iUpload Gets InfoWorld Plug

New client iUpload gets a thumbs up in InfoWorld's October issue.

They're in the mix with other top hosted cm apps such as Clickability and Crownpeak. InfoWorld sums it up here "iUpload Content Manager’s clean design and one-button publishing will be appreciated by content authors, while extensive role functions make this product appropriate for extranets."

Traditional media is still alive and kicking and reviews of products do matter!

The End of Faith

Check out The End of Faith by Sam Harris for an enlightening read.

The author presents a clear concise view of faith, perhaps the most important discussion since Descartes. Harris writes that we are in a time when so many people are moving toward faith as their anchor, and not enlisting reason in their governing of life's potential. He presents an alternative universe to those that wish to perpetuate dogmatic ritualistic beliefs that undermine progress and more to the point, human happiness. You can find out more about Harris and his novel here.

Factcheck.org

There's a great website called Factcheck.org. The site is a great reference to verify some of the incredible lies and misstatements of both political camps. It is supposedly a factually accurate and unbiased source that provides a summary of discredited claims and misinformation throughout the campaign.

Skid in Sideways Girls

One of the things I miss about my new local is 'girlfriend time,' you know that time women spend connecting about things that men don't or simply don't do well. My connections were usually over a glass of Chardonnay in some funky bistro and the East Coast women in my circles tended to have a lot more edge.

In Berkeley, the women I'm meeting lately want to save the election. Certainly, a noble thing to do. In the South Bay, they tend to be focused on high tech marketing or funding and spend their time talking about it, and in the city, I'm running into the "health conscious."

This is a good thing. For anyone who has seen me with my vitamins, herbs and Super Green drinks, they'll know I'm a fan of being part of a community that pays more attention to their health.

And yet sometimes I recall those fond childhood memories of my grandparents cocktail parties that started in the 1930s and continued to the day they died. And while I feel better than I did a decade ago and know that exercise and my greens are all an integral part of it, I smile when I think of another mantra I hold dear.

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming ~ WOO HOO what a ride!"

Ah, here's to life's journey and to skidding in sideways at the end.' Happy Sunday.

Australian Perspective

Director of anti-Bush film Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore plans to have hundreds of cameras outside polling places in Ohio and Florida on Election Day to watch for attempts to suppress voter turnout. He announced that a total of 1,200 professional and non-professional camera operators, filmmakers and videographers will bring their cameras to polling places in the two presidential battleground states, especially in minority communities.

"I'm putting those who intend to suppress the vote on notice: Voter intimidation and suppression will not be tolerated," Moore said in a statement."

An Australian friend sent me his comment - "Thank God your crazy election is almost over. Most Australian's would have lost interest in this charade months ago or rised up in rebellion."

Here here Chris. We're so close to it sometimes, its hard to see it for the circus it really is.

Moving to the City

Not quite here two months and I'm moving on....to my second temporary digs in San Francisco. I've grown accustomed to the East Bay and am sure I'll miss the sunshine and my regular runs around Lake Merritt. It's all part of the process though, all part of the process. Sometimes, it just feels like such a long one.

Don't you ever think about packing it all in and moving to some Third World country where you can eat seafood and swim all day or write about and photograph everything that moves you? Or maybe its building something you've always wanted to create with your bare hands and having the time and resources to actually "do it."

Forgive my meander. A slight diversion down another avenue.

Safety in the Hands of......

The timing is just just remarkable isn't it? Doesn't anyone wonder about that? The Bin Laden footage is released only a few days before the election and its the first time we've heard anything from him since May 2002. Full story here.

In Friday's film coverage, Bin Laden explains the reasons for the 9/11 attacks, in the clearest admission yet of his involvement in this violent act of terrorism.

He accused Bush of an incompetent reaction to Sept. 11 because "it was more important to preoccupy himself with the talk of the little girl about her goat ... than with the planes and their strike on the skyscrapers," in reference to the president's reaction to news of the attacks.

Bin Laden also said there was little difference between the two main presidential candidates.

And he also said that reasons to repeat the Sept. 11 attacks remain, because US policy has not changed and "Bush is still misleading you."

Hello. Doesn't anyone wonder what's really going on here? I don't feel safe, do you?

Newsweek Poll's Bad News

Ugggggghh! Newsweek's recent poll shows that Bush is ahead of Kerry by 6 percentage points among likely voters in a three-day poll taken partly after the release of a videotape by Bin Laden.

Fifty percent of likely voters favor Bush, compared with 44 percent for Kerry, within the Oct. 27-29 survey's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points according to Newsweek.

It doesn't necessarily reflect reality, but reading news like this just makes me want to crawl into a hole until this thing is over.

The Times Goes Tabloid

The London Times is apparently eliminating "broadsheet" newspaper format. Wow! The Observer's Peter Preston has the entire story.

For those of you who have either lived in or traveled extensively to the U.K., it's hard to imagine this shift.

The Brits of all people have enormous sigma around the "Tabloid newspaper." I remember commuting from the western suburbs to London every day and observing personalities on the train based on the newspaper they read and of course, whether it was a broadsheet or Tabloid "said" something about them.

I'm not sure why I spent so much time observing people's reading patterns; perhaps because I was studying media at the time; perhaps because it was just so much fun to do in England, a country that hides from passion and emotion. This was evident in their "reading patterns."

It's easier to hide from the world behind a broadsheet than it is a Tabloid for example. And Brits on trains always seemed to hide behind their morning paper. The Times was one I read every day, after skimming through the Guardian (my favorite at the time) and The Observer.

I never read a Tabloid when I lived in the U.K.; I didn't see it as a class distinction although it clearly was. I simply didn't feel the same reading a Tabloid; the larger format gives me more power somehow. But do we need to feel powerful when we read our morning newspaper? It just "feels better" damn it.

The Telegraph reports that 30,000 or so hardcore broadsheet lovers will never turn Tabloid - and may thus switch to something else. Other rivals put potential resistance at a still higher level.

Many claim that a smaller page is only the beginning of change, not the end. "Who needs all those existing tabloid sections if their basic point, a distinct shift in size and tone from the broadsheet news, is gone? Without that contrast, all you get is more of the same."

Moving America Where?

Can someone please explain to me the "moving forward" part? Perhaps I've been asleep over the last four years.