Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Catching Up With 26 news sources in my "news aggregator"-- not to mention the loyal senders of spam -- I have a lot of catching up to do after a week away from this computer. Alas, the best media chuckle I had while away is not online... It was a local television station in another city, which ran one of those background-text slides to announce that the Pope had "beautified" Mother Theresa. I hope someone got a shot of that for Leno. First, Jon Udell's blog reminded me that I hadn't watched the video of BloggerCon sessions I missed. I'd been waiting for a quiet day at my local WiFi coffeeship, but that day hasn't come. So today I gave it a try from home, and I'm very pleasantly surprised with my dial-up modem connection's delivery of the streaming version of the session on weblog journalism. Jon's right, though, an easier way to point to a particular moment in the stream would be wonderful. It also would be a great tool in "no, what he said was..." follow-up reports about politics, among other things. Starting with Jon's entry, here are a few of today's items from the syndication aggregator; sources credited in the little [brackets]... The gap between average and proficient users of weblogs. John Udell uses a video-blog sample from BloggerCon to illustrate how wide that gap is. The report is a bit technical, but his trying to cite portions of a webcast illustrates the problem: "In several different sessions, people made compelling pleas for simplicity. It ought to be easy for me to send you to those places in the webcast. It isn't." [Jon Udell's Weblog] 4:03:38 PM     Private lenders endangering federal student loan program. Megan Barnett, Julian E. Barnes and Danielle Knight of U.S. News & World Report find that many colleges and universities are abandoning the U.S. Department of Education's direct-loan program in favor of deals with private lenders that promise profits to... [Extra! Extra!] 3:53:00 PM     Taxpayers foot bill for campaign activities. John M.R. Bull of The (Allentown, Pa.) Morning Call delves into Pennsylvania's "Special Leadership Accounts," taxpayer-funded operations controlled by the majority and minority leaders of the state House. "A Morning Call investigation has revealed that $3.2 million was spent from... [Extra! Extra!] 3:51:17 PM

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