Web
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who's long been on the New America board of directors, will succeed Jim Fallows as chairman later this year.
The full release is here, but for me the key passages are these:
Clearly, I haven't been posting here lately. Lots of reasons for that, but one that's worth mentioning publicly is all the work that's gone into revamping and expanding NewAmerica.net.
The new site went live today -- much cleaner, IMO, thanks to Mike Jones' design, and a much-needed shift in emphasis to topics and timeliness.
Radiohead's new album, "In Rainbows," dropped early this morning in the band's experiment with DRM-free, digital-only distribution for whatever a fan is willing to pay.
Of course, "DRM-free" also means "super-easy to share."
John McCain's daughter Meghan has launched her own (sorta) campaign blog: McCainBlogette.com, a "fresh perspective on what is sometimes perceived as a stale and boring process."
Meghan and her two co-bloggers plan to post from Dad's campaign bus about "musings and pop culture on the campaign trail." I'm all for pop culture, so this is already better than the Rommney brothers' groupblog. Beyond that, though, I'm mainly just scratching my head.
National Journal's Technology Daily has published an impressive package of articles on the role tech policy is playing (or isn't, as the case may be) in the 2008 race for the White House.
Good stuff. And unlike the vast majority of insider coverage produced by Tech Daily and the other publications of National Journal Group, these articles are posted outside the subscibers-only wall -- no four-figure annual subscriptions required.
If memory serves, that quote is from former White House Spokesman Mike McCurry -- it's probably my favorite example of the off-the-record attitude that pervades Washington DC.
That "maintain deniability" mantra doesn't apply to today's web, obviously. From the blogs to Facebook to now Twitter and Pownce, it seems like there's now nothing that won't be posted for posterity.
The explosion of interest in Twitter, Facebook, Pownce, et al is exciting for anyone hoping to get their message out, but it also poses some obvious problems:
- Multiple channels mean multiple places to post (and check). Blogging is a dangerous time suck as it is.
- Even if you automate the cross-posting -- and God help me if I ever go so far as to do this -- that means the same posts are showing up on your blog AND Twitter AND Facebook AND [insert your preferred Web2.0 services here]...
Jeff Jarvis, posting at both PresVid and his own BuzzMachine, has some interesting thoughts on the CNN-YouTube presidential debates. My favorite quote:
...the YouTube debates are a crack in the wall of control of elections, politics, and media. Bring your chisels.
As noted a week or so ago, I've been playing with Twitter and trying to see if it's actually useful for someone who doesn't live via mobile-phone text messages OR feel the compulsive need to microblog. For me, at least, the answer was "not yet" -- since there was no way to prioritize different feeds, or effectively "mute" those that you don't want to hear from 24/7.
On Friday, VentureBeat's Dan Kaplan wrote about PoliticalTrends.info -- a site that mines web data "to track political buzz in the blogosphere." It got me thinking about a rather unfortunate reality -- at least from the perspective of political junkies and would-be web moguls: Like newly launched restaurants, nearly all big-time political web ventures are doomed to fail.
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