stevenberlinjohnson.com

Outside.in and The Washington Post

This morning we announced our new partnership with the Washington Post: our buzzmaps for the DC area are now live on the Post site. As you'll see, these maps are variations of the buzzmaps we've created for all the bloggers in our system: they're tracking all the places that local bloggers are discussing in the DC area, and mapping the top ten places based on overall volume over the past week. But of course it's not just about the map; there are links to all stories from the blogosphere about each place, along with links to the place pages themselves at outside.in.

One thing that's important to note: we're also tracking Washington Post content as well. (If the Post has an article about a place in the top ten, you'll see an orange slice in that placemarker on the map.) So in this relatively simple page, a number of cool and interrelated things are happening:

First, we're strengthening the ties between the local bloggers and the Washington Post. (Our investor Fred Wilson talks about this a little today on his blog.) The Post gets a easy way of integrating blog content onto its pages, and the  blogs get traffic from -- and the fun of appearing on -- the Washington Post's pages.

Secondly, we're not just geographically organizing the blogger content -- we're organizing the Post's content. That's because our system is designed to track geographically pretty much anything that outputs a feed. So building a map like this for another newspaper, in another city, takes us about five minutes. (You can see where we are heading with this.)

Thirdly, it's an extremely distributed system. We're not just creating a page that shows you information about a neighborhood (though of course we do that at outside.in.) We're connecting stories from dozens of bloggers, from a newspaper site, from our own  database of places in the DC area, and from Google's map API -- and we're putting it up on someone else's site, not our own.

The other thing that's exciting about this deal -- and I hope it's just the beginning -- is that we're working with the Washington Post, which is not only one of the top newspapers in the country, but also a true leader in their local coverage online. (Their local explorer maps, for instance, are very cool.) So congrats to the team at outside.in and at The Post for making it happen!

New Hampshire

Absolutely fascinating. The one thought I had going to bed last night was that, for once, we New Yorkers (and Californians) were actually going to have a say in who gets to be our next President, given that the race is definitely going to be tight up through our primaries on Super Tuesday. That'll be a nice change.

One quick note on something that I found incredibly offensive last night: both Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews floated the idea that perhaps women voters had flocked to Hillary because they didn't like the way Edwards and Obama were "ganging up on her" in the debate. I thought that exchange was clearly pivotal, but it's just absurd to think that people vote for Presidential candidates because they feel sorry for them. Isn't it much more likely that the women voters liked the powerful and impassioned way she stood up to Edwards and Obama when they united in their attacks on her "status quo" campaign? She had a great set of counterpunches, I thought, and her later line about her likability ("Now you've hurt my feelings") was as deft and funny and original as anything that had been said in the debate.

Anyhow, this is going to be fun to watch. I've said all along that the best thing about this 08 Democrat field is that the roster of candidates across the board is very appealing -- they're all, in their different ways, top of their class. I'm pulling for Obama, and still think he'll end up winning. But if these first few days are any indication, it's going to be an extraordinary year.

Iowa, The Morning After

So far my predictions are looking pretty good. (I'd be enjoying it all even more if I didn't have a mean caucus-night hangover.) I imagine I'm not alone in getting a little choked up more than a few times during Obama's speech -- particularly during these passages:

I'll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all. And I'll be a president who ends this war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home... who restores our moral standing, who understands that 9/11 is not a way to scare up votes but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century. Common threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease.

Tonight, we are one step closer to that vision of America because of what you did here in Iowa.

... I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay and a lot of sacrifice. There are days of disappointment. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this; a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in, when more families can afford to see a doctor, when our children -- when Malia and Sasha and your children inherit a planet that's a little cleaner and safer, when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united, you'll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began.

I love that temporal shift of projecting forward to our future recollection of the present -- "a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in..." It reminds me a little of the device Whitman uses in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" when he's directly addressing future city dwellers making the same passage across the East River:

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;	25
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d. Those lines always choke me up as well -- but Whitman always does that to me. But political speeches almost never do. But maybe that, too, is about to change.

My Political Forecast

I've been meaning to write something about the Obama candidacy for a while now, and just haven't found the time, so now that it's the day of the Iowa caucus I thought I'd just jot down a quick thought and prediction that I've been pretty convinced of for the past month. And that prediction is that Obama is going to win it all -- Iowa, the nomination, the Presidency. And I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that he is a rare combination in American politics, in that he is both the "emotional" choice and the "electable" choice. The whole concept of an Obama presidency is just intrinsically inspiring, particularly after the last two terms. And yet at the same time, all the polls suggest that he's the candidate who can beat pretty much any Republican in the field -- unlike Hillary. All the independents in my extended family would vote for him in a heartbeat, and they'd never vote for Hillary. Everything I've read suggests that this pattern is going to repeat itself all across the country.

Traditionally, we've always had to make a tradeoff between the emotional and the electable choices -- "Sure this Howard Dean campaign is exciting, but the guy's never going to win a national election, so let's go with the politically experienced war hero." But with Obama the two sets overlap: you want the guy to win, and he also has the best chance of winning.

So there it is -- we'll see where things stand tomorrow. (My Iowa prediction last year turned out to be dead right, for what it's worth.) The other thing I've been thinking is that it's entirely possible that the Clinton campaign is going to implode quickly -- it's entirely possible that she could start the primary season with back-to-back third place finishes which would be a stunning early defeat. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we had an Edwards/Obama race by Feb 6.

My Year In Cities

I've always liked Jason's "year in cities" recap that he posts at the start of a new year, so I thought I'd follow suit with my own list. Multiple visits are indicated by a number in parentheses after the city name. Interesting to see here that San Fran beats out DC (my original hometown and where my parents still live). Also, note that the multiple Vegas trips were all for speeches and not blackjack/strip clubs.

I haven't compiled this list in the past, but I think this would certainly be at least tied with the last year or two in terms of the volume and breadth of travel. (Both those years were book tour years, unlike this year, which adds at least six or seven cities to the list.) I can imagine that this data would be really interesting to look at over a twenty-year period, charting both the changes over time, and the overall distribution.

If you are a good friend of mine living in any of these cities, and I didn't manage to say hi on my way through, rest assured that my layover in most of these places was as short as humanly possible, given that my wife was at home with the three kids.

Brooklyn, NY
Washington, DC (6)
Grand Cayman
Helsinki, Finland
San Francisco (7)
Las Vegas (3)
Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (2)
Orlando, Florida (2)
Palm Beach, Florida
New Brunswick, NJ
Indianapolis, IN
Minneapolis, MN
Boston, MA
Edgartown, MA
Los Angeles, CA
Manchester-By-The-Sea, MA
Clemson, SC
Pittsburgh, PA
Shelter Island, NY (3)
Providence, RI
Rochester, NY
Salt Lake City, UT
Birmingham, AL
Barcelona, Spain
London, UK
Chicago, IL
Montego Bay, Jamaica