Tag: public

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NowPublic Names LA’s 20 Most Influential Individuals

Crowdsourcing news site NowPublic released a list of LA’s ‘Most Public’ and — however arbitrarily — selected many of my favorite people both online and off including #4: Micki Krimmel, #5: Zadi Diaz of Epic Fu, #6: Dave Bullock, #8: Zach Behrens of LAist, #10: Kent Nichols of Ask a Ninja, #15: Sean Bonner of MetBlogs, and #20: Efren Toscano of TechZulu.

The full list (and [purported] methodology) is here.

Coolest thing about the list? It drew me back to NowPublic for the first time in months and I really like the re-design. Last year NowPublic’s partnered with AP and more recently, believe it or not, NP acquired Guy Kawasaki’s Truemors. Most attractive about their redesign is the dynamically updating homepage… much more inviting as a reader and contributor.

UPDATE: Sean Bonner wrote a great post exposing the true annoyance of such link-baiting tactics as engineered (in this instance) by PR firm morris+king to exemplify how filling a page with self-referential links (all of the names on the list refer not to that individual’s web site, but to a nowpublic.com member page, created especially for this campaign) and baiting such “influentials” to spread the word and linkylove spam is ugly and should be seen through. THIS is where the rel=”nofollow” comes handy. By adding that tag to the end of a URI, search engine robots and crawlers are flagged to not weigh the reference of a hyperlink to the rank or relevance of the destination.

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Are Americans Ready to Appropriate More Tax to Public Transportation?

My favorite thing about CNN.com is the polls on the right side of the home page. I’ve referenced them several times on this blog.

A poll this weekend definitely signaled a sign-of-the-times sea change in public opinion of your average CNN.com visitor. Clearly influenced by the seemingly endless rise in prices at the pump, two-thirds of the 130,000 or so who answered the survey selected yes when asked if they’d support using more tax money to improve the public transit system. Note: it did say using more tax, not paying more tax, however, I believe that most people see the phrase “more tax” and think “outta my pockets.”

cnn poll public transportation tax

Here’s to hoping that this is a glimpse of a real sea change revealing a clear path for government to finally improve, build, and subsidize public transportation systems that could be critical to such vital assets as: our infrastructure; our expenses; our environment; our oil dependency; our local economies…

If the federal bias continues to be pro-war anti-infrastructure, there are several ways this can be dealt with on the state and local level.

Continue reading “Are Americans Ready to Appropriate More Tax to Public Transportation?”

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I believe it, do you?

A colleague of mine today put forth the idea of the blogosphere as a truly functional public sphere on an international level — and how it can get there. I then posted that I truly feel there is a substantial movement and much energy working towards this goal. But regulation / legislation often steps in — or fails to step in — in a way that slows the process.

Anyone care to extend on these thoughts?

Continue reading “I believe it, do you?”