Merredith Branscombe

Her religious views scare me. Her lack of any undertanding of foreign policy scares me even more. The fact that she wants a pipleline installed by Jesus makes me agree she is a wingnut! - Michael VanDervort via twhirl

who the heck is john cole besides a former republican? - Tony Kanzia

Can we start asking former Democrats what they think of Obama? Oh, nevermind. Joe Liberman already told us. - Brian Norwood

I used to read his blog a couple of years ago when he was Republican. Great for opposing point of view, and I felt that he was one of a very few on the other side of the fence who was honest. While I haven't read him in awhile, I can see that he still tells it like it is. - JodyUnwired

You're apologizing to them because they're actually using Pownce, right? (I went there!) - Candace Holly

+1 Candace - Mona N.

"What could possibly be holding the deal up?" the story on digg needs to hit 200M diggs before Googs forks out $200M for it !! - Peter Dawson

Well, Google coming to their senses could be holding it up... Steve Ballmer's foot up Kevin Rose's ass could be slowing things down too. - Jason Carreira

lol at jason carreira - Gregory Lent

@Jason: Very true: after all, it is business and it is governed by money (and nice money in this case). - Svetlana Gladkova via twhirl

Jason, it would take 5 seconds to get out of that contract, or to just ignore it, like Facebook seems to be. - Duncan Riley

totally agree, corvida. thanks for taking the time to deal with that idiotic stuff. - Eric Eldon

kiss it http://www.southparkstudios.co... - AnotherⓃⓄⒶⒽ

wow, this is interesting... gotta read this! - Susan Beebe

Not sure if this/he is racist or not but from all appearances Feldman is a bit of tool and deserves to lose this deal regardless. - Brian Sullivan

I've stated that the video itself is definitely racist and have refrained from labelling Loren himself. But I've been trying to find an apology and this is all I've found: http://www.1938media.com/offic... - Shey

Just posted this: Loren loses his deal http://video.knbc.com/player/?... - Dan Kaplan

it's sad that people choose to cast off a racist video like that as "comedy" or "satire" and instead attack those who who have a valid gripe with it as being too "pc." there's responsibility that goes along with having a forum such as that one. this clown shed all responsibility when he chose to make a mockery of an entire group of people. funny? what world are some of you living in? - Cee Bee

I put more faith in Corvida's judgment than in any of the other responses to this that I saw. She's a Verizon customer. She's part of the racial group that Loren was doing an alleged parody of. And I respect that it's up to her to determine just how offensive that is as part of those two groups. - Cyndy

While I am glad that Loren's behavior is being examined at the Corporate sponsor level, I feel that the industry (i.e. individuals in it) should resist jumping on his back, creating controversy and/or seeking to add to one's one fame/notoriety at the expense of another industry individual. That's not right. - Alex Hammer

Shey - I think I can label Loren. He's a jackass. I don't think he'd even argue it. - Phil Glockner

Thank you, Corvida. - Hao Chen

@Alex Did we create the controversy or was that Loren? Your logic seems a little backward. He brought this on himself. - Shey

Alex, you don't think that's a bit ironic considering that's how he's spent the last several months? Or was that tongue-in-cheek? I didn't see a winkie there. - Cyndy

Everyone should stand-up against all kinds of racism. Loren Feldman still has thousands of followers in Twitter and FriendFeed. Do something against racism and don’t follow him anymore. - Kerem Ozkan

I'm with you Cordiva. - Russellreno

I disagree with you Cordiva, I thinking the bigger problem which was debated last year is when is jokiiing about such subjects as racism correct or incorrect as we seem to have this unwritten rule that only the minority that is being poked fun at can do the joke.. Chris Rock's comedy skits are but one example. - Fred Grott

Wow -- what a complex subject if one is strongly against racism, strongly against political correctness and strongly for free speech simultaneously, as I am. My mind is going in every possible direction on this. I enjoy satire and parody when it is carefully targeted, and I detest vicious ethnic and racial stereotyping. I defend the right of jackasses to embarrass themselves and self-destruct. I deny their right to harm others. - Sean McBride

Sean - Welcome to libertarianism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... - Phil Glockner

Fred, I can understand your stand here, but does that mean that you also like the stuff that Loren puts out, regardless of the ethical quandary? - Phil Glockner

@corvida is shegeeks.net down? - Eric Schlissel via twhirl

J Phil does that mean that the racist gangster rap gets free pas on Verizon? - Fred Grott

My $.02: Loren exercised his right to post that video and now Corvida is exercising her right to express her strong feelings about it. I think that's exactly how it should work. Telling her to stay quiet about it makes about as much sense as telling Loren he didn't have the right to make the video in the first place. - Mike Doeff

Rap lyrics *always* get a free pass. That is a major double standard. I mentioned that back when Don Imus' firing was in debate and got shot down. - Morton Fox

Just in case anyone gets upset at Corvida's response - you might be interested in reading Loren's response to a stupid Guy K. remark in his post http://www.1938media.com/guy-k... (he wrote in the comments "Im so not sensitive about the jew thing, but this just smacked me in the face a bit" - leigh himel

All I can say is 'thank you.' That was a brave and motivated thing you did and I support it all the way. - Tsega Dinka

My opinion anyway is Loren's right to post the video doesn't mean that he is free from the consequences of posting that video. We all too have the right to boycott, shun, or speak out in response. - Morton Fox

why are people bringing rap music into this argument as a way to level the debate? lol - Cee Bee

'm so glad that Corvida, in her usual, straightfoward and articulate way, spelled it out. If there was an equivalent to the n-word for white people that carried the same lacerating power, that would be easier. But there just isn't. "Blasting political correctness" is just the skinny tree that bad comedians of the world hide behind when they're aiming for satire and can't manage to get past crude or cruel. Loren might have been aiming FTW, but he failed. - Merredith Branscombe

Way to go Corvida! good riddance. - Alan Le

@Fred Grott - It's not about the fact that he used the n-word. I know plenty of people that use it black/white/hispanic/ you name it. It's the way in which he went about degrading the African-American community. It was more than the words he used. It was the entire video. It was his looks. It was his actions. Saying the n-word doesn't get press like this if you're a true comedian. - Corvida

And Chris Rock doesn't get a free pass. Chris Rock does his comedy, but he doesn't degrade his community in the process. He points out truths and does so in a way that's not crossing the line because if he insults the African-American community, he's insulting himself simultaneously. Hispanic comedians to the same thing. Caucasian comedians do the same thing. They don't degrade, the state facts that either make people squirm or make people laugh. That's as far as it goes. - Corvida

There is a risk in Friendfeed that you will only ever see the comments of a small subset of the FF population - interspersed with the odd Friend of... who may make it "In" - Rooms has the potential to widen the gene pool but sticking to the friends tab can definitely limit the number of names you will see... - David W

I don't feel a need to reinvent the web inside of FF. However it is part of what I do, in the same way Twitter is. I like FF better, but only marginally better. It's very far from the ideal. None of these guys have managed to combine all the elements the way plain old HTML does it so well. It's nice in some ways but a big step backward in others. - Dave Hussein Winer

oh don't you worry the "BigCos" and slooow media will always end up being displaced; it's a law of nature, soon to be documented and displaced - Billy Shipp via twhirl

Yeah. It's a big old loop we're in. And watch for the moments when new products don't get any air. That means the routearound is just about to begin. - Dave Hussein Winer

BTW its weird but Techmeme is down now. What a day! - Dave Hussein Winer

reinventing if needed is fine but to get a new look I guess, it's like starting over again a little bit. - Jack

Dave: I disagree to a point. If you look at Techmeme stories from my blog in May and June alone, you can see stories on Loud3r, Feedly, Disqus, Sezwho, FFToGo, and Shyftr, for example. It could be that Techmeme is accurately monitoring the most discussed blogs, and that the vast majority of these blogs are talking less about new products. Link: http://tinyurl.com/4nscbe - Louis Gray

Dave, I don't disagree, but having said that I don't believe its Technemes fault, it is designed to follow the peak noise and ultimately thats around the big players. What we need is a techmeme like service that blocks techcrunch and any mention of a defined list of companies such as google, facebook etc so we can cut through the noise - Duncan Riley via fftogo

Nah, I think the blogosphere and devices like Twitter and FriendFeed show me cool things all the time. When you rely on one aggregator/editor for information... things you are interested in slip through. If you leave it up to crowdsourcing, you see what you want. - Andrew Ruess

Louis -- that's kind of the point -- those products didn't launch well, and with no slight to you -- I haven't heard of them because I depend on TechMeme to tell me what's important in the tech world. TechMeme does what it does well, but it has some real limits and the industry has shaped around those limits, just as the industry shaped around the limits of the press in the pre-Internet era and during the browser and Java wars in the 90s. - Dave Hussein Winer

Dave, what are you thinking about? - feedlyqa

I think there needs to be a website where people can list the new products and services, that way its very easy to find out and support new services like SocialBrowse and A.viary that I would have never found if it wasn't for the invites friendfeed channel - Chacha

Feedly, generate a daily RSS feed (archived) of the user's posts. Here's an example. http://twitter.scripting.com/d... - Dave Hussein Winer

are you thinking of a parallel twitter system based on RSS and an associated XXXmeme? - feedlyqa

Dave, I guess the answer is on your website http://www.scripting.com/ (note: permalinks on the website seem to be broken). how do you envision people creating http://twitter.scripting.com/d...? SwitchAbit? Friendfeed? (or the point is that you do not care?) - feedlyqa

@Chacha i made a new product/software category @ http://www.socialmedian.com/ try *solacetech* as an invite code and tell me if that's what you had in mind - Anthony Farrior

I would find it interesting to hear less breaking news and new startups. Instead more analytics on the guys that are doing it right. Why are they successful? Nine out of 10 new startups don't seem to be launching something that addresses an actual need, instead they launch a technology. We have enough technology already, so that fails. And providing us with next gen social ad business models ain't going to work either ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

I really liked Fred Wilson's suggestion to make a TechMeme that was for individual bloggers only. No branded blogs like TechCrunch, Engadget, VentureBeat... just Scripting, AVC, Scoble, etc. This would cast a much more individual net, which I think would really increase diversity. PeopleMeme - Jason Calacanis

Jason, a good idea:-) BTW TechMeme could be improved vastly if it could ignore 3 types of post: 1) any posts that say "Breaking News" 2) posts that copy the exact content of another post and add 1-2 lines to them (echo echo) 3) Anything, and I mean anything that discusses the performance of Twitter at this moment. Removing any of those would make TechMeme probably 100% more interesting and diverse already. Is Gabe listening? ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Alexander, Gabe always listens. He's one of the best I've seen for monitoring his service online. He's out of town until July 8th, so may be checking things less. - Louis Gray

Well they sound like easy fixes, so I hope he has the time to implement them. Come to think of it, it would be great if each of us can have it's own TechMeme algorithm ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

BTW Louis, it seems YOU are always listening too ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Maybe the route-around is to read Louis Gray. - Jason Kaneshiro

I have been reading TechMeme less and less lately. I guess that means it's about to go mainstream! :-) - Robert Scoble

My route-around is to read Louis Gray. That's for sure. But he'll be slowed down by two new babies. But I have a lot to say on this topic. The thing is that the early adopters are way ahead of most of the world and the rest of the world needs to catch up before we can see a ton of new stuff again that'll be successful. In the area of work, for instance, on the Office 2.0 database there are more than 800 services. How many of them have any of us tried? I bet a VERY SMALL percentage. - Robert Scoble

Can't slow me down. My Thursday/Friday gap was as we were at the hospital, fattening up Sarah, but my bet is that's a blip. Two new services, never blogged about by anyone ever on Techmeme, hit the blog today. :-) - Louis Gray

I have to disagree. Been seeing more new sources as relatively unknown sources appearing on Techmeme all the time (possibly not this past week?) ... but I read Louis ... and sometimes Robert too :) - Charlie Anzman

I hope Sarah gets fat enough to release louis from fear so he can help us again :-) - Francine Hardaway via twhirl

dont forget http://emilychang.com/go/ehub ! all new products there - Marshall Kirkpatrick via fftogo

Yep, I'm listening, and appreciate the ideas. But I'm in disagreement with many people here. I can't give alot of weight to requests for coverage of new products from people who provide coverage of new products (or the products themself). And I can't give undue weight to requests for more personal blogs from personal bloggers. These suggestions are somewhat helpful, but don't speak for the vast majority of Techmeme's readers, who don't use FriendFeed or even leave comments on blogs. So why does Techmeme overlook alot of new products? Maybe there's new product fatigue. Though product launches are accelerating, people are sensing that most don't hold a lot of promise for disruption or significant growth. I'm certainly not the first to observe this. - Gabe Rivera

It would be interesting to see if someone were to calculate a success/fail ratio on these new products AND relate that to the amount of hype created in some breaking news blogs. I could tell you the outcome, no correlation at all. You either execute right or you don't. The power of the "Hype Blog" review isn't sustainable or accessible for users beyond the early adopters. - Alexander van Elsas

maybe it's just me, but i think there's a "fatigue bar" that keeps going up to get people excited about new products. i think it's more interesting to talk more about things that appear to be getting some traction than any smart little thing that releases. traction > launching - Charles Hudson

I get paid to write about start-ups, but usually it's those that raise funding, make a splash or do something new. We can read about big company news almost anywhere. I'm with Charles, though. Not every start-up is worth the virtual ink. How do you strike a balance? That would be up to Gabe's secret sauce. - Dan Kaplan

I like what Charles said. Very often, where there's traction, there's a story. What happened? Why is this catching on? What made the difference? What kind of people are using it? How is it spreading? Etc., etc. - Gabe Rivera

More information = more usability. Hope to see some new developing things on Techmeme soon. - Mark Frost

I agree in part with Gabe, but disagree too. TechMeme attracted me because it was different than what was on Google News. Now it's getting to be big-city news and isn't as interesting as hanging out in FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble

Finding all most new products worth trying via twitter/friendfeed (techmeme new product launches usually = techcrunch = PR relationship with MikeA = not enough reason to give a crap pour moi ) - leigh himel

re: a 'Techmeme' that is 'personal' -- A recent blog post from Nick Bradbury explains how the "popular topics" feature on FeedDemon is sort of like a meme-tracker limited to those blogs to which one subscribes (