Technorati - tracking 63 million blogs

Currently tracking 63 million blogs

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

But it all started with blogs. A blog, or weblog, is a regularly updated journal published on the web. Some blogs are intended for a small audience; others vie for readership with national newspapers. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them.

Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Technorati. Who's saying what. Right now.

What does do these figures mean?

Rank: 753,005 means that the number of blogs, plus one, that have more than 5 blogs linking to them

7 links: the number of links pointing at this URL in the last 180 days

5 blogs: the number of distinct blogs pointing at this URL in the last 180 days

6 links: the total number of links we found pointing at this blog, ever.

Grief Without God

I'm an atheist. I'll just say that up front, so there's no confusion. I suffered a horrible tragedy, and continue to endure lasting effects. My grief process is something I will go through for the rest of my life. And I will do it without the aid of religion, a belief in God, a church support group, or prayer.

reposted from: http://richarddawkins.net/article,576,n,n

America may be the land of religious freedom (though some might debate the accuracy of that) but I have discovered that it is not a land of freedom from no religion. The writer and scientist Richard Dawkins lists numerous examples of discrimination against and prejudice towards atheists in his recent book The God Delusion. There are many more of us than most people realize, partly because American atheists stay in the closet. What do you think the chances are of an atheist becoming a member of Congress? But no where is there more shock and disbelief concerning atheism than when someone is dying.

In October of 2000, my test pilot husband of 20 years was in a fatal plane crash. I lived by Eric's side in the burn center of the hospital for 36 days before he died. I didn't know what 4th degree burns were until I saw them covering almost half of my husband's body, mostly on his face and hands. The experience left me with a terrifying fear of fires, compulsive behaviors about the safety of my children, and insomnia.
Eric was an amazing person, full of love and kindness and strong ethics. He possessed several degrees and pondered deep philosophical questions. He lived his life with a strong sense of responsibility for his own actions: no blaming, no excuses, no whining. He was a good friend, an outstanding husband, a loving patient father. He was also an atheist.

Before I arrived at the hospital just hours after the accident, Eric had been given the last rites by a Catholic priest. On whose authority? During the entire time I lived at the hospital I heard the following comments over and over: "God has a plan", "God never gives us more than we can handle", "Put your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." One respiratory therapist even told me that unless I prayed for Eric, he would die. She'd seen it happen before, she repeated. When the family doesn't pray, the patient dies. Almost without exception, every single person who visited, called, or sent cards said the same thing "I'm praying for your husband."

After Eric died I heard the same statements but with a new even more infuriating one thrown in: "He's in a better place." What place? He was dead! I can assure everyone that Eric loved life, his family, his job. There was no better place for him than right here. And what of God's plan? Did these people really believe that their God was watching Eric, out of all the beings in the universe? If so, why didn't he answer the prayers of more than half the city of Wichita? If there is a God and he has a plan, maybe this is what he was thinking:
Gee, I think I'll cause a really great guy to crash on takeoff. He's a test pilot who tries to make the skies safe for everyone, but just for fun I'll cause the jet to stall, plow into the runway, and catch fire. Then, just to torture the wife, I'll make her watch the test pilot suffer horrible injuries and burns for 36 days. Then as the final blow, I'll make sure the small children are present at the moment of death so their lives will be screwed up forever. I will ignore their pleas not to let their Daddy die because hey, I'm God and I can do whatever I want.

A plan? I certainly hope not.

So how can we avoid all these painful religious comments spoken to people already enduring an unbelievable amount of torture? How about listening? People are being thoughtless in thinking that everyone is comforted by these kinds of statements. I repeatedly asked people not to pray (though I understand that sometimes people don't know what to say, so responding they'll pray seems like a safe comment). I threw the priest out of Eric's room, and I refused any more rites or prayers to be mumbled over him. People still didn't get it. They thought perhaps Eric would change his mind about not believing in God, that I would too. I'd suddenly come out of the atheist closet. What was the point now? I was going to make sure Eric got the funeral he wanted, and I knew he didn't want people praying over him.

Eric's service was held in a hangar with various memorabilia and awards lovingly displayed under the outstretched wings of his favorite test plane. There were no pews; no religious leader conducted the service. There were no prayers, no reading of scripture. Fellow pilots wore their flight suits, speeches were given honoring Eric's life, and a microphone was passed around. It was a moving tribute to a man who had dedicated his life to aviation.

My mother, a strict Catholic who had once enrolled in a convent, said to me afterwards, "Well, that was a nice, well whatever it was. I guess it wasn't really a service, but I guess it was nice." Many of the hundreds present seemed to be confused about the lack of religious content of the service, but the closet atheists were all too obvious─and there seemed to be more than a few. They were the ones who were most obviously overwhelmed. From them I heard comments like "I never knew a service could be so beautiful", or "It's the most moving service I've ever attended", or "I couldn't have imagined a better tribute to Eric." They didn't say "Eric is in a better place."

During the years since Eric's death, I have been told repeatedly to "put yourself in the Lord's hands and he will help you." But I learned that if there was any helping and healing to do, I'm the one who has to do it. Does God really help you get better? Does he make the grief go away? Even the little happy pills known as antidepressants didn't make it go away. The psychiatrists hurt more than they helped, the counselors made no difference, and though the family tried, they really couldn't do anything. Listening to me talk about Eric did help somewhat, but in the end, it was me who had to deal with the grief. Not God.

An important part of my recovery process has been in honoring Eric and in keeping my promise to him that the world would know who he was. I donated the entire sum of money given to me from The Challenger Fund to Eric's favorite museum─the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. Every year a full scholarship is awarded to a deserving high school student to attend the Future Astronaut Training Program. A magnificent display has been set up to honor Eric.

Additional money has been donated to Eric's alma mater, where another display has been erected in his memory. I set up a program at the burn center where Eric was a patient. The Eric Basket Program is designed to help burn victims and their families. I have given several speeches in honor of burn patients and survivors.

I have tried to heal myself by performing various charity works in my own little town: Meals on Wheels, wildlife rehabilitating, conservation work, donating money and items for homeless people. One of the ways I have found to fight grief is by helping others.

I have spent many years of my life writing a book about Eric, his life, my experience at the hospital, and our incredible love. I continue to edit and polish the work. I am even going back to school to acquire better writing skills, so that I can better accomplish my goals.

I still miss Eric every day and maybe it would be easier to believe that he is safe and happy in a beautiful garden with a kind God and pretty angels. But it would be a lie. I try to be thankful that I had the love and support of such an amazing man as Eric, even if it was for such a short time. Maybe I was actually one of the lucky ones. I had the kind of love that people dream about. It was real and tangible, not a dream about some other world

Get a (second) life

Why are some people so worked up about virtual online worlds such as Second Life? They are just a delightful bit of fun.

January 27, 2007 08:50 AM |

reposted from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk & view Readers comments
my highlights / edits

I have an alternate identity. Some evenings I am Misty Trilling, a girl who likes nothing better than to put on her pink fluffy bunny slippers and fly over chimney tops looking for mischief. Yes, I am a Second Lifer, one of the growing network of users of the online virtual world currently attracting a whirlwind of attention. Believe some commentators and it's all about making money, whether by big corporations with imaginary offices or the lurid trade in virtual sex. To others it is a disengagement from reality, heralding another nail in the coffin for society, and the rest find it so tedious they can't imagine why anyone but the gawkiest of geeks would bother.

Well I bother, and here's why. It's fun. I've jumped off the Eiffel Tower, tangoed the night away, got a pet kitten, and tried to steal a Harrier jump jet. I've got into fights, refused to pole dance, and worn a coot on my head like a hat. I've even borrowed my friend's login and gambled all her money away at virtual poker while she was cleaning the bathroom, but no one's supposed to know about that.

I've met loads of people along the way. Mostly cybergoths, dominatixes and small furry-tailed animals wearing trousers and deck shoes. But who am I to judge? That's the beauty of it. I can dress as ludicrously as I want and other residents have no idea who is at the other end of the computer.

It would be easy to imagine that the anonymity this brings would encourage us to break free from normal social constraints but that's not necessarily the case. Second Life residents spend a lot of time and money perfecting their avatars, and they attach real feelings and emotions to them. It's not hard to see why. A friend once phoned me in a blind panic because she had arranged to meet a colleague within Second Life. Upon logging in, however, she realised she had taken her avatar's clothes off when feeling a bit tipsy and experimental on Christmas day and couldn't work out how to put them back on again. It may be far removed from actually being caught without your undercrackers on by your boss but it conjures up similar emotions. It's the same logic that made me turn down the chance to pole dance for money. I felt that somehow it was degrading to my pixelated self, so she and I remain poor but virtuous. Real life principles still apply.

I've had my run ins with the darker side of Life. Exploring a wasteland one day we spied a pair of flag-waving skinheads in the distance. Suddenly one was in front of me, all tight jeans, tattoos and bovver boots, face pressed up close to mine, typing "u see this baseball bat? I'm gonna smash yr face in with it". It was an absurd situation, especially when you consider that avatars in Second Life are unable to lift their arms without a specially written script and are even less able to inflict damage on one another. He didn't seem overly taken with me pointing this out, however, and accused me of having "no arse" - which confused me as I wasn't sure if he meant me or my avatar. The whole sorry escapade only came to an end when a sympathetic bystander dropped a yacht on his head and he teleported away. I sometimes wonder what sort of spotty 13-year-old would sit at home in their bedroom thinking it might be a good idea to pretend to be a skinhead on the internet, but I'd rather they played out their fantasies there than went out to bother the rabbits at the local pets' corner. That's the thing about virtual worlds, they allow us to play out roles in a safe, limited environment that we can just switch off when we've had enough.

And I do switch it off. I confess that I'm a fairly heavy internet user. I share my thoughts, photos, videos and choice of bunny slippers with people across the world. I've made friends online, met boyfriends, even made enemies that way, and all the while managed to lead what resembles a perfectly normal real life. I have a job, lovely friends and my bathroom is as clean as it's ever going to be, even should I have an epiphany and throw my overworked laptop out the window. Second Life is just another delightful opportunity to muck about. Anyone who claims otherwise gets a yacht dropped on their head.

Climate Change. Big business speaks

2007/01/27 - Big business

from Today

BBC Radio 4: The Today Progamme 0810 interview. Should big businesses being taking serious action against climate change? Are they to blame for global warming?

mySociety.org

mySociety builds websites which give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. For more info on our aims, click here. The founder of mySociety is Tom Steinberg.

Our Main Sites

TheyWorkForYou

http://www.PledgeBank.com/ - Want to help a cause, but worried that your effort will make no difference? For all the development pages see PledgeBank

http://www.WriteToThem.com/ - Write to any of your elected representatives in the UK. For the development pages see FaxYourRepresentative (which was the old name).

http://www.HearFromYourMP.com/ - Get email from your MP: Discuss it with your MP and other local people - Development details at YourConstituencyMailingList

FAQ (edited by Chris Street)

mySociety.org - What's it all about then, eh?

Q. What is mySociety.org?
A. mySociety has two missions. The first is to be a charitable project which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to most efficiently use the internet to improve lives.

Q. How do I get in contact with you in person?
A. Email Tom Steinberg or call 07811 082158.

Q. What exactly are you doing?
A. We are supporting and improving our launch projects.

Q. Can you give us any examples of the types of project you're on about?
A. TheyWorkForYou.com, WriteToThem (which used to be called FaxYourMP) and PledgeBank are all examples of the type of service which we aim to foster. But it is exactly the rarity of such really useful, effective, cheap civic sites that led to mySociety's creation

Q. What have you been doing for the last three years?
A. mySociety was founded in September 2003. We spent the first year raising money, getting a substantial grant from a Government department called ODPM, in partnership with West Sussex County Council. The money actually arrived in September 2004. We raced along for a year, building all of our launch projects. Since then we've been improving our existing projects, and starting new ones, some described in this post on our developers' blog. We're getting money from various foundations and bits of government.

Q. Who are you lot?
A. Tom Steinberg is the project's founder, a Westminster policy wonk and technology aficionado. He's joined by three full time developers, Francis Irving, Chris Lightfoot and Matthew Somerville, who've all started projects making mySociety style websites in the past. A whole bunch of super fine volunteers build and improve mySociety websites for fun. They're credited on the individual websites. You can be one too. Lots of other volunteers help run mySociety in other ways. For example, by being on our advisory panel. You can never thank someone enough for doing VAT registration for you, you know who you are James.

Q. Can I help?
A. Yes! We are looking for help of all kinds. Anything from marketing, to fund raising, to graphic design, to programming, human computer interface work, anything. If you're interested, please check volunteer tasks page, and/or join our public developer mailing list.

Q. Are you a registered charity?
A. mySociety is the project of a registered charity. The charity is called UK Citizens Online Democracy and is charity number 1076346. UKCOD doesn't do much else these days, so don't worry if you get confused between the two. We do as well!

Q. Where did the idea come from?
A. mySociety represents the crystallisation of a lot of widely shared thoughts and concerns about the problems facing democracy, government and technology in the UK at the moment. James Crabtree first gave the idea formal shape in an OpenDemocracy article. Then Tom took the idea, gave it a polish, and set up mySociety.

Q. So you're an incubator?
A. Not really, although we'd love to work with more partners. mySociety is keen to build sites which embody certain core principles, such as cheap scalability, really tangible outputs, and high usability. We're not a web agency, and won't build anything we don't believe is worthwhile, but if you have an idea and you think we might be able to help, please get in touch.

Q. Do end users pay for services?
A. No. There would have to be a very unusual and compelling basis for charging to become part of a project's structure. Sometimes partners who want to syndicate our sites will be asked to contribute.

Q. Do the full time people get paid?
A. Yes. We believe that in order to deliver polished, highly usable social tools, developers need at least a short period of financially stable full time employment. We pay rates which are living wages, but which well below the market rate, especially for people of the talent we employ. The gratitude of the director (Tom Steinberg) and all the project's Trustees goes to the developers for working on these terms.

Q. I'm not in Britain - does any of this matter to me?
A. Yes! Whilst our home country is the UK, we do not see ourselves as limited to it in any way. We gladly speak to and work with people from outside the UK. People around the world can use and adopt our open source tools and services for use in their own countries. PledgeBank, for example, is a truly international project. We will consider developing projects based in other countries, if appropriate funding can be found.

Q. Do you have a political agenda?
A. No, we are not party political, and this project is neither left or right-wing. It is about building useful digital tools for anyone who wants to use them.

Q. Who built this website, www.mysociety.org?
A. Tomski and Jason Kitcat hacked together the first version in a real hurry a few years ago. We've been rebuilding it ever since.

Q. How can I be kept up to date with the projects?
A. Please join our mailing list. All normal no-moronic-spamming policies apply. If you use RSS, you can subscribe to our news or developers blogs.

Q. How can I contact you?
A. See our contact page.

HearFromYourMP - Get email from your MP - Discuss it with your MP and other local people

examples

Latest messages

• John Redwood's Reading Evening Post Article, by John Redwood MP, Wokingham

Latest replies

• Joe Middleton at 21:01, Friday

If you enter your details, we'll add you to a queue of other people in your constituency. When enough have signed up, your MP will get sent an email. It'll say "25 of your constituents would like to hear what you're up to. Hit reply to let them know". If they don't reply, nothing will happen, until your MP gets a further email which says there are now 50, then 75, 100, 150 — until it is nonsensical not to reply and start talking.

When your MP sends you mail it won't be one-way spam, and it won't be an inbox-filling free-for-all. Instead, each email comes with a link at the bottom, which takes you straight to a web page containing a copy of the email your MP wrote, along with any comments by other constituents. To leave your thoughts, you just enter your text and hit enter. There's no tiresome login — you can just start talking about what they've said. Safe, easy and democratic.

29092 people have signed up in all 646 constituencies — League table

WriteToThem.com

via WriteToThem.com contact your Councillors, MP, MEPs, MSPs, or Northern Ireland, Welsh and London AMs for free

I can Write To Them:

• 2 District Councillors
• my County Councillor
• my MP
• 10 local MEPs
  
• any Lord.

TheyWorkForYou - Everything about your MP, the Lords, Hansard

TheyWorkForYou.com is a non-partisan website run by a charity which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected and unelected representatives in Parliament, and other assemblies.


About your MP / All MPs
What has been the voting record of you local MP? What are his interests?
eg: Desmond Swayne MP (Conservative MP for New Forest West)

Lords - All eg: Lord Bragg (Melyvn Bragg) and his voting record

House of Lords Debates
eg: Road Safety - Mobile phones

House of Commons Debates
eg: point of order - Iraq and the wider Middle East

Hansard
eg: Commons debates, Lords debates, written answers, written ministerial statements