Lance Wins, Kerry Offers Advice

Congratulations to Lance Armstrong on his 7th straight Tour De France championship. While fighting off the usual criticisms of doping, Armstrong single-handedly defeated a pack of Europeans riders determined to gang up on him.

I was proud to see Lance ride with that American flag through the center of Paris... It's like the Olympics, but better because Armstong is a true-American success story.

Post-retirement Lance will have a lot of free time on his hands now that he doesn't have to endure a 4 to 5 hour bike ride every day. Besides spending time with his rock star girlfriend, Sheryl Crow, Lance is contemplating running for Governor of Texas... as a Republican.

It is interesting to note:
In the car behind Armstrong during the race was Senator John Kerry, who was the Democratic candidate in last year's Presidential election.

"I hope that Lance goes into politics and chooses the right party," Senator Kerry said. "He has focus, strategic ability, is not afraid to make decisions and is intelligent.

Democrats everywhere sigh.

Exam Free Pass

Working on Dr. Anderson's final paper...

Lacking Inspiration...

Lacking inspiration...

Paying for Internet Content

Pay for Internet Content?

That's what Jakob Neilsen thinks that we would be doing by the year 2000. In 1998, he wrote a column that advocated charging users for internet content, instead of relying on traditional internet advertising. Neilsen hypothesized that users would be willing to pay 1 cent or 5 cents per page view.

I find the idea of paying for internet content ludicrous.

I already pay $50 a month for cable internet so why should I pay to access internet content? AOL became the largest internet provider in the late 1990s because they offered customizable internet content through dial-up access. In 2005, AOL is shedding customers faster than they can sign up new ones because people are unwilling to pay for content.

As readers of my blog know, I frequent ESPN.com on an almost daily basis. ESPN.com offers ESPN Insider for a $39.95 fee. Sometimes, the content looks really appealing - the latest trade rumors, top fantasy football picks, and "inside" information - but I can't bring myself to pay $40 bucks to use a website.

Neilsen says that micropayments are the way of the future, but micropayments seem to be everything counter to what the internet is: Unfiltered, unowned information. To his credit, Neilsen acknowledges the potential failures of micropayments saying: "Subscriptions break the basic principles of the web," but he predicted that micropayments would be widespread in two years.

Neilsen received some interesting feedback on his observations. Neilsen is usually right on web usability, but I'm glad his predictions of fee-based internet browsing were wrong.

Anne Applebaum Reads My Blog

Never heard of Anne Applebaum? Me either. But she writes for the Post... And she is a huge fan of my blog.

After all, I help give her material for her columns. She read my blog entries on Chinese internet censorship before her latest column hit the Washington Post today.

No, not really. I don't even think my blog is cool enough for Google.

But if it was, I'm sure Applebaum would enjoy it.

While many Post readers are hearing about the problem of Chinese censorship for the first time, our class read about the role of US companies like Microsoft and Cisco in filtering out "subversive" materials before it was a centerpiece editorial in the Post. Applebaum's latest column helps illustrate how news breaks on the "blogosphere" before it makes news in the MSM.

Truthfully, I would have never gotten the idea for the Chinese internet censorship without Phil's article.

So maybe, Applebaum reads Phil's blog.

Do-It-Yourself Political Advertising

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Internet is rapidly changing politics. A perfect example are the online advertisements and spoofs from the 2004 election.

The most popular by far was JibJab. By spoofing both sides, JibJab made a bipartisan effort to poke fun at the mudslinging of Bush vs. Kerry.

Internet advertisements work because they are relatively cheap to make and they cost virtually nothing to distribute. Television ads, the accepted standard in the media industry, can cost up to hundreds of thousand of dollars. Distribution via television also costs loads of money, of which media consultants take a cut.

Internet ads do not have to be professionally recorded. Half of the advertisements in the IPDI directory were done by kids in their basement. (Be careful, most of them don't work). I thought one of the most creative ads was the Cheney is Alive ad.

Internet ads are taking the power out of the hands of media consultants. Anyone with a camera and a good idea can make an ad. If you're flush with cash or if you're on a tight budget, you can still make an effective internet-based ad. By removing the middle man and the high powered consultants, internet advertisements are helping our democracy in the same way personal letters from a campaign worker helped in the 1950s and 1960s.

But make no mistake. Internet ads are also dangerous.

Internet ads are famous for their lack of accountability. While most TV stations have to abide by legal regulations, there is no governing body for the internet. People can post blantantly untrue ads and distortions that many people will believe are fact.

One of the worst offenders in 2004 - on either side - was an ad by MoveOn.org that compared Bush to Hitler. MoveOn faced intense media pressure, but refused to relent. This ad is still recalled by Republican critics of MoveOn.

If someone where to create an internet ad like the famous LBJ ad "Daisy," it might have the power to swing an election.

Let's just hope it's true.

No Room To Talk

Comcast is one of the main internet providers in the Washington D.C. region, and it's interesting that in this region of political activism that they would find themselves in hot water.

Comcast hires Symantec to run anti-spam filters on e-mails, and this time their spam filters kept e-mails out from After Downing Street. After Downing Street is a movement described to "Honor our Dead, and Demand the Truth."

On the 3 year anniversary of the Downing Street Memo (mentioned previously here), the activists at After Downing Street were attempting to organize groups of like-minded people across the country. That's where they ran into a little glitch.

For over a week, Comcast via Symantec had filtered out e-mails from After Downing Street by identifying www.afterdowningstreet.org within the e-mail. Most people used it as a line their signature or the subject line.

Both Comcast and Symantec blamed the filtering on spam and said that they had received 46,000 complaints. But they refused to share any of the complaints with the activist group.

If 46,000 people did indeed file complaints against the group, it poses problems for the future of online political organizing.

What happens when a group of 500,000 Democrats complains about an e-mail from the RNC? Does it get blocked? Or what if large groups of Republicans complained about the excessive amounts of e-mails from MoveOn.org?

Political speech needs to be protected, but unfortunately large companies control access to that information in the digital age. We value ourselves as a high-minded society that believes in free speech, but how can we criticize Chinese internet censorship when companies like Comcast are denying access to information?

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Contrary to this article, there are other high speed cable internet providers in D.C. I'm with Starpower.