SHEILA LENNON'S SUBTERRANEAN HOMEPAGE NEWS

If you missed Part 1: My Projo.com home page headlines vanished today, I think because I updated a time stamp and that post leapfrogged the latest creation date. Neither of today's two posts got out there for long. The topic: The gathering of self-identified progressive political bloggers at the first YearlyKos convention at the Riviera in Las Vegas.

How to check into this stream:

"Tags" are keywords — categories by subject — attached to blog posts and photos to make them easily retrievable when searched. The tag "yearlykos" at Technorati (blog posts) and Flickr (photos) — is now working. More and better blog results seem to come from a straight keyword search at T'rati. It's easier and timelier to point you to the ongoing flow of published posts than to track them here. Most of those will link to others, so you can follow as many bread crumbs as you can handle.

A couple, though:

Nice Flickr photo chronology, with lots of folks' faces matched to familiar names, from Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise, where she's blogging all this.

Uh-oh: Ezra Klein writes at Tapped (photograph by Lindsay):

YearlyKos: Wondering why the magazines are a bit quiet? Possibly because large segments of their staffs are in Las Vegas, making a fishbowl of YearlyKos. In the rooms I've been in, attendees have barely outnumbered those writing about the attendees. A CAP-sponsored seminar on media appearances this morning saw the second row populated by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash, The National Review's Byron York, and The American Prospect's me. Also darting in and out of the session were The New Republic's Ryan Lizza, Time's Ana Marie-Cox, Salon's Michael Scherer, a Chicago Tribune reporter, and Maureen Dowd. And this was not, mind you, a large room.

Due to Times Select, the NYT's euphemism for locking the bluechip columnists behind the pay wall, I found myself thinking, "Maureen Dowd? Is she still around?" Ker-plunk.

At the top of the ladder, the number of readers dwindles sharply. How's that for a kick in the pants?

(Mark Glaser at PBS' Media Shift parodies Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall" in an impassioned appeal to the Times publisher to drop the pay wall.)

Classic "live-blogging the convention" opening post, from Dave Johnson (Seeing the Forest). We've all been there.

From YearlyKos:

I'm posting from the lobby at YearlyKos, sitting on the floor, next to the bathroom, across from the registration desk. This is because they have free wireless here, and it costs a bunch to get hooked up in the rooms, and I'm really cheap....

...Arriving here, being in the line to check into my room, and heading to where YearlyKos is, I had a strange feeling like I sort of recognized lots of people. Yet I didn't quite. Of course, I did recognize the people I know, but so many other people that seemed familiar... why is that? And then in front of the registration desk for YearlyKos there's a crowd of people, but 're all looking at each other's badges for clues to who everyone is, because we all know each other from online but have never seen each other. I think you'll probably read the same observation at other blogs, and in diaries at Kos.

Is the Wi-Fi still up? 1,500 laptops on any convention pipe usually bring it down.

Meanwhile, back at DailyKos this morning, Markos was chewing out diarists for all blogging "Zarqawi is dead" at the same time, rather than chiming in on the post of the first one to the publish.

11:23 a.m.

$4k hypoallergenic kitty; Yahoo launches Flickr-like photo site; Radio Deliro; 'B&W Hansel and Gretel'; Journalist: 'I was Russell Crowe's stooge'; Web downloads via TiVo; Copyright showdown today

Fleas without sneezes: Scientists breed allergy-free kitty — AFP. No, not kitties who don't get hay fever. These lack allergens that cause humans to scratch and sneeze in their presence. For $4,000, one of these precious creatures can be yours.

The demo at right is Persian, of course.

Yahoo photos is open. Free unlimited storage, tagging, etc. ZNet: Yahoo pours AJAX on photo service:

Yahoo Photos has been around since 2000, and has gathered about 2 billion photos and 30 million monthly users. It was early in the game and useful, but not quick to take advantage of Web 2.0 or its sibling Flickr's functionality. The new version (in limited beta in the U.S.) pours on the AJAX, giving it the feel of a rich desktop client application, with slick drag and drop, in line text editing, organizational features, such as automatically updating albums based on tags. Yahoo Photos beta also has integration with other Yahoo services, Mail, Messenger, Mobile and 360. It borrows tagging and comments from Flickr, and Yahoo is partnering with Target for photo finishing services. It also allows users to download original high-res versions of photos.

Yes, Yahoo bought Flickr last year, but sees different audiences. Yahoo photos are not by default publicly searchable, for instance. If you have a Yahoo login and password, you can get in and try it out. Here's the link again.

3:32 a.m.

One man's taste, streaming: At Radio Déliro. I've heard classical piano, Quincy Jones with the Sammy Nestico Orchestra, Peggy Lee, Paul McCartney live dedicating Fool on the Hill to his old mates, Swedish jazz, a grave Grav Sonata in A Minor by Amsterdam cellist Anner Bylsma, followed by Miles Davis doing All of You, Louis Chedid, Little Jimmy King and the Memphis Soul Survivors. Whew. This feels like a late-night Euro-lounge crawl. Gotta see what morning is like. ...

Radio Déliro, basée sur les préférences musicales de Roland Moreno, est animée et programmée par Sylvain Robert.

Push the Power button on the radio to turn it on and wear Roland Moreno's ears.

via Doc Searls.

The story of Hansel & Gretel told as an old silent black & white German expressionist film. At ZeD — Open Source Television — CBC
via wood s lot.

Fascinating: Nightmare On Wall Street: Prosecution Witness Describes 'Chaos' In UBS PaineWebber Attack

A journalist's confession: I was Russell Crowe's stooge. Flattery caused Aussie journalist Jack Marx to pull his punches on this story for People (The man they love to hate, 9.24.05). Crowe dropped him anyway, so he writes the story he didn't write the first time, in context. Hundreds of readers respond on his Sydney Morning Herald blog, The Daily Truth.

Marx gives it back to them: And another thing...

...Looking over the last few days, I can see very quickly the problems that most people have with me, and they are, in no particular order; lack of "ethics", missing "morals", not a lot of "taste", conspicuously absent "professionalism" and critical shortages of "respect". While I'm sure that neither James Joyce nor Salvador Dali ever cleaned their ears out so as to better hear such criticisms, let alone give answer to them, I feel compelled to explain my feelings about such matters.

Footnote: Marx writes in "Stooge."

At this point I produced from my pocket a book I had published at the turn of the century. It told the true story of the time I had gone in search of my childhood rock and roll idol, finding him destitute in a small coastal town, a reclusive invalid after 25 years of drug addiction. I moved in with him for a few months, finally moving out after relations reached such critical mass that another few days may have seen a fatality. I fashioned the experience into something of a modern-day fable, a cautionary tale about the perils of getting too close to one's idols.

The book turned my name to mud among those who would believe that the only crimes involving rock stars are those perpetrated by journalists and biographers.

The book was, Sorry — The Wretched Tale Of Little Stevie Wright and if you hurry here and scroll down, you can still hear Stevie Wright and The Easybeats sing Sorry.

TiVo offers Net video downloads for TV: News.com (TiVo tunes in to Net downloads)

Through the new TiVoCast service, people can download broadband video clips to their TiVo boxes for free from a handful of Internet sites, such as woman-oriented iVillage, technology-focused CNET.com (a CNET News.com sister site), entertainment-grooved Heavy.com, The New York Times, the National Basketball Association and Women's National Basketball Association, and news and political video blog site Rocketboom....

"Television is still the preferred platform for watching video," Tara Maitra, TiVo general manger of programming, said in a statement. "The TiVoCast service captures mainstream and specialty-based content on the Web, delivering programming that is not otherwise available through the TV today."

...Subscribers will be able to access the content through the Showcases area of TiVo Central, using a TiVo Series2 DVR box connected to a broadband connection....

Much of it so far seems to be audio whose artist/title info screens double for "video," like Music Choice on cable. Among the offerings: Live 365 Radio Network, with its thousands of niche FM, CD and AM stations. (Free reg. req., ads)

Yes, Tivo Nation can now download radio to their TVs.

(Of course, you can download Web radio to your home stereo speakers several ways. I do it through a receiver with a USB input, and the right jack. No TiVo required.)

SIRA addresses ephemeral downloads, or what the EFF refers to as incidental downloads, meaning any content that is either temporary or cached in a computer. Chris Norgaard, partner and intellectual property attorney at Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley, says that SIRA actually prevents incidental downloads from being licensed but speculates that the mere mention of it has EFF nervous.

"It's designed to not have separate royalty-triggering events for incidental downloads for buffering and all of that stuff that happens in between," Norgaard said. "In other words, it contains a lot of language aimed at clearing away all of that as being actionable."

But EFF insists just the opposite. "[SIRA] is a subtle way of setting a dangerous precedent for the fundamental meaning of copyright law," said Derek Slater, an activist with the EFF. "It says that basically every transmission of a copyright work is also a distribution. That's very dangerous because the record industry has said if you're performing these songs and you're allowing them to be recorded, like with a TiVo for radio, that's a distribution and it treats it as licensable."

8:09 a.m.

Part 1: Dems, bloggers and readers convene in Vegas

This started off part of the previous post, but it grew and took up too much real estate. Who knew antibiotics would work like No-Doz?

Power to and from the readers: Bloggers and readers with a connection to the blog DailyKos have pulled together their own convention in Vegas this weekend, without much involvement from chief blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, at right. Here's the YearlyKos Convention News & Details. Among their heavy hitters,

Friday Lunch Keynote - House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Barbara Boxer Saturday Morning Keynote with DNC Chair Howard Dean, lunch with Virginia Governor Mark Warner, evening reception featuring keynote by Senate Minority Leader Give 'em Hell Harry Reid (D-NV)

A lot of bytes have traveled since Joe Trippi's blogging efforts on behalf of Howard Dean grew into this self-organizing group of blogggers and readers shaping their own grassroots event.

Matt Bai: Can Bloggers Get Real? NYT, May 28. Here's the nut.

...In (one) way, Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm. It is not so much a blog as a travel destination, a place where what you have to say can be more important — at least for a few hours each day — than who you are or what you do.

DailyKos isn't exactly Cheers. They deal the cards again in life, if you're lucky. Reinventing yourself, another chance, happens when you go to a new school, fall in love, achieve something, like yourself.

And ... what you have to say — at least for a few hours each day — is who you are and what you do. It's not something to do between tending persona and performing.

I guess I don't like how Bai gets here, but here's his point:

And those who lead the most consequential revolts against the status quo never really vanquish the party's insider establishment. They simply take its place.

Yeah, you can become your parents. You can chide the amateurs in the Times.

But what the Democrats really need is new candidates, and influencers of candidates who can win, and innovative, effective, positive campaigns. The politician who sees this Vegas crowd as access to the virtual voting bloc doesn't get it:

• There is no top-down access to bloggers. Ideas bubble up and ring true for people or they don't.

• Every blogger drives her own bumper car.

• The Web is not pipes, it's a technology people use for human exchange — a "prosthesis for telepathy," as a painter friend called it. This self-organizing system is capable of galvanizing vast numbers of people quickly.

YearlyKos should tease out the extroverts, the ones who got themselves off their computers and out to Vegas. Some of them can probably get themselves to wakes and beaches, neighborhood barbecues and bocce and baseball fields this summer, too.

We here call that the analog world.

But don't let the grown-ups dazzle you with your chosen status, then reinvent you in their image. They'll stiffen you up just as Al Gore's experienced handlers did in 2000.

If your ads try to scare me with "terror," I'll turn away. We know better than to vote for whover says "Boo!"

If you want to make your religion the laws of our melting pot, please think again. That will tear America apart.

I'll likely support you if you want to spend our money at home on the needs of our own people, on the development of good tech jobs, on the computer literacy of the rest of us so we all can work, shop and learn as part of the online society.

Put videos on blogs where I'll see them. Say things worth reporting, not just safe lines wrapped in bunting. Don't hire actors to make your radio spots. Use your time to show me who you are, tell me what you'd change and why. And please don't talk mush to me.

And ... I don't want podcasts pushed to my phone, nor political ads in my inbox or white metal mailbox.

"Casey Goodguy needs your vote" will do.

Here's where YearlyKos says you can watch coverage. C-SPAN Schedule. This Technorati search should yield the latest live-blogging.