So I’m throwing up the white flag. I’m not going to upgrade my blog nor will I try to cull the comments. I’m moving to Wordpress, ASAP. I’m also going to split my content – MichaelWhitney.net will just be my personal blog, and anything internet-related (i.e. “professional” blog posts) will go to a new domain.

Get ready, I’ll finish this in the next decade or so.

tags: site notes

The New York Times Caucus blog gave me a shout-out later that day.

So much has changed in a year, no? The popularity of Twitter dizzily buzzed around. (Hat tip to Michael Whitney at TechPresident — an airport encounter revealed that Mr. Barr tweets!)

tags: 2008 election, tech president, twitter

No, this time it’s me holding a burger and a whisky sour at the HuffPo/GQ party in Austin at Netroots Nation last week.

Sweet! I’m certainly sending this one home.

tags: huffington post, pictures, yearly kos

Let that be a lesson – find a niche, stick to it, and you’ll find fame, wealth, and success as a blogger. Mine the wealth, and only relative fame. But, you know. Internet!

tags: blogging, district of columbia

I’m on several high-traffic email lists, and so I have more than 100 new conversations in my inbox every day. I automatically archive the vast majority using filters, and then have Gmail apply labels to almost every message – newsletters, discussion groups, bills, job search, etc. That’s always been a useful feature, but colored labels take that functionality to a new level.

Color labels allow me to keep important messages in my inbox, making it easy to scan my messages and find what I’m looking for. I don’t have to read each line of text; I just find the color I know I applied. The image above is a snippet of my inbox to give you an idea of how I use it.

Intrigued? Thought so. I’ll let the Gmail blog teach you how to do this for yourself:

To set up a filter with a colored label, simply click the “Create a filter” link next to the search box. Add senders or certain words you want to keep a better eye on, click next, and assign a label by checking “apply the label” and choosing an appropriate one. Then just pick a label color by clicking the color swatch next to the label title in the left-hand navigation menu. Give colored labels with filters a try and see if it changes the way you read your inbox too.

tags: email, google, internets

Wow, I thought. A local restaurant might understand the Internet. I expected to see a review from any of the numerous DC food blogs, or maybe even a comment from Yelp.

No, instead, it’s a screenshot of a random, unnamed bulletin board.

The first person quotes a previous poster who asks,

“Has anyone here had Duccinis Pizza, I got a menu from them the other day. looks great.”

The man with the fro responds,

“I put one of the children of the Duccini’s owners through college. A friend put a different child of the owners through college. Another friend bought their books.”

“Neptune,” represented by a ghost sticking out its tongue, offered encouragement.

“duccinis is quite good … and they always manage to deliver mighty quick. best stromboli EVER. the best part about duccinis, they deliver ben and jerry’s ice cream! yay for chocolate chip cookie dough!”

No URL, no name of the bulletin board. Nothing. Just a screenshot.

Man, those Blogs sure love Duccini’s!!!

P.S. One of my secret passions is online marketing for local businesses. With a little bit of work, local businesses could build their online reputations and drive customers from effective web marketing.

tags: district of columbia, internets, web 2.0

tags: republicans, videos, words, wtf

Barack Obama is about to get his one millionth fan.  The Democratic candidate’s official Facebook page saw a sharp increase right around when Sen. Clinton dropped out earlier this month, and has climbed steadily since.  Lucky #1,000,000 will arrive tonight.

Updated: Here’s 1,000,000:

At 7:09pm EST – I twittered that Obama had 998,901 fans, and he’d reach one million “by the end of the week.”  Then I refreshed the page.  Now, it’s 7:29, and there are 999,036 supporters.  That’s 135 new supporters in 20 minutes.  At that rate – according to my very rough math – Obama will have 1,000,000 Facebook supporters by 10pm EST or so.

The original social networking craze in this election – the One Million Strong for Barack Obama Facebook group – only has 565,214 members.  The first million-strong group to actually reach its goal was the anti-Hillary Facebook group One Million Against Hillary Clinton, which crossed one million two months ago.

John McCain has 146,439 supporters, and he saw a similar, though not as sharp, spike in supporters around when Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race.

And finally, as of this posting, Obama has 999,141 supporters. Right on track for one million tonight.

tags: barack obama, facebook

Today Buffalo lost its biggest booster.

tags: buffalo

2006: Michael Jackson acquitted
2008: R. Kelly acquitted
2008: Tim Russert dies

Watch out, celebrities: it’s an up and down day!

tags: my life, tv

tags: my life

tags: videos

Anyway, they had a bit of an adventure. Dirt McGirt had a photo shoot with former presidential candidate John Kerry, who was in town campaigning for Obama.

3 more photos here. Thank you Courtney, Catherine, and Kevin!!!

tags: 2008 election, barack obama, dirt mcgirt

The campaign passed on a potential opportunity to actually engage its email list.  They had the right idea: open up part of the campaign and let people make it their own.  Unfortunately, $250 for a banner isn’t quite the best way to start.

There are small, easy ways to get supporters involved without asking them to break the bank on a banner.  George W. Bush and Howard Dean’s campaigns both offered online tools to tailor campaign signs for individual supporters.  Hillary Clinton’s campaign is holding a vote on the design for the next campaign t-shirt.   Obama’s campaign is now selling supporters’ art in its online store.  And over at techRepublican, there’s an idea for a Threadless-style campaign shop, where supporters vote on the most popular merchandise variations, which the campaign would then sell.

Digging into the details of the message. this message broke from the campaign’s normal names who send emails.  Titled “Get Your Name on a McCain Banner Today,” this message came from “Team McCain: Frank and Becki Donatelli,” two people who say they’ve been McCain supporters since 1999.  There’s even a nice picture of Frank and Becki – in business dress – holding their banner, which reads “Donatelli’s for McCain” (ignore the extra apostrophe). 

One problem though:  Frank and Becki aren’t just any McCain supporters.  No, McCain just appointed Frank Donatelli to “act as the main liaison between the [Republican National Committee] and the McCain campaign,” a promotion from his previous position as a longtime lobbyist.  (Tip of the hat to Matt Ortega at the DNC blog.)

Could the McCain campaign not find any actual grassroots supporter to feature in the email?  Maybe someone who’s not on McCain’s staff?  Or not a lobbyist?  Someone real, perhaps?

On the bright side of this email, there’s more than one link in the body of the message, which only ran at 272 words.  That means since the last McCain email, they’ve doubled the number of links, and halved the length of the message.  (Did they read Luigi’s recommendations?)

We’ll continue monitoring McCain’s messages in the McCain Email Watch, and add your thoughts in the comments.  What I’ll be looking for are continued improvements in the structure of the emails – which shouldn’t be hard to implement – as well as a fundamental focus on connecting with the email list, an objective that requires a restart of the campaign’s relationship with its supporters.

tags: email, john mccain, tech president

tags: dirt mcgirt, videos

Forget the content, even forget the length. One link? In the last sentence? What is McCain’s campaign thinking?

My guess: it seems like there’s too many cooks in McCain’s email kitchen. McCain’s online team needs to assert itself within the campaign and put the brakes on the email insanity. There’s a reason their email messages aren’t bringing in more money. To start, try shrinking the ratio of words to links in the next email, and then make a relevant ask.

Emails don’t have to be short to be effective – but at least try to engage your readers. A link in the first 500 words would do just fine.

tags: 2008 election, email, john mccain, tech president

When I do get my wheels on the road to move, I’ll likely look to lease a 1br in Brooklyn near a park, or find a roommate who’s really cool with a kind of psycho dog – whichever is more manageable. (I imagine the former, right now.) (Psst…got a hot tip?)

Anyway, that’s about all I know right now. I’ll update more when I know anything; and if you know of anything relevant I should know about or for New York, drop me a line.

tags: district of columbia, my life, new york city

Comcast says they got notice from HBO that they found my IP address downloading an episode of “The Wire.” That’s true. It’s just one of the many things I download from the Internet. I download computer applications, music albums, movies, TV shows – you name it, I download it to my computer.

Anyway, as you can see in the above picture of the letter, they got my IP address, name of the file, size of the fil, and even the exact Torrent I was downloading. That’s probably because HBO uploaded a dummy torrent of S01E01 of the Wire to catch “pirates” downloading.

Forgetting the fact that I cancelled that torrent because it was downloading too slow (and that I went on to find a better torrent with the entire first season), Comcast can, quite frankly, suck my balls. They’re the only ISP bowing down to the almighty studios and sending out letters to Internet users via IP address.

Believe me, it’s not my choice to use Comcast. Comcast is virulently anti-union, and they overcharge for Internet to boot (I’m paying $50/month for JUST internet). If I could use RCN, I would; but unfortunately, the only ISP able to serve my building is Comcast.

Going further, Copyright is dead. It is extremely unclear a.) what HBO/TimeWarner hopes to accomplish by uploading dummy torrents to the Pirate Bay, and then identifying those few people who download them, and then send letters to ISPs, and then have those ISPs contact those downloaders. What, do they think that will stop people from downloading their shows. OK. Have fun with that. But b.) what the fuck does Comcast care? There is so much “illegal” activity going on from people using their Internet that it’s impossible to describe. Why do they want to cut off customers who happen to download dummy torrents? I’m going to use the Internet anyway, I’m going to keep paying for their overcharged service, so they should really just save some paper and stop with their petty threats.

I said as much (in <140 characters) to Comcast's Twitter representative, Frank @comcastcares. He replies that he understands my sentiment, which is nice. It doesn’t change the fact that Comcast is enabling HBO’s futile quest to stop a tsunami with an umbrella.

tags: comcast, internet, my life, twitter

I finally uploaded my best photos to Flickr. Here’s a slideshow of my New Mexico polaroids.

Created with flickrSLiDR.

tags: my life, photography, travel

I wish I could help GOTV for Obama this weekend, but I’m glad I can live vicariously through my dog. I’m confident her cuteness will win over a few voters, bitter or not. Even better, I’m sure she’ll lick the bitter off voters if need be.

Pictures and more to come, I hope. Thank you Courtney (and Kevin and Catherine)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tags: barack obama, dirt mcgirt