I just read about this, and can’t believe it: Carmel Belanger, one of the brightest lights of any campaign I’ve ever worked on, has passed away. She worked with the federal NDP for 25 years, and never failed to rise to every occasion – from dire news to momentous events – with anything but the highest standard of professionalism, leavened with a fabulous sense of humour.

I can’t… Read more...

• Facebook | Thomas King for Guelph!
  Not only is Thomas King running for the federal NDP nomination in Guelph, he has his own Facebook page. As a comic and New Democrat, I can only approve.
  (tags: ndp guelph thomas_king dead_dog_cafe cbc nomination politics canada facebook)
• the hollywood north report: Best

Via Kevin Drum, this LA Times story:

Circuit City Stores Inc. has a message for some of its best-paid employees: Work for less or work somewhere else.

The electronics retailer on Wednesday laid off 3,400 people who earned “well above” the local market rate for the sort of jobs they held at its stores. In 11 weeks they’ll be able to apply for their old positions –… Read more...

• Hacking John McCain
  Someone on McCain’s campaign threw together a MySpace presence… and lifted someone else’s images in the process. The owner got (hilariously) even.
  (tags: MySpace politics hack funny template election USA 2008 ip images design campaign presidential)
• Mike Davidson: Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace

This just in; Tod Maffin has the details. They’re responding to huge demand:

We first introduced podcasts in 2005, and the demand has been growing ever since, with downloads now averaging more than one million per month. CBC Radio 3, Quirks and Quarks and Ideas are consistently among the top podcasts in Canada, and have a significant following around the world… Read more...

If you’re a parent with kids under, oh, ten or so, then Saturday Night Live has just delivered the vengeance you’ve been waiting for on Dora the Explorer.

Animated at a gorgeous three frames an hour, written by stunned gerbils and voiced by telemarketers on helium, Dora was the bane of my existence for a solid year. Woody Allen once said his parents’ values were God and… Read more...

• Convert YouTube, etc. to MPEG4 with vixy.net
  Here’s a handy tool: it lets you enter the URL for any page on several popular video-sharing sites that use Flash to handle their content, and turns it into a downloadable MPEG4 file. Works like a charm.
  (tags: web application video youtube flv conversion convert quicktime format

This is a year old, but it’s still very, very cool.

The campaign is called “Irrepressible.info – an effort by Amnesty International to draw attention to the way too many governments are censoring the Internet, and punishing those who use it to speak out.

They’ve created a web badge for your site. Nothing especially new, although