Jenn’s Other Blog

The Setting:

McAlester, OK in Pittsburg County (East-Central, OK, about an hour-and-a-half south of Tulsa, OK)

The characters:

• Jim Bob Miller - District Attorney
• Michael Ethan Miller - Jim Bob’s Son
• Gene Stipe - Former State Senator, Convicted Felon
• Wayne Stipe - Nephew of Gene Stipe
• Harold King - Operator of the “McAlester Watercooler”

The background:

The McAlester Watercooler (McCooler.net) according to it’s home page:

Our goal is to provide the citizens of McAlester, Oklahoma a place to voice their views about the on-going City events. All suggestions are welcome….Keeping it positive doesn’t mean living in denial.

According to a recent report in the Tulsa World:

King said he has been trying to get the district attorney and “most of the Pittsburg County judges” prosecuted for alleged corruption. Commentary on his Web site concerns local politics and the federal government’s investigation and prosecutions of political corruption, kickbacks to legislators, and state funds that were illegally funneled to businesses controlled by Gene Stipe.

King also told The Oklahoman:

The site focuses on McAlester politics — particularly matters related to former state Sen. Gene Stipe.

In December 2005, King filed a police report claiming Stipe assaulted him. Stipe and his brother Francis filed a stalking complaint, accusing King of harassing them. Gene Stipe also obtained a protective order against King and accused him of libel.

According to the Tulsa World report, Stipe, then an associate of Stipe have each unsucessfully gone after King on “libel” accusations, which if successful, would have carried penalties up to a year in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

On the page if his site where members are encouraged to enter their opinions, is the following quote:

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. -Thomas Paine - Introduction to Common Sense

The story:

The tumult, it seems, has not yet subsided, because over the weekend, King filed a police report and sought a temporary restraining order against Wayne Stipe.

According to a report in the Tulsa World:

King filed a police report Saturday [August 9, 2008] after Wayne Stipe allegedly hit him in the mouth outside a grocery store, records show.

Wayne Stipe said: ‘This man has been trying to pick a fight with me for the last three years. He was finally successful. He picked a fight with me, and I defended myself. I felt like I was about to be attacked by the crazy man.’

Asked whether King physically assaulted him, Wayne Stipe said King ‘verbally assaulted’ him.

King said: ‘I don’t know how you pick a fight when you say, ‘No, I don’t want to talk to you. Go away.’ He hit. I didn’t.’

So then, on Tuesday August 12, 2008, according to a report in The McAlester News that McAlester police detectives handed him subpoenas:

I was at home and they came and knocked on my door…I understand it was due to a criminal investigation requested by elected officials…[I] was not told which elected officials, or official, requested the investigation…

The Tulsa World is reporting that:

McAlester Police Capt. Don Hass said the investigation concerns ‘criminal libel’ complaints.

King Told The Oklahoman that he:

…researched posts under those pseudonyms and found one common denominator: All had written critically about Pittsburg County District Attorney Jim Miller.

Miller, according to The Oklahoman, had no comment about any investigation, but he told the Tulsa World that, “he thinks some statements posted on the Web site about him and others are libelous.”

King, calling the request for 35 names a “witch hunt,” says he needs more information before turning over any information about the bloggers (commenters) on his site:

I’m waiting specifically for what they need. There has to be a real need — and that need has to be balanced against the Constitutional rights of the blogger. Blanket requests will not be accepted. If they would be specific, I would be happy to contact that person and have them get in touch.

King told the Tulsa World he would file an objection to the subpoena.

There are several possible grounds — ranging (from) Bill of Rights issues to procedural ones. The problem that really concerns me is what they might try next.

The ramifications:

And that, my friends, is a concern for the entire online community. Right now, there is a request by either a prosecutor or a judge for the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of people who have posted criticism (some anonymously or pseudonymously) of local elected officials. The possible ramifications of such a precedent, if successful, are staggering, nationwide, in the online community, particularly the political online community. We need to watch this closely.

The “libel” complaint could easily be used as a weapon to silence dissent. As Joey Senate, past president of FOI Oklahoma Inc. and associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University, pointed out to The Oklahoman, the subpoena could have:

…a chilling effect. It just smacks of trying to chill criticism. We have a right to speak anonymously, especially about political matters.

(hat-tip, Okie Campaigns and The McCarvile Report Online)

A couple of weeks ago, I asked some friends to check out the new search engine, Cuil, to see if this might be a viable alternative to Google.

It has potential, after all, as it has been developed by some former Google employees.

Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency. Read more »

There has been a group on Facebook for a couple of years, called “Israel is Not a Country… …Delist it from Facebook as a Country.” If you go there, now, it looks very much like a spoof site. But that’s because it has been taken over by a group called the Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF), which has changed it’s logo, admins, and description, and closed the group to new membership. It has also managed to deleted over half of the original 48,000+ members.

Is this legal?

According to the JIDF, it is acting “with the advice of legal counsel and within the confines of the law.”

Why bother? Didn’t the Anti-Israel site have “Freedom of Speech?”

Well, keep in mind that Facebook is a private, not a government entity…so “free speech” is granted only as long as the Facebook administrators allow it to be taken. The new description of the group explains a little of why this was done:

This group was one of the most vile, antisemitic, pro-terrorist sites on the internet. Moreover, it was the most active hate group of all, heartily promoting hatred, murder, and genocide while proliferating abominable propaganda paralleled only by the fables of Goebbels. While such content clearly violates Facebook’s own Terms of Use and Code of Conduct, provisions that users agree to abide when they register on the site, Facebook refused to take action. Despite thousands of user complaints over the course of eighteen months, Facebook allowed this group and its ubiquitous antisemitic lies to flourish. Facebook’s own negligence and abdication of responsibility gave us no option but to take matters in our own hands.

We wish to be clear – we have no issues with legitimate political discourse so long as it is contextual, comparative and truthful. However, when it comes to encouraging the murder of Jews and purposefully disseminating misinformation to demonize Jews and to delegitimize Israel, there is a moral obligation to remove the platform of such repugnant hate-mongers. Unfortunately, we do not need to search too far back into history to realize that such evils have a real cost in terms of human lives.

The comments and posts of the original group are no longer available, but “vile” is truly an understatement. To get the gist of the types of conversations that took place there, you can take a look at a couple of smaller groups that are in the same mindset as the original, here and here.

Should the JIDF have done this?

There will be repercussions, that’s for sure. But if there are 48,000 people assimilating freely, some literally conspiring to kill and ahihilate an entire nation of people…what is the appropriate way for them to protect themselves?

I’ve noticed a similarity between the mindset of some in social networks online and that of road-rage. Some people get very aggressive while they are inside their vehicles, protected by somewhat of an “anonymous” identity. Most of these people, in real life, are harmless. But for the mentally unbalanced, that rage sometimes seeps outside the vehicle, and can result in injury or death to the object of their rage.

Social networks online are also vehicles which provide somewhat of a protective barrier of anonymity. However, when we see thousands of people congregating, fueling each others fury, actually making death threats online, and discussing strategies for exterminating an entire race - we need to realize that a few of those people might actually get out of the care and act on that rage. That is particularly true when that rage has actually been boiling for centuries, excalating in recent decades, long before there was anything called Web 2.0..

Also see: Jewish Internet Defense Force ’seizes control’ of anti-Israel Facebook group

In our most recent survey, one of the major needs expressed by respondents was a need for ways to social network more effectively. As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite social networking site is Facebook, because of its ability to interface with all so many of the other sites, and because I believe it is an example of the future of social networking.

Facebook is useful for many aspects of social networking, but the one we’re going to discuss today is promoting your own blog. Before I get started listing the blog promotion opportunities, I cannot stress enough the importance of not overusing any of these strategies - and the importance of not using Facebook only for promoting a blog. Try that, and you’ll lose friends faster than you can add them. The purpose of Facebook is to foster genuine networking relationships - and no one like to be “spammed.” But along with superpoking, sharing videos, writing on friends walls, and responding to clever status messages, here are some great blog-promotion opportunites with Facebook:

1. Sign up for FriendFeed, and add the FriendFeed Facebook Application, and selectively submit your blog posts to the Feed.
2. If you’re on Twitter, you can automate the above submissions by adding TwitterFeed, and then adding your Twitter stream to your FriendFeed.
3. Join Groups that relate to the content of your blog, or start a group on the topic of your blog. As a group administrator, you can message the members of the group when you have an action item that your think they’ll all be interested in (heed word of caution above about overusing these techniques).
4. Put links to your really important stuff in your “status” message (occassionally). Note, there are several Twitter apps on Facebook that automatically update your Twitter status to your Facebook status - if you’ve installed the TwitterFeed app in #2 above, I would not recommend using these apps. Your Facebook Friends might grow weary of the constant blog promotion directly on Facebook.)

Also see:

• Patrick Ruffini: The Early Adopter Effect
• Facebook info on the WebWarriors Wiki
• How to Develop a Social Networking Profile in Four Easy Steps
• Friendfeed: Web 2.0 for Fans of Discussion Forums

Friday is your last chance to sign up now for BlogWorldExpo 2008 at the best possible rate, so don’t miss it! The Conference is September 20-21 in Las Vegas.

I went last year, and learned a lot, so I’m planning to go back this year. From the site:

BlogWorld features the largest blogging conference in the world including more than 50 seminars, panel discussions and keynotes from iconic personalities on the leading-edge of online technology and internet-savvy business. If you are currently blogging, vlogging, podcasting, producing other forms of new media content, entering the new media industry, or just want to know what the blogosphere is all about, then you need to be at the most comprehensive blogging convention–BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Located in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center at: 3150 Paradise Road, Las Vegas, NV 89109

Vegas, baby! See you there.

Note: You can support Ft. Hard Knox by signing up using one of the links from this site. Also, if you would like to become an affiliate, and register your own blog readers, click here, or on the affiliate link at the top right of this page.

(Updated)

Do you have an online presence, or is your online reputation a bit hap-hazzard, with um-teen different ID’s and profiles on who-knows-how-many social networking sites out there? It’s time to get it together, and show some virtual self-respect. Developing an effective online profile takes a little planning and work, but it is not difficult, if you follow these four easy steps.

1. Choose a name.

   This is the name you’re going to use everywhere online, so choose wisely. You can use your own name, of course, but if you have safety and privacy concerns, you may want to choose a pseudonym. I recommend choosing a name that sounds like a real name (i.e., has a first and last name, like “Jenn Sierra”), so that you’ll also be able to use it on sites like Facebook and Linked-In. Alternatively, some social networkers choose a name that reflects their online interests or political stance (e.g., Foeammer, or bamapachyderm).

   Keep in mind, that if the name you choose is too overtly “anti” any group of people, including anti-jihad, it may eventually be banned by some of the more politically correct social networking sites, and/or make you a target for “burying” by the users on those sites. Your courage in choosing such a name is commendable, but you may find that it becomes more tiring than you think to have to continuously “start over” with new user ID’s and profiles.

2. Get a free e-mail account using your new name.

   This can be done through a plethora of e-mail services like g-mail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.. Don’t use your internet service provider (like AOL, or Cox), because if you change providers, you’ll lose your e-mail address. Begin developing a list of contacts and networking with those contacts by e-mail whenever possible.

3. Choose an avatar.

   This is the little picture that will be beside your username nearly everywhere. Choose one you like…it should be a square, and save it to your harddrive or photosharing site in a few different sizes, from 50×50 pixels to about 400×400 pixels.

4. Join social networking sites, using your new e-mail address, avatar, and name.

   …or as close to your name as you can get. The longer the site has been active, the more likely someone has already used that name, so you may have to add a number or a suffix to your user ID on some sites.

   Join networks as you discover them. You will be more active on some networks than others. On some, you’ll simply be reserving your username, but on a few, you’ll be actively developing online networking relationships by participating in voting on articles and especially in the discussions.

   On the more established networks like Facebook and Stumblupon, use the friend-finder feature which checks your e-mail address books for friends that are already using the social networking sites. This helps you develop a friends-list quickly.

And there you go - you have a Web 2.0 presence. Take care of it. Your reputation online is as valuable as your repuation in “real life.”

Update: See Get a Gravatar, by ChrisG of Blogging and New Media

(Also on FHK)

FHK receives a lot of e-mail from start-up Web 2.0 businesses, and it would be impossible to research and post about all of them, but I received one from Brendan, at SaysMe TV, which included a link to The People’s Cube, one of my favorite political satirists, so I had to take a look.

This is a link to a video explanation of how the system works. Basically, you can either make your own ad, or choose from existing ads, and sponsor one in a TV viewing area. The list of TV viewing areas is small right now, but the company is growing.

Red Square, on The People’s Cube followed up with Brandan, regardling whether politically-conservative advertising would be welcome. Here’s what Brendan had to say:

Go nuts, have at it, we’re free speech junkies. I’m a pro-war rabid capitalist, my partner is a tree hugging nut job. We both agree though the barriers to entry for political advertising should drop to nothing.

As long as we can get your ads approved for broadcast (cable guys are the last word) and stuff has to be TV ready, its up to people to decide to what gets run and what doesn’t.

Not us. (more)

To find out more about SaysMe TV click here, or to purchase political TV ads, click here.

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.

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)

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)