Earlier this month, Leah Messinger wrote an interesting piece on "quality swag" and its potential ROI.  For those who do not recognize the terms, "swag" is a gift or free service that a company offers to potential clients, typically at events such as trade shows.  Some award shows package all of the gifts together in ‘swag bags' for the guests.  ROI stands for "return on investment," the rate of return which is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment.  The ROI of swag is important because once the products are created, they are a sunk cost, and I am sure many companies find themselves tossing pens and highlighters that were never given out at any shows.

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U.S. Congressmen John Culberson (R-TX) has gotten a bit of online fame lately for sending real-time updates to constituents and Internet geeks via services like Twitter and Qik, sometimes straight from the House floor.  Culberson has gotten attention for his efforts from tech blogger Robert Scoble, TechPresident and many others.  I follow Congressmen Culberson on Twitter and have been watching his experiment with these services with interest.

Today his Twitter account included messages about what Culberson says are efforts by Democrats to censor the content he sends out from the Floor.

Here is his first tweet on the topic:

I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them <link>

This was followed a short while later with this clarification:

They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!! <link>

This afternoon, Culberson’s staff put out a statement on their website protesting the proposed action. Culberson’s release provides the following explanation:

Millions of Americans today utilize free, unregulated and uncensored websites like YouTube on a daily basis to not only obtain information from their elected leaders about what’s going on in their government, but to also give feedback and easily share that information with others. The advent of new media technology has empowered American citizens with real-time information about the policy debates and actions being undertaken by Congress. This has increasingly forced Congress to become more transparent and made it easier for American citizens to hold their elected leaders accountable.

The Committee on House Administration is considering a new rule that could bring this trend to a screeching halt. The Committee is considering the adoption of new rules that would require outside websites such as YouTube to comply with House regulations before Members of Congress could post videos on them. Under the proposal, the House Administration Committee would develop a list of “approved” websites, and Members of Congress could post content only such websites.

If the proposed rule is adopted, the free flow of information over the Internet between Americans and their representatives will be significantly curtailed. Americans who currently use free websites like YouTube to obtain uncensored daily information about congressional policy debates will instead be forced to go to websites “approved” by the House Administration Committee in order to continue getting such information. This would amount to new government censorship of the Internet, by a panel of federal officials that is neither neutral nor independent.

I did a few searches trying to find more information on what is happening exactly, but so far the only info I’ve found is from Culberson himself.  This story will be interesting to follow.  If you find more information please post it in the comments and I’ll update the story.

Update: Here is a link to the proposal Culberson says will cause him to have his tweets reviewed prior to being posted.  The proposal sounds fairly innocuous to me, but I don’t have a deep enough understanding of the law to know the true ramifications of what is being proposed.

Update 2: Techdirt has a post up that claims Culberson is misrepresenting what the proposal will actually do in an effort to score some partisan points against the Democrats.  Earlier in the day before Culberson’s Twitter mobilization efforts, David All weighed in against the proposal on TechRepublican while Soren Dayton wrote a post critical of the proposal on The Next Right.

Update 3: Mashable has a post up on the topic as well.

In many ways, I've learned more while explaining a concept than I do reading or listening about it.  That's why it is always intriguing to explain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to someone who doesn't work in the realm of web development. 

Over the weekend, I was explaining SEO to a librarian I know. During this conversation I was trying to explain the field to her in terms that I assume she would understand.

For example, I explained that a search engine is like a librarian whom people approach to find the most relevant information about a topic.  In the case of search engines, people ask by using a keyword.  Then the search engine provides a list of sites in order of relevance.

To do this, I explained, that search engines gauge many factors of each information source that a librarian must also consider.  These factors include: the age of the source, who cites (links to it on the Internet) it, how often it is updated, etc. 

During this discussion she mentioned something that intrigued me.  Librarians, like us all, need to conscientiously work to avoid providing biased information.  For instance, a patron may ask a librarian for a book about the librarian's religion, and the librarian may feel compelled to refer the patron a book written by someone who sheds a positive light upon the religion.  Whether this is truly the best book or not, the librarian must refrain from unduly emphasizing one factor of relevance over others.

Likewise, search engines must also work to avoid providing biased information.  This was the case years ago when they weren't as selective with the link factor when assessing a site's relevance.  Many web developers would create virtually useless sites to a human that were chock full of links (aka "link farms") to sites that they were trying to get ranked well.  The search engines eventually became more discriminating when assessing links to prevent such manipulation so that they could provide less biased results to those who used them to search for information.

Although I've understood the concept of link farms before my discussion with my friend, her comments helped me understand SEO in a better way.  Thus, I would suggest to anyone to explain the complexities of their field to someone else.  It helps.

As someone who was born in the generation that lives, breathes, writes, eats, sleeps, and drinks the Internet, I have become jaded with how many useless and uninteresting websites that I have found over the years.  It seems like every time that I sign online, I am bombarded with a flood of websites that I could easily do without.  There are certain sites, however, that are so useful and innovative in their clean design and functionality that I would be at a loss on the Internet without them.  As an Independence Day present to the readers, I decided to share these with you. (more…)

As a loyal technology fan and social change enthusiast, attending my first Personal Democracy Forum (PDF08) in NYC excited me. The ability to mingle with others who share my interests and desires to use technology to make changes in the world and ease our lives is an unbelievable experience that I couldn’t pass up. As I walked into the Lincoln Center Rose Hall, with the grand glass windows and stunning views of Columbus Circle and Central Park I instantly thought WOW – what an amazing place, just based on the location this conference is going to be great! I then walked into the atrium where many of the sponsors/exhibitors had their booths, and went to join my colleagues at our ImpactWatch booth. As I surveyed the room, I took in the beauty of the floor to ceiling glass windows and looked at the various booths around me. From the previous grand technology conferences/trade shows/exhibition fairs I’ve attended in the past, I assumed that this conference would be like all the others, packed full with booths with insight on new products and ideas and tons of swag, but when I looked around, I realized I had the wrong assumptions. Now, while I will say that the booths in attendance did advertise excellent products, including ours =), I had previously thought this conference would have had more companies in attendance advertising the other great products that are available to the online political community. After this realization, I decided to sit in on my first session and recognized what PDF08 really is all about. (more…)

Due to scalability problems, the micro-blogging platform Twitter has struggled mightily to stay up and running the last few months.  As a result of the problems, a lot of folks are threatening to abandon Twitter for the social aggregator service FriendFeed.

I personally won’t be abandoning Twitter for Friendfeed.  Here’s why:

(1) There is too much noise on FriendFeed.

I’m currently following around 160 people on Twitter.  Some of these people I know well in real life.  Some casually.  Some not at all.  I’m able to follow and learn from this large group of  people because all I see is what they type in their Twitter status bar periodically.  Sure, some people tell you what they had for breakfast.  But most people exert some level of editorial discipline on themselves, and only write when something at least semi-interesting happens.

They don’t tweet about every meal they have, just the really, really good ones.  They don’t share every item they come across on the web, just the interesting ones.  The result is a usually compelling stream of anecdotes that is updated throughout the day.

FriendFeed has no such editorial discipline.  In addition to receiving those few choice anecdotes each day about the people you follow, you also learn what they are listening too on Last.fm, what is in their Netflix queue and what they dugg on Digg, among other things.  I might be interested in knowing that stuff about my 10-20 closest friends, but certainly not about all 160 people I follow on Twitter.  It is just too much.

(2) I have no desire to recreate my Twitter network on FriendFeed.

I’ve been on Twitter for close to a year and a half now.  I’ve amassed a modest network of followers and, more importantly, have developed a good list of people I follow.  This happened organically over time and I have no desire to start over on FriendFeed.   I’m not Robert Scoble - I can’t just say I’m going over to FriendFeed and have everyone move with me.  I’m in the same boat as Patrick Ruffini, a fellow poli-tech blogger who wrote:

But the main reason I can’t brook switching to FriendFeed is the sunk cost of building up my Twitter network, and the fact that FriendFeed is still mostly for elite tech blogger groupies. I now have 898 followers on Twitter, and my posts still generate far more conversation on Twitter than they do on FriendFeed. That’s because most of my followers are interested in politics, and political users aren’t (yet) over on FriendFeed.

(3) For whatever reason I don’t like the FriendFeed user experience.

Tantek Celik wrote a great post a while back about how Twitter is successful due to its dead simple interface that minimizes keystrokes.  On the occasions when Twitter is working, it feels much less like a website than a utility that is part of you.  For me FriendFeed still feels very much like a website, and a slightly disorienting one at that.  It is just not the same.