Google Not Shut Down! (Shot Down, Maybe)
An inordinate people are coming in to view my four-year-old post "Google Shut Down for 15 Minutes, Thought Hacked." A couple minutes of digging reveals the likely cause. Michael Arrington reports, in a piece with the odd title "Twitter Mania: Google Got Shut Down. Apple Rumors Heat Up," that there are rumors that Apple is trying to buy Twitter, this ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 5, 2009 06:19
Google Search Moving Web 2.0
Michael Arrington previews what purports to be a prototype of a new Google search experience, incorporating user commenting and voting such as we see on Digg and other social media sites: The video above shows a user interface being bucket tested by Google to select (probably randomly determined) users. Earlier today we showed a screen shot of the interface and a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 17, 2008 09:09
Blogrolls, RIP
Duncan Riley laments the demise of the blogroll. Once upon a time in the land of the blogs, the blogroll reigned suprmeme. Everyone had a blogroll, and it was a great way to discover new and interesting blogs. But somewhere along the way blogrolls fell out of favor, and you don’t seem them much at all today. [...] Unlike other areas of blogging, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 9, 2008 11:26
Blog Linking Less Important?
Louis Gray believes the importance of blog linkage is declining, noting that, "I've seen traffic from other blogs to be driving an ever-declining percentage of visits to my site, swamped by social media tools, aggregation sites, and of course, Google search." He offers three likely explanations: 1. People are relying on aggregators to find them new sources of information, including ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 8, 2008 08:17
Google Shuts Down Anti-Obama Blogs
Some Obama supporters are apparently taking advantage of Google's terms of service to silence anti-Obama blogs, Simon Owens of Bloggasm reports. The company automatically shuts down sites upon receipt of TOS violation claims until they're able to do a human audit, a rather slow process with given little priority on the free BlogSpot service. After some digging it became apparent ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 30, 2008 12:30
McCains Pay Back Taxes on Aunt’s Condo
The latest mini-scandal in Campaign 2008 is that the McCains have apparently not done a good job keeping track of their finances. HuffPo has gotten 1420 Diggs at this writing with a story headlined "McCains Defaulted On Home Taxes For Last Four Years, Newsweek Reports." It promises "a highly embarrassing report." Newsweek has delivered with "Mrs. McCain, San Diego County ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 29, 2008 06:54
Presidents and Computer Literacy
Jane Hamsher wants to know, "If You Can’t Use a Computer, How Can You Be President?" I chuckled when I saw the story at memeorandum since, after all, it's unlikely that any president before Bill Clinton could "use" a computer in any meaningful sense. (Maybe Jimmy Carter, who was a nuclear engineer in a past life, could, too, but proficiency ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 24, 2008 10:42
Shelby Steele: Yes He Can
The gang at Media Matters is excited that they have caught Shelby Steele admitting that the subtitle of his book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win (Free Press, December 2007) is wrong to Sean Hannity. HANNITY: All right, so he can't win? STEELE: He can win. I regret that subtitle. HANNITY: OK. STEELE: It was ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 24, 2008 08:52
OTB Caption JamTM
Weekend Caption Jam Linkfest. . . Rodney is off to Alcatraz. Wizbang is in a hole and digging faster. Wyatt Earp has a balled head. Public Pondering is serving steamed rice. Cowboy Blob is bulking up. Willisms shoulda worn white gloves. Right ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 24, 2008 10:28
Indiana and North Carolina Postmortem
Barack Obama moved to within 200 delegates of securing the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, scoring a 56-42 blowout in North Carolina while narrowly losing, 49-51, in Indiana. Barring revelations that would make the Wright affair look insignificant in comparison, the race is all over but the shouting. Obama Wins the Night AP's Calvin Woodward: On the rebound, Barack Obama left Hillary Rodham ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 7, 2008 06:11
Bill Clinton’s $450,000 Charity Speech
Fundraising has been very, very good to Bill Clinton. When London socialite Renu Mehta sought to urge Britain's super-rich into giving more to charity, she threw a fundraising dinner headlined by former President Bill Clinton, who has used his global star power to encourage large-scale philanthropy that stresses accountability. Mehta declared the first gathering of her Fortune Forum, held Sept. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 8, 2008 10:17
State Dept. Contractors Caught Snooping Obama Records
Via Marc Ambinder and reporter Bill Gertz of the Moonie Washington Times, three State Department contract employees were recently caught sneaking peeks at Barack Obama's passport records. The relevant particulars from Gertz's piece: The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department's consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 20, 2008 22:35
Hitchens on 5th Anniversary of Iraq War
As part of a retrospective commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, Christopher Hitchens admits to having been right all along. He does, however, reject the premise of the question. Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with Iraq would have to know that a heavy U.S. involvement in the affairs of that country began no later than 1968, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 18, 2008 08:06
McCartney Divorce Settlement
Reflecting on the Paul McCartney-Heather Mills divorce settlement, Alex Massie, blogging from the other side of the Pond, observes, Isn't £24m pretty fair compensation for having endured Sir Paul McCartney for four years. It works out at £16, 427 a day which, as a per diem, seems quite reasonable... (Of course if you take the view that she is but a gold-digger, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 17, 2008 14:55
Barack Obama’s Crazy Pastor
My colleague Alex Knapp has pointed out some outrageous comments made by John Hagee and Rod Parsley, nutball preachers whose endorsements McCain has courted and received. McCain's not alone, apparently, among our major presidential hopefuls in having associations with religious crazies. By far the hottest story on memeorandum today is an ABC News piece headlined "Obama's Pastor: God Damn ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 13, 2008 14:18
