Google

California's extreme right successfully pushed for a state constitutional referendum on same-sex marriage. Known as Proposition 8, it's the latest effort by Republicans to "move the base" and get them out to vote in November.

This from Ballotpedia : 

Proposition 8, also known as the Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Act, will appear on the November 2008 ballot in California. It was previously titled the Protect Marriage Act. It has also been known as the Same-Sex Marriage Ban or the Limit on Marriage Amendment. If it passes, it will add a new constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that will have the following text: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The ballot title for the measure says that Prop. 8 "eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry".

Look at the bottom of this screen shot and tell me what you see.

I had to go into my stats to find out who was directing so much attention to my first thoughts about Google's G1. Believe it or not it's purely search traffic.

Google Search works in mysterious ways. I honestly think it's hilarious that neither Gizmodo nor Endgaget are above culturekitchen in the search for google+g1+phone. Am actually #1 in the blog search.

I really, really, really smacked down the urge to get an iPhone because it was bound to the detestable ATT; whereas I am already bound to the somewhat detestable TMobile.

Obligatory segway into political commentary : I hate ATT because it's the company that came after the breakup of ITT which was one of the major corporations to finance dictatorships all across Latin America in the 60s and 70s.

Anyhow ...

Am looking at this image and am totally feeling my bossom heave. HAWT!

 BTW : Does the G1's trackball have an outie?

To be honest, I am not so enamored with the actual casing. As one twitterina said, "it looks cheaply made". Yet the price is looking all right : Starting at $179, which by the time you get your data and voice plans in place and pay taxes and fees, it's probably going to run to about $225 initial price with about $40/month in usage fee.

I have spent the last 72 hours scouring videos online, looking for citizen journalism from Iraq. I've found scores of video blogs and bits by US soldiers. I cannot find any videos created by Iraqis from inside Iraq. It may be because, I do not speak Arabic. Yet I doubt that's the case --there are quite a number of propaganda videos from the different insurgencies fighting in Iraq.

What I speak of is of videos coming from Iraqi cellular phones or digital cameras. I speak of videos where Iraqis may have filmed their surroundings, their day to day and put out on the web for any and all to witness and never forget.

Iraq by Iraqis in Iraq are nowhere to be found.

The measure of a brutal imperialistic force is in it's effective silencing of the people they've set out to conquer, submit, silence and colonize.

We The People Of The United States have been complicit in the silencing of Iraqis, in the wiping away of their culture and history, in the destruction of their freedom of speech and freedom to be by destroying their homes, destroying their country's infrastructure, destroying their economy.

[This post is for Greg Scott, who caught me in the middle of a rant about RCN over at Twitter.]

For about 4 months now I have noticed the change in service : I will get to YouTube but the pages load as slow as molasses. Other times, if I'm doing a search in Google, the page will take forever to load.

Today though, it's pretty obvious what's happening : I can't get into Google from my home connection. No Google. No Gmail. No YouTube. So I pinged people on Twitter and asked if anybody was having problems getting into Google.

Erica G replied from Boston :

I'm on RCN in Boston and having trouble connecting to Yahoo and tinyurl this evening. # [...] And actually, thinking of it, for the past several weeks I haven't been able to load YouTube videos properly, either. #

Melanie Notkin, who is also in NYC, reported the same issue. Maria Niles is on Comcast California, but she has had similar choppy access to YouTube in the past several weeks, making her wonder if she's living in China.

Why is this so important to blog and not dismiss as a possible "blip" or outage? Well, if we take into consideration all the services Google provides, the search company may indeed be the largest and most trafficked network of websites in the world. YouTube alone would make Google the largest video broadcaster at least in the United States.

Are you going to tell me RCN just happened to degrade service to the biggest web network and web services provider in the United States? As Seinfeld would say ... I. Don't. Think. So.

It is said that Google Ads is run by algorithms that are turning everything Google into the closest thing to a web powered 'artificial intelligence'. I think they actually have a good act going there and that they do have some level of editorial control over what ads go in and out of a web property, just the same way they've become keen at editorializing the GoogleNews front page.

If not, how would you explain such 'on topic' advertising for "republican ass biters"?

I complete agree with Ross Mayfield : Advertising is not Democratic.

This past weekend whilst the technology blogosphere was drooling over the iPhone, a post by one of Google's advertising account planner in the health category created the effect of rubbernecking in front of a car crash. And I mean it when I say it was ugly. Ugly in a "We Do Evil* As Long As There Is Cash Involved" kind of ugly.

In Does Negative Press Make You Sicko?, Lauren Turner wrote :

My Safari browser has decided that Google is the internet.

As I write this post, Google is in a blackhole of sorts, gone off the face of the internet map. Instead of my browser registering an error from the part of Google's servers, this is what is telling me :

Of course, my internet connection is fine and dandy. Yet the browser does not understand that. It registers Google's absence as a problem with internet connection.

Now if I take a look at my blog submit page, I find this :

The page has all links to Google's servers reporting errors.

This should be sobering to the millions of people who are now switching to Google's servers for all their technology needs.

I honestly don't think it is good business practice to rely on web services like GMail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Groups, Picassa, Checkout --eventhough I make use of all these services myself. I consider them fallbacks more than primary services because, on the net and with Google, you just never know.

Sure, their servers may be up and running by the time I finish this post. Yet the point is still valid : By it's ubiquitousness, Google is becoming the internet.

That sure makes me wary.

Infothought: Google Transferable Stock Options (TSO's) or how Seth Finkelstein succeeds at redifining web 2.0 with Google's Transferable Stock Options tool as Citizen Lunchmeat.

Eat The Press | Craigslist Robs Food From the Mouths of Journalist's Babies | The Huffington Post or how media dinosaurs cry the money blues.

BetaNews | Yahoo: Lower Page Views Due to AJAX or, if it takes a giant like Yahoo! to discredit a site rankings based on pageviews, oh lord have mercy, that would be so fine by me indeed. AJAX is a thing of web wonder that more sites should have to do away with the non-contextual page refreshing that happens due to non-dynamic designs. BTW, if you don't understand what I am talking about, don't worry. This is a shout-out to the techies in the community.

TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Le Web3 the good, bad and ugly., or the seedy underbelly of Web 2.0 technology conferences.

SECOND LIFE: A story too good to check - Valleywag or how PR and marketing departments are selling the virtual lie that is Second Life. This is Clay Shirky at his best and I am definitely coming back to this article.