Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down over 1,100 Nazi war criminals following World War II, then spent the rest of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died at age 96 today.

An architect by profession, the murder of 89 members of his family by the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust took him down a different road in life.

Aside from Eichmann, among the 1,100 Nazi war criminals Wiesenthal helped bring to justice, were the commanders of Treblinka and Sobibor, and also the Nazi who arrested Anne Frank, Karl Silberbauer.

Barukh Ah-ta Adonai Elohaynu Melekh HaOlam Dayan HaEmet

Technorati Tags: Simon Wiesenthal

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Garrison Keillor was on Al Franken’s September 19, 2005 show, and for the first time he seems publicly acknowledge the ‘Prairie Ho’ with Rex Sorgatz. Here’s a quick audio clip where Franken’s ask him about it in a tongue and cheek manor.

I do find it funny that a man, who has made his living from parody of public figures and institutions, including their names, has now served papers on someone doing the same.

Someday, we are going to need to deal with the right to protect trademarks, name and likeness vs. first amendment, fair use, and the right to parody public figures and institutions in the digital age.

Technorati Tags: Fair Use, Parody, Al Franken, Garrison Keillor, Trademark, Rex Sorgatz

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Bennett Haselton of Peacefire just tried sending an e-mail to Peacefire newsletter subscribers (confirmed opt-in, etc.) It had been awhile since the last e-mail had been sent to the members of the newsletter list. Bennett found by checking his own Hotmail address that the Peacefire newletter list was being blocked as Bulk Mail.

Bennett filled out the questionnaire, Documentation for Bulk or Duplicative E-mail. At first all Bennett got was an automatic response saying that their mail would continue to be blocked as Junk Mail unless they paid a fee of $1,375 or $625 for non-profits to join The Bonded Sender Program.

Bennett replied and did manage to get into a dialog with an actual human, but he reiterated that under Hotmail’s current anti-spam system, there was nothing Peacefire could do except pay the money.

A few people believe Bennett was given inaccurate information. i.e You are *not* required to be part of Bonded Sender program (now owned by Return Path) to send e-mail into Hotmail. However, unless you have SPF records setup and proper reverse DNS entries, you will encounter deliverability problems.

Unless a person has run newsletters for a large company or is very technical, the chances that they can set up SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records and reverse DNS entries are pretty small.

There is an answer for this problem and it is called RSS. The problem for Peacefire and others who would benefit from this are two fold; first, not enought people who are non geeks know how to use RSS and second, going to RSS will force the readers of the newsletters to re-subscribe.

The first problem can be addressed by those of us who use RSS for News, Podcasts and Video blogs. We can teach our friends and family how to use RSS. Also, developers need to make subscribing to and using RSS easier.

The second problem, getting people to re-subscribe, is a harder because you are already locked out of what used to be the best way to communicate to your community. Hoping they will visit your web site and find out about the RSS feed is chancy, since many went to the e-mail newsletter so they did not have to go to the web site regularly. Plus, many people will just be too lazy to subscribe to the RSS feed-even if they know about it and know how to use it.

The time to start moving to RSS feeds as your newsletter is now, before you need it. Even if you can afford to pay fees or if you are technical enough to get around the gates of services like Hotmail to reach people in your community, you should offer an RSS feed. Things like distributing large audio or video files as attachmments that are off limits with free email services like Hotmail are easily accomplished with an RSS feed. Hotmail is not alone, other services like AOL and Earthlink plan on having similar policies which will force senders to pay to reach mail users or have the tech skills to over come the road blocks.

As an aside, the top entry on Peacefire’s blog speaks critically about Microsoft and their support of the Chinese government’s censorship policies. This entry is dated June 20, 2005.

Technorati Tags: E-mail, Hotmail, Microsoft, SPF, RSS, Bonded Sender Program

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Be sure to check out the Alternative Source podcast, found at alternativesourceradio.com. My buddy Frank Sennett each week gives a rundown of the best stories from the alternative press.

In less than 5 minutes you can be SMRT and amused. Don’t forget to tell your firends to subscribe too.
Only if we could get more people in DC to listen.

Technorati Tags: Podcast, Frank Sennett, Alternative Source, Alternative Press, News

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The Google Blog Search Beta is now open for you enjoyment.

This came the way of Chris Pirillo

Technorati Tags: Google, Blog Search, Chris Pirillo

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