:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 7.27.2004 ::

:: RE the 911 report ::

From Wired News
Techies Reshape 9/11 History
By Staci D. Kramer

Instant PDF and print availability of the 9/11 Commission Report wasn't enough for some Internet users, who quickly bent the public report to their will. Within hours, versions of the long-awaited document in Notepad, HTML and enhanced PDF sprouted online as people sought to make the information even more accessible and usable.

PDF versions of the report (PDF) and an executive summary were published online simultaneously July 22 at 11:30 a.m. EST by the commission and the Government Printing Office. At the same time, printed versions published by W.W. Norton and the GPO went on sale. The book quickly became a bestseller.

Blogger and Web designer Jason Kottke used a free conversion tool to translate the executive summary into HTML. He then cleaned it up, added permanent links and popped it on his site. "I wanted to whip up something people could actually link to so bloggers could comment on it," Kottke explained. He decided converting the entire report to HTML would take too much time. As of Sunday afternoon, he had about 10,000 pageviews, fewer than he expected.

Michele Catalano remembers trying to read the Starr Report online in 1998 and giving up in frustration. This time she went in a different direction, getting help to produce a text version about one-sixth the size of the 7.5-MB PDF report and posting it on her blog, A Small Victory. It's been downloaded 348 times, as of Sunday, a number that doesn't disappoint Catalano considering the variety of formats available.

"I hate PDF," said Catalano. "You can't refer someone to the exact part. Ideally, the best thing would be to have the entire thing in HTML and searchable." She praised the commission for getting the information out fast. "I think that's a hallmark of democracy, making all of this information public immediately," Catalano said.

Now she wants government to take another big step by recognizing the different ways people use technology, and by publishing versions of important documents in multiple formats, such as text and HTML.

For some, the report offered a chance to shine a little light on their own abilities. Search company Vivisimo, which specializes in making information searchable at the paragraph level, indexed the report and organized it into groups or clusters according to topic. Clusters are then labeled, for example, "Saudi" or "Taliban." Users can also create their own clusters. More than 20,000 searches took place in the first three days, according to a spokesman. The most frequent "non-canned queries" were "Berger Clinton Iraq Bush Iran."

Read more here.

ALSO from Wired News
Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire
By Mark Baard

BOSTON -- The estimated 5,000 protesters at the Democratic National Convention this week have so far bumped heads over their political differences. In some cases, they have even barred one another from their scheduled (and permitted) events.

But activists have been largely united in one civil action: their boycott of the so-called free-speech zone carved out by the U.S. Secret Service and local authorities, the only spot where protesters will be able to shout their messages to the delegates arriving on buses in a nearby parking lot.

The protesters are also coordinating actions outside the free-speech zone by sending text messages on their wireless phones. Some protesters for a short time Monday converted the zone into a mock prison camp by donning hoods and marching in the cage with their hands behind their backs.

The protest zone, which most people here simply call "the cage," is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.

Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters' free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

"You can't have free speech inside a prison," said the observer, Tony Naro, a recent college graduate who plans to start law school this fall.

Observers like Naro attend rallies and marches to record incidents where the authorities appear to be violating the protesters' constitutional rights.

Naro noted that when the Boston Police union was planning to protest at the DNC over a contract dispute with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, "there was no talk of putting them into a free-speech zone. It's the people with the guns who get to have free speech."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 2:35:00 PM [+] ::
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