situation in the country now. About time. Lets ask ourselves, in this age of uber-connectivity and communications tools – why are we growing ever more divided, and ever more frightened?
Jay Rosen is taking questions about Citizen Journalism at Slashdot.
Mark Glaser publishes a guide to Citizen Journalism referring to a timeline published by IndyMedia’s Chris Anderson.
But where’s the mention of Slashdot?
Terry Heaton says that papers should work harder to provide databases of local information:
Remember that Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it easily accessible. That ought to be the core goal of any Media 2.0 business, because that’s where the eyeballs and the money will be. We can either be contributors to the knowledge/information base by supplying content (the expensive end of the value chain), be the aggregator of local the local knowledge/information base, or we can do both. Let’s see, hmm. Which path should we take?
Hitwise opens up to reveal some interesting information from its datacenter. Look at the market share the top 25 have. It strikes me that it is so… small. Think about it.
Journalists confronting each other was a theme this week as The Philadelphia Daily News’s Will Bunch challenged the Washington Post’s David Broder to do better journalism and Salon’s Scott Rosenberg challenge’s Slate’s Jacob Weisberg to do the same.
Google Reader, Google’s RSS personal aggregator, upgrades. Its new functionality and UI are good enough to provide Bloglines with its first real challenger, as far as I’m concerned. I think I’m switching.
Jeff Jarvis gets on ABC with a clever piece about participatory media.
Hey – what’s a Norg? And there was an unconference you say? Uhuh. And an ongoing conversation. We need to get our site rolling.
Make sure you check out Civil Defense, the latest blog featured at Philly Future. Better yet, spread word and expand the online discussion.
There’s lots going on in the world, some terrible, some not. Some outragous, some boring. Some that begs the question, some that just begs to go the hell away. I’ve been a bit too busy to post. With work yes, but also at home.
I’m sure you’d understand 🙂
Philly.com: Center City shaken:
A fire in an underground electric cable yesterday spewed smoke, ignited gases that blew manhole covers into the air, and forced the evacuation of about 5,000 workers from two office towers near City Hall.
The ripple effect of the lunchtime drama snarled traffic in Center City and threatened to disrupt the evening rush hour.
But the fire was put out by 3, and power was quickly restored to most of the buildings in the area bounded by 15th and 16th Streets and Market and Chestnut Streets.
Livia was in the area and posted some shots on Flickr.
Whadda day.
Occupants of the office building I work in were evacuated today as underground explosions shook our building and the surrounding neighborhood.
Around 1pm today, a few co-workers and I were giving a send-off, at Nodding Head, to a co-worker who is moving, when a powerful rumble vibrated the building for a split second. It sounded low and deep. At that time, we thought it was an accident involving heavy construction equipment, but as we approached 15th and Chestnut St., it became clear something was very, very wrong.
People were standing looking up. Others were talking of a car explosion nearby. We saw co-workers walking away from our office building. Thoughts of 9/11, of terrorism weighed on my heart. And judging from conversations I could over hear, I wasn’t alone.
We traveled up Chestnut to 16th, thinking we could get close to our building from the back. But when we arrived, we found a group of fellow co-workers across the street, outside One Liberty Place. They explained they heard and felt an explosion, and saw smoke from the building windows.
I made a quick call to my wife, to let her know what was going on, and that I was okay. Shortly after there was a bright flash of flame and loud thump as an explosion happened up Ranstead, towards 15th, underneath East Tower – right in front of us. I mentioned to my friends that it was time to leave, and that walking straight to the Parkway was our best bet. A short time later a few other co-workers joined us near JFK Blvd., mentioned that the building was shut down for the night, that we could go home.
I had an urge to stick around, but anything that I could have used to record events was still stuck in the building. So I took the first train out of there and headed home.
CBS3 has video and more information. Philly.com‘s story has a picture of the street we were looking down when we saw what we thought was the second explosion. More pictures and info at KYW1060.
Crossposted from Philly Future.
Hehe. That’s Ed Cone sharing the news about the Daily News’s Wendy Warren joining the Inquirer’s Daniel Rubin, participating at ConvergeSouth. It already looks to be an interesting gathering, one that I want to make if fates permit.
Speaking of Philly, did you know that YearlyKos might choose our town for the location of next year’s convention?
I can’t explain why Philly has such a preponderance of great, nationally known bloggers, but we do, that’s for sure. Maybe it’s the cheesesteaks or water ice? Maybe it’s old Ben’s legacy. The great blogosphere here, and the new local ownership of our two big papers might herald a new age for media, communications, and civic involvement (yes civic involvement). Check out The Next Mayor or Young Philly Politics.
Speaking of Philly being a great place to blog, and while there’s no denying that Philadelphia is facing some huge challenges, it truly is a great place to live and work. Comcast is hiring.
A reminder for folks to check out Philly Future’s latest featured Philadelphia blogger, “I’ve Made a Huge Tiny Mistake”.