response to Nancy

Let's face it, facebook is just too damn friendly and positive, it's no place for crusty, antagonistic people like me (but not you dear Nancy!). In all seriousness, you're right, to be a "fan" of a brand or other entity (I'm apparently a fan of an NGO and a blogging network), makes no sense. The platform is struggling with numbers it seems. There are lots of reports now about getting 'timed out' notices for too much cruising around Facebook, or refusals of facebook to send out notices to groups that have over 1000 members. So while this represents a certain clumsiness on the part of an exponentially growing platform, the issue for me is one of framing -- where can we indicate our curiosity, frustration, deep antipathy, or apathy? While at AoIR I bumped into an old nemesis from my undergrad days, an enemy of sorts lets say. But hell, he was a significant person in my life... but why is there no language here (or in some of the more vocal academic work on social networking) about networks that include such figures in ones past or present...this fella was way more important to me than 95% of my facebook friends -GE

Ron Paul's 5th of November fundraising campaign

Yet another example of maverick campaign working online but going nowhere with the electorate.

Covert Cat

Does anyone want to share insights on Youtube's "Covert cat". This person has uploaded some rather lengthy -- and interesting, to say the least -- videos. I'll pass on posting links.

too many friends: a warning

Kevin's Facebook Friends

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Waiting for call to be on the Christy Clark show...;-)

...but Canadians don't want an election (Conservative -Liberal coalition government emerges)

How much longer can Dion say he opposes the government, think their proposals are wrong for Canada, and then abstain from voting in the house? The Conservatives have already done a pretty decent job painting Dion as a weak leader, now the NDP are doing the same. The Tories near term agenda seems to offer yet more of the same for Dion, modest right-of-centre policies (or the "new" Centre as Andrew Coyne has argued) that the majority of the Liberal caucus support (or have proposed before). Unless the Tories take a sharper turn right, Harper will continue to benefit from the Conservative-Liberal coalition government.

video threads

I love video-bloggers who respond to videos with another video. Well, I thought so until this:

sign of the Times

OK, now I'm more convinced that a federal election is around the corner -- Signs for sale, advertised on political blogs.

No PMO blog contract? Why not blog for RBC?

OK, I'm not making this up...this is all from RBC and their blogger or P2P "contest" where university students can "Make some cash blogging from your room". Imagine being able to: "Get paid to tell the truth about money". But this is of course contingent upon being able to answer yes to their litmus test question: "Do you use money?"

This, here

So, for the best coverage and analysis on the Ontario election, check out this, from this guy, and make sure to tell your friends about this, cause here is where it all happens.

Dump Dion, hell Dump Tory!

Leadership matters! Well, as Tories gloat over the state of Dionistas they are also voicing questions about their own provincial leader, see influencial blogger Greg Staples for one glum take on Tory's future.

Facebook Libs, post Outremont

So, what better way to advertise internal strife than a Facebook group entitled "A United Party, A Unity Canada - Stephane Dion", so far it has 60 members, that's 12 more than the "Stéphane Dion looks like a turtle" group (if anyone is counting). :-)

Blogging Tories in search of Loonies

A number of Blogging Tories have banded together to form an ad co-op, ooops, business. Rates look a bit out of wack considering that Google ads run between $30-$100/month.

Dry run for Federal election

Much that we have seen from the Liberals online in this provincial election is surely a dry run for the next federal election, remember their war room is being run by Dion backer Warren Kinsella. And if there is any more proof needed about the need for parties to rethink their campaigns with the net in mind, one need only look at what is happening elsewhere around the world: Australia, a case in point.

/GE

The basics....

Everyone, well almost everyone, seems to be doing it. Internet campaigning that is. Here is a decent outline of the benefits, for those who remain critical. So, folks the bottom line is this....if you're just going to run a campaign with a website (and leave the social networking, youtubing, facebooking, etc. to less organized types), then at least think about paying the $30 to Google (OK they hardly need it), to increase traffic to your stand-alone, network phobic website.

Education fairness: who buys this stuff?

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where www.educationairness.ca comes from.

Nasty brutish and short: Greg's "live" debate blogging

McGuinty looks like a bored highschooler. He is getting spanked. Hampton started slowly and lacked specifics, but has come on as the debate goes on. Tory looks very composed. I'd be very surprised if polls don't reflect his good performance.

Queen's Park Press Gallery tires of Youtube surveillance

The president of the Queen's Park press gallery issued a terse statement today calling into question the legality of partisan Youtubers capturing conversations between candidates and some journalists. Some members of the media have also recently grumbled about being poorly treated by the Premier's lead Communications guy, former broadcast journalist Ben Chin. Torytubers might be testing the patience of the press gallery.

CBC-RC also just came over to get my thoughts on the Tories 3 new TV ads. In short, a shocker (on violence and sentencing, which will be controversial), a dud (broken tax promise), and an absolute gem (broken promise on coal plants).

McGuinty getting trashed....on Craigslist!

Ok, much has been written about how nasty youtube has become during the Ont. election. But a quick scan of the politics discussion group on craigslist will leave no doubt where the trash talking is taking place. Besides the foul language and nasty personal attacks (I'm not going to repeat any here), I found it odd that McGuinty is the target of many of the attacks (while Tory seems to be getting hammered on youtube and in the blogosphere).

by-election hijinks

Tory humour. I'm impressed.

This video takes the nut!

Thanks to fifth column for this bizarre video from the Toronto Star. I thought I'd seen it all, but I absolutely must know more about this. We've seen journalists blog before, but is Torstar now asking Q.P. bureau folks to cut iMovies during campaign stops on the road? Or is this what my undergrad students are doing for internships now?

GE

Liberal Bloggers out in the cold

Liberal bloggers are starting to mumble about the sad campaign put on in Outremont, While in London, Ont. a former Liberal blogger left the campaign there after his previous online comments were made public. The Ontario Liberal party also seems to be largely ignoring the power of their partisan blogosphere focusing instead on a closely scripted and centralized campaign supported with a nasty backroom internet war room.

GE

media concentration -- hearing begin in Ottawa

the CBC weighs in on the state of broadcasting in Canada.

Film/TV conference

While the infoscapers will plough through today's net shenanigans, I'll be taking a breather from the media to host the "Locating Migrating Media" Conference at Ryerson. We'll have a new code politics weekly report out later this weekend.

Meow

A good article from Lydia Perovic on 2.0 Campaigning. A bunch of other good stories and links too.

Tomorrow, I'm on CHCH Hamilton, which I hear is now referred to as E-Hamilton...which kinda sounds sexy in that new media meets old industry town kinda way.

Britney and Torytube crash Youtube

OK, got your attention. My bet is on the former. Didn't Google buy Youtube? Then why does their search engine, well...suck?
-GE

Youtube crashes?

Jason Cherniak just pointed out that Youtube is not showing any new videos from the leaders for th epast 5 days, which seems to be at odds with some videos I found earlier today from Torytube that were clearly tagged "John Tory". This might throw a wrench in the works.
/GE

Blogging Tories Keeping Close Eye on CBC TV News

Blogging Tory founder/"pundit" Stephen Taylor continues to keep a close eye on the CBC. Other media outlets have largely bypassed the story, but Taylor reports on his blog that the CBC has officialy apologized for the second time in a year after the Conservative blogger question their coverage on his blog.

http://www.stephentaylor.ca/archives/000833.html

The Infoscape lab (of which I am the director) also reported last week that other Blogging Tories uploaded and discussed a clip of CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge. The Tories were seemingly unimpressed with Peter's facial expression and body language as his interviewee, the Israeili Prime Minister, gushed about PM Stephen Harper.

Amsterdam

decided to pick the worse time of the year to come to Amsterdam. Though unlike June when I was last here there are at least much fewer packs of drunken British men (sheesh). For visual update check out flickr.

In my absence (actually I'm a visiting fellow at the Virtual Knowledge studio, for the next 3 weeks) the infoscape lab continues to pur along. We will be rolling out a set of new projects in anticipation of the upcoming federal election in Canada (editorial: which may well see the most boring set of party leaders ever in CDN history).
stay tuned...

-Greg