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Another bloggin’ article

The Guardian has added to the recent spate of articles on “the blog” and what it all means for 21st century journalism, by Ben Hammersley, a blogger himself (naturally). I like the tagline for the article:

Investigating the world of weblogs: at a Silicon Valley conference, new technology left old-style reporters so far behind that they retired to the bar

I don’t know about you, but personally I’d rather go for the hotel bar martini than real-time blogging on my laptop….

This quote, related to Japan’s cellphones, from Dan Gillmor, amused me:

Some day soon, there will be a major, newsworthy event in Japan and there will be 400 photos taken of it in the first minute by cam-equipped cellphones. Those 400 photos will make their way to news organisations and to individuals and we will have 400 visual perspectives of that event from the ‘former audience’.
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Is the US finally catching up to mobile Japan?

Steve Mollman at Salon looks into whether the US will ever close the technology gap that currently exists between mobile phones and services that exist in Japan and what’s currently available in the US, even as AT&T Wireless touts their new “mMode” service.

For Americans who’ve never been to Japan and played around with an imode handset, there’s really no Stateside parallel to help them understand how enjoyable the experience can be. “I just cringe when I see handsets in America,” says analyst [Mark] Berman. The best analogy may be this: Whereas Japanese handsets are fun, colorful iMacs, those sold in the U.S. are drab, grim DOS terminals.

It isn’t just the phones, or the various wireless technologies at play, Mollman suggests, but also America’s dependence on the automobile. In Japan’s major cities, the reliance of the majority of the population on mass-transportation has created an abundance of what Mollman refers to as “microniches of time” spent waiting for or on trains, time that NTT DoCoMo and the other wireless players has filled with their interactive phones and services.

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Backlash against Israeli icon

From the Associated Press (via Salon’s “From the wires”) comes this story filed out of Tel Aviv by one Celean Jacobson:

Israeli singer shunned for asking questions

For half a century, Yaffa Yarkoni’s songs glorified Israeli soldiers. So when the 76-year-old diva, a national symbol, drew parallels between the treatment of Jews by the Nazis and the army’s handling of Palestinians, she stunned other Israelis.

The article mentions that Yarkoni has received death threats for speaking out. What is not mentioned is that before the recent May 11th peace rally in Rabin Square, a group known as “Gilad-Shalhevet” threatened to assassinate her if she performed at the rally. (Despite this warning, Yarkoni did perform at the rally). This according to a story in Ha’aretz (scroll down the page).

Curious about this “Gilad-Shalhevet” group, I did a Google search and came upon the New Kach Movement, a group dedicated to “reviving the Kahanist dream” (“Kahanist” referring to slain Rabbi Meir Kahane). From their July 11, 2001 newsletter,

The “Gilad Shalhevet Brigades” took responsibility for a shooting attack carried out late last night against Palestinians near Ramallah.

[…]The Brigades are reportedly a Jewish underground organization named after 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, killed by a “palestinian” sniper in Chevron on March 26, and Samaria Regional Council security head Gilad Zar, 40, of the Itamar community in Samaria, killed in a shooting attack on May 30.

[…]Finally some Jews have begun taking the oath of Never Again seriously. Finally Jews have put the nations future ahead of their own future. The only question that must be asked is why there is only a Gilad-Shalhevet Brigade. Where is the Binyamin Kahane Brigade where is the Yehuda Shoham Brigade?

The Arabs have hundreds of brigades each named after their dead, each one of these brigades go out day after day to kill Jews in an attempt to wipe us out. We must do the same, or face the sad facts that our deaths today are worth no more then the unanswered deaths of the 6 million Jews of the Holocaust?