September 2007 - Posts
The reporting of the protests in Burma represents a fascinating application of lessons learned in the past few years about organizing and reporting online - and probably even about censoring Web sites. The tools of citizen journalism have been steadily improving since the DIY digital rally for tsunami stricken Southeast Asian regions raised the eyebrows of media watchers everywhere. And the professional media have done more than just watch citizen journalism grow. Nearly every mainstream media outlet has developed a means of actively soliciting content from their audience (ahem ). While it can sometimes be the case that when the media can't report on a story it reports on the reporting of the story, as copiously as mainstream media is cranking out boilerplate citizen journalism articles, they're also ingesting and processing photos, videos and news tips straight from the street from people who are not being paid or assigned to cover the story.
The stand-out line for me in this Wall Street Journal article was, "One blogger dubbed 'Moezack,' whose photos and descriptions of the protests -- sometimes posted minutes after events occurred -- were picked up by the international press , had stopped blogging." (FWIW, This is Moezack's blog, Today Burma .)
Communication tools for the Web have been improving, becoming more efficient, mobile based, and with more useful features. Ironically, one of the more useful tools in disseminating information on this story is the "Cbox" a comment box that works almost like an old school chat room.
Sophisticated efforts by repressive governments to block, ban, cordon and censor the Web have also increased, but then corresponding efforts to circumvent those blocks and keep the flow of information free have also made gains - both in technology like proxy servers and wireless devices and organization with small news sites run by expats with friends still in-country and concerned activist groups like Reporters Without Borders .
And so we find it all come to a head in Burma. Citizens with cameras and camera phones and video cameras and blogs and YouTube accounts and Facebook pages. A global media poised to accept the help of amateurs to report a story that's difficult to access in an official capacity. And a network of expats and cyber activists working to find loopholes and hacks as fast as the government can cut cords and pull plugs.
What I clicked, including some examples of what I've mentioned above:
"Burma is blacked out now! " It is amazing the lengths the government is going to in order to keep its shameful secrets.
What a censored page looks like to someone in Burma (via Myo Chit ).
And in case you were wondering, much of the media in Burma called it quits when they were being forced to print state propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, Voice of America news reports on Burmese junta propagandaBangkok Pundit .)
That Facebook page that's been making news: Support the Monks' protest in Burma
The Burma News Cbox - A scrolling newswire of tips, reports, rumors, links, photos. Clean and simple and one of the most useful things out there. A Cbox is a comment box that would usually appear in the margin of a blog for visitors to leave comments. The untranslated, original version is Niknayman .
Here's a collection of Cboxes on a single page.
Speaking of compiling and translating, Burma-Myanmar Genocide 2007 - "Here, we present you most updated news about current ongoing genocide in Burma/Myanmar. A translated English version of many Burmese/Myanmar blogs from within the country, for international viewers."
From that blog I saw this idea:
29 Sep 07, 11:30 - MyoThant: A group of 88-generation activists are urging UN and US & UK embassies in Rangoon to open a 1-page web service via WIFI access to general public just to submit news photos (with user name: 2007, pw: 2007). Please write to them to request this.
I wonder what kind of trouble it would cause if there was Wifi at the US Embassy in defiance of the national Internet shut-down. I imagine they'd simply deny access to the embassy.
The Burma Digest YouTube channel - Protest videos from inside the country.
Another YouTube channel of protest videos: Juvenilebirds
Those organizing expats:
Democratic Voice of Burma - News from inside the country based in Norway.Mizzima News - Exiled Burmese journalists based in Delhi, India.Ko Htike - An expat blogging from London, relaying reports and photos from contacts inside Burma.
Global Voices - Myanmar (Burma) - For international news of this nature Global Voices should be your first click, not just for news but for further links and translations. It's certainly better than randomly clicking through blog directories for worthwhile blog content.
Of course, if you did want to randomly flip through a blog director, you can . If nothing else, it gives a sense of what normal life is like there.
Speaking of worthwhile blog content, Dr. Lun Swe's blog is not in English but you don't need language to look at the photos. This is where I first saw the now infamous series of photos of the Japanese photographer shot and dying in the street. (I've seen the photos with a Reuters credit but Reuters only names "stringer" as the source, so it's not clear to me who took the originals.)
Speaking of the shooting of the Japanese photographer, I'd heard there was video of the shooting as well. All I found of that was this news report . ADDING: There's also this . It's a split second at 3:40, replayed again in the last few seconds of the clip. The point here is not to be ghoulish about the death but to document the abuse and remove any deniability.
As I write this, rumors of a mutiny or coup are popping up on several sites. Andrew Sullivan rounds up links .
That Jim Carrey video - He's got a new one now about sending e-mail to the UN, but this is the earlier one in which he explains the situation in Burma. I mention it only because at some point you're going to be watching some serious news about this story and Jim Carrey is going to show up on the TV screen and you're going to say, "WTF is Jim Carrey doing on this serious news story??"
This McConnell/Feinstein video and two bucks will get you on the NYC subway.
I was looking at some of the reaction to that "bed-wetter" article we saw in yesterday's Clicked and saw an unexpected theme: defining maturity. I'm thinking the cultural context for the question is that we typically think of diplomacy and negotiation as part of a rational grow-up profile and conversely violence and rigidity are seen as symptomatic of impulsive immaturity. The challenge to that convention says that being a grown-up means learning from mistakes and not making them again. Immaturity is characterized by cowardice and avoidance of the facts to preserve a deluded comfort. ...Plus...
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The Smoking Gun has the lawyer letter asking the restaurant owner to take down his photo with Chelsea Clinton.
I don't understand this story at all. Either someone in the Clinton legal office is acting on standing orders without thinking or there's a story-behind-the-story that we don't know.
I had never heard of buttering a floor but there are a bunch of these in YouTube.
NOTE: The victim of the prank does quite a bit of cursing.
Female 'Ninjas' Rob Richland Gas Station With Sword, Dagger - That's pretty much the whole story except that New York City has also been dealing with a ninja burglar. This can mean only one thing: it's time for a war on ninjas. Sorry al Qaeda, we're moving on. ... Plus... Hey babe, nice tatoo, the sink is staring at me, and MacArthur? What rehab center is that?
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BoingBoing has all the deets and links on that MIT student who was arrested at the airport in Boston. I don't think mine is the majority opinion, but "She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue" is one of the most galling remarks I've ever heard. In fact it's the over-reacting security team who's lucky - lucky their embarrassing string of knee-jerk panic and jumping at shadows hasn't been crowned with the loss of a promising young American life. ... Plus... Apportez it on, fake but accurate, and an annoying waste of time
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Run away the ray-gun is coming: A test of the US army's new secret weapon - We've already heard all about the new weapon that makes a person feel like they're on fire so it's not really news to watch this guy zap himself. What strikes me as I read this account, however, is how the tide has turned against non-lethal weaponry. ...Plus... A hard right cross(dressing), cancer still not cured, and Rather picks the scab
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I've been waiting to have the actual swag in hand before officially congratulating Julie Hulvey for being fastest on the draw with the tesseract answer to last week's Madeleine L’Engle contest. We were out of t-shirts but I was able to score a mug along with a baseball hat. Wear and sip from them in good health, Julie.
Congratulations also to Tim who correctly recognized that "dissed by the Manilow" was a play on "dissed in the Malibu " (last quote on the page) from "Say Anything." That was a non-swag challenge but an impressive job by Tim just as I was about to give up hope.
Virtual worlds open up to blind - I scoffed at this at first, thinking it was the latest Second Life gimmick but it has some cool thinking at its root. In some cases they're talking about overt verbal descriptions of objects in the virtual world, and I can't think of any way around that. But more is the use of 3D audio giving the feeling of a sense of place. ...Plus... The end is nigh, the neighborhood SLUT, and celebrate chairlessness
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This is an odd story because when I saw it last night I wasn't sure I'd even mention it because frankly there are taser videos online all the time and there are stories of people being tasered all the time and this one isn't too much different from the ones you've seen in the past - right down the uncomfortable shift in tone from outraged defiance to frantic screams and whimpers for mercy.
But then this morning I saw that the story had made the news cycle, I guess because TV was able to get hold of the videos through whatever wire services they consume, so I figured it was so big a story that it didn't need any linking from me.
However, having just watched another segment on it I was annoyed by two of my biggest TV pet peeves: The first is a TV person saying, "If you see the video, it's really amazing," while they talk over the video and only a little piece is shown. The second is that the entire segment was about the tasering and there was no mention of the guy's question or the circumstances. I understand that from the legal perspective the event's preamble is not especially relevant, but as a news consumer I want to know what happened.
There appear to be a number of versions of this video out there. This is the best one I've seen so far: UPDATING: This looks like the video the TV folks are running . It's part two of a series. Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here.
For the record, this is the one I initially posted:
And this is the one I saw last night . It doesn't have the best perspective on the tasering but it has the full exchange and you can hear Kerry pretty well while the whole thing is going on. I'm a little curious to know what Kerry's answer was about how he feels about conceding.
OK A FEW MORE: The arrested guy, Andrew Meyer, has a Web site .
John Kerry's Online Communications Director gives the Kerry perspective .
"How it really went down ." (Witness account relayed in a Kos diary basically says the guy had it coming. I think this is becoming clear from some of the news accounts.)
And a new Web meme is born!
This ice cream dispenser uses biometrics to tell how sad you are and gives you an appropriately cheery portion. We read so many gloom and doom reports about biometrics and big brother but it's fun to think of what else is possible beyond security, lie detecting and ferreting out dark thoughts. ... Plus... Bees in a bell jar, dissed by the Manilow and a blizzard of Benjamins
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I admit I actually watched most of the Emmy Awards - or at least, it was on the TV while I sat on the couch editing photos of motorcycles, but to the extent that it seeped into my brain while I did so, I watched.
It would have been easy to believe that the cut away was a mistake given the remarkably poor production of the show, but it was pretty clear Sally Field was veering into an "off-script" moment. While looking for a bootleg or transcript of what happened I learned that "the cut-out was only in the USA and that Canada had an uninterrupted feed."
Sure enough, a Canadian blog had the line : "If mothers ruled the world, there'd be no goddamn wars in the first place."
ADDING: Finally, here's the unedited clip .
P.S. The right way and wrong way to blog the Emmys (Also worth a look is his entry on that head-scratcher of an award category, Interactive TV . I thought it was just an excuse for Fox to cross promote another Murdoch property, particularly with MySpaceTV blurring the definition of broadcast network . Awarding Current TV doesn't fit that conspiracy theory very well, however.)
The Project for Excellence in Journalism has managed to kick up a bit of dust from the equine corpse of the bloggers vs. journalism argument with an odd bit of straw man-ism seasoned with a dose of red herring. The old ghost is the notion that bloggers, citizen journalists and now "user-news sites" will bring about the extinction of the professional journalist. ...Plus... While you were out for Sex Day and does it come in X-wing?
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I can't decide which is more mind blowing, this guy's freak out on behalf of Britney or the seriously mass media numbers hitting it. When I noted this link last night around 10 p.m. ET it was at 2.5 million. He's added more than a million more just this morning. Say hello to your newest Web celebrity. NOTE: Contains F-bombs and other cursing. You'll want headphones regardless if you're within earshot of others because it's pretty over-the-top.
UPDATE: Hey, my colleague Helen Popkin has already interviewed him .
Brains of liberals, conservatives may work differently, study finds - I'm seeing this story linked in various forms all over the place. The source study is here but you need a subscription to view it. A problem I always have with studies like this (or at least the reporting of the study) is the way they treat something like "liberal" or "conservative" as though it has some kind of biological basis. ... Plus ... the Petreaus poem, Xtreme chocolate, and the future is now.
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All day long, the Petraeus/Crocker testimony was peppered with condemnations, excoriations, denunciations and assorted Helen Lovejoyisms over a "General Betray us" ad in the New York Times. The only problem is, for those of us who only read the dead tree version of the Times on weekends there was no way to see the ad so we had to take the word of Congressmembers who seemed quite confident that it was the most horrible, inappropriate, offensive over-the-line piece of work since the last Sarah Silverman monologue - and you know members of Congress never exaggerate or over-dramatize.
Anyway, a pdf of the ad is here . I finally found it on the MoveOn.org site itself .
50 Great Widgets For Your Blog
40 Unusual Websites you should Bookmark
17 best time machines
10 Best Foods You Aren't Eating
...Plus... A Clicked swag contest!
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Hopefully the Congressional testimony by General Petraeus will occupy tomorrow's news, but on the chance that
this article is correct and the world is abuzz with talk of how terrible the Spears comeback performance was, you can watch it
here on the Mtv site in better resolution than you'll see it on YouTube. Or, take my word for it, she was as bad as the article says.
Listening to news reports today of the McCann parents coming under police scrutiny I heard them read a quote from the father's blog. That's this . NOTE: Plays sad music even before the page loads and I don't see an "off" button. Mute before clicking.
OK, I just wanted to catch up on these news items. I'll have a regular post later.
This is not the new bin Laden video that's making news this morning , and in fact earlier today I heard NBC's Pete Williams say this threat had been discounted, but y'know how we always hear about "threats made on Islamic Jihadist Web sites" but we never really see the primary source (and even if we did it wouldn't mean a whole lot)? In this case The Jawa Report takes a more detailed look at the "special gift" threat we heard about earlier this week.
The matter of Apple gadgets and the related hype are best left to MSNBC.com's gadget coverage but since it has indeed seized the attention of a portion of the Web community, this is what I clicked:
The letter from Steve Jobs to people who feel like they've been ripped off for buying the more expensive iPhone a couple months ago. Bottom line, a hundred dollar store credit.
Apple screwed you: So now what?
Jobs didn't screw you - Bottom line: If you though the phone was valuable enough to you that you'd pay $599 for it, that shouldn't have changed. It's the same phone it was when you didn't feel ripped off.
Want your $200 back? - This was before the Jobs letter when there wasn't yet an official Apple policy but it implies that complaining works.
General consensus about liveblogging coverage of the recent Apple event is that Engadget was the best place to go . Even non-live it's a nice record of the event.
iPod touch may do more than Apple expects - I mention this because it's exactly what I said when I heard about it: "Imagine, if you will, being able to get to your e-mail, use AIM, play games, and use whatever other applications you so desire, all without carrier lock-in and monthly fees." And I can go back to having a nice small phone.
Everyone's been talking about the Craigslist hookers - mostly in a thick tone of "duh!" - but for me it calls to mind a question I wonder every time a story like Senator Craig's comes up. With so many lower risk ways of obtaining sex for hire, particularly through the Internet, why are people still soliciting sex via foot taps in public bathrooms? ...Plus... Too sexy for this plane, Web 2.0 must be good for something, Ride on
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The story of Senator Craig is hardly exclusive the blogosphere and by now you've likely seen the news that he may not resign after all. But an interesting side note is a voicemail the Senator accidentally left at a wrong number, obtained by Roll Call , that gives some insight into the kind of maneuvering that goes on behind the scenes. The audio doesn't play with a direct click, but right click and save it to your machine and then play it and it works. It's a quick mp3.
Google Earth has a hidden flight simulator in it? Keyboard controls listed here. I thought I had the latest version of Google Earth from when I checked out their new Sky layer a couple weeks ago but I still had to go through a pretty heavy download. Once I did that though, the Ctrl + Alt + A keystroke worked and I was in the air in a matter of seconds. Of course, minutes later I was spinning out of control, narrowly avoiding crashing into the mountains. ... Plus... Name that color, tattooed lady and reading your eyes
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I don't know how much mainstream media played this last week, but one thing I missed while I was away was the clip of Miss Teen South Carolina answering a question about why Americans aren't better at geography. Her answer may be more revealing than if she'd managed to actually put two words together.
UPDATE: OK, I actually looked around and I see she was on every TV show in the world. Most relevant is probably the Today show clip with Anne Curry and Matt Lauer trying to make her feel better and give her another shot at the answer.
OK, JUST ONE MORE UPDATE (probably): I know it's ridiculous to rehash week-old news but I got sucked into a mini-clickathon with this Miss South Carolina thing. A Clicked reader named Lawrence shared with me a letter he sent to the Today show disputing the accuracy of the question itself (so it's really Lawrence's fault I got sucked into this story). He also provided this link to the most likely source of the question's basis. It doesn't make Americans look good, but it also disagrees with the "1 in 5" stat in the question.
The "dumb question" argument is made well on this Salon blog :
"She was asked a dumb question, and the world's beating her up for the sin of not being able to arrive quickly enough at the sort of meaningless sound bite that we expect from our politicians."
I also appreciated this point:
"Upton could have answered, because people can easily find where things are, and there's less appreciable difference, in our era of instant knowledge, between knowing things and knowing how to find things."
What else I clicked: Miss South Carolina's geography quiz on People Magazine's site kind of makes me hate her (I think it's that smile).
Speaking of hating her, Jezebel picks her apart via her Facebook page.
From there I followed a link to a clip of a guy from gossip site TMZ making people look stupid with questions about 9/11 (pretty funny to see a guy trying to push an alternate explanation of what happened on 9/11 on people who don't even know the official explanation). Of course, we've seen that before and looking around for "stupid Americans" reveals no shortage of material - particularly foreign comedy shows . The perpetuation of that stereotype is probably the worst thing about Miss Teen South Carolina's garbled answer.
OK, ONE LAST ONE: Since Bill Maher mentioned it on Hardball, George Bush answers a question on tribal sovereignty .
