Fake distaste for fake news?  

Mika Brzezinski wouldn't read the Paris Hilton story when she realized it was the lead on Scarborough's MSNBC morning show today. That's good. Except you can't help but suspect it might have been planned. Have you noticed the media has been playing a little game, maybe in hopes of pandering both to people who hate the fluff and people who like it. They say they don't like to talk about it, and then they do.

Is Scarborough on permanently in Imus's place? (Later, found out: probably.) Dan Abrams sits in for him in the night slot now. He has some sort of management position at MSNBC now and seems to be trying out topics. Looks like research. (Do you have the blogs monitored, too, Dan? Hi!) I don't care for Abrams; I think he comes off acting even more self-important than most of that crowd. Just a gut feeling but I think he pushes the fake news. As an O.J. trial reporting veteran, maybe he's doing a Capt. Queeg from The Caine Mutiny, reliving the great cheese theft investigation from his ensign days, the high point of his career.

Listing toward the untethered idea 

This morning: Loading up some podcasts for my commute, I noticed a few .m3u files in the folder. Forced me to consider: the ability to use playlists linking to .mp3 files on web servers would be another nice benefit of Dave's Perfect (untethered wifi) Podcast Player, wouldn't it?

Tonight: Or, how about OPML listening lists like the Churnin' Urn reading lists I thought about last year. Here's one way it might work in a very social way: let's say a group of friends on a college campus wants to get ideas from each other about new podcasts to listen to (I'm suggesting a campus because it's one type of place right now that has wifi all over the place).

Each member of the group publishes a feed (or just another OPML file) with enclosures. It's made a part of the master OPML file via inclusion, but each feed isn't just one podcast with new episodes. It's recommendations -- the group member's favorites and new finds, and it changes over time. The result is any time you tell your Perfect Podcast Player to tune into the listening list, you get brand new stuff your friends have chosen for you, always a surprise.

Not so democratic after all: chokes disintermediation 

Here's a little nugget from the dustup over Google's healthcare blunder this weekend. A minor point in the issue was an assertion by Google's blogger/account planner in her mea culpa post that advertising is democratic. At least one blogger I respect agreed, but something about that idea didn't feel right to me at the time. I do see blogs as the latter day Thomas Paine pamphlets. Ads, not so much. And now see Boing Boing's update.

Mike sez, "I thought you might want to know that Google doesn't even allow individuals to purchase ads critical of large companies. In May 2004, I set up a website to criticize the large medical-testing firm Covance. I bought -- and was willing to pay, out of my own pocket -- a Google AdWord so people searching for Covance would find my site. After a few days, Google told me that their 'policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain 'language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization'.' So, apparently HMOs criticizing Michael Moore is okay, but random-guy-with-a-website criticizing a large corporation is not okay. 'Democratic,' indeed. (The full text of Google's email to me is here).

Middlemen of any stripe get in the way of the best promise of the internet.

Later: Michael Bazeley points to this Google Ads political judgement call (an anti-war site was characterized as a hate site). This case and the one Boing Boing mentions are a few years old. I'd like to learn whether Google still gets this active in deciding what kinds of advocacy advertising will be accepted, and if they still suggest people edit their websites for balance.

Stephen Downes says Google is now officially evil.