Shelley Powers on The Ugly Face Of Facebook:

In our rush to a new social network we have idolized youth; made them the pampered pets of social networking. More importantly, we have both taught and celebrated the right of free expression without promoting an awareness that the best expression is accompanied by both empathy and respect.

The younger the person the more self-absorbed and that’s natural; after all, it takes experience to become empathetic. Over time, society and our interactions within it help most (not all) of us to see beyond just our own needs, our own wants. We become friends with people outside our age group, race, class, or country. We learn that being aware of others, their needs and feelings, isn’t the same as ’selling out’; nor is it destructive of ’self’.

However, what I’m seeing with some of the social networking sites (just some, not all), is that rather than expose people to different viewpoints, they can reinforce barriers against the the natural processes that abrade self-absorbed behavior. When challenged in one’s day to day life to give o’er our preconceptions or biases, rather than learn to adapt and grow socially, we can rush home and twitter, blog, and Facebook with others who have exactly our same point of view. We can safely ensconce ourselves behind a buffer of like-minded folks, postponing, perhaps indefinitely, the need to challenge our “world is me me me” view.

Web 2.0 promoting the “Daily Me”. Is this a good thing?

Respectance - a social network for those who have already passed. It’s even pulled $1.5 million of funding already. Yep, $1.5 million for dead people to buddy up with other dead people. Will they be half nekkid like those on MySpace?

Perhaps it has a more useful purpose of acting like a sorta family tree or wiki for the deceased Joe’s of the world. But “social networking”? Hmmm…

(via Burningbird)

An “8 Facts/Habits” meme has been making the rounds in the Virginia blogosphere and it’s found its way to me via Jim Riley over at Virginia Virtucon.

“list eight habits or facts about yourself, then tag eight more people.”

Here goes:

1. I come from a large family (my mother’s one of five siblings, I’m one of four brothers, one of ninteen cousins, and there are six kids in the next generation already with another on the way).

2. I grew up in Caroline County, went to high school in Spotsylvania, but say I grew up in Fredericksburg.

3. I took flight lessons as a teenager.

4. I’ve played the guitar for about ten years (and still am not all that good at it).

5. I don’t own a car and bike everywhere I need to go (for the most part).

6. I fancy myself a writer (”fancy myself” in that I think I am, not in that I have a crush on a writer which I probably do but that’s besides the point).

7. Yuengling Lager is my beer of choice.

8. When I was six I wanted to be a mailman.

Now to tag eight others. Hmmm…

Terry

Clay

John

Ross - played

Matt - played

Everyone at DailyWhackjob - played

That’s more than eight then, so I’m done.

Many of you out there may not be fully aware of the existance of TechRepublican, a group blog created by David All and others professing to bring the tech revolution to the convervative cause:

Collectively, the contributors of techRepublican will focus, like a laser, to report best practices on the application of technology to the political spectrum, identifying Republicans and conservatives throughout the world who are using the Internet to bridge that great partisan digital divide and reach modern voters. We’ll provide tips, tricks, and tools for campaigns to use — for FREE.

And we hope you’ll get involved in our Revolution. After all, it’s your Party too. Together, we’ll be successful. But we can’t do it alone.

For the most part it’s an okay site with some interesting information. I don’t completely agree with their desire to utilize every single bit of Web 2.0 technology for political gain (I have yet to see a real use for Twitter as a campaign tool) but it’s not bad.

Except when it messes up it’s code.

Last week a post was made with some really bad code that ruined the rest of the site. It kinda looked like this (click to make all big like):

I contacted David All about it and sent a screen capture of the error. His response: I’ll talk to my developer.

Now, that’s all well and good for some sites, but it just struck me as odd that a site of people trying to sell themselves as conservative revolutionaries for the Web 2.0 cause need to turn to a developer for a coding issue. Just one more log on the fire, really.

You see, my big problem with TechRepublican and even folks on the Left side of netroots is that they’re trying to create a market for themselves and their abilities. Campaigns are being told you have to blog, you have to have a netroots coordinator to be in touch with the blogosphere, this is the future, don’t get left behind!

But, really, these people are trying to create jobs that only they can fill.

Communication directors or other already created positions need to get to know the blogs and how to handle them. They’re not so drastically different from other mediums that a whole new position needs to exist to deal with them. Current pros just need to adapt. And politicans need to realize that the blogs may not truly impact their race depending on what they’re running for. Why someone running for dog catcher needs to have the blogs on his side or create a MySpace page to appeal to half nekkid teenagers is beyond me.

Something like TechRepublican shouldn’t be acting so much as a cheerleader for the blogs and creating a market. No, if they really want to help bring about this revolution they need to show how easy this is for anyone already in the know to do it and easing their way in with handy tutorials and how-tos. Otherwise it’s a revolution for the few who want to be employed.

I’ve been wondering what it would take to create a map of Richmond showing all it’s wonderful drinking establishments and highlighting their deals and best times to partake without appearing like a drunk. So imagine my joy when I found that someone has already had this idea and I can refer to them as drunks instead!

The drunks over at MappyHour have created a handy site where people can join up and mark their favorite watering holes and the times of their happy hour. Richmond has no listings yet, but I’m sure that can change real quick. I mean, c’mon, Norfolk’s listed and surely we have a better drinking basis than those lightweights!

UPDATE: Oh, wait, Richmond does have some listings. You have to scroll to the bottom of the right side and type in the zip code and then you’ll see some of the bars in the area. Meh. The interface on the whole is kinda clunky and the info a little skimpy (but that’s what you get with a fairly new, user generated content site). Still interesting and still potentially useful.

Brick Weekly, the “hip” weekly Richmond paper churned out by the Times Dispatch, has an article this week on Waldo Jaquith and the Richmond Sunlight website. Waldo also has announced a new feature at Richmond Sunlight: now you can download CSV data of every legislator’s record. Handy if you’re into that stuff.

Andrew Meagher at Compete has an interesting post that measures traffic to Republican candidate websites by state and displays what the primary would look like if those clicks were accurate measurements of votes:

Romney - 916 delegates
Thompson - 713 delegates
Giuliani - 567 delegates
McCain - 262 delegates

Certainly far from accurate, but still an interesting visualization.

(h/t Bivings Report)

UPDATE: The same for Democrats and a final:

Walk Score is a handy site where you punch in an address and it calculates your neighborhood’s “walk score” by determining how close restaurants, grocery stores, schools and more are. My current address has a walk score of 68 out of a hundred, which isn’t too bad and just confirms why I dig my neighborhood.

Terabitz is a neat new site where you can check out the real estate market for an area and get a slew of information while you’re at it. Drag and drop into the table and you can see the rental market, houses for sale, crime statistics, Craigslist listings, grocery stores, schools, and so much more. Very handy for yours truly considering I’m apartment shopping. Not that I need to know about schools and am too horribly worried about crime stats, but just the same, good to know stuff.

Congrats to Dave Mastio on the new look over at BlogNetNews. My only complaint is the continuing lack of info as to who exactly is linking to what. There’s a number next to most linked to articles and blogposts, but what does it mean? Otherwise, pretty slick.

To all attending and the three who might have anticipated seeing me there:

Sorry I won’t be able to attend this year. Excuses aren’t becoming so I’ll just leave it at that. I do hope everyone has a great time and I’m looking forward to all the reports afterwards. Maybe there will even be a podcast of the panels.

Lately I’ve been getting a few e-mails in my inbox from someone trying to convince me to go sign an online petition declaring my undying love and support for President Bush. Not one for online petitions, I ignored it for a while. But then boredom took over and I checked it out.

To sign said petition you have to pay money.

Yes, that’s right, for $1 you get to sign. For $2 your name will appear bigger and bolder and longer than the others. What better way to show your support than to give money to unnamed individuals?

Ah, but if you just can’t get up the urge to give money to faceless profiteers because you don’t really like the president all that much, never fear. These folks offer a slew of petitions you can pay to sign to show your love for Republicans, Democrats, Clinton, Obama, hell, you can even pay to say how much you love Mom.

So who are the folks behind this project? A WHOIS search reveals:

domain: isupportgwbush.com
owner-address: 1 square de furstenberg
owner-address: 78150
owner-address: le chesnay
owner-address: France
admin-c: FC2125-GANDI
tech-c: FC2125-GANDI
bill-c: FC2125-GANDI
nserver: ns1.surf-town.net 212.97.132.11
nserver: ns2.surf-town.net 212.97.132.12
nserver: ns3.surf-town.net 212.97.129.67
reg_created: 2007-01-12 11:29:52
expires: 2008-01-12 11:29:52
created: 2007-01-12 12:29:01
changed: 2007-01-12 12:29:01

person: frederic chesney
nic-hdl: FC2125-GANDI
address: 1 square de furstenberg
address: 78150
address: le chesnay
address: France
phone: +33.614697241
e-mail: 1c4799a1def88563635c54aa0a2962b9-fc2125@contact.gandi.net
lastupdated: 2007-01-10 15:17:54

It’s a French plot! Even the button on the Republican petition is in French.

Who is Frederic Chesney? All I can find is that he’s signed a couple online petitions in the past. But he’s made at least four bucks so far on these things. Way to go, guy!

So, yeah, ignore this spam.

Music For Kids Who Can’t Read Good has a great track-by-track review of Spoon’s new album that came out this past Tuesday. Fantastic album, perhaps the best of the year. The more I listen the more I dig. Check out the review and mp3s and judge for yourself.

Anything coming out of Sub Pop is usually worth a listen. This one’s no different. Jese Fortino and a guitar makes for some good, mellow listening (as if I need more mellow listening). She was Sub Pop’s artist of the month for June (link leads to info and tiny interview). Hands Across The Void is due out July 14th, but you can check out her MySpace profile until then.