Amanda Congdon has a bright, simple, persuasive vlog on Net Neutrality today.  She includes links to Net Neutrality sites to make it easy for you to write your congress-critter.  So go there. Enjoy Amanda’s presentation, her excellent lip gloss, her - you know - “production values.”  Then write those congress-critters!

(Amanda’s vlog beats the heck out of information like this upbeat mainstream media number on how to profit from diabetes.  But, while perhaps more acceptable in a mainstream context, more socially aware, less offensive than a dead tree publication shilling for big pharmcos, she still ain’t as fucking funny as ze Frank, and that’s the truth, strange rangers.  But my god, what a compliment to be compared to him all the time!)

Chris Pirillo is discussing living his life publically online.  Terry Heaton discussed the loss of his wife.  Lisa talked about the loss of her father, and everyone is being open about the challenges of public inspection versus the support of the community.  I think Tamar would have a lot to offer the group in this session.

People are sharing all these personal stories and I’m thinking about all the people I don’t write about out of concern for what effect my thoughts might have on my relationships.  Thinking about my dad, my brother… there’s so much to explore there, but I’m not going to explore it in the blog.  Lisa says that when she moved from paper to pixels the volume of her complaints went down.

Jory says that her blog has helped her clean up her relationships… these are incredibly MINDFUL people, mindful like Tamar, like Ronni, like Liz Ditz.  Jay Rosen says that blgging is emotional, it’s about freedom… he calls blogs “the little first amendment machines.”

Lisa’s boyfriend violated her privacy by reading her diary and leaving comments.

Back at BloggerCon after an interesting morning in Judge Walker’s court. More about that later and AT&T, and the US Government… is Joho really working for AT&T? I love him anyway. More aqbout that - as I said - later.

Right now there’s a heated discussion about backing up our images before we entrust them to the Goomers and Bloomers and other FlickR competitors.

And Marc Canter is doing his best to break the vendor rap rule. Niall Kennedy is seriously enforcing it.

Discussion moved on to moving blogs… nobody has a good story about this, but Chris Pirillo has sponsored an export routine from someplace to WordPress… the cross ventilation from one tool to another is something that will hapen incrementally.. Elisa Camahort specs a beautiful utility that she wants… something that crawls her blog every night and back-ups the permalinks and the comments and the links and everything. Brilliant, and it brings the subject back to back-up which is where I started… but I’m feeliong a little tender right now since that 120GB Western Digital drive crapped out earlier this month, and the Dell laptop died in Minneapolis. Back-up, I’m convinced, is a good thing.

another conference….  thanks to the IRC channel for the nudge.

Marc Canter is now filling this corner of the room, btw.  All these super heroes of the first wave.

Doc is at the front table writing up notes that are projected on the screen.  It’s an OPML outliner kind of thing.

Jory des Jardins is the microphone person.

Phil Torrone will be talking tools in just a bit, after we sort out the singing thing.

Anil Dash is here… Dan Farber, Chris and Ponzi…

Song suggestion… Bruggeman suggests “Feelings” but Dave doesn’t know it…  “All you need is love…”

Ponzi suggests the “Hokie Pokie” …  okay, we got that out of the way… I’m sitting in the repressed corner…

BlogHer is on Doc’s birthday… this technography thing is informative.

Luminaries in the room…. the laughingsquid, jay rosen, dave, doc, terry heaton, rex hammock, marnie webb, bruce bruggeman… the room is filling up and McD is on the IRC link.

Sylvia Paul - I think Britt Bravo just wlked in - the room is slowly filling up and there is nice music . Dave is calling the room to order…

“Everybody shut-up!”

James Bond’s old nemesis SMERSH (from shmert shpionam, or “death to spies”) may file a brief today on behalf of the ironically Stalinist US Government in Courtroom 6 at 450 Golden Gate Avenue at the 9:30a.m. hearing on the Hepting vs. AT&T suit. Or they may not. How would we know, since the US Government has pulled something called “the State Secrets Act” out of its ass to deprive the public of information regarding the case?

Here is the redacted testimony of J. Scott Marcus taken earlier this month in the case which revolves around the government using AT&T facilities to spy on private citizens. (Adobe Acrobat required). Redacted means that the government censors cut out the parts that we, the public, shouldn’t be allowed to see.

Maybe I’ll skip the BloggerCon National Anthem session in order to go down to the Federal Court and learn first hand what BushCo has on its collective Orwellian mind.

Wouldn’t want to miss it.