Should gang truce organizer blog?

When someone signing themself as 'Tayir Pugh', one of the organizers of the recent 'gang truce', commented on the Plainfield Today post on the East 6th Street Posse/Liberty Street Gang shootings recently (see here, and here), an intriguing suggestion emerged: that Tayir consider starting a blog.

With 27 comments logged in on the two posts and indicating considerable interest, an anonymous reader on Saturday said --

Tayir Pugh one the things you could do to help all of us in Plainfield is to start your own blog. Tell us how you see things in Plainfield and in the world from your point of view. In order to solve Plainfield's problems we need everyone's input, criticism and feedback.

June 19, 2011 9:25 AM

-- which strikes me as a worthwhile proposition.

Why not learn about Plainfield from how yet another person sees things?

What would be wrong with widening the conversation about what could be done to make Plainfield a better place for everyone?

Tayir, if you're reading this, please chime in and let us know your thoughts about joining the Plainfield blogsters.

---

• Plainfield Today --
• "Did Mayor Sharon do a good deed, finding jobs for truce organizers?"
• "Despite 'truce', Plainfield's gang wars continue"
  
• Courier:  "Feuding Plainfield gangs call truce, meet with mayor""
  

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Why Plainfield's blogs were down for two days

Logo for one of Blogger's service blogs.

 

From late Wednesday morning through early Friday afternoon, most Plainfield blogs -- along with millions of others hosted by Google's free Blogger service -- were out of service.

Those affected were my Plainfield Today and CLIPS blogs, as well as Bernice's Plaintalker II, Olddoc's Potpourri, Maria's Blog, all of the Council members, Renata, Milani, Vashon, ke'stans, Ken Schuman, Dee Dameron, Tony Rucker and Jackie Schnoop.

Bloggers were unable to post, or found their posts had disappeared (as with mine on the fraud at the school district) and comments were not able to be made by readers or posted by the bloggers.

Eventually, Blogger rolled back to an earlier archived version, removing all Wednesday and Thursday posts.

Ironically, Blogger personnel were able to communicate little about the difficulties or the solution they were trying to implement as all Blogger's service blogs are hosted on their own service. (Known as putting all your eggs in one basket, this is never a good strategy.)

Information Week, an IT magazine, offered an overview on its website Friday (see here), noting that Microsoft has also had outages with some of its web-hosted (or 'cloud') services this week.

Annoying as it is for bloggers and their readers, the outage may give pause to businesses contemplating shifting their information processing 'to the cloud'. In fact, ZDNet's Ed Bott blogs today (see here) that businesses would be wise not to adopt a cloud-only strategy. (ZDNet is the online presence of Ziff-Davis magazines, a stable of technology and business magazines.)

Small fry like Plainfield's blogging community have few options, though Plainfield Sports News and Dr. E=MC² and Piv for Plainfield are hosted on other blogging platforms.

Blogger offered an explanation in an email that I received at 4:33 PM Friday, which reads --

What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal — you can publish again, and in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored.  Thank you for your patience while we fix this situation.  We use Blogger for our own blogs, so we’ve also felt your pain.

Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish.  We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

Again, we are very sorry for the impact to our authors and readers.  We try hard to ensure Blogger is always available for you to share your thoughts and opinions with the world, and we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening again.

Posted by Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead/Manager, Blogger

Meanwhile, bear with us as we make sure everything has been restored (I noticed one of my posts has disappeared completely), and if you tried and were unable to post comments on any of the blogs, give it another shot.

And now, we return you to our regularly scheduled program.

---

• Information Week:  "Cloud outages plague Google, Microsoft"
• ZDNet:  "Google's Blogger outage makes the case against a cloud-only strategy"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Plainfield blogger beat Ledger to punch on use of N-word in West Orange schools

The language in question derived from a mystery novel by Agatha Christie.

It was a month ago that Plainfield blogger Nat Singleton, writing at Dumbed Down America, wrote about an incident involving the use of the N-word in a West Orange middle school language arts lesson (see here), beating the Star-Ledger to the punch.

The incident led to a complaint to the District by the student's parents, Demond and Tauheedah Baker-Jones, a friend of whom had tipped Nat to the story. Eventually both the NAACP and ACLU were drawn into the matter.

That complaint led to a meeting and proposed steps by the District to address the issue which formed the basis of a front-page Ledger story yesterday (see here).

Baker-Jones did not object to the use of the material per se, but to the lack of proper introduction and context-setting concerning the language in the selection given to the students.

The class was handed an excerpt from a stage adaptation of a 1939 novel by the famed English mystery writer Agatha Christie, a story which ultimately came to be known as 'And Then There Were None' (see more here).

The N-word reference was dropped long before the 1945 movie version.

The plot concerned ten guests invited to a remote mansion for a weekend house party -- a classic English mystery motif. One by one, the guests are murdered in grotesque fashion, playing on the song of the title. (I remember seeing the movie as 'Ten Little Indians'.)

To date, the book is still Agatha Christie's most popular mystery, with over 100 million copies sold.

Christie is not thought to have had any racist intent in using the N-word, but was referring to a song that would have been well known to an audience of her time and place -- exactly the sort of condition that Baker-Jones says calls for teachers to set the context and perhaps have an important 'teaching moment' with their students with regard to ethnicity and racial stereotyping.

West Orange superintendent Anthony Cavanna, in a CYA move, says the district will hire an outside consultant to assess 'what the district is doing right and what it could do better'. Gimme a break.

Good pedagogical sense should have prevailed all along, no matter how large a percentage of the District's students were white, nor how small a percentage were minority. The fact that Cavanna says the unit has been in use for years without any prior complaint only makes the conduct more egregious, in my opinion.

There have been several film, TV and stage adaptations of the novel. It should be noted that the N-word reference was withdrawn very early on, in favor of an old rhyme concerning the fate of 'ten little Indians'.

Not really more sensitive, by my lights, but they must have thought so seventy years ago.

Nat closed his essay by noting he hoped he was wrong and that someone had played a practical joke on him.

Not so lucky.


DISCLOSURE: Nat is my partner. He has not seen this piece prior to my publishing it.

---

• Dumbed Down America:  "N-word taught in West Orange middle school"
• Ledger:  "School officials review diversity training, curriculum after class handout includes racial epithet"
• Wikipedia:  "Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Dan to Renata: I am guilty

Board of Ed member Renata Hernandez maintains a personal blog.

Dan to fellow Plainfield blogger Renata Hernandez: I am guilty, on TWO COUNTS.

• FIRST, of trying to make some sense of your often recondite posts in the same amount of time I devote to each of the other Plainfield blogs in the daily preparation of the CLIPS blog; and
  
  
• SECOND, of trying to craft a 'clickworthy' teaser for your post in my headline to drive traffic toward your blog, assuming you do like to have readers' attention called to it.

The mysterious entry that got Dan in hot water.

 So, what happened?

Landing on your 'Dear Michael' post yesterday, it seemed to be clearly part of an ongoing conversation...giving no clue to your readers exactly WHERE that conversation was taking place. Given my time constraints and the fact that you did not point folks toward that conversation (which it turns out actually can be found here), I had to try and figure out -- QUICKLY -- who 'Michael' was and what blog was being referenced.

Since the topic obviously concerned the Board of Ed, but didn't state DIRECTLY AND CLEARLY whether it was about a SPECIFIC issue with a particular meeting notice or a GENERAL issue with the POLICY of giving public notices, the question became: How much time am I going to spend on this puzzle before moving on?

Answer: Not more than on grasping any other blogger's post.

All I was left with was 'MICHAEL' and 'blog'.

There is another Plainfield blogger, who chooses to be anonymous, but whom many think is a person named MICHAEL. So, I wondered, is Renata referring to this supposed person? Is she carelessly 'outing' the purposely anonymous blogger? Or is it on purpose? Hence my headline teaser.

Turns out it was nothing of the kind, as I learn from reading your Wednesday post in response.

Which led me to Olddoc's post where you got into a back-and-forth and Olddoc asserted his right not to have his blog's comments highjacked (see here) --

Ras, I am not posting your comments in reply to MT since I do n ot feel that it is the function of this blogger to open his blog to a commentary tiff. Your points are appreciated and fortunately you have your well read blog to express them. That perhaps is a better venue than turning a commentary section of a blog into one which we find in the newspapers. (October 26, 2010 9:26 PM)

Each of us bloggers has the right not to have our blogs or comments taken over by others with issues not seen as germane to the blog's general intent. And to suggest that commenters take it elsewhere. Fair is fair.

This is not the first time that your blog has left things that could -- and should -- be made perfectly clear left unaddressed or clouded.

Two recent examples --

The public got a 'take that' whack for not attending a BOE presentation.

'STATE OF THE DISTRICT' PRESENTATION

Would it not be reasonable to expect -- since you considered it so important -- that YOU would have promoted the 'State of the District' address on YOUR BLOG? If I read you correctly, you would have found out about it in your Friday packet before the meeting. That would have left you from Friday to Tuesday (since the meeting was held on Wednesday) to post something useful for your many readers inviting, encouraging or challenging them to come out for this key presentation.

Yet you did not.

However, you didn't resist a little tongue-lashing (and WHERE were YOU?) of the public after the fact (see here). What is YOUR responsibility for the admittedly low turnout?

And if the District's efforts to put the info in the little fluttery text box on its website and in a legal notice (I would want to see proof it was even mentioned in a legal notice) only netted TWO members of the public, why isn't it fair to ask why the District's public relations machine didn't do more?

Guess what, Mark Spivey is putting just everything that folks throw at him on the InPlainfield microsite. So, why not make use of that outlet, which is the best read of all Gannett's microsites in the whole state of New Jersey?

The event has a clear deadline, how should folks interpret today's post?

ALRICK BROWN 'PLAINFIELD'S PROMISE' EVENT

Then we have today's post promoting the P-PAL's event presenting the very talented Alrick Brown, hometown kid, PHS grad and successful film director and screenwriter in their 'Plainfield's Promise' speaker series.

THIS Saturday, at Washington Community School.

But one question is left UNADDRESSED.

Reading the fine print on the event's graphic, there is a notice that the deadline to register for this event was OCTOBER 15, nearly two weeks ago.

So, is the deadline in effect, in which case folks should disregard your notice?

Or has the deadline been waived, in which case those interested should go ahead and show up?

Why would you leave such a question up in the air?

Though being bloggers means we are free to express our opinions on all sorts of things and in as convoluted and obscure a manner as suits us, when any of us turns to PROMOTING MEETINGS OR EVENTS, we are subject to the same FIVE W's PLUS ONE of the mainstream media: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and hoW.

It's common sense. It's best practice. It encourages readers to take us seriously.

Bottom line: From now on, when I read your entries to summarize them for CLIPS, if I can't get the gist in the same amount of time I spend on the others, I'll take a pass. And that includes including you in the headline teaser -- with or without 'clickworthy' copy.

Life is too short, and there is so much ground to cover.

Especially in the Queen City, which has to be setting some kind of record to have TWENTY TWO blogs and counting.

---

• Doc's Potpourri:  "10/25/10 Potpourri, with back-and-forth on BOE meeting"
• Standing in the Gap:  "10/22/10: And WHERE were YOU?"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Hey! This is MY soap-box! You got a problem with that, get your own!

Hmmmm.....

Today, I will take up those whiners who complain through their anonymous comments that I am unfair to Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs and/or Assemblyman Jerry Green. (For yesterday's post on Councilor Burney's tantrum over not getting star billing on CLIPS, see here.)

Plainfield Today is DAN'S soap-box. It has always been Dan's soap-box. There is no secret about it. The tagline says as much: The needler in the haystack.

Nevertheless, some supporters of Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs and Assemblyman Jerry Green repeatedly post anonymous comments whining that I take constant potshots at Her Honor and her mentor (Bernice's monicker for Assemblyman Green).

So what?

I choose NOT to post those comments because they DON'T ADVANCE THE CONVERSATION.

Got a beef with my 'facts' or agument? Give chapter-and-verse to support your opposing view.

'Dan, you are just soooo unfair' just won't hack it.

Is Mayor Robinson-Briggs the best thing since sliced bread? Prove it, sticking to the relevant issues like crime, economic development, staff and board appointments, budget -- you know, the 'important' stuff, not how many events she has gushed at.

Does the Assemblyman walk on water? Show us the pictures.

Better yet, all you anonymous herds (or is it really just two or three of you?), start your own damn blog and blast away.

Go here -- www.blogger.com -- it's free, it's easy, it's waiting for YOU.

I even have some possible blog titles to get your juices flowing.

How about 'Queen of Victims' or 'Life Is Just Sooo Unfair' for supporters of Mayor Robinson-Briggs?

Or for supporters of the Assemblyman, maybe 'Puppetry by Trial and Error' or 'Life Behind the Yellow Curtain'?

All you will have to do is set yourself up and start casting your pearls of wisdom as the rest of the bloggers do.

And I'll be happy to include you in CLIPS, giving you the same chance to impress Plainfield readers as Councilor Burney and the others get.

Now, get to work!

And stop whining!

---

• Plainfield Today: "Whose soap-box is it anyway? Burney blame-game compels Dan's response"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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'Monetizing' Plainfield Today?

Google's AdSense displays ads on blog pages.

Plainfield Today finally took the 'monetizing' plunge.

Google, which owns Blogger, the service that hosts Plainfield Today and CLIPS is constantly nudging bloggers to try and get a little income from their efforts by using Google's 'AdSense' ad-placing service.

Once you are approved and set up an account, Google supplies the code for placing small ads on a blogger's pages (those on Plainfield Today will be in the right-hand column and at the bottom of the most recent post).

They are supposed to reflect a blog's geographical or topical niche.

I'm not so sure -- the first ad that popped up was for a bridal service, something that I wouldn't associate with the PT reader profile. The next was for a Westfield-based business. We already have enough folks shopping in Westfield, so I was a little leery of that one.

As I learn the ins and outs of the ads, there may be a way to fine-tune them.

The minute I see one for an erectile dysfunction product though, I'm outta here.

Meanwhile, I await the promised cheques. Perhaps there will be enough to buy a cup of coffee.

Eventually.

There will also be PSAs -- Public Service Announcements.

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Thanksgiving is 'tinker' time

Improving the user experience?

Plainfield Today will take advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to tinker with and spruce up the blog site.

There will be no posts on Plainfield Today from Thanksgiving Day until Monday, November 30.

Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday, and if you are visiting family away from the area, please travel safely.

See you Monday!

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Comments are caught up -- see yours here!

Plainfield Today readers know it's no secret I fall behind on emails and posting your comments. In honor of Daylight Savings Time, I made a catch-up effort.

Spent last evening going through 1400 back emails (mea culpa!) and posting comments. All that are going up are up -- and it's a lot.

(Those that didn't get up, those who sent them know why).

Since there are so many, I sorted the links into categories. They are roughly chronological in order. If you posted and didn't see your comment, check out the links below and find your comments as well as those of others on the topics.

Mayor Sharon

• "Mayor Sharon: Another promise made. Another promise broken?"
• "Why was Mayor Sharon missing?"
• "Solaris takes a slap at Mayor Sharon"
• "Mayor Sharon: What about that theft in the Tax Collector's office?"
• "A flummoxing message from Plainfield's mayor"
• "Find Plainfield's 'Stimulus Plan' plan. I dare you."

Assemblyman Green

• "Is Boss Green throwing the Mayor under the bus?"

City Council

• "Take-home City vehicles on Council agenda tonight"
• "Council calendar changes: Looking before leaping always a wise policy"

Administration

• "City to Solaris: We'll get back to you...in a week..."
• "Straight talk on the IT 'poisoned apple'"
• "Courier editorial muddies the waters on police reorganization plan"
• "IT: They blinked, thanks to McWilliams and the public"
• "Stimulus money for Plainfield, other Police Departments"
• "Hellwig on Hellwig still leaves Dan with a question or two"

Miscellaneous

• "Cory Storch wins national award in psychiatric rehab"
• "G. W. Bush: Bookends"
• "Gang graffiti = Gang warfare?"
• "New Senior Center/Condos: Butterfly emerging from cocoon?"
• "Paying more for less. Much less." [Ledger, Courier]
• "The Daily-Ledgord News-Times?"
• "Mapp announces run for Mayor"

I promise to try and be more current going forward.

Promise.

---

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Paying more for less. Much less.

For Plainfield's hard-news freaks (count me in), the times are hard.

And getting harder.

This morning, I was startled from my autopilot newspaper ramble when the clerk said, "That'll be $3." Up from last Friday's $2.75.

For what?

The Courier News has joined the Star-Ledger with a 75¢ cover price for the daily paper.

In the A section, Page One had four area stories (including Plainfield's first homicide of 2009, above the fold, thank you!), and page 3 had three, all by staff reporters. The rest of the section had 6 AP stories and 2 from USA Today.

The Star-Ledger disappoints in its own unique way.

Monday's edition comes in four sections, of which hard news is only in the first section.

Page One has 3 stories by Ledger reporters, plus Bob Braun's column. Page 3 has a Newark story by a Ledger reporter. The balance of the section has 1 Jersey Journal story, 7 AP stories, a global roundup with 6 items from unidentified wire sources, and a New Jersey roundup of 4 items from unidentified sources (including the Plainfield homicide).

The news business is in tough times.

Gannett, the Courier's parent company, recently avoided being downgraded to 'junk bond' status -- just barely (see here).

The Star-Ledger, once the darling of the Newhouse publishing empire (with Plainfield connections, yet) is said to have lost $40M last year, precipitating the nasty buyout which has decimated its reportorial staff -- both news and columns (see here).

A recent OpEd by the New Jersey ACLU in Editor And Publisher (see here) sums up the effects of all this quite succinctly --

The people of New Jersey rely on reporters to let us know what is going on and use that information to form opinions, take action and determine how they want to vote. Reporters sit as our proxies and do our homework, attending council meetings until 2 a.m. They uncover political corruption and work with whistleblowers to release information that can protect the public. They put pressure on officials simply by doing their jobs, compelling our leaders to fix their mistakes.

Reporters bring important issues into the public square. Sometimes the press ignites a fire from a nonprofit’s fuel, and sometimes organizations discover new causes to rally behind because of a paper’s reporting. ...

Without paid reporters on the ground it’s almost impossible to hold our government accountable. While the prospect of having no one to look over their shoulders anymore could make a New Jersey politician or two giddy, it’s at the public’s expense. ...

With an even smaller number of overworked reporters forced to cut corners, more and more, our news sources only scratch the surface. Participatory democracy is much weaker without people who have the time and expertise to sniff out stories, wait out meetings and bring out credible information. ...

A vacuum in the newspaper industry sucks away democracy. Television news specializes in the sound bite. Bloggers specialize in commentary and speed. And newspapers specialize in the original reporting that governments, other reporters -- including bloggers -- and society rely on to understand the inner workings of government.

This blogger says 'Amen' to all that, and thinks that bloggers help by complementing the print media, not supplanting it.

As coverage of local politics thins more and more (the Plainfields have been lucky so far that the Courier still dedicates resources in a way the Ledger no longer does), the public is less well-served, though asked to pickup more of the tab left over from the disappearing ad sales.

And for this retiree, trying to get by on a meager pension and Social Security, the prospect of shelling out $102 a month for print editions of the Courier, the Ledger and the NYTimes is giving me deep pause.

What are your thoughts on this business? Log a comment!

---

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Ch-ch-ch-change is coming to Plainfield Today

I've been tinkering under the hood of Plainfield Today for some time now in response to reader requests to expand the blog's usefulness.

Here are three of the improvements you've asked for that will be coming online shortly --

AN EXPANDED CALENDAR

Several organizations that plan out their events a year or more into the future have wanted to have a sort of 'date bank' so that they and others can get an idea of how things look farther down the road than the week or two that has normally been included in the 'What's Happening' listings. I was made sharply aware of this a couple of years ago when one weekend had FOUR events scheduled by major community organizations with overlapping audiences and important fundraising goals that were somewhat dented by everyone having the 'tin cup' out at the same time. The expanded calendar will be a tool for planners to help avoid such situations in the future.

CLASSES AND SERVICES

There are organizations, clubs and individuals throughout the community that offer classes or services to residents and others that have asked Plainfield Today to help spread the word. Once again, it becomes clear that the 'What's Happening' listings don't really fill the bill to keep ONGOING, REGULAR activities in a handy place where readers can refer to them as the need arises. Plainfield Today will make an area available where both individuals and organizations may post for free listings of classes and services, whether or not fee-based, as a community service.

CLASSIFIEDS

Folks have yard and garage sales and want to get the word out. They have stuff to donate, sell or that they are looking to buy. Others may have needs such as room rentals for student housing. Plainfield Today is setting aside a corner where individuals (no businesses, please) can put up a listing for FREE to put PT's many readers in the loop.

These are just a few of the changes planned for 2009 to improve the usefulness of Plainfield Today for its ever-growing readership.

Stay tuned.

---

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

That's it! Dan is moving. To Australia.

That's it! Dan is moving to Australia.

Before the pols break out the champagne, let me clarify.

Dan is moving his bulk email to Australia.

Ever since tropical storm Hanna buzzed through last weekend, Comcast's email service has been acting bizarrely.

Comcast's website offers no explanation, and trying to use the online chat service -- Live! In real time, you can chat with a service representative! -- was an exercise in frustration after I sat watching the cursor blink for an hour while I was shown as 'next in line' for a rep. (At least there wasn't elevator music.)

I know I've threatened before, but this time I'm doing it.

If you receive the daily CLIPS email with links to Plainfield Today and the other Plainfield blogs as well as news of interest, after today you will start receiving it in a stylish new form.

Of course, you can always bookmark CLIPS (http://pclips.blogspot.com/) and Plainfield Today (http://ptoday.blogspot.com/) and the others, but isn't it nice to have them all at your fingertips?

To Comcast: See ya later!

To my readers: See ya tomorrow!

---

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Putting the blogs up on the lift

After more than two and a half years, it is time to put the blogs into the shop for a tune-up. Much has changed in blogging and there are tons of new tools available to improve your reading experience -- and make my blogging efforts easier.

Tweaking takes time, so for the next two weeks or so, both Plainfield Today and CLIPS are going into 'lite' mode so I can devote the necessary hours to getting under the hood.

Summer is supposed to be the 'slow news' season anyway, right? Hah!

Stay tuned.

-- Dan

Jes' monkeyin' around

Running late today.

Got my new laptop set up for Plainfield Today today -- FINALLY.

Moving over the several gigabytes of email and address books was a little hairy, but it's done.

Back to grinding sausage tomorrow.

Oh yes, the illustration? Logo for what used to be a very useful website for geeks who work 'under the hood' as digital greasemonkeys.

---

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Murphy's Revenge

I should know better than to mess with Murphy.

As many readers know, my 3-year-old HP Pavilion laptop has been giving me a little grief lately. It quickly overheats and shuts down, causing me to reboot (several times each morning) and causing you, dear reader, to wonder what the hell is taking Dan so long.

Didn't want to force one of the screws on the fan cover, so decided to go to the PC hospital.

Backed up my email and other essential files for blogging to a drive on the wireless network. Fired up my NEW HP laptop -- less than half the cost, more than three times the power and storage, but that's ANOTHER law.

Took the old machine to the shop.

Started to set up for today's posts, and guess what? -- the backed-up email files (including the address books from which CLIPS is sents) were corrupted and unreadable. And the GOOD files were where? You know.

Kicked by Murphy.

In the butt.

Shoulda known better.

---

NOTE: It'll be a couple of days until I get it back and CLIPS can go out again. Sorry. :-(

-- Dan Damon

Your disappearing emails from Dan

A reader's curiosity was piqued at finding her regular CLIPS emails failed to reach her inbox and sent the following message --

I've noticed over the past month or so that CLIPS comes into my gmail spam filter despite having the address in my address 'book'. A bit of further reading seems to indicate that Google often marks email with the same sender and recipient as spam. You may already know this, but since the rules for getting black-boxed keep changing (at my office we had to stop sending large mailings with people in the bcc field, as this is now a trigger), I thought I'd go ahead and mention it. At some point, you may have better luck with a low-cost mailing service, though low-cost isn't free, and maybe that would depend upon reader support. I've gotten used to CLIPS coming into the spam filter instead of the Plainfield filter every day, but some folks don't look in their spam filters.

She is not the first to mention that these daily emails sometimes go amiss, and I think she has a good point.

I have a good news/bad news story. I am currently moving the email list over to an online service. That's the good news. The bad news is that I have to do it by hand, one name and address at a time. So, it's taking a while.

For now, if your CLIPS goes missing from your inbox, I think a good clue would be to check in your 'spam' or 'junk' (or whatever you call it) folder and see if your email program has a mind of its own. The first step would be to make sure and put me in your email address book (just right-click on my email address on one of the CLIPS emails -- as in the image above -- and select 'add to address book').

In the meantime, I will try to tinker and see if there is a workaround.

Again, thanks to all for the supportive comments -- I ran into several people at both the candidate brunch and the Muhlenberg rally on Saturday who said they are regular readers and how much they enjoy the blogs. Compliments are good pay!

---

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Bonehead Dan learns a lesson

Bonehead Dan has learned a lesson: Readers rule.

Plainfield Today's companion blog, CLIPS, is what is known as an aggregator blog.

Unlike regular blogs, aggregator blogs are simply collections of links to other items on the Web. CLIPS links, as its tagline says, to "online stories of interest to the Tri-County area". That includes the local regularly publishing blogs as well as items from print (or 'legacy') media.

Aggregator blogs are held in disdain by some and are ignored by Google -- as I found out in the beginning when I tried to submit CLIPS to Google's 'crawler', its process of combing the hundreds of millions of pages on the Web to build the database that brings you those marvelous, near-instantaneous results.

Google's reasoning goes like this. If Google were to index aggregator blogs and aggregators were to simply put up blogs with nothing but links to their own posts, the Web would become a hall of mirrors, facilitated by Google, in which those wishing to game the system would rise in the search results by the use of these aggregator blogs. Makes sense to me.

On the other hand, there are those who think that aggregators are the online equivalent of a babushka, the Russian grandmother figure. You know, someone to remind you to wear your overshoes, eat your vegetables -- and read your news. And grownups don't need babushkas.

The question of CLIPS and linking to the local blogs was raised by a local blogger to me in a private email about a month ago. In my response, I offered to stop putting links up to that blog if the blogger desired. The favor of a reply was not granted.

A few days ago there was a post that singled out aggregator blogs and suggested readers had the choice of bypassing them by bookmarking sites they want to read, concluding "[t]here is no need for a nanny to tell you what to read."

In a fit of scruples, I assumed the blogger no longer wished to be linked to by CLIPS and accordingly took the link down yesterday. (As any good politician will tell you, you should always beware attacks of scruples.)

That was when blockhead Dan got his lesson.

Seems that readers get different mileage. They actually LIKE the aggregated blog CLIPS just because it does what it says it does -- put all the links to local news and views at the reader's fingertips. And readers told me so, in no uncertain terms.

Usefulness!

What a concept!

Chastened, I am returning the other blogger's links to CLIPS as of this morning.

Whether or not it is nannyish.

Babushkas of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your usefulness.

---

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Thin-skinned pols seek blogger's ID

Should Plainfield bloggers beware?

The intrepid Kelly Heyboer, the Ledger's point person on all things blogish in Jersey, landed a front page story this morning on the maneuvers by Manalapan's township attorney to force Google to divulge the identity of the blogger behind the 'daTruthSquad' blog.

Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a national organization dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights on the Internet, has involved itself in the case. EFF is taking up the case of former mayor and township attorney Stuart Moskovitz, whom Manalapan officials suspect is behind the blog.

Moskovitz is also embroiled in a nasty court case with the township over a land deal gone bad. But it seems likely that the pols are interested because the unnamed writer seems to know a lot of inside dirt about Manalapan politics.

Who ever thought pols had thin skins?

A reader emailed me with concerns about whether Manalapan's tactic would spread northward to Plainfield.

Should Plainfield bloggers beware?

Nah! None of us is a 'venomous blogger'.

Besides, everyone knows who we are.

---

Ledger: "Shielding face of N.J. blogger"
Blog: "daTruthSquad"
The Transcript (local paper): "Manalapan case draws Google into the mix"
EFF: "Electronic Frontier Foundation"
EFF: "Manalapan vs. Moskowitz"

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/

Plainfield Today changes set for...today

It's finally happened. CLIPS, the daily email of central NJ news, has outgrown Comcast's ability to cope and will be moving on.

Coincidentally, I had been planning for some down time over the long weekend to migrate to an online email delivery service. Turns out Comcast broke over the weekend, too. And Murphy invoked his law, meaning the transfer was not glitch-free.

I'm not tinkering with Comcast more. There are better ways.

If you haven't bookmarked CLIPS or Plainfield Today before and missed Saturday and Sunday, here are some highlights from the weekend CLIPS--

Saturday

• Drive-By Shooting: "Two shot in Plainfield drive-by" | Ledger | Courier |
• Hoboken Cops & Hooters: "Babe: SWAT team made impression" and Sunday followup.

Sunday

• J.M. Benjamin - NYT: "Ex-Con Back in the ’Hood, Hustling His Novel Now"
• Randle Shooting: "Cop-shooting victim's mom speaks at rally"
• Charlotte DeFilippo: "Modest jobs, big benefits for Trenton aides"

The online service should be up later today.

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/

The times, they are a-changin' - 1

Comcast's outbound email servers have been unavailable since yesterday, though there are posts to PT and CLIPS. Sorry.

Changes are comin'.

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/

The times, they are a-changin' - 2

Changes are comin'.

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/