Comcast Wants To Be First In Evil Empire Race

Not only is Comcast, our local cable provider and ISP to many, slowing traffic along their tubes, they're also geared to fire employees who talk about what they're up to. So of course the techno-geeks are talking! Good for them. And at least one reason to be glad you stuck with Bellsouth. From Ars Technica:

Ars has heard from multiple Comcast employees since the story broke, and they're all telling us the same thing. They're supposed to tell customers asking whether Comcast limits access to BitTorrent that the ISP doesn't block access to any application, including BitTorrent. Furthermore, tech support workers are supposed to toe the party line at all times, or they'll be fired. "Management informed anyone that discussed this issue with any customer or press associate that it would lead to termination," an internal tier 2 tech support worker told Ars on the condition of anonymity.

Full post here. And call your Atlanta Comcast office and see what BS they have to offer you: 404-266-2278. Does anyone know who handles PR for Comcast here? I'd love to blog about them too!

OnLineAthens The Coolest Kids In Georgia Media

OnLineAthens dot com, the online version of the Athens Banner-Herald (note how they brand print and online separately), is seriously head-and-shoulders above the rest of Georgia "traditional" media outlets in offering good, locally-grown multimedia on their pages. Scroll down on their AthFest page to click-on a video featuring the AthFest awards ceremony... still viable and good to watch even after the festival is over.

Not only is OnlineAthens wielding excellent, localized reporting, they're toting some nice DV cams while they're out and about. Too bad the AJC can't tap into a blazing Atlanta music scene right now to offer jack shit. Who even clicks on their one-dimensional site anymore, for that matter? I just go directly to The Blogs... or to Athens.

Heck, OnlineAthens even links you to a site called AthensMusic.com. Talk about your one-stop shopping. Wishful thinking to feel that Atlanta musicians and artists could hope for but a crumb from Atlanta media/Cox Plantation table.

Chances are, when their paper version flutters away one day, and it will, as all papers are in the process of doing, the Athens Banner-Herald won't miss a beat; they "got it" long ago that it's all about the sharing.

Teaching Kids To Be Cyber-Smart

So they can become cyber-leaders for their peers.

Some parents rush to get their infants on a look-at-all-my-money kind of pre-school waiting list. Mostly so they can slap the bumper sticker for that particular school onto their green Suburban as soon as possible, but not quite covering-up the SSI or the Lovett stickers from the older kids, of course. But I diverge...

Me, about as soon as the pregnancy test turned blue, I not only rushed to the phone for the pre-school, but immediately registered a domain name in my child's name. Then I didn't think much about it all, her being moreorless a milk-swillin' blob for what seemed like decades for a few sleep-deprived months, way back when.

Fast forward seven years to real-time reality and I've found (former) milk-swillin' blob surfing sites I never knew existed, typically trying to find video on any Harry Potter movie, or a Bridge To Terabithia or Fire House Dog vid after having seen the trailer just a few hours ago at the "movie sitter", as opposed to the typical DVD at home. (Text-heavy sites are not even on the radar, and I seriously doubt they ever will be for the Born Year 2000 gen.)

It's only a matter of time before she's on MySpace. She already wants her own YouTube channel, but I don't think you can even sign-up a seven-year old for one of those. Not honestly that is.

At least one friend has had to involve the police over a Mean Girls On MySpace incident that involved her household. The kids in this particular "event" were all about 12. Twelve!

Getting to the point here, as cyber-savvy as Dear 'Ole Mom here is, I still feel my child could slip through even my clutch-y grasp online, even if I do stare over her shoulder 24/7 which I already do, well... mostly, even in our own home.

Vaspers over on The Grate has some critical questions to ask, and statements about cyber-bullies, that anyone with a computer, a modem and an almost-ready-for-prime-cyber-time kid unit should be asking now. A sampling:

Parents and teachers need to prepare children for blogocombat. I recently watched a news program on television, about a young boy who killed himself because some mean kids at school were calling him "gay" and "sissy boy" in a chat room that the child was addicted to.

Why would any child be so masochistic, that they would obsessively visit a chat room that was abusive to and victimizing them? To defend themselves? To attempt to answer every new allegation? To try to win people over to his side?

Why don't we ask ourselves what kind of parents and teachers we are?

Why do we shun our responsibility and let our young people run wild in the web, "do anything they want" on the computer, without any supervision, guidelines, or preparation for the evil they are bound to encounter sooner or later?

And what about when a child goes to a friend's house? And maybe Friend has Not-So-Cyber-Savvy, Kinda Clueless Parentals? Should I ask, as one might ask about guns in an unknown (to you) person's home, about what level of cyber-awareness exists in that household? And how could you do so without insulting their, no doubt otherwise, fine intelligence?

Lordy, lordy, lordy. If the traffic doesn't get us all around here, the relentless pursuit of progress surely will.

Scooter and Judy, Sittin' In A Tree...

Don't know if they were k-i-s-s-i-n-g or not, but seems some are smelling a strong Judy & Scooter connect out there in them thar woods. Just when I thought I could get up from the tubes, back down I go...

Colbert's Big Wiki Thing

Since Stephen Colbert is likely the only Charlestonian who knows what a wiki is, or has a staff that can operate a computer, he's of course got his own "challenge" to Wikipedi now. It's Wikiality: The Internets Tubes Dedicated To Truthiness. Hilarious. Give it a whirl.

Now switching to Yo La Tengo, in keeping with my Bands Beloved By NPR Listeners (that's urban code for "smart liberal geeks with glasses" of course) theme this am.

MetaCafe Not Worth A Dime

MetaCafe is in negotiations to be sold for 200-million. I wouldn't pay a dime for this piece of crap product/company. I had a terrible experience with MetaCafe when I decided that the thumbnail shot I'd chosen for a video I'd posted to the video sharing site looked weird and vaguely obscene. (Chosing your own thumbnail was a cool feature, or so I thought at the time, of the uploading process.) I decided I hated my choice, though, after seeing the final, posted product.

But there is no way to edit your thumbnail choices on MetaCafe once you've made them, nor can you delete your videos once you've posted them! After clicking through the site for what seemed like an hour, I finally found this page. Whew, I thought. I can delete now. Wrong. There simply was no “Remove From Metacafe” link anywhere for me to click in my My Videos list. Such an option simply does not exist.

But I kept trying like like crazy to change the thumbnail and delete the questionable video, but since there's no live customer service support or functional blog associated with the site, only this useless Help thingee, I ended-up calling some clueless PR person in Palo Alto, the only live number listed on the site.

To their credit, someone with the Palo Alto marketing office did return my panicky call later that evening, and then someone sent an email two days later when I filled-out and sent in this form, asking me to re-send/re-capture a thumbnail shot (I wasn't quite sure how to do this without their uploading wizard prompting me) and send it back to them.

The video thumbnail in question has since mysteriously disappeared from my My Videos list, as have all the others I posted too, but I have no way of deleting the actual space I'd parked it on, or the copy I wrote associated with this video.

The whole experience made me feel powerless and vulnerable, and I still have some videos there on the site/account, but I have no control whatsoever over them now. Someone's being sold a bill of good with this deal when a page passes for customer service.

Makes you wonder if the people shelling out 200-million for a website even bother to test-drive, personally, the product before they spend so wildly. Or will the new owners go in and make it all better? They'd better hurry before others get as frustrated as I was that one night.

UPDATE: Just now managed to find a timely MetaCafe blog. Not from their own site, but by Googling Metacafe. WTF's with that?

TV Left To The Stupid People

So TV's dead. Only stupid people watch it now anyway. More on that here.

I'll miss Larry King at 9pm. I have such a nice little night-time ritual of putting kid to bed, then savoring some Tension Tamer (Ooops. Product placement. Hello Celestial Seasonings???!!) with milk and a little A-listing with Mr. King, despite his flinching ugliness, but the guests are always good. Then a little AC 360 for a bedtime global news romp.

As strong a relationship as I've developed with the Internets, I still enjoy cozying-up with a little TV every now and then, especially since I grew-up without one. But I can easily see how that damn Disney Channel sucks the mindwind right out of the young ones. Only a moron could think otherwise. Thank goodness they don't run commercials, its only saving grace, otherwise it'd all be outta here. Still, we need TV for use as a DVD monitor, don't we? In the den?

Ultimately, lying in bed with the laptop watching something on-demand, whether it's a longer form piece from ABC News, a far-fetched conspiracy theory, a movie (The Breakup last night. Quite good.) or a clip from MetaCafe, is pretty darn compelling. All of the above I've done lately. Can't say I've had quite that intimate a relationship with my TV that's fer sure as I've never invited one into my bedroom.

WTF... bring on the broadband. What a party. Smash your TV, but put yourself doing it on YouTube, of course.

Be Thankful For Girl Geeks

Family starting to annoy you by now? Tired of bland turkey and heavy foods and lard-minded relatives who wear Wal-Mart clothes and talk with their mouths full? Sneaking-off to a computer to get to your world?

From Mary Shelley to Paris Hilton, here's a fun list of Top Ten Girl Geeks to browse. Lemme add my dear friend Catherine Smith, Director of Marketing for Second Life, to the Gals of Geekdom list. Talk about making virtual worlds viable alternatives to this particular reality.

I'm thankful for a friend like her, who reaches out at a time when we can feel the sharpness of loneliness, particularly when we're surrounded by people in the midst of an all-American holiday.

Here's an interview with Cath. Plenty of others out there to be Googled too. Now get real wherever you're likely to be the most thankful!

Blog Yourself A Better Life

Well, that's pushing it I admit. But a richer, more honest life maybe. Tania, again, blows me away, and makes me think and cry and laugh and leave way-honest comments and reach for more. From The Stone's Colossal Dream:

Finally--and I realize I've merely touched and not delved here--as the world gets smaller though technology, the Internet and television show us a lot of pain. We don't have the luxury of ignorance anymore. It keeps us more honest. It should compel us to at least some small action. (Voting maybe.) That's not a bad thing. But I see joy and youthful exuberance everywhere. I see imaginative people letting their hair down, accessing their inner child, acknowledging the wonder of this beautiful, flawed world.

Mind yourselves. Ask questions. Do what's right. Do what's fun. Take your small comfort from the past but revel in progress. Be a part of it.

Don't be so afraid.

Yeah. Tania's blog here.

Burn Your Laptop

Not only does the U.N. wish to give every kid in the world a dinky laptop, it is foaming at the mouth for control of the whole enchilada - the Internet as we know it. Hell, every entity under the sun wants control of the Internet, our government included.

Why don't we just give it away to the Junior League, for chrissake? They're the best at making boring lists and marketing 'em as something worthwhile.

So self-anointed information czars of all flavors, Kofi Annan leading the pack, are all gathering in Tunisia (WTF?????) today for the World Summit on the Information Society, or How Best To Wrest The Internet Away (from private, non-profit, USA-oriented control). So far, the internationalists have agreed to do nothing. But rest assured, they'll be back.

In the meantime, I've got relatives (with all their teeth and laptops too) out in the woods of S.C. who can't even get 'em no DSL service! No long-distance wireless networks utilizing microwave dishes, routers... nope, nuttin' honey. Shame shame shame. And wonks at M.I.T. are cashing-in on crafting prototypes of Wal-Martesque laptops to hand-out on a global basis? Excuse me, but didn't somebody 'round here just loose a job over likeminded, albeit smaller-scale, insidery shenanigans?

WTF - again!!!?? They got DSL or massive airports or free router programs all across Africa to power these puppies with? Throughout Algeria? Liberia? Congo? Calcutta? (Well, I bet they got something there.)

My suggestion...once you've torched a vehicle, then flambe your charity case laptop. What else ya gonna do with it? Sprint across Kenya with it strapped to your back until you get to the Starbucks in Mombasa for a look at Disney.com?

Tags: Computers and Internet, Wireless, U.N.

Nailed To The Big Media Door

Excerpt below from:
TV News in a Postmodern World: The Jewel of the Elites
by Terry Heaton

By placing the Bible in the hands of commoners, (John) Wycliffe destroyed the secret weapon of the church hierarchy: protected knowledge. His opponents responded with the statement, "The jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity."

So it is today as the personal media revolution undercuts the institution of the press, but the energy behind it all is actually much larger. Knowledge is empowering the commoners once again, and the jewel of the elites has become the toy of the masses. It is and will change our culture beyond even that of the Protestant Reformation, because it reaches into every aspect of life.

One of the more ludicrous, unspoken "rules" I broke on a moreorless daily, if not hourly, basis when I once worked in Big Media was that only the chosen few were "allowed" to editorialized. Only the elite amongst the clawed-their-way-to-the-top managers were granted the power to opine on the state of the world at, for instance, daily editorial meetings held by those "entrusted" to cover the news, specifically those, chiefly New Yorkers, "empowered" to decide what was news-worthy that day or not.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as there must be some kind of organizational method to the madness. However, the co-opting of editorial power by a few required the presence of many lowly worker-bee types to go out and prove them, and only them, right on a regular basis.

If a study came out of some "institution," or think tank, typically a DC-based one deemed worthy or reliable by the managers within the Big Media group, then it was my job to go out and validate that study du jour. To do this, I was required to troll for the omnipotent, validating soundbite to bestow a mark of credibility on the study, and, of course, tie it all up in a tidy video package for air that evening.

For instance, if a study came out declaring that Men Under 35 prefer oranges to apples, I'd be dispatched to "the field" (the field being anywhere outside of Manhattan) and required to shove a mic in the face of Men Under 35 and have them testify that, yes indeed, they preferred oranges to apples. Often times however, I would position the mic and get back 10 responses that declared, "I prefer apples." Perhaps only one or two that particular day would say, "I prefer oranges."

Well, I'm sure you can imagine which of the 10 or 12 soundbites actually made it to air that evening. The Chosen Ones needed only one to validate what they thought "real America" was thinking, despite the 10 or so perfectly good, but conflicting responses soon left on the edit room floor.

This was, and still is sadly, how Big Media operates. It should be no wonder then that when I got hip to the Internet, I got the hell outta Dodge, as did a whole lot of others too, most of 'em a hell of a lot more talented than me.

So Dear Reader, the reason I bore you all to tears with the above tale of Big Media woe is that I'd like to now direct your attention to the full article that set me off on this whole rant in the first place, by Terry Heaton, titled:

TV News in a Postmodern World : The Jewel of the Elites