I wrote my piece about how a This American Life episode transformed news consumption of mortgage crisis stories after reading a post by NYU professor Jay Rosen at Idea Lab. My article included an interview with Rosen and TAL producer Alex Blumberg. Today Rosen did a follow-up on the story.
Last night I reported that sites using Site Meter statistics were causing problems for Internet Explorer users. Well, it looks like it’s been fixed. Bloggasm reader Tammy B. forwarded this message from the Site Meter team:
Dear SiteMeter Users,
We corrected a compatibility issue with our SiteMeter tracking code and IE7 and IE6 browsers that started last night.
The problem was related to some work we were doing on the backend system for our upcoming website launch.
We’ve identified and resolved two separate but related issues -
1 - IE Users viewing pages - The error occured when the SiteMeter tag was not a direct child of the body tag (e.g. if the tag was within a table or div). Recent changes we made created a failure for visitors viewing sites using Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 6.
2 - Accessing SiteMeter and Stats - Individuals trying to access or view their SiteMeter stats by clicking on their SiteMeter logo/icons were unable to gain access. This again appears to have affected only individuals using IE7 and IE6.
At this time both problems have been fixed and our services are fully operational.
For those who removed the SiteMeter code from your pages please be assured that the problem has been resolved and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
If you have any questions please let us know by submitting a support ticket at support.sitemeter.com.
Sincerely,
The SiteMeter Team
Updated below
In a recent post criticizing blogger Michelle Malkin, I said that she “will stop at nothing to drag her opponents through the mud, often at the expense of actual facts.” And then, once she’s been caught in an error, “she spins her way into oblivion by backtracking on just about every incorrect claim she had made.”
To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at Malkin’s “lead story” for today, a post titled “Question of the Day: Where did the DNC get its IED footage?”
It hit the web at 11:43 a.m., and highlights a recent advertisement made by the DNC that shows a very brief (less than half a second) clip of a bomb going off near American soldiers. Malkin takes the clip and asks where the footage came from. She then favorably block quotes a source that accuses the DNC of getting the footage from terrorist jihadis “who videotape IED explosions that kill American combat troops. The jihadists place the video on the internet to tout their ‘kill Americans’ campaign success.”
After the block quote, Malkin writes, “they’re certainly dumb enough and indifferent enough to our men and women in uniform to incorporate jihadi propaganda into their campaign ads.”
Next, she posts an “update” at 11:56 a.m. claiming that the DNC got the footage not from a terrorist website but from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. She then asks where Moore got the footage from (thereby passing the ball to him) while also accusing the DNC of plagiarizing Moore.
And then finally, she posts a second “update” at 12:12 p.m. pointing out that the footage actually came from a network news source from right after the invasion.
The post then ends with a long quote that accuses the DNC of exploiting the images of soldiers being blown up for political gain.
So just to recap for those playing along at home, here’s the narrative that takes place on a single post over a span of 29 minutes and 500 words:
1. The DNC is using terrorist propaganda videos in advertisements to attack John McCain. 2. Actually, Michael Moore is using terrorist propaganda videos in advertisements to attack John McCain. Also, the DNC is plagiarizing Michael Moore by using footage without permission. 3. Actually, neither Michael Moore nor the DNC is using terrorist propaganda videos to attack John McCain. They were both using footage from a US news network. But that’s not the REAL issue here. The REAL issue is that they’re using videos of soldiers being blown up for their own political gain.
According to Malkin’s sitemeter stats, around 16,000 unique visitors went to her site during the hour in which this was posted. The time lapsed between the initial posting and the final update was about a half hour. So that means about 8,000 people visited her site in between the posting and the update, not counting all the RSS feed readers. Depending on the number of people who checked back at the site to see the new update, that means that as many as 8,000 people went out into the world today thinking the DNC is using terrorist video footage for its advertisements. And who knows how many people they will repeat this lie to.
And Michelle Malkin has the gall to criticize other news networks? Imagine if a mainstream news source had committed such an act targeting a conservative; she wouldn’t have stopped attacking them for weeks.
UPDATE: Surprise surprise. It turns out the footage came from Getty Images. Various reports show that it was licensed legally. So no copyright infringement and no terrorist propaganda video.
A year ago today, artists and writers celebrated International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, an event where hundreds of them release their work online for free. I wrote about the day over here. Apparently it’s to become an annual event, and today’s the day.
A few weeks ago I published an article that gave some of the details of a major new website that science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor Books will be launching within the next few months. I said that it will implement light social networking and publish original short fiction and nonfiction for free online.
Well, the other day Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden revealed even more details about the site at his blog.
But we know several things. We know that the site will use a blog-like architecture to present an ongoing stream of news, opinion, and observation from various Tor people, myself included, about the SF and fantasy events of the day—and about perhaps less-current things that are nonetheless of interest to SF and fantasy readers, such as medieval siege engines, the Van Allen Belt, hoisin sauce, XKCD, and the novels of Georgette Heyer. We know that there will be non-Tor bloggers also posting to the “front page”; in fact we’ve already recruited several in order to ensure coverage of particular niche areas. (Some of these individuals will be familiar to Making Light readers—wave hello, Bruce Baugh—and we haven’t finished recruiting, either.) We know that the site will also feature new original fiction on a regular basis, illustrated under the supervision of art director Irene Gallo, and that these original stories—free of DRM, offered as part of the blog feed and also Available For Your Convenience in a variety of other formats—will have their own associated open comment threads, just like everything else on the blog. We know that there will be lightweight “social networking” features for registered users, including the ability to form mutual-interest groups through tagging and the ability to create journals and/or discussions of their own. Most of all, we know that the real point of the exercise isn’t to create yet another blog, but rather, a place and a context for the lively, ongoing, wide-ranging, and profoundly self-organizing discussions that have characterized the science fiction subculture since its earliest days. In other words, it’ll be a lot like Making Light, except with original fiction and art, more front-page bloggers, a more direct connection to SF and fantasy, and run out of the middle of Tor Books.
Damn, it appears that my opening line in my article on the mainstreaming of atheism is false, atheists do have holiday cards, though these don’t come from Hallmark. A reader named Andrew Shaffer wrote in to say:
Re: Hunter’s comments in the “Dawkins Effect” article: “If they had hallmark cards, maybe they wouldn’t feel so left out. We have Christmas cards. We have Kwanza cards now. Maybe they need to get some atheist cards and get that whole ball rolling so more people can get involved with what they’re doing.”
…funny thing is, we DO have holiday cards!
(wink, wink, points at links to own shop below)
***
Related posts:
1. Facebook users fight back
Seeing as how I wrote a post about the history of the typewriter a few days ago, it’s only appropriate that I link to the virtual typewriter museum
***
Related posts: How to make $50 million in online advertising revenue
Bloggasm is a blog run by Simon Owens that focuses on the media, with an emphasis on online media and journalism. It often features interviews with prominent bloggers, authors and journalists. If you want to request an interview, just drop us a line.
simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
