Ever tried to explain RSS to someone? Had trouble? Well, now there’s a great visual way to get the genius of it across in plain English. Check out this video!

Ever been out with “That Guy?” You know the one who has two, three, eight too many and ends up embarrassing the entire crowd? Not surprisingly, binge drinking is a serious problem among military recruits. The DOD hired Fleishman Hilliard to develop this incredibly non-government feeling campaign. It’s hip, edgy, savvy and the website is incredible. Have fun.

For a break at work, try Virgin’s 74 bands game. Looks like it’s been floating around for a while, but it was new to me this week. Can you find them all?

I think I just hit my 15 minutes! If you are going to the NTEN conference, be sure to visit the session Jonah Sachs and I are leading on online storytelling.

I don’t know why, but I’m really excited about my new twitter page.

And after complaining that my Google homepage was too boring and switching to page flakes, Google has launched a bunch of new groovy themes to choose from. I’m fickle, I’m back to Google.

Check out this story on eyetracking software from the Annenberg Center for Communications at USC.

Read the article to the end and you get to this juicy tidbit (tee hee)!

Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed.

Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

My friend and co-strategist Emily Weinstein sent me a link today from YouTube. Someone took Apple’s 1984 Macintosh ad and tinkered with it so that it paints Hilary as a symbol of a politically calculating past and Obama as the fresh start of a new transparent era of politics. Shall we say a 2.0 candidate?  Check it out and the SF Chronicle article about it.

I saw the best show at 9:30 Club in a long time on Friday- Michael Franti and Spearhead. Check him out on YouTube to get a flavor of what it was like. Jumpin’!

Cograts to my friend Colin Delany on winning a Golden Dot for his blog, e.politics. Check it out and have a look at my recent contribution on mobile-izing volunteers.

Congrats to Free Range!

We made Fast Company’s “Fast 50″ List. Check it out!

I just listened to a segment of NPR’s On the Media titled, Clink-Stained Wretch. describes the story of blogger Josh Wolf, who has been jailed in an American prison longer than any other journalist (6 months) for refusing to testify in federal court and hand over video footage, which he took at a September 2005 G8 protest in California.

Wolf’s footage captured protesters fighting with police and allegedly damaging a police car (considered federal property). While Wolf sold some of the footage to a local TV station, put some up on his website, he kept other footage that contains shots of the protesters that he has come to know as he’s been documenting civil dissent in the San Francisco Bay area for tow-and-a-half years (http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/47999/). This is what the court has subpoenaed and desires Wolf to testify on.

The subpoena is actually signed by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Wolf and his lawyer, Martin Garbus, along with the ACLU, argue that he should not be compelled to testify and identify the unmasked protesters that he filmed as it shows no footage of the clashes.

There are many thoughts circling through my head as I digest this story. On the one hand, I believe the police are in the right to investigate crimes committed against them. I also feel we do need to be vigilant and smart about investigating terrorist threats.

But on the other hand, I can’t help but feel that the case is less about the police wanting to discipline a protester, but more about heavy handed citizen surveillance, and a McCarthy like persecution of liberals. While we only have to listen to the daily news to understand why a terrorism task force is important, this case seems to be one more example of anti-terrorism dollars being spent foolishly.

The story of Wolf raises another complicated question. In today’s Post 9/11 climate, and given our conservative Supreme Court, how will journalists’ rights fare? Will we see them narrow in the coming years? Specifically, how will bloggers be viewed? Will they be considered journalists in the same way newspaper writers or television or radio and TV reporters are?

I hope our justices work in such a way that mitigates not only our fear of terrorism striking our soil again, but also our fear that we are loosing more freedom and privacy than necessary.