Monday, November 17, 2003

I'd like to call your attention to an idea for the campaigns of leading Presidential candidates. I'd like them to stand up for the Internet, to say that, if elected, they will do everything they can to protect it from control of the big media companies. "Both Clark and Dean have raised prodigious amounts of money on the Internet. Now, how about using that money to keep the Internet free." 

Jay Rosen: "At most five percent of Americans actually mattered to the operatives who ran the campaign. And what do the lucky five percent get? Ads!" 

2/22/00: How to Win the Presidency on the Internet. 

I had a mockup of an ad for McCain. 

Bill Gates: "We've never been in any talks with Google about any acquisition thing in any way, shape or form." 

John Robb: "Google's KPCB hype machine must just be clearing its throat for the IPO." 

The possibility that talk of Microsoft buying Google was hype hadn't occurred to me until I read John's post, above. And I would have rejected the theory if I hadn't read another piece in the last few days that said that Netscape's bluster about killing Microsoft served KPCB, it made the Netscape IPO super-hot, and that made them billions of dollars. Previously I had taken them at face value, assuming their goal with Netscape was to build a real company, and that they were surprised when the stock took off, but why assume that? Maybe they were hyping all along and Andreessen was just following orders. In any case with Gates on the record saying there were no discussions about Microsoft acquiring Google, one has to wonder, how did the rumor start? 

Arnold Kling: "If you're Jim Clark or Kleiner-Perkins, you can make a lot of money by convincing Wall Street that you are going to be the next Microsoft, even if you have no way of achieving that objective. So you 'moon Microsoft' to pump up the stock, and then sell it. I think that there was a lot of that going on with Netscape." 

Doerr: "Believe it or not, the Internet is actually underhyped."  

Nick Denton: "I don't want to see some VC's invest idiot money in idiot people at idiot companies." 

Wired: Social Nets Find Friends in VCs. 

Statistics on the growth of the blogosphere from Technorati. 

Newsbot: Will it support RSS? 

Adam Curry: "We produce the show entirely in Radio's outliner." 

Calpundit explains how to point to NY Times articles without linkrot. "It's a bit klunky, but since we bloggers link to the Times frequently I thought I'd pass it along." 

This idea is going to backfire. Better to send music CDs to record company execs, cut them in half so they can't re-sell them, and send an unmistakable message that the gravy train is drying up. Sending email with huge enclosures is a horrible abuse of the Net.  

Des Moines Register on candidate weblogs. 

Toronto Star: "It was a gift from the propaganda gods. Just two problems: It didn't happen that way, and the designated hero, Pte Jessica Lynch, refuses to say it did." 

Screen shots of a three-pane aggregator, RSS Bandit.  

Serious problems with the transfer of power from west to east last night, so we flipped the switch back, and will try again in a couple of days after some more testing.