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Better than Blogging?

As seen on Cairns: In the course of writing a recent story on e-campaigning, I had an interesting conversation with Michael Cornfield about the blogging phenomenon. Michael is the politics guy at the Pew Internet and American Life project, and a great source of wisdom...

A download button that works

download Firefox immediately. Where will this madness lead? "Submit" buttons that submit your form, without asking you to please reformulate the syntax for your birthdate or street address? Help numbers that connect you with actual live helpful people? Fellow fans of...

Bad sharers

Looking for a snapshot of how the war against terrorism is hurting the Internet? Check out the letter that ran in the Circuits section of today's New York Times. To the Editor:''Where Good Wi-Fi Makes Good Neighbors'' (Oct. 21) did not take into account two serious...

Social capital for beginners

The Encyclopedia of Informal Information has a very nice overview of social capital. For anyone who wants a quick intellectual history of social capital as an idea, and a quick peek at some of the key findings to date, this is a great place to start.

The morning after the night before

Less than twelve hours since victory seemed uncertain, and the Bush camp is already spinning the heck out of its big victory. What I don't understand is why the media is swallowing the line about this being an historic victory. I just caught a CBC-Radio teaser,...

Blogging as an engagement tool

As posted to Cairns: The UK's Hansard Society has produced terrific research on e-democracy under the leadership of Prof. Stephen Coleman (also of the Oxford Internet Institute). This summer they released a paper that looks at how blogs can be a tool for democratic...