To rank high on the list — one of 12 included in the WEF's annual Global Competitiveness Report — countries need to have tech-friendly government policies as well as high tech usage.

In the ranking, the WEF focuses on information and communication technologies (ICT), such as cellular connectivity and broadband Internet, noting that "ICT has evolved into the 'general-purpose technology' of our time … responsible for a large part of productivity increases."

Rankings are based on a combination of hard data from organizations like the International Telecommunications Union and responses to the WEF's Executive Opinion Survey on topics such as business adoption of technology and laws relating to ICT. About 11,000 business executives in 131 countries participate in the survey.

1) Sweden
2) Iceland
3) Switzerland
4) Netherlands
5) Denmark
6) Hong Kong
7) South Korea
8) Norway
9) United States
10) Luxembourg

Link

They may play an important role, but to get over the threshold of what will interest me enough to open the stuff in my inbox that comes from the campaigns? There are several tips I would give.

First, the research, from the Center for Media Research:

a new PEW study reported by Aaron Smith and Lee Rainie, “The Internet and the 2008 Election,” shows that a record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.

In addition, says the memo report, three online activities have become especially prominent as the presidential primary campaigns have progressed:

• 35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos, triple that in the 2004 race
• 10% say they have used social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to gather information or become involved. Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns
• 6% of Americans have made political contributions online, compared with 2% who did that during the entire 2004 campaign [emphasis mine]
  

Here’s the Pew study.  But the Center for Media Research post has some good graphs and other info (I’m playing beat the clock between shlepping, finishing up the Carnival and my first workout session to get my back back to…something better than it is).

Let me remind you of something Ohio Democratic Party Chair Chris Redfern said to my in early 2006:

…we spoke about many topics, including blogs, bloggers and blogging.

If he were in a position akin to that of a media placement advisor for a corporation, but doing so for a politician, what percentage of a budget did he think blogs would get?

Zero. Unequivocally.

Did he think Paul Hackett or Howard Dean would say the same?

No direct answer, but we talked about how Hackett’s juggernaut experience in the Ohio 2nd race and Dean’s fundraising successes aren’t really parallel to the question I asked, but do represent the burgeoning use of a media that Redfern agreed was in its infancy and as such, not really a known quantity yet.

He stated at least a couple of times his belief that in 4-6-8 years, the story re: blogs may very well be entirely different.

So, we’re now two years from that time, not 4, 6 or 8.  But I still feel ready to ask Chairman Redfern: are we beyond the “Zero. Unequivocally” stage yet?

Well, what is 6% of all political contributions?  If candidates raise $200 million total between them, that’s $12 million? And how much ad money from the campaigns did it take to raise that $12 million? What was the ROI?

Certainly doesn’t sound like nothing, especially if you don’t have the $12 million.

I haven’t looked yet but if anyone has ideas of what have campaigns spent to get money, let me know.  I think I read a couple of months ago that the proportion is still miniscule for online advertising, but is that including this notion of e-mail communication?

And what if anything has the ODP spent to raise more? I know I get an awful lot of e-mails asking me for money, including from the ODP.  That must cost someone something.

Yeah, I think we’re past the unequivocal zero.

Sadly, Windows XP will stop being sold today. I can assure you it will be a long time before I ever (if I ever) buy a computer with Windows Vista in it. Jaci has one that she inherited, and the thing is so slow. Plus, there's the annoying feeling that Vista just should have been something much more than it is.

At least I have a couple of XP CDs that I can install on any new computers I do have to get. That should tide me over for now. That is, if I have to buy Windows at all.

Here’s the letter and here’s the pdf that details the changes. What I notice:

1. When I looked at the one page overview of “numbers,” my first thought was: oh, no - you do not want to do this (i.e., show all these numbers that will make people think about/see how much gas is used and how much paper is consumed rather than any information about how the paper is trying to go green or greenify its operations at any level, not to mention using/maximizing its online capabilities) (to wit, the paper won another award, this time from the APME, for its multi-platform presentation of the Johanna Orozco story - “ONLINE CONVERGENCE, Over 150,000: The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, for deep reporting on the grueling recovery of an 18-year-old girl shot in the face; you can read about a different award they won for the coverage here).

2. The Page Two WakeUpCall: Did anyone from the PD check with James Pindell of Politicker.com, where one of the features is called Wake-Up Call? The PD’s version is described as,

…your guide to what’s new online at cleveland.com. If you only have a few minutes, this page is your watercooler study guide, led by its “Five Smart Things You Should Know Today” summary.

3. Moving the Opinion page to the back of the first section reminds me of how the New York Times in print is organized. Now, unless I’m reading it incorrectly, which is possible, it sounds like there will no longer be a dedicated op-ed page but rather just one page that will be, “…a lively one-page mix of editorials, columns and your letters.” Hmm. But the Sunday Forum will go to six pages.

4.  Thursday will have a feature in the back of the Inside & Out section called “New on the Net.” There doesn’t appear to be a visual preview of what the section will include or look like.

5. The Business section appears to have the most changes that interplay with cleveland.com: there will be no section at all on Mondays, but rather will be represented by changes at its place on cleveland.com, including the provision of “online-only features.”  Now, the thing here, in describing this change? Is that, if, you know, the section won’t be anywhere in print on Mondays, and it will all be online on Mondays, then isn’t the entire section, on Mondays, an online-only feature?

And that’s the bulk of the summary. Now, whether it results in the rumored 35 page per week cut addressed by Roldo Bartimole in early June, I can’t really visualize.  I might have to buy it for a week just to see.

Areas that aren’t mentioned at all: politics, women, education, jobs, real estate, crime. May or may not be relevant but to me, as a reader, especially after reading Rocky Mountain News‘ publisher/editor John Temple’s column about individualizing newspapers, well - if I had an individualized newspaper, those are some of the topics I’d want to know will be covered in an organized and well-displayed way. (As an aside, I e-mailed Temple about one observation I had regarding the idea of individualizing print papers and he responds to it here in his blog.)

I’m also curious to know the price of the revamp. Would I buy a smaller paper, that had more essential info to me in it, at the same price it’s now charging?  This is an interesting question.  One reason I stopped buying it was because I felt that the editorials were poorly reasoned and failed to serve the community in a way commensurate with the brain resources and talent that exists at the PD. That doesn’t mean the conclusions had to be the same as mine, but at least solid reasoning needed to be provided.  It’s hard to believe, but it’s been more than 18 months since I received it regularly.

The revamp doesn’t say much about the guts of the stories themselves or how the editorial process may change (but there is this pdf that goes over the process of producing the paper). Will we see more wire reports or fewer?  Will the brief items be so brief that even someone who spends a minimal amount of time online will already know those stories? Will we see more narrative, or no?

The Business re-do indicates that there will be some front-paging of news about local business and I know that there have been some changes to the front page as well re: local highlights.

I am kind of a news junkie - I have to say - so I might just talk myself into getting the paper again.  Just so I can, you know, trash it. Right? For the record, I’ve sent a link to this post to the changes AT plaind DOT com e-mai, as an FYI.

I’m not going to Denver for the Democratic National Convention from August 25-28, but if you’re a blogger and are hoping to go, even though not credentialed by the DNC, check this out and apply now.  I’ve been told in a communication I’ve received that, “They are looking to include more diversity with women of color, women bloggers, women’s organizations and women in politics.”

The Big Tent will be the place to be for new media journalists, bloggers, reporters, and non-profit leaders covering the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

We’re creating a 9,000 square foot, two-story structure that will house the work space for journalists, bloggers and new media, a Digg Stage with prominent national leaders, as well as a Google Retreat with a YouTube kiosk where you can make your own YouTube videos. The Big Tent will be open throughout the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 25- 28.

In the New Media Lounge, your pass will be a ticket to to enjoy all the benefits of the blogger / new media lounge, including free WiFi, work space, television-coverage, as well as free food and drinks. And you get to hang out with some of the top bloggers, new media journalists, and non-profit leaders in the country.

And in the Public Space, you can participate in panel discussions with top national leaders on a range of hot topics. There will also be workshops on blogging, community organizing, and new technologies.

The Big Tent will host sponsored happy hours each day from 4 to 5, followed by live coverage of every minute of the Democratic National Convention until 9 p.m. each night. When the Convention ends each day, the Big Tent will still be going with late-night entertainment, including concerts and films. Check back at BigTentDenver.com for additional details as the convention nears.

Google is one of the sponsors and the hosts are Daily Kos, Progress Now (of which ProgressOhio is a part) and the Alliance for a Sustainable Colorado.

I consider the presence of bloggers to be an unique chance to get many first-hand reports back, filtered only by the bloggers you know, as opposed to the layers of editors in the MSM that you don’t.  If transparency means something to you in figuring out what’s really going on, these bloggers will be offering an immense quantity of information unlikely to be found anywhere else.

Not to mention having a great time while doing it - I hope, for their sake.  Though I can say that live-blogging can be exhausting!

Hattip to Shireen of Digital Sisters/Sistas (which looks to be a very cool and needed organization:

If the technology field is any indication of messages sent to women and girls research has shown that women have the least penetration in technology fields. This number decreasing by the inclusion of ethnicity and socio economic factors. Young girls are continuously sent daily messages that technology is “not for them.”

Working through enhance partnerships with community based organizations, corporations, technology centers and local schools, Digital Sisters provides assistance in closing the gender gap in technology that is plaguing single mothers. We have developed and implemented programs that promote needed life skills training and address the impact of the lack of technology skills on families. Our educational philosophy is based on a participatory and interactive learning approach.

Reminds me of the work Bill Callahan does.

Earlier today, I wrote about how Tracy Russo took on a John McCain surrogate at the Personal Democracy Forum yesterday. Here’s Micah Sifry’s take of what happened, which includes a video of the exchange, and he linked to this post by Tracy (pre-PDf conference) about why it’s so critical that our CIC understand technology now and as it evolves.

John McCain will lose the presidential race because the people who are serving as his surrogates sound as clueless as he does. No substance, no meat, no knowledge. Bring back Clara Peller, who appeared to be far more sentient.

And again, more than I thought when I titled the last post on this topic, maybe McCain just doesn’t believe that democracy is, you know, connected to The People.

Oh and a last thing - I certainly didn’t need Tracy to apologize re: the grandmother analogy. She is exactly right.

This video is old but interesting. It has some behind the scenes footage of a large scale data center.

One of the comments on yesterday's post was, "Where/how do you find these things?" The simple answer is: I let them come to me.

Google Alerts is a service that allows you to search on any term or phrase you might otherwise Google and get alerted to any new appearances of that query on the Web. You can specify whether you want a search limited to appearances of your query in News, Blogs, Web pages, Video, Groups, or across all of these ("Comprehensive"). Then you can dictate how frequently you want to be notified of the new items: weekly, daily or as they appear (as they are added to Google's index).

Sit back and let the information come to you. For your first alert, start with daily to get a feel for what's out there, then if you feel you're getting too much information, you can edit your alert and pull back to a weekly notification. Google Alerts are also great for vanity searches, if you're so inclined. See what people are saying about you and where the information you're putting out there is being referenced.

In case it hasn’t occurred to you, I’m not exactly in a home away from home right now and my Internet access has been seriously compromised since Thursday.  However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been following the news (just suffering from ink-stained fingertips from all the print news I’ve been absorbing) and there’s a lot of really disturbing stuff going on.

I know - what’s new.

First: children. adults.  PEOPLE. Ugh. I was in tears of rage reading the story about the three year-old child who died at the hands of caretakers to whom the mother of the child had entrusted the child’s care - even though neither of the child’s parents had ever given up custody.  The case is out of NYC and as unbelievable as this may sound, I can’t figure out how to open up another tab on this PC IE browser so I can’t link to the article but it was in the NYT on…Thursday I believe.

As usual, I became IRATE, absolutely IRATE reading the article.  Why? Not just because of the allegations and details.  No. But because over, and over and over and over.  What do these MSM stories cover?  The DCFS problems.  The law.  The parents’ and caretakers’ backgrounds.  All the people who saw red flags and didn’t. do. SQUAT.

What do you care if you are in the grocery store and you see a parent or adult beating on a child? HELLO?

Ugh.

Ok - but that’s not what made me irate.  What makes me irate is the failure of the press to tell us why - why - why - why people cannot be patient with children, do not employ others for help, do not do the right thing, take care of children when they hate kids.  And what as a society is our responsibility for these situations.

Again - I am time and Internet-challenged right now but I have written about this before.  It is the same when looking at serial killers or sexual predators: where are the article examing the societal expectations and environments that allow these cases to happen again and again and again? You can put in all the laws you want, all the money you want and pretend we can government-regulate and monitor this stuff.  But we are dealing with humans, always.  And it is not enough to be looking at what we do after the fact.  We simply do not focus on pre-emptive and etiological issues related to these circumstances.

FISA - why are we not angry, let alone scared of this? Are we okay with becoming more like China?  Is anyone reading what that government allows?  You think we’re any better than Hugo Chavez?  Wake up people.  CARE.  Start to CARE.

AP/Drudge: I was reminded by someone for whom I have great respect that the issue bloggers should be thinking about has to do not with this silliness over the AP and money grabbing and hassling bloggers but rather: the federal shield law.  Wendy Hoke has written about this over and over and over - LISTEN to her, people.  That shield law excludes independent citizen journalists - i.e., bloggers.  And if you think this won’t ultimately have more effect on us, you are not reading or thinking.

As Emily Littela would finally tell you: Have a nice day.

Thanks to Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice for flagging this post by Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association.  READ IT ALL.

Awesome.

[Update: Here’s MSNBC on it. It’s got a bit of a nasty, snarky edge to it, but is only inaccurate in its analogizing of the Media Bloggers Association to the United Organization of Anarchists.]

Do yourself a favor and read the entire article but the gist is this: From the AP’s perspective:

“We need to protect our content, no matter who’s using it, but we also recognize that the bloggers perform a really important function on the Internet in terms of increasing the engagement of the audience online, and we want to facilitate that,” Kennedy said.

…within the confines of “fair use” which allows short quotations of copyrighted material.

From the bloggers’ perspective:

For the bloggers’ part, Robert Cox will be working with Jim Kennedy to fashion “…a clearer understanding among bloggers about what kinds of use of AP stories would or would not trigger legal complaints.

“Up until now there hasn’t’ been a concrete articulation of what they expect,” Cox said. “I think that would go a long way to pre-empting problems,” he said, adding that “I think the desire is there on both sides to get this sorted out.”

Five days ago, I wrote about the precipitating events, including a reference to Jeff Jarvis’s post, bluntly titled, “FU AP,” which includes a comment from Jim Kennedy. Liza at Culture Kitchen may not have been the only one to mention Bob Cox (he of Newsweek.com’s The Ruckus, bloggers at the Libby trial and the person responsible for me getting credentials for the Cleveland presidential primary debate), but it was a great idea and I’m very pleased to see it move in this direction.

Good luck, Bob. Let us know if you need back up, which is highly unlikely.

A recent post by Ben Collins-Sussman talks about the benefits of frequent commits. This is a must read for all developers that work as part of a team.

Ben talks about some potential benefits to distributed version control, but didn’t go into too much detail. All of my source code repositories use Subversion. I often use DVCS as a way to let me work offline. With a DVCS I am able to make very small commits and take advantage of version control when I’m on a plane, in a park or a variety of other places. I am then able to sync up all of my commits as individual commits into the Subversion repository. The trick is to not go more than a day or two in between the syncs.

Interesting article about training for bloggers from…Society of Professional Journalists with commentary by Clint Brewer, current president of the national SPJ and Robert Cox, the champion of Media Bloggers Association:

Non-journalists entering the world of blogs, online feedback forums, online videos and news Web sites provide information that newspapers and other media can’t or don’t. But many are now turning to professional journalists for help with dilemmas they’re facing: When is something libelous? What’s the difference between opinion and news? And how do you find public documents?

About a dozen would-be reporters navigated the basics of journalism at a recent training offered by the Society of Professional Journalists in Chicago. The group plans similar seminars this month in Greensboro, N.C., and Los Angeles.

Just a way to make a buck?

Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., which supports working journalists, praised the effort to offer training to so-called citizen journalists.

“I think that what we’re moving toward is some king of positioning between amateur and professional,” Clark said.

Amateurs have long contributed to professional news reports, including the film of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and photos from the Virginia Tech massacre last year, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, Clark said.

Now, many distribute their content on their own, and some have gotten into trouble, said Clint Brewer, the national president of SPJ.

So what’s the point?

Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, said more than 100 judgments valued at $17 million have been handed down against bloggers over the last three years - about 60 percent for defamation, 25 percent for copyright infringement and 10 percent involving privacy.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” Cox said. “Bloggers are being asked to write checks. The threats against bloggers are very real. The costs are very real.”

But what I really want to know more about is this project:

Geoff Dougherty, editor of the Web site ChiTownDailyNews.org and a presenter at the SPJ program, is trying to prevent that by offering his reporters online training.

With a $340,000 Knight News Challenge, he’s creating a team of 77 to report on the smallest of meetings in every city neighborhood - gatherings that mainstream news organizations don’t cover.

“I see us in five years as the go-to source for Chicago news,” said Dougherty. “It’s a big goal.”

Wendy - have we heard anything yet?

For the past few days, this blogsite has been hanging up everybody who comes here. It started the day we posted the foreign-language renditions of commentary on Ohio's HB 477.

Toodling around the internet, I've found similar problems occurring over the past year for others due to something called dg.specificclick.net, which they say was introduced by Sitemeter, which we used until yesterday. Here's the story and the supposed cure for the malady: http://michaelsync.net/2007/04/11/things-you-should-know-before-using-sitemeter

I could actually see the dg.specificclick.net come in and take over the page loading process, so I got rid of its cookies and Sitemeter as well. Everything worked for a while.

Now, it's all hanging up all over again. Well-wishers are emailing me to say that, having entered here, they've abandoned all hope and will follow my progress even more vicariously than before, from other perspectives, in other ways, safely.

If anybody has some suggestions, and can post a comment here, I'd appreciate help finding a work-around. If you can't post, the I am emailable at taferrisATgmail.com.

From Liza at Culture Kitchen:

Rogers Cadenhead, founder and publisher of The Drudge Retort, has been Cease and Desisted by AP News for publishing fragments of their syndicated news articles and reports.

Yes, fragments, not the whole articles. Go to Rogers’ site to read the reasons given by AP.

Adding a quote to a blog post is very much like the sampling of a hook or a beat on a song. It’s why so many people were opposed to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It’s not only that albums like Beck’s Odelay or Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet would never had happened. Documentaries, archival works, opinion or scholarly writing would be all but non-existent if it means that now journalists, bloggers, historians and scholars would need to pay publishing houses for every single quote and/or sample they need for their work.

Wow. We’re talking about some very serious slippery slopes here, depending on what happens. I’m not up on all this but I’m hoping some more with it lawyers than myself (inactive for four years now, I can hardly believe it) can chime in.

Here’s what Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine has to say (his words, not mine, of course):

FU AP

I talked to a reporter this week about the embattled Associated Press and said three times that I didn’t want it to die. I might take that back.

The AP has filed truly noxious takedown notices against Rogers Cadenhead’s community-created Drudge Retort, arguing copyright violations for quotes from 33 to 79 words long.

For shame, AP.

Read the whole post by Jarvis but here’s a bit more in which he says NICE things about Ohio’s media!

This complaint comes from an organization that leaches off original reporting and kills links and credit to the source of that journalism. Yes, it has a right to reproduce reporting from member news organizations. But as I point out here, the AP is hurting original reporting by not crediting and linking to the journalism at its source. We should be operating under an ethic of the link to original reporting; this is an ethic that the AP systematically violates.

What would be better for journalism would be for aggregators — Daylife (where I am a partner), Inform, Google News, Pro Publica — to link directly to original reporting without rewriting it through its mill. That is what is happening in Ohio, where newspapers are now sharing original stories. If the AP doesn’t watch out, that is what could happen everywhere.

What to do? Here’s Jarvis’ suggestion:

So let’s fire back. I urge bloggers everywhere to go to the AP and reproduce a story at length in solidarity with Cadenhead and Drudge Retort. Here’s mine:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — The Cedar River poured over its banks here Thursday, forcing the evacuation of more than 3,000 homes, causing a railroad bridge to collapse and leaving cars underwater on downtown streets.Officials estimated that 100 blocks were underwater in Cedar Rapids, where several days of preparation could not hold back the rain-swollen river. Rescuers had to use boats to reach many stranded residents, and people could be seen dragging suitcases up closed highway exit ramps to escape the water.

“We’re just kind of at God’s mercy right now, so hopefully people that never prayed before this, it might be a good time to start,” Linn County Sheriff Don Zeller said. “We’re going to need a lot of prayers and people are going to need a lot of patience and understanding.”

About 3,200 homes were evacuated and some 8,000 residents displaced, officials estimated….

That’s just the homogenized AP version of the news.

Here’s original journalism: a story from Gazette Online and another; aerial photos; users‘ photos (not the property of the AP, I’ll bet).

…

Who needs the AP tapioca when we can get reporting like this from the source wtih no more than a link? Isn’t it a better service to reader and journalist to link directly to the original reporting?

So, bloggers, unless the AP recants and apologizes to Cadenhead, I urge you to avoid linking to the AP and to link to reporting at its source.

Sigh. The dinosaurs really did die and they really did live before humans. For the love of life, AP, come into the 21st century.