Jenn’s Other Blog

Mashable featured a great new site today, called LiveNewsCameras.com:

On the whole, LiveNewsCameras is a simple invention, but something that a number of news junkies will find appealing, particular when away from the television set. Furthermore, those interested in viewing news from time zones or regions unique from their own can make some use of the broad selection of channels delivered through the new site. In addition to a broad swath of US-bases news channels, LiveNewsCameras provides viewers with one-click access to videos streams, including regular weather reports as well as international broadcasters like BBC World, Sky News, France 24, Al Jazeera, and NHK Japan.

I checked it out, and it is incredible. There are over 200 feeds already. I watched live from the Pentagon, as Bush greeted the atheletes and fans at the Wounded Warriors Bike ride. There are news and weather channels all over the U.S., and about 16 abroad. This is a news junkie’s dream. Check it out.

The only thing that could make this better is a way to embed this on a blog.

Western Conservatives have been warning that socio-politcal movements such as the leftism, socialism, and leftist-islamism have been increasing their power online, partly by sheer volume.

USA Today reported yesterday, “China Vaults Past USA in Internet Users“:

The number of Chinese on the Internet hit more than 220 million as of February, according to estimates from official Chinese statistics by the Beijing-based research group BDA China….there is strong government backing for companies such as China Netcom, which offers broadband service at $10 a month…(more)

The United States previously had more internet users than any other country online, and now communist China, at least according to its own calculations, holds that honor. PC Advisor:

China seems set to consolidate its global position, despite complaints of human rights violations and widespread internet censorship in the country. China’s population numbers 1.3 billion people, just 17 percent of which have access to the internet [compared to 71% in the U.S.].

We know these Chinese internet users aren’t watching YouTube, right? So what are they doing? The USA Today report cites internet communications and gaming. That’s not the only thing that’s going on online, however. in March, FHK’s TXPoet wrote:

Chinese “hackers” have broken into U.S.-based, German-based and several other other country’s computer networks in attempts to: steal national security information, steal economic data, steal trade secrets and perform denial of service (DNS) attacks. This is not new nor is it news to those in the Government but it seems to be to the general public. The London Times broke a story about Chinese hacking into the German Chancellery and three other German ministries in August 2007. The Financial Times reported in September 2007 that Chinese hackers had broken into a Pentagon computer network. ZDNET reported on a group of Chinese hackers in November 2005. The LA Times reported on Chinese hacking again on 4 March 2008.

The Chinese government claims these hackers are independent and have no connection with the government. Security experts say that the Chinese government is paying the hackers. It is inconceivable that China with the most highly censored Internet system in the world is not fully aware of who these hackers are and what they are doing. The Golden Shield Project, better known as the Great Chinese Firewall removes even “plausible deniability”.

Hmmm…let’s think, If They Did It, how would the Communists take over the web?

Visit FHK’s resist! red china Archive.

Wikio has a list of the monthly rankings for the most influential blogs in the blogosphere: (Hat-Tip, Jack Givens)

How are these rankings compiled?

The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. These links are dynamic, which means that they are backlinks or links found within articles.

Blogrolls are not taken into account and Wikio only counts links from the last 120 days. We thus hope to provide a classification more representative of trends in the blogosphere.

Moreover, the weight of a link depends on the linking blog’s position in the Wikio ranking. With our algorithm, the weight of a link from a top blog is greater than that of a link from a blog that is less well ranked.

Our rankings also include Top Blogs for several categories: Technology, Politics, etc. New categories will be added on a regular basis.

Under “Politics,” the top ten are:

1. The Corner
2. Daily Kos
3. The Caucus
4. Think Progress
5. Michelle Malkin
6. Political Ticker
7. The Daily Dish
8. The Liberal Blog Network
9. Crooks and Liars
10. NewsBusters

Under “Technology” the top ten are:

1. TechCrunch
2. Gizmodo
3. Engadget
4. Daring Fireball
5. Mashable
6. Boing Boing
7. ReadWriteWeb
8. Valleywag
9. Lifehacker
10. MSDN Blogs

For a general list and other content-matter blog rankings, go here.

As you can see, this list is a little more objective than the one Time Magazine released recently. It is also helpful, because it tells readers how they can legitimately improve the ranking of their favorite blogs (hint: links are important!).

WEbook (beta) is a new “User Generated Book” site that combines the collaborative writing process of group blogs and wikis with social networking. Writers on WEbook can work individually, within their group of friends, or with the entire WEbook community to produce content, the best of which (as determined by the community) is published for sale to the public by WEbook.

Even if you’re not a writer, you can review and provide feedback for active projects, if requested by the authors.

The service is free to the users, and if your work is chosen for publication, WEbook says it’ll foot the publishing bill, and you get to share in the profits of projects you’ve contributed to. The down side is that everyone who has contributed significantly to the book once it sells gets to share in a whopping 5% of the royalties - so don’t plan to make a lot of money on this type of project. It’s mostly for sharing information, and honing your writing skills.

WEbook explains how writers can benefit from using the site:

First, you will find a very talented community of writers, reviewers, and readers at WEbook who will give you terrific feedback on your writing, whether you start your own project or jump into one of the existing public projects on WEbook. You can work on a public project or start a private project with a group of your friends and benefit from their input.

Second, posting your work at WEbook gives you a shot at being published by WEbook. Unlike “vanity publishing,” WEbook foots the bill for published books and markets them on our site and other retail channels. The community itself will rate work, and a la American Idol, help tap the next published books for the WEbook imprint.

Third, if you do find yourself selected for publication (either as an author of a chapter of a novel, an essay in a collection, or a book you lead), you will be entitled to a percentage of the royalties on sales of a book to which you made a major contribution. WEbook allocates 5% of sales to royalties for contributors (authors and those who provide valuable feedback), and you would secure a share.

Finally, you’ll enjoy the esteem and admiration of friends, fame, pride, and that nice warm feeling you get inside when you do something you’ve always dreamed of.

And explains the collaborative writing process:

Collaborative writing is not a parlor game. At WEbook, collaborative writing takes many forms. Writers can create chapters together, contribute individual features to a collection, or just get feedback on their own work . WEbook dismisses the legend of the lonely author working alone in the attic in favor of an entirely different model: The dynamic creation of a new kind of content, borne of the active involvement of countless talented writers, readers, and reactors engaged at WEbook.com.

Working with other people gives you a chance to play to your strengths. You can post a fledgling idea, help flesh out someone else’s inspiration, give a friend advice on improving her writing, or write a chapter that picks up on the twists of the one before it. At WEbook, you can always find the sweet spot in the creative process, and WEbooks are far better for the infusion of so much talent.

WEbook will leverage the wisdom of the crowd to create, rate, and elevate the very best work for publication.

WEbooks is funded by Greylock Partners which has also invested in well-known sites like Linked-In, Digg, Constant Contact, Facebook, and many others.

To find out more, check out the FAQ’s.

(Hat-tip, Mashable)

Considering who Time Magazine chose for its Person of the Year in 2007, this list should not come as a surprise. Time has chosen the top 25 (mostly) lefty blogs on the web and had the audacity to call the list, “The Top 25 Blogs.” This is Time Magazine’s first attempt at such a list. For next year, we challenge the editors of time to at least visit the other side of the blogosphere.

Let’s say you find yourself needing to save money, and find someone to share living expenses. I’ll get a roommate, you think. This is a sensitive matter. This is the person you will be sharing at least a kitchen and living quarters, perhaps a bathroom, a garage, and definitely your set of house keys with for months, maybe years. This person is going to have access to your personal belongings, your family, your friends, your phone calls, and your computer. Trust and compatibililty are paramount.

But the government, via the Fair Housing Act, says it is not okay for you to choose this person based on basis of “race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, and national origin.”

This is simply not practical, or sensible. People choose their living companions based largely on compatibility and convenience.

Take weekends, for example. Let’s say like to have your friends over on Friday nights, to do your household chores on Saturdays, and then attend church on Sundays. You might want to think seriously about whether you are going to be compatible with someone who considers Friday or Saturday to be a sabbath or a day of rest. Or holidays. Things can get a little awkward when one person is celebrating Christmas and Easter while the other is committed to weeks of mourning. Meals? Maybe you have a fettish for pickled pigs feet, and like to keep them in the fridge at all times. This is likely to totally gross-out someone who either doesn’t eat pork, or doesn’t eat meat at all. It isn’t that it is impossible to find solutions to these problems, but maybe this is just more “diversity” than either of you is going to want to deal with on a 24/7 basis.

And seriously. While gender and sexual orientation can be none of anyone’s business in public or the work place - it’s pretty hard to ignore these personal matters when someone is in your home. Traditionally, roommates have often chosen to live with someone of the same gender, specifically to avoid the uncomfortable situation in which one roommate becomes sexually attracted to the other. Is that no longer possible? Familial status…Wouldn’t it be nice to know if your potential roommate has a spouse and children that are going to be in your home every weekend?

Online, roommate matching services have operated largely in the same way that dating services have operated, in which a series of questions is answered by each applicant, and then possible matches are made by the computer. Until now, websites have been protected from lawsuits by the law. As Wired.com explains:

Apartment hunting site Roommates.com cannot shield itself from an housing discrimination lawsuit by claiming it is just an internet forum, because the site requires users to answer questions about their gender, marital status and sexual orientation, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

The ruling is an important one because it sets a limit on a federal law protecting internet forums from lawsuits. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act largely frees websites, online forums and ISPs from responsibility for what users say on their sites. Online freedom advocates describe that law as the best thing Congress has ever done for freedom of expression on the internet, since it allows social networking sites, hosted blogging services and news sites with commenting features — like this one — to let users be responsible for their words.

That legal immunity doesn’t apply to Roommates.com, the court ruled, because the check boxes on the site actively solicit discriminatory content, making the service much more than a simple forum….(more)

The larger story here is that the advocates for the political-correctness agenda onine have just won a major victory while advocates for personal liberty and freedom of speech online have sustained a loss. Watch for more lawsuits like this, in which things like “discrimination” and “hate speech” become not only frowned upon by the online community, but actually illegal.

What about dating sites? Well, for now, they’re safe. At this time you can at least still use sexual orientation as part of your screening process is choosing a date. For now.

Also see: .pdf of the ruling

(hat-tip, Mashable)

The Telegraph is quoting a Saudi clerick, Ali al-Maliki, critical of Facebook:

Facebook is a door to lust and young women and men are spending more on their mobile phones and the Internet than they are spending on food.

He says that like it’s a bad thing - I mean, afterall, we wouldn’t want the Saudi teens to get fat, and start resembling “ugly Americans,” now, would we?

Facebook has become quite a divisive issue in Saudi Arabial, according to Arab Media and Society, with the young women arguing that, it “to express their feelings and build friendships with young women from all around the world. They continued that it granted them the opportunity to learn about different customs and traditions…”

Unfortunately, there is a very sad side to this story. Maliki’s attitude represents that of many other Saudi’s, and one of these men took it to the extreme by murdering his daughter after he caught her communicating with a man on Facebook, in what is commonly called an “honour killing.”

A friend who brought this story to my attention pointed out that there is a third perpsective on this issue, which is the west’s observation and commentary on the events. On the U.S. based social news site, Digg.com, a user posted the story from ValleyWag, to Digg.com. His comment (thanks, Tim!) was, “You should keep an eye on not the article itself, but the Digg-no-crati’s response…already the first couple of comments are out of this world!”

He was right. The story had made the front page of the site, and received over a thousand Diggs, and over 350 comments. While the submitter’s story description was simply neutral and factual, the comments were very empassioned. Some of the comments expressed the expected shock and sadness over the death of the young woman.

Many of the comments, however, were attacking those who dared to insinuate that this “honour killing” might reflect negatively on Islam. Some commenters attacked the submitter, simply for posting the story. Others pointed out that Christians and Jews do bad things, too. Some were attacking the institution of religion altogether.

Here’s an interesting comment, by omegaredIX, basically blaming the west for the problem (***** indicates words deleted by the profanity filter):

Well dumbass Radicals on both sides ***** things up for moderates on both sides as well. Does the westboro baptist church define all baptists? I condemn violent acts on both sides but i also condemn ignorant tools saying “religion of peace” like they know what the ***** they are talking about. Extremist ruin things for everyone. We should also understand why people kill in the name of Allah and why they are blowing themselves up etc. All you have to do is look at the Wests impact on the Muslim world. Throughout Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, the Iran-Iraq war. This research will also take days seeing as you actually have to open a ***** book and study thousands of years of history to really grasp and know what the ***** you are talking about.

ralphthemagi defended the Saudi culture:

It’s their country. Their a sovereign nation. It is, like it or not, their right.

One Digger named slyzxx bemoans:

what is digg turning into anti islam ?…

And this pseudo-intellectual, Stryder81, assumes that the young woman apparently deserved to be killed, because if she didn’t want to follow the rules where she lived, she should have simply moved. This one even includes a catchy phrase at the end [emphasis mine]:

I swear if one isn’t careful on digg, they can catch a heart attack.

How so many give such Naive & ignorant comments to this day on a social news site is incredible to me.

First off, This is in ” Saudi Arabia ” done by an ” Arabian Individual ” it has NOTHING to do with Religion.

# 2, Whether you or I like it, that is the way they operate over there. Knowing that, You should not play with fire unless it is justified one way or another, unless you are a female.

Those of you bashing on Religion so quickly just because of a story or 2 then taking out verses that are meant for one thing and not the other to try and justify your own personal disagreement shows nothing more than pure ignorance at it’s finest.

Bottom Line, This girl was going on there looking for a guy, not to socialize with friends. You people who look at this as ” wow thats crazy, all she did was talk to a guy ” are the same ones who look at 14 year olds on Maury Povich with 10 kids and say ” Damn, society today has really changed ” and flip the channel.

If you live somewhere where you can’t wear a red shirt, don’t wear it or move. What is so complicated.

I don’t condone murder, I don’t care what it’s for, but don’t try to push the buttons of the hand that feeds you especially in a country that has had these laws for many many years.

Laws of the LAND ( Saudi Arabia ) not ” The Qu’ran “

I find the number of people on this social “news” site willing to defend and excuse something as brutal as killing one’s own child shocking. I can think of only two reasons for this happening: Either Digg.com has become the go-to place for the a heartless, mindless subset of the internet generation, or there is an element operating on the site, systematically spreading disinformation.

NewsFutures: Prediction Markets is a new social news sites, which boasts “delivering the wisdom of crowds”. To see how it works, go here, and create an account. No real money is exchanged, although winners are able to bid on real prizes such as upgrades, or Amazon.com gift certificates.

According to an ABC report:

While the money earned on NewsFutures isn’t real, Servan-Schreiber [the creator of NewsFutures] argues that prediction markets are an incredibly valuable tool.

“I think of them as a brain,” he said. “You take a bunch of individually stupid neurons and put them together. Through massive interaction emerges intelligence. It’s the same thing with the market.”

“The market really is smarter than the average player in there, and sometimes smarter than anyone in there, even the best player,” he said. This aggregation of many people’s opinions, Servan-Schreiber argued, produces an “incredible probability that the market prices really corresponds to the probability [of the event occurring].”

Here is a CBS video about the site.

Question: How, if at all, do you think this type of technology and social networking will affect American politics?

Noah Shachtman: A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested ‘clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers’.

Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy,” offers a third approach…” (Continue Reading)

Noah Shachtman: A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested ‘clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers’.

Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy,” offers a third approach…” (Continue Reading)