Hard on the heels of deploying a passel of new applications, Google has debuted its blogsearch, which might be the opening shot in the conquest of blog-indexing by brand-name web companies. That, however, is only a minor theater in a much more ambitious campaign by Google.

A follow-up to our earlier post about DIA community member Andrew Rasiej: he lost his primary election yesterday, though he claimed philosophical victory in his speech.

Front and center among DIA's campaign users now: Tim Kaine,
currently in the heat of a tight race for Governor of Virginia.
It figures to be the highest-profile ballot in the country this Nov. 8.

Just returned from the New York regional NTEN -- a very low-key
event. Next month's Washington
NTEN
figures to be a much livelier affair. Washington doesn't outdo
Gotham in much, but the pokey capital is as thick with nonprofits as it
is with marble statues and senatorial sinecures.

The New York event was structured around
the vanilla theme, "How to Know When You're Succeeding:
Technology Tools to Measure What Matters." NYU's Paul Light gave
a great morning keynote. Yours truly perpetrated one-fifth of a speed-geek session during Speed Dating for Databases.

Given the way FEMA has covered itself with ignominy the past week, it's hardly a shock to find that you can't file a disaster relief claim on its web site without Windows/Internet Explorer.

Interoperability between browsers and operating systems isn't
always a cinch -- as one small but occasionally nettlesome example that
affects our own system, the Safari browser lacks the "hooks" necessary
to operate most online WYSIWYG editors -- but sheesh.  FEMA is
running a line of code on its page that essentially asks, "are you
using IE?" and only delivering the page if the answer is yes.  The
page works fine if you configure another browser to claim that it's Explorer.

Love MoveOn or hate them -- they've posted a free housing database
(co-sponsored by a variety of frequent MoveOn partners, including
JohnKerry.com which never deployed its treasury to better effect) to
match folks
in needs of lodging with people volunteering their spare bedrooms,
basements, dens, and fold-out couches across the U.S. As of this
writing, it claims 115,537 beds. No political litmus test
required.

The Red Cross, meanwhile, has this database to match separated relatives with no way to get in touch, and of course, you can search for your local chapters to volunteer or donate blood. They're co-sponsirng katrinahousing.org, another hub for donated rooms. Air America Radio has opened a public voicemail system for the disconnected.

Nicked from kos.

One
wonders what to say about Katrina from a niche blog like
this. The scale of the catastrophe beggars description; the
dunderheaded relief effort scourges the conscience.

Yesterday morning,
a good friend who happens to be a Republican said to me,
quavering with emotion, that she was so furious with the Bush
administration's indifferent response that she was considering voting
Democratic in 2006.

T-Mobile
half-accidentally creates a delicious viral campaign, and then can't
resist ham-fistedly smashing it up out of a compulsive need for
control.

August 31 is Blog Day!

I never know what to get people for these.

• The unparalleled Robin Good.
  If you're going to read just one blog on the future of
  technology and communications, this is the one. If you're going
  to read several, well, you might just start here and never leave.
• It's not only development people who'll love Wealth Bondage's literate, subversive, omnivorous take on the philanthropic world and beyond.
• The Progressive Review
  has been a luxuriant jungle of old-school reporting and frenetic
  information exchange since before blogs were blogs, and before the the Internet was the Internet. Feels like
  visiting Bugs Raplin's
  apartment. Bonus for D.C. readers: has forgotten more about
  District politics, local color and home rule than you'll ever know.

Now this is a fantastic Flash animation.

My only question: what next? I'm pumped full of energy ... how can I (productively) discharge it?

A couple of really interesting stories have run in the last few days
on blogging's rapid blastulation in Egypt, a country currently in the midst of an
election campaign in which the strongman is fated to win 98% of the
vote.

Talk about online democracy. We have monkeyshine
flamewars in the U.S. over whether pro-war bloggers shouldn't be
signing up for service. Blogging dissension in a place like Egypt is signing up for service, the sort liable to deploy to an oubliette for the best part of one's youth.

The excellent Alternet, a DIA community member, logs a Christian Science Monitor story on the phenomenon here.