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Patrick Ruffini has a good post about an online poll he came across that asked what technology would have the biggest impact on the 2008 election cycle.  YouTube is winning the poll in a landslide.  Ruffini writes:

That’s a “fighting the last war” mentality. Ask the pundits to predict what will work in the next election cycle and they’ll repeat what worked in the last one.

I agree.  So in a fit of stupidity, I'm going to list some of the technologies I think will impact the 2008 cycle that haven't already been hyped/written about to death.  Technologies that haven't really hit the political world yet.  Chances are none of these will actually have an impact and it will be something else, but it is worth a shot.

(1) Ning (Niche Social Networks)

The social network creation tool Ning relauched yesterday and it looks very, very promising.  Ning allows users to create their own highly specialized social networks through a slick drag and drop interface.  As an example, a network has been created to draft Al Gore for another Presidential run.  Ning is not the only player in this field – there are tons.

The implications here are pretty obvious.  These tools will allow activists to create their own networks around the issues or candidates they are passionate about (they are essentially a more powerful version of Yahoo Groups).  Campaigns can build their own social networks without spending a fortune to build inferior tools.  Bloggers can build communities around their sites. 

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Erin and I went up to NYC a few weeks back to give a presentation to members of the Magazine Publishers' of America about our study on the features of magazine websites.  If you are a glutton for punishment, you can download a copy of our Powerpoint presentation here.  

As a presenter, the questions/answer part of the session is always the most interesting. And the best questions are always the ones you can't really answer.  So here are some of the better questions we were asked.

(1)  How do journalists balance the time demands of their print duties with those of their online duties?

I basically said "umm" and then made a grunting noise. Seriously, I don't know.

It sort of reminds me of when I go into pitches to corporate clients and try to get them to start blogging themselves.  They always ask about the time commitments that are required.  "We're already overworked.  We don't have time to blog.  How can I do it without hiring someone?"  I can't really answer that one either.

I can only answer these questions from my own personal experience.  I'm a busy guy and I find time to blog.  How?  For me, my work and my blogging are accomplished in one motion.  Blogging feeds my work and my work feeds my blogging.  It's all kind of the same thing.  

So I'd say in an ideal world magazines should create an environment where writing web and print content can be achieved in one motion.  Write blog entries that provide insight into the process of creating the story itself.  Post notes from interviews.  Post follow ups on the story as more information becomes available.  Post links to discussion about the article.  Post about peripheral issues you got interested in due to your story research.  I think creating web content can be done in a way that supplements what you are already doing.

I don't know is probably the right answer though. 

(2) How do you balance the traditional role of magazines as gatekeepers with the trend towards user generated content and social news?

I don't really have a good answer to this one either.  I would just say I think there is a sweet spot between your traditional, editor-driven newspaper website and the free for all approach taken by sites like Digg that no one has really hit yet.  

(3) Assuming you open things up and allow readers to comment on stories, how do you manage this given the lack of resources?

Once again, I don't think there is a right answer here as people are still figuring this out, but I did take a stab at it. 

First, you don't have to allow people to comment on every article.  Why bother with comments on wire stories?  In order to preserve resources you could potentially allow commenting only on longer pieces and/or editorials.  This is the approach being taken by www.espn.com .

Second, let your readers/users help you police the comments.  Give them ways to report out of line comments through your site.  I think this is a much better and more practical approach than having magazine staffers waiting at the ready to review every comment as they come in.

Following on the heels of the New York Times, the Seattle Post Intelligencer has launched a news reader that allows you to read the print version of the newspaper through a desktop application.

I gave the reader a test drive and think it is a fantastic piece of technology.  The reader runs smooth and fast and creates a really pleasing reading experience.  It is much better than the PDFs of print editions I've seen in other places.

However, there are a couple of problems with this.

(1) You have to install the reader software on your machine in order to use it.  Not only that, the version of the reader is specific to each newspaper.  So if I want to read five papers online like this, I'd have to install five programs.  This is much more likely to be adopted if you could install the program once and then read all your newspapers and magazines on it.

(2) I don't want to read the print version of the newspaper on my computer, even if the reader is really slick.  I really don't.

If I'm on my computer, I'd rather just go to the website and quickly pick and choose what I read.   Maybe I'd use this thing for a glossy magazine, but I'm having trouble seeing why I'd use this application instead of just reading stuff on the newspaper's website.  I don't get it.

Am I missing something?

I wrote a pretty complementary post a few weeks back about a conference call the McCain campaign had with conservative bloggers. 

Two weeks later it is clear that the McCain campaign is failing at the most important part of blogger relations: listening.

Mike Turk signed up for an account on McCain's social networking tool, McCainSpace, a while back.  Due to the top-down nature of the campaign's online effort, accounts must be approved by a human administrator before they are made active.  So far no joy for Turk.  He writes:

It has been 14 days since I created my page, and it still has not been approved.  I have received no rejection, no e-mail indicating there is a problem, and no request to change the content.  There is simply stony silence.

Ok, so they are slow or maybe someone missed something.  It happens.  But Turk has written about not getting his account approved not once but twice on his blog.  William Beutler is also waiting.  Silence. 

A sort of small time, political version of Dell Hell.

And mind you these guys aren't just some random bloggers.  Turk ran the Bush-Cheney e-campaign in 2004 and Beutler is a former National Journal reporter.   If you aren't listening to these guys who are you listening to?

Contrast this with the Obama campaigns' response to a site bug pointed out by Michael Arrington of Techcrunch.  The bug was fixed within two hours of posting (although admittedly that bug was a little more explosive than the McCainSpace problems). 

Contrast this with the Edwards' campaign, where Elizabeth Edwards herself is engaging in blog discussions (including one on our blog). 

Contrast this with Microsoft, which helped Gaping Void's Hugh Maclead fix a problem he was having with his tablet PC within a few hours of him posting.

Having conference calls with bloggers is great.  Truly listening to what they are saying is better.

Update: Mike Turk has now written his third blog entry about his troubles.  We'll see if this ever gets resolved.

Update 2: After eighteen days of waiting, Turk's account was finally approved.  He has a full review of the McCainSpace tool up on TechPresident .

Fuzzy Zoeller is suing Wikipedia.

Well, at least, he wishes he could.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Fuzzy Zoeller is suing a Florida-based consulting company for vandalizing his Wikipedia profile.  The paragraph in question has since been removed from both Wikipedia and Answers.com (which draws lots of its info from Wikipedia articles), but according to the Smoking Gun, the entry included false information about Zoeller abusing alcohol and drugs as well as physically abusing his family.

Zoeller, known for his slightly unorthodox temperament on the golf course, is known for being a jokester.  Example: check out these comments in a 2001 interview with Golf Digest:

Did any fellow competitor ever ask you to tone down the joking around? I've heard some guys say that you were a little difficult to play with.
Don't care. Tell them to speed up. Get ahead of me.

Some guys don't like the crowd getting into it, saying it affects their play.
Tell them to go look in the mirror. I don't hit their shots for them. Like firing caddies out here–caddies never hit a shot out here; what are you firing the caddie for? I haven't had a caddie in 27 years who ever hit a shot for me. I know they'd like to, but it's never happened.

You used to joke that your prescription for the bad back was "vodka and Advil."
You gotta tell 'em something. I do take a lot of Advil. But only when I'm on the road. When I'm home, I'm off.

Is vodka still your drink?
I'll even drink a few beers now and then. But then I might go home and not have anything for two or three weeks, a month.

A lot of the great characters in golf history–Hagen, Demaret–enjoyed their beverages.
That was a little before my time. Back then that was how all the guys played; they carried flasks in their bags. There's nothing wrong with that.

It's changed a lot over the years.
Yeah, but what else did you have to do back then? Think about it.

Now there's the fitness kick on tour.
The last five years, everybody feels that they gotta look their best out there.

Has that hit you yet?
Look at me! [Laughs.] I tell you, every time I get the idea of working out, I have to sit down until the thought leaves. I don't want to go out there and sweat. [Laughs.] Seriously, if I had a good spine, I'd probably do it. But I have no spine.

Even though Zoeller often made jokes like this in the past, there is a huge difference between joking around about vodka and advil and publishing malicious and damaging remarks about someone's character in a public environment.  Zoeller claims that the comments made about him on Wikipedia caused him "mental anguish" and "loss of income".

This brings me back to my original purpose in writing this post.  What kind of protection do people have against slander and defamation on sites like Wikipedia?  Not much.  In its disclaimers, Wikipedia clearly does not take any responsibility for the content that appears in the open-source encyclopedia.  It seems like the site is invincible: since most articles are written/edited by individuals not associated with the website, the encyclopedia is not necessarily responsible for the information that is published on its pages. As Fuzzy Zoeller discovered, you can't sue Wikipedia!

Wikipedia Disclaimer:

None of the contributors, sponsors, administrators, or anyone else connected with Wikipedia in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of any inaccurate or libelous information or for your use of the information contained in or linked from these web pages.

Since Zoeller and his lawyers can't touch the website legally, the pro golfer has approached the source of the comments.  By identifying the IP address of the original "vandalism", it was discovered the the comments came from a computer at Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami-based consulting firm.  Zoeller is suing the consulting firm in order to "put a stop to this. Otherwise, we're all just victims of the Internet vandals out there. They ought not to be able to act with impunity ."

Zoeller's defense team is right. Online users should not be able to slander whoever and whatever they want on the Web with no recourse for punishment.  But should Zoeller be able to sue an entire company for something that most likely only involved one employee in non-business-related activity?  I'm not sure.  In addition, Should people like Zoeller be so concerned with false information appearing on a site that everyone knows provides unreliable information in the first place?  I'm not sure about that either.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said in response to this event, "We try to police [Wikipedia entries] pretty closely, but people do misbehave on the Internet."

I think that situations like the "Zoeller Incident" speak to the structure of Wikipedia.  While having an open-source encyclopedia is in theory a great (if not utopian) idea, I think that the site needs a better system of identifying individual editors.  That way, individuals could be held responsible if they purposely publish false or damaging information to the encyclopedia, possibly discouraging the publishing of malicious or false content to begin with. 

Also, should people be able to sue Wikipedia?  It seems strange to me that just because of a few disclaimers, the site is free of any responsibility of the material that shows up online.  If a Wikipedia article is the source of a reputation-killing piece of false information, should the site's owners have to take some responsibility?  I think to some degree, they should.

I'd be really interested to see what other people have to say about this, so please feel free to chime in with your opinions.

 The blogosphere was shocked today when the AP published an article about an Egyptian blogger receiving a 4-year prison sentence for publishing content online that the Egyptian government deemed offensive to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

According to the Washington Post:

Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic institution, was a vocal secularist and sharp critic of conservative Muslims in his blog. He also lashed out often at Al-Azhar, the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam, calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of encouraging extremism.

Nabil was part of a group of bloggers put on trial last year by the Egyptian government for publishing questionable materials online.  Other bloggers were freed, but due to what the Washington Post calls the "sensitivity" to Nabil's writings on religion, Nabil received a prison sentence.  Nabil's lawyer says they will appeal the decision, noting that the ruling will "terrify other bloggers and will negatively impact on the freedom of expression in Egypt."

We have all heard about Internet censorship in China, where many websites are blocked or content is edited to meet the Communist Party's regulations (TBR did several pieces on China: here, here, and here.)  The arrest of Kareem Nabil is a big disappointment, especially after several pushed for journalistic freedom in the country. Reporters without Borders, an international organization that protects journalists and reporters imprisoned for their writings, writes about a former announcement that was supposed to prevent journalists like Kareem Nabil from being punished for their opinions:

On 23 February 2004, the newly-elected president of the Union of Egyptian Journalists, Galal Aref, made an important announcement: President Mubarak had just telephoned him and had formally undertaken to abolish prison sentences for journalists in connection with their work. In effect, he was promising a major overhaul of the laws concerning press offences. Three years later, nothing has changed. Journalists still risk being imprisoned despite the semblance of a reform last year.

Apparently, legal rights for Egyptian journalists and reporters is a big farce:

Article 48 of the Egyptian constitution guarantees press freedom. But in practice, a string of laws have turned respect for this principle into an exception. In addition to the legal provisions for sentencing journalists to prison terms, the state of emergency in force since Mubarak became president in 1981 means that anyone suspected of disturbing the peace can be held without charge for six months or even more in some cases.

Further, according to Reporters without Borders, there are currently 35 offenses, "including defamation and insulting President Mubarak or a foreign head of state", for which a journalist or reporter can be imprisoned.

As a result of the imprisonment of Nabil and harassment of other Egyptian journalists, Reporters without Borders added Egypt to its list of "Internet Enemies", which includes some of the world's most secretive and isolated countries, like Burma and North Korea.  This is probably definitely not a group that Egypt wants to be lumped together with. 

This turn of events is truly disappointing, not just for online communities in Egypt, but for the international blogosphere as a whole.  Blogs are supposed to provide a space where individuals can discuss the issues that concern them the most, creating discussion with like-minded parties and debate with the opposition.  Stories like the account of Kareem Nabil really bring to light the limitations on freedom of thought that are often taken for granted and the unwillingness of some governments to let citizens think for themselves.  

Just think what the American blogosphere would be like if Americans couldn't insult politicians.  There would be no Wonkette, and certainly no blog posts like this one, which implies that everyone in the Bush administration is stupid.  If the US were anything like Egypt, the people involved with blogs like the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos would be in serious trouble–or more likely, these blogs wouldn't exist.  It's mind boggling to think that sources of opinion like these liberal blog networks, which have cemented themselves as avenues for both information and entertainment in the US, would be outlawed in many countries, with their authors severely punished.  For Americans, poking fun at domestic culture and politics is a way of life.  In countries like Egypt, with strict limits on journalistic freedom, these actions are virtually a death sentence.

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If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend checking out the blog FreeKareem.org.  They have a lot of non-mainstream info and pictures about this issue.  There are also several petitions posted that you can sign to show your support for Kareem.  Also, this blog has some excerpts from Kareem's blog.

CNN.com is the main national type of news site I visit on the web.  I do so out of habit and because I really dislike the websites of alternatives like MSNBC and Fox News. 

But they are starting to lose me due to the way they are using video.

(1) Our office is an open space and so to watch videos I either have to annoy my co-workers or unplug my headphones from my iPod and plug them into my computer.  And that's when I don't have my computer muted.

Due to this I really don't watch many  videos during the day.  I'm going to CNN to read news articles, blog entries and such.  For text.

So what's the problem?  CNN is now all about video and its hard to find the text.    Of the items on the homepage, roughly 50% are web videos (see graphic on right for an example). 

I don't mind that they have lots of video.  That's great.  But I wish it all wasn't so intermingled.  Having to scan and discard 50% of the content is not a pleasant user experience.  I'll probably switch.

(2) CNN is still displaying videos in Windows Media Player format (which means I've had problems playing them in Firefox).  And they are still popping up their videos in controlled windows using javascript.  I hate that.  Please switch to Flash (which more people can see anyway) and stop using pop up windows.   You just shouldn't do that stuff anymore.

CNN isn't the only one making this mistake.  The John McCain for President site does as well by devoting pretty much its entire homepage to video clips and surprising users with video on what look like normal buttons/links at the bottom of the page (you are either muted or yelling at my whole office dude). 

In summary, I think people are going a bit too far in an effort to embrace the whole web video thing.  Video is a great and powerful thing, but not all the time and not in every circumstance.  Please remember that sometimes your users just want to read some text and move on.  Video should always be opt in.

Blog entries about customer service seemed to be following me around yesterday so I figured I’d write a blog post about it. 

First, I read “Seven steps to remarkable customer service” over on the extraordinary blog, Joel On Software.  Joel is the head of Fog Creek Software which makes the excellent FogBugz bug tracking software.  The post is specifically about support for software products, but is relevant to anyone who does customer service in their job (which is just about everyone really, isn’t it?).

His first tenet is perhaps the most valuable: fix everything two ways.  He writes:

Almost every tech support problem has two solutions. The superficial and immediate solution is just to solve the customer’s problem. But when you think a little harder you can usually find a deeper solution: a way to prevent this particular problem from ever happening again.

After reading that I immediately came across an example of a company attempting to fix a problem two ways.  Due to ice storms, JetBlue has had to cancel a large number of its flights (23%) over the last week or so.  People were stranded in airports.  Folks sat on runways for 8 hours.  Your classic planes, trains and automobiles nightmare.  Jetblue was and is under a barrage of criticism for the their poor handling of the situation.

So what are they doing?  Trying to fix the problem two ways.

To address the specific customer problem, they are reimbursing the people who were caught up in the delays.  Here’s the payment schedule according the Consumerist:

• Delays 1-2 hours: $25 off a future flight
• Delays 2-4 hours: $50 off a future flight
• Delays 6+ hours: Free round-trip ticket

To solve the long term program, JetBlue has announced a Customer Bill of Rights.  Here is a list of some of the changes that have been taken to prevent this kind of event from occurring again:

• All non-airport crew members of JetBlue will be badged and ready to go if needed to be called upon
• Increasing number phone lines open for changing reservations
• Tripling the size of the group that schedules pilots and stewardesses

To announce the Bill of Rights, CEO David Needleman posted a video on YouTube explaining the plan of action (embedded after the jump).  The YouTube video has been viewed 33,000 times so far.  A nice use of social media I think, although they should have done a better job with the web during the crisis itself. 

All of this sounds great but won’t mean much if the changes don’t work. We’ll see.

Anyway, give the piece from Joel on Software a read.

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