unmediated

CNN Pitches a Cheaper Wire Service to Newspapers - NYTimes.com

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:45:23 -0500

CNN Pitches a Cheaper Wire Service to Newspapers - NYTimes.com: (via mikehudack)

Guilty Verdict in Cyberbullying Case Provokes Many Questions Over Online Identity - NYTimes.com

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:48:16 -0500

Guilty Verdict in Cyberbullying Case Provokes Many Questions Over Online Identity - NYTimes.com:

Is lying about one’s identity on the Internet now a crime?

The verdict Wednesday in the MySpace cyberbullying case raised a variety of questions about the terms that users agree to when they log on to Web sites.

The defendant in the case, a Missouri woman, was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles on three misdemeanor counts of computer fraud for having misrepresented herself on the popular social network MySpace. The woman, Lori Drew, posed as a teenage boy in using the account to send first friendly and then menacing messages to Megan Meier, 13, who killed herself shortly after receiving a message in October 2006 that said in part, “The world would be a better place without you.”

“If this verdict stands,” Mr. Grossman said, “it means that every site on the Internet gets to define the criminal law. That’s a radical change. What used to be small-stakes contracts become high-stakes criminal prohibitions.”

The capabilities and limits of newsfeeds as news sources « John Bracken

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:20:19 -0500

The capabilities and limits of newsfeeds as news sources « John Bracken:

RSS and blgging were both declared dead yesterday. Paul Boutin is only the latest in a long line to toss dirt on blogging’s coffin in Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004; but the case of blogging as an old medium more suited for long-form journalism seems to be gaining currency:

The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

Meanwhile, Steve Rubel says RSS, too, is , losing currency to the network and the newsfeed:

RSS has peaked….I believe that social network newsfeeds will become more a more prominent delivery channel over time. Newsfeeds elegantly combine peers and pros, algorithms and networks. They know no bounaries. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb agrees. This is why social networks will become the primary theater for PR in five years time.

Of course, Rubel’s example of a news story he learned about through FriendFeed, “a campus shooting [that] has unfolded at Western Kentucky University,” (Rubel called “it a great example of where this is going”) may not have actually happened, it turns out. Note the more than a dozen comments bemoaning the “shooting,” appended by one note that “it’s unclear whether there was a gunman or not. It may have just been a fight.” Rubel has yet to correct his post.

[For a related post, see Blogs can be slow and wrong: Memeorandum and Ben Smith.]

comScore Reports 6.5 Million Americans Watched Mobile Video in August

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:36:27 -0400

comScore Reports 6.5 Million Americans Watched Mobile Video in August:

mikehudack:

(via wiredset)

Those are meaningful numbers. It may be time to give mobile another look.

What happened to citizen journalism election coverage? « John Bracken

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:28:05 -0400

What happened to citizen journalism election coverage? « John Bracken:

The other day, a colleague from across the pond asked what’s surprised me about media coverage of the 2008 election. Josh Levy articulates my answer more eloquently than I did: with one notable exception, citizen journalism has not illuminated voters much:

Outside of exposing Bittergate to the masses (albeit a major feat), the citizen brigade hasn’t had much impact on the narrative of the race….Recently I realized that, when the chips are down — when it’s less than two weeks out from The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime — I always turn to the pros. For me, the best analysis of the election is being done by people who do it for a living. Pros, of course, are a different breed now than they were five or seven or ten years ago. That category now includes folks like Talking Points Memo, the Politico’s Ben Smith, and Andrew Sullivan….No amateur blogger — defined as someone who isn’t being paid to blog — has been able to fill this void….In a return to the halcyon days before comments, it turns out that readers — responding to blogs via e-mail, of all things — are the new citizen journalists.

Of course, the “bitter” comment, the reporting of which Levy rightly credits to citizen journalism, was not mentioned at all in blogger Mayhill Fowler’s original report on Obama’s April 6 San Francisco fundraiser, and was buried at the end of the 6th paragraph of a later report. Marc Cooper, the professional journalist who edited the piece, recounted the process that led to the impactful story.

(None of this is news to folks like Seth Finkelstein, I grant you.)

Will the collaboration between YouTube and PBS, Video Your Vote, break any significant stories on November 4th?

User Generated Content Principles

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:21:10 -0400

User Generated Content Principles: Leading commercial copyright owners (“Copyright Owners”) and services providing user-uploaded and user-generated audio and video content (“UGC Services”) have collaborated to establish these Principles to foster an online environment that promotes the promises and benefits of UGC Services and protects the rights of Copyright Owners. In this context, UGC Services are services such as Soapbox on MSN Video, MySpace, Dailymotion and Veoh.com, and not other technologies such as browsers, applets, email, or search services.

FCC Clears Free Wireless Web

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:59:08 -0400

FCC Clears Free Wireless Web:

A proposal to create a free, national wireless Internet service got a boost as Federal Communications Commission engineers concluded that concerns are overblown about such service interfering with other carriers.

The report clears the way for the FCC to move forward with a plan to auction off airwaves to a bidder who agrees to offer free, national wireless Internet service. The FCC is expected to finalize rules this year and could begin auctioning off airwaves in early-to-mid 2009.

yvynyl: Lx7 » Four types of free music the industry needs...

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:51:27 -0400

yvynyl:

Lx7 » Four types of free music the industry needs to support

Knowledge Cartography

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:06:29 -0400

Knowledge Cartography: This website aims to present the results of the ongoing research on a cartographic approach to the representation of knowledge in its present configurations.
The aim of the research is to extend the cartographic metaphor beyond visual analogy, and to expose it as a narrative model and tool to intervene in complex, heterogeneous, dynamic realities, just like those of human geography. The map, in this context, is not only a passive representation of reality but a tool for the production of meaning. The map is thus a communication device: a mature representation artefact, aware of its own language and its own rhetoric, equipped with it its own tools, languages, techniques and supports. A model that recovers the narrative abilities of pre-scientific maps and presents itself not as a mere mimetic artefact, but as a poetic and political tool

Communication Nation: The eyes have it

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:15:21 -0400

Communication Nation: The eyes have it:
The eyes have it, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

Actual bandwidth of the five senses, compared to the bandwidth we are consciously aware of. From The half-second delay: What follows?, a paper on learning, consciousness and perception.

Another quote from this interesting paper:
“Traditional models of affect posit that … first we decide what we think, and then we decide how we feel about it. However, the evidence … indicates that the real order of things is likely to be the reverse of this… what we feel about something tells us what we think.”

Bike Hugger · Purple Pedals

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:44:00 -0400

Bike Hugger · Purple Pedals:

We first noticed Flickr’s Moblogging, Geotagging Bike a few weeks ago, when I spotted it in Dunstan’s photostream. Since then, Yahoo! has launched a related site and Lifehacker details how the bikes work (PDF). The bike is an Electra and built by Uncommon Projects.

We’ve discussed bikes and mobile technology before and dig what Yahoo! and crew has built.

We hope the Purple Bikes generate even more buzz, pushing innovation. Next month, we’re back in Taipei for another Intel Developer Forum, and are looking for the latest mobile devices. Maybe we’ll see one during a Mobile Social? Also see Fritz’s post on Commute by Bike.

The Story of Muxtape

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:39:35 -0400

The Story of Muxtape:

moth:

A must-read update from muxtape’s Justin for anyone hoping to innovate in the music business, or who wonders why it’s so hard to discover good music online. Here’s an excerpt:

And so I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced: I walked away from the licensing deals. They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They’d already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn’t get into this to build a big company as fast as I could no matter what the cost, I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music, and I plan to continue doing that. As promised, the site is coming back, but not as you’ve known.

Fred Benenson’s Blog: Arts + Labs Astroturfing Content Filtering

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:02:34 -0400

Fred Benenson’s Blog: Arts + Labs Astroturfing Content Filtering:

I’m not saying someone paid by the telecoms can’t write blog posts linking to pro-network neutrality articles. That might even be a good thing. But what I am saying is that statements like this:

Arts+Labs is a coalition of Creative and Technology communities committed to a better, safer internet that works for both artists and consumers. At The ArtLab, we offer our information and ideas; our contribution to the conversation about the future of the internet.

come off as wholly disingenuous because Arts+Labs really represents the interests of a few corporations looking to end network neutrality. This is where the campaign is essentially astroturf and engaging in the kind of “fair and balanced” rhetoric that FOX News and Bill O’Reilly have pioneered. By putting links to blogs that sometimes carry critical (but not too critical — no links to Slashdot or BoingBoing, mind you) opinions of telecoms they’re trying give the false impression that they are interested in discussing things and engaging within a community.

They are not.

Viacom, NBC Universal, AT&T, Microsoft, Songwriters Guild of America, Cisco (don’t forget Cisco also makes and sells the routers to China that help block ‘dissidents’ from accessing western media) don’t want to talk about network neutrality with you. They want to end network neutrality.

They don’t want to think of you as the creators or the editors or the musicians. No, Viacom, NBC Universal, AT&T, Microsoft, Songwriters Guild of America, Cisco, think of you as the consumers. Why else would they have a page of “creativity” and only link to content friendly and corporately funded startups sites like NBC, MTV, and Comedy Central?

Is Google Search Thinning?

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:28:22 -0400

dembot:

There is a discussion of Google going on with Tim O’Reilly and Read Write Web regarding the well being of Google. Read Write Web proposed the idea that Google was flailing and spreading itself too thin, but O’Reilly dismissed the notion suggesting Google is healthy.

Funny enough, an idea hit pretty hard the other day when I was looking at my friendfeed sidebar I have here on my blog (to the right). Check out all the conversation that is happening around these posts. Yes, I call them posts, for they are not just aggregated feed items from my other accounts around the web. Friendfeed has become a favorite of mine and it’s lot like my blog, its just easier to post over there and there is more community for me there.

But the problem is, for me, none of that data is showing up in Google search. Its not being indexed because FF has opted to disallow search spiders. As a result, all of this potentially useful data will never be discovered outside of FF. Even the sidebar on my blog is not indexed.

So why would FF block the spiders you ask? For the same reason Twitter did I assume: The new search engine that Twitter bought, Summize, is a major property value. An enormous amount of the value of Twitter is the ability to search news updates every .01 seconds. (e.g. I wanted to know if there was still a line at the Apple store in Soho when the iPhone came out, so I went to twitter search, typed in “apple soho” and found a tweet from someone published 20 seconds prior that said the line was around the block to Houston street, info Google could not offer). Not sure if anyone is articulating this, but a no brainer way for Twitter to generate a lot of revenue would be to sell the rights for search engines to index them. To my point, Twitter could end up selling spider rights for even more by going exclusive, dealing with only one search giant, like Yahoo for instance, leaving Google out in the cold.

Facebook, Myspace, iTunes, Twitter, Friendfeed, the list goes on and on - all not indexable by Google spiders.

Are you seeing a trend here? I know I am. For all of the time, value and umph I put into publishing on these networks, I get no Google juice in return - the traffic gain and value goes to others and thus I’m decentralized and I’m also unable to monetize until they are ready to monetize my work on their terms.

While there is no denying that there is still a lot of value for me personally nonetheless, and while I am okay with continuing on in this direction (i.e. its better than not being there at all), it seems like the internet is trending away from a centralized search.

I used to think of Google as my entry point into the web but recently, have found that Google search is where I go just to get old news and well established findings. More recently, I find myself going other places to explore and research.

In my opinion this trend is a potential threat to Google search. Its not any one company that is coming in to rival the superpower by doing it better, and its not about Google spreading itself too thin, its just that Google is being denied access to important, growing pools of data. Perhaps the trend is a slow breakdown, more like the melting ice caps. Slow, but quick enough to be concerned.

*update: apparently FF and Twitter DO allow alot of indexing, though I maintain my argument re: Facebook, Myspace, etc as major pools of inaccessible data.

Kickstarter - Waxy.org

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:30:55 -0400

Kickstarter - Waxy.org: Kickstarter aims to let creative people of all kinds — journalists, artists, musicians, game developers, entrepreneurs, bloggers — raise money for their projects by connecting directly with fans, who receive exclusive access and rewards in exchange for their patronage. More than just a fundraising app, Kickstarter’s a publishing platform where project creators can communicate with the people that are supporting them. (Think Jill Sobule, A Swarm of Angels, or Sean Tevis.)

The Difference Between Great and Dumbass Producers | Studio Monthly

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:04:12 -0400

The Difference Between Great and Dumbass Producers | Studio Monthly: “A real producer holds the vision of the project. They’re the first person to turn on the lights in the morning, and the last person to turn out the lights at night. They are the leader, the go-to person, the solution-provider, the conflict resolver. They are consistent, passionate, fair and fierce. They know how to pick their battles. They know how to inspire others, even and especially when they are taking hits and bleeding profusely from their own battles to keep the ship afloat. They are everyone’s confidante, keep everyone’s counsel, but beat to their own drum. Their number one client: the Director. Their number one loyalty: the project — which brings us back around to vision.” That was a passionate response. Clearly John has affection for producers. I think with those words, he just defined the position as it should be. But I certainly know “producers” who are nothing like that. Obviously they don’t work at Dreamworks.

Clearly there is a massive rift between the real producers and wannabies. The problem as I see it is that there are more producer pretenders/Dumbass producers out there than I like to see;. Some (mostly younger IMHO) studio execs have clearly been sucked in by “producers” who talk a good game. Consider the number of really bad movies getting made when there is much better material out there being ignored. A lot of really awful TV is being foisted upon us and, to quote Howard Beale, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Thus you see the motivation for this column.

Silverlight Announces H.264 Support for Online HD Video

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:32:28 -0400

Silverlight Announces H.264 Support for Online HD Video: Later this week, at the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) 2008 in Amsterdam, Microsoft Corp. will demonstrate an important new capability for Silverlight - playback of H.264-based video. H264 is a standard video specification that delivers high-definition video over a variety of delivery channels. During the event, Microsoft will also highlight how customers in Europe are reaping the benefits of adopting Silverlight.

Panda - Open source video platform

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:09:26 -0400

Panda - Open source video platform:

Panda is an open source solution for video uploading, encoding and streaming.

Unlike other video platforms, Panda is not just a service for encoding your videos for the web; Panda handles the whole process. From the upload form to streaming, Panda takes control.

By providing an elegant REST API, Panda makes it completely painless to implement full video uploading, encoding and streaming functionality to your web application in a matter of hours.

Runs completely within Amazon’s Web Services utilising EC2, S3 and SimpleDB.
Everything contained within one elegant Merb application.
Support for the numerous encoding profiles FFmpeg supports including FLV, h264 for Flash a iPhone formats.
Panda gem for painless integration with Ruby on Rails and Merb.
Lovely little admin dashboard for managing your videos.

The YouTube Solution - Forbes.com

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:37:08 -0400

The YouTube Solution - Forbes.com: In his new book, Gridlock Economy, Columbia University Law School Professor Michael Heller paints a scary picture in which property rights—copyrights, patents or individual parcels of land—strangle the economy and stifle innovation. In Heller’s world, new cures for Alzheimer’s remain in the lab, films flounder unreleased and even hip-hop albums go unrecorded because it’s simply too hard to buy off all the owners who are in a blocking position with their pesky property rights. It’s a great theory, but is it true? I studied this problem during a year as a Knight Fellow at Yale Law School several years ago, and came to a different conclusion. In an unruly capitalistic playground like the Internet, the concept of “ownership” will get stretched beyond the breaking point and replaced with rules that allow creative works to be produced at a cost of some royalties going uncollected.

Dear Web 2.0: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! | Kara Swisher

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:28:35 -0400

Dear Web 2.0: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! | Kara Swisher: Dear Web 2.0: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! Posted at 8:15 AM PT on September 15, 2008 Print Yahoo! Buzz Share Sphere Last week, one of the things that struck me about the coverage of the two main tech conferences devoted to start-ups, DEMOfall and TechCrunch50, was the almost complete lack of discussion–or, more appropriately, worry–about the troubled economy. This, even though the subprime mortgage crisis remains in full swing, along with the continuing turmoil around the stability of Wall Street financial firms, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Also, let’s not forget those sky-high gas prices.