But somehow, despite all that is known about its power to sift and find that hidden thing which you seek, the article above never mentions the power of Google Alerts, something I swear by and testify to. Just saying...
Music's long-tail idea not working out exactly as planned, is it? I last wrote about rock guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen in my April 30, 2011 blog post titled, If the blog is rockin', don't come knockin' - Yngwie Malmsteen: Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (HQ); original version by ABBA (LIVE at Wembley Arena, 1979) http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-blog-is-rockin-dont-come-knockin.html of which this remake of ABBA'sGime Gimme! Gimme! is but one of many videos there.
This Gang of 8 bill is like Wimpy in Popeye. We cannot support border security Tuesday, for amnesty today. pic.twitter.com/REUd4dfKq1 — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 20, 2013
As I told you all last month in my multiple blog posts about Marco Rubio's lack of tweets about immigration -but about the Miami Heat- and the Miami Herald's self-evident and heavy-handed censorship for well over two weeks of all references, in-print and in their blogs, re Ryan Lizza's excellent New Yorker piece on the Schumer-Rubio bill, the Gang of Eight and Marco Rubio and his staff re the pro-amnesty bill that emerged. And censorship of any articulate, fact-filled negative comments about the bill. Nope, nothing about Florida's agribusiness industry hungering for more low-cost labor and how much they were spending to make it happen.
Los Angeles-based blogger Mickey Kaus, long one of my favorites since I was living and working in the D.C. area and he was atSlate, and now writing at The Daily Callerwebsite,is one of the many people I shared this bits of news with around the country. Some didn't know about it, some had heard but hadn't seen any actual evidence. Then I dropped some fact-filled evidence on them via email. Over the past few weeks, as only Mickey Kaus can so consistently, with insightful reporting and good humor, well-timed sarcasm and a knack for saying today what others will be saying tomorrow, via his very popular Twitter feed and blog, he has reminded us all again that, surprise, "Team Rubio really has gone silent on immigration"
.@MarcoRubio's *already* non-trivially damaged Gangof8 bill's prospects by acting like he's scared of it, no? — Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) July 18, 2013
67% of GOP voters who oppose a "path to legal status" say they could not vote 4 someone who disagreed on that issue! http://t.co/L0WC4Cqavw — Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) July 18, 2013
@RyanLizza That said I agree press gives v-poor picture of those in middle. Also no way of knowing what's for show and what's real. — Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) July 11, 2013
@RyanLizza Seems 2 me pro-legalizers (Ryan/Labrador/DiazBalart) get quoted most, w/ King/Bachmann as crazies on other side. #biasexplainsall — Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) July 11, 2013
Just to prove a point that I've proven so many times in the past on this blog: Snapshot of the Twitter feed of the Miami Herald shows its complete obliviousness to Broward County and the people who live there -like me; @MiamiHerald, @MindyMarques, @rickhirsch
Above is a snapshot of the Miami Herald'sobliviousness to Broward County, the land it treats like terra incognita in its new HQ in Doral -on the way to all the dumped bodies in The Everglades- even more so than when they were in downtown Miami and lumped Broward in with The Keys edition, withy older news, even though the Broward edition was printed in Broward.
At the top are the tweets appearing on the Miami Herald's Twitterpage as of 6:16 p.m. on Monday night.
How many do you think have to go thru before coming across thesecondreference to a person, place, issue or topic that is of particular relevance to Broward County and the people who live here?
What's your guess?
The correct answer is63.
62 tweets before the second item of particular relevance to Broward residents comes up.
The next time you get a phone call from a Herald reporter or editor, you ought to ask them
if they're sure they really meant to call someone in far-off Broward County.
If you're interested in seeing all the tweets that came before it, drop me a line and I will send it to you.
Sure, because what could possibly go wrong with tens of millions of teenagers' personal information being recorded and stored digitally somewhere on school property, and likely being easily accessible by all sorts of computer-savvy creeps, whether there at the school or many hundreds or thousands of miles away?
WSJDigitalNetwork YouTube Channel video: Does the NSA Know More About You Than Google? -WJS's Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on Verizon's cooperation in handing over metadata to the federal govt. Uploaded June 6, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A5yLOwX320
The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.
The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over 'on an ongoing daily basis' to the National Security Agency all call logs 'between the United States and abroad' or 'wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.
Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism -especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.
On PRISM, admin points to Sec 702 of FISA, says it collects "important and valuable" data from non-Americans politi.co/12vhdG6 — Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) June 7, 2013
The Guardian's bombshell revelation about domestic spying is only the tip of the iceberg read.bi/191sf7C — Politix (@bi_politics) June 6, 2013
The NSA Doesn't Need Much Phone Data to Know You're You. bit.ly/18Yjxab — Niraj Chokshi (@nirajc) June 6, 2013
I'm curious if any Miami or FTL-based federal officials have a similar M.O. to avoid compliance. Not that the local news media will investigate this unless a local federal employee comes forward to say so.
Twitter Proves Pivotal In Dissemination Of Information During Taksim Square Protests mbist.ro/131l3Sz (via @alltwtr) — mediabistro.com (@Mediabistro) June 3, 2013
Multi-talented DxDutch does it all: sings "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and plays talent scout and spots Old-style flash mob in the Old Country, complete with costumes: Flash mob in Munich shopping center startles some shoppers but amuses the hip and the cool kids who "get it"; #voXXclub, @DxDutch
Last week I first got wind of this interesting video and insight into German pop culture, courtesy of a Tweet by super-music talent DxDutch, one of the genuine stars of the YouTube generation, and an actual YouTube Partner, just like vlogger extraordinaire and HBB favorite Justine Ezarik, i.e. iJustine, http://ijustine.com/category/vlogs/ (See vid of them together at http://youtu.be/LBvWk6yv5XE) It features the music and antics of Universal Music Group (Germany) recording artist s voXXclub. http://www.universal-music.de/voxxclub/home
voXXclub YouTube channel video: "Rock mi" flashmob in den Riem Arcaden in München. Uploaded March 19, 2013.http://youtu.be/0Y_VqqXphaQ
Over the weekend I was going thru my large YouTube inbox of subscribed videos I hadn't gotten around to watching yet because of the NCAA Mens Basketball tourney, the usual unethical doings in Hallandale Beach and environs, and some other matters not worth getting into now. There, staring back at me from my computer screen was this remake byDxDutch of a Sonny Bono tune that he wrote and which became a hit for Cher in 1966, reaching #2 onBillboard's Hot 100 list. And who, counter to some of her fan's fears, is NOT dead -NOWTHATCHERISNOTDEAD...
Saturday night, if I'm home, is one of the times during the week when I double-check on reporters, columnists and pundits that I might've missed during the week whom I often read or who are interesting enough that it's worthwhile every so often to see what they've written or Tweeted.
Usually with some ballgame on TV in the background.
And that was the case last night with Rubin, who will be a guest onABC News'"This Week" this morning, which airs at 10:30 am here in Miami
Ari Fleischer @AriFleischer,
If President O wrote the Constitution, it would begin, "We the government, in order to form a more perfect people..."
Above, the cover of Broward County Commission candidate Marty Kiar's recent four-page direct mail to NW Broward County voters. If you think that a mailing with this cover would be light on ideas or issues, esp. those involving the County Commission, the group he wants to join, you'd be right. But then have you read his tweets?
Over the past nine months, for the most part, if you didn't know any better, you'd never even guess that Kiar lived in Broward County, because whether it's the issue of ethics and scruples or rather the obvious lack of them at times on the County and municipal level here by elected officials and well-paid administrators and employees, the overwhelming evidence that red-light cameras in Broward are being used primarily as revenue generators for cities instead of for the public safety purposes elected officials say they are when installing them, the County's curious garbage contract monopoly, Broward County Commissioners fighting term-limits overwhelmingly voted in as law by Broward citizens, et al, Kiarnever mentions important public policy matters that were actually being publicly discussed and voted upon in THIS county -and what he thinks about them. But then again, he is only 34-years old.
I find it very troubling that considering all the advantages that he enjoys, he's SO MUCH of a blank slate instead of being a more fully-formed and informed citizen. I seriously hope that voters living in District 8 will see more civic-minded candidates entering the race in the next four weeks, people who are NOT as tied-in to the Status Quo society in this county as Kiar is, so they can have at least one candidate to consider who will not only know the facts and know their own mind, but NOT hedge what they publicly says now because of being SO CONCERNED about election campaigns in the future, as Kiar seems to be. April 22, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
Did you see Marty Kiar's tweet about why FL Fair Districts & the FL Democrats NEVER made public -and submitted- their Redistricting maps when they had the chance? Actually, he never did.
On the other hand, Kiar, who, as I wrote the other day here, is running for the Broward County Comm. District 8 seat currently held by term-limited Ilene Lieberman, never neglected to tell us what he perceived to be very important insider info on all sorts of matters.
Things like how many miles he ran that day in preparation for running in a marathon, and how many doors he knocked on -he actually did it during Dolphins home loss to Tebow-led Broncos and a later home win against Buffalo- mentioned that he was at various state Redistricting meetings around the state and, even -wait for it- the sex of his unborn child, the latter being a fact that nobody outside of his family and immediate circle of friends could possibly care about... and TMI.
On October 19th of last year he even tweeted a link to an Orlando Sentinel editorial about two companion bills dealing with the public's right to speak to elected officials at public meetings that he and Sen. Joe Negron of Stuart offered, Senate Bill 206 and HB 355. Bills that I and almost everyone reading this blog would wholeheartedly agree with, in my case, because of what I and my friends and other HB residents have had to deal with for years at Hallandale Beach City Hall. http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=47498
(Residency-challenged Rep. Frank Artiles of House 119 voted against it on 2/3/12 in the Rulemaking & Regulation Subcommittee, but it still passed 12-3.)
Similarly, he tweets that he ran the Disney Marathon but, incredulously, doesn't give his time. Really.
As someone with a sister who runs in a lot of marathons across the country, I can say with little chance of being wrong that Marty Kiar may be the first person in the history of Twitter -at least in South Florida- to run a marathon, mention it in a tweet but NOT give his time, even if it isn't a PR.
He mentions the sex of his soon-too-be second child but the subject of Democratic-drawn maps that conformed to the two Constitutional Amendments that were overwhelmingly approved by Florida voters, something that was in the news about every day for a couple of months, he tweets nothing about? Yes.
That's very curious when you consider that for better than a year, we were all told over-and-over by the members of the Florida news media that the people running Fair Districts Floridawanted us to know that they were really looking out for all our best interests after we came thru and gave them the big election victories, but on the other hand, they also wanted us to know that the Florida GOP, on the other hand, well, you know them.
They'll do nothing but try to obfuscate and prevent the people of this state from ever seeing competitive districts drawn for a change so that real ideas and issues might matter more than PAC contributions or a candidates race, ethnicity or religion. You know the Florida GOP, they said with a sly wink, they'll keep up the long and treasured Sunshine State tradition of pols choosing their districts, rather than have voters choose them, the way it was always explained in high school Social Studies books once upon a time.
Yet what did THEY do?
So now that it's the first week of May and state legislative elections with the Republican-drawn court-approved maps will be held in six months, how come Fair Districts Florida and the Florida Democratic Party STILL haven't explained to the public why they NEVER officially submitted maps to the Florida Senate Redistricting Comm.?
Why?
And better yet, why doesn't the Mainstream News Media in this state, the nation's fourth-largest I remind you, care a whit about that, and never mentionthat salient fact in their stories about the court siding with the Florida GOP and what those new maps mean?
Not just real competition in some cases, but incumbents running against one another, always a good thing?
It's like they all have a bad case of situational amnesia, and are feigning not knowing what I and many of you reading this already know.
It's galling, just like Kiar's precious tweets.
Yes, it's not only a case of late with the Florida Democratic Party being the dog that doesn't hunt, but when you toss in the incurious state news media to the mix, it's a case of the watchdog that never barks.
Manchester City FC video: TUNNEL CAM: Man City 1-0 Man United Behind the scenes at the Etihad Stadium. April 30, 2012. http://youtu.be/90xoWo5Eah8 At 17:06, Diego Maradona and his daughter and grand-son arrive to see son-in-law Sergio Agüero...
My biggest fear when I woke up Monday morning was that the scheduled torrential downpours in South Florida would come during the broadcast of the Manchester Derby on ESPN at 3 p.m., and absolutely ruin things, since I have DirecTV and I lose reception during those sort of heavy end-of-the-world thunderstorms we get down here. Or that Manchester would have similar weather during the match in this, the wettest April in recorded history.
Fortunately for me, everything happened before and after in my corner of South Florida and City won a fabulous game. Well, at least one team I root for actually wins!
Liam Gallagher crashes the post-match press conference at Manchester City. "The league top, how about that?" April 30, 2012. http://youtu.be/dGBbbwRpNzc
I'd have posted all this all sooner, as well as posts about the FA's Roy Hodgson vs. "people's choice" Harry Redknapp publicdebate over the manager of the English National Team, but the perpetual downpours we've had down here of late have played havoc with my access to the AT&T server, rendering me frustrated. More on this very soon, though, as it's the burr under everyone's saddle there.
Reason Magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch discusses the symbol-laden presidency of Barack Obama with Fox Business Channel's Stuart Varney. http://youtu.be/b5W6KYFWN_Y
The blog post below is easily among the best things I've read, heard or seen all year, and I'm especially pleased that longtime HBB favorite Sharon Waxman is the one sharing the scoop with us via her blog on the website she created.
If you've read this blog for any period of time, you will know exactly why I feel this way, and just to give you a sense of the devastating and penetrating comments made by former Los Angles Times Assistant Editorial Page editor Matt Welch, now Editor-in-chief at Reason magazine, which he gave to Sharon on the telephone -wish I had the audio to play here!- take a look at this:
The paper is “blaming customers, blaming competition, blaming technology, instead of more forthrightly recognizing that the economics (of newspapers) got a lot worse,” he said. “If we don’t confront our own organizational pathologies, we’re in trouble.”
The Wrap WaxWord blog Former L.A. Times Editor Slams Paper For 'Blaming Customers, Competition, Technology' By Sharon Waxman Published: April 3, 2012 @ 2:58 pm,
How badly does former Los Angeles Times editor Matt Welch think the paper is doing?
Its “attitude is killing the host,” he tweeted last weekend.
For those of us like yours truly -and most of you reading this- far from The Left Coast who don't get the LA Times tossed into our front yard every morning, the costs under the LA Times: Digital Unlimited plan is 99 cents for the first four weeks, which includes unrestricted 24/7 access to latimes.com, plus special membership privileges, and then continues at $3.99 a week after promotional period, which comes out to roughly $196 for the year for digital access.
This post of Sharon's on Tuesday regarding the Tribune Company-owned Times actually follows by a few days an email I sent out last week about the decision of the Tribune'sSouth Florida Sun-Sentinel to erect a paywall next week, and why I think that in their particular case -as opposed to the Chicago Tribune or even the Baltimore Sun, both of which are MUCH BETTER value-added newspapers- is positively a suicidal roll of the dice.
I will post that email of mine online very soon.
And since many of you reading this probably never saw it the first time, I'll also include links to my critical and fact-filled email -and subsequent blog posts here- to Miami Herald President and Publisher David Landsberg, with cc's to Herald executive editor Aminda Marques and managing editor Rick Hirschregarding the Herald's continuing unsatisfactory news coverage of Broward County, which so often is either invisible when it should be anything but, or obtuse and condescending when it should be penetrating and hard-hitting. As I said at the time, neither is acceptable.
by Lois Beckett, ProPublica,
March 13, 2012, 1:31 p.m.
Instead of picketing outside company headquarters, an advocacy group is using Facebook ads to try to influence people whose profiles identify them as employees of Freddie Mac or JPMorgan Chase.
The anti-foreclosure ad campaign, which launches today, asks Freddie and Chase employees to talk to their CEOs about a veteran -- a former Marine -- who's facing eviction in California.
"This is not any sort of attack on the employees there," said Jim Pugh of Rebuild the Dream, which is running the ad campaign. "We're trying to let them know what's happening."
The ad that targets Freddie Mac employees features a small picture of CEO Charles Haldeman's face, and the message, "Freddie Mac did what???? Freddie Mac is evicting a former Marine who's been trying to pay his mortgage. Tell CEO Haldeman to work out a fair deal with him!" according to a copy of the ad provided by Pugh.
The JPMorgan Chase ad is similar, but with a Chase logo instead of an executive's face.
We've contacted Freddie Mac and JP Morgan Chase spokespeople for comment, and also reached out to Freddie Mac and JPMorgan Chase employees on Facebook. If you've seen one of these ads, please let us know.
Targeted online advertising is nothing new. (As anyone who has changed their Facebook status to "engaged" can tell you, a simple update can bring a deluge of new ads.) But political campaigns and advocacy groups are increasingly adopting the same microtargeting tactics that companies use.
Rick Perry's campaign, for instance, targeted faith-focused ads to people in Iowa who listed themselves as Christians on Facebook, and ads featuring his wife to the state's female conservatives, Politico reported.
According to FEC data, Endorse Liberty, a super PAC that supports Ron Paul, has led the way on Facebook expenditures, spending a total of $241,508 through January 2012.
And it's not just Facebook and Google where campaigns and activists are doing microtargeting. The music site Pandora announced last year that it would be selling political ad space targeted to the zip codes of particular listeners, the Wall Street Journal reported.
There's nothing inherently problematic about targeted ads. Campaigns have been using direct mail to target particular voters for decades. Digital targeting can be a cost-effective way of spending advertising dollars, especially for smaller groups, like Rebuild the Dream, which sees the ads as a great way to get more bang for their buck in terms of reaching their intended audience. (The group also launched a special donation drive specifically for the Facebook ad buy.) ProPublica even used Facebook ads to try to find sources for our 2009 series, When Caregivers Harm.
But as the ability to use data to reach particular people grows more sophisticated, targeting risks crossing privacy lines, as demonstrated by a recent New York Times article on how Target knew a teenage customer was pregnant before her father did.
What's clear is that if all this microtargeting translates into electoral gains, the scale and sophistication of these efforts will continue to grow, and the data science that gained traction in 2008 will become a regular part of campaigning. In the meantime, the Obama campaign's already substantial data team continues to hire statistical modeling analysts and analytics engineers.
The increasing ease and flexibility of online targeting also raises new questions about how politicians are presenting themselves to different audiences, how much campaigns need to tell their supporters about the personal information they collect -- and what will happen to the massive databases of voter information collected during the 2012 presidential campaign. Will they be sold? Passed on to other politicians?
Rebuild the Dream, which focuses on economic issues, was launched by MoveOn.org in 2011, but has been independent since January, Pugh said. The group's president is former Obama green jobs adviser Van Jones.
Pugh worked on the Obama campaign's digital analytics team in 2008 while also trying to finish a Ph.D. dissertation in robotics, and later did similar work for the Democratic National Committee. He said he was not sure what kind of reaction the ads would receive.
"I would imagine that people are fairly used to targeted ads at this point," he said. But while people who work in politics and advocacy may be used to receiving Facebook ads targeting specific causes, "It's hard to know in advance how unusual it will seem to the employees of Freddie Mac and JP Morgan Chase."
----- Reader comments at:http://www.propublica.org/article/how-to-win-facebook-friends-and-influence-people/single#comments
The Washington Post By Evelio Contreras, Marc Fisher, Kat Downs and Jon Cohen January 20, 2012 ----- Below, the everyday media world of three South Carolina voters who are avid news consumers... Prepare to see this effort copied by newspapers and TV stations across the country!
The Washington Post Polarized news market has altered the political process in South Carolina primary
By Marc Fisher January 20, 2012
LAURENS, S.C. — Once upon a time — oh, about two presidential elections ago — Dianne Belsom would get up in the morning and read the paper, taking in news stories about candidates and campaigns. Some stuff she agreed with, some she didn’t.
This morning, Belsom wakes in her splendidly restored pink Victorian on Main Street in this rural South Carolina town, makes coffee and settles in at her desktop to fire up Facebook. There on her news feed are more than 100 stories that some of her 460 friends have posted since Belsom went to bed eight hours ago.
This article accompanies a quiz on the Washington Post's website to measure the reader's daily media consumption. ----- http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics
When TNT's 'Lady Law' knocks, open the door! HBB faves The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles return tonight to amuse and delight us -and boy do we need it!
The Closer's 7th season continues tonight with the first of the five last episodes in the series on TNT tonight at 9 p.m., as we begin to suffer premature Kyra Sedgwick withdrawal.
"Thank you."
The repeat is at 11 p.m.
As most of you who follow the show probably know by now, TNT intends to spin-off Mary McDonnell's character of Capt. Sharon Raydor in their upcoming new series "Major Crimes."
As of now, I'm not quite sure when that will air, as they may wish to put it on right before the London 2012 Olympics airs late next summer on NBC's myriad outlets, and then come back in the fall. That's what I'd do if I was programming the network.
Season 2 of Rizzoli & Isles – returns tonight at 10 p.m. as "basic cable’s most-watched drama" with longtime Hallandale Beach Blog favorites Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander as crime-solving sleuths for the Boston Police Department, with lovely Sasha as the drop-dead gorgeous and brainy forensics genius, below, to Angie's "Old School" moxie-filled detective.
Screen grab of Sasha Alexander by South Beach Hoosier.
To quote myself, "Love, Love, Love them!"
Their rapport is spot-on fabulous!
The show repeats at Midnight and then on Tuesday at 11 p.m.
FYI: Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander will be tweeting during tonight's new episode! See http://twitter.com/#!/RizzoliIslesTNT for more details, or ask a question directly to them @Angie_Harmon & @SashaAlexander1.
Need to catch up, see the Rizzoli & Isles - Season 2 Mid-Season Rewind
If you haven't already heard, TNT is already hard at work producing a drama for next summer called "Perception,"starring Eric McCormack, Rachael Leigh Cook, Arjay Smith and Hallandale Beach Blog fave Kelly Rowan, who so famously played Kirsten, USA'sCovert Affairs'Peter Gallagher's on-screen wife in The O.C., a show I loved and never missed because of the clever and knowing dialogue.
And seriously, Rachel Bilson dressed-up as Wonder Woman to surprise Seth?
Both brilliant AND priceless!
Rachel Bilson as Wonder Woman in Fox-TV's "The O.C."
According to TNT's official press release -I'm on their mailing list and a member of their Inner Circle- Perception centers on McCormack as "an eccentric neuroscientist who helps solve complex criminal cases."
In Perception, McCormack plays Dr. Daniel Pierce, a neuroscientist and professor recruited to help the federal government crack difficult cases. His intimate knowledge of human behavior and masterful understanding of the mind give him an extraordinary ability to read people, but his eccentric view of the world and less-than-stellar social skills can often interfere with his work.
When I last saw McCormack on TV it was in one of the all-time classic episodes of USA's Monk, "Mr. Monk's 100th Case," as a TV host profiling Adrian's eccentric method of crime-solving. That episode was on IOn TV recently.
2.) JULY 11, 2011, Oh, how I've missed you! Sasha Alexander & Angie Harmon's Rizzoli & Isles, and Kyra Sedgwick & Co.'s The Closer are back to delight us again tonight!
