May 31, 2002

Google's Search for Winner Ends. A piece of code that helps localize search results wins first prize in the popular search engine's programming contest. By Farhad Manjoo. [Wired News] Egnor wrote his program as a kind of Google-powered Yellow Pages for the Web.  Act global, think local. 3:10:43 PM

'Blog Burst' The story of the anti-Semitic riot at San Francisco State University has given rise to what blogger Joe Katzman calls a "blog burst"--a huge amount of coverage from blogs. (If you still don't know what a blog is, read this article.) One of the most interesting items comes from Glenn Frazier, who reports that Patricia Jennings, who attended the rally, sent a long letter of complaint to SFSU president Robert Corrigan. Here's a small sample: The Jewish student organizations had reserved the plaza from 12 until 2:00 PM. At 1:30, the police and the administration allowed the counter demonstrators to flood the plaza and to come at the Jewish students who were standing by their table. The counter-demonstrators blocked the entrance to the student union. We were cornered in front of the building, unable to leave, and subjected to the most hateful speech I have ever heard in my life. Students were yelling, "Jews off campus," "Zionism is Nazism," "Death to Jews," "Burn, M----- F-----, Burn," "Hitler should have finished the job," among others too vile to repeat in writing. We stood together and sang peace songs. I was so proud of the Jewish students. Despite being subjected to this awful hate speech, none of them responded in kind but continued to sing songs of love and peace. After some follow-up correspondence with Corrigan, Jennings received the following e-mail from him: Pam-- This woman is causing almost as much trouble as our friend. She admits to having contacting many people with her view of SFSU. Be careful in how you respond. RAC "Pam," according to Frazier, is Pam Vaughn, chairman of SFSU's academic senate. Apparently Corrigan mistakenly hit "reply" instead of "forward."  [ OpinionJournal.com ] 12:44:58 PM

Former U.N. Secretary General, Former Austrian president and former NAZI Kurt Waldheim (yep all the same guy) is visting Lebanon in order to give out an annual award in his name for a Lebanese University student.   This media event gives Lebanon's president, Emile Lahoud, a chance to try and make it seem like the UN is really in Israel's pocket.   Kurt is being used, and either doesn't know it, or doesn't mind.   12:39:54 PM

Real-time weblogs: "Include users in your idea of what the press is, listen, and tune your message, and your marketing automatically gets more efficient. There's not much time to waste, professional journalists are learning about and adopting the new technology. Any technology vendor that isn't also using these techniques to market is going to wake up in a very strange world in a couple of quarters."  [Scripting News] 12:27:56 PM