Essentially, this is an open-protocol that could move real-time conversation away from Twitter, or at least give it some competition. Read Write Web understands and explains the whole thing better than I do.

Dave is obviously pretty jazzed: “It’s pretty amazing. I feel about the same way as I felt when the NY Times RSS feeds came online in 2002.”

Anyway, I just added a new plug-in that makes my WordPress install cloud-enabled. Cool.

This “new media” Iowa journalist wrote old fashioned rings around other young food reporters in traditional media — by practicing self examination without self indulgence and by teaching readers about his subjects.

Two things to look at: my other blog, which Mr. Duncan mentioned in the citation, and “A Pig in Three Parts,” a multimedia package about raising, slaughtering and eating pigs.

I’m not sure what that says about the state of food writing in Iowa that I was so named, but I’m honored.

The nicest A1 I saw was from Mr. Obama’s hometown tabloid, the Chicago Sun-Times. Simple. The Des Moines Register‘s was simple and effective and I’m a fan of not trying to make the headline do too much. We know who Barack Obama is and what his victory means. No need to do too beat readers over the head with your, um, hed. The Gazette‘s Yes, He Did! is too obvious (we saw tons of Yes, He Did and Yes, He Can heds today, best to avoid the cliche). The layout is striking, though. The Press-Citizen was apparently in a Star Wars mood after CNN’s Princess Leia hologram. Or perhaps those on the universal desk there are too young to know better remember the original movie’s full title (it was 1977, after all). The Sioux City Journal again tries to do too much. No need to root. Understated heds only, please. The worst was from the Weatherford (Oklahoma) Daily News. Simply awful. The Rockdale (Georgia) Citizen was awful, too; It led with a dog story (albeit a dog-attacks-school-kids story).