Sunday, January 29, 2006

Iran warns of missile strike. World: Revolutionary Guard general puts West on notice not to interfere as Tehran goes ahead with nuclear programme. [Guardian Unlimited] 7:33:44 AM    comment []

Shaq travels light. As the Heat prepare to travel out on a long road trip, Shaq is finally revealing the mysterious contents of his suitcase. While one could assume there would be things like suits and an iPod, who would have guessed The Big Traveller would be taking a loaded bazooka to basketball games? "We've got seven games, so that's seven suits," he said. "We might have a couple days in between games, so I'll bring a couple jeans and then a sweat suit. Nine undershirts, nine pairs of underwear, deodorant, computer, iPod. That's it." Continue reading on YAYsports! [PJM - Best of the Blogs] 7:33:22 AM    comment []

Danny O'Brien's Open Source con presentation on Evil. Danny O'Brien gave an amazingly funny talk called "To Evil" at the O'Reilly Open Source conference in August and now you can download the audio and the slides. Danny is a full-time civil liberties activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but he's also done time as a stand up comic, and he co-founded and co-edits the hilarious tech newsletter NTK. "To Evil" is based on his column of the same name, in which Danny picks examples of evil behavior in the tech world and writes about it. In Danny's presentation, he recaps some of the evils of the year in technological liberty, and then switches to reporting on how good gets done (see the Gandhi State Diagram, left) and reports on some of the triumphs of the year. It's a terrific and funny presentation, one that provokes both thought and laughter, and it's full of geeky in-jokes. Link to audio, Link to Danny's slides (via Trubble) [Boing Boing] 7:32:49 AM    comment []

During the year, The Washington Post will examine youth basketball in the United States. The lure of multimillion dollar contracts and the growth o... [Washington Post: Top News] 7:32:30 AM    comment []

Jason Scott discusses an idea for a hackathon TV pilot. dubbed "Hardcoded," he's outlined a show I would easily watch every week online or off   [Waxy.org Links] 7:31:58 AM    comment []

How Citizen Reporters Work. OhMyNews has an interesting article on Tribun Timur, a local newspaper in Makassar, the capital city of the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi, which benefits from citizen journalists. "It was first published two years ago and has become one of the leading newspapers in Makassar, with a distribution of 50,000 copies and about 120,000 readers. ... “We practically do not have a special budget to send our reporters to Mecca, which is why we are trying to maintain cooperation with people who are going to Mecca, asking them to send reports to us. We started this kind of cooperation last year, and we have gained so much popularity among our readers, because the stories are unique and original. Thanks to the idea of citizen journalists, and we might say that our newspaper benefits from this model,” explained Dahlan. The citizen reporters in Mecca send summaries of the stories via SMS (short message service), and the newspaper in Makassar makes international phone calls for further information. Based on the experience from the previous Hajj season, this year Tribun Timur feels more confident asking six citizen reporters for special coverage, one of the reporters being the mayor of Makassar, Ilham Arif Sirajuddin, who will lead the pilgrims from Makassar. “When at least 345 pilgrims died in a stampede during a stone-throwing ritual this Jan. 12, Tribun Timur received various first-hand stories from its citizen reporters, enabling it to provide comprehensive coverage." [Smart Mobs] 7:31:00 AM    comment []

Wiki tricki. Wiki tricki: Congressional staffers are editiing their bosses' bios (sometimes rather aggressively, so), a check of IP addresses reveal. When will people realize that a click on the history of any Wikipedia page will reveal the IP addresses of the computers from which changes were made? Two-word advice to Hill staffers: Internet cafe. Better advice: Click on the "discussion link" of the entry and explain any changes you make and the reasons you are making them. If the reason is, "We don't want people to know that," then, sorry, it's not going to work. However, if you're trying to add to the accuracy of the entry or to provide some balance to the interpretation of a fact in the entry, you'll be lauded as a good Wikipedian. Don't be a spineless weasel and think you can censor the facts in your boss's bio. But don't be shy about entering the fray to present your argument for an entry's accuracy. Technorati Tags: wiki, wikipedia [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 7:30:55 AM    comment []