Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows how great Google is… *rolls his eyes*

I’ll tell you one thing isn’t great at–customer support. Ever had a problem with your blogger account?

So, when I had problems with BlogBridge, I had about enough time to go in, mess with the settings, check the forums, do a couple things I could think of, export my opml file, then figure out some other reader to use. I was total disappointed because BlogBridge is the best Linux feed reader I’ve found. To me, one of their biggest advantages is their web service, which backs up your list of feeds on a periodic basis. The combination of a web back up (why I’ve tried every other service–bloglines, rojo, netvibes, google reader–is because if my primary machine that I’ve been subscribing blogs with goes down and I haven’t backed up my opml… *shudder*) with the speed of a desktop reader makes it a killer app for a powerblogger. My big wish is that I can post directly to BFD from BB like you can do with Flock or Net News Wire/Mars Edit.

Back to customer service. When I did my original post about my BB problem (which I should add, I also tried a couple of things Scott Kovatch mentioned), I did it with the hope that someone would come across it and have a solution. Thankfully, Pito Salas (Project Leader and Programmer for BlogBridge) saw my plea and put me in touch with his colleague Aleksey Gureev. Aleksey’s and I have been exchanging emails (the world is flat. He’s in the Ukraine. Since I’m up in the middle of the night, today was the first time we were exchanging emails realtime) and he explained how to install their latest weekly version and move my feeds over:

My thinking that it’s definitely something with the font selected, because I could see that other parts of the interface were rendered correctly on your end. I can’t recall if there’s a font selector in the preferences dialog of BB 3.0.1 (near the theme selector), but it’s present in BB 3.6 (http://www.blogbridge.com/install/weekly/blogbridge.jnlp). Please try it and see if it helps.

One note about weekly. It places files in a different directory ~/.bb/weekly (and your stable / final files are in ~/.bb/final ). After the initial startup and installation procedure, close BB, rename ~/.bb/weekly to something and copy ~/.bb/final to ~/.bb/weekly, restart BB. It will give you your subscriptions.

So thanks Pito for keeping your eye on the net for problems with your service. You’re an example of the right way for a tech company to deal with an issue. Thank you Aleksey for working thru the issue. The BB people are pros. If you haven’t tried BlogBridge, check it out.

BlogBridge » Team

A request from Mr. Ferris:

I have to figure out how to dress up as something REALLY SCARY, and I need your help, gentle readers.

Tonight, Gloria and I have to attend a Halloween costume party over at Dennis’ old haunted library at 55th and Broadway, and I woke up just now with a costume identity crisis. Yesterday, I did an informal poll of everybody I talked to, asking them what’s the scariest thing out there this year, and the answer was a standard “Issue 3.” So, my problem is, how do I dress up as Issue 3?

Tim Ferris: I need help with something really scary: My Issue 3 Costume

This seems to now be an alarming trend and not a good sign of where we’re headed. We’ve got to find a way to make projects like this work if we’re going to continue on the road to recovery. The question is will we? Maybe Henry Gomez, on his new beat, can shed some light on this for us.

This from today’s Crain’s Cleveland Business - West Tech owners default on HUD load:

The West Tech Lofts, the $30-million conversion of the one-time West Side high school to 189 apartment units, has defaulted on its U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-insured mortgage, one of the partners in the project announced today.

HUD defaults are historically rare in Cleveland, but the West Tech Lofts is the second big housing redevelopment in the city of Cleveland to default on a HUD-insured mortgage in the last two years, following the Statler Arms in downtown Cleveland. (Ital added by me for emphasis.)

This from today’s Cleveland.com/PD - West Tech apartment complex in default:

Converting the massive edifice - once the largest high school in the state - into housing was first taken on by a California developer who quickly found himself in over his head.

Just four months into the work, the whole thing crashed in a heap of cost overruns, bounced paychecks, property liens and shoddy work.

From the beginning, the project has been a roller coaster of hope and disappointment for investors and city officials, especially Councilman Jay Westbrook who represents the neighborhood.

“It’s like trying to get a train back on the track and running again after a train wreck,” Westbrook told The Plain Dealer last year. The councilman could not be reached Thursday for comment on the latest derailment.

This week, two young companies — DAVE.tv and vSocial — unveiled software services to provide companies and individuals a way to have a video and text blog platform that also includes social networking features. (Note: I use blog to define a Web-based publishing platform that allows anyone to contribute.)

I think it’s an excellent idea. As many of my readers and viewers know I love the marriage of both: The blogging capabilities in video or text allow for anyone to contribute from a staffed producer and reporter to the audience or the user. The social network features allow anyone to market and distribute the content.

AlwaysOn - Socialize this…video

I’ve had this cold. I can’t imagine starting my day every day with cold coffee:

Canned coffee is very popular in Japan and it’s hard to watch TV for any time without seeing a commercial that ends in a salaryman or two gulping down a shot of brew from a can (complete with gulping sound effects).

Japundit » Canned coffee in the a.m.

From Openers:

DeWine is the Senate’s biggest energy-stock investor, according to the study, which can be found here. He holds as much as $1.47 million in energy stocks that include Occidental Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Halliburton, Dynegy and BP. The value of his holdings may be considerably less, however — as low as $548,020 — because financial disclosure forms allow members to list their assets in a range of values rather than requiring a specific sum.

And he has voted 70 percent of the time on issues that help the oil and gas industry, according to the study, which examined votes on 20 energy-related bills…

cleveland.com: Weblogs

Because Jimmy Dimora thinks Issue 3 is a “common-sense measure”.

Official Ohio Learn and Earn Blog » Cuyahoga County Democratic Chair Blasts Senator Voinovich

Looking into this:

In the gigantic world of blogs, there are so many important ones to keep up with, and sometimes the information they provide might not be what you want to read. You might want to search out blogs just to read one specific topic–how on earth can you keep up? Our friends at Google have come up with an answer, Google Blog Alerts…

Google just made it a whole heckuva lot easier for business to track the buzz about them on blogs.

Google Blog Alerts - Download Squad

Seems no one cares about history:

Yesterday, a forum held at CSU’s Levin College of Urban Affairs presented the history and relevance of Marcel Breuer’s Cleveland Trust Tower, its opportunities for re-use, and alternatives from demolition. Sadly, the first public discussion to consider the reuse or preservation of the tower may have been too late. The effort to educate the community on the significance of Marcel Breuer’s career, his design of the tower, and the challenges and advantages for rehabilitation should have happened concurrent with the County’s architect selection process. Hardly a whisper from the public about the importance of keeping this building, whether as an important piece of existing urbanism or as a landmark architectural design, determined the fate of this highrise months ago. Even as the presentations from panelists representing County government, architecture, preservation, green building and construction technology concluded yesterday evening, there was no clear consensus of its design significance or, simply, of the advantages of adapting the structure for another use or another “look”…

The Design Rag: When “Ugly” Distracts - Cleveland Trust Tower

It would be real handy if you could use Google Analytics on your Google Reader Shared items page. Is anyone looking at my shared items? Do you ever click thru on the stuff I’ve tagged?

Google Reader - George’s shared items

Lisa Chamberlain on MOCA:

The news that caught my eye today is that a hot young architecture firm has been chosen by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland (MOCA) to design the museum’s new building. Foreign Office Architects of London was founded in 1993 by a husband and wife team, Alejandro Zaera Polo and Farshid Moussavi, who met at Harvard (he’s Spanish and she is Iranian). The team gained international recognition with the Yokohama International Port Terminal in Japan (pictured above). They were short-listed for the Ground Zero master plan competition. But the firm has not built anything in the United States yet, and this will be the team’s first museum. It’s a fantastic selection on the part of MOCA…

Foreigners in Cleveland « Polis

From a recently discovered blog authored by Luke Armour:

I was listening to FIR #184 this morning (blog page, show notes) and Shel made some great comments about headlines. Especially in this day of RSS, we really need to be descriptive and informative in our headlines if we expect people to pay attention to the messages. This goes for newspapers, bloggers, and more. As a PR professional, I scan over 140 feeds in my aggregator to attempt to stay on top of events. Many of those feeds are headline only, no lead paragraph. I may be missing information, though I try not to. Think about that when crafting headlines for your blog, your website, or your client. RSS is changing not only the way we get information, but how we get information out…

Blogger criticizes local paper typo - what a jerk « Observations of Public Relations

Might want to review this list:

Thanks to Hunter at the Daily Kos and Bob Geiger for this cool comparison chart. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America compiled a list of over three hundred legislative votes from the last five years. This non-partisan group put together this ranking of our Congress men and women and whether they actually supported the troops with their votes, not just with their words.

Republicans are always making a show of how much they support the troops, how much they respect the fine men and women that have dedicated their lives to the defense of the United States, etc. Here I link to an earlier post I made about the Republican leadership replacing one of their fellow Republicans as chairman of the Veteran’s Affiars committee. The first Republican was actually doing a good job and voted often in favor of more benefits, better protection, etc., but then the Republican leadership didn’t like that so they replaced him with a rank and file stooge who would do their bidding and vote against all of those benefits…

The Daily Depression: Who Really Supports the Troops? - The Democrats, That’s Who

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to an important discussion that is taking place at BFD after this post that I made Thursday about the YBI being #1 in the state. It’s unexpected conversations like this getting to the core of Cleveland’s dysfunctional problems/leadership, public and private, that keep me posting at and reading BFD. Here’s a byte from one of many enlightening comments:

No, as with JumpStart, even the most original new ideas will be absorbed by the old guard interests in this town (especially if government throws fee money at it) and reformed to fit their understanding of how to do IT. Elements like the GCP and Roman’s role will always be a way that the enigma pretends to interface with the rest of us all the while protecting what it really knows; don’t risk anything, we like it just the way it is!

Three years ago, after running two companies from Akron for over 15 years with clients across the country (but none here), I decided to get better connected in NEO. After observing and experiencing firsthand what is being discussed here and questioning the insanity of it myself on a daily basis, discussions like this that call a spade a spade actually give me hope that we’ll eventually dismantle this dysfunctional power structure with an open and transparent network primed for progessive change.

I can’t imagine how desperate this situtation would seem without the Ed Morrisons and Norm Roulets showing us the way out and the Ron Copfers, speaking from firsthand involvement, bringing transparency to a very screwed up Institutional mindset that continues to hold the region hostage while Rome burns in order to maintain whatever power bases they think they have ownership of. And thanks to the Roldos for showing us how to follow the money trail.

Discussions like this collectively make us smarter and better prepared to effect open, positive and lasting change. I just hope I live long enough to experience the results.

From an email:

10. Beat out Detroit in the race to the bottom.
9. Teach the Columbus business leadership a lesson in collaboration.
8. Concentrate our cocaine traffic, strip clubs and prostitution in one place.
7. Reverse the welfare juggernaut: Have poor inner city families pay the the college tuition bills for rich suburban families.
6. Contribute 8 cents on the dollar to education (or maybe it’s 6).
5. Prove to the wimps once and for all that, in politics, money trumps the truth.
4. Finally build our Forest City Convention Center.
3. Demonstrate the power of free enterprise by getting our Cleveland casinos written into the Ohio Constitution.
2. Show editorial writers in Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, Lorain, Warren, Akron, Cincinnati and Youngstown that they’re completely out to lunch.
1. Prove to Northeast Ohio leaders what regionalism is all about, whether they like it or not.

Ed posted his list here. What would you add?

I received this email from Subodh Chandra and was just about to post it when (cue the omnious music) the power went out!

Ohio2006 Blog

Amazing movie of an amazing man:

By day, Henry Darger was a reclusive janitor who had few — if any — friends. But at night, he became a literary artist with a unique vision. Darger’s 15,000-page novel is a wonderland of imagination as it details the exploits of seven angelic sisters who lead a rebellion against child-enslaving men. Featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning and Larry Pine and the work of talented animators, this film tells the story of Darger’s hidden world.

Netflix: In the Realms of the Unreal

Around the back of the Little Amsterdam, near the ancient rubbish bins and the furniture that has died from overuse, we are seated at a rickety table beside an old broken-down, rain-warped piano. Waits is drinking black coffee from a paper cup, wearing a suit at least one size too small, scuffed biker boots and a weather-beaten look that says, ‘I’ve seen it all.’ His hair is thinner now, but still has a mind of its own. His guitar is nestling in a case on the tarmac, on which rests a well-worn porkpie hat. He could have just stepped out of one of his own songs.

‘Just look at this piano,’ he says, the voice low and hoarse, and just the way you’d imagine it to be from his singing. ‘Why has this piano been left out in the rain? It will never have a song pass through its chambers again. That’s a sad thing, right?’

Tom Waits, now teetotaller, is at 56 making the music of his life, he tells Sean O’Hagan | Magazine | The Observer

John Sharp’s picks from Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat.
eHealth - Powered By Bloglines

Did mine yesterday. Everything went cool. Boot time is faster. I dig Firefox 2.0. Remember YMMV.
Slashdot | Upgrading to Ubuntu Edgy Eft a “Nightmare”

One more reason to vote for Democrats this year: letting tobacco lobbists attempt to amend the constitution:

J Matthew Yuskewich is the treasurer for this retarded issue 4 thing- you know, the “smoke less ohio” constitutional amendment that is on the ballot this year thanks to the millions of dollars worth of signatures paid for by big tobacco companies.
[…]
He’s also treasurer for the Ohio House Republican Campaign Committee.

Ahem, ODP, this is something you want want to make hay out of | Buckeye State Blog

Violence in Mexico continues:

An American photojournalist and another man were killed and at least five other people were injured Friday as protesters and pro-government gunmen clashed in the southern state capital of Oaxaca.

The journalist, whom colleagues identified as documentary filmmaker and photographer Brad Will, was shot in a confrontation in a community on the edge of Oaxaca City, capital of the state of the same name…

Boing Boing: US video journalist killed in Oaxaca by paramilitaries

A quote from a new biography of Andrew Carnegie.
Working With Words

The Cincinnati Post - Gambling on slots

From Business First of Columbus:

If Ohio voters give the OK for slot machines in the Nov. 7 election, they’ll be getting shortchanged on their investment, says a think tank opposed to the gambling proposal.

State Issue 3 would allow for as many as 3,500 slot machines at each of Ohio’s seven horse racing tracks, including Scioto Downs and Beulah Park in the Columbus area, and permit the development of two casino-type gaming parlors in Cleveland.

Calling the right to run slots parlors a “license to print money,” the Columbus-based Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions says the Learn & Earn initiative wouldn’t distribute enough of the potential gaming profits to the state’s education system or government, based on gambling receipts in other states…

As many of you know, I have lived in many cities and have taken full opportunities of my whereabouts to enjoy whatever local resources were available to explore and learn something new about my surroundings.

Cleveland has been a cornucopia of opportunities and I feel so grateful for yet another free event offered at the main library. On November 5^th one of my all time favorite authors [Link] Margaret Atwood will be a guest for an afternoon.

I feel as if her work has followed me from city to city as a timely companion on my own personal journey. I first read her in Ottawa on the recommendation of Wendy Black a very good friend. I read in one non-stop sitting “The Edible Woman” and suddenly had a better understanding of my mother’s life, the life of women who came before me and were a product of their own generation as we all are, it was a personal insight.

Later, I read “Lady Oracle” in Texas and it made me believe that women often have two distinct personas; a private one and a social one which may co-exists without dementia in the same body. It was re-assuring and affirming but also challenged what I had been taught about being a woman.

I read and reviewed her futuristic view of America’s romance with the right in a “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It was a dark forecast of things to come if people did not pushed back collectively to stop the flow of narrow and divisive spirit invading our political scene. At the time I was living an expatriate life in Switzerland raising young children, a full fledge member of the international community. Far in miles from America but close in spirit as always.

A very difficult re-entry into America was eased by reading “The Robber Bride” the last gift that was given to me by my ex-husband in Minnesota. I read many of her short stories at that time since I had little attention span and no appetite for complicated plots; my fault not hers.
Finally here in Cleveland, I entered the terrifying and totally compelling world of “Orix and Crake” a novel that has stayed with me and influence my view that we must cherish all that we have since all may be lost in the blink of an eye. An inspiring vision cradle in a world destroyed. Maybe a metaphor for events that touched our nation and the world on a clear sky day in September 2001?

I would encourage lovers of writing to join me at the Library for a meeting with this sensitive author who has influence generations to defy typecasting and write their own life scripts in spite of society’s pressure to comply and assimilate. The words of another writer Michael Connelly that “everyone matters or no one matters” comes to mind when thinking of Margaret Atwood’s work and her craftmanship in stimulating our imagination through her writing.

While Cleveland leaders are focusing on gambling to develop the economy, they’re overlooking other opportunities:

THE Midwest is blessed with the world’s largest fresh water system, yet the states surrounding it don’t seem to know how to sufficiently market it to benefit their struggling economies.

As another presidential election season looms, the Great Lakes states must begin to collaborate to take advantage of their greatest natural asset and speak with one regional voice, making them a force to be reckoned with in 2008 and beyond.

The Brookings Institution, a research and policy institution, is urging the Great Lakes states to develop a plan to market their most valuable resource. That couldn’t be more timely.

It is true, as Brookings observes in a new report, that the region has important assets to spur significant economic development. Most of all, the rest of the country, indeed the world, covets our fresh water supply…

That’s from the Toledo Blade. I’m really interested in going back to Toledo and doing more meet.the.bloggers* interviews. It seemed to me that from our conversation with Ben Konop, that there’s lots of changes taking place there. It’d be a shame if Cleveland’s leadership ignored the opportunity to collaborate just because they aren’t closer.
- toledoblade.com -

From this week’s PostSecret, kickball.

Have we lost our way?

On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York City by President Grover Cleveland with these words on the pedestal, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” There is no possibility that we would ever accept such a brazen symbol of Democracy 120 years after the dedication of the original Ms. Liberty. We would dismantle that Lady and send her back to France on ship carrying a banner “Mission Accomplished…”

clevelandhomeless: Give Us Your Tired and Poor…

How much are they will to pay in OH?

The competition among three companies for the privilege to operate a casino in Pittsburgh is so heated that all three have pledged to build or help build a new arena for the Penguins hockey team.

The winner, expected to be chosen before year’s end, also will pay $50 million to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in a one-time licensing fee and 43 percent of annual gross slot machine revenue for property tax relief, economic development and tourism promotion.

One of those bidders is a partnership led by Forest City Enterprises, the same developer that also would like to build a casino at Tower City Center in downtown Cleveland.

But Forest City won’t have to sweeten the pot to land the Cleveland deal. All the developer needs is a yes vote on Issue 3.

The proposed amendment is unusual because it essentially writes the developer’s Tower City address on the east bank of the Cuyahoga River into the Ohio Constitution as one of two downtown locations allowed to operate slot machines…

I’d say we’re getting the shaft.

Beacon Journal | 10/29/2006 | Ohio, Pa. part ways on slots

Next week, there are 0 Meet.The.Bloggers* interviews scheduled. Zero.

Thank goodness.

I don’t feel to bad though, because you’ve got plenty to listen to. Just in the past two days I’ve posted six interviews:

• Smoke Free Ohio
• Issue 19 for Health and Human Services
• Another in the Reframe Dialogue Series with Sheryl Hoffman and Diane Shoemaker of Art House on supporting Issue 18
• An interview with Raymond Ku who’s running for State House
• State Rep Tim Cassell who’s running for re-election
• Jeff Cole, Director of the Center for the Digital Future

A couple things I’d like to point out about the interviews. Listen to the beginning of the Tim Cassell interview, where he talks about how dilapitated the Tower Press Building was and what a marvelous job Dave Perkowski’s done on it. The Jeff Cole interview is probably my favorite MTB interview so far because we spend so much time talking about how people are using the internets.

One event next week that we are doing is Midtown Brews which is Thursday. This month’s speaker is Lev Gonick. After his presentation, we’ll be turning on the mics and having a conversation like we did last month.

Details:
Time: 5:30 P.M. to 7:30 P.M.
Place: Webtego
2530 Superior Avenue, Suite 600, Cleveland, Ohio 44114

What happened when MTB interviewed Dr. Jeffrey Cole, Director of the Center for Digital Future at USC Annenberg School for Communication, yesterday morning was one of the most dynamic meetings that I had yet the pleasure to participate in as a blogger.

It was a discussion that took place at our main hub at the Tower Press building and was engineered between Howard Landau, President of Landau Public Relations and our own George Nemeth. Also joining in the conversation was Len Steinbach CIO of the Cleveland Museum of Arts, Rick Weiss Assistant Director of the Ingenuity Festival, Dennis Althar (with his wife Georgia in the second row) Gloria Ferris, Tim Ferris and yours truly.

Prior to this interview I worried that it might be a bit too technical for me but I was curious about the work that Jeff Cole initiated under the umbrella of the World Internet Project where under his direction the Web, its users and their usage habits were scrutinized, analyzed and categorized since 1999. This is a lot of material and a lot of information for us to dive in and make sense of but Jeff as he likes to be call, made it simple for us to appreciate.

According to his findings, people are more likely to give up their TV sets and their cell phones than to give up that ever fascinating internet connection. The Broadband revolution currently underway is sweeping across the world and the US may be left behind when you compare other countries entry into this race.

The conversation was provocative in its depth and range and went from the dramatic impact that the Internet had on the World as we know it to the forecasting of what else it might bring; from users in Dubai to users here in the US creating their own virtual communities of people all linked by the Internet. Home can now be anywhere and businesses have seized upon that phenomena as well as government agencies. It is interesting to note that most people now know what Google, My Space, Match.Com and Edmunds offer, it was not so when the World Internet Project started in 1999. The results are evident in our daily activities from searching the Web for services, to researching big ticket items purchases like real estate or cars to finding our soul mate on a dating site.

There was so much packed in this interview that I can’t wait to hear it on MTB again to refresh my memory, pause and reflect on its content. It might be worthwhile to launch our own MTB Internet Project and discuss how we may use some of the research information available from the Center for Digital Future to help in bringing to Cleveland a first rate education model. I keep thinking of all those kids labeled as lost that may be retrieved and educated if instead of using traditional classroom methods we allow them to develop their potential by using their inborn multi-tasking skills and use the Web as a tool on their own personal journey into self-actualization.

How do you convince people to do it?

My cousin’s daughter transferred to (to) Oberlin from a sunny, California college. Her parents will be here for parents weekend later this week. None of them know Cleveland. Yet. Their home is in a town north of New York City and they have lived mostly in the tri-state area (Northern Jersey and NY/Upper NYC) their whole lives.

What places do you suggest they experience with the hope of having them feel and enjoy NEO, in about 48 hours, less the time they’ll spend on campus?

While Issue 3 proponents push their cause by saying, “Everybody else around us is doing it,” what everyone else around us is also experiencing is tourist-frightening levels of crime that are rising faster than anywhere else in the country.

Read a brief piece here, or the release from the Morgan Quitno Press (with links to other info on the report) here.

BlackCoat Work Premier - iPod coat with ruberized controls.

Originally uploaded by koyonoinc.

If ya gotta watch the Browns, do it in high tech style…

Ray shared this during his MTB interview, and in fine blogger style, he posted it to his own blog:

The State of Ohio shall provide each public school (K-12) with the funds necessary to guarantee in every classroom for every subject (with the possible exception of gym) an actual instructional student to teacher ratio no greater than 15 to 1.

Ray Ku for State Representative: Weblog

Add a new stop to your WiFi circuit. Grabbed a sandwich and watched dusk creep in over the lake. Left the laptop @ home though. They’re open at 7AM though, so instead of going all the way into downtown, vary your pattern and get off at 55th St. and head up North Marginal.

Can’t wait to warm up by their fireplace this winter…

Andrea’s Boardwalk Cafe

Before y’all jump on me calling me liberal and crap, this is via Bruce Schneier, k?

What if I told you that it would take only one person—one highly motivated, but only moderately skilled bad apple, with either authorized or unauthorized access to the right company’s internal computer network—to steal a statewide election? You might think I was crazy, or alarmist, or just talking about something that’s only a remote, highly theoretical possibility. You also probably would think I was being really over-the-top if I told you that, without sweeping and very costly changes to the American electoral process, this scenario is almost certain to play out at some point in the future in some county or state in America, and that after it happens not only will we not have a clue as to what has taken place, but if we do get suspicious there will be no way to prove anything. You certainly wouldn’t want to believe me, and I don’t blame you.

How to steal an election by hacking the vote : Page 1

• The Chief Source: Republican Kevin Coughlin’s Gutter Campaign
  How old do you suppose that picture of Hanna is? I guess Coughlin was a do-gooder when he was that age. Who’s the comedian that jokes about the guys running this country now and how they were in high school?
  (tags: Politics)

I find it extremely disappointing that all of these people disapprove of Issue 3, but are “too busy” to talk about it:

All major statewide officials, including Blackwell and his Democratic opponent for governor, U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, oppose Issue 3. Spokesmen for Blackwell and Strickland said the candidates are speaking out against Issue 3 when asked but have not made it a prominent theme of their campaigns.

The Columbus Dispatch - Local/State

Chas writes:

It’s been nothing but negative ads. So much for that “I approve this ad” language being any sort of deterrent. Mainly DeWine and Brown and the RSCC and DSCC going after the other candidate.

Putting it mildly, it’s done nothing to make me want to look at, write about or even think about politics. My superficial opinion was that state and national GOP negatives, screw-ups and scandals pretty much meant the Dems had no reason not to win at least two state offices and the Ohio Senate seat.

The only hope for the Ohio GOP would be a bigger and better then expected turnout of Republican voters. What would the direct mailings in the final week use to motivate? What could they use to stir the hearts and minds to get to the polls? This? This is all they have left as the appeal to GOTV to registered Republicans?

[Image of Republican mailer. Click the follow link to view it]

I repeat, this is the best/only thing they have left to try and get registered Republicans to vote?

They’ve gone beyond running the whole 9/11 into the ground. The (Ohio) GOP is now passing levels of turning off and numbing their own base.

cleveland.com: Weblogs

Jason replies:

Yeah, sorry, Chas. All that’s left for energizing the Ohio GOP base is reminding them that 9/11 happened. Perhaps it will work.

But more than anything, it shows complete and utter desperation. I seem to recall a multitude of other important days in American history: a few near the end of the 18th century, perhaps the day Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation, the election of Kennedy as the first (and only) non-protestant president, and seems to me V-J day was important too. Dare we say it, the day Francis Scott Key penned the national anthem, probably important.

But I must be wrong. All that matters is 9/11 and the future election day.

psychobilly democrat: ORP: Using Tragedy for Gain

I had the chance to sit through Harvard Professor Michael Porter’s CSU-sponsored Town Hall talk on the healthcare system last night. His analysis was dead on: the parties in the healthcare system are focused too much on cost shifting to each other, and not enough on providing value to patients.

His solution is to demand value from the system, by demanding that healthcare institutions publish their outcomes data. Insurers and managed care organizations should then direct patients to top providers and away from inadequate ones. Poor quality providers would not be guaranteed patient flow, as occurs under today’s contracts between insurers and providers, or even careers in healthcare. Hospitals would no longer offer all services, but only those at which they were proficient. Healthcare would be delivered around disease states, rather than geographies or medical specialties.

There is plenty of money in the system already, Porter argues, to provide quality care to all Americans. It’s just being squandered through a lack of focus on the outcomes obtained through the spending.

At the end of his lengthy, detailed, and cogent talk–a summary of his new book Redefining Health Care (Harvard Business School Press)–Porter noted wryly that he had not mentioned the government once during his talk. His observation is that the changes that are needed can be achieved by each of us in what we demand as employees, employers, and citizens. If the government. Medicare, and Medicaid, come along for the ride, all the better, but he doesn’t think we should wait 20 more years for that to happen.

Not once, but twice today have people contact me about taking down photos. Flickr allows you to specify whether you’ll allow people to do this:

Specifying who can blog your public photos will hide the “Blog This” button from anyone who doesn’t have permission.

Flickr also lets you specify a creative commons license. If you use that and think someone’s violating your license, you probably should mention it…

Flickr: Who can blog your photos?

With jokes about how we do elections:

Six years ago the world watched dumbfounded as the Florida 2000 fiasco exposed the messy underbelly of U.S. election administration. Since then states have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new electronic voting equipment to ensure that the nation would never experience such mishaps again.

But two recent and lengthy reports examining this year’s May primary in Cuyahoga County, Ohio — a pivotal state where the electoral votes gave President Bush his second win in 2004 — make it clear that Florida-like fiascos are far from behind us.

The reports, totaling more than 500 pages, paint a disturbing picture of how million-dollar equipment and security safeguards can quickly be undone by poor product design, improper election procedures and inadequate training. From destroyed ballots and vote totals that didn’t add up to lost equipment and breaches in security protocols, Cuyahoga’s primary is a perfect study in how not to run an election…

Wired News: Ohio Election Portends Trouble

This isn’t a reminder to vote on 11/7, though that’s a good idea. The purpose of this post is to encourage you to use the voting system I set up here on BFD. Help me by providing feedback on the posts you like/don’t.

Also, please remember that BFD is open to anyone who take the time to sign up to be an author. But BFD won’t just write itself. If you’re a contributor, by all mean, login and post something. Anything!

WOW. Most people never carve a pumpkin like Rob Hawkin’s wife did on her first attempt.

Jack O’Lantern（コンテストに応募してみよう）ー3ー — NeoHAWK

A link from Rob Hawkins:

Shapiro says he is “fascinated” by what he calls the “community voice. The reason I invented rosetimes is that there are so many people in this world with important things to say, but who will never be invited into mainstream media. Their ideas are worth hearing, and the most powerful way for them to express their ideas is in video form, via interviews with each other.

“My highest hope is that the community voice will start drowning out the shoutfests on television. If people start turning off their televisions and listening more to each other, then I know I’ve done my job. We can only reach understanding when we listen to each other a lot more.”

Thoughts?

NewsForge | The Internet is for interviews

A good name for it, because that’s what I mean it to be. If your want your feed added or removed, please contact me. It’s actually a pretty cool tool. AJAX, PHP, and MySQL. Create a login for yourself. That let’s you keep track of what you’ve read, flag it and tag it.
BFD NEO

• Team NEO Board Strengthened
  “The addition of these new trustees clearly advances our Mission: Uniting the Region to Accelerate Business Growth.” A GM, a VP, and a Managing Partner. Explain how that’s “uniting the region?”
  (tags: leadership)
• Slot machine opponents begin airing TV ads
  (tags: ohiolearnandearn)

Quit spending so much time commenting on BFD and go to Pittsburgh to find out why they got $1B in investment and Cleveland didn’t:

Last year, the research corridor near Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh attracted about $1 billion in public and private funding, twice the amount of five years ago.

“Pittsburgh was hit harder than any other American city in the change from an industrial economy to the new economy,'’ says Don Smith, vice president for economic development at the Mellon Pitt Corp., a partnership coordinating research at the schools…

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