I have a personal weblog at Just Shelley.

I write on all things technology at Mad Techie Woman.

I’m starting a site devoted to all things Missouri at MissouriGreen.

I aggregate everything I write at Planet Powers.

Just in time for the Jena conference this week, Leigh has posted links to local mirrors of useful RDF data sources. Unfortunately, as Michael Bernstein pointed out to me in a recent email, the historical site needs a new home.

I really do like Danny Ayers’ posts where he mixes tech and critters.

Dave Beckett blogs his company, or as much as he can. I wouldn’t mind hearing what he is working on at Yahoo at some point in the future. Bound to be interesting.

I’m listing these folks in particular because I know they’ll all be at the Jena conference. Should be a fun party.

I’ve been spending time today with Eclipse, the popular development tool used primarily by Java developers. I’m using Eclipse in my J2EE development because there’s a plugin that enables EJB development for JBoss, and another plugin that enables web servlet development, and yet another that allows me to interface with a SQL Server database, and even a plugin to connect with Subversion. These are all professional development tools, more or less. Yet Eclipse is not just for the pros, or the geeks.

It’s easy to install, with installations for Unix, Linux, Mac, and Windows. I had to use gunzip and tar to unzip and expand the package for the Mac, because the machine I’m using is my older Mac; it doesn’t have the modern unzipping tools of the Tiger machines.

Once Eclipse is installed, then the fun begins. You can add any number of plugins.

Continue reading…

Seth Finkelstein writes on the recent Maine weblogger being sued by an ad agency brouha. The ad agency dropped the lawsuit, in part because of the noise generated by webloggers. Contrary to belief, this was not the result of a ground swelling of support as much as a carefully orchestrated media event. In the post he points to, Media Blogger Association president Robert Cox writes:

The real story behind the “Maine Blogger” story is that this blogstorm did not just “happen”. I personally spent several weeks developing a media strategy which we launched last Thursday morning. The original goal was to get the story in front of 3-5 mm people by Friday night. We easily surpassed that figure and the number continues to grow.

Once we were ready to drop the story, I reached out to the membership of the Media Bloggers Association with an “MBA Legal Alert” and they responded in force. Hundreds of bloggers responded to the MBA’s request to post on this story and make their readership aware of what was happening in Maine. We also sent out a traditional press release to our “press list” and added in about 100 Maine/Travel media outlets - that’s how the Globe got the story. Once the ball was rolling lots of other folks got behind the effort and Lance was a full-fledged bloglebrity.

This kind of blog/MSM media strategy is part of the two-pronged approach we take as part of our Legal Defense Initiative. I think the real story is that this strategy can be - and has been - so effective.

Seth responds with:

And I agree - it can be, and has been, so effective. But … it’s important to realize just how old-school top-down this is structurally. In fact, scarily so. Work with people who have big megaphones, get them to echo the story, then go up the media pyramid. It’s extremely traditional. Now, the powers here were used for good instead of evil. But, still, what if it were the reverse?

I followed this story. My initial sympathy was with the weblogger, being sued by some big corporation. But then I read the Maine weblogger’s posts on his ‘investigation’ and found his effort to be flawed, and personally biased. The issue at stake was the Maine weblogger was angry at having to pay more for Pay-per-click ads, and blamed the Maine Department of Tourism because of their use of Pay-per-click. They’re driving up the prices, he cries. But then he takes his reader on a journey through implied charges of government corruption and malfeasance, hints of conspiracy, and out and out accusations of misuse of public funds and fraud.

He gave out assumptions as facts, when proven wrong he seldom retracted what he wrote without twisting it about into some new form of accusation, he brought in other organizations not even connected with the event–all because he had to pay more for Pay-Per-Click.

When, after many communications with both the state and the ad agency failed to resolve the issue and he was sued, bloggers cried out about free speech and censorship. I think on a young man standing in front of a tank in China, and I’m embarrassed.

Lots of webloggers patting themselves on the back, job well done, and bully defeated. But who was the bully?

3 Quarks Daily points to a wonderful NY Times magazine article on birding, stories, and the now legendary ivory-billed woodpecker.

But this is not one of those crummy stories that ends with some annoying riff about “ambiguity.” Birding is not philosophy. Birding is storytelling, and ivory-bill birding is the most exquisitely nuanced yarn of them all. It requires that you consider the different facets of the ivory-billed woodpecker from every angle. (My experience with Bill Tippit and this philosophical mumbo jumbo are but two.) There are, with some editing, 13 ways of looking at the ivory-billed woodpecker, and there is an answer to the burning question Did I see the damn bird or not? Here’s the thing — I’m not able to give the answer. It’s a birding story. Only you can.

It’s a wonderful story, and not just because of it’s focus on birding. Its about the power of faith and wanting to believe, and how this can influence even the most dedicated observationist and critical thinker.

Wonderful. I must plan a trip to Arkansas. Soon.

Sweet-and-Sour Bovine Penis Braised, With Testicular Partners…