News from the NTEN Connect Blog

Summer Tour Photos: DC

Submitted by Holly on Wed, 06/14/2006 - 12:38pm

Last night, Katrin and I kicked off the N-TEN summer tour with our first listening party in Washington DC. Many thanks to all the folks who turned out and helped me finish the guacamole. Since this IS a listening tour, we we'd capture people's thougths about what they want out of N-TEN. If you'd like to tell us what you want from N-TEN, but can't make one of the

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2006 Rewrite of U.S. Communications Policy Needs to Ensure Public Interest

Submitted by Visitor on Wed, 06/14/2006 - 10:48am

By Lauren-Glenn Davitian, Center for Media & Democracy

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a National Video Franchising bill on June 8th 2006. This bill, known as COPE-the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006 (H5252)-permits the telephone companies to get quickly into the cable TV business by sidestepping local government approval (franchises) in favor of national service approval from the FCC. The Senate will mark-up a version of this bill in June. The Consumer Competition and Broadband Promotion Act (S.2686), sponsored by Senator Ted Stevens - R/ Alaska, raises many of the same public interest concerns in COPE. By moving into the

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Katrin Verclas: What NTEN is About

Submitted by Visitor on Wed, 06/14/2006 - 10:43am

Thank you for the warm welcome that so many of you have extended to me in the last week. I am thrilled to see how vibrant this community is, how creative you are in your ideas and innovations, and how much technical wizardry you do every day - all to make the world better and more just. It is truly a pleasure and a privilege to be working with you all.

I have this space to talk about N-TEN, but to be frank, I much rather want to hear from YOU. After all, you ARE N-TEN. So, I hope you can join me and Holly on one of the whistle stops of the N-TEN Summer tour so we have a chance to hear from you. I have also enjoyed the many conversations via email, on

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Puzzled Logic? Letter to Congress from the Advocacy Community

Submitted by Visitor on Sun, 06/11/2006 - 12:52pm

There has been, on many lists on the right, left, and middle, furious debate about the CAPCHA/Logic Puzzle that the Congressional Admin Office (CAO) instituted for email delivery to Congress. It is an optional system for Congressional Offices. Gavin Clabaugh expressed his opinions below, and while I agree with his assessment about a 'broken system' (after all my work, for many years, was deeply steeped in the then-very-active campaign finance reform), I also believe that email communication with Congress is essential, that advocacy organizations have a role in educating their members and aggregating their opinions on complex and difficult policy matters, and that restricting their ability to communicate with

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Hearing the People's Voice: Of Logic Puzzles, Advocacy and Heresy

Submitted by Visitor on Sat, 06/10/2006 - 5:16am

Dear friends,

This is a copy of the reply I posted on NTEN-Discuss - It was in reply to a call for action against a plan to:

... "require human interaction (by answering a question or retyping displayed letters/numbers) before the email could be submitted to [Congress]" and thus make the "use of 3rd-party email vendors impossible."

I think I'd like to take a whack at this issue, even though the discussion has died down a bit.

First off, let me just state, up front, that I believe in democracy, really. And, in line with that, I believe that all people should have a voice and that voice should -- indeed

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Moby says: Save the Internet

Submitted by Holly on Thu, 06/08/2006 - 6:34am

Net Neutrality is an incredibly important topic, being debated and discussed in Congress right now. We all owe it to ourselves to learn more and decide how we want to take action. And hey, if Moby says it's cool, it must be. If you want to know more and get more involved, I encourage you to join the discussion in the Net Neutrality affinity group.

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Do As I Say...

Submitted by Holly on Wed, 06/07/2006 - 5:38am

Ruby Sinreich (I adore you!) accused N-TEN of being un-web savvy the other day in her post about our new ED, Katrin Verclas. I think she's a little right and a little wrong. She's wrong in that we're not un-savvy, we're just a staff of 3, which makes it hard to prioritize a lot beyond the "what I need to get done to make it through the day."

She's right in that it just shouldn't matter. I've been running around the Bay Area opining to any friend who can still stand to listen to me about how the world has changed and we better wake up and smell the globalization, and to borrow from

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Laziness and Democracy Don't Mix

Submitted by Holly on Tue, 06/06/2006 - 12:47pm

Many thanks to Allison Kozak at EarthJustice for bringing this to me and the N-TEN discuss list. It seems that Congress is up to no good again. This time it's the House, instead of the senate, that's trying to tinker with their email system and block any email sent from a third party. Essentially, under the new system, users will have to verify their humanity by answering a question or typing in a series of letters before their email will be delivered to it recipient.

It's insulting for several reasons:

1. It reeks of laziness, and democracy deserves better. If you're an elected official, it's your job to figure out what to do with consitutent communications. Sweeping them under the rug

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Glad to meet you...sort of

Submitted by Holly on Tue, 06/06/2006 - 8:50am

I ran across this site the other day on the TechCrunch blog. fo.rtuitio.us is another of what I like to call the "Serendipity Rocks" Web 2.0 tools. It's only a mildly interesting concept on its own. (I haven't met anyone I consider cool yet - and I think I have a pretty low bar there.) But I think it could be a very interesting