Syndicate and Hague

With the massive amount of twitter activity on the topic, I’m sure you’ve seen that Amazon.com (I won’t link) has gotten some sizable damage from deleting the sales rank of not only LGBT books (academic, erotic, plain old fiction, any and all of it period), but of feminist books and books like “The Joy of Sex.” This means that books sink to the bottom in search results or aren’t displayed at all (Bastard Out of Carolina comes in 5th at Amazon, and in its rightful place of 1st on Barnes and Noble, the new non-fiction book, “Unfriendly Fire,” on military policy and don’t ask don’t tell does not even show up on Amazon’s actual book listing now - only the Kindle version is returned in the search results), and that they don’t show up on the main pages if they’re top sellers.

If you look at the #amazonfail twitter search, you’ll see all the links to more information on what’s going on.

What I want to highlight is that homophobia is not a new phenomenon at Amazon.com. Many years ago - ten years ago, to be exact - Amazon Bookstore here in Minneapolis sued Amazon.com for trademark infringement. The dot com’s legal strategy? Make Amazon Bookstore out to be a bunch of lesbians selling lesbian books and dismiss the suit that way. Nevermind that Amazon Bookstore had best selling literature on its shelves, and in recent years had an extensive children’s section to serve the population of the South Minneapolis neighborhood it was in - no, “feminist” and “women-owned” meant “lesbian” to Amazon.com and its lawyers and they played that one out to the end.

I don’t need to repeat the excellent article Salon.com wrote back in 1999, but I would like to note that ten years ago questioning people under oath about their personal sexuality was far more intimidating than it would be today. And it’s not like it’s an easy topic now.

I will say this - ten years ago, the Internet wouldn’t have been filled with outraged people on Twitter. Things are really changing. And I’m grateful for tools like Twitter that allow for massive dissemination of information at lightning speed. Amazing.

Amazon has been an #amazonfail for years, you just didn’t know it. Thanks to Twitter and the Internet, now you do. Don’t forget it.

Shop local, folks. You can start at IndieBound if you don’t know your local booksellers.

I am currently aglow and in awe of what we accomplished yesterday. MinneWebCon wound up being a conference beyond the dreams of those of us who started gathering last fall and geeking out over our shared desire to have a conference that addressed the needs of those of us who are craftsmen (ty to Eric Meyer for that usage) of the Web. (And craftswomen. Craftspeople. Craftsgeeks.)

I had a great time in the sessions I attended and am craving the podcasts of the social networking and microformats sessions that I missed. This first conference reaffirmed my belief that the University is full of smart, talented, dedicated people who are leading in their various areas–and that people from outside the U would want to hear us and others talk about these things. It means that the things we’re interested in are the things others are interested in.

Honestly, the number of non-U people in attendance was humbling and mind-boggling to me (I believe it was 1/3).

Also, I had a great time presenting–but I dig getting up in front of people and doing my thing. It’s fun for me.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for coming–thanks to those I met in person and those who were twittering (tweeting? I’m new to that. I’ve caved. I was trying to avoid it.) with all the #minnewebcon stuff.

Hopefully next year will be better–considering none of us had put on a conference before, I think we did damn well. Or, rather, we were fucking awesome. But I’m not prone to hyperbole or anything…

From one of my incomparable Web colleagues here at the U:

The little web conference that could (MinneWebCon) has really taken off. We just made the University of Minnesota homepage. (At the bottom)

I’ve never had anything I was in leadership on have such a high profile and it’s really exciting. Yay me!!

This came up in a meeting today and I hadn’t seen it yet. I’m pretty sure you don’t care about how (in detail) it’s done, but suffice it to say that a programmer took Google Maps and housing information from Craigslist and made an interactive map that shows you, on the map, where all the rentals in your area are and pops up any pictures available when you click on one. It’s the coolest thing ever. Well, maybe not ever. But it’s cool. It’s all at HousingMaps.com.

Despite the bugs - and they’re lurking around - I’m diving in on this.

I miss blogging. Moving over from the Myspace blog has taken more time than I’d like, but I have this 40-hour a week “job” thing that seems to take up my coding time. And I try to maintain some semblance of a life that doesn’t involve wringing my hands over minutiae in the site’s styles.

So! Moving on!

We’ll be back to technology, politics, the news, and some mundane aspects of my existence in just a bit, but let me highlight some of the cool parts of this blog because I’m so gosh-darned excited about the whole enterprise.

• You can share my posts! (On the individual entry pages, there are a bunch of different icons for various bookmarking sites. If you’re a user of any of these, and you like what I’ve written, please do send it off into the ether
• Subscribing is easier! Look on the right sidebar. Ah, icons. Helpful. If you’re on any of these, just click the corresponding image and it’ll be as easy as that. If you’re not on any of these, take them as options if you ever decide to make your life easier.
• Fun, repurposed data. This part of the site will grow, but for now you can take a look at the books I’m reading on the left. The data for that is pulled in from Goodreads, which is a fantastic place to share reviews on books.

Oh, right, you can still comment on entries. And if you blog, please use the trackback info to highlight me if you grab content from this blog.

I think…I think we’re done with all that now. More improvements to come. This is my php sandbox for the time being.