Kevin: I've often that there is value in helping people see the connections between things. The intersections and inter-relations are very important to understanding the big picture. I'm sure that we'll see more services like this.

Kevin: Interesting concept of pitting liberal and conservative commenters against each other, letting them set the topic and having other commenters vote on who wins. It could be a moderation nightmare, but at the moment, it seems mostly civil, but dominated by liberal commenters.

Kevin: Cory Bergman at Lost Remote has an excellent summary of the Seattle Council debate over the future of newspapers as the Seattle PI is just weeks away from possibly ceasing operations. Cory says: "The vast majority of the discussion missed the point, straying into common misconceptions and old-school thinking about journalism in a new connected world." And he quotes Tracy Record from WestSeattleBlog.com who told the council, "newspapers are a delivery model. What needs saving is journalism, not newspapers."

Kevin: This is well worth a read explaining the investment strategy of Union Square Ventures, well represented on the web by Fred Wilson.

Kevin: I think this post slightly overstates the death of email at least from the data that it quotes. It also seem to conflate the reading of marketing emails with the use of email as a form of communication. Millenials do use email. The stats quoted in the post say it's their second most used form of communication. They just don't respond to email marketing.

Kevin: Very handy if you want to try playing around with their APIs.

SHANGHAI — When Tang Xiaozhao first saw a copy of the pro-democracy petition in her e-mail inbox, she silently acknowledged she agreed with everything in it but didn't want to get involved.