The presidential election of 2008 is already underway...

The United States presidential election of 2008 is going to be fascinating for any number of reasons. Technology will play a role without doubt. Blogging will have an impact; the only question being how much of an impact that will be. Robert Scoble recently tagged along while John Edwards announced that he’s running for President.

I think the most important aspect of the election will potentially be the fact that it will represent the first time a woman has been a credible candidate for the presidency. A poll of New Hampshire Democrats released Thursday by the American Research Group indicated that the undeclared Senator Hillary Clinton of New York has 27 percent support, significantly ahead of John Edwards who has just 18 percent support.

This is, of course, a long race and much can happen between now and election day. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards

15 seconds of fame...

In 1968 Andy Warhol made the statement that "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." In 1979 Warhol reiterated his claim: "...my prediction from the sixties finally came true: In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."

Warhol may turn out to be right in principle but wrong about how fleeting fame might be, courtesy of CBS Interactive.

If you had 15 seconds to tell the world whatever you want to, what would you say? Well, now's your chance to be seen and heard on national television, courtesy of CBS Interactive. Post your 15-second video on YouTube, and CBS Interactive will select one to be broadcast on TV! The first selection will air on Sunday, February 4, 2007.

This has the potential to be fascinating.

[Link]

Technorati Tags: andy warhol, CBS, Fame

Ticket to the moon...

I have some vivid memories of watching the moon landings at school as a child. I was just eight years old when Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. When I travelled to Florida on holiday one of the highlights of the trip was the visit to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. I guess you could call me a child of the space age.

It was with some sadness, therefore, that I read in this article on CNN about the scale of indifference among 18 to 25 year olds for the NASA vision to return to the moon and then go to Mars.

I guess the good news is that NASA is recognising that is has a problem and therefore is applying some thought to how to turn this around. The article indicates some understanding of what the solution has to manage, but I'm not convinced they have yet found the inspiring, viral idea that will get them to their goal.

I hope they do, before Congress decides the vision has insufficient public support and quietly buries the plans.

Technorati Tags: NASA

Google Reader

As I haven't had much time to blog I haven't had the chance to report that I've moved over to Google Reader and although I thought I'd never find that I would be happy with a feed reader tool that wasn't based in Outlook I've actually found the transition relatively painless. This is how I went about implementing Reader:

(1) I was able to get going in minutes by importing an opml file of my Newsgator subscriptions

(2) I keep all my subscriptions in a simple list, in other words I don't create folders. I do, however, only list updated subscriptions. I sometimes scan the list to zero in on favourite feeds but most of the time I use "All items" view and just next, next, next through my items in expanded mode. I never use the list mode. So after all this time I finally get completely the concept of a "river of news", but it's taken Google's implementation of it to win me over.

(3) I keep my "All items" view and each subscription sorted by oldest. I like to read in the order in which people wrote items and I also keep an eye on how far behind I am with my feed reading.

(4) I love the way "Starred items" has been implemented. This makes it easy to retrieve items I want to blog about or to go back and read a post in more depth later on.

(5) I also totally love the way that shared items has been implemented. Robert Scoble used this feature to re-introduce his link blog. I use it to share items of interest from my feeds with my wife and friends.

I'm definitely a convert!

Tags: Robert Scoble, Google Reader

Sigh...

So I haven't blogged in over a month and now that I have some time to catch up I find the spammers have found a way to hit haloscan and statcounter is down. Terrific!