Kerfuffle

Amazon's Silk, their new Kindle web browser, may just be a game changer

Yesterday, my friend and former colleague Harvey Briggs included a post on My View From the Shore that asserts Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet will "torch everyone but Apple" in the tablet game. 

This is a classic disruption strategy. While everyone else is battling for the same customers at the top end of the category, Amazon found a way to open the market to a huge swath of people for whom a $500 tablet just doesn't make sense.

Very few people who "need" an iPad will trade down to get one of these. But those tablets stuck in the middle will see their volumes fall to a product that's just good enough but a whole lot cheaper. The fact that Amazon is being launched with an integrated multimedia ecosystem guarantees it.

I totally agree with Harvey.  Essentially there are those people who will always want the high-end Apple product, and for them cost is not considered a barrier.  Others want something that costs a lot less and offers the key functions of content delivery, web access and email.

Both Apple and Amazon understand and offer something besides price that is key to category success in tablets: content.  Both have vast collections of content that they continue to grow by the minute.  All of the other tablet manufacturers and marketers out there simply don't have that.  They rely, essentially, on others (notably Amazon and Apple's iTunes) for content.  They're not even re-sellers, just also-ran conduits that make no money on the real product (aforementioned content).  How key is content compared to hardware? BusinessInsider.com opined yesterday, we may see Kindle devices actually be free some day soon... since it is simply the last link of Amazon's content delivery chain.

From my survey of two (my partner, a Kindle-user and me, an iPad user), content access and its portability are the primary if not only reasons we use those particular devices.  We both have laptops for all our computing needs, and smartphones for all our mobile needs.  The Kindle and iPad fill this in-between need that is, for us, totally about content.

But that's not the only reason Amazon is will rock the tablet market in a huge way.  They are going to do what others -- except, some might say, for Apple -- have not been able to really do:  use cloud computing to do the heavy lifting of browser functions, making browsing fast, easy, and (most importantly) invisible.  The best thing for complicated technology is for it to work really well without you knowing it.  I hope I am correct in thinking Amazon's Silk browser will deliver on this in such a huge way as to dramatically change the way web surfing technology works.

Here's a group of Amazon geeks to explain it, and they explain it quite well...

I love my iPad.  But something tells me that we'll be getting one of these in the house this Christmas.  If I order it early enough.

[cross-posted on my course blog, J646 Overtime]

I'm just a straw in the tornado of information swirling around us all day, every day. And actually, I'm OK with that.

They seem to be burning through communication directors t a pretty good pace over at the White House these days.  Dan Pfeiffer, the third communication director to serve in the Obama administration, recently had this to say about the nature of political news and information as reported by Michael Scherer of TIME magazine...

"We have a theory of how the news media work in this Internet age," explains Dan Pfeiffer, the buzz-cut 34-year-old who recently became the third person to serve as Obama's communications director. "There is basically a constant swirl going on."

This twister still includes the newspaper front pages, nightly news broadcasts and magazine covers that can often shape the national debate. But it also incorporates Sarah Palin's Facebook page, the latest Internet attack videos and that e-mail your aunt just sent you. "There is a constant conversation that goes on all day long, through blogs, through cable TV, through Twitter, between reporter, subject and reader," says Pfeiffer, who sits down the hall from the Oval Office. He says his new job is to "make sure we are not getting swallowed up by the swirl."

Gone are the days when presidents could just summon reporters from the three networks, the wire services and a couple newspapers to manage a story.  No, as Pfeiffer says, it's a tornado.  A cross-platform, interactive, digital feed, tweeted tornado.  Repurposing content is the way of the new news world.  So is stealing content, or as I like to call it:  appropriating content.  The traditional media provide the credibility bloggers like me... and the good ones too... need to seem even sort of legitimate.  Fair use being what it is, my friends at time have figured out a way for a link like the one below to appear with every cut 'n' paste I do from their site...

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1969571,00.html?artId=1969571?contType=article?chn=politics#ixzz0iOVutLJw

Just this once, I'm not deleting this thing, since I am (usually) very good about linking to borrowed content.  Credit where credit is due, whether the material is outstanding or odious.

This blog, Kerfuffle, started as a little bit of fun with a TypePad account three years ago this very day.  Since then it has carried 733 posts before this one.  It has served up 34,379 page views in its lifetime, with 320 in the past seven days.  Comments, well, those still lag the number of posts, with only 395 so far.  Many entries have been cross posted at Daily Kos, occasionally at Dane 101, and most recently at Mediated Communication, the blog of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  The blog underwent a redesign about two years ago, and last year a Twitter feed was added to make up for a less than daily posting schedule.  (I'd like to say that's due to a "quality over quantity" objective, but sometimes it's due to lack of time, inspiration or both.)

During these three years, I have transitioned from media director at an advertising agency to PhD student at the UW.  I'm focusing on new media technologies in the J-school... imagine that.

Kerfuffle has a small but loyal number of followers.  I appreciate those who stop by regularly, and especially those who take time to post comments,whether here or via Twitter, FaceBook or email.  I genuinely appreciate your attention and your feedback.  I hope I make it worth your while now and then.  And if not, I guess I'm just happy you chose to waste time here instead of on somewhere else.

Thanks for reading.

Apparently, my blog is among "some of the most extreme and vile writings on the Internet." A new low. I'm so ashamed.

Really?  This thing?

From something called Freedom Eden...

The blogroll on Russ Feingold's website, (Authorized and paid for by the Feingold Senate Committee Daniel D. Hannula, Superior, WI, Treasurer), is very revealing.

It includes liberal sites containing some of the most extreme and vile writings on the Internet.

I guess the woman named Mary who writes the rather Beckian blog dubbed Freedom Eden -- and whose only element in her profile is that Goodnight Moon is her favorite book -- thinks I am extreme or vile or something.  True, I used the word "asshole" in describing Republicans in a headline recently... the same one where I called Democrats pussies.  Vile!  Extreme!  So I guess that means you read them all then, right Mary?

Obviously, I'm not familiar with all the content on all these sites, but I'm familiar with enough of the content on some of them to know they do not represent the mainstream.

Wait, what?  Mary!  You slammed all of us as a group, but you're saying you really aren't familiar with us other than "enough" of "some."  My, how thorough of you... well, thorough enough to claim we don't fit your particular definition of "mainstream."  Kind of like the people who want to ban a book that they haven't read, or rail against a movie that hasn't yet been made, eh?  Hmmm. 

Please, Mary, continue...

Under both the categories, "Wisconsin Blogs" and "Political Blogs," you'll find some of the ugliest of the ugly when it comes to attacks and lies and smears.

The fact that Feingold is willing to cozy up to these bloggers should concern Wisconsinites.

Did I miss something?  Did some cozying up get passed around while I was out of the room?  Damn it.  I always miss the good stuff.  C'mon, be fair, Mary.  If I'm going to get lumped in with all the other Wisconsin bloggers that are to be found on the blogroll of Russ Feingold's campaign blog as "among some the extreme and vile writings on the Internet," then I should have gotten some of this coziness you speak of.  A handshake, even.

Feingold might want to reconsider that blogroll, especially if he wants to pass himself off as being on the same page politically as most of the people in the state.

I'm not sure what to think about Mary's accusation.  Links to liberal blogs on a liberal senator's campaign blog?  No!  Really?  Shocking! 

I would probably take Mary more seriously if she, well, you know, offered examples instead of just being a concern troll.  And, for what it's worth, it's generally considered more credible when a blog's author is willing to actually attach her actual identity to her blog. 

Yet, on the other hand, any link is a good link in terms of traffic, I suppose.  So far, her post on the mighty Freedom Eden has given me one additional page view according to my traffic statistics.  Looks like I've gotten three whole hits from Russ in the past 90 days. 

With this tidal wave of incoming traffic from Mary and Russ, TypePad may need to get me more server space.

Awesome.

 

Coal: when you're pissed-off enough to send the very worst

From one of my favorite satirical bloggers...

Hello, friends. This holiday season, it's important to remember all the wonderful people in your life who have been good to you this year. A kind word here, a thoughtful gesture there...they help make living in these uncertain times more hopeful and joyous.

At the same time, it's also important to remember those bastards and jerks who lied, cheated, swindled, insulted, extorted, threatened and otherwise crapped all over you in 2009. And, as usual, America's coal industry will be there to help you express your disappointment and disgust, just as we have been for over a century.

When your company CEO cancelled all employee bonuses except for his own and the executive staff, we were there.

When your health insurance provider told you with a straight face that the acne you had as a teenager was a pre-existing condition that negated your cancer treatment, we were there.

When your neighbor backed over your tulips and then denied it, even though the tire marks in your garden matched her Hummer's, we were there, too.

The cop who gave you a ticket for going two miles-an-hour over the speed limit while the driver in front of you was going much faster and texting? He got coal.

Your sister-in-law who constantly sends emails to you questioning the president's citizenship? You bet...she's gettin' coal.

The "friendly, at-your-service" loan officer who refused to rework the terms of your mortgage because "rules are rules?" He'll be poopin' coal for weeks.

The office brownnoser who stole your idea and used it to snag a promotion? A cubicle full of coal.

For everyone on your list who's made your life miserable, there's only one holiday gift you can rely on to adequately say, "Suck on this, asshole!" So call now and order some ugly, dirty, toxic coal. One glance at that lump of bituminous blackness and they'll get your message loud and clear. Available in lignite, flame coal, gas coal, anthracite, coke and---for the really nasty peckerheads---coal fly ash slurry.  Order today and we'll even pay for the shipping.

Coal: when you're pissed-off enough to send the very worst.

This message brought to you by the Holiday Coal Consortium, conveniently located next to that mountain over there with the top blown off. Wishing you and yours a holiday filled with glad tidings of mercury and joy.

Shamelessly stolen with no regard for Fair Use limitations from Bill in Portland Maine on Daily Kos.  Yep, I'll be getting coal from Bill.

With the alleged popularity of all those inane quizes on Facebook, maybe Kerfuffle should try to get a piece of that action. Here's a start

In keeping with the true social networking spirit, I totally stole -- I mean re-purposed -- this quiz from Bill in Portland Maine, one of my favorite Daily Kos front-pagers.  This comes from his Cheers & Jeers post this morning. (Since I have been drunk with Bill on exactly two occasions, I feel that entitles me to co-opt his work under the Budweiser-proxy-sorta-Fair-Use Doctrine.)

Let's play a game

All you have to do is figure out which of the following was said by a straight married couple, and which was said by a gay married couple. Ready? Go!

"Quit hogging the remote."

"It's your turn to take the dog out to pee."

"Hurry up or we'll be late for church."

"Be right back---I gotta pick the kids up from soccer practice."

"Happy anniversary."

"You're not wearing that to Jacob's Bar Mitzvah. Are you? Really?"

"I promise I'll be nice to your mother. For at least the first 15 minutes."

"You never, you always, why can't you, why don't you, why didn't you, how could you, why couldn’t you, why haven't you, why aren’t you...?"

"Our pastor married us. It was a great ceremony."

"We're not religious so we went to a justice of the peace."

"She voted for McCain, I voted for Obama. Let's leave it at that."

"Turn right, turn left, no the other left, now you've gone too far, gimme the map, you're speeding again..."

"I'm gonna cry at Rusty's graduation like a busted garden hose. You've been warned. Deal with it."

"Not tonight, I have a headache."

"Oh look! The underwear fairy made another deposit on the bedroom floor. How special!"

"I love you."

It's harder than you thought, no? 

Assassination of abortion doctor brings out the worst of the right wing radicals... but not on every righty blog

The assassination of George Tiller, an abortion doctor in Wichita, Kansas has dominated the media today.  Tiller was gunned down as he served as an usher inside his church.  (Local news account here if this whole story slid by you.)

The story has also dominated the blogosphere.  The President weighed in, and so did the founder of Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion group loosely tied to the murderer. (In fairness, the current president of the organization is trying hard to contradict the founder and back far away from this.  Good luck with that). 

Lots of commentary in lots of places.  One place I checked had this to say:

Some right wing blogs are closing comments on threads about the murder, and judging from the vile, sick stuff you see above, that’s probably a good idea.

This is very, very bad craziness, at its worst. Shame on all you people who are gloating and partying over a murder that took place inside a church. And you call yourselves “Christians?” What the hell is wrong with you?

I’m pleased to say that LGF did not join in this orgy of murder celebration; we had a few over the top comments, but they were quickly deleted, and a couple of people lost their accounts.

LGF is Little Green Footballs, a pretty respectable blog that is on the other side of the fence from Daily Kos and AMERICAblog... meaning right of center.  To LGF's credit, they tried to avoid the incredible ugliness that can bubble up in comments from readers.  Comments on big sites don't necessarily represent the views of the site itself, just individuals.  But LGF took steps to delete hateful entries and, they also claim to have kicked out a few members along the way today.  Good on them.

Meanwhile, at the hate-fest that is Free Republic, a pretty heinous blog if there ever was one, the vitriol was flying.  I won't bother to publish any of the hateful, violence-inciting or otherwise incredibly asinine commentary, and I will break with Kerfuffle protocol by not linking directly to it.  You can get there via LGF if you must.

Frequently, sites like Daily Kos are called out by the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh as being lunatic left purveyors of lies, nastiness and distortions.  (O'Reilly once called Daily Kos a hate site on par with Nazis and the KKK.)  I wonder if wither of those two men will have anything to say about what's going on in their own blogosphere backyard right now.  I doubt it.  Just like I doubt the right wing punditocracy will see Tiller's assassination as domestic terrorism, which by their own standards it most certainly is.

There's no shortage of hate, that's for sure.  Left, right, whatever; it's unfortunate that it seems to be one of the ingredients in the exchange of views and information via the Internet.  Mostly it shows up in the form of comments by readers, but it can also come from the publishers/owners of sites as well.  It would be nice to think that eventually that part of blogging and forums will be cleaned up.  It would also be nice if everyone in the world sent me five dollars.  Neither pipe dream will happen. 

Free speech isn't always pretty.  Or nice.  Or articulate.  But everyone gets their say, such as it is.

Daily Kos TV debuts. Great, as if I didn't spend enough time on the computer as it is

The Big Orange media machine continues to grow.  The newest product, now in beta, is Daily Kos TV.  The project is in the very capable hands of Jed Lewison.

Take a look...

New media is cool media.

Pardon me while I go meta for a moment

I started blogging about a year and a half ago. I didn't actually tell anyone for maybe the first three months.  Little by little, I started building an archive of posts, and began to pick up readers... one by one.  Today, I may be lucky if I have fifty or so people who come by the site consistently... what I'd call regular visitors.

Traffic to the sight is erratic at best. For the first year, I was usually lucky to see more than ten or fifteen page views a day.  Once in a while I'd troll in Google traffic.  It took writing about the demise of the print version of the Madison Capital Times newspaper to send me well over a hundred views for the first time, and that went on for several days days.  Traffic was driven here  from links in other local media and a cross-post at Daily Kos.  (It also created a firestorm at my company when the local weekly's blog outed me as the blogger by name, title and company, and thus kind of tipped our hand that we were working for the Cap Times.  Whoops!  That led to an internal scrutiny of Kerfuffle and it was learned I referred to the company as perpetually financially challenged and other less charitable things.  Whoops again. But I digress.)

Recently, as I took a more forward and timely approach to posts and got better at headlining, traffic began to routinely be close to a hundred views a day, mostly from Google search redirection.  That's exactly how one grows a blog.  Posts on Ralph Nader, RNC partying and a few other topics got me some choice links and drove traffic into the "several hundreds" in the last month. 

None of that compares to today.  A story on a site I had not heard of (but now list on my blogroll) called Pandagon linked to a post I wrote from Austin while attending Netroots Nation.  My piece, titled Lawrence Lessig wants to change Congress, and he's throwing in his 9¢, is one that I was pretty happy with, but drew little traffic at the time it went up on July 19.  But today, it received almost a thousand views.  Holy shit.

Not just to return the favor, but to send you to a really good post that shows how f***ed up the McCain fund-raising machine is, I recommend you go visit Pandagon and read "Dear Auguste Sr."  It's more than worth the effort. 

Jeez, I am such a nerd.  But this is the coolest thing for me.

Thanks, Auguste Jr...

dw

Texroots.org: admiration from an outsider

[Austin TX] "Yearly Kos" changed its name to "Netroots Nation" to, as I understand it, reflect that the many gains made for Progressives and Democrats in recent years have been greatly assisted by internet-driven activity. It's not just Daily Kos; it's the whole netroots community.  Citizen journalism, online activism, lefty blogging. Call it whatever you want, but nowhere is it more organized and I'd say, effective at the state level than here in Texas. I look at their success and, like a little kid looking at his pal's tricked out new bicycle, find myself asking "How do I get one of those?"

One look at the scheduling grid for Netroots Nation will tell you that you have to make some choices in what events you want to attend. I had planned on going to a caucus of state bloggers, but at the last minute decided to sit in on the Texas bloggers caucus instead. As it turned out, I was the only non-Texan in the room, but they let me stay anyway. Until very recently, I had no idea that a large group of Texas bloggers had formed the Texas Progressive Alliance. It is an organization of over 40 of the states biggest, best progressive blogs and bloggers. They have learned that together they are much stronger than they are individually. That synergy thing. And it is working. Texas is getting closer and closer to flipping blue, and it is grassroots efforts -- Texroots in this case -- that are making it happen. DNC chairman Howard Dean told a crowd of us as much just after the Texas caucus.

“We’re going to undo all those evil things Tom DeLay did,” Dean said, a reference to the GOP-majority Legislature’s redraw of congressional districts in 2003. At the time, then-Rep. DeLay was the U.S. House majority leader and a prime architect of the redistricting effort.

An altogether separate testament to the strength of progressive Texas bloggers is that Netroots Nation is being held here in Austin. It's not what one would call a top-tier convention city but it is home to a lot of people who truly know how the netroots game is played. I live in Wisconsin, a blue state. We have standout progressive people in Congress like Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin. Unfortunately, we also have BushCo boneheads like Paul Ryan and F. James Sensenbrenner. And we have a statehouse that is divided, with the Republicans holding everything up in the state assembly with a 52:47 majority. So, while we appear blue at the national level, there's enough red to keep us moving either backwards or not moving at all.

We need a WiscRoots.org. A blogger credited with getting the Texas Progressive Alliance off the ground is Anna (like many bloggers, last names are extraneous), who blogs at annatopia.com and Texas Kaos.com. "It just started as a mailing list," she told me. "We were pissed off about the whole [congressional] redistricting thing, and that brought us together." That was back in the Tom Delay heyday when Republicans were pretty much redrawing their districts freehand to assure enough voters to keep Democrats out of the House. Classy bunch, those Texas Republicans. It was also during a time when the state was having severe budget problems... but not too severe I gather in that the Republican governor kept calling the legislature back for "emergency sessions" to pass the redistricting plans. In case you didn't know, this is a big state with a lot of state legislators. Getting all those folks to Austin for so-called emergencies cost a lot of money the state didn't have at the time.

So how do we get one in (insert your state here)? Vince Leibowitz, a frequent contributor to Burnt Orange Report and author of Capitol Annex suggests starting small. "First, find out who the players are; who would come together to form a texroots kind of thing. Start a Google group, or better yet, get together in person. Wisconsin's not that big so you probably could all get together. (Yeah, well, Wisconsin isn't tiny, but I guess compared to Texas...) You have to be organized." Leibowitz suggests picking a small objective first... a specific piece of legislation or the like. Then go after it, "...work up a blog swarm..." and build from there. Strive to draft a candidate or two. "Keep raising the bar."

To apply this to my state, I know I have to change my own way of thinking if I am to be helpful. I have to stop thinking of Wisconsin as Madison. Just like Howard Dean is all about a 50 state strategy, we need a 72 county strategy. (I never knew we had that many until I just counted them, twice.) To be sure, this is not an original thought. But it remains a powerful idea. and our friends in the Texas blogosphere operate a working example of how a coalition of blogs can make a huge difference not only on the national level, but at the critical state level.

Wisconsin bloggers: we have work to do!

cross-posted at Daily Kos

Better Blogs: Blogs that are better

To the right of this very post you will find all kinds of stuff, including a roster of links to other blogs.  The "Better Blogs" are Kerfuffle's blogrole, in blogspeak.  (Is that blognoying you yet?).

Some of these are blogs I revere, like Daily Kos and Huffington Post.  These two are less blogs than they are digital news media at this point.  I look at them every day, and in the case of DK, post and comment there too.

Thers belong to people I know who blog like I do... for fun and for friends.  Cubby Blue, by Tim Souers, is more art than words, which makes sense since he is a rockin' great art director I used to work with.  Irrational Exuberance is about I don;t know what, but Mike Koweiski, the guy who posts it, was an early Kerfuffle fan and will always have a link here.

Most of the others are blogs and blog-like sites that i just came across and are pretty good.  Check out AdBroad.  I have no clue as to who this lady is, but she was nice enough to thank me for the link in an e-mail.  That means at least one of you went from here to there.  Her post today is a good "stop and think" for those of us who work in the advertising business.

Hans is Great is something that I stumbled upon from a friend's blogrole and am not sure how to classify it.  If you've ever picked up the New Republic magazine, you know it is half politics and half arts.  Or something like that.  Hans is Great is half shirtless men and half arts.  Honestly, though, you may find yourself reading it for the articles.  It's description from the front page: 

Hansisgreat is your #1 source for leisure reading, light cultural interest stories, and shirtless male models. Checking out guys on the internet is good... but there's also more to life. I'm going for the feel of Men's Health or Cosmopolitan magazine, only with slightly brainier articles.

I change these out now and then, so if you have a recommendation, let me know.  And be sure to catch Mug Shot Mondays at Famous Like Me each week.  30 seconds of amusement, guaranteed.