Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

No one could have predicted…

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

You are here: Home / z-Retired Categories / Previous Site Maintenance / New Plan for Live Blogging

New Plan for Live Blogging

by | 52 Comments

This post is in: 

DougJ and I have decided to purchase a subscription to a live blogging service for the rest of the election. The goal is to buy something that will stay up during the few hours when the site can’t handle the traffic.

Right now, we’re looking at CoverItLive. If you want to see an example of how it works, Slog uses it for all its live events. I’ve used it before for debates in the race blog I ran a few years ago and it worked fine, and was actually a lot of fun. As you can see if you click that link, the blog looks exactly the same, everyone sees the ads, etc., but the back-and-forth takes place in a CoverItLive window. The whole conversation is archived so you can play it back the next day.

You can still use your same commenting handles to participate, and we’ll make sure any front pager who wants it will have full access. We’ll have a test run sometime before the VP debate, probably early next week.

If anyone has used an alternative to CoverItLive, please let us know in the comments.

Reader Interactions

52Comments

  1. 1.

    arguingwithsignposts

    The only thing I’ve heard that does similar is scribblelive. I’ve seen a few places use it, but I’ve never used it myself. CiL is pretty good.

  2. 2.

    Soonergrunt

    I wouldn’t want to do any extra liveblogging myself, but I’ll be happy to help with the cost of that. Shoot me an email and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

  4. 4.

    PeakVT

    I have a related request: can someone add some twitter widgets for everyone who tweets on nights like these to the site somewhere? They could simply be placed on a static page like the Lexicon so that the current site layout doesn’t have to be redesigned. That would be better than the sidebar anyway, because such widgets tend to be cpu hogs.

  5. 5.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    Sounds like an opportunity to ask to have it paid for, rather than you guys funding it yourselves. I suspect plenty of us would pay a little bit to have the site up.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    Maybe it’s changed in the last couple of years, but I can remember following some heavy-traffic events on sites using CoveritLive and they didn’t always do very well under heavy load. The one that comes to mind is a couple of tech sites doing liveblogs of the iPhone 4 announcement ~2 years ago. Just something to look into before shelling out any money.

    And I second the suggestion of doing a fundraiser. I’d happily toss in some bucks.

  9. 9.

    Keith G

    Thanks for your efforts looking into this. One thing about the site last night I thought it was a perfect metaphor for what was going on in Denver.

  10. 10.

    WereBear

    Sounds good! I saw the debate pattern around 20 minutes in, gave up, and fell asleep because I’d been battling this stupid cold/flu thing.

    Sounds like I might have had trouble anyway.

  12. 12.

    Culture of Truth

    I’ve used it before for debates in the race blog I ran a few years ago and it worked fine, and was actually a lot of fun.

    The fact that I immediately thought ‘yeah that does sound like a lot of fun’ suggests I may need to get a life after the election

  14. 14.

    mistermix

    @PeakVT: CoverItLive lets you integrate Twitter streams (or whatever you call them) within CoverItLive so you’ll see what any of us are tweeting at the moment.

    @Soonergrunt: Appreciate the offer. DougJ and I will cover this month. If it becomes a regular thing we’ll have to figure out a way to pay for it.

    @jayackroyd: Sarcasm?

  15. 15.

    Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)

    It sounds good to me, which is too bad, since this wouldn’t be Balloon Juice without somebody finding something to bitch and moan about. So I guess I’ll have to do it. See the following:

    Aw, man, what the fuck? Do you mean that there’s a whole other window to deal with? What the fuck is that? I don’t have time to deal with whole other windows. Shit. What the hell is wrong with you?

  18. 18.

    some guy

    Good Erskine Bowles to everyone, recovered from the Mild vs. Massive Austerity debates last night yet?

  21. 21.

    some guy

    @Chyron HR:

    nope, for a Centrist Obama is doing a heckuva job. This is why the BJ Center-Right Fight Club loves the guy so much. Obama’s plan for austerity sounds so reasonable to them.

  22. 22.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Punchy: Not surprised. Inflation in the healthcare industry was only 4% each of the last three years, as compared to 9% before. The crushing regulation of being required to take care of the insured is killing them.

  24. 24.

    some guy

    Pierce’s hammer meets the nail, square on the head:

    What you saw, I think, anyway, was the end product of the president’s consuming naivete as regards the American political process, as well as the end product of thirty years of a Democratic Party that has slid so far to the center-right that a Democratic president found himself arguing with a “severely conservative” Republican candidate over the issues of how much the Democratic president had cut out of the budget, how many regulations he’d trimmed, how much more devoted to the middle-class-kick-in-the-balls Simpson-Bowles “plan” he is, and how he would “reform” Social Security and Medicare — and, frankly, a Democratic president losing some of those arguments to his left.

  25. 25.

    some guy

    speaking of Twitter, could not access either tbogg or Pierce’s feeds during the debate, so not sure how effective that route will be.

  26. 26.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @some guy:
    @Chyron HR:

    Actually, what some guy thinks Obama is being terrible at is a far left Democrat. But since that’s not something that gets you elected president, there’s no real contradiction between your statement and his.

  27. 27.

    martha

    CiL works really well. Sites here in WI use it for sports related things (the Packers and Badgers!) as well as for coverage of all the Walker-related hearings/protest events last year and it worked really well. And the integration of the Twitter feeds was cool too.

  28. 28.

    jayackroyd

    @mistermix: Dead serious, Mistermix. It’s amazing the way people here pull together to make things happen, from saving pets, to working out a way to make a live blog work when Cole (correctly, IMO) doesn’t want to build out his server capacity for these infrequent peaks.

    And the way people can let their freak flags fly, ftm.

  29. 29.

    some guy

    Willard Romney, “opponent” of Wall Street Banks

    Barack Obama, “defender” of spending cuts and deficit reduction.

    America, 2012. if this is the way the BJ Center Right Fight Club thinks we will win this election they need to “wake the fuck up” as Samuel Jackson would say.

  30. 30.

    General Stuck

    DougJ and I have decided to purchase a subscription to a live blogging service for the rest of the election.

    My suggestion is to get a permanent subscription and drop this motherfucking dead horse of a blog platform like the lead weight it is. We been dealing with this shit for 5 years, and any number of repairs and reconstructions, and it is still fucked up. The blog owner doesn’t want to fix it, cause it only happens during high traffic events. Well, yea, those are the most important times, and why they are high traffic. duh.

  33. 33.

    General Stuck

    @raven:

    and yet here you are

    Brilliant observation. But I do renounce my comment above, from really not giving as much of a shit as it sounded. My apologies, Mr. Cole. Carry on.

  34. 34.

    kd bart

    In the end, the most important thing to come out of last night’s debate is Mitt Romney’s willingness to kill, mount and stuff Big Bird.

  35. 35.

    General Stuck

    @kd bart:

    In the end, the important thing to come out of last night’s debate was the expectation of too many people that Barack Obama didn’t dunk as many balls as they paid were entitled to see.

    That and the murder of Big Bird.

  37. 37.

    Culture of Truth

    and you though Oscar was grouchy before

    I mean he already lives in a garbage can

  41. 41.

    Culture of Truth

    “Of course Mitt Romney wants to eliminate PBS. Sesame Street teaches children the basic math to see that his plan is a fraud”

  42. 42.

    dmsilev

    One of the tabloids around here had the headline this morning of “Main Street, Wall Street, Sesame Street”. A lot of people have fond feelings towards Big Bird.

  43. 43.

    mistermix

    I looked at the Scribblelive site and the amount of usage we’d need (more than 3 “seats”) is a “custom” plan which involves talking to a salesperson, negotiating pricing, blah blah fuckety blah. Seems like a decent product but I don’t have the bandwidth to do that plus I hate that kind of non-transparency.

  45. 45.

    ExurbanMom

    I like CoverItLive. Have seen it used for many different types of events, it is robust, it integrates twitter, and is easy to use. It’s a good plan.

    One awesome feature is the time stamping of comments, so you can quickly scroll to the point, say, in a debate where a particular zinger was thrown, and read the responses to it. It’s good stuff and a good solution for this blog on debate days and election night.

    And it archives, so you can go back and read it later.

  47. 47.

    Maude

    There’s always an IRC. Oil Drum had one during the BP spill. I think Ruckus was on there at that time.
    It is instant and free.
    I will be here and Twitter.
    I don’t have much to say during the debate and I like replying to Bloomberg.

  49. 49.

    MazeDancer

    CoverItLive works well. Have enjoyed it live tweeting entertainment events. It is, indeed, much fun. But it is wild and furious. And not everyone will enjoy the speed of the stream.

    But at least it will be something. Thanks for thinking of it. If it goes into action, funding will happily be kicked in by many.

    The three potential down sides of it are:


    – Different identities.
    Many of us do not have matching Twitter handles and Balloon-Juice commenter names. Some us don’t even Tweet at all. So it won’t include everyone. And you won’t recognize everyone it does include

    – Hashtag coherence
    Choosing a particular and easy BJ hashtag will be needed. This also creates its own back-up to the back-up, because one can also search the BJ Hashtag on Twitter and see all the tweets.

    – Trolling spam attack
    Moderating a big CoverItLive stream is also a full time job. If it’s too open – like anyone using the hashtag is automatically added – well, red tide could roll. (And FYI, Red State uses it for some of their event coverage)

    Think it is also possible to limit who can participate and show up on the CoverItLive screen. Have seen ones that were just the “panel”, not the audience. That it can just be front pagers or specific live blog volunteers. That will cut down on conversation, but, again, at least it will be something. And no red spam.

    Can’t hurt to test it. Think CoverItLive even offers a test option.

    Is there a sports event or TV show or something that would normally be an open thread, that, instead, gets no open thread, just instructions on CoverItLive, that can be a test run of BJ CoverItLive? If that works, then could do further test on the Veep debate.

  50. 50.

    Violet

    Question about CoverItLive: Do you have to sign up? Do they harvest your email account? If we have to provide an email account to them, does it have to be the same one we use here?

  51. 51.

    Anne Laurie

    Thank you, MisterMix (& DougJ) — I am very glad to be able to cede the front page for the next debate(s). And if you change your mind, I’m in to help cover the costs, or whatever back-of-the-curtain scutwork might be required.

  52. 52.

    Pseudonym

    I posted a comment in a different thread about server performance, but anyways, also, too. CoverItLive looks annoying if it actually requires one to sign up for a new account. Something that could optionally accept Google/Twitter/Facebook accounts via OpenID or whatnot would be nice. It sounds like a lot of users are willing to offer tech advice. I’d recommend hiring a WordPress performance guru to audit/optimize the system regardless of whether you switch to another platform for events like the debates.

Comments are closed.