The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini has created a stir. Patrick's arguing that right rooters, or members of the conservative online class, need to quit trying to be the next George Will and focus on producing more and better Karl Roves; I don't know, I thought Jim Brokaw Schieffer did a decent job moderating the presidential debate. Wait, those were three separate events?; The Google Earth team and the University of Richmond are offering up a bird's-eye look at how the U.S. has voted in presidential races going back to Ronald Reagan's Electoral College trouncing of Jimmy Carter; and a good helping more.

Will bloggers armed with cheap, high-tech tools change the news, or will the age-old rule that the closer you get to the powerful, the harder it is for you to criticize them, hold? This week at the Democratic convention we're seeing a new model in action, the Qik-powered videoblogger, but the results are still unclear.

I spent a few minutes in the future last night, having a late dinner at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica with Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv and Loic le Meur of the start-up Seesmic. Both of them are tech pioneers who are working in the emerging world of the world live web. And when they say live, they don't mean simply the part of the web that gets updated often, otherwise known as the blogosphere and the news-sphere. They mean the direct streaming of live events onto the web, along with live feedback from audiences that are highly networked.