blogs

Mostly American blogs but some of the ones I read…does that mean I am an amalgamation of the thoughts.

Slackstory explores what your favourite blog says about you.

The other day Boing Boing published an article about the Police in Georgia (the country not the state) and their new iPad like devices. In the article they added the following comment:

“100% guaranteed those crooked, fat, lazy cops will be using these devices primarily for porn and Russian gambling services.”

Boing Boing is clearly very widely read because the Georgian government responded. The letter is awesome and shows how you can turn a silly comment into a social media win. Labour should take note:

The article published on [Boing Boing on] January 12, 2012, about the initiative by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia to introduce new portable field computers (so called “Police Pads”) ends with an anonymous quote declaring that “100% guaranteed those crooked, fat, lazy cops will be using these devices primarily for porn and Russian gambling services.”

Stereotypes like this are easy to toss out—but are quite simply incorrect. This quote does not reflect the productivity, effectiveness, transparency, and reliability of the police force in Georgia today, but rather the bygone era of the 1990s, a reality that has drastically changed thanks to an ambitious and successful reform process.

The reform process in Georgia began immediately after the 2003 Rose Revolution. The new government inherited a completely corrupt and bloated law-enforcement system. The systemic corruption and the high level of crime throughout the country resulted in a very low level of public trust: fewer than 10% of Georgians had confidence in the police, according to 2003 polls. And the very low average policeman’s salary (approximately $68 per month) made the soliciting of bribes routine.

Georgia has since made the creation of an efficient and modern police force a national priority, undertaking a series of reforms that sought to rebuild the national police force literally from the ground up. The entire national police force was fired, and a new force hired, trained and deployed with the aim of meeting the highest international standards of professionalism.

These reforms are widely regarded as an unqualified success. Having reduced corruption and bribe taking to levels comparable to those in Europe, the police in Georgia have earned the trust and respect of the public they serve:

•According to Transparency International’s latest Global Corruption Barometer, in terms of public perception Georgia has the world’s 5th least-corrupt police force, placing it ahead of Germany or even the United States;

•According to the survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in November 2011, 87% of population have confidence in Police;

•According to a survey funded by the EU and conducted by GORBI Institute in 2011, Georgia has one of the lowest “victimization coefficients,” a measure that reflects public perceptions of crime and individual security.

On the subject of the so-called “Police Pads,” reforms have transformed what was once an antiquated backlog of paper files for car imports, registries, and customs. They have been replaced with new, cutting-edge technology capable of streamlining requests and filing paperwork in record time.

Georgia has much work to do in shaking off the vestiges of nearly a century of Soviet occupation, but the transformation of our police force into a modern and professional service is an achievement that Georgians are deeply proud of, and a symbol of our commitment to retake our rightful place in the European community.

January 16, 2012
Press Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia

No one will be under any illusion now as tot he fact that Georgia is a vibrant, modern, improving economy climbing out of the wreck of Soviet domination.

It looks like Labour has seconded Trevor Mallard to advise Vladimir Putin with his forays into the online world. He is certainly having all the same luck as the Duck:

Within moments of Vladimir Putin launching his campaign website today, calls for him to resign and drop his bid for Russian Presidency were so large that officials had to limit public access andcontinued to live in denial blame hackers. If we were better at Russian (luckily many sitesare adept) or if the Putin campaign hadn’t limited public access, we’d be able to tell you more about the messages and less about the website’s majestic aesthetic. Radio Free Europe has more on the messages which flooded the site. They ranged from “Please leave politics,” to “I’m tired of you. I’ve already tolerated you for 12 years and it’s still the same” before the Putin campaign culled the comments. ”All this fuss with calls for resignation is a kind of computer game that children are playing at. It has nothing to do with constructive dialogue,” Putin’s spokesman said in a Reuters report. He also mentioned that most of the anti-Putin messages were a result of email spam (cue that Russian/.ru email spam joke). Of course Putin’s hacker attack excuse is just more proof of agovernment feigning denial or knowledge of massive anti-Putin sentiment in the country, which has been pretty hard for anyone to ignore.

There is a fair bit of commentary around at the moment about the state of blogging. to be fair most of it is in the tech world where there is a sort of consensus that the golden age of blogging, at least from a tech perspective, is over:

The reasons, in brief: many top blogs have sold out; staff turnover saw “star” voices slip off the radar; younger audiences like social networking more; and advertising revenue is increasingly hard to get at.

All the reasons given are true, but they’re not reasons to believe that a golden age has passed. They’re phenomena in their own right, each with its own story, and only the last presenting a barrier to entry for newcomers. Epochal change makes for an epic narrative, but all this adds up to a simpler truth: media is a tough game and you won’t get far by copying what other people did years ago.

I have always said that New Zealand lags about 5 years behind the rest of the world and blogging here is no different. We are just now catching up with the advent of bloggers commentators that has been prevalent int he US and UK for at least 6 years.

Some don’t agree that the golden age is over. I’m with them:

“There are still plenty of people who love to write– not just share, Tweet and comment– for a living, and blogs are still the best platform for that. In many ways, professional blogging is just getting started. It’s a time when new entrants are jumping into the field with bold, fresh ideas, standing on the shoulders of the blogging giants that came before, taking a second stab at reinventing the new media landscape.”

In the 6 years I have been blogging there have been many blogs and bloggers not many of us stick around. There is a reason for that, it is bloody hard work. Your critics are instantaneous and not many can take the constant criticism and especially the nasty hate mail. I keep every email and one day I will publish them all. It will make a book of hate all by itself. This comment at Boing Boing though sums up blogging for me:

There was never a golden age of blogging, just a golden age of mainstream interest in what it all meant. Don’t worry about it; opportunity does not knock but once. You need obsession, a work ethic, and an uncommon voice. That’s tough, but that’s all. The rest is counting the hours, and we’ve all got plenty of those.

So readers what do you think…Has blogging done it’s dash?

Clear cut nominations for this category.

Red Alert: The blog of Labour MPs, tightly moderated, dissenting views are rigorously edited or deleted. All the moderators tell out right lies when altering, moderating or deleting comments.

No Right Turn: The shouty blog of Malcolm Harbrow, professional student and pretend liberal. He turned off comments years ago because like all shouty socialists and control freaks he cannot tolerate dissent. Seriously prone to Key Derangement Syndrome.

The Standard: Janet Wilson labeled them as “hard left rhetoric rendered [them] blind to any rational coverage.” Tightly moderated, rabid to the extreme and blinkered. Mostly anonymous but Lynn Pretice thinks he is the worlds best programmer and quaintly still refers to himself as a “sysop”. Perhaps the most seriously afflicted with Key Derangement Syndrome. Ironically they describe almost any blog other than their own as “the sewer”.

Tumeke: Used to be a decent blog when mostly written by Tim Selwyn. During his stint at Her Majesty pleasure it was taken over by blow-hard Martyn Bradbury. Is way more shouty than no Right Turn and prone to serious bouts of Key Derangement Syndrome. Phoebe Fletcher is the sole voice of reason at the blog but her posts are almost always tl;dr.

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There you readers, fill yer boots.

So many awful blogs to choose from, the largely anonymous cowards at The Standard, Red Alert, Malcolm Harbrow’s No Right Turn where he focuses on the first part of his handle Idiot/Savant.

Then there is the failed horse trainer/plumber from Ruakaka, Todd, who has a blog called The Jackal. Karl du Fresne describes it thus:

 “A jackal is a cowardly cur that skulks in the shadows. I can’t think of a blog that’s more appropriately named”

Public Address isn;t so much as bad, rather tedious. Pundit is the blog for unemployed journalists but does harbour Nicky Hager.

So many good political blogs to choose from for this award.

There is the old boring and formerly top blog, Kiwiblog. The acerbic Cactus Kate. Don’t forget Red Alert and their proxy blog The Standard. There is the boring mundanity of Public Address and the unemployed journalists club at Pundit as well.

Keeping Stock and Home paddock had a pretty good output as well.

Nominate away and don’t forget to give reasons as well. Note that only political blogs are eligible, silly photoblogs or blogs about gossipers aren’t included.

Since no one else will nominate them I will nominate Red Alert. You may ask why I would do that but I believe that it has been a very useful resource and will continue to be a very useful resource for other bloggers and media to use. Feel free to disagree, but I have indulged you all by accepting your other nominations so i think I can have a free pass in nominating this one.

via Boing Boing

Some people just don’t think through the consequences of their actions.

At Gawker, Brooklyn-based journalist Caitlin Curran explains how you could quickly go from being part of the downtrodden 99% to being part of the “no, really, unemployed and utterly fucked” contingent: your boss could see a photo of you holding up a sign at a protest and fire you the next day. Ms. Curran is the woman in the photo above, feature in two previous Boing Boing posts.

Andrew Sullivan shows the very real difference between the MSM and the blogosphere – the willingness of the bloggers to mock themselves for making mistakes.

via Andrew Sullivan

Interesting comments ont he demise of traditional media. Especially worth reading the link on democratizing effect of technology

We’re pretty much in a perma-recession, small banks are failing left and right, the biggest ones get bailed out, but the people who are in charge of the financial world–which is now optimized for algorithms, not people–are still burning $100 bills to light their Cohibas.

Isn’t this the kind of primordial soup that spawns an industry’s overhaul? I mean, people in my line of work got our asses handed to us by the democratizing effect of technology. Journalism used to be a few powerful people dictating what information you need to know, and now look at us. Blogs, twitter, well, I don’t need to rehash this old saw. Journalism was gutted by technology, in some cases for better, in some cases for worse.