Why the posts will be less this week

Adbusters is a great Canadian group, most famous for their fab spoof ads like these ones.






They've run 'TV turn-off week' for a few years and it's transmogrified into 'Mental detox week'.



And I'm going to try it! Do the garden, read, spring clean ... forget checking the feeds for a few days. Should be interesting because I do have a routine which revolves around this machine :{

As they put it:

Simple, but not at all easy.

Google Reader clips catch up

• Twitter at the tipping point
  [NB: I'm leaving my original text but Rory tells me this is meant completely ironically - read it now in that light!] From BBC dot.life. Contains an opening paragraph of such sheer onanistic pretentiousness it's worth repeating for a good belly-laugh:
  

  Suddenly everyone is talking Twitter. Just as Facebook hit the mainstream a year ago, so the short message social network has become the media flavour of this month - to such an extent you can even find me talking about it on the Today programme.
  
  But I'm not convinced that Twitter is really going to spread, in the way Facebook did, beyond the digerati into millions of people's lives. What's more, I'm struggling to understand the business model.

• Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand (David Barstow/New York Times)
  Investigative reporting, the sort they didn't do before the war.
  
• Mail Online's new look
  Jemina Kiss @ the grauniad. According to comments, it's a 2MB load! Really bad design as well.
  
• New ways into blogs
  The BBC's blog comments problem fixed (but not the 502/404 error message, now several years old)
• No Whining About the Media - Three quick points on the Democratic debate last night: (David Brooks/Campaign Stops)
  Memorandum has Brooks' defence and the critics of Brooks (that's why I like their presentational format for such online debate).
  
  
• Postcards From Yo Momma
  HT: Etre. Really funny true-life emails to offspring.
  
• PoliticsWeb2.0: On the Future of Government in the Digital Era
  TechPresident has a good series of 'semi-liveblogging' from a London conference. Opens with a report of Helen Margetts, of the Oxford Internet Institute, presentation covering UK eGov.
  

  Right now the UK govt has embarked on a high risk "supersite" strategy of centralizing e-govt services on two sites: DirectGov and BusinessLink (while closing down 2500 disparate e-govt sites at the same time). Both have low brand recognition and problems competing with other sources.

  This is what I've been saying for a year!
  
  
• Obama Targets Pennsylvania Voters with Pure Persuasion Ads
  ClickZ. This is new. Before they were just pleas for money.
  
• Blog On Blogging
  More BBC.
  

  The act of blogging wasn't, and still isn't, entirely uncontroversial, even here at the BBC
  

• Twitter spam spirals out of control
• If Robert Scoble is right, then Web 2.0 is dead
  A current Silicon Valley meme. Something to do with content being repurposed.
• Networking Journalism
  Great stuff from Bill Thompson who says:
  

  What has happened so far [to MSM] can be compared to the mild tremors felt before an earthquake.
  
  As the internet spreads there are more and more places where we can simply ask those who are living through the events what they think of them and seek insights and analysis from those who know the people and the places involved.
  

  This would be the death of the 'foreign correspondent' (that's you, Orla Guerin, praise be).
  
• The Pleasures of the Flesh
  George Monbiot on why we should eat less meat.
  
• Downing Street removes Labour Party link
  I had a delightful spar with the fierce looking (check the typeface on his blog) Tory wideboy who found a hole in Downing Street's bleedin' edge. Yes, the phrase 'grow up' was used.
  
  
• Civicsurf in action
  Shane McCracken has blogged at Cllr 2.0 about the experience of Norfolk County Councillor Tony Tomkinson who started blogging at the beginning of this year.
• Hillary Clinton To Appear On "Colbert Report"
  And it was dull. As was Stephen dazzled by Michelle Obama. Is he morphing into David Letterman?
  
• [Paul Bradshaw] User generated content? Or great place for a prank? Sky gets photoshopped on Marathon day
  This was truly hysterical.
  
• Social media and the dark side of doing PR
  Simon Collister on the growth of 'ghost blogging'.
• Top 10 UK search terms: social networks dominate the list

Not on Reader:

• The First 21st-Century Campaign
  National Journal overview by Ronald Brownstein on how the Democrats are reaching new heights in raising money, recruiting volunteers, hiring staff, buying TV ads, contacting voters, and generating turnout (and hence have a big edge for November).
  Time also has a piece on this - Why Democrats Rule the Web
• Youth Work and Social Networking Research Project
  Very interesting blog with some new research.
• Will economics put newspapers to bed before the readers do?
  Justin Williams blogging in the Telegraph
• Implications of Google Transit in the UK
  Tim Howgego has a very in-depth analysis on Google's latest project.
• Could the web win it in London?
  The BBC adds a bit more detail on my post Ken's already lost online but doesn't actually answer that question