No Blogging Tomorrow

Just a heads up - I will be out of commission tomorrow, so there will be no new posts. And don't think I'm taking the day off. I will be doing this.

Kelo vs. New London fallout

There's been some pretty interesting discussion over the recent Supreme Court decision to allow local governments to seize residential properties for commercial development.

It appears that somebody is going to try and act on the letter of the law and convince a local New Hampshire commission to build a hotel on Justice Souter's property.

Props to Kamylienne for pointing out the article - good stuff.

(on a related note, one of the features that we're working on is the ability for reviewers to hyperlink out to interesting articles. RIA does not exist in a vacuum, and if people are reading interesting, relevant stuff, why not let our reviewers link out to it?)

More Weblist Discussion

For the truly hardcore RIA users.... lots of Weblist philosophy going on in the comments here. A lot of it from me.

Two Opinonated Posts Worth Reading

A heartfelt condemnation of Rap Music from Souljunkie, and a beautifully written endorsement of agnosticism from traderboy.

Agree or not with the sentiments, I think you'll find these posts worth reading.

Sharapova Goes Down

My favorite tennis player Maria Sharapova just lost to Venus Williams, spoiling her bid to repeat as Wimbledon champ.

More Gay Marriage

Spain today became the fourth country to legalize gay marriage, following Canada, Holland, and Belgium.

Article HERE. (it's the NYT, so a registration is required)

There are lots of places to talk about gay marriage on RIA - these are just a few:

Gay Marriage as a political issue

Gay Rights as a political issue

John Kerry's support for civil unions

Bush's support of an amendment that would ban gay marriage

Arguments against gay marriage

MA Court rules in favor of gay marriage

Gay Marriage (debate corner)

War of the Worlds

The first War of the Worlds review just came in. And it's a good one - courtesy of Kamylienne.

Business Exec Gets Off

HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy got acquitted of fraud today, becoming the first of the big federal corruption chargees to avoid conviction.

RIA Features Preview....

Here are a couple of things that are either in development or being considered:

• New Search Engine. One that works like Google, catches misspellings, and delivers you ALL the pages that contain the query you're looking for, sorted by relevance. I think it will be great.
• Giving Weblist creators an Approve/Reject option on weblist suggestions that captures all the incoming data (description, rating, review, etc.)
• New registration process for new users that allows new users to rate items and register on the same form. Right now it's really confusing... you leave the comment, hit submit, then get taken to the registration page.
• New RIA User Toolkit - links to Recent Comments, Top Reviewers, etc.
  
• Featured Member functionality for home page.
• Vastly expanded user pages that includes a lot of things not currently present.
• Editing tool for item description available to ALL users. Think Wikipedia.
• Networking functionality that will allow you to view a list of members interested in a certain topic.
• Trust factor. More on this to follow.
• Interlinking profiles. So if I say that I like the Rolling Stones in my profile, the words "Rolling Stones" becomes a link that will show me other members that like the Rolling Stones.
• New Alert functionality. Alerts when a new item is added to a given topic, alerts when a certain user posts, as well as a tool for each user to manage their alerts.
  
• Top Contributors page (new item submissions, item edits, weblist items)
• RSS feeds of RIA content to other sites (recent comments page, top ten lists, etc.). So you can put RIA content on your MyYahoo page, for example.
• User Stats (so you can see how many times people have viewed your profile).
• Mod Flag ability that would allow moderators to put comments on hold.
• Getting rid of the ratings pop up window, going to a full page, and providing a few simple formatting tools (internal and external linking and paragraphs for example)

I think that's the big stuff. Feedback is always welcome (either public or private).

32 New Features in the Pipeline

Just a heads up... we are starting development today on a project development list that includes 32 new features for RateItAll. Stuff like a new search engine, expanded user pages, and cool new networking features.

No timeline yet as to when stuff will go live, but it's coming.

Responses to Bogus Weblist Flags

Just an FYI. Every time you flag a Weblist for administrative review, it does get read. Unfortunately, we have not a built an easy way into the tool to respond to the reviewer who flags the Weblist. So you will only very rarely hear back from RIA regarding the result of the Weblist that you flagged.

But we act on many of these, and all of them are read.

If you need direct feedback from me, a better way is to use the feedback links in the footer of every page.

Iraq / September 11 Link?

President Bush seems to be taking some heat internationally for using references to 9/11 to try and bolster American resolve regarding the war in Iraq.

Here's the article.

Was invading Iraq the right response to the 9/11 attacks?

NBA Draft

Not sure if anyone cares, but you can rate the top 20 or so 2005 NBA draft picks on this weblist.

Andrew Bogut went number one - he's from Australia.

Rate Fosters while you're at it - it's Australian for beer.

Couple of highlights from Presiden't Bush's Iraq Speech

In a speech designed to inform and reassure the nation about progress in subduing the insurgency in Iraq, President Bush said that he will not be sending more troops to Iraq and will not set a timetable for pulling out.

He also said that the international community had pledged $34B to help rebuild Iraqi infrastructure.

A full summary of the speech can be read here.

Fred Phelps

Fred Phelps and gang from Westboro Baptist Church took it upon themselves to protest the funeral of a fallen Green Beret In Marblehead, MA. Why? Because MA is thought by Phelps to foster homosexuality.

Here's a link to the article (you may have to subscribe).

Here's a link to comment on Fred Phelps.

Oh yeah, Phelps is a Democrat.

Comment Worth Reading...

From LanceRoxas, and his thoughts on religion and tolerance.

There has to be a better way....

.... to network ourselves into subgroups than THIS.

I have some ideas. Stay tuned.

More News From the Big G

Google launched Google Earth today - it's a satellite imagery based mapping product that lets you zoom in on satellite images of buildings, streets, neighborhoods, etc. I saw a demo and it's pretty amazing. As usual with Google gadgets, it's for Windows only. Here are the full specs from the press release:

· Free software download available at http://earth.google.com
· 3D buildings in major cities across the United States
· 3D terrain showing mountains, valleys, and canyons around the world
· Integrated Google Local search to find local information such as
hotels, restaurants, schools, parks, and transportation
· Fast, dynamic navigation
· Video playback of driving directions
· Tilt, rotate, and activate 3D terrain and buildings for a different
perspective on a location
· Easy creation and sharing of annotations among users

You can comment HERE.

RateItAll Member Blogs

It looks like spartacus007 has set up a directory of RateItAll member blogs. There are only two listings on there, but I think we can grow it. I know that Redo has a blog, and I suspect that there might be some others out there.

Please add any submissions to his list, and let's start getting some exposure for these folks.

Spartacus, if you're reading, please let me do the "approvals" of the new listings so that folks can add descriptions and ratings as they add new blogs to the list.

Podcasting

Have you guys been following this podcasting stuff? It's getting pretty big. Podcasting is basically just a fancy name for uploading audio files to the Internet so that users can download them and listen to them at their convenience.

Applications include classes, comedy clips, church sermons, dating personals, and news broadcasts. Obviously blogging is already being impacted as well.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that Apple just announced that its free iTunes software now supports podcasting - meaning that users can download podcast files to their computers and synch them with their iPod. The podcast directory in the latest iTunes will feature content from the BBC, ESPN, and other news channels.

To show you how mainstream this is getting, I just added an evangelist called John Malone to RIA today. When verifying he exists, I went to BibleStudy.net and saw a big podcasting button which would allow you to download his sermon.