• create your own post types from within the admin panel (#9674 (Better support for custom post types) – WordPress Trac)
• BuddyPress will become a feature for standard WP.org installations
• Custom taxonomies are becoming progressively easier to implement
• It’s getting progressively easy to work with custom fields.
• There are two WP Google Summer of Code projects dealing with AJAX inline reordering of pages on the manage post screens.

That said, I’m not sure I really need the media handling improvements now the focus of the WP 2.9 development. But I think it’s a generally a good thing. Now if they only allow easy flickr integration or API searching of pictures from the edit screens and improve the internal linking features, I’d have a hard time to find a lot of thigs I still don’t like about WordPress…

The funny thing is, though, that, apparently – quoting the WP developer blog – the design has mostly been done by Matt Thomas and Andy Peatling (who is otherwise the buddypress guy at automattic) over the course of the last week. Which – for all the excitement – begs the question: why not earlier?

To have a look at some mockup screens and read even more about this, check out the link below.

The Visual Design of 2.7.

Welche Konsequenzen wird es haben, wenn jede halböffentliche Bemerkung eines Politikers aufgezeichnet und per Internet verbreitet werden kann?

Niemand weiß es. Das Problem sind dabei vermutlich auch weniger Ausraster wie die Sarkozys – wenn dieser Auftritt nicht in ein zunehmend von den präsidentiellen Eskapaden genervtes (europäisches!) Umfeld gefallen wäre, wäre das Video nicht mal halb so interessant – sondern die Unmöglichkeit unterschiedliche Zielgruppen mit spezifischen Botschaften anzusprechen, ohne dabei komplett kryptisch zu werden. Bestes Beispiel hierfür ist doch die Tatsache, daß der amerikanische Präsident in Texas kein “texanisch” mehr reden kann, wenn er darauf achten muß, daß seine Äußerungen in Crawford keine Probleme in New York oder in Brüssel kreieren.

Vielleicht finden sich Hinweise darauf in der Forschung von Kommunikationswissenschaftlern wie Danah Boyd (papers, blog) aus Berkeley, deren Vortrag zum Privatsphäeren-Management von Teenagern ich vor einiger Zeit in Paris hören konnte.

Erklären Teenager auf facebook die Zukunft politischer Kommunikation? On verra…

“In the March issue of GQ, Wil S. Hylton argues that Vice President Richard Cheney should be impeached for committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Now I suppse there was a small chance for this to appear in Hustler magazine, although Larry Flynt is better known for being sued that for suing. But GQ? I’m confused. Maybe they just want to give everyone an good alibi, you know… I’m just reading Playboy for the interviews…. and I’m just reading GQ for the impeachment proceeedings…

Naja, besser spät als nie. Sollte sich jemand von dort hier her verirren – ein paar einleitende Worte zu Blogs und der journalistischen Ausbildung finden sich hier.

This is a must read, of course, not least because their treatment on blogging and journalism in the fall of 2003 was the first serious take on the issue and that, hailing from Mainz like Gutenberg himself, I can’t exactly agree with the title…

Interestingly, they have also renounced to a pdf-version of the current report, while all back issues are available as such.

“Sie lesen eigentlich keine Blogs. Blogs finden sie Scheiße. Mit Blogs verdient man kein Geld. Im Internet ist 99 Prozent Dreck. …”

Mal sehen, wie lange diese Einstellung sich noch hält – denn einer von denen, bei denen die zukünftige schreibende Elite vermutlich gerne arbeiten würde (ja, auch ein Praktikum wäre toll…), Bernd Kundrun, seines Zeichens Vorstandsvorsitzender der Gruner + Jahr AG, dürfte, zumindest offiziell, nicht mehr so begeistert sein von solchen Ansichten. Laut Branchenblog turi2.de sagte Kundrun am vergangenen Donnerstag der Werbe- und PR-Fachzeitschrift W&V -

“Es wird notwendig sein, in den nächsten zehn Jahren das Berufsbild des Journalisten schrittweise neu zu definieren. Die bisherige Vorgehensweise ‘Ich besitze den Content und Du konsumierst ihn’ wird sich ändern in Richtung “Ich lenke, strukturiere und produziere, aber Du bist eingeladen, mir dabei behilflich zu sein.”

Auch wenn das eigentlich eine Debatte ist, die zumindest theoretisch schon mal Mitte der neunziger Jahre abgehandelt wurde (“daily me”, irgendwer?), erscheint die Aussage angesichts der erkennbaren Resistenz dysfunktionaler Rationalitätsmythen irgendwie revolutionär.

Glücklicherweise ist das Erkenntnisziel gar nicht so schwer erreichbar – wie Wolfgang Harrer mit seinem Kommentar beweist.

“Die Trennlinie ist also nicht Old Media vs. New Media oder gar Blogger vs. Journalist. Die Trennlinie ist Qualität vs. Schrott; und diese Trennlinie hat erstaunlich wenig damit zu tun, ob ein Autor für seine Arbeit bezahlt wird oder nicht.”

Und was fehlt noch an dieser Stelle? Ganz klar – der Link zum Qualitätsblog. Und der schücherne Hinweis auf die Tatsache, daß der Tausendkontaktpreis dort gerade mal ein sechzigstel dessen beträgt, was bei Spiegel Online International zu zahlen ist…

The SEO Blog: Google News Credibility Foiled By 15-Year Old

“Reading through SEO focused blog entries, Vandetta found an article that explained how to fool Google’s news system by writing fake press releases. Sensing an opportunity to experiment and play a joke on his friends, the self-described “Google fanboy” decided to see what would happen if he submitted a fake Google press release claiming the 15-year old New Jersey student was Google’s youngest employee.

The press release was issued through the free service I-Newswire and contained a number of spelling mistakes. Short and to the point, the release, which appeared to have been sent by a Google spokesperson Sonya Johnson (who’s actually existence is unconfirmed and is assumed to be imaginary), read:

“(I-Newswire) – 15 year old student, Tom Vendetta has been hired by search engine giant Google Inc. The student will receive a lowered salary, which will be placed into a bank account for future education, said Google CEO Larry Page. When asked what role Vendetta will play at the Tech Giant’s offices, Page said he wouldnt have a role at the Main Offices. Instead he would work from his home in the New Jersey suburbs. Vendetta will be incharge of working with recent security flaw’s in Google’s beta e-mail service, “Gmail”. Google said they first found out about him when they discovered the student’s blog, at http://tomvendetta.be. The media giant said they looked forward to working with Vendetta’s expertise in JavaScript and AJAX.”

A few hours after posting the fake press release, Vandetta logged into the news search tool Digg after receiving an automated email from MAKEBot (Digg’s Spider), to find his practical joke had become a credible international tech story. Google was even displaying reference to the press release in Google News and at in the news results placed above search results relating to Google employment or hiring.

At least that’s the hypothesis – and in order to find out more about the endangered species “German blogger”, Jan Schmidt at the University of Bamberg is conducting a survey called “Weblogs 2005 – Bloggen im deutschsprachigen Raum”.

So, whether you’ve started yesterday or in 1999, or, like me, in 2002 – fill out the survey to demonstrate clearly that the claim is actually true : Germany blogs!

I was inclined to think that someone like him would be most confident when it comes to Schumpeterian processes, the creative destruction and recreation of social and economic governance mechanisms. Well, I was wrong.

Maybe his – in my view – unwarranted pessismim about the state of the economy and, clearly, the country in general are simply a consequence of the persistent common German habit of badmouthing Germany. Some do it for strategic reasons, because they believe depression is a necessary precondition for the medication to have some effect. Others – most – do it because it has become the socialised myth of rationality de jour – a rather distant relative of truth, if you will.

True or not, this kind of talk has some effect. Depression-caused anxiety can be witnessed everywhere. And just as so many others, my parents’ friend – who once teached command economy and only fourteen years ago successfully managed to weather a most dramatic social change – now has fundamental doubts about the ability of our economic governance mechanism to adopt to the challenges of the future.

At times I tend to believe such pessimism is the contemporary version of the anxiety people pre-Copernican times must have felt when the days became shorter and shorter and colder and colder as the year progressed – not knowing, just expecting – that the days would become longer and sunnier again after midwinter.

If you browse through the archives of this blog or read my posts over at AFOE you’ll see that I am also very much concerned about some fundamental changes in the underlying structure of the way we live and exchange apples for pears at the edge of the forrest these days. What is happening to societies based on extensive division of labour in the wake of continuing labour supply shocks or increasing uncertainty about the continuing existence of crucical prerequisites for market interactions with respect to the reduced excludability of information goods? Important questions to which no one has an answer yet.

But those worried about the future – like my parents’ friend – should remember our ancestors who trusted in the occurence of the next sun-cycle in the absence of an explanation thereof, and eagerly waited for the first ray of sunlight and the first snowdrop to surface. I’m not sure whether Josh Marshall’s announcement that he is hiring (another) intern for his blog TalkingPointMemo can be interpreted as a surfacing snowdrop of the digital age. It’s clearly too early.

But there’s a chance.

When I went to meet him and some other bloggers I had never seen or even heard of before, I was not too sure what to expect beyond a pint of wheat beer. But what developed were indeed very intristing debates about the future -as we develop it.

No doubt about it, blogs, or personal publishing, is quickly changing some parts of the communicational transactional infrastructure of the societies we live in. But what exactly is going to happen – no one has really figured that out yet.

It is great to be among people who are fascinated by what they do, people who firmly believe that they are true revolutionaries, tearing down the old walls of informational constraints and top-down control. Ideas really are a powerful motivator.

Yet just like love can make us blind with regard to things we do not want to see or know about our loved ones, enthusiasm tends to blind us with respect to the nasty little details. I am mentioning the German technological adventure “Toll Collect” only for the fun of it.

On Monday, Loic LeMeur was asked about the future of printed newspapers and magazines by one of the attending non-bloggers. His reaction could not have been faster – it’s dead, he said, and I am sure, he firmly believes this.

However, I am not so certain about the future of printed paper. The medium has certain qualities that are not yet easily replicated by electronic media – most doctors’ waiting rooms still feature papers and not free W-Lan. And while this may even change sooner than I imagine, there will a market for printed information and commentary, and if only because the higher cost will serve as a signalling mechanism for quality – in whichever changed format this may be the case – the “RSS-Times -once a week, the stuff that is actually worth reading”

Ross Mayfield apparently also starts to think that blogs are different, and therefore a medium with a very specific set of core competences: Broad coverage, he writes today, is not one of them. He’s (mostly) right – coverage of important events involved an infrastructure and professionalism that (most) blogs simply cannot and do not possess.

Things are different in situations, where no infrastructure is present. I remember the advantages of neighbourhood bloggers over the established media last year when half of California burnt down. But when it comes to attending press-conferences and filtering official information like, say, following the Madrid attacks, it becomes obvious that journalists and bloggers are still operating in largely distinct, though complimentary market segments.

Op-Ed journalists should be far more afraid of all the opinion that is now out there.

“A heretofore unknown candidate named George Schwartzman placed ninth statewide. Although the San Diego County businessman insists his fresh ideas won him those 11,000 votes, his stellar showing more likely results from a case of mistaken identity. Voters no doubt confused George Schwartzman with Georgy Russell – the candidate who marketed herself on thong undies.”

“Don’t get me started on the Blaster virus sabotaging Microsoft systems, or the cram of spam reminding us that the average American is an impotent, insecure, overweight, tired, depressed loser desperately seeking to refinance. The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.” (from the NY Times)

“What comes out of this: A hundred Salam Paxes. A thousand Salam Paxes. The intelligent, caring, involved future of Iraq will come online to share their experiences and opinions and hopes and fears and Iraq will be better for it; so will the world, for we will build bridges to Iraqis online. History has never had a better, cheaper, easier, faster means of publishing content and distributing it worldwide. Now is the time to take advantage of this for sake of democracy and freedom and nothing less than that.”

I am not too convinced that the outcome of setting up “blogspots” in Baghdad would necessarily be the creation of a happy modern all-Iraqi civil society, even assuming that enough people would care to learn how to use the technology. I suppose there is hardly anyone who would be able to tell how blogging would fit into institutionalised Iraqi patterns of societal communication.

Thinking of the almost violent way the pro-/anti-war debate evolved in the western blogosphere in the first few months this year, I would say that there is no guarantee that blogging does enhance the way any civil society works – just read my post about Rebecca Lucas below. In fact, remembering how Karl Deutsch has described long ago in “Nationalism and Social Communication” that increased communication does not per se translate into more understanding between the communicating parties, one might be tempted to think that blogging actually requires a significant amount of civil society and mutual understanding to start with in order to deal with all the Rachel Lucases around. Otherwise, it might just ignite a fire no one wanted to light.

I am not saying this would be the case in Iraq. But given the way a “modern/pseudo-socialist” authoritarian government has been superimposed on a semi-tribally-organised, ethnically and religiously diverse country I’d say that there is a certain chance for a negative development.

So while I think that the idea put forth by Mr Jarvis is clearly worth to be tested, those involved would have to be very attentive and careful not to become too hopeful about the possible positive effects of such a project.

“If you make self-defense illegal, or even problematic, you’re making life easier for criminals and tyrants.”

Well, if I were living in a Hobbesian state of nature I would probably have to subscribe to the strict version of that theory, too. But, luckily, I am not. Maybe she is – she lives in Texas, according to her webpage – that would explain her position.

In the real world however, it just doesn’t make much sense. But just like I am, Rachel and everybody else is entitled to tell the world about his or her opinions.

So when there’s nothing to argue, what am I doing here? Well, I am not really concerned with the substance of her rant, but rather with the style.

Unfortunately, Rachel (although she’s far from the worst) seemingly believes in the bizarre discourse theory a lot of bloggers, in my experience predominantly American right-wing bloggers, are spreading these days – that calling people who don’t share their opinions “idiots” as frequently as possible is making their points more convincing. Generally, they seem to follow the rule “the more aggressive, and insulting, the better.”

Rachel herself admits this practice on her FAQ page

“Q: ‘How does Rachel expect to make her point by insulting people she disagrees with?’
A: Easy. I don’t expect to make my point to people who can’t see past the insults. Also, this is just a blog, not the New York Times op-ed page.”

Don’t get me wrong here, there are instances for the application of “idiot”. But the word’s inflationary use is a kind of verbal pollution, is simply annoying, and possibly preventing a good deal of the debate theoretically made possible by advances in communication technologies – who likes to talk to people who begin the discussion by saying “shut up, you idiot”? In Rachel’s words – why should they want to see past the insults?

I wonder if some phd student is already trying to capture the early changes personal publishing is making to the style of written opinion in general – can anyone imagine a NY Times op-ed headline that reads “Stupid, stupid, stupid idiots”? Probably not – for the time being. But who knows what the future, and the effects of personal publishing will have on other forms of media?