O the Humanity.

U.N. officials are estimating that the Darfur genocide has taken the lives of 50 percent more people than originally thought.

I am trying to parse that and it makes my bones hurt. I can't grasp it. What does this mean? Another half person dead for every person dead? I... can't. It's too big. It's too sad. It's too much.

What are we doing?
Who are we fooling?

In March, international figures, including U.N. data, put the death toll in Darfur at 200,000, with another 2.5 million people displaced.

But 300,000 are believed to have died in the tribal conflict in the past two years, said John Holmes, who also is the United Nations emergency relief coordinator.

Holmes said that sexual violence has increased and that food allotments for civilians affected by the civil war will be halved in a few days.

Holmes gave the U.N. Security Council an update on conditions in the western Sudan region, revisiting a report he gave a year ago.

"I am sad to say that the humanitarian situation remains as grim today as it was then, if not more so," he said.

Meanwhile, Hillary's tough talk is downright stupid - yet another publicity stunt among many.

If the phone rings at 3 a.m. with her in office, I hope she rolls over and goes back to sleep.

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When It's Time to Call A Spade Hillary Clinton

That lying sack of shit shillary. I found this incredibly interesting reading from people who actually KNOW the people involved, and are not afraid to take a stand.

Wow. I had no idea who Ayers was except how Hillary portrayed him in that debate. Is there not a single fact immune from twisting in this twisted race?

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Doc, What'd They Put Girl Repellant In Your IV?

First this, then this.

Well if I didn't know any better, I might think there is a gender gap in technology, Virginia!

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Ladies, What the Hell Is Up?

You know, I've been in this business of solo-web-practitioner for six years now, and a couple of decades on the agency and enterprise sides before that, and I've had my say about what's frustrating and wrong with the web 1.0 and 2.0 gender divide, and I've stood up and yelled foul when it was not in the best interest of my career to do so, and I've found myself in the middle of some of the biggest Internet dust-ups of all time, but I never thought I'd have to write a post asking what the hell is wrong with you?

Not all of the ladies; of course not.

I'm talking about the ones taking advantage of the other ones. And they are numerous.

I've already done the disinfecting; I'm well aware that I'm biting the hand that feeds me here. So let me continue.

Here goes the general, sweeping observation. You tell me if I'm wrong...

When men -- male CEOs or marketing heads or agency leads -- look for help on social media projects from women-owned businesses and/or consultants who happen to be women, they do not come looking to put us through sixteen hoops, a dozen or more what-SHOULD-HAVE-BEEN-billable hours, months of hemming and hawing, and eight attempts at trying it themselves only to come back and ask 'what do you think?' all before signing the statement of work.

They do not as a rule take the ideas you give them for free in the course of detailed proposal work and run off to implement them with a 'maybe later on we'll work together!' They generally do not expect, ask for, or anticipate freebies or unpaid time on our part simply because their project is the most super-coolest-omgzbbq that you have ever ever seen.

SO WHY THE HELL DO WOMEN expect these things of other women?

Why do women in these same roles -- women who know their female colleagues are trying to make a living -- ask something of them that they would never ask of a male consultant in the same business? The female CEO who expects free help from her sister consultants would not think of asking her brothers in business for those same freebies.

Why is that? Because she would get laughed at? Ignored? Turned away? Not taken seriously?

Really--tell me why?

Did I miss the secret handshake class?

Was I sick the day they taught that women in business should give away free to other women what they wouldn't to a man?

Is there a rule somewhere that says only the men I do business with understand that I need to get paid?

I'm telling you, I find it more infuriating and frustrating than ever in the techmeme world of gangs and bangs and winner take all, we can't depend on the women business owners who seek our services NOT to do us a disservice.



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technorati tags: Women, Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0, Advertising, Marketing, Technology, PR, New Media, Sales, Business
del.icio.us tags: Women, Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0, Advertising, Marketing, Technology, PR, New Media, Sales, Business

I listen to the new sound of BBF!

George and I were strolling down AM radio memory lane from our home towns tonight - what a cool cool site for taking you baaaack. If you grew up in the northeast, you'll probably find your old favorite radio station here.

This one reminded me of the old radio FREE advertising tactic (okay maybe a couple of promo tickets to a concert, but no ad agency required) of getting the audience to answer their home phones with an ad. I remember when I spent a week or two answering our home phone "I listen to the new sound of BBF!" in hopes of winning something from WBBF. "You never know when we'll call, so answer your phone that way every time. If we call you, and you answer 'I listen to the new sound of BBF,' you win!"

Lots of radio stations in our area adopted this cheap WOM ad tactic, though few of the families in my neighborhood would dare answer the phone with anything other than a proper 'Hello?' Polite phone voices were the "in thing" before SMS.

BBF never called me. But I think that bringing back the retro ad tactic of answering your phone with a slogan is worth a try. SO the next time you call me, don't be surprised if I pick up the phone and say, "I'm voting for Obama!" And you know what I win... We all win.

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that's what you gotta do.

brush yer shoulders offf.

Tom on Social Networks circa 2004

This:

"On an only slightly less naive level, software that is social could try to imagine what is involved in the development of a society. I don't think Social Man began when a bunch of australopithecines began swapping cave art faves around a dead moose."

not-so-interim tom matrullo.
once there, now here.

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You KNOW You Know

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Big Blogger News, Sez Me - SezWho Comes to Blogger!!

In working with the folks at SezWho over the last several months, I've been on pins and needles waiting for the free service to be available for Google's Blogger blogs.

Well w00t!! That day has arrived.

Today SezWho announced a bunch of very cool news as part of it's SezWho 2.0 launch, including support for Blogger blogs and Drupal blogs and discussion forums and phpBB bulletin boards, and open APIs all around.

SezWhosers can not only rate comments, but posts as well, and they can also remain anonymous or be authenticated by email or URL, which I think is TRES COOL, because in saying I AM COMMENTING AS JENEANE OF ALLIED, I'm building one part of my reputation, and maybe I want to build my reputation as a marketing renegade by engaging in some conversations based on my GonzoEngaged URL. AND sometimes I just want to be me.

I'm not sure how it's all going to shake out as far as what blogs I'll use SezWho on first, but I am very excited at the prospects of trying it out on Blog Sisters especially, because, as the OLDEST women's group blog, that community needs some new life, some new ways to engage contributors that not only write on Blog Sisters, but have homes across the social web. I need something to encourage the ladies to come and play.

It's hard to beat the business model mantra of BlogHer and other women's communities who have found ways to monetize and even pay their contributors for participation. But when money's not the main point, there are still rewards to be had in participating -- social rewards -- and the one I like the best is FUN. Blog Sisters remains an open forum, a place for women to write about what.ever without worrying about how it might affect ad dollars or elite sensibilities. SO I think having a community-based reputation and discussion tool over there that we can use as a springboard for participating elsewhere is just what's needed.

Bub.bliciou.us has more info on the news: "SezWho 2.0 closes the conversational loop, delivering value back to site hosts (in terms of page views and engagement) and to participants (in terms of reputation and expertise building). SezWho captures valuable information about the history and expertise of individual social media contributors, encourages more thoughtful commentary, and cultivates community engagement."

I really like what Sarah Perez says on her blog and over at RWW regarding fractured conversations and why we care. Her experience discussing the topic -- where, once again, the mighty many ended up depositing their thoughts and expertise directly into Scoble's blog comments with no thread to their larger participation across other social sites -- is an example of why services like SezWho are needed. Sarah points out that conversations belong to everyone. And while this is ideally the case, I think they CAN belong to everyone and STILL be connected and tied back to the contributor, but only through tools that enable cross-media, Intersite, distributed-but-connected conversations.

I'll keep you posted about how it goes and here it goes as I move from enthusiasm into action over on Blog Sisters soon.

p.s. Mixed with my excitement over SezWho is sadness and actual panic over Eric Case leaving Bloogle, being that Eric was my only bat phone connection to Google's Blogger, and if you don't have a bat phone connection, you are often SOL when it comes to Blogger. 1.) I'm scared. 2.) GOOD LUCK ERIC and thanks for everything.

Like, for putting up with me during the migration to the new servers. Even when I was a bitch. And when I gave your email to 10 of my closest Blogger friends. And when I yelled at you because I paid $180 for blogspot hosting in 2001 and doesn't that mean something. And when I tried to reach you on sabatical. And if you wouldn't mind giving me your home number that'd be SUPER...

Seriously, Good luck Eric. Lets rock the conversatiola folks.

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on a need to know bassist

Yep.

Re:Favorite Electric Bass Players
Sunday, February 05 2006 @ 08:02 AM CST

In no particular order, my fave bass players:

Geddy Lee
Marcus Miller
Flea
Joel Johnson
George Sessum
Mark King

Mark King of Level 42 is awesome. Geddy Lee is going to be on most people's lists. Marcus Miller is maybe pound for pound the best, most versatile bass player ever. George Sessum is a jazz great who I used to see perform every weekend in the jazz group Cabo Frio. George is one of the best funk bass players EVER and I saw him in little clubs that I snuck into underage. He is unbelievable. Joel Johnson is a great bass player no one probably knows - I played with him in a band in college. And I include Flee because I love his playing - though I'm a casual fan - I only have two RHCP albums.

There are more players I like, but those are my faves.

Social Workgroup for Hire...

Oh. I remember when I had this idea! It's still ready to happen, isn't it? I bet in another couple years social workgroups will be spinning off and acquiring other socos (social companies). You'll see.

(that is if we're not all hovering next to a barrel full of wood kindling looking for scraps of food on the street post economic meltdown. I'm pretty sure it will go one way or the other. Stay tuned for details.)

Two years ago I thought it might simplify projects to work from social workgroups - something we'd been wanting to do with the gonzo engaged group since 2001. We're not quite there yet, are we guys? ;-)

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technorati tags: gonzo engaged, gonzo enraged, work-a-day life, good idea outtakes, social workgroups, social software, social underwear

so there was this tea place near art camp...

Blogger Is Slow Again

it needs to stop that shit.

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DEFinately the guy you want dealing with China, Korea, Japan...

"I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live."
--John McCain

My PTSD isn't as bad as this guy's, and you don't see me running for President.
--Jeneane

The doctors said McCain explained that while in solitary confinement he created for himself a fantasy world in which he lived. The doctors said McCain always heard the guards coming with his food, but "was often so much in his private world, that he strongly resented their coming around and bringing him back to reality by intruding. He was enjoying his fantasies so much."

Members of the two major POW/MIA family organizations know the "real" John McCain and they despise him. They have experienced firsthand his cruel, angry temperament.

In 1996, McCain encountered a group of POW/MIA family members outside a Senate hearing room. The family members were some of the same who worked tirelessly during the Vietnam War to make sure Hanoi released all U.S. POWs - including POW McCain.

McCain immediately began quarreling with the POW/MIA family members, who were eager to question him on the issue of what happened to their loved ones.

Instead showing courtesy and appropriate compassion by answering their questions, the Arizona senator pushed through the group, shoving them out of his way, nearly toppling the wheelchair of POW/MIA mother Jane Duke Gaylor. Her son, Charles Duke, a civilian worker in Vietnam, is among 2,300 American POWs and MIAs still unaccounted for by the communists.

The POW/MIA families, shocked at McCain's overly aggressive behavior toward Mrs. Gaylor, registered complaints with senate officials.

McCain's temper is legendary. Think this is why he is refusing to release medical records?

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Toward 5,000 Posts - A Penny for My Thought

I haven't made the $10-per-post day-laborer blogging wage cited in the 'blogging and death' article that is making the rounds today, or I'd be celebrating $50K pretty soon. Now, have I made $50K through connections I've made at least partly through blogging? A case could be made that I have, over the last seven years, in fact benefited thusly. And that is something, isn't it?

But that's not the point of the article.

The point of the article, I guess, is to tell the world what stress the men of blogging are under as they seek to scoop one another in running the latest breaking news story on technology, the web, and sometimes even actual news.

Our fallen brethren are mentioned by name in the article - one that would probably have made their skin crawl in its light handling of a deep subject of life intertwined with Internet culture, and which one wins in the end.

It can be argued, can't it, on the day of Mr. Heston's death that blogs don't kill people; people kill people.

And mostly, bit by bit, we kill ourselves.

As I say goodbye yet again to Shelley, who it seems has posted a goodbye to weblogging -- something Shelley has done before and yet returned again to blog another day -- I wonder if this time she's gone from blogging for good.

I wouldn't blame her. I haven't even emailed her to ask. Because I think I already know her response.

I haven't been frequenting this place myself much these days, you see. For none of the reasons mentioned by the big boys of blogging in the NYT story, the blogscape doesn't appeal to me much anymore.

The blogosphere I once loved has become the Walmart of the net, always open, stocking shelves 24x7 with every non-original, mass-produced commodity anyone might think that they might want, everything known to man that he might, with half a brain and half-witted-attention, stumble upon and consume--quickly.

In other words - it's gotten pretty stupid around here.

We were once an agora of idea merchants, crafters of thought, offering tapestries of original wit, clay pots of humor. We came together here to barter, to banter, and to exercise our voice in the town square.

We came to rile one another up, not to scoop one another.

We came to make stories, not to report news.

And when all else failed, which it did often, we came to squeeze each others' melons.

I'm not here to wax anything, although I could go on. There are plenty of blog posts from elder bloggers telling the new headliners how it used to be.

Shelley and I aren't the only ones feeling like misfits. The news makers have been supplanted by the new stenographers. The story tellers have been run over by the reporters. The pros have taken the helm. Death of the amateur be not proud.

And that's ok.

Except that it's not.

But like everything else, the net is cyclical. So I'll wait. Round and round we go. One by one they'll go. And some of us will make it through to the other side.

Meet me at the melons.


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Be Careful What You Ask For

You know, three years ago, when you blog something quirky and you don't think twice (because you are just such a funny little unit) and that something you blog about is free hamsters (because your hamsters have just had a second round of babies, having eaten the first dozen babies), and you title your post Free Hamsters (because, again, you are SOOO freakin funny) and then, because you are a blogger of some renown, Google makes sure your free hamsters post comes up on the FIRST PAGE of google search results for the term Free Hamsters, and that the image of your free hamster babies (who are now long since gone, as Google's memory long outlives a hamster's puny 2-3 year lifespan) will remain forever in the number one spot for Google image results, that you ask yourself: Why the hell did I do that?

Because I am not kidding you: I get a phone call and a couple of emails each week asking for free baby hamsters -- or even baby hamsters that cost money -- because of these posts.

No I am not kidding you. A near seven-year blogging legacy, and the most traction I've gotten on any one post -- even surpassing the kathy sierra death deal -- is my baby hamster post.

What does that tell you about the Internets? George says maybe we should be in the hamster business. I think it's smarter than being in the Web 2.0 Business.

But as of today, right now, this moment in this house: WE DON'T HAVE ANY BABY HAMSTERS!!!!

$10 a post? OMGZ BBQ Where's My Check?

"I haven't died yet."
-Mike Arrington

eh?

not fearing any man

i was just thinking

Wow, of all the April Fools posts, I wish this one were true the mostest!

Bin Laden Has Won

And its no April Fool's Joke...

November 2, 2004: Bin Laden's Goal is to Bankrupt the U.S. Economy

March 4, 2008: The $2 Trillion Nightmare



Bush - putting the "lame" in lame duck.