learnandteachonline.com

Yes, the Hardball host started a fundraising phenomenon in the 6th congressional district in Minnesota with his Oct. 17 MSNBC interview with incumbent Michele Bachmann. She called for a media investigation into members of congress to see which of them might be anti-American.

But, Chris, come on. Be a little generous to the internet effect. You implied on Monday night's show that it was entirely the power of your show that drove outraged viewers to contribute hundreds of thousands to Bachmann's opponent.

You did good, but what you did was to start a viral effect. Check out the blogs that helped spread the influence of your interview in the first few days. Factor in the rabid use among politics junkies of microblogging tools like Twitter that have replaced our RSS readers to pass around these blog and video links, and there you go.

A single interview in isolation would not have caused the Democratic National Committee to take notice of Elwyn Tinklenberg's campaign. Thank you for getting the snowball rolling, but individual contributions flooded in from the combined influence of your interview and the net effect. The DNC recognized the resultant phenomenon. There was a team at work here, and as quarterback it would be gracious of you to acknowledge the whole squad.

I was about to get all huffy, but no.

Hulu offers embeddable video. If you're trying it out with a local file, as I did, and thought it wasn't resizable -- that it was clipped rather than scaled from the 512-pixel width -- just publish it anyway. It actually does scale like YouTube or most other embeds, once you get it online.

For example here is last night's SNL Weekend Update.

I've limited the width to 450 pixels because that's the space I have available for it in the main column of my blog.

These days, to figure the proportion for such things, I fire up Paint Shop Pro. (I don't want to pay for Photoshop at home, and though I remember how to solve for X, I've grown too lazy to haul out the pencil.)

I think I threw away my proportion wheel 35 years ago right after I took a newspaper editing class. You'd measure a photo, then slide the wheel to match up the photo width with the column width. The wheel calculated the column height, so you could draw a box of the correct number of column inches on your layout, and a percentage, so you could scribble it on the photo with a grease pencil.

"Learning 2.0" is the 2nd highest-ranked Technorati search this morning. Huh!

Have you been following the blogosphere conversation about Techmeme, its new leaderboard, piling on, and groupthink?

Seems like everybody who's complaining also visits regularly. Me too, but I do agree it incents bloggers to behave like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

Maybe that's the trouble with relying on algorithms. They can seek out items like other items, but math has a harder time detecting something original and new (while also being important or consequential). You need human judgment for that, just like you need people to intervene in the social problem of juvenile and rude behavior in comments, even though the techies keep saying identity systems are the answer.

Human brains and machine brains dividing the labor in a smart way. Calacanis isn't all wrong when it comes to that part.

Danah Boyd's story of how one company came to understand the viral power of the web just by watching something unfold.

Ever since I read the thread on the Moodle forums about integration with Facebook, I've been thinking how the two species just don't want to meet in the wild.

But what about something like this? Build a Facebook app that's a simple output of an assignments feed from a learning management system. Give it a name like "Here's what I'm supposed to be doing; tell me to get back to work."

I think most kids -- heck, most humans -- like the idea of a nudge if they've asked for it. Think of diet groups or the dissertation support group I started 10 years ago, run for years now, and more ably, by Tom Tom Jankowski (PhinisheD). That kind of help can be quite motivating.

By this time you must have seen the quiz that asks you to identity which terms are Star Wars character names and which are Web 2.0 cutsie business names.

I had an idea. It sounds too much like Odeo, but how about Oh-Ree-Oh for a name? You know, that chilling chant sung by the guards of the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West? You could use a guard as the logo/mascot.

That's me, after messing around with Adobe Audition filters.