Speed up. Slow down. Block.

Assuming that the above five words are nothing more than a description of Super Bowl tactics would be incorrect. That’s because the words also define tactics the largest Internet service providers (ISPs)—Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable—might soon be using to bolster their bottom line. This radical change to the way in which Internet service comes into our homes, schools, and businesses follows the recent decision by a federal-appeals court to strike down the FCC’s rules governing net neutrality.

To understand what was at stake that day in court, it’s important to understand what net neutrality means. It’s “the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.”

Now that we’ve got the definition cleared up, let’s rewind the action a bit. That means taking a look at what happened last month in the courtroom of Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Judge Tatel ruled against the FCC in a case brought by lawyers for Verizon. That decision effectively invalidated the FCC’s application of open-Internet, or net-neutrality, rules that historically have prevented Internet service providers from prioritizing speed and limiting access to content and user applications.

As of today, net neutrality is out. Preferential access is in. If the court’s decision is the final word, Internet users with money to spend will be treated to having their data moved to the head of the line. The rest of us will be sitting in front of our screens tapping our fingers (or worse) in frustration over slower access speeds and may even find ourselves blocked out of content one or more of the ISPs may deem objectionable.

So unless the FCC takes action, ISPs will now be free to cut exclusive deals with cable, television, online retailers, and streaming companies to prioritize Internet traffic. This could lead to a multi-tiered system of up charges and data tracks. There would be slow and fast lanes. Slow lanes would be for companies, organizations, and individuals that can’t afford to get in on the deals. Those poor cousins of the Internet might include schools, libraries, universities, nonprofits, artists posting creative content, researchers using Google and other search engines, activist organizations, small businesses, and start-ups. Fast lanes would be reserved for the largest corporations and the wealthy who could afford to ante up for the privilege.

The implications of Judge Tatel’s decision are broad. The decision threatens to destroy both the level playing field Internet users have enjoyed for more than a decade and open access to the explosion of information sharing. It threatens to increase everyone’s costs for using the Internet. As one writer at the Free Press put it, the disappearance of net neutrality will mean that “the Internet as we know it could be a relic of the past.”

As Michael Copps, former FCC commissioner from 2001 to 2011 and now a public-interest advocate at Common Cause, explains, the loss of net neutrality will mean “playing fast and loose with the most opportunity-creating technology in all of communications history.”

But don’t despair just yet. There is an opening for the FCC that allows the agency to stay in the game. Fortunately, Judge Tatel’s decision actually affirmed two vital concepts: first, the decision upheld the concept of net neutrality as a matter of principle; and, second, it upheld the FCC’s ability to reclassify ISPs as common carriers (the same classification given to companies providing telephone service), which would allow the FCC to apply its rules of net neutrality.

Here’s former FCC commissioner Copps explaining how the FCC can reverse the “flawed decision” it made ten years ago when it classified broadband service as an information service rather than a common carrier and left itself open to the devastating decision in Judge Tatel’s courtroom.

The good news is that the solution is pretty simple. It doesn’t require a new telecommunications statute replete with time-consuming years of legislative horse-trading and special interest lobbying. All it requires is an FCC big enough to own up to its previous mistakes and courageous enough to put our communications future back on track.

Current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has not ruled out reclassification but hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for it in his public statements. His official statement following the court’s decision broadly reaffirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to “consider all available options, including those for appeal, to ensure that these networks on which the Internet depends continue to provide a free and open platform for innovation and expression, and operate in the interest of all Americans.”

If, however, the FCC and Chairman Wheeler fail to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, Copps warns that “we are guaranteeing an Internet future of toll-booths, gatekeepers and preferential carriage.”

Even with the setback of the court’s decision, it’s certainly not time to throw in the towel. After all, Internet users are potentially the largest interest group in the country. A few weeks ago a petition sponsored by eighty-six organizations, including the ACLU, Common Cause, Reddit, Avaaz, the Free Press, The Writers Guild of America, Ms. Foundation for Women, and Daily Kos, collected more than one million signatures and was delivered to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. The petition declared:

Right now there is no one protecting Internet users from ISPs that block or discriminate against online content. Companies like AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon will be able to block or slow down any website, application or service they like. And they’ll be able to create tiered pricing structures with fast lanes for content providers and speakers who can afford the tolls—and slow lanes for everyone else.

I’m here to remind you, fellow Internet users, that those one million signatures were a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 207 million of us. If every one of us would step away from the screen for a few minutes and get in the game by calling the people who were elected to represent us and demanding they and the FCC protect net neutrality and stop catering to the narrow interests of the corporate world, we could win this one.

Here’s Internet blogger Mark Fiore’s satirical take on the Internet’s future if we allow the court’s decision to stand.

Goodbye Net Neutrality, Hello Gilded Age Internet from MarkFiore on Vimeo.

The post Net neutrality: Will you be in the slow lane or the express lane? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Proving that President Obama is still a trend starter, after his speech at the Democratic National Convention, online searches for registering to vote doubled across America. His excellent speech which ended with the following statement:

“I ask you tonight for your vote….

If you reject the notion that this nation’s promise is reserved for the few, your voice must be heard in this election.

If you reject the notion that our government is forever beholden to the highest bidder, you need to stand up in this election.

If you believe that new plants and factories can dot our landscape, that new energy can power our future, that new schools can provide ladders of opportunity to this nation of dreamers, if you believe in a country where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same rules, then I need you to vote this November.”

It must have struck a chord with people. As MSNBC and Google’s twitter feed report, at 11:03 Google searches for voter registration info surged. (Google isn’t great at sharing specific numbers but they do offer interesting graphs and charts on what’s trending at any given time.)

Another interesting thing to note is that between both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the Democratic speakers were more commonly Googled.

The post Google searches on “register to vote” go crazy after Obama speech appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A new online business, called SkillShare, wants us get over the idea that a college education is the only legitimate path to a career. What’s the point of going to college and taking on mass quantities of debt, only to graduate to a job that requires the skills and knowledge you had when you finished high school, ask SkillShare’s founders. And who decided that you can only learn in a traditional classroom from professors with Ph.D.’s, tenure and a bunch of obscure, published papers?

SkillShare’s aim is to democratize education—allowing anyone who wants to learn something to learn it from anyone who wants to teach it. No transcripts, SATs, teaching credentials or ivy-covered buildings necessary.

SkillShare describes its core principles this way:

We believe that people care more about real-world skills than antiquated accreditation systems. Our communities are filled with these people who are great at what they do, whether it’s delivering a fantastic speech at a conference or baking a triple layer chocolate cake. Our vision is to unlock this knowledge and allow people to share their skills with those who want to learn them.

1. Everyone is a teacher, and everyone has valuable knowledge to share.
2. Learning should not stop when you graduate from school.
3. Learning should happen in communities around shared interests and passions.
4. Everyone has a lifelong right to enjoy learning new things.
5. Learning should be fun and interesting!

So, exactly what does SkillShare do? It matches up people who know something—say, how to make a Chinese dumpling, or draw on an iPad, or take great food photos—with people who want to learn that skill. The teacher suggests a course, posts it on SkillShare, and sells a limited number of tickets to the class, whose price he/she sets. Many classes charge under $20 per ticket, but some are considerably higher. Teachers pay no fee to list their classes, but they are responsible for arranging and paying for a venue, such as a coffee shop, community center or bookstore. Skillshare makes money by taking a portion of each ticket sale.

One course that you might sign up for in May 2011 is called “Lady Luck: Poker 101 for Women.” A ticket to the class costs $15. Its teacher is Michael Karnjanaprakorn, who happens to be one of the founders of Skillshare. He also happens to be a semi-professional poker player with 15 years of experience and is the founder of  World Series of Good, which encourages poker players to donate a percentage of their winnings to charity. His class description makes it sound like a pretty good bet, if you’re a woman who feels the need to out-poker a bunch of men:

Ever want to sit at the poker table but don’t really understand how the game is played? Come learn from two semi-professional poker players on how to play the game and put anyone in their poker place. Many people assume that poker is a “men’s game” but that’s not true. Join us as we host a class geared specifically for women. This class is geared towards the beginner poker player, and features an integrated curriculum which includes a live lecture, Q&A and interactive gameplay. In this class, we will go over the following:

• Texas Hold ‘Em Gameplay
• Rules & Etiquette
• Poker Lingo
• Hand Values
• Basic Poker Strategies
• Handling Overly Aggressive Opponents
• Chip Tricks
• Secrets Behind Winning Professional Players

Other courses offered at this writing include: “5 and Under: Restaurant-caliber food with less than 5 ingredients,” taught by a New York City chef;  “Spy School – The Seeing Lab.” where, for $40 you can “learn how to notice and read facial micro-expressions;” and “Visual Means 101: Strategies for Beginning Photographers.”

The project currently operates only in New York City, where Skillshare has amassed a “venue database” that helps teachers find workable, affordable locations for their classes. Next up: San Francisco. In the meantime, Skillshare encourages community teachers in other areas to start thinking about classes they might want to lead and even to propose them as listings for Skillshare.

An idea worth watching. What’s in your skill set?

The post Forget credentials & credit hours: Learn anything from anybody appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You’ve heard about the chaos in Egypt. Ordinary citizens got tired of their oppressive ruler and took to the streets. There are tanks in Cairo, riots, mandatory curfews, and most surprisingly, no internet. It’s a terrifying thought; the idea that with a handful of phone calls the government is able to shut off internet and cell phone services for a country with 80 million people. (In Egypt only 20% of people have access to the internet through a home computer but 75% have cell phones.) The question isn’t why Egypt halted the internet, but why the United States is considering legislation to allow for the same thing to happen here.

For the second time a bill is being brought before Congress that gives the President power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency” and prohibiting any review by the court system.

According to CNET:

“The revised Lieberman-Collins bill, dubbed the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, works this way: Homeland Security will “establish and maintain a list of systems or assets that constitute covered critical infrastructure” and that will be subject to emergency decrees.

Under the revised legislation, the definition of critical infrastructure has been tightened. DHS is only supposed to place a computer system (including a server, Web site, router, and so on) on the list if it meets three requirements. First, the disruption of the system could cause “severe economic consequences” or worse. Second, that the system “is a component of the national information infrastructure.” Third, that the “national information infrastructure is essential to the reliable operation of the system.”

President Obama would then have the power to “issue a declaration of a national cyberemergency.” What that entails is a little unclear, including whether DHS could pry user information out of Internet companies that it would not normally be entitled to obtain without a court order. One section says they can disclose certain types of noncommunications data if “specifically authorized by law,” but a presidential decree may suffice.

Senator Susan Collins, the author of the bill, claims that it isn’t “kill switch” legislation like what happened in Egypt. But with the vague definition of “cyberemergency” and “critical infrastructure” it can be justification for anything. All the president has to do is declare cyberemergency and he could shut down Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail, effectively halting all email. For however long he wanted.

The ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, and numerous other groups think that it will be a tool for censorship. (The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman. He’s said before that it’s okay to pressure companies about internet content.) Once the bill gets revised and resubmitted it should be interesting to see where public supports lies.

The idea behind the bill is nothing new. Internet censorship/restriction is a hallmark of non-freedom loving countries. China blocks Google, Iran has censored social media sites in times of unrest, and all websites are under government control in North Korea. Are those really countries we want to use as role models for our internet policies?

The post Internet blockades: coming soon to a country near you! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

When a school district repurposes a building, or a sandwich shop takes the political pulse of its neighborhood, is it news? Sure, especially if you live down the block. But when newspapers downsize, those stories [and journalists to cover them] are often the first to get chopped from the news budget.

That’s where Patch.com comes in. I first became aware of it when, as an editor, I sorted through news feeds for a newly launched, progressive news “aggregator,” called Forward STL. Included in the RSS feeds we were looking at were stories from some of the nearly 100 municipalities in the very balkanized St. Louis, Missouri metro area. The “Brentwood-Maplewood Patch” had a story about a high-school beekeeping project. The “Creve Coeur Patch” showed up with a piece on a school building that had recently been purchased by the local school district.

But this is not a just St. Louis metro story. It’s both smaller and bigger than that. A quick check of Patch.com reveals a service map that shows Patch organizations in about half of the states. By the end of 2010, Patch is reported to have established 400 to 500 outlets, including, for example, the Dunwoody, GA Patch, the Gulfport FL Patch and the Mercer Island, WA Patch.  [In the St. Louis metro area, Patch currently has 24.] A sampling of recent hyperlocal headlines of interest to community residents include:  “Important presentation on Medicare at Senior Center.” “Garden Club heads out on winter walk.” “Wildcats come back to beat Lady Islanders.”

Patch is not the only hyperlocal news organization on the block. Its main competitor is  Examiner.com, which has been in play since 2008. As of October 2010, Examiner.com claimed 19 million unique visitors a month and 54 million page views a month for its local news and reviews.

One big difference is that Patch hires journalists while Examiner.com hires  “examiners.”

Examiners are local experts, usually not journalists, who are passionate about subjects such as pets.  They could post about local dog parks or write restaurant reviews. They are paid based on a complex formula that includes how many page views they get, how many views come from local readers, and how much users are engaged with their postsMost of the examiners do not make a living on their. posts, but view the work as an avocation.

It doesn’t take an MBA [I don’t have one] to figure out that in starting up Patch, somebody very smart saw an on-line niche—and presumably a profitable business model—for “hyper-local” news. It remains to be seen how smart the idea was. Patch is only about one year old.

Patch is owned by AOL [yes, that AOL, the digital dinosaur. Patch represents part of AOL’s effort to morph into a content provider. In 2010, AOL invested $50 million in the venture, and has since reportedly added another $10 milllion.] The idea behind Patch appears to go something like this: Set up a professional, national news organization that breaks down the news community by community and fund it with hyperlocal advertising targeted to a specific geographical segment of a state or city.

Patch executives say that local readers feel under-served.

“People are way more hungry for news at their local level than even we imagined,” said Brian Farnham, editor in chief of Patch. “There’s a lot of good sources for news existing at the national level and beyond, but at the local level the cohesive experience is missing.”

Patch.com is part of the Patch.org Foundation, which was formed in March, 2010, to:

“improve the quality of life in underserved communities across the globe through access to trusted local news and information. The Patch.org Foundation plans to partner with community foundations and other organizations to fund the operation of Patch news and information sites in communities that need them most: inner-city neighborhoods and underserved towns around the world.”

Patch looks for communities with populations ranging from 15,000 to 100,000 that are “underserved by the media and would benefit by having access to local news and information about government, schools and business.”

PaidContent.org reports that:

Patch selects towns to expand to based in part on a 59-variable algorithm that takes into account factors like the average household income of a town, how often citizens vote, and how the local public high school ranks; the company is then talking to local residents to ensure that targeted areas have other less quantifiable characteristics like a “vibrant business community” and “walkable Main Street.” Patch hires one professional reporter to cover each community; each “cluster” of sites also has an ad manager who is the “feet in the street” selling ads.

Patch is run by an editorial board, based in New York City, with impressive credentials in journalism and the news business. The organization hires local reporters who have journalism experience, too. Each local editor — who essentially acts as reporter, editor, aggregator and community-outreach manager — is given a website, a MacBook Pro, a digital camera with video and an iPhone or BlackBerry, and reportedly paid between $38,000 and $45,000 with health benefits. The editors then pay individual freelancers about $50-$100 per item. According to Lostremote.com, “editors are expected to publish at least 3 stories a day and 1 tweet every 4 hours. Also, editors must live in the communities they cover.”

As an outlet for writers looking for work, Patch is great news: it’s already recognized as the nation’s primary hirer of journalists.

Is it profitable? In a PaidContent interview, Patch’s CEO Warren Webster would say only that the sites are exceeding “every metric we set.”

But Patch does say that it costs 1/25th the amount to run a Patch site that it does to operate a daily newspaper in the same town, even when costs associated with publishing a newspaper, like delivery trucks and printing presses, are taken out. Patch has been criticized for overworking its reporters, but Webster says that on average 75 percent of them make more money than they did at previous journalism jobs.

By the way, not everyone loves Patch.  Some see it as the “Walmart of news,” flooding a market with its low-cost reporting, usurping the role of existing, local news media and blogs, and driving them out of business. An article in the Los Angeles Times reports that some long-established neighborhood news providers have nicknamed the company “Poach.”  Others call out Patch for the hypocrisy of running an organization that purports to be hyper-local, while having its headquarters in New York City.

Patch itself is a news story worth following. Right now, it’s expanding rapidly. If it succeeds, it could be good news for some communities. If it fails, we’ll have to read that story somewhere else.

The post Patch: Good news for neighborhoods, or local-news poacher? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Federal Communications Commission voted a partisan 3-2 on network neutrality on December 21st, in what proponents consider an upset. The rules, a flimsy copy of rules written by Verizon and Google in October, are worse than nothing. So they say.

Net neutrality is a hot topic, but only [it seems] for people who understand what net neutrality is and what it means for the future of free speech and online innovation. The rules, which the FCC hopes to enforce and Republicans vow to block in their first 2011 session, are a boon to the telecommunications industry.

What is net neutrality?

Net neutrality is what internet users are accustomed to. Simply put, it means that providers must give all network traffic the same priority. It means that we have equal access to Google and Bing, YouTube and Hulu, Fox News and CBS. They cannot collect fees from a company, for example, in order to grant that company network priority over others. In essence, showing bias towards one website or application can mean a certain level of control over what you, the consumer, have access to. Without net neutrality, providers could choke bandwidth or even block certain websites from being accessed by you.

Why the FCC’s net neutrality rules are worse than nothing

The FCC could reclassify internet providers as telecommunications companies, and ISP’s would be subject to the same rules and regulations that phone and cable companies are. Reclassification would also grant the FCC regulatory oversight. That could be the end of it. The FCC, however, chose to take the hard road and adopt separate rules and regulations for the internet; rules and regulations which may or may not hold up to inspection by the Supreme Court.

The “rules” [as proposed by Verizon and Google and approved by the FCC] prevent fixed-line broadband providers [e.g. DSL, cable] from blocking access to websites and/or applications but wireless providers would be able to put limits on access. Under the new “rules”, wireless providers like AT&T would be able to block applications that compete with their own products and services.

This is exactly what happened late last year with Comcast and the popular video service, Netflix. Netflix is direct competition to Comcast’s on-demand video service, so Comcast gave Netflix an ultimatum: pay us a fee or we block your service from being accessed by Comcast customers. Netflix paid, though under duress. Unfortunately, we can’t expect companies like Netflix to eat the cost of the imposed fees and that cost is passed on to Netflix customers. One company’s greed is another man’s cost.

We should be outraged at such underhanded stifling of competition, and consumers should be outraged that these costs are passed on to them. But at the heart of this issue is freedom. We should all be outraged that certain telecommunications companies seek to undermine freedom of speech, internet freedom, and innovation. Internet giants like Google should remember how they came to be the largest and most popular search engine around the world [net neutrality] and once again take the lead; this time in fighting to keep our free and open internet just the way it is.

Image credit: thenextweb.com

The post Don’t fix net neutrality. It isn’t broken. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

2010 has been the first calendar year for Occasional Planet’s eclectic, under-the-news-radar, occasionally-humorous-and-often-opinionated potpourri of mostly positive posts on progressive people, programs and ideas. Looking back–obsessively–via our Google Analytics dashboard, we’ve identified the 10 stories that have gotten the most clicks this year. There’s no discernible, underlying theme to the posts that readers pick up on, but we hope we’re a place where progressive readers can find something worth looking at. More to come in 2011. Here’s the list, with a bit of commentary.

1. President Obama’s 244 Accomplishments:  Posted just before the Nov. 2, 2010 mid-term elections, this post apparently tapped into a need to find the good news in a bad-news year for Democrats. Fact is, President Obama, beleaguered from both right and left, has managed to get a lot done–and this list came out before his big finish in the December lame-duck session of Congress.
2. $10,440 in South Carolina equals $0 in Vermont: A run for Congress,from Missouri, by OP co-founder Arthur Lieber sparked our interest in what it costs to run for Congress in other states. It took some meandering deep into some states’ regulations, but we managed to create an apparently heretofore non-existent chart comparing filing fees among the 50 states.
3. Wacky, hidden  provisions of healthcare reform act: April Fools’ Day brought a perfect opportunity to satirize some of the misleading claims, from the right, about the Health Care Reform Act that went into effect this year.
4. Ballpark Village to Ballpark “Tillage”: As 2010 enters the history books, there’s still no visible sign of progress toward development of the empty lot leftover from the demolition of the “old” Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis. This article offers a creative idea that cold turn a downtown scar into a technological and environmental showcase.
5. MO Prop A: If it passes, who wins, who loses? : It passed–overwhelmingly– although Missouri voters  may have been bamboozled by an ad campaign sponsored by a zillionaire. Proposition A threatens a huge portion of the operating budgets of Kansas City and St. Louis. Contributor Stacy Mergenthal looks at the consequences.
6. School is in! What’s your teachers’ salary?:  Teachers’ salaries vary widely from state to state. A handy, state-to-state chart reveals the crazy-quilt of pay ranges.
7. What’s a secret hold & why ban it in the U.S. Senate?: Senate rules are ugly, and Senators who know how to use them can do a lot of damage. The “secret hold” has held up hundreds of President Obama’s nominations for important jobs, without which government is, itself, on hold. An explanation and some logic.
8. In going green, failure leads to success: First, you fail. That’s pretty much the history of a lot of eventually successful industries and businesses. And that’s probably true for the “green revolution” as well. A look at the need for start-ups and the necessity of tolerating failure.
9. To reduce unemployment, make businesses stop off shoring jobs: Where did all the jobs go? It’s no secret–they’re everywhere but here at home, and that’s partly because tax laws “incentivize” off-shoring. OP contributor Madonna Gauding looks at ways to encourage job creation and retention in the U.S.
10. Rejected. Annals of unsuccessful Supreme Court bids: Newly sworn-in Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomajor made it, but many more nominees failed. A walk through Supreme Court history turns up some intriguing stories of failed attempts.

The post 10 most-read Occasional Planet posts of 2010 appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If negative advertising turns you off, but if you really would like people to know the facts that make a candidate look bad, Daily Kos has a plan for you. The highly influential progressive blog has launched a scheme called “Grassroots SEO.” It’s billed as a way to use the power of internet search engines to increase political activism.

Noting that, as the November 2010 election approaches, conventional Democratic playbooks focus on efforts to get out the vote [known in inner circles as GOTV], Daily Kos asks its followers to get involved both in traditional and non-traditional ways.

Here at Daily Kos, we are going to engage in very different, but still very important, form of election activism. It’s a type of activism no one else is working on, and it is well-suited to our medium as a blog.

The goal of Grassroots SEO is to get as many undecided voters as possible to read the most damaging news article about the Republican candidate for Congress in their district. It is based on two simple premises:

• One of the most common political activities people take online is to use search engines, mainly Google, to find information on candidates. (For more information, see the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s report on 2008 online political engagement.)
• These results of these searches are always in flux based upon hyperlinks anyone posts anywhere on the Internet, including message board comments and social networking sites (but not email).

As a result of this, not only is it possible for us to use our hyperlinks to impact what people find when they search for information on candidates, but we would be foolish not to do so in a way that benefited our preferred candidates.

To get its reader/bloggers involved, Daily Kos has created a series of search-engine-optimization tips, which it publishes on the blog itself and makes available via email alerts.

The first tip is called “Clicks Matter.”  Daily Kos’ Chris Bowers explains it like this:

What to do: Once a day, spend a couple minutes conducting a Google, Yahoo or Bing search on the name of a Republican running for Congress. Look over the summaries of the first 50 results and, when you do, be sure to only click on the links that appear unflattering to the Republican candidate.

Why it works: The links you click on during any search will become a little bit more prominent the next time someone else conducts the same search. This is a type of influence search engines themselves grant you, and which you can use to help other people see your preferred articles on any subject matter.

To help participants focus their efforts, Daily Kos has compiled a list of 98 competitive Congressional races. It’s all perfectly legal, says Daily Kos, and within the rules established by Google.

But if this kind of negative effort makes you uncomfortable, just don’t do it.

The post Progressive Poli- “clicks” debuts at Daily Kos appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Spot.us is a non-profit website aimed at inspiring civic journalism through “community powered reporting.” Spot.us partners the public with journalists to generate stories on a variety of under-reported topics

At the site, citizens submit news tips, or story ideas they’re passionate about in their communities. Freelance journalists then create pitches from news tips or their own ideas. Next, journalists determine the monetary requirements to complete a story.

Stories are funded by tax-deductible donations from citizens, and an expenses plan is outlined in a journalist’s pitch. Once the funding goal for a story is met, journalists begin the reporting process.

The finished product is available to for any person to republish for free. News publications are allowed exclusive rights to a story, but are required to donate half the cost to fund an already existing pitch.

Founded in 2010 by David Cohn, a freelance writer and fellow at the Reynolds Institute of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Spot.us has successfully created a sense of public service journalism by including a medley of topics to donate to or report on, ranging from a Philadelphia teacher’s use of flash mobs to encourage news literacy among his students, to San Francisco’s plan to turn a former Naval Base into an environmentally wholesome neighborhood.

While the site’s content is mostly West-coast centered, Cohn explains that the Bay Area and Los Angeles are simply a launch pad for this operation, and Spot.us will eventually expand to other cities.

While still in its first year, Spot.us has garnered a steady base of support and attention. Its community centered nature gives it the ability to cover the stories big publications often overlook or don’t have the resources to report on, especially as the season for primaries and elections starts up.

Spot.us started as a project by the center for Media Change, an organization that works to ensure journalism’s survival through the emergence of online publications.

“Journalism is a process, it’s a series of acts and another aspect to that principle is that journalism should be participatory,” says Cohn. “It’s something that the public should engage in.”

The post Got a story? Pitch your idea to Spot.us. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

David McCandless loves pie. And he loves information, too. But he hates pie charts. So, he’s doing something about that. Calling himself a “data journalist” and “information designer,” McCandless has given himself the task of turning facts, data, ideas, issues, statistics and questions into visual information.

Describing himself as “into anything strange and interesting,” he describes his work this way:

I’m interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath. Or, failing that, it can just look cool!

A look at his website demonstrates McCandless’ skill in combining intellectual curiosity, data and imaginative design. The result of his wide-ranging efforts is Information is Beautiful, a treasure-trove of information that’s presented in often unusual–but highly informative—visualizations. Not one of which is a pie chart.

Among his works is “Mountains Out of Molehills.” In a “chart” [don’t tell him I used that word, please] in which data forms mountain peaks of varying altitudes, McCandless presents a timeline of globally hyped media scare stories from the past decade. Most of the scares concern dire predictions of mass deaths caused by flu, the SARS virus or even “killer Wi-Fi,” and a collision between Earth and a giant asteroid.  You see the duration and intensity of media attention, and the actual outcomes. Information sources are as varied as the topics, and McCandless is scrupulous about crediting other researchers and news sources.

One relatively steep “mountain range” represents media stories from 2005 through 2007 about the “catastrophic threat of bird flu.” In a key below the visualization, McCandless reveals the actual number of bird flu deaths reported by the media: 262. As for that Earth/asteroid collision scare, it creates a low-rise but pesky group of hillocks that persist from 2000 into 2009 [the last year represented in the visualization]. Number of deaths reported as a result of this non-event: 0 [to date].

Other non-pie-charts on Information is Beautiful have names like: “When Sea Levels Attack” [a timeline of when various cities could be underwater as ocean levels rise]; “Timelines ” [time travel in popular tv and movies—a mesmerizing, convoluted diagram that’s a mind-bender, even for non-Trekkies]; and “How many nukes would it take to destroy the world” [self-explanatory, but scary]. Information sources are as varied as the topics. Personally, I can’t wait to see what’s next.

McCandless’ work appears in The Guardian, Wired and other publications. A compendium of his data designs, called The Visual Miscellaneum, was published in 2009. I highly recommend his website–but  not if you have a looming deadline at work or school, or an important date.

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