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19 Feb 2011 15:43

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Politics: Reader-submitted: One protester’s take on the Wisconsin issue

  • From someone who’s been there: Here’s a clip Tumblr user definitelynotcanon sent our way. Her friend Anna, who says in the clip that she’s never made a video blog, offers some perspective from the front lines of the protests in Madison, and wants to encourage better coverage of the entire issue. The important part is that the stripping of collective bargaining rights is the key issue here – not the current budget issue. We do have one point to make about all this: The part that she brings up about the special interest groups is actually inaccurate, as pointed out by Politifact. (It’s not spending on special interest groups, but tax breaks.) The heart of her argument still stands up, though. It’s OK though, because Ezra Klein has her back. After watching that, read this: source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 15:03

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Tech: Libya’s unrest won’t affect Bit.ly’s domains at all, guys

  • NO Libya’s unrest won’t affect Bit.ly’s URL-shortening source
  • » When clever names go bad: As we have noted in the past, Bit.ly’s name is tied very closely to Libya. However, as the Interwebs have gone down of late in the country, many are wondering if this means anything bad for the URL shortener market, which also counts owl.ly and ht.ly as potential victims, among others. We’ll let Bit.ly’s CEO, John Borthwick, take it from here: “For .ly domains to be unresolvable the five .ly root servers that are authoritative *all* have to be offline, or responding with empty responses. Of the five root nameservers for the .ly TLD: two are based in Oregon, one is in the Netherlands and two are in Libya.” And plus, they have backup plans in place, like j.mp or bitly.com. So no, nothing to worry about.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 14:49

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World: A tale of two conflicts: Bahrain, Libya seem headed in different ways

  • Bahrain In a major symbolic victory for protesters, the military has pulled out of Pearl Square in Manama, allowing the protesters to re-enter amidst much international anger over the violence against the peaceful protests.
  • Libya As fresh violence continues to break, at least 84 have died at the hands of the Libyan military, according to Human Rights Watch. “We’ve never heard of anything like this before. It’s horrible,” one eyewitness said to Al Jazeera. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 21:20

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Tech: Twitter goes after UberTwitter, looks pretty lame in the process

  • We’ve had conversations with UberMedia, the developer of these applications, about policy violations since April 2010, when they first launched under the name TweetUp – a term commonly used by Twitter users and a trademark violation. We continue to be in contact with UberMedia and hope that they will bring the suspended applications into compliance with our policies soon.
  • A message from Twitter • Revealing that they had temporarily banned some of the most popular third-party apps on their system – Twidroid, UberTwitter and UberCurrent – for their unauthorized usage of Twitter copyright in their apps. UberMedia, which owns all three of these apps, has quickly become the most-powerful third-party developer in the Twitter ecosystem, and recently bought the also-offending Tweetdeck (which hasn’t been shut down). While UberMedia is working hard to fix the problems, the real question is why Twitter had to do this in the first place. These apps helped make Twitter popular. Now that Twitter is huge, all of a sudden they’re going to be the heavies? Not sure how we feel about this, honestly. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 20:12

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U.S.: Tucson shooting: Christina Taylor Green’s photographer may sue. Ugh.

  • Christina Taylor Green’s death may have been the saddest of the many that took place in Tucson last month. But now that Gabrielle Giffords has started to recover and the dust has mostly settled, ugliness is starting to seep in a little. Photographer Jon Wolf, who owns the copyright to this photo of Green, has pressured a number of media organizations, including the Arizona Republic, and the Tucson Citizen, to pay a licensing fee for use of the now-iconic image. He wants $125,000, which he’s said he wants to mostly give to charity, and he’s, uh, threatened to sue. Green’s family doesn’t support his actions, the charity has refused to take any of Wolf’s money, and there’s a Facebook campaign against Wolf’s business picking up steam. It’s a photo of someone who died. If we were him, we’d just take the modest licensing fee (which the media organizations have offered) and be done with this. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 19:47

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Music: Hey, guess who Smashing Pumpkins’ new bassist is?

  • One of these two girls may be Nicole Fiorentino: Fiorentino recently became the band’s new bassist, and Billy Corgan claimed on Twitter after she joined, she revealed that she was one of the girls in the above album that anyone worth their salt in 1993 owned. (“Today” still sounds just as good many days later.) She said that she held the info back out of fear it would cost her the gig. Anyway, because Rolling Stone likes bursting bubbles, they got a hold of the photographer involved in this shot, who claims that Fiorentino, 31, was too old for the photo. Even though they claim this, she looks almost exactly like the girl on the right. WE WANT TO BELIEVE. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 19:21

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Culture: The Red Cross is cool, drinks Dogfish Head, into #gettngslizzerd

  • We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.
  • A tweet from @redcross • Using a Twitter gaffe as a way to get people’s attention for their cause. The offending tweet went a little like this: “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer…when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd.” Impeccable taste in beer for a humanitarian organization, kids. Anyway, Dogfish Head noticed the tweet and retweeted it, ensuring many others saw it. From there, the Red Cross used the opportunity to correct the problem and in response, got numerous donations and tons of attention. This is how you deal with social media, kids. (thanks 2105) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink
 

18 Feb 2011 15:50

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U.S.: Another paper tiger? House pushes to strip Planned Parenthood funding

  • 240-185 to strip the org of funding source
  • » This has nothing to do with abortions: This bill, which only passed in the GOP-controlled house, affects preventative-health services like cancer screenings or contraception – not abortions, which are maybe 3% of Planned Parenthood’s entire array of services and are already not supported through federal funding – at the grand cost of $330 million. Now, the likelihood that this would actually affect Planned Parenthood as-is? That’s very low, because this is part of that whole Republican-pushed spending plan that will likely not get through the Senate or Obama in its current form, but the fact that it’s even on the table is getting a lot of people worked up.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 12:55

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World: Things get even worse – and deadly – for protesters in Bahrain

The AP is reporting that at least 50 people have been injured in attacks on protesters in Bahrain. “People started running in all directions and bullets were flying,” one person said. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 12:27

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Tech, U.S.: Obama meets with everyone TechCrunch cares about all at once

  • Finally. Most of the people we write about were in a single room last night, having alcohol together. Obama. Mark Zuckerberg. The Twitter guy. Steve Jobs. And if you’re stretching it, that @$$hole Larry Ellison. If a nuclear bomb hit this restaurant last night, we would have nothing to write about and would probably have to shut down the blog. We’re glad it wasn’t. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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