Blogs Are the Light

We are outsourcing our minds to the machines!

2011-08-01T18:50:00.000-05:00

This article makes clear that internet users of today are starting to get better at knowing where to find information than at actually remembering it. I remember saying long ago that schools should be preparing for this change, teaching kids to be digital literates who can quickly parse through volumes of information to find what they need. For better or worse, people now seem to be learning this on their own..!

South park takes on facebook.

2010-04-11T11:22:00.000-05:00

tangentially related to my thesis...

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/267112

Patrick Ruffini :: Radiohead Republicans

2007-11-24T10:22:00.000-06:00

Patrick Ruffini :: Radiohead Republicans

He did some simple sampling of facebook and discerned political involvement and leaning of the facebook crowd. Sounds remarkably similar to study I did during my MA year, although admittedly, that was on a much smaller scale.

Blogging is personal, Traditional media is corporate.

2006-06-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks (among numerous other business ventures), is a really interesting, perceptive guy. This entry from his blog (www.blogmaverick.com), focuses in on the differences between blogs and traditional media:

A blog is media. Its a platform to communicate that can reach anyone within reach of an internet connection. Ive been writing this blog for more than 2 years and that time has allowed me to recognize the difference between a blog and traditional media and why the two will never successfully meet.
In traditional media, you are first defined by your medium. There is some constraint to the physical or digital definition of the medium the content is delivered on or by, that for the most part determines how you are perceived.
There is a cost vs time vs interest vs access series of constraints that determines who your audience is, how you reach them and what they expect of you. Over time, that has evolved our media into very defined roles.
Blogs are different. There really isnt a cost constraint. It costs nothing to create a blog. There are time constraints, but less so than traditional media. Bloggers dont have to publish or show on a schedule. In a nutshell, blogging is personal. Which is really where the paths of blogging and traditonal media diverge. Traditional media has become almost exclusively corporate while blogging remains almost exclusively personal
There in lies the rub. Sure there are bloggers that want to make money from their blogs. Yes there are blogging networks that are corporations that want to make money. They are the infintisimal minority. 99pct of blogs are about what someone has to say. 99 pct of traditional media is about making money. Which is exactly what leads to the resentment between bloggers and traditional media and why blogging on traditional media websites will find it tough to be successful.
I can write about anything. I can write opinion. I can report facts. I can ask questions. I can jump from topic to topic to topic. Sports, the NBA, business, personal experiences, technology, movies, entertainment, hdtv, whatever I want to write about. One minute Im a reporter, communicating what happened and where, the next Im an opinion columnist. The next Im op-ed, punching or counter punching someone in traditional media, just to see if they can take a punch as well as they can throw one. its all up to me and its fun.My blog is just that. Mine.
Traditional media members cant do any of the above. They get hired for a specific job and they have to do that job. They get hired by a corporation that is most likely public, which means their senior management , the people they ultimately report to, have to put getting the stock price up above all else. That is really what blogging vs traditional media in 2006 has come down to. Bloggers drive blogs, share price drives traditional media. Blogging is personal, traditional media is corporate.
Which is exactly why blog readership is going up, while traditional media is consolidating, if not contracting. Traditional media goes to work, bloggers live their work.

Helio Launches Into MySpace Orbit

2006-05-11T20:51:00.000-05:00

Helio Launches Into MySpace Orbit

WOW. This will change everything. A Korean phone carrier has coupled with some internet groups, including Myspace, to help us further integrate our on- and off-line worlds. This wil certainly make its way to America. And it will take off like wildfire.

Facebook becomes a money machine

2006-04-21T18:14:00.000-05:00

Social Networking's Gold Rush

It's only a matter of time...

New MySpace Security Measures

2006-04-21T18:09:00.000-05:00

Instant Classic!

Facebook's on the Block

2006-04-03T18:33:00.000-05:00

Facebook's on the Block

Facebook may get sold!

FT.com / MySpace acts to calm teen safety fears

2006-04-03T12:05:00.000-05:00

FT.com / MySpace acts to calm teen safety fears

“We don’t want to change the fundamental look and feel of the site,” he said. “We do not want users to have any sense that it is corporatised.”

Replace the word "feel" with the word "realize," and you get the truth.

The Physics of Friendship

2006-03-20T23:15:00.000-06:00

The Physics of Friendship

By comparing people to mobile particles randomly bouncing off each other, scientists have developed a new model for social networks. The model fits with empirical data to naturally reproduce the community structure, clustering and evolution of general acquaintances and even sexual contacts.

Applying a mathematical model to the social dynamics of people presents difficulties not involved with more physical – and perhaps more rational – applications. The many factors that influence an individual’s fate to meet an acquaintance and decide to become a friend are impossible to capture, but physicists have used techniques from physical systems to model social networks with near precision.

By modeling people’s interactions based on how particles bounce off each other in an enclosed area, physicists Marta Gonzalez, Pedro Lind and Hans Herrmann found that the characteristics of social networks emerge “in a very natural way.” In a study recently published in Physical Review Letters, the scientists compared their model to empirical data taken from a survey of more than 90,000 U.S. students regarding friendships, and found similarities indicating that this model may serve as a novel approach for understanding social networks.

“The idea behind our model, though simple, is different from the usual paradigmatic approaches,” Gonzalez told PhysOrg.com. “We consider a system of mobile agents (students), which at the beginning have no acquaintances; by moving in a continuous space they collide with each other, forming their friendships.”

After a collision, a particle moves in a different direction with an updated velocity, just as how an individual’s chance of meeting a new person depends on their most recent acquaintances.

At a critical point, the system reaches a quasi-stationary state, for the first time allowing the scientists to reproduce several features of social networks in a single model and in a natural way. Specifically, this technique accurately describes social clustering, the way friendships evolve over time, the shortest path length in a large group, and some features related to group structure.

“With this new framework, we show that specific velocity and collision rules are able to reproduce the statistical and structural features of empirical social networks,” said Gonzalez. ”Therefore, this model seems to have the novelty of bringing together all the previous developments for collision theory with the empirical results of socio-dynamics.”

The scientists were also able to apply this model to describe specific types of contacts to produce a distribution that again closely resembles real-life acquaintances. For example, to separate sexual contacts from all social contacts, the scientists assigned to the sexual contacts an intrinsic property that could then be used to model these distinct networks. In this case, the model reproduced the real sexual contact network found in a tracing study of HIV tests.

Although this particle motion does not literally model human motion, it represents connections among people – and it’s these links that contain the most significance for social networking theories. For example, links can represent the flow of information traveling through a community. By knowing the shortest path, communicators can optimize the information flow and improve productivity in a business. With the ability to determine hot hubs or holes in a community, business managers can identify leaders or points that require an organizational change.

As Gonzalez sees it, statistical physics and human behavioral studies have a history of inspiring each other, which makes physicists’ desire to understand social networks a natural interest.

“As Philip Ball [Nature Editor] remarks,” said Gonzalez, “‘by seeking to uncover the rules of collective human activities, today's statistical physicists are aiming to return to their roots: Social statistics also guided Maxwell and Boltzmann towards the utilization of probability distributions in the development of the kinetic theory of gases – the foundation of statistical mechanics’ (Physica A 314 (2002) 1-4)."

Citation: Gonzalez, Marta C., Lind, Pedro G. and Herrmann, Hans J. System of Mobile Agents to Model Social Networks. Physical Review Letters. 96, 088702 (2006).

By Lisa Zyga, Copyright 2006 PhysOrg.com

isolatr beta

2006-03-14T21:26:00.000-06:00

isolatr beta

blowback from the social networking craze...

BBC NEWS | Technology | Congress 'made Wikipedia changes'

2006-03-14T19:53:00.000-06:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Congress 'made Wikipedia changes'

Interesting...

Demotivators!

2006-02-07T17:00:00.000-06:00

Motivator: Inspire! Motivate! Mock!

TPD Warning about MySpace, Xanga

2006-02-04T11:32:00.000-06:00

Appearing in my hometown paper was this article. I don't know where they find the time. Actually, I do - but not investigating crime! When I was younger, my house was robbed, and through neighborhood chatter I quickly became aware of the people who had stolen my video games, and my mom's heirloom jewelry. The police refused to investigate. I'll assume, now, that they were investigating the "internets" and that blasted "emailing." GET A SACK OF ROCKS AND GO FIGHT CRIME!

Today's freshmen want to lend a hand

2006-01-29T21:29:00.000-06:00

Today's freshmen want to lend a hand

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY
This year's entering college freshmen show "a distinctive and widespread rise" in commitment to social and civic responsibility, a new survey finds, and researchers suggest that the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and Hurricane Katrina played a key role in shaping those attitudes.
Recent college graduate Jeff Kamen, of Buffalo Grove, Ill., collects books from the flood-damaged library at Beth Israel synagogue in New Orleans. Recent college graduate Jeff Kamen, of Buffalo Grove, Ill., collects books from the flood-damaged library at Beth Israel synagogue in New Orleans.
By Jacqueline Larma, AP

"This survey is evidence that last year's natural disasters impacted these freshmen in a significant way," says John Pryor, director of the 40-year-old Cooperative Institutional Research Project Freshman Survey. It is conducted each fall by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

The 2005 survey, released Wednesday, is based on 263,710 students at 385 U.S. colleges and universities and adjusted to reflect the responses of the 1.3 million first-time full-time students who entered four-year colleges last fall.

This year's class exhibited record increases across several related questions, which is unusual, Pryor says, "unless a major event occurs."

Because the Indian Ocean tsunami struck during their high school senior year in December 2004 and Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast as many were starting college, he says, the student responses "could be a reaction to the worst global and national disasters witnessed in their lifetime."

Among results:

• 66.3% said it is essential or very important to help others who are in difficulty, the highest response in 25 years.

• A record 83.2% said they had volunteered at least occasionally during their high school senior year, and 67.3% said there's a good chance they will continue to volunteer at college, also an all-time high.

• 25.6% said it is essential or very important to participate personally in community action programs, up 4.1 percentage points over 2004 and the highest since 1996.

• 33.9% said becoming a leader is essential or very important, up 3.2 percentage points over 2004.

Carol Geary Schneider, head of the Washington-based Association of American Colleges and Universities, encourages schools to build on the opportunity.

"While earlier studies suggest that too few students sustain such commitments into their advanced college years, these new data should encourage educators to redouble their efforts to create new connections between academic study and challenges in larger society," she says.

A number of schools already have leveraged the heightened concern among students. Many colleges, including Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., and McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., organized programs during their winter break in which student volunteered in cleanup efforts in Louisiana.

Numerous colleges are planning similar programs during spring break.

Other findings:

• A decline in support for military spending. In the first survey conducted after 9/11, 45% supported increased military spending; 34.2% supported it in 2005.

• A record low in high school drinking. Fewer than half (43.4%) said they frequently or occasionally drank beer as high school seniors, reflecting a steady drop from a high of 73.7% in 1982.

A false Wikipedia 'biography' - Yahoo! News

2005-11-30T13:58:00.000-06:00

A real thought-provoking piece regarding Wikipedia written by John Seigenthaler, former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s. His Wikipedia entry insinuated that he was an assassin, and possibly responsible for the deaths or Kennedy and his brother. But all of it was crap.

Now Seigenthaler has battled, with little success, to clear his name and confront his accuser. He demands that we stop protecting people who post on the Internet, and argues against the virtue of anonymity. While I agree that what happened to him was wrong, I disagree with his suggested changes.

But it's good food for thought.

A false Wikipedia 'biography'

Internet holds only future for newspapers, experts warn

2005-11-14T21:41:00.000-06:00

Internet holds only future for newspapers, experts warn - Yahoo! News

I'm not surprised, but I'm worried when newspaper conferences discuss the importance of online for gathering digital revenues, apparently leaving unaddressed the potential for information exchange amongst their readers (read: not their financiers)

Web’s never-to-be-repeated revolution

2005-11-08T16:24:00.000-06:00

James Boyle: Web’s never-to-be-repeated revolution

Great article on how the web came to be, and why it wouldn't happen again if it started now.

pre-bib 2

2005-10-30T19:06:00.000-06:00

The stuff I am reading about is pretty cool. I am interested in internet and civic engagement, and so far, here's what I've figured out (scroll to end if you don't care about research):
There's this notion called "social capital" which refers to our involvement with organizations and clubs. Denser social networks are said to be better, because amassed capital is assumed to lead to better welfare. Anyway, a guy named Putnam suggested that America has been losing social capital for the last 50 years (perhaps because we're working more, which would explain how businesses are getting richer!). I think that the internet lends itself to accelerated pluralism, which refers to the idea that we will be more issues-based, individualistic, and understanding of others. This certainly meshes with details held common about our generation: we don't like group work, we're regularly regarded as social libertarians, and we tend not to attach ourselves to two massive political parties (though I'm not going so far as to suggest that will ever change). The internet offers an added bonus, in that it supplements our communicative and information outlets, thus making us more effective and connected. The strong and weak ties we build to each other on facebook, and the increased ease with which we can communicate (text message, facebook message, IM, email, phone call), will lead to greater availability and more multitasking (another thing our generation is famous for). I'm worried about the "digital divide," or the difference between internet users and nonusers, but am comforted to know that poor people and minorities have been found repeatedly to be more aware of free access, and likely to use it. Anyway, to put an end to my rambling...I think things like the facebook are increasing our social bonds, which makes us more effective and/but individualistic, which will have a profound effect on social and political culture, in our lifetime.

But I could be wrong...

For This Group, Snail Mail Is All There Is - New York Times

2005-10-25T10:34:00.000-05:00

For This Group, Snail Mail Is All There Is

"Despite all the talk about an increasingly connected world, the proportion of American adults who have never used the Internet and do not live in an Internet-enabled home has remained almost unchanged since 2002, according to a study recently released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

In 2005, 22% of American adults remained disconnected. In 2002, it was 23%.

"There's a group of Americans who are really hard-core offline, truly disconnected," said Susannah Fox, the author of the report. Ms. Fox said that the truly disconnected were mostly over age 65, and less educated than the rest of the population.

As the influx of new Internet users has slowed, America's online population has become proportionately more experienced. The study found that 79 percent of Internet users have had access for four years or more, compared to 52 percent in 2002.

Wikipedia gets critically analyzed

2005-10-23T22:34:00.000-05:00

The Guardian sent Wikipedia entries to subject experts to get their feedback and rating. Good article, and an interesting question:
Can you trust Wikipedia?

Inside the New World of Listenomics

2005-10-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

How the Open Source Revolution Impacts Your Brands

Too bad this AdAge article will become unavailable in less than 30 days...

With Fewer Paying Up, AOL.com Shifts to Free

2005-10-15T10:46:00.000-05:00

With Fewer Paying Up, AOL.com Shifts to Free - New York Times

The campaign has been in development for months, ever since AOL's parent, Time Warner, decided to shift strategies (again) and offer at no cost much of the content and features that had been available only to subscribers of America Online. The reason is that despite all the elaborate previous changes to the subscription service, paying users continue to flee.

"It's about building AOL's audience to make money through advertising, e-commerce and search in a much bigger way than we're able to when we were focused only on the subscription service," said Kevin Conroy, executive vice president for AOL Media Networks in Dulles, Va.

The Future Of Photojournalism - Forbes.com

2005-10-06T10:09:00.001-05:00

The Future Of Photojournalism - Forbes.com
I'm not keen on giving people an incentive to be spies. This reminds me of 1984, where the kids are part of a group called the spies and earn merit by tattling on crimthinkers, including their parents.

That said, the business models supports this, and I'm sure it will take off.

Media Execs Weigh User-Generated News

2005-10-06T10:09:00.000-05:00

By SETH SUTEL, AP Business Writer2 hours, 1 minute ago

The avalanche of high quality video, photos and e-mailed news material from citizens following the July 7 bombings in London marked a turning point for the British Broadcasting Corporation, the head of its global news division said Wednesday.

Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World Service and Global News Division, told a conference the broadcaster's prominent use of video and other material contributed by ordinary citizens signaled that the BBC was evolving from being a broadcaster to a facilitator of news.

"We don't own the news any more," Sambrook said. "This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public."

Sambrook likened the increasing use of user-generated news material to a sports game in which the crowd was not only invading the field but also seeking to participate in the game, fundamentally changing the sport.

Sambrook was speaking on a panel with other media professionals at a conference on "citizen journalism" organized by The Media Center, a media think tank based in Reston, Va., and hosted by The Associated Press at its headquarters building in New York.

Larry Kramer, the head of digital operations at Viacom Inc.'s CBS unit, said CBS was eager for more feedback from listeners via its newly expanded online presence, but he said the company would keep a "filter" on such contributions rather than allow open posting by users.

The goal was to "treat news more like a loop," Kramer said. "Stories don't end when we post them. ... People respond. We wanted to create a vehicle through which people could respond."

Tom Curley, the president of the AP, noted that the news cooperative has used material such as photos contributed by users for many years, pointing out recent examples including video from the tsunami in Asia and photos from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"This is something we do every day," Curley said. However, the emerging area of citizen-generated news was still in the "first inning," Curley said. "There are lots of opportunities — The audience is growing."

Another member of the opening panel, Farai Chideya, a correspondent for National Public Radio Inc. in Los Angeles and founder of blog called PopandPolitics.com, expressed concern that many big stories may be affecting people who don't have broadband access to the Internet, resulting in a risk that they could be excluded from citizen-generated news.

Chideya said it "breaks my heart" that many poor people and people of color may not be able to participate in the online generation and dissemination of news. The big question, she said, was how to get people "in the caboose of the digital train" involved.

Chideya suggested a "middle ground" where journalists can collaborate with non-journalists, such as distributing tape recorders to people in the area hit by Hurricane Katrina to collect sound, which could then be culled and edited by NPR journalists.

In a keynote speech, former presidential candidate Al Gore, who now runs a cable TV channel that uses user-generated material, railed against the state of television, saying that the growing entertainment focus of newscasts was undermining the country's political dialogue.

"The subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy," Gore said. "I'm trying to work in the medium of television to have a multiway conversation."

Yet even as media outlets seek more input from users, participants on a later panel said those organizations can encounter difficulties when covering their own affairs.

Jessica Coen, editor of the popular media gossip and commentary site Gawker, said CBS News' online user forum Public Eye was falling far short of expectations. Any time a large media outlet tries to launch a blog, she said, "they have to bite their tongues all the time."

___

On the Net:

http://www.mediacenter.org/wemedia05/

The Australian: Google and Sun beat at the gates of Microsoft's PC empire

2005-10-05T17:21:00.000-05:00

Google and Sun beat at the gates of Microsoft's PC empire [October 06, 2005]

GOOGLE, the internet search king, has teamed with veteran Microsoft-hater Sun Microsystems to wrest control of the personal computer from Bill Gates's software colossus.

The possibility of OpenOffice capabilities on the Google Toolbar has observers predicting the end of the software world as we know it.

"They could turn the desktop software market on its head," said IT analyst Bruce McCabe from S2 Intelligence. "It's great for consumers, it could drive price changes at Microsoft," he said.

Media Curmudgeon: FEMA and WEMA

2005-09-27T20:54:00.000-05:00

Media Curmudgeon: FEMA and WEMA

I just commented, when reviewing Esther Thorson's recent paper, that the NYT decision will kill its brand.

Wikipedia attacked by Nazis

2005-09-21T10:42:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia attacked by Nazis

Similar to Google-bombing, Simon Wiesenthal has been Wiki-bombed.

Best Blogs - Forbes.com

2005-09-17T11:24:00.000-05:00

Best Blogs - Forbes.com

A breakdown of best of blogs by category, as compiled by Forbes

Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits

2005-09-15T16:18:00.000-05:00

Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits

Google offers the ability to search blogs. This is separate from their general and news searchhes, which do not search many blogs.

Are blogs fundamentally undemocratic?

2005-09-13T14:40:00.000-05:00

Idea: Conduct a cross-population study of blogs to assess their effectiveness in aiding
critical thinking. Test for affirmations of party line (operant def) or
objections to opposing party's actions. -->Do blogs lead readers to
critically analyze news, or do they reaffirm the beliefs of their readers?

Ebay swallows Skype for at least $2.6 billion

2005-09-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

Ebay swallows Skype for at least $2.6 billion

Playboy interviews Gates

2005-09-11T01:43:00.000-05:00

Bill Gates reflects on the impact of technology on Democracy

Gates shares some of my concerns about educated leaders and how Democracy should work. Later in the article, he talks about the importance of education.

...

GATES: Say the President is making a speech. Everybody in the nation gets to push little buttons to say yea or nay, and gathering all that information so it can be displayed within a second or two is tricky. But it's all within the state of the art. You don't have to be a dreamer to know that the technology will not limit the construction of the information highway.
PLAYBOY: How will being able to respond directly to the president alter our system of government?
GATES: The idea of representative democracy will change. Today, we claim we don't use direct democracy because it would be impractical to poll everybody on every issue. The truth is that we use representative democracy because we want to get an above-average group to think through problems and make choices that, in the short term, might not be obvious, even if they are to everybody's benefit over the long term.
PLAYBOY: Do you agree?
GATES: Yes. When making choices, or setting policies about the economy, education or medicine, society is best served by electing people who are particularly hardworking, intelligent and interested in long-term thinking.
PLAYBOY: You're giving our current elected officials a lot of credit.
GATES: What we have may be less than ideal, but it's still better than direct democracy. Anyway, we'll no longer be able to hide behind the excuse that we don't have the technology to gather the opinions.

The Journalist Behind the Curtain: Participatory Functions on the Internet and their Impact on Perceptions of the Work of Journalism

2005-09-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

The Journalist Behind the Curtain: Participatory Functions on the Internet and their Impact on Perceptions of the Work of Journalism

Through a framework from the sociology of occupations, this study examines the consequences of increasing audience participation in journalism processes. This framework suggests that increased transparency between readers and journalists may weaken the occupation's authority. A weakening of exclusive authority in the eyes of the public may leave the jurisdictional area of journalism vulnerable to rival occupations, such as bloggers. The challenge from this budding activity suggests news audiences have continued to broaden their perceptions of what constitutes news, as findings from this study predict.

Blogs: Two Main Types

2005-09-06T00:05:00.000-05:00

Two types of blogs

5 types of blogs

2005-09-05T23:46:00.000-05:00

5 types of blogs

NOLA Rescue weblog

2005-09-05T23:25:00.000-05:00

NOLA View weblog

A blog of people needing rescue. A good idea, a touching thing to create, and a discomforting thing to read.

Olympics ban athletes from blogging - CyberJournalist.net

2005-08-31T02:33:00.000-05:00

Olympics ban athletes from blogging - CyberJournalist.net

Unless they had a blog beforehand about something dissimilar, olympic athletes cannot have blogs.

The key, not the rug

2005-08-30T16:58:00.000-05:00

I am not opposed to the notion of advertising in media.
In Lee Hills Hall, an engraving says advertising is the key to a free press. However, I think advertising has become more like the rug. I think this because anything the press does that is in any way critical of business causes the rug to be pulled out from under them.

So, I support the key...but not the rug.

Media intervention

2005-08-30T16:19:00.000-05:00

I had a very interesting conversation with my boss today. I was talking about media insitutions, and my fears that business has too much influence over what doesn't get printed/broadcast. He expressed similar concerns, but articulated that their must be some concessions made, or business will take out their ad funding and bankrupt papers. He cited that if GM has a part that might cause problems, is it really worth trying to make people aware if the paper might subsequently have to shut down?

Yes, because it's our fucking media, NOT their fucking media.

First, I don't think that any newspaper gets the predominance of their funds from one advertiser. Second, in an ideal world where information was free and prioritized in accordance of risk of injury/death, need to know, civic duty, etc. (order as you like), I am fairly confident that the risk of 1,000 people dying is more important to society than is the need for GM to make a bit more profit. What's more, I feel that GM should go out of their way to make it known that their vehicle has a defective part, and could cause serious injury. It reminds me of the formula used in Fight Club - if the amount of deaths x average settlement costs less than a full recall, they just don't do one. Sick.

Moreover, I think if media would grow a set of balls (this is assuming they weren't just appendages of business in the first place), they could fight back. If an advertiser took away funds because I ran a factually based story about them, I CONSIDER THAT BIG NEWS, and if I were a managing editor I would gloat about this on the next day's front page. Media institutions belong to society. They lend businesses the right to advertise on them. They exist to serve me information, not for business to serve me hook line and sinker.

They'll play by our rules, or we'll go somewhere else.

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2005-08-30T02:57:00.000-05:00

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I especially liked the underlying reasoning for the use of the term "Invisible Pink Unicorn..."

Citizen Journalism about Hurricane Katrina

2005-08-30T01:32:00.000-05:00

This just came across the desk of the digital missourian...while this is a very sad issue otherwise, I am particularly interested in the length people will go to to communicate, and what limitations such as loss of electricity or a home urge people to do via improvisation...

Of course, I also hope people give to the Red Cross to help said people!

Jeremy my family is in new orleans and they said the local fast food chain krystal burgers has wireless so everyone is racing their. they are only talking via internet right now. everyone is using this site craigslist.com and go to communities or for sale. some heated debate is started about recovery, mops, insurance, etc. that's where she said locals are giving their stories right now.
she said she'll send pictures as soon as she can.
best,
b
oh and,
i just submitted a story she wrote for me but i don't know if it went through. here it is again:

Cynthia Rico, General Manager of Lakewood Country Club, born and raised in the Irish Channel of New Orleans, current resident of Algiers, LA.

I’m really worried right now. I have all my employees right there on the edge of the levee. I told Roland to go to the hospital, but all the hospitals are flooded. Craig’s list is listing the stories. Listing stories and telling people to pray and stuff like that. I have to give my employees cash. They don't have any cash, I know Geraldine doesn't have any cash. It’s the first of the month, they cant get their Government checks and even if they can the banks are going to be closed, so I have to head back tonight to pay them. The roof came off the superdome, and Brian (cousin and officer still in New Orleans says the roof of our house is gone). They tell you to bring your own food in the Superdome and people criticize people for looting, but what else can you do? They can’t pay for the stuff. Who cares anyway? It’ll all go bad anyway. If you can imagine me, Gus, Oscar, Patsy, Xiomara, Maya, my momma, all stuffed into one house with no roof and no electricity. The on!
ly place you can get free internet is the Krystal hamburger shop. We're looking for somebody who has some form of electricity. 750,000 people lost electricity, so you know we’re looking for those 300,000 that have it. We took Mrs. Grace and Barbara in the caravan. Thirteen hours to get what usually takes us three hours. We're going to be driving our car going as fast as we need to go. Isabelle, my partner wants to come back because her ex-husband stayed here and she hasn’t heard from him since last night at nine pm. She should stay here but she won't. My employees didn't even go to the superdome, two of them, their wives are sick, she just had her leg cut off so they had to stay. St. Bernard got it the worst, St. Bernard and Chalmette. Buildings collapsed. Whatever you think, they should just let people come in and take their groceries, nobody can check you out, let everybody take whatever they need to. People are going to be without stuff for months. People are!
on the roofs of their houses in the ninth ward because the pumps brok
e. Their houses are under five to six feet of rising water, because pumps are failing. We really are lucky it just didn't destroy the whole city. They don't have electricity so they can't charge their cell phone. People are charging their phones in their car. It'll be a month before we get electricity back. No schools, everything is cancelled. That coffee shop in city park, plantation coffee house, is under water. The first floor of East Jefferson hospital is completely under water. Well I’ll send photographs as soon as I get home. I just hope we’re civil.

As someone said in Craig's List, in an up to date discussion board about Katrina, "If one penny of federal assistance goes to pay for clean-up for a city below sea level, then i think we (as the rest of the country) have the right to say you will rebuild New Orleans on higher ground." It's all just starting.

CNN.com Citizen Journalists: Send your pictures, video, stories

2005-08-29T23:06:00.000-05:00

CNN.com Citizen Journalists: Send your pictures, video, stories

(this was done in London after the bombings...let's see how it works when people are doing without necessities (such as electricity, in this case) ~J Littau

CITIZEN JOURNALIST

CNN wants to know how the 2005 hurricane season is affecting you. Send us your thoughts and stories. The best stories include details, the more the better.

Some of the videos, photos and audio submitted may be selected for use in CNN.com's Hurricane Season special report, CNN television programming or other CNN programming services about hurricanes, so by sending information you are agreeing to our terms of use.

Please include the following information with your submission: Your name, phone number, e-mail address, and hometown.

Fill out a quick and easy form on our Web site.

Please include the following information with your submission: Your name, phone number, e-mail address, hometown and a short caption that describes what is happening in your video/photo/audio and where and when it was taken.

E-mail multimedia submissions to hurricane@cnn.com.

Choreo Media

2005-08-29T15:59:00.000-05:00

choreomedia | columns
Craig Weiland's August post to the CoMo Biz Times.

When People Pay What They Think Content Is Worth

2005-08-24T23:28:00.000-05:00

When People Pay What They Think Content Is Worth

Democratization of the media will be aided much by the implementation of a business model that cannot be financially undercut...thus Google's success. But can this be done on a scale massive enough to make it work...?

Wohleblog

2005-08-20T20:05:00.000-05:00

Wohleblog

Curt Wohleber, a digital mastermind and professor at MU, has his own highly entertaining blog.

Micro Persuasion

2005-08-20T15:38:00.000-05:00

Micro Persuasion

A resource for forthcoming news on blogs, podcasting, and RSS feeds.

Yahoo! Health Blog For Hope

2005-08-20T15:09:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! Health Blog For Hope

Celebrities discuss, in blog format, their personal encounters or battles with cancer.

Macromedia - Studio 8 : Customers : University of Missouri

2005-08-08T16:24:00.000-05:00

We made it onto Macromedia's site!

Macromedia - Studio 8 : Customers : University of Missouri

Blogging as You Go Belly Up

2005-08-07T17:01:00.000-05:00

This guys business started tanking soon after he began blogging, and his blog chronicles his downfall.

Still, he sees technology as a good and business-friendly thing.

Blogging as You Go Belly Up

Forbes.com Blogs by category

2005-08-07T16:34:00.000-05:00

Wow, lots of blogs to choose from!

Forbes.com Best of the Web

Forbes.com Best of the Web

2005-08-07T16:33:00.000-05:00

Reviews of Marketing uses for Blogs...

Forbes.com Best of the Web

The New York Times> Search> Abstract

2005-08-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

Marketers look to whore out RSS...already.

Marketers see Opportunity as a Web Tool Gains Users

Washingtonienne Sex Blog Scandal

2005-06-20T00:19:00.000-05:00

It's the Washingtonienne Sex Blog Scandal!

Tard Blogs

2005-06-20T00:18:00.000-05:00

I had heard of the Tard Blog a long while ago, but hadn't really spent time reading through it until today. I had some spare time earlier today, and decided to check it out. I've been near-crying in laughter since I made that wonderful decision. I urge you to follow my lead:

This is the first tard blog I found, but as it turns out, it is not the original. I think it is the funnier of the two.
Tard-Blog.com

This is the original, and it has a lot more material on it. I have yet to really delve into this one.
The Tard Blog

Lordy...

(Sure these are sort of crude, but their rationale (posted in the disclaimer and FAQ) is impeccable, and you'd have to be pretty priggish to deny these people their release)

Short-story political blogs

2005-06-09T17:51:00.000-05:00

This blogger is irreverent and hilarious.
I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hard

PostSecret

2005-05-03T11:00:00.000-05:00

A blog that allows viewers to anonymously send in secrets, which are then scanned and posted. Interesting idea.
PostSecret

Why Google Scares Gates

2005-05-03T10:33:00.000-05:00

I read an absolutely fabulous article in Fortune today...
Gates sees Google as unlike any competitor they've ever faced before. In brief, Microsoft can't bully Google out of the market by undercutting their prices (Google is free) or refuse to support their software on their operating system (it's internet run, not to mention far too popular). Because Google is ad run, and because of the unique marketing deal with their advertisers and the use of ad words, a company that is only 1/90th the size of the monolithic, trust-broken Microsoft is scaring Gates nearly to death.
I wouldn't mind him dying.
Why Google Scares Bill Gates - Fortune

Mizzou has blogs!?!

2005-04-28T19:12:00.000-05:00

An Alumni Assc project in which current and former students post about their experience at my school...
Mizzou.com News

EPIC 2014

2005-04-23T00:40:00.000-05:00

This 8 minute flash video documents the future (or lack thereof) or news media. Incredible...
EPIC 2014

Google Launches Personal History Feature

2005-04-21T16:54:00.000-05:00

An interesting idea...I can think of both positive and negative uses...
Google Launches Personal History Feature - Yahoo! News

creation

2005-03-04T22:31:00.000-06:00

creation