mattgriffin.net

I’ll admit it, I love BoingBoing, but who doesn’t? Fresh off their front page today, here’s some brilliant satire.

Check out this hilarious campaign ad.  I’ll probably still vote for Patrick, but this Mihos guy is pretty funny…

Which really means I need more real friends, bu that’s not my point…

BackPack is a wonderful web application from 37Signals that I can easily see myself getting completely hooked on.  I looked into it for tracking projects, calendars and to-dos for work, but I think I’ll be using it for anything and everything.  It’s like a place to store information and ideas.  A wonderful AJAX’d place, where everything works with iCal and I can send voicemail notes to myself with ease…  (Now if only Pocket IE for my XV6700 worked with AJAX, that’d be perfect…  Anyone know of a good non-IE browser for Windows Mobile 5?)

Anyway, check it out for yourself… 

Read this essay by Doug Rushkoff right now.  Please.

Here’s a snippet:

So was democracy a failed experiment? Should we just let these guys run the country as long as they let us eat? Clearly, they’re not scared of us or what we might be saying about them. In fact, their best argument that we haven’t descended into fascism is the fact that we’re allowed to distribute columns like this one. How could we be living in a totalitarian propaganda state if there are articles pronouncing the same? Because fascism looks different every time around. 1930’s fascism failed because it was too obviously repressive. Today’s fascism works because it has turned the mediaspace into a house of mirrors where nothing is true and everything is permissible. The fact that there are plenty of blogs and even major books saying what’s happening and still it doesn’t matter is proof that it has worked.

It does have an optimistic conclusion, but part of that is that the situation has to feel worse before it can begin to better.  He’s convinced me (at least for now) that I’m not quite ready to look seriously into moving to another country.

…because if there is, Bush and his buddies are going there.

Blip.tv has posted a very positive response to the essay posted over at the Democracy Blog. Check it out…

the blip.tv blog » Openness Matters. RSS Can Help.

I love Blip! (and Democracy!)

There’s a Boing Boing Podcast!  Hooray!

This is the best Pluto shirt to date.  I wish they were available now, as I would order one immediately.

For other cool t-shirts, check out Threadless.

Check out this news. It turns out that Diebold’s electronic voting machines’ locks can be opened by the same kind of key that opens hotel mini bars. This means that without much trouble you can buy a key on the internet and rig elections (with the proper know-how, of course.)

Have we not realized that serious, determined criminals will not be deterred by this kind of “security”? We need these things banned from elections forever, and we need it done now.

Here’s a link to the original post,  but click through BoingBoing too, because that’s how I found it.

Nicholas Reville just posted a great essay on internet video and his thoughts on the right direction to be moving. It started as an email to Blip.tv about how they feature RSS feeds, but turned into sort of an open letter, I guess. To Blip’s defense (which isn’t really necessary, since it wasn’t an attack) they do feature lots of one-click subscribe buttons, one of which is for Democracy. For example, you can see all of the buttons at the bottom of my blip video blog page.

Read the essay here: The Future of Video Online: Openness Matters