Just discovered a valuable resource for those interested in getting started in blogging. Here is a good post to start with:

Just about everyone will agree that the internet offers users a certain degree of anonymity. There will always be debates about whether that’s a good thing or not, but it’s the reality of the web. For the most part, people can’t see us if we don’t want them to, and people can’t get to know us if we don’t want them to.

As a blogger, you may have asked yourself just how personal you want to get when it comes to your blog. Do you want people to know a little or a lot about you? Do you want to disclose personal information to the readers who visit your blog?

All of these questions are important to ask if you are a blog owner; in determining just how personal you want to get on your blog, consider two critical points.

The two questions are:

1. What is the purpose of your blog?

2. What do you feel comfortable with?

Read the full post and comments on the two questions over at Blogging Expertise.

Leave your thoughts about how personal you get on your blog? What has your own experience been as far as the personal things you have revealed?

This article about YouTube on the Washington Post goes to show that in today's fast changing competitive marketplace, no Goliath is safe from it's David.

YouTube is at a critical juncture. Since it launched in December 2005, it has ridden a wave of popularity that led Google to buy it in a $1.65 billion deal last year. But now the site must figure out its relationship with major traditional media companies while also forging its business, which to date has relied on advertising posted alongside videos.

The partnership announced yesterday by NBC, News Corp., AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft creates a first-of-its-kind alternative to some of YouTube's most popular content: TV and movie clips and music videos that were often posted there without permission. Unlike YouTube, the new competitor -- which says it will launch its Web site this summer -- has proposed a wide offering of videos, borrowing the iTunes model of offering some files for free and others, in this case movies and TV shows, for a fee.

Industry experts aren't ready to announce YouTube's demise but say the company needs to revamp its strategy quickly.

According to Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, an entertainment market research firm, YouTube is not about watching TV, but about connecting and social networking. Considering how fickly the social network audiences seem to be, how effective of a strategy is that?

YouTube has never been a destination site for watching television on the Internet but instead is more like a social network, he said. "People go to YouTube to be seen and to see other people and to be a part of this community environment," Garland said.

SEND ME ANYTHING: Digital pictures of you holding a sign, a picture you draw in microsoft paint, a message to Republican politicians on the back of a business card, a video of you writing a message on a white board, a haiku, anything, literally. I’ll find a way to make something pretty and effective out of it. That’s what I do.

The message is simple: Why do Republican politicians need to listen and speak with us?

He is looking to see and hear your interpretation of the message. You can get more details here and here. So if you have some free time in your hands, pull out that camera, start up Photoshop, and get to work.

Townhall Blogs Alert: I have a note I wanted to pass along from Townhall General Manager, Chuck Defeo.

I wanted to send out an apology to all of our faithful Townhall bloggers for the slowness of the site in the last couple weeks. We wanted to make sure you know that we are aware of the problems and our web development team is working very hard to get them resolved. 

The root of the issue has been growth of our site.  We have moved from 12 million monthly page views six months ago to 35 million page views last month.  Our team made some adjustments to our caching system a few days ago that should lighten the load but we need to upgrade our server capacity and are in the process of doing that.

We greatly appreciate your patience.  We have been blessed with a very fast growing website and are managing the growth as best we can.

Thank you for your feedback and for those of you who have gone the extra mile to let us know about problems being encountered. It helps. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Chuck DeFeo
General Manager
Townhall.com

Of course, I'm always here and available. My email is shown on the left, and make sure to check back here often for updates and alerts.

~ Josue

I had the opportunity to talk politics on "Rough Cuts" with Michelle Martin.

Political Blogosphere -- Bloggers Kim Pearson and Josue Sierra discuss this week's news: Bush's visit to Latin America, the recent controversial firing of U.S. Attorneys and the biggest election of all right now... American Idol.

Check it out and listen to the RealMedia stream (Click on "Political Blogosphere"). You can leave your comments below, or on NPR's website here.

I'm at the third plenary session at Politics Online conference and one of the panelists is Jay Rosen, Prof. of Journalism at New York University.  He just made a comment about Bush,  calling out campaigns and the media for what he calls a failure to expose Bush for the radical he is!!  "He's not a conservative, he's a radical!" he said.

Now, I think Bush has failed in many things, and don't consider him a stellar example of conservatism. And many might agree with Jay that Bush is not a conservative. But a radical? 

It is really sad to see how the ideological biases (mixed with what I see as a false objectivity that pervades the industry). It really makes some of these presentations shallow--embarrassing perhaps.

Here is his bio as shown on the IPDI website.

Jay Rosen - Professor of Jounalism, New York University

Jay Rosen teaches Journalism at New York University, where has been on the faculty since 1986. From 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department.

Rosen is the author of PressThink, a weblog about journalism and its ordeals in the age of the Net (www.pressthink.org), which he introduced in September 2003. In June 2005, PressThink won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Freedom Blog award for outstanding defense of free expression.  He also blogs at the Huffington Post.  In July 2006 he announced the debut NewAssignment.Net, his experimental site for pro-am, open source reporting projects.

In 1999, Yale University Press published his book, What Are Journalists For?, which is about the rise of the civic journalism movement.  (sample chapter)  Rosen wrote and spoke frequently about civic journalism (also called public journalism) over a ten-year period, 1989-99. From 1993 to 1997 he was the director of the Project on Public Life and the Press, funded by the Knight Foundation.

As a press critic and reviewer, he has published in The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and others. Online he has written for Salon.com, TomPaine.com and Poynter.org.

Note: Post edited and words deleted to moderate my tendency to get carried away... I disagree with the Professor’s points of view, and do find them to be an example of what is wrong with journalism today. Nevertheless, my comments should never be directed at individuals, but at the ideas and issues being debated. My sincerest apologies go to Prof. Rosen for the slip in my argumentative writing skills.

As most of you know, Townhall.com was at CPAC 2007 just a few weeks ago, and I had the chance to record Brownback answering some questions. Since I was just putting up some other videos, I thought I would throw this one up.  

Update: Rob Bluey blogged about a Brownback today:

Sen. Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) stood firmly behind Gen. Peter Pace today, circulating a letter among his Senate colleagues in support of the embattled chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was a bold move by Brownback, but part of a shrewd strategy to differentiate himself from other candidates.

Watch the video. Share your reactions, impressions and opinions about Brownback, and his candidacy in the comments below.

Eliot Schrage is VP of Global Communications for Google, Inc. He is a TERRIBLE public speaker! I mean, really bad. I mean, like first year Public Speaking 101 bad.

He starts off arguing that Google is content neutral, and argues that even though some may not like it, they are obligated to allow all sorts of content. It made me wonder how he would answer questions about Michelle Malkin's HotAir videos that have been removed because they where critical of radical islam?

He predicts political "spyware" in the coming elections. You could hear a "hmm" in the room full of online political strategists. He poses potential legal questions as a result of emerging technologies in political campaigns. For example, is it legal to send text messages to a person located in close proximity of a polling place?

He is opening up for Q&A. There seems to be a bit of a negative vibe towards Google in the room. Not surprised.

We're just about ready for the second morning plenary. My boss, Chuck DeFeo is one of the presenters, so it should be interesting. I'm hoping he'll say my name and give me my 30 seconds of fame.

11:23 -- Introductions. How to build a web team, and what are the right ways to do it. The only other guy I know up on the panel is Patrick Ruffini, who is working on the Rudy Giuliani campaign.



Q: What kind of people are you hiring.

Ruffini: Seven categories. The online campaign has to be completely integrated with your traditional campaign. Your web team needs to speak the campaign language. You need to have someone who knows what the people in the field need. Integration is key.

Joe Trippi: There shouldn't be a wall between the online strategy guys (web team) and the traditional campaign teams. Field is offline AND online.

Chuck DeFeo: Campaigns are broken down into 3 areas: Communication, Finance, and Political. Over all of those there is a strategy (like Joe in the Dean campaign). Your eCampaign has to reflect how you are organizing for your strategy. "It's integrated with all three of those."

11:36 -- They are getting deep into political campaigns strategy, and discussing how online strategy implementation is different. I'm not a political science guy, so some of this stuff isn't all that interesting, but some of the concepts could be related to any communications strategy.

A key point is that to execute effective online strategy, you have to have buy-in all the way from the top. The implementation of an online strategy has to be in focus with the organizational goals. This is challenging when you have higher-ups who don't get it when it comes to technology, and "tie the hands" of their web guys.

Jerome Armstrong is talking about he got Mark Warner to let him use Second Life for his campaign. It was not well received in the political world, but it was very well received by the technical world -- the bloggers, among others.

How to deal with negative viral crisis: Flood the zone. Makaca was a problem because the campaign did not respond to the video. Another example is Romney. Someone posted a negative video, and Romney responded by taping a phone call with a conservative blogger responding to the negative video. He overtook the story, and drove the message.

They are talking about political campaigns in today's YouTube world. They all agree each candidate should have a videographer follow the candidate 24/7 and post daily video journals. Of course, you still do the more traditional "tracker." You can also use viral "citizen" videographers to send in videos, reducing your costs.

12:10PM - We are going to Q&A, but here is a video clip of some thoughts on YouTube.

Just wanted to point out the new Townhall.com footer. In case you hadn't noticed it yet, if  you look below at the footer, we have just deployed a new more robust footer that lets you access much of the great Townhall content in one place. So, if you finished reading a blog post, and are looking for something else to read, just scroll down, pick your favorite category and read away.

9:41 AM: I'm in DC sitting at the first morning plenary. Its starting a bit late--it seems there has been some sort of accident on the Red Line here in DC, so people are running a bit behind schedule. (http://polc.ipdi.org/)

The topic this morning is "On-Demand Politics: Lessons from the Business Web." I'm going to live blog this session a bit, and share notes and tid-bits as I heard them Check back all day.

9:43 - The moderator, Andrew M Baron (Creator & Producer, Rocketboom) is being presented by the President of Politics Online.

Panelists include:
- Daniel Burton, Senior VP of Global Public Policy at Salesforce.com
- Laura Quinn - Chief Executive Officer, Catalist
- Keith Tomatore, VP of Sales Development and Operations & Manager of Newsweek and Budget Travel, Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive
- Jim Yu, VP of Relationship Management, United Way of America.

9:55 - each panelist is introducing themselves, and talking a bit about what they do. I was just commenting to my co-worker that Baron is REALY bad at public speaking. You would think these guys could afford a public speaking coach.

10:15 - Some interesting things on the presentations. Burton talked about how the internet has been a catalyst for the evolution of softare. His pitch is basicly you should be using a Application Service Provider. The idea is that by using a web-based softare like Salesforce.com, you don't have to worry about upgrades, legacy software, and IT costs. He made some good points, but our company has found that Salesforce.com was not the best solution for online advertising revenue model. They don't integrate with our ad systems, among other things.

10:20 - Jim Yun talked about the evolution of United Way. They are focusing more now on community impact, and going away from the fund-raising business model. It looks like they are providing some key technology infrastructure support to their local chapters. I'm not sure if he said whether their services are available to outside non-profits.

10:37 - Laura Quinn is talking about data sharing. I can't find her company address, and I don't see it on the printed material. Not a very "online" thing to do.

Side note: A special shout out to a faithfull reader, Judith Martinez in Miami FL.

I think the session is about done. I had to step out to grab my boss, who is speaking on the next plenary, so I missed the discussion. I'll have some pictures up in a couple minutes...

In case you hadn't heard, Hugh's new book, "A Mormon in the White House?" is out today.

Here is a tip to new bloggers trying to build an audience -- do book reviews. I remember one of the times I got a link from Glen Reynolds was when I reviewed his book, Army of Davids. He linked to my blog post, even though I had a couple negative things to say about his book.

Just an idea...

I have been keeping my eyes open for private companies -- free market forces -- that are providing technology that is helping in the war against terror, in sercuring our homeland, or helping our soldiers. Here is another great example.

...Inventor extraordinaire Dean Kamen's latest project: building a next-gen robotic prosthesis for soldiers wounded in the war.

Engadget is reporting that inventor Dean showed off an early video of the arm in action, performing such precise actions as picking up a pen and scratching a nose. You might know Dean's previous work, the Segway Human Transporter.

Hot Air is showcasing a new book by Major Eric Egland, The Troops Need You. This sounds like a great book to share with family and friends -- spread the word. Check out Makin's interview with Major Egland, and the book's website, http://www.troopsneedyou.com. 

My parents came to America escaping castro's Cuba. It's nice to hear this sort of thing.

“I look forward to the day when the stain of Castro is finally washed from the soil of Cuba.” -- Presidential candidate Mitt Romney while in Miami. (Associated Press)

HT: Bluey Blog.