EchoDitto - Open Source

Sprinkle A Little Social On Your Site - posted by Meaghan Lamarre

Sun, 25 May 2008 11:13:41 -0700

So our friends at the leading social networks -- MySpace, Facebook, and Google -– are finally getting the idea that we don’t really want to spend all our online lives on their websites. Last week these three companies launched new plans to let us integrate our profiles on their networks with other sites we use. All three initiatives claim to be advancing us closer to the idea of the utopian open social web, where we can connect with all our friends on any network through any website. But how close are we?

Google's initiative here is the most interesting … and the most disappointing. Called Google Friend Connect, this initiative allows any website owner to, as Google's David Glazer says, "sprinkle a little social" on their sites (listen to the audio of the announcement, thanks to ReadWriteTalk). I didn’t realize “social” was a noun, but I digress. Through some applications Google is developing and, eventually, other developers will be contributing, a website owner can paste in a little code on her website and voila! she can now have users post photos, add comments, and other social functions on her website (check out Google's demonstrations to see what I mean). Sounds kind of cool. And it's definitely great if you’ve got a static site that needs some spice, and you don’t know a lick of code.

But there are a couple of key failings of this new plan.

First, you've still got to select your network. After Google announced Friend Connect, which originally was supposed to include your Facebook profile as a networking option, Facebook banned Friend Connect, saying it violates their privacy settings. So, if you put a Friend Connect application on your site, your users have to have a Google or OpenID account. If you want let people connect with their Facebook friends, you can't do it through Friend Connect.

The bigger drawback, however, is that there's no way to integrate the data from Friend Connect with whatever you’re doing on your site. At EchoDitto, we recommend using everything you know about your users to tailor your communications with them and their experiences on your site. But the really cool discussions that you might foster on your site, or information on the users who submitted photos to your contest, all of that will be inaccessible to you. And that doesn't sound very open.

The jury's still out on Google Friend Connect, which isn't even available to the public yet, as well as Facebook Connect and MySpace's Data Avaibility initiatives, so it remains to be seen how these programs will work in practice, or how quickly they'll lead us to that utopia of the open social web.

Celebrate Earth Day with 1Sky! - posted by Meaghan Lamarre

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:04:17 -0700

In honor of Earth Day today, we at EchoDitto are joining with individuals around the world who are committing to do something to combat climate change. Most of us already walk, bike, or take public transportation to work; we're adamant recyclers; and we use environmentally-friendly cleaning products from Seventh Generation. But today we're especially proud to contribute to the fight against global warming with the relaunch of 1Sky.org.

1Sky was created in 2007 with one primary objective: to harness the power of the millions of Americans who are concerned about climate change in order to pass federal legislation by 2010 that can reverse global warming. Since its founding, 1Sky has built a platform of specific solutions, partnered with organizations and allies around the country, and activated a network of over 50,000 citizens who are actively lobbying for policy change and garnering support for the 1Sky solutions in meetings with their members of Congress.

1Sky's power is in its broad base and decentralized structure. It's a truly open-source collaborative campaign, uniting supporters from among traditional "green" activists, communities of faith, business groups and civil rights organizations. All of us have something at stake in the fight against global warming – and individuals are sharing their diverse stories through 1Sky's Faces of Climate Change campaign. Check it out and share your story!

It's been an exciting project for us here at EchoDitto as the site has some neat features that totally embrace our philosophy of building vibrant communities and allowing authentic voices to be heard:

The Faces of Climate Change campaign collects stories, photos, and videos from users and plots them on a map so you can see how climate change impacts people around the country.
The new blog, The Skywriter, features posts by campaign staff and guest posts from the field; complete with comments so readers can contribute to the discussion.
More to come!

We're thrilled to be relaunching 1Sky.org and handing it off to the dedicated folks at 1Sky to run with. More importantly, though, we can't wait to see how it grows as all of us who care passionately about ending climate change share our thoughts and stories with one another.

Last Night a Dorkbot Saved My Life - posted by Anne Keenan

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:43:37 -0800

A few weeks ago, I read an EchoDitto Labs blog post about Dorkbot DC, which prompted me to search for a NYC equivalent. Bingo! Dorkbot NYC meets the first Wednesday of every month only a few blocks from our office. Perfect, for someone like me who is essentially lazy.

What is Dorkbot?
dorkbot-nyc is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties from the new york area who are involved in the creative use of electricity. dorkbot meetings are free and open to the public. Since we started dorkbot-nyc in 2000 many other dorkbots have sprung up around the world. See them all at: http://dorkbot.org
Well, I mean, of course it started in NYC.

I got to the gallery a little before 7 and found a seat toward the front. Being shy and a little nervous that someone was going to ask me to solder or explain how the internet works, I then had 15 minutes to busy myself with my iPhone, and furtively check out the room. Things looked promising: all projectors and mics seemed to be working; everyone seemed pretty friendly; and someone had brought my favorite snack, kettle corn, to share. Ready.

The first presentation was two guys explaining their new open-source program to push user interfaces to mobile devices (called Mrmr). The premise is that you can build interfaces to control computer programs and then send them to someone’s mobile device. Then that person can control the program from their phone. Their example was a computer visualization program where you could adjust the angle, static, distortion, etc.

The best part was that they actually explained it in human language. When open for questions, the discussion became a little more robot-based, but I pretty much followed. If you are a robot, and would like more robot details, check out their site.

The details of how this will actually be helpful in real life are a little vague, but they did suggest we could use it in museums to send interactive content to people or add it to interactive billboards to let passersby interact with them. Pretty fricking cool…

When the next presenter, Andrew Senior, started talking, my heart skipped a beat. His three projects were explorations of artificial life—life forms that live on television radiation, words that come alive and crawl toward each other, robots that help plants achieve optimal energy storage. Amazing. I recommend watching this video immediately. And then swooning.

All in all, I left the meeting filled with nerdy hope for the world. There are people out there working on amazing projects, not for money, not for fame, just for the joy and intellectual challenge of it. I love these people. And plan to spend the first Wednesday night of every month with them. Wanna join me?

P.S. One other thing filling me with nerdy hope for the world: the Obama Yes We Can video. It’s #1 on CNN and on Google Video for a reason. These geniuses (or… celebrities) have turned a political speech into a relatively catchy video. The kind that makes you want to listen again and again so you can sing along to it. Just when you think there’s nothing new in the world, smart people come along.

¡Viva la Barça, y Viva la Drupalcon! - posted by Phil Lamb

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:10:22 -0700

I just flew in from Barcelona, and boy are my arms tired!

Well, not really - actually I got back about two weeks ago, but what with finalizing development and launching President Clinton's newest site and the Bears beating the Packers, I haven't had a lot of time to collect my thoughts and set them down via an interblag. Well, now that things have calmed down slightly, I figured I'd give it a shot.

First of all, Barcelona is an amazing city. It's incredibly metropolitan - sort of like New York on a smaller scale and with more spanish, although most people with whom I interacted spoke great English. It's really easy to get around, which was good since the conference was taking place at CitiLab Cornélia, on the outskirts of the city.

The overnight flight was not nearly as sleepy as I would have liked. Older planes apparently don't cool off much during flight, which is bad for me, as I really prefer to sleep in a cold room with lots of blankets. I also prefer to sleep lying down, which, as any of you who've experienced transatlantic travel in coach know, is basically impossible in a 747.

Anyway, what that all amounted to was me getting in at about 9:30 and wishing I could have slept. Thankfully I was able to adjust fairly quickly to the new schedule, and things were aces from there.

It was interesting to meet in real life so many of the people with whom I had interacted via IRC and forums. A lot of them were really cool people, which was great since I had come as the sole representative of EchoDitto and didn't exactly have any guarantee of social interaction. About two days into the conference I met up with ExoDitto Justin Miller, who was there with a group of people from the DoD. They're doing some really cool open-source stuff which I'm not sure I can talk about here, but needless to say the move towards open-source is one which I think would benefit a number of existing government agencies.

The days were PACKED and to my chagrin a number of talks I wanted to attend were scheduled for the same timeslot, but someone had the brilliant idea of recording most of the sessions and posting them online, and I'd definitely recommend checking them out.

It wouldn't be feasible for me to talk in depth about every session I attended, so instead I'll just focus on the one that interested me the most: the Agile Development method.

Why did this one strike me? Well, for the most part there weren't many technical surprises at DC07, with maybe the exception of Dave Cohen's presentation on Drupal for Facebook, which shows some real promise for melding the two platforms. One of the reasons I was sent out to Barcelona was for self-improvement, and as many developers out there know, getting a great development process going is one area where many people find themselves stuck. The Agile process, to me, represents a great solution - one that will almost certainly keep the client happy and the developer sane, and that combination leads to faster development, less overhead, and more client leads.

Here's the general idea behind Agile software development:

Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software
Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
Working software is the principal measure of progress
Even late changes in requirements are welcomed
Close, daily, cooperation between business people and developers
Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication
Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
Simplicity
Self-organizing teams
Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

- wikipedia

EchoDitto's development process is already composed of some of these ideas, but lately we've been starting to take a look at adopting a majority of them.

All in all, DC07 was an incredibly beneficial experience, reinforcing things I already knew and teaching me things I didn't. I'm not entirely sure where the next DrupalCon will be held (some are saying Stuttgart), but if you get the chance - GO!

You know - for kids! - posted by Nicco

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 06:13:16 -0700

I started my professional life as a student teacher at James Blair Middle School in Williamsburg, Virginia. Teaching has always been in my blood; I absolutely love learning, which is the other side of the coin. My grandmother was an amazing teacher; you can still buy her textbooks on Amazon. And for the last year and half, I've taught a class in the Johns Hopkins University Graduate School of Communications on digital communications. This semester, I'm teaching the class entirely online, remotely, with no face-to-face meetings.

What's interesting is how long it has taken open-source models to move to the educational space. MIT has put the syllabus for almost every single class they teach online in an open, accessible format - it's called MIT Open Course Ware (OCW), and they've made more than 1,700 MIT course available. But for most of these course, you still have to buy the books - and ideally listen to the lectures. Still, it's a major leap forward and more than 200 other universities world-wide (including Johns Hopkins) have followed MIT's lead. One of the most astonishing projects is England's Open University, where there are more than 180,000 enrolled students - including more than 25,000 students from outside the UK. Their "Open Learn" site is probably one of the most advanced online open educational resource out there.

Looking around the web, the open educational resources available out there appear to be growing by leaps and bounds. The OER Grapevine maintains a "neutral" list of OER projects online, and there are a number of interesting and notable projects, like the California Open Source Textbook Project. The COSTP has a project with Wikipedia to create a history curriculum for 9th graders that is based on California State Curriculum Standards.

The tools for sharing educational resources online continue to emerge. EduCommons is an open source courseware management system pioneered and maintained by the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University. And while EduCommons is designed to manage catalogs of courses, Moodle is an open-source software platform designed to facilitate actual online learning through the creation of online learning communities.

Yahoo! has just launched a new online site design to help teachers "create, modify, and share standards-based curriculum". Maggie Mason describes it:

You can drag and drop any element of a web page while you're researching, then search for other people's lesson plans by grade, subject, and state standards. You can even locate nearby teachers who have to teach around the same local events (Chinese New Year in San Francisco, for example). It shows you top-rated, most recent, and most copied lesson plans, and lets you build a network of teachers whose work you trust.

But despite all of this activity, there isn't much in the way of open educational resources for middle school teachers, let alone primary school students. I'm a big believer in the One Laptop Per Child project - give the world's children laptops, and let them learn about learning and teach each other. Unlock their potential through technology. But for laptops to be useful resources inside of the world's educational systems, we need affordable - even open - educational resources, like digital textbooks. Reviewing what's out there, it seems that there is a vacuum of original, high-quality content for primary school children, and an even greater absence of basic educational curricula sourced from the developing world. That's one reason I've signed on to help get the Open Learning Exchange started - we need more - and better - open online educational resources for kids.

Practicing what we preach - posted by Phil Lamb

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:26:25 -0700

I recently assumed the mantle of Chicago Bears event coordinator for my local (well, sorta) pub, The Gael, which meant that, with the season quickly approaching, I needed a system easy to rapidly deploy for getting the word out to Bears fans in New York. After the (amazing, fantastic) NFC Championship game back in January, one of the pub's owners passed around an email signup sheet (wonderful forethought on his part!) and invited anyone interested to give us their email address.

I managed the email addresses using Campaign Monitor, a cheap ($0.01 per subscriber) email campaign system, and set up a Drupal-based site for blogging and other user management (check it out here). We've now got over 100 fans subscribed, and have used the massive turnout to work with the owners of the bar to become the only place in New York City to serve Vienna Beef Chicago-style Hot Dogs and Polish Sausage, and Goose Island Beer - all imported from Chicago. The next step: Old Style, the classic Chicago sports beer. All in all, it's been a successful few weeks, and a lot of fun, and just goes to show that at EchoDitto we're great at what we do because we use this stuff in our daily lives.

Useful Widgets - posted by Matt Stempeck

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 16:24:18 -0800

Being the early-adopting nerd that I am, I've gone through my share of widgets. I've tinkered with every site- and PC-based widget engine from Konfabulator to Yahoo Widgets to Google Desktop. At work I use a Mac, so I got to experiment with those guys, including an ill-fated Christmas Countdown widget. But as much as I love fun technology, the overwhelming uselessness of widgets thus far has tainted my expectations for the platforms that enable them. The fact is, I've never had any stocks to check. If something's really important, I'll place the RSS feed or bookmark somewhere prominent within Firefox. And don't get me started on how many different ways I can check the weather.

Which is why I owe Katya Andresen thanks for her Net Squared DC presentation last night for changing all of that and making me realize their potential again. The Six Degrees project
has done something genuinely groundbreaking. They want people to do good in the world, but they don't really care if you go to their website to do so. They're doing what we've grown hoarse repeating: If you let go of your message a little and empower your supporters, big things can happen.

Six Degrees allows users to make badges for their cause and take their fundraising elsewhere: their blog, their MySpace, and so on. In doing so they've essentially enabled individuals to become their own charities, in the same way that tools like Wordpress allowed people to become their own publishers.

And it works. Think about it, when is the last time you gave to charity? Chances are, it was for a friend or family member who was running a race or otherwise soliciting donations for a cause. And you gave. You do support Save the Baby Zebras, but you gave to them because your friend or family member asked you to, and what's important to them is important to you.

Six Degrees keeps things interesting with a Top Six Badges contest for matching grants that judges based on how many donators you've attracted rather than how much money you've accrued.

Oh, and I almost forgot the best part of this whole thing: It was started with the help of Kevin Bacon, who bought the Six Degrees domain after realizing that most mentions of him on the Internet were about the six degrees from Kevin Bacon game and not his stellar performance in Footloose. The celebrity tie-ins continue with Celebrity Badges from Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, Nicole Kidman and others.

Anyway, thanks again to Katya and to everyone else for coming out and making this another great NetSquared event. Join us next month on March 20th at 7pm!

DrupalCamp NYC 2007 - posted by Harish Rao

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:57:52 -0800

This last Saturday, I was at DrupalCamp here in New York. I went because I:

(a) wanted to meet people that could possibly work with us and

(b) learn more about Drupal, especially its new release, version 5.0.

It was wicked fun, and I have some musings about what I learned later. Skip this paragraph if you already know about Drupal...in case you don't know what Drupal is, it's a feature-rich open-source web Content Management System that simplifies publishing web content. For example, it has a What-you-see-if-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) content editor, so you don't necessarily have to learn HTML to publish web pages. Several organizations, notably MTV UK as well as certain clients of EchoDitto, like the Pearl Harbor Stories Project, use Drupal. I should note that Drupal can be a partial alternative to the packages that the two companies Michael talks about in this post, although there are pros and cons to making that choice.

A few anecdotal takeaways that might be useful to you:

(1) The crowd at Drupalcamp NYC split into two camps: those who already knew a lot about Drupal (let's call them super-users), and folks who were there just to get a feel for Drupal or to learn more (we'll call them newbies). The latter was in the definite majority. That said, I thought the super-users--like the good folks at Advomatic--generally did a good job being helpful to the newbies.

(2) What's most interesting to me, though, is that many of the super-users (including, of course, the EchoDitto contingent) were actively looking for people to hire. In fact, that was pretty much the purpose of a lot of super-users there. It's also useful for me to note that the super-users were not always part of companies like EchoDitto -- many of them were well-versed freelancers. Which is interesting to me -- clearly, there's a lot of demand for Drupal-based websites, but not enough people building them. Somewhat counter-intuitively, I will say that as good as these events are from a social + learning perspective, they may not be the best place for recruiting talent.

(3) Setting aside sociological phenomena that I believe informs the drive toward more independent contractors I observed at Drupalcamp (for example, read this book), it was fairly clear to me that a higher level of coordination (does NOT mean collusion) amongst the different Drupal developers/companies could be useful. I don't know what that entails necessarily but perhaps a shared opportunities/business development portal is a useful thing? I'm open to ideas here, I admit that this is not a clear idea, but what do you all think? I'd like to presume positive intent on all parties' if we get into this conversation on this blog...there's a great deal of demand for Drupal services, and no one entity (company or individual contractor) is filling all of it.

One last note: props to Noel Hidalgo, who I thought did a great job making the conference happen.

Disclosure: EchoDitto was a sponsor of this year's Drupalcamp.

Breaking: GetActive to be acquired by Convio, Inc. - posted by Michael Silberman

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:46:45 -0800

Just announced moments ago, we're not yet entirely sure yet what this means for everyone, but we know two things:

1. Twenty-five percent of the fully integrated eCRM/CMS market just disappeared, reducing options to three very different providers: Convio, Blue State Digital, and Kintera (not counting open-source solutions and a myriad of other tools of course)

2. This is likely to have a pretty dramatic impact on the nonprofit and social change technology space. Will this encourage more healthy competition from the other vendors and providers? (I hope so.) Or will Convio innovate less due to their massive new market share and potential perceived lack of competition? (I hope not.) And will this make open source solutions even more attractive to potential clients and users? (I think yes.)

I think the real competitive edge will be for the vendors who figure out how to integrate and play nicely with other tools and systems (Sign the integration proclamation!)

What else does this mean? We're curious about other opinions -- please comment here!

Also, here's the FAQ that we and others received from Sheeraz, GetActive's CEO:

What is the new company name?
Convio, Inc.

Will the GetActive products be maintained? For how long?
GetActive provides both an eCRM platform in addition to a Web content management (CMS) product. Over time, GetActive clients using eCRM will be migrated to Convio's eCRM platform. Support for the GetActive eCRM platform will eventually be discontinued, although a firm date for this transition has not yet been determined. We will give clients at least six months notice. Convio will continue to invest in the CMS product, and make it available to all clients.

Can I migrate to the Convio platform and use their tools?
Yes, in time all eCRM clients will be migrated to the Convio platform, while the website management module will be integrated into the Convio platform. Our new, expanded product team will be working to take the best features of GetActive and engineer them to work on the Convio platform; additionally our team will be developing new features to streamline your data migration.

How long will a migration take?
Migrations timeframes depend on the number and complexity of modules, special features, activity history and database size being deployed, as well as on how many other migrations or new deployments are occurring around the same time.

Will there be a fee to migrate?
A migration plan will be made available to all customers by March 30, 2007. Any costs associated with migration will be addressed in this plan.

Will I continue to work with my current Account Manager?
Yes. We are sensitive to the fact that clients value continuity in their service relationships. There will initially be very few changes in primary client contacts. Our goal is to minimize any changes.

What about training?
Several training options will continue to be available, some free and some for a fee.

How does this affect my current GetActive contract?
Your current contract will remain in effect for the entire term. During the course of the contract we may approach you about the option of migrating to the Convio platform in order to take advantage of the expanded functionality.

What additional features does Convio offer?
Tributes
eCommerce
TeamRaiser
Event triggered email messaging
HTML auto-response messaging
Social networking Widgets
Advocacy call alerts and vote center
Automated check payment processing
Pledge fundraising
eCards
Member Directories
Member Rewards
Check out Convio's website (http://www.convio.com) to learn more.

I'm in the middle of a GetActive deployment. Will that be stopped?
Your GetActive implementation will proceed as planned. A migration schedule to the Convio platform will be determined in coming months, but only in very special circumstances will your current GetActive deployment be disrupted.

RootsCampDC: A WikiConference - posted by Jason Rosenberg

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:47:51 -0800

Michael and I attended RootsCampDC this weekend. It was an amazing conference with an equally exciting vibe. The attendees were all remarkable people with great stories and experiences to share. They included 2006 campaign workers fresh off the trail, a candidate for U.S. Senate and leaders of the netroots community.

The idea of the conference was to bring these ideas together to progressive ideas to reality, and I think it really worked. The sessions I attended were filled with lively discussion and some great ideas were shared.

Everyone I spoke with told me that this was one of the best conferences they've attended. One person told me the reason they enjoyed RootsCamp so much was because this conference didn't have a room full of vendors trying to sell their services. This was a conference of ideas not of products.

What I found the most interesting was how the sessions were formed. On one of the floors of the building was a giant cork board. People that wanted to host a session could simply post a piece or paper with the vital information: Name of event, topic, time and place. The conference was truly a wikiconference.

RootsCampDC was a great success and should serve as a model for other progressive conferences.

Check out RootsCampDC's Flickr pics.

NOI/RootsCamp modeling good organizing (of course!) - posted by Michael Silberman

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:40:31 -0800

I shouldn't be surprised, but I can't help but be impressed with how we heard back from the RootsCamp DC organizers only moments after signing-on as sponsors. It wasn't just the typical 'thank you' that you might expect. Instead Roz told us exactly who we were enabling to attend through our sponsorship -- the real name of the real internet director coming off a campaign in CA who wouldn't otherwise be able to participate in this post-election debrief.

The email we received is exactly what we try so hard to emphasize across all of our projects and client work: making clear the true, real-world impact of every action or contribution that we ask of others. And following-up as quickly as possible to close the loop and show how every person's contribution is part of something larger than themself. So Roz's note brought a smile to our--ok, my--face.

RootsCamp, if you haven't already heard, is a post-election debrief happing in cities across the country in the very un-conference bar-camp tradition. Ours in DC is happening this weekend. Bar camps are open-source, self-organized geek gatherings organized online to take place in real-space, usually around big tech convergences like SXSW, and organized transparently via a basic wiki.

Needless to say, this is right up our alley, so we're psyched to be involved. Between politics, online organizing, and the open sourcing of technology and ideas, RootsCamp is essentially the perfect merger of our greatest obsessions. (There's even one happening every Wednesday in the SecondLife metaverse!) See you this weekend!

Free Zipcode-to-Representative Matching Database! Come and Get It! - posted by Tom Lee

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:45:16 -0700

In a previous, much crappier professional life, I worked as a programmer for the government. Most DC-area geeks do, in fact, although the work is usually so secret and/or boring that you don't hear much about it. But the federal government spends a staggering amount on IT. The only thing more astounding than the scale of the enterprise is how little direct good it does for the public.

I'll be the first to admit that not every project is a good candidate for release into citizens' hands. But there's a lot of code and data that could and should be released. But it isn't.

Now that I work on the advocacy side of things, I know that one prime example is the difficulty involved in helping a user find their congresswoman. Matching a zip code to a congressional district is a pretty obvious and simple capability that the government could make available to developers for very little cost. This would presumably facilitate conversations between constituents and representatives — if you believe in representative democracy, it's pretty hard to say that this would be anything other than a good thing.

But instead, developers usually have to buy this information from a vendor, for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. To me, it seems obvious that this information ought to be free.

Fortunately, from my time in the belly of the beast I know that the government actually does make this information available... at least, sort of. There's a collection of webpages on house.gov that provide the necessary data for a given zipcode, but they relay it in a thoroughly unusable form. If you're a developer, the obvious answer is to write some scripts to chew through that output, turning it into easily digestible SQL. Then you repeat the process for every zip code that you need to match to congressional districts. As part of another project, that's exactly what I did. I figured that other people might find it useful. At the very least, the price is right.

So! If you might find this database useful, have at it. You've got two options: first, you can download the scripts and use them to recreate the database. But the house.gov people probably wouldn't like that very much, and I'd hate to have them shut the door on this valuable data. Besides, it takes several hours to spider the necessary information.

The other option is to visit our charmingly ad-hoc bittorrent tracker and download the whole database. That archive includes the scripts, too, so that you can rebuild the database when the spiritual descendants of Tom Delay inevitably gerrymander us further into oblivion.

Enjoy! Now if we could just get the postal service to loosen their restrictions on zip+4 matching...

UPDATE: As pointed out in comments, it's slightly silly of me to have offered this via a torrent. Besides, the initial traffic has now died down. So: if you need the larger database file, you can download it here.

UPDATE 2: Since I'm still getting occasional emails about this entry, I thought I'd add a note about where everything stands. Unfortunately this data is for the 109th congress, and the 110th altered their site format in a way that broke the screen-scraping scripts. So this database is outdated and probably won't be much use to you.

But there's good news! The Sunlight Foundation is now offering this functionality via a free API. You can find information about it here. Good luck!

Blogging With No Exit - posted by Terrance Heath

Tue, 23 May 2006 07:36:30 -0700

I am not a developer. I'm a writer with just enough technical knowledge to be dangerous. So there's probably a lot I don't know about creating blogging software. I'm not the guy who builds the platform. I'm the guy who comes goes comes in, redecorates, adds some content, and makes the place his own.

I'm also in the process of having a house built. Now, I'm not a builder either, and there's definitely a lot I don't know about building a house. However, I know the one I'll soon be living in has a front door, a back door, lots of windows and several other ways to get in and out. It's something I almost take for granted. So, why is it that my blogging platform has a way to get in (via import) but no way to get out? Why do developers build blogging platforms with no internal export function?

The reason I ask is because of the trouble I've been having with my blog lately. If you visit that link, you'll see what the trouble is. It's not there. Or it's there but you can't see it because you can't access the database. It's the result of an ongoing problem with my current blogging platform. Ever since the most recent version came out, databases queries have been insane to the point that my host has finally blocked all access to my database from any IP address except my own.

I've tried everything to solve the problem. I've enabled caching. I've killed all but two plugins that connect to the database. But nothing works. Besides, I'm inclined to think that it's not just me, because lots of people have written about their problems with it and they're all nearly identical to mine. It seems that something about my blogging platform makes MYSQL databases go wonky during traffic bursts, because of some bad mojo involving dynamic content generation, caching, and skyrocketing database queries. The higher your traffic, the worse it gets. And I get anywhere from a couple to several thousand page loads per day.

So, it seems the answer would be to switch to a different blogging software, or at least test drive a few with my current content, to see how they handle the load. There's just one problem. My blogging software has several ways in, via internal import functions to retrieve content from other systems, but no exit. No built in export. None. So, I could leave if I want to, but right now I'd have to leave my content behind.

And when it comes to blogging, content has value because that's what people link to. It's your the accrued interest in your "blog cred" account. Lose your content, lose your links, and you start over again from square one. That's a lot harder to do than it was even just a few years ago

I don't get it. Why build something that has so many ways in, but no way out? Especially if it's open source software, and nobody's going to lose any money if I switch to a different platform? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the meaning of open source, but it seems to me the way out should be as available and clearly marked as the way in, and that I shouldn't have to become a programmer to find it or to build my own.

Asking on the support forums doesn't yield much in the way of help. My last attempt got me a pretty derisive response, basically telling me I'm crazy to think that any developer would include an internal export function, because "nobody is offering an export script to let users go away from their tool."

This, however, is in direct contradiction to what the über developer himself had to say on the matter earlier.

There's no need to "lock" anyone in to ... , it stands on its own merits. No one makes or loses money if you use ... or not. We do this because we love doing it. We don't have any propietary storage formats or obscufated code, anyone is free to do anything with the data they want, and they do. There are ... import tools for other systems (though they're all lossy at the moment). Also remember ... content is available through the same standard APIs (blogger, metaweblog) as everyone else.

An export function has been planned out and the code has been assigned to someone, and as far as I know he has been working on it. When everything is done you'll be able to export and import to RSS/Atom and to a custom lossless XML format.

Insinuations about the motivations of ... developers is uncalled for and not productive toward what we're all trying to do here: make ... better.

Posted: 2004-08-11 08:59:52

That was almost two years, and a couple of versions ago, and still no export function is forthcoming. And the lone export plugin in existence stopped working due to sum code changes in the new version of the blogging software. So there was a tunnel under the wall, but somehow it got filled in.

So perhaps the lone person who responded to my call for help was right after all. But if I take the developer in question at his word, I still have to ask: why build something with an easy way in, but no easy way out? If you don't stand to gain or financially from my decision to use your platform or switch to another, why not have a clearly marked exit? Why make me dig my own way out or wait for someone else to dig me out?

Bottom line? I don't have to be a builder to get into and out of my own house. I can walk out the door any time I choose. And I shouldn't have to be a developer to get my content in and out of my blogging software either. It should be as easy as opening the door and walking out of my house.

Instead, choosing a blogging software is akin to hastily jumping into a relationship with someone you barely know, and moving in with them. By the time you realize what the problems are, and how deep the trouble goes, it's a lot harder to get out than it was to get in. And even if you manage to get out, it might not be so easy to take your stuff with you.

From now on, my advice to anyone who asks about blogging software is this: don't use any blogging software that doesn't have an internal export function, unless you are absolutely sure you will never ever want to move to another platform and take your content with you.

When Wiki Writers Attack - posted by Terrance Heath

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 10:11:54 -0800

I have to be honest. Despite my line of work, I still haven't entirely quaffed the wiki kool-aid. Blogging is one thing, but something about a reference source that's editable by anybody makes me a little wary. John Seigenthaler, Sr.'s story only reinforces that wariness.

“John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.”

— Wikipedia

This is a highly personal story about Internet character assassination. It could be your story.

I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious “biography” that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable. There was more:

“John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984,” Wikipedia said. “He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter.”

At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com.

My experience was a bit different, and a bit less personal than Seigenthaler's -- I don't have a Wikipedia entry, and given Seigenthaler's experience I'm not sure I want one. I was simply using Wikipedia to look up information for a online calendar of important dates and people in the performing arts, so I could write 365 brief paragraphs on the people and the dates.

I quickly learned not to rely on Wikipedia alone. There were frequent discrepancies on important details like the birthdates of certain figures, or the facts on certain important works. I ended up having to cross reference information between Wikipedia and sites like AllMusic.Com, the Internet Movie Database, and the Internet Broadway Database (yes, there is one), as well as other online encyclopedias, like the one's Seigenthaler mentions -- that feature content from Wikipedia.

Eventually my employer bought a subscription to a reputable online encyclopedia just to ensure that we ended up with accurate information. Turns out the old truism really is true sometimes: you get what you pay for.

Seigenthaler goes on to detail the process of getting the false information in entries about him removed. Compared to actually finding out who posted the disinformation, getting it removed was the easy part. In the end, the wiki author who libeled Seigenthaler simply struck and slipped back in to the ether of the internet, with considerable legal protection. And while Seigenthaler was successful in getting the entries corrected, in some ways the damage was already done.

When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of “gossip.” She held a feather pillow and said, “If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people.”

For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia.

The most exciting thing about the new media age we live in is that almost anyone has access to the tools disseminate information on a global scale. The most frightening thing about the new media age we live in is that almost anyone has access to the tools to disseminate information on a global scale. A lot more people have the power of media at the fingertips than ever before, and not all of them use it for good.

The only defense is to become your own personal anti-defamation agency. The same advice that applies in the case of anyone who's ever blogged, posted on an online forum, posted on Usenet, or even emailed: Google yourself once in a while. It's a good way of knowing what others -- from potential employers to students working on research papers -- are reading about you. If you happen to have your own entry on Wikipedia check it out every once in a while. Register on Wikipedia, add your entry to your watchlist and correct it when you find inaccuracies. And if you have, as Seigenthaler does, it's helpful a major media megaphone like USA Today at your disposal.

Seigenthaler's story is certainly disturbing. Almost anyone would be shaken after seeing disinformation posted about them for all the world to see, and by an anonymous author who can't be held accountable. And that's just one wiki entry. Multiply it by the number of sites that post Wikipedia's content, and the ever expanding number of blogs and online forums, and the personal anti-defamation tactics mentioned above can become a full-time job if you're famous enough. Unfortunately, in an age when almost anyone is armed with the ability to spread information or disinformation far and wide, that kind of eternal vigilance will probably remain a necessity for the foreseeable future.

Update: Wikipedia is now requiring users to register in order to submit articles.