Do know evil: John Battelle asked the following two questions to Google and in both cases they told him, the answer is “yes”:
“1) “Given a list of search terms, can Google produce a list of people who searched for that term, identified by IP address and/or Google cookie value?” 2) “Given an IP address or Google cookie value, can Google produce a list of the terms searched by the user of that IP address or cookie value?”
Gee. I wonder who’d want that kind of information.
Technorati Tags: google
Rextrordinary discovery: Nashville blogger TV on the Fritz has made a startling discovery: He figured out I’m not the Rex that is the funny Middle Tennessee blogger who goes by the name Rex L. Camino. I’m sorry to disappoint him and others. For the record, I also am not the blogger who maintains TV on the Fritz.
Technorati Tags: brandrex
The conversational part of Wikipedia most people don’t see: Until I started hanging out inside Wikipedia to understand the “community” part of it, I didn’t quite “get” it. While this “talk” page on Wikipedia has been linked to by both Digg and /., I still wanted to point to it as an insightful (but extreme) example of the conversation that goes on beneath the surface of Wikipedia (all pages have a “discussion” link attached). Lots of passion and dedication by, granted, some obsessed folks. However, if the topic is not related to politics or technology, you’ll find the discourse a bit more polite and tame. (Sort of like the blogoshere.)
By the way, on Saturday, I posted a short item regarding this issue and gave some advice to those involved.
(Note: Rereading this, I thought I should explain why I “hung out” on Wikipedia: My “evenings and weekend project,” Smallbusiness.com, is running on MediaWiki.).
Technorati Tags: wiki, wikipedia
Time Inc. lays off broken down employees: The following sentence is a direct quote from this MediaWeek article: “Broken down, 40 business-side employees and 26 non-union protected editorial staffers were let go across multiple titles…”
(Note [and pre-apologies]: I saw a bit of humor in the parsing of that sentence, but there is nothing humorous about losing ones job.)
Technorati Tags: magazines
A good example of a new Nashville business (and media executive) weblog: The blogosphere-embracing general manager of the Nashville ABC-affiliate, WKRN-TV, Mike Seachrist, has started blogging himself.
Here are a few good things I believe suits (like me) can learn from Mike’s first few days of blogging:
1. He writes in his own voice — you know it’s him.
2. He talks honestly — explaining, for example, how the station has lucked out on ratings of the current “Bachelor,” because of some fortunate Nashville connections…(”a show that I thought was well past its prime,” he admits).
3. He comments on other blogs — like mine — during the weekend and at night, so I know he’s not delegating the conversation.
4. He links out - to other websites (like mine) boosting my blog-ego (blego).
5. Most encouraging: he doesn’t blog with numbers like I’m doing here.
Technorati Tags: blogging, businessblogs, media, nashville
