BuzzMachine

Rudy’s running

: Guliani clearly had too much fun being before a cheering crowd again. He will run for office soon. I hope.

Cleaning up the mud

: Leonard Witt says this is one way to clean up campaign mud: The St. Pete Times withdraws the endorsement of a slinging candidate and endorses his opponent.

Cell phone, cell phone, in my purse, who’s the fairest in this verse?

: SmartMobs says women in Britain use cell phones to check their hair, makeup, and — it being Britain — teeth.

– 20 percent of mobile users send snaps of themselves in new outfits to friends to see if they like them.

– 18 per cent take pictures of shoes or clothes on display for the same reason.

– 5 per cent take pictures of snappy dressers that they see on the high street to copy their style.

– 15 per cent frequently pull out their camera-phones to photograph the sides and backs of their hair,

– 10 per cent use their camera-phones as a mirror to check their make-up.

– 4 per cent even resort to getting the phone out in the middle of a restaurant after dinner – to check their teeth.

Vlogging the convention

: Folks from Unmediated are going to get new forms of video of the convention using Shawn Van Every’s neat technology tonight.

I’m moving to Amsterdam

: HotSpot Amsterdam just went up, promising to spread wi-fi access across the entire city at reasonable rates. [via EditorsWeblog]

McGreevey, the sequel

: The attorney for Golan Cipel said he would not file suit against almost-ex-Gov. McGreevey. This could still turn into criminal investigations into (a) whether Cipel did or did not try to blackmail McGreevey and (b) whether McGreevey violated the law hiring Cipel. It’ ain’t over until the skinny guy sings.

When blogs help… and hurt

: You won’t be surprised to hear that I agree with half of this John Podhoretz column and disagree with the other half. John praises blogs for opening up media — that’s the half with which I disagree — and he uses as evidence of bloggie goodness the Swift Vets story. Of course, I disagree with that. I would hate to think that mudslinging — whether the mud is the Swifties’ snipes or Moore’s or those who went after Bush’s military record — is our proudest moment in this new medium. It’s not. In any case, John as interesting things to say, so I quote:

I’ve been listening to mainstream-media types talk about the terrible threat posed to the news business by one new phenomenon or other since I began my career 22 years ago. The complaint is invariably, and drearily, the same: Whatever is new is bad because it supposedly lowers the historically high standards of the mainstream media.

The last two years in particular have seen the explosion of a new medium

Of French hostages and headscarves

: The irony is downright tragic: The French refuse to support the war in Iraq and yet Iraqi terrorists kidnap two French journalists anyway because the country bans Muslim headscarves. Both French decisions were wrong, in my book, but, of course, that’s no reason to offer anything other than support to the hostages and their nation.

And I also offer this hope: That the French learn a lesson from this: There is no sense in cozying up to terrorists and in forgetting who your allies should be. To

the terrorists, all of civilization is an enemy… and that includes you, France.

: UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan said it better than I could (of course):

One can only hope that Paris gets the message. There is no escaping this fight. It is civilization or Jihadism. We can and should debate tactics; but the sides are clear enough.