Archive for January, 2008
New Impressive Somebody’s Talking About Portals
Posted on Jan 31, 2008 08:01:01 PM
Today, Bless you, Steve Rubel. Interesting point that the big guys probably still win even if they can’t build a competing social network. I get Facebook notifications through GMail, for example. (Source: Traffick)
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Software U.s. Diners Opting For Fast Over Casual
Posted on Jan 30, 2008 10:15:43 PM
Admin wrote: Applebee’s is undertaking a rebranding campaign in the hopes of drawing Americans away from the drive-thru and back to the table.
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Scripting Tasha Explains Library 2.0 For You
Posted on Jan 30, 2008 12:15:22 PM
Admin wrote: Menasha Public Library Director Tasha Saecker’s Wednesday afternoon presentation, Library 2.0: The Movement Explained, was one of those lively, inspiring conference events that make you walk out thinking to yourself, “I’m sure glad I caught that one!”She was incredibly engaging and very persuasive in her promotion of this new, customer-oriented approach to library services. The term is a spinoff of Web 2.0, the subject of another breakout session at this conference and, as Tasha explains it, “simply means making your library space - both physical and virtual - more interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs.”Library 2.0 represents a dramatic departure from the way some of us have traditionally done library service, which explains why we may be reluctant to embrace it, she said. But ultimately, it offers perhaps the best opportunity for librarians to attract more users and make our libraries the community hubs they are meant to be.Simply defined, Library 2.0 is two-way communication between libraries and the communities they serve. “It’s a way of inviting input from the public … and a lot of us aren’t all that used to doing that.” It requires flexibility, transparency, openness, decentralized control and participation from all sectors. Common tools include blogs, wikis, instant messaging, email, mashups, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and interactive websites. But she stressed that Library 2.0 goes deeper than new technologies.”It’s more about the theory and philosophy and approach that you take with your staff, your patrons and your community,” she said. “You can do it even if you’re not a techno-geek.”You’re still living in the Library 1.0 world if you: believe that rules rule (i.e. …
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New Scripting Google Maps On Amazon’s Kindle, In Case You Get Lost While Reading
Posted on Jan 29, 2008 09:50:22 PM
Admin wrote:
Was Amazon’s Kindle holding out on us all this time? Turns out, an easter egg has been discovered, and it comes with a bit of interactivity, according to engadget. Access Google Maps with your Kindle. This integration even allows for you to find the nearest gas stations and restaurants, among other custom search options. There’s also a hidden picture viewer and slide show, which should make any types of books with graphics more enjoyable, but back to this Google Maps integration. Why?
As Mark and countless others pointed out, a major downfall (at least for this self-selecting, techie demographic) is the lack of interactivity that the Kindle provides. And I’m sorry to say that the inclusion of Google Maps doesn’t make it interactive enough to warrant all the hubbub.
The other question I’m dying to get an answer to is why Amazon didn’t advertise the images and the Google Maps integration. Google Maps seemed to be a pretty big selling point for the iPhone, which also happens to look way cooler than the Kindle, but still. Is this just a feature that the Kindle included, but decided not to promote, for whatever reason?
Perhaps it’s not finished, or maybe further integration with Sprint’s EVDO will come in the near future, making the Kindle a far more useful device and more easily justified in terms of Google Maps integration. Or maybe Google thought the Kindle’s non-backlit, color-lacking screen was too simple for even its minimalistic attitude, and told Amazon to keep mum on this one. Whatever the case, Google Maps on Kindle still won’t do you any good in Montana.
New Updates Microsoft And Viacom Form $500 Million Partnership
Posted on Jan 29, 2008 03:40:40 AM
Today, Programming from Viacom’s MTV, Comedy Central and BET cable networks, and Paramount studio will be distributed on MSN and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
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Updated Common Craft Love
Posted on Jan 28, 2008 02:30:10 PM
Today, I recently sent this email to a library looking for some gentle 2.0 explanations. Of course Common Craft came to mind instantly. What would you add to the list? I tried to make it a universal set, so please feel free to use these at your next meeting.—-There is a wonderful website called Common Craft that I have found invaluable when explaining all of this wacky 2.0 stuff. You can find their quick (around 4 minutes for the longest one) videos here: http://www.commoncraft.com/Here are some discussion questions you may want to use after watching each video.Blogs - http://www.commoncraft.com/blogsWhat would you, or the library do with a blog?Do you think your / the library’s blog would inspire patron comments? If not, what would you do to create the inspiration? (sometimes a simple criticism will inspire months of conversation. see http://www.libraryforlife.org/blogs/lifeline/?p=2752)How would you answer Lee’s (the guy narrating) questions?Wikis - http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-englishCan you think of a time when a wiki would have been useful for a committee, family trip, etc.?Do you still think wikis are scary? Will you try it anyway?RSS - http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_englishHow many sites do you visit daily using the “old, slow way”?Are you already using RSS? Which reader do you use?Social Networking - http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networkingDo you belong to any social networks?Do you think they’re just a way to clog patron computers?Have you visited any of the sites mentioned in the video? Were they useful?Social Bookmarking - http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-englishHow long is your bookmarks list on desk?Can you see a collaborative use for this kind of bookmarking?Is this just another 2.0 thing that you won’t really use? (this one seems to have a bit more trouble with buy in.) (Source: blog.skagirlie.net)
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New Scripting Blue Dot Is Now Faves: New Name, New Features
Posted on Jan 27, 2008 04:27:02 PM
Admin wrote:
Blue Dot, the social bookmarking site that launched over a year ago amidst the crowding space of social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon, has undergone a pretty big overhaul. For one, it’s changed its name to Faves.com. Note the ridding of a .us domain name to the more widespread use of a .com. This is the primary reason for changing the name. All of your information, including your sign in and account info, remains intact, but you will need to update your browser toolbar buttons. Grab the new one here.
Some of the other changes on the new site include the ability to subscribe to Topics, in addition to paying attention only to your friends’ bookmarks. This should give you a more expansive look at what’s going on in the bookmarking community, and hopefully break you out of your inner-network shell to find sites you may not have come across otherwise. Building on its existing custom options for things like your profile page, Faves has a personalized home page that you can modify in order to make the most important content more prominent for your own use.
And drawing from functions we often see on feed readers, Faves has an option that lets you see only the Faves that are new to you. So Faves is keeping track of items you’ve seen before, and presenting you with completely fresh content. In terms of its recommendation ability, I really like the concept of this feature for search and discovery purposes. Bookmarks can now be voted up or down, which takes us back to the community aspects of Faves. Those that you’ve voted on will display on your personal Faves page, and a new Votes tab grants you quick access to the stuff you voted on.
So will all these new changes help Faves better compete with the major players? I really like the incorporation of feed management tools, along with the other ways to manage bookmarks, and leverage the community votes. And while Faves already had a good amount of personalization options, crating more in terms of its content management takes a cue from popular start pages, and is a similar tactic to one that StumbleUpon has recently implemented with its own site. So while the changes may not make it a big contender just yet, it does make the playing field that much more even.
[thanks jeffro2pt0]
Tutorial Digital-rights Conflict Moves To Mobile Phones
Posted on Jan 26, 2008 07:10:03 PM
Admin wrote: For many consumers, the restrictions that companies put on what they can do with their digital content, whether it be music, video clips or pictures, are akin to stipulating that a book you purchase can only be read in your house and cannot be loaned to a friend.
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New Impressive Online Journalism Isn’t An Oxymoron
Posted on Jan 26, 2008 07:40:33 AM
Admin wrote:
We’ve made a fairly conscious decision here at Mashable not to focus on or cover the fiasco that arose from a blogger at Gizmodo when he pushed a button. Perhaps Adam or Pete would have made a different editorial decision, but they were otherwise engaged at the Open Web Awards, and had left Sean, Kristen, Stan, Paul and I in charge in the interim. Chartered with “not burning the place down,” we chatted about the pros and cons of covering the story, and arrived at the unanimous decision that it should probably be best left as a story we let slide by. For one, we usually try not to get mired in the inside baseball that can sometimes occurs in the tech blogosphere, and for another, we all agreed that it is one of those issues where the less attention it received, the better.
Unfortunately, the incident was widely covered and discussed, and has served perhaps as a warning to other large organizations that want either keep the riff-raff of the blogosphere out of their events, or as an example for folks in the Old Media who want to show how what we do isn’t really journalism. Personally, I’d say that neither of those trains of thought really track if you want to use the incident for those purposes, but as time goes on and the details of what happen fade from memory, I’m sure it’ll be used for both.
The reason why I bring it up at all is that I caught an interesting post from techPresident by Micah Sifry today, announcing that the Democratic Party has enumerated in quite specific detail exactly what you must be to qualify as a member of the blogging press if you want to cover the upcoming Democratic Party Convention:
The DNCC will be credentialing one blogger from every state and territory (56 in all), as well as an undetermined number of national bloggers. “We’re looking for people with political impact,” Rosenberg says, adding that bloggers have to demonstrate that by listing their Technorati rank, including at least five links to political posts they’ve written. Only bloggers who have been active for at least six months and have written at least 120 political posts will be considered for the credentials.
I asked Rosenberg about the logistics of the event, and bottom line is come prepared with your own aircard: wifi inside the convention will be spotty at best, due to all the other electromagnetic noise inside the hall. As for whether the bloggers will be seated in the nosebleed section, as they were in Boston in 2004, he said no decisions on seating had been made yet.
I know from personal experience that covering political events as an online journalist can be a dicey affair, and more on that in a minute, but I can’t help but wonder if the DNC announcement is somehow related to the CES incident. The announcement comes hot on the heels of the decision to bar the blogger from future CES events, and the requirements virtually assure that no bloggers from secondary or tertiary genres to politics will be on hand to cover the event. The connection, on the other hand, could be in my own mind - but I have a gut feeling it isn’t.
Still, I have no plans to berate the Gizmodo blogger for doing what he did. It’s high time that the outside world got savvy on how the blogosphere works, and started implementing some smart standards on what constitutes an appropriate member of the New Media for coverage of their event (and it is also important to note that if CES had instituted industry translated standards as used by the DNC, Gizmodo would likely still have fallen under the category of allowed online journalists).
How About Those Requirements, Though?
These requirements are quite stiff, and while they do indicate a certain level of technical savvy on the part of the Dems, I can say that they are a bit unfair, and tend to favor the liberal side of the political blogosphere, thus likely ensuring that positive PR will be made primary in the coverage of the event.
By that, I mean: take a scan of the top political blogs in the Technorati top list. You’ve got HuffPo at 4. Daily Kos at 11. ThinkProgress at 25. Crooks and Liars at 30. You have to get all the way down to 39 before you hit something resembling a conservative blog (Drudge Report) - and in the case of Drudge, the term “blog” is used loosely.
Clearly, using Technorati as a measure of qualification is a bit discriminatory. It isn’t that there aren’t any popular conservative blogs, but that conservative blogging is decentralized, ironically, where as liberal blogging is concentrated on a few sites. Hundreds of writers can be found at HuffPo and Daily Kos. As such, those sites are naturally going to be read more than conservative team blogs, where the numbers are rarely more than a handful of writers.
The other requirements mentioned by Sifry seem reasonable, though 120 posts may be a bit high if a blog is being written by a single individual. None the less, if the judging is done on even a moderately impartial basis in terms of the politics, I’d say that it is a fair system on the whole.
The Requirements are Certainly Stiffer than Those of the Secret Service!
I covered for RantMedia the 2004 Presidential Debates when they were held down at the University of Miami. The event was surprisingly easy to crash, especially for someone like me. My personal blog has always had a small core group of viewers, only occasionally getting widespread readership on hot stories, and my radio show at the time only covered politics as a secondary subject. I literally printed up my press credentials in my one bedroom apartment a month before the debate and had Art Lindsey, my friend and program director for RantMedia, sign them and act as the point of contact for the Secret Service, who did the authentication on the press at the event.
The screening process seemed to be something along the lines of “does he have a criminal record?” and “is he a terrorist?” then “is his driver’s license valid?” then “he’s in.” Once I was in, it was a different story. I was placed in a separate room from the debate where I could view it on closed circuit TV. I was seated next to mostly South American members of the 
press, and interestingly enough, Juan Williams of Fox and NPR. A connection to the Internet was available, assuming I had a spare $600 payable to Geek Squad. The only highlight of the evening was the quick appearance by Karl Rove, from whom I wasn’t able to get to answer a single question due to the mob of reporters around him.
Political Events are Tough
And indy journalists are second class citizens. Most of these events have all the good coverage reserved for the major networks in an area that is actually officially titled “Spin Alley.” You have to be an event sponsor to be allowed access to the area, and in political events, the bouncers at the gate are the same folks responsible for protecting the president, so it isn’t as easy as sneaking into a Paris Hilton party on shaky credentials (something that’s quite a bit easier to do, trust me).
It will be interesting to see how the round of formal political events go this year, and how they’re covered. The political blogosphere is definitely in the adolescent phase of development, to put a psychological term on it. They’ve matured enough to know the ropes a bit, but definitely not enough to say that they’re a full on replacement for major media coverage. I’m as anxious to hear reports as to what the New Media experiences are like at these events as I am to see how this very interesting presidential race turns out.
Tutorial Ditch The Resolutions
Posted on Jan 25, 2008 09:35:08 PM
Admin wrote: Welcome to January, the stern sister to December. While December is about gift giving and celebration, January arrives like the dreaded morning after bearing with it bill payments, back-to-work anxiety and of course the latest batch of New Year’s resolutions: “I will lose weight, build up my Linked-In network, post to my blog twice a week, go to the gym, and meet my billable hours target.” There has got to be a better way to herald the New Year then marching to the orders of our inner drill sergeant.I’m a professional business coach, goals and resolutions are the heart of my business, so trust me when I tell you, this year ditch the resolutions and abandon the guilt. Life’s too short! Replace all the gloom and puritanical posturing with some first class day dreaming, the kind you did as a kid. What do you want to be when you grow up? There’s always something new to learn, or see, or do. What to you want to get out of 2008? When you are raising your glass to bring in the New Year what do you want to look back on? Compelling and inspiring goals are the key ingredients of a fulfilling and successful professional life. They encourage creativity. They provide the challenge and the meaning that is so easy to lose when life get busy.Goals also help us determine what to invest our time and money on—blogs, social networks, the latest PDA—what’s it going to be? Setting a few goals at the beginning of the year helps us to ensure we stay on top of what’s most important.Daydreaming and goal setting transformed my friend David’s practice. A few years ago he had all the outward trimmings of success: He made partner in his mid-thirties, was happily married with two kids. There was just one problem: he was bored and depressed. He was completely unmotivated. …
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