December 21, 2007
Highlights from the NPR Utterz-Twitter Experiment
This week, NPR's Morning Edition will air a series on the 10th anniversary of the word "weblog" and the impact of blogging over the last decade. I've been helping the producers in a variety of ways, like writing a timeline tracing blogging's origins, tracking down interesting bloggers for them to interview and writing a story on my own experience with blogging over the years. (I'll post links to them once they go online.)
I also sat down with a producer from Morning Edition to do a demo of the mobile audio blogging service Utterz and the microblogging tool Twitter. We were curious to see what kinds of responses we'd get from Utterz Twitter users to this question: "What are you doing for New Year's Eve, and what do you wish you were doing?" We got 70 replies, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights.
For Utterz, I recorded the question as a voicemail over my mobile phone, which then got cross-posted onto my Utterz page, my blog and my Twitter account.
We got 42 replies to the question this way, including this one from video blogger Jonny Goldstein, who talks about attending a Chinese banquet with his in-laws:
Wendy Drexler, a teacher in Florida, described a trip she's taking to Maine:
Fricka, who designs apparel for gamers, recalls how she spent one New Year's eve helping a mother and baby after their car caught on fire:
It should come as no surprise that Hawaiian blogger InfinityPro is happy to be home in Hawaii:
In contrast, technology evangelist Len Edgerly would prefer to toast the new year with Barack Obama:
One Utterz user who goes by the name "rcow" doesn't know what he's doing because his wife plans all of their social engagements:
Jennifer Sardam, who writes the literary blog Observed in Books, plans to work on her reading goals for 2008, even though she'd rather be celebrating another new year in Germany:
Over at Twitter, meanwhile, I received 28 replies. Some of my favorites:
kthread: happy to be ringing in the new year partying with close friends at my house, attempting to make this: http://tinyurl.com/39rcsu
leh4: What I wish I were doing: scuba diving somewhere WARM. what i'm actually doing: moving into my new apt
karynromeis: I'm going to a party at my church. I wish I was going to a party with my friends back in Cape Town!
vgloucester: Probably sleeping - probably sleeping...lol.
ruby: I'll be at the beach with my friends and our families for the 11th New Year's in a row! It's ritual of laziness+food+drink+love.
ryanne: we don't have plans yet, but probably something low key!
ClareLane: Going to Sedona for R&R with nature and spirit and college roomie and our hubbies. Am very happy doing just that Thanks!
jonnygoldstein (supplementing his Utterz post): i'm will be in NYC. Going to Chinese midnight banquet with my wife and in laws. Wish I was going to be inebriated at some blow out.
digitalmaverick: I'll be, as every true Scot, wearing my kilt and singing Auld Lang Syne at a party, then at the bells I'll 1st Foot my neighbours
kanter: raising money for cambodian orphans http://tinyurl.com/yryffz
jensimmons: I'm sleeping on much of New Years, recovering from hauling all my stuff to Jersey. I'm thinking about heading to a yoga retreat.
Darshell: Hope to be going out with the hubby- dinner, dancing, etc but will probably be home with the kids. Who wants to babysit new year's?
Karoli: staying home watching the ball drop on the high-def TV. wish I were going to Corona del Mar and chilling
tigerbeat: not sure yet. Probably be up late enough to listen to the 3 am feed of Morning Edition on KQED. Wish i were somewhere warm & sunny
JoeGermuska: spending it in with friends, which is just the way I like it
BrassT: Watching movies and playing boardgames with the kids and hubby :-) How late will the kids sleep if I let them stay up til 12?
But my favorite reply came in the form of two responses from blogger/artist Susan Reynolds:
NEW YEARs eve home in VA recovering from breast cancer surgery but encouraged by all of you. Twitter pea avatars = VISIBLE SupportNEW YEARs eve - what I wish I was doing? I can't imagine feling more loved, so no celebration could be better
For those of you who don't follow Twitter, about two weeks ago Susan announced via Twitter that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would have surgery on December 21. Susan even created a blog called Boobs on Ice to document her sudden transformation into a cancer patient, including how she soothed the pain of her biopsies by using bags of frozen peas as a compress.
Almost immediately, the Twitter community responded. Dozens of people started changing their profile picture to show them with a bag of frozen peas, to show their solidarity with Susan. That gesture then morphed into a photo sharing group on Flickr, which now has almost 300 pictures of Twitter users with their bags of peas.
Meanwhile, it didn't take long for Utterz to get into the mix. NBC cameraman Jim Long, better known to the Twitter community as NewMediaJim, recorded an impromptu interview with Susan using Utterz, just after she finished her pre-op visit:
By the time Susan's surgery took place on the 21st, Twitter users had organized a fundraising campaign called the Frozen Pea Fund, asking people to donate to the American Cancer Society in Susan's name. Nearly 120 people donated more than $3500 in the first 24 hours. If that doesn't demonstrate the power of Twitter and Utterz as tools for building community, I'm not sure what would. -andy
Tags: microblogging | mobcasting | Morning Edition | NPR | Susan Reynolds | twitter | utterz
Posted by acarvin at 4:49 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
December 11, 2007
What Milestones Would You Include in a Timeline History of Blogging?
I'm working with the folks at NPR's Morning Edition on a series they're planning to do about the history of blogging and its impact on society, and one of the things I'm trying to write is a timeline identifying some of the major milestones. My goal is two-fold. First, I want to show that blogging's origins on the Internet pre-date the invention of the term "Web log" by many years, not to mention its historic relation to journal-writing more broadly. Second, I want to emphasize interesting milestones that would be of interest to a mainstream, non-technical audience, rather than create a comprehensive timeline with every minor technical, business, political and social milestone. I'm not sure what the overall word length will be, but it won't be huge, so I need to pick my milestones carefully.
Here are some of the milestones I've come up with so far:
Unknown: Mariners begin keeping a "log book" to record the speed of their ships, measured by "heaving the log," throwing overboard a piece of wood or lead attached to a long rope with knots in it.
Early 9th Century: Chinese philosopher Li Ao publishes one of the first known diaries, a travel journal entitled Lainan Lu ("Record of Coming to the South").
17th Century: Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn publish journals that are among the earliest diary best-sellers in the English language
1812: London publisher John Letts begins selling blank "page-a-day" books intended to be used as personal journals and business ledgers.
1966: James T. Kirk (William Shatner) begins an episode of Star Trek with the words "Captain's Log: Stardate," inspiring a generation of young diarists eager to document their own life events by any means necessary.
1967: The Internet is invented.
1979: The birth of USENET, a decentralized system of discussion boards, forming the basis of some of the Internet's oldest online communities.
1983: Brian Redman creates mod.ber, a USENET discussion through which he and his friends post summaries of interesting things they find online and offline.
1989: British researcher Tim Berners-Lee proposes the development of the World Wide Web.
1990: Margaret Lanterman, aka The Log Lady, begins dispensing advice and prophesies that supposedly emanate from the wooden log she carries on the TV series Twin Peaks. (It remains to be seen how much of an influence Lanterman is in blogging history, but I thought I'd err on the safe side and include her just in case.) Hat tip: Jim Long
1992: Berners-Lee launches the first website. Among his publishing innovations that year is the first "What's New" page, a Web page that places new updates at the top of each page, pushing older items down to the bottom.
1994: Claudio Pinhanez of MIT publishes his "Open Diary," a Web page documenting goings-on in his life. At the same time, online diarist Justin Hall would gain notoriety for creating a "personal homepage" on the Web covering his day-to-day activities in very revealing – and occasionally embarrassing - detail.
1994: Brian Lucas launches travel-library.com, a collection of online travel journals submitted by the public to the rec.travel USENET group.
1995: Vermeer Technologies releases FrontPage, one of the first Web publishing tools. Introduced the idea of allowing people without coding skills to publish websites.
1996: The 24 Hours in Cyberspace. Thousands of people use the Internet to collect photographs of people whose lives were affected by the Internet. An early experiment in collaborative photo blogging.
Feb 1997: Steve Gibson hired by Ritual Entertainment to journal on a full-time basis, making him one of the first professional bloggers.
Dec 1997: Jorn Barger uses the term "Weblog" for the first time to describe his online journal, Robot Wisdom.
1998: Open Diary becomes one of the first online tools to assist users in the publishing of online journals. Would later be followed by other journaling tools including LiveJournal (1999), DiaryLand (1999), Pitas (1999) Blogger (1999), Xanga (2000), Movable Type (2001) and Wordpress (2003).
Spring 1999: Online journal writer Peter Merholz jokingly takes the word "Weblog" and splits it into the phrase "We blog." Over time, "blog" would supercede "Weblog" as the term of art for describing online journals.
1999: Development of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. Made it easier for people to subscribe to blog posts, as well as distribute them across the Internet, such as the early news aggregator Radio UserLand. (Hat tip: Joe Germuska)
2001: Big-name bloggers begin to emerge, including Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit)
2002: Bloggers focus their attention on comments made by Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) at a birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) that appear to endorse segregation. After intense coverage in the blogosphere, the story spreads throughout the media, forcing Lott to resign his leadership position in the senate.
2004: Bloggers play a major role in covering the presidential campaign; a number of them are credentialed to participate in the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Dan Rather resigns following pressure from bloggers who documented errors in a story about President George W. Bush's military service record.
2005 (?): The launch of some of the first blog search engines, including Feedster and Technorati, making it possible for people to track blog conversations on a continuous basis.
2005: Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard's Berkman Center launch GlobalVoicesOnline.org, an international network of bloggers emphasizing local and regional stories around the world that aren't being covered by mainstream media.
March 2005: Garrett M. Graff becomes the first blogger to receive credentials for the daily White House briefing.
2006: The launch of Twitter, one of the first "micro-blogging" communities that allows user to publish and receive short posts via the Web, text messaging and instant messaging.
2006: Research report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 12 million U.S. adults publish their own blogs.
2007: Technorati is tracking more than 112 million blogs worldwide.
If you have any suggestions of ones you think I should edit, add or drop altogether, please feel free to post them as a comment. I need to put this to bed in the next couple of days, so if you can get me your suggestions no later than December 13, I'd really appreciate it.Tags: blogging | diaries | history | journals | milestones | personal homepage | timeline
Posted by acarvin at 11:27 AM
November 17, 2007
Radio Open Source is Back!
They're back!
Yesterday, Radio Open Source host Chris Lydon and producer Mary McGrath circulated an email announcing the return of the cutting-edge radio show, one of the first to weave blogging and social media into the core mission of the program. After going on an indefinite hiatus this summer because of funding cuts, Radio Open Source has moved its operation to Brown University.
Here's the text of the email:
Dear Friend of Open Source:The summer is over, and so is our hiatus.
The Open Source conversation is reborn at the Watson Institute at Brown University.
Please check in on what we've been up to at http://www.radioopensource.org .
Thomas Watson of IBM fame, who'd been Jimmy Carter's ambassador to Moscow, founded the Institute in 1981 to address the most urgent global risks of that day: nuclear hazards of the Cold War. Today the mission of the Watson Institute encompasses poverty, hunger, war and culture. My fellowship here commits me to keep exploring and innovating in the interactive new media - at the intersection of pod- and broad- casting where the new discourse of a global age is taking shape.
Brown and Watson overflow with blessings for Open Source, starting with the brilliant Rafael Vinoly building that both nestles and goads us to think anew. Nikita Khrushchev's son Sergei is upstairs writing, as is the exiled Zimbabwean novelist Chenjeria Hove, and former presidents Ricardo Lagos Escobar of Chile and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil. Geoffrey Kirkman of the Watson Institute was right when he told me years ago: the same swath of visiting stars that pass through New York and Harvard come also to Brown, but here they stay longer and they talk more. Brown students keep knocking on my door - this new rainbow generation of "millennials," most of them with digital media skills and native confidence in the expanding universe of the Web.
Not least, my Watson fellowship and the combination of avid Brown students and first-class recording facilities have let us cut radically into the "nut" cost of producing Open Source. So, not for the first time in human history, adversity has forced us into a precious opportunity to get lean, cheap and experimental again.
"An American conversation with global attitude" could be the motto of the revived Open Source. As always, we need your partnership here to locate the topics, guests and angles that will keep it richly distinctive. All we want to be, as we keep growing up, is - as many of you suggested, and producer Mary McGrath distilled the message - "the best damn podcast" on your computer or your Nano. But how long should the conversation run? And how often? What new features do you want on the site? How do we keep it making it more interactive with "the people formerly known as the audience" and with the world beyond our shores?
What we learned in two years on the last round is that "open source" works as well for public conversation as well as it works for advancing software. We announced a "conspiracy of the curious," and people joined it - with an unending flow of show suggestions and witty, critical, often impassioned extensions of the on-air conversation.
We learned also that podcasting works. The proto-blogger Dave Winer and I claim together to have done the first podcast in human history just a little more than four years ago. Between us, at Harvard's Berkman Center, we were the Neil Armstrong of the podcast moon, and now everyone's going there. For good reason. Podcasting is the cheap, democratic, speedy, listener-friendly universal means of sharing and archiving original sound files of every kind. Can we keep it new, or newish?
To begin, we've fired up the podcast feed of our summer gab which went from the Oscar Wao novelist Junot Diaz to the late John Coltrane, from the cyber prophet William Gibson to the unheeded prophets of our quagmire in Iraq. And there is tasty talk ahead with another of the "global" novelists, Ha Jin, on his first fiction set in America - with "The War" documentarian Ken Burns, and with the canonical critic Harold Bloom at Yale, among many others.
Let us end by saying again: Thank you. We couldn't and wouldn't be embarking in these Open Source conversations without the community of you -- that is, without the yeasty, resilient, generous, hungry, faithful, world-wide community that built and sustained Open Source from the beginning.
As always, coming and going, Emerson speaks to a great deal of what we're feeling. This comes from the end of his marvelous essay "Circles."
"Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them."
Thank you for passionate, engaged, listenership and commentary these last two years. Now let us all together keep this "community of the curious" alive and growing.
So send us your news, your dreams and expectations, please, for the next ride on Open Source and reload your podcast here: http://www.radioopensource.org . Are you aware that you can subscribe (free) to the Open Source Podcast at the iTunes store? Go to iTunes, then the store, enter "open source podcast" in the search box, and then click on the Open Source icon and "subscribe" to get every episode.
In the spirit of Emerson: Onward, ever onward!
Christopher Lydon and Mary McGrath
Mazel tov, Chris and Mary! -andy
Tags: Brown University | Christopher Lydon | Mary McGrath | podcasting | public radio | Radio Open Source
Posted by acarvin at 2:02 PM
August 2, 2007
Journalist Shield Legislation Amended to Cover Only Commercial Bloggers
The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee yesterday approved an amended version of HR 2102, also known as the Free Flow of Information Act. The purpose of the legislation is to create a federal shield for journalists so they could not be compelled to reveal their sources except in extreme cases, such as emergent national security situations and the like. Advocates of bloggers had fought hard to extend the bill's coverage to the blogosphere, but the amendment passed yesterday might not please everyone who might feel they should be covered.
The bill defines journalism as "gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public." By this definition, many bloggers could easily argue that they, too, would be covered if the bill were signed into law. The intention of this language was to get away from the notion that journalism is solely an occupation in which one works for a media entity of some sort, has an editor, etc. Instead, it defines journalism in terms of actions rather than as an occupational status.
Yesterday's voice vote, though, complicates matters a bit for some bloggers. The Bush administration, as well as some members of Congress, expressed concerns that the bill's original language could be used to create an enormous loophole for people engaging in criminal behavior. For example, someone who participated in a crime or assisted a criminal could point to a hastily crafted blog and claim that they were researching a story to obfuscate the fact they were engaging in a criminal enterprise or obstructing the law.
As a compromise, members of Congress decided to refine the definition of who would be covered as a journalist. To be covered, you would have to derive "financial gain or livelihood" from your journalistic activities. In other words, if you could prove that you use your blog to generate income, you would qualify as practicing journalism and thus fall under the shield law. But if you published a blog without any financial benefit, you wouldn't be covered by the law.
I'm not surprised that Congress would offer this up as a compromise. But I also won't be surprised if some advocates of citizen journalism take this compromise as exclusionary, since it favors those bloggers who are in a position - or make the decision - to blog commercially. I would surmise that the vast majority of bloggers make no income from their activities. Granted, many of these same folks would never consider themselves as engaging in acts of journalism, but where does that leave those who do? I know many bloggers who choose to keep their blogs advertising-free so they don't appear to have any conflicts of interest. Does this make their acts of journalism less deserving of protection than those who decide to make money off their blogging activities?
I keep wondering how this provision would apply to me, for example. I wear a variety of blogging hats. I get paid by PBS for my contributions to learning.now, for example, but I don't derive any income from my personal blog. And while not all of my writings on my personal blog qualify as journalism, other posts certainly do. Would I not be covered by this legislation regarding any acts of journalism I conduct for my personal blog?
More generally, will this bill lead to a wave of bloggers adding advertising to their blogs just to be covered? And if all it takes is for a person to derive some income from their blog, even if it's paltry, won't that mean the loophole hasn't really been closed?
This is definitely gonna be an interesting debate. -andy
Tags: bloggers | Congress | HR 2102 | journalism | loopholes | shield law
Posted by acarvin at 7:29 AM
June 22, 2007
Ask a Presidential Candidate
If you had a chance to put a question to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or any of the other Democratic presidential candidates, what would you ask them? If something comes to mind, please tell my NPR colleague Michel Martin. She's one of the moderators at next week's Democratic presidential debate at Howard University on June 28th. I suggested to her that she ask the public for potential questions on her blog and she took up the challenge:
Yours truly will be one of the questioners at the PBS-sponsored presidential debate next week at Howard University.We want your questions. Do you have one...or three?
We are particularly interested in key domestic and international concerns that have NOT been showcased in the other debates.
What's on your mind? We'll be asking every day from now until next THURSDAY, June 28.
So if you've got a potential question for the candidates, please post it on Michel's blog. (You're welcome to post it on my blog as well, but be sure to post it on hers as well, since I can't guarantee she'll read it here.)
Speaking of next week's debate, I'll be blogging from the event, thanks to my colleagues at PBS, who are sponsoring the debate. PBS is now working with the Media Bloggers Association to credential bloggers who want to cover the event. I'll probably be in the media center with everyone else, but hopefully I can snag some time with some of the candidates or their proxies in the post-debate chaos of the spin room. This will be my second presidential debate - I covered the last of the three general election debates that took place between Bill Clinton, Bush Sr. and Ross Perot in 1992. I'm really looking forward to the debate, so please check out the blog on the evening of Thursday, June 28th to get the skinny on what's taking place there. -andy
Tags: Barack Obama | blogging | credentials | election 2008 | Hillary Clinton | Howard University | Media Bloggers Association | PBS | presidential debate
Posted by acarvin at 11:39 AM
March 11, 2007
Blogging Where Speech Isn't Free
Jon Lebkowsky, moderator
Shava Nerad, TOR
Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices
Rob Faris, Harvard Berkman Center
Shahed Amanullah, HalalFire Media
Yasmina Tesanovic, Serbian filmmaker
Faris:The OpenNet Initiative. There was a time when we hoped the net would be a frontier place not subject to natl sovereignty. That idea is pretty much dead. And many countries use that sovereignty to censor or filter the Net. We've looked at 40 countries so far, and more than two dozen of them are using filtering. Half are filtering social issues or political content, primarily blogs. Filtering is a messy, incomplete process. It targets certain content, but it's basically impossible to actually block everything you want to without knocking out stuff that's not on your hit list. So when Pakistan tried to block certain yahoo hosts, they knocked out 52,000 other websites.
In North Korea, suppression of opposing viewpoints basically shuts down the Net, while China wants to maintain a vibrant internet but still try to block things they find unacceptable. The rules of censorship have changed and continue to evolve. It's very fluid and ill-defined. That creates both opportunities and dangers.
Zuckerman:
I tend to work on citizen media - blogging, podcasting and the like - particularly in the developing world. We often talk about it in the context of press freedoms. There's high repression in places like North Korea, Burma, Turkmenistan. In medium oppression stakes like China, Iran and Zimbabwe, citizen media tools are embraced more actively. In places with freer press, like South Africa, they use these tools less because they have other platforms for sharing their ideas. Iran is an amazing case study. In 2004, suddenly you had 60,000 blogs start. The independent press had shut down and many of them moved into the blogosphere. So even the vice president started a blog to have better communication with his constituents.
My org, globalvoicesonline.org, looks at citizens media in the world. Some of it focuses on just cultural activities, but a lot focuses on freedom and politics. In Bahrain, there's a pdf from google maps showing how much land is controlled by the monarchy, and the size of their palaces compared to where everyone else lives. They blocked Google Maps because of. The Tunisian Prison Map used google maps to show where the secret prisons are, and which dissidents were there. Alaa abd el Fatah blogged on paper while they were in prison, and his wife posted it at www. manalaa.net. We even see video being smuggled out, like Zimbabwe protestors being broken up violently in Harare.
This is all user-generated media, and it's making states very, very upset. They react in four ways. They block the sites, the tools; register bloggers, even threaten their safety. In Ethiopia, you can't see a site like nazret.com, the leading opposition site. In Pakistan, blogger.com is blocked, just so they can censor six sites. This lead to dontblocktheblog.com to get around this. (A guy from Blogger in the audience says the block ended last week.)
FreeKareem.com - Egyptian blogger sentenced to four years in prison, and now there's an active campaign to have him released.
How do we fight back? We can mirror sites, like isaacmao.com and notisaacmao.com. Isaac redirects people to the second site when he's blocked. There are also anonymous blogs, like sleeplessinsudan.blogspot.com, which was run by a relief worker in Darfur. I maintain a guide on anonymous blogging, and Reporters Without Borders has one as well.
What's most important is bringing attention to the fact that governments are blocking sites and denying access. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is blogging, and that'll probably lead to a crackdown. And we need to fight for the rights of these voices and others, even if we disagree with their politics.
Shava Nerad: TOR allows people to circumvent firewalls and go online anonymously. We have around 1,000 proxy servers around the world. When you connect, you get randomly routed through a trail of these servers, making it impossible for authorities to see where you came from. So you can blog without authorities knowing which cybercafe your at, for example. When you blog, you normally leave a trail that shows your physical location. If you're saying risky things, that makes you vulnerable. So you need to wipe the footprints off of that trail to keep you safe.
We talk a lot about free speech as if it were an absolute good we need immediately. It's a good idea, but a lot of my family comes from parts of the world where free speech isn't a reality. There are ways to protect yourself - they're safety valves. Medium suppression countries realize that free speech is inevitable in a Darwinian sort of way, but they want to control the pace of change. China doesn't shut down all free speech but they try to throttle it so they control the message. So it's not as monolithic as it seems. It's process. When I see people in the US blogging about it, they don't always see it as a live action roleplaying game involving internet diplomacy. It's an ongoing story of cultural tensions. People need the tools to do this, but here in the US, we need to understand that there's a process going on, and in our activism, we should recognize that rather than just vilifying the other side.
Amanullah:
I run altmuslim.com and HalalFire Media, trying to cultivate the Islamic blogosphere. A lot of online repression happens in Muslim countries. Why is that the case? You have political instability, undemocratic regimes and the rise of extremism, because Islam is in flux. Why should we care about that? The Muslim world deserves political and press freedoms just like everybody else; they shouldn't be written off as backwards and hopeless. There's a need for free expression to create an Islam that's in sync with modernity. We all have a stake in that battle. Sept 11 reminds us that we just can't "contain" them. We need to support Islamic bloggers who are trying to help countries go through this change.
Even when governments aren't legitimate, they wrap themselves in a clock of religious responsibility. There are also extremists trying to drive a political or moral agenda. It's tough to run a bookstore that's open without getting flak for it, literally or figuratively. Despite getting it from both ends, Muslim bloggers are coming out, wanting to join the modern world and get out of the crossfire of regimes vs. extremists.
It starts with simple questions. When a Saudi girl asks why she can't driver herself. It has big ramifications in places where people aren't used to asking simple questions. The bloggers are the vanguard of that, asking questions that are never asked. It also breaks the govt monopoly on information, including govt-controlled press. The bottom line is that the freer the discourse is on Islam, the more modern and moderate the practices are. Muslims in America are a prime example of that. You're free to say what you want and develop in harmony with your non-Muslim neighbords. It's almost a linear correlation. That's why I side of the free speech side of things, even while Muslim countries are grappling with the issue.
How can we help? We can use technology to pry the doors open from the outside. I'm hoping for the day when govts give up on filtering and battle ideas with other ideas rather than jackbooted thugs. We need to read and publicize the work of bloggers, advocating good ones and shaming bad ones. We need to reduce anarchy in the Muslim world. There's been a rise of extremism, and it plays a role in what's going on right now. That's something the Muslim world needs to deal with internally. We need to advocate for persecuted bloggers and freedom in general. Not necessarily specific bloggers, since we don't want them to seem like US puppets. But we should push for general press freedoms while leaving specific advocacy to us - the blogosphere.
Tesanovic:
I come from Serbia. In the early 90s, I was a feminist and activist for Women in Black. When the war was going on, people would ask me what was going on, so I decided to write a letter for everyone. It wasn't journalism but more than a diary. It was a blog before they were called that, sent over mailing lists. When Serbia was bombed in '99, I was sitting in my flat watching the international news channels, and I was seeing myself bombed on TV. But it was still information - Milosovic was lying and you couldn't trust local news. When a southern town was bombed, I called my relatives and they saw people killed by cluster bombs. Milosovic denied it but NATO called it collateral damage and acted like it didn't exist. So we were invisible victims. So I started writing about it online anonymously.
This went on for a couple of months, then a friend asked me if I was the one doing it. Eventually the media started asking me if it's me. They wanted to talk with me but not identify me, since they didn't want me to get killed by Milosovic or looters or NATO or anyone else. But I outed myself in a letter and said the public is my only protection, then told the governments, this is where I live - come and get me. I didn't want to hide.
Posted by acarvin at 1:16 PM
The Rise of Mommy and Daddy Blogs
Marrit Ingma of the Austin Chronicle ran a great session this morning about the rise of parenting blogs. Here are my notes from the session - andy.
Marrit Ingman, Austin Chronicle
Asha Dornfest, ParentHacks.com
Dan Evans, Dad Gone Mad
Tracy Gaughran-Perez, Sweetney.com
Amy Corbett StorchIngman:
Blogging about parenting used to be considered strange. Why would anyone read it? But people do. Telling stories and creating communities is both natural and necessary for parents. We look it as a way of interacting with other parents and staving off the isolation. Question: Some people see it as boring and narcissistic. Why are they wrong?
Corbett: I'm not boring! I read a lot of parent blogs. Some are boring, but the authors don't care. Not everyone is out for readership and money. The most valuable thing is documenting my baby's childhood. The community keeps it interactive.
Gaughran-Perez: It's boring if you're a bad writer. But that holds for any blog topic. There are bad mommy bloggers, but there are lots of great ones.
Dornfest: When people find a strong voice, it doesn't matter what they're talking about. If it resonates, the reader is engaged.
Ingman: The act of parenting engenders storytelling. How many times do you have a great story at the end of day? Not just the funny things kids say, but the narratives our parenting.Evans: That's the difference between "my kid used the potty!" and "here's the story of my child's life as it unfolds and what we're learning from it."
Ingman: what about making money?
Evans: I sell t-shirts on my vlog.
Ingman: Do you make money?
Evans: You have no idea. J
Dornfest. Parenthacks is a bit different because it's a community, so people share info about products - reviews, advice, etc. So I connect it with Amazon affiliates program and google ads.
Gaughran Perez: Multiple income streams. You can have primary advertisers. We use Federated Media and BlogHer ad network. I haven't been able to get Google Adsense to work well for me. But if you cobble together you can cobble together an income. But there's a difference between an income, a living.
Corbett. I have a couple of paid blogging gigs. It's strange when people want to buy your voice, but then there are restrictions due to that. If I didn't have those paying gigs, I'd be very nervous that this wouldn't work.
Ingman: What do you mean by restrictions?
Corbett: Subject matter - you don't own the copyright. I can't always put pics of my son up because I want to own them. Language is an issue - some of us can be a little salty. One of my vlogs is PG-13, the other is Rated G.
Gaughran: I gave up my paid gigs because they were too restrictive. I got an offer from a major corp. At first they said do whatever you want. But contract time, they said it had to be rated G and fit with the corporation's image. I said no - have you read my blog? Do you know how I am? You can make good money, but you have to give up a little freedom.
Dornfest: If you do a blog that gets some traffic, traditional media may approach you. You have an opportunity because you've created a name for yourself. This can give you other writing opportunities. So it's indirect, but it's still money.
Evans: When you have a corporate blogging gig, you need to write to their target audience and not offend them. You're making a sacrifice of your own style in order to make a buck. It's acceptable for a while, but I write because I want to write what I want. Compromise can be uncomfortable.
Gaughran: It's not like we're getting rich. You need a couple of paying gigs to really make a living off of it.
Corbett: I'm concerned about how long-term I can do this. Even with a loyal audience, they may not follow you to a corporate gig where you're not being authentic. And the corporate folks may be disappointed because your audience didn't follow you.
Gaughran: Readers will only go to so many sites. They came to you because of your voice and perspective, and if that's reigned in and controlled, it loses its allure.
Ingman: So they want your readers and not your writing?
Corbett? To an extent. I've been able to make it work but it's a challenge. For some companies it's a race to have parent blogs, but they want to control it.
Evans: It's becoming corporatized. The only parenting pros were the folks who write the What to Expect series. It's so clinical and not personal. Now we're hearing real voices about what it's really like to be a parent. We're talking about poop now! And corporations are having a hard time adapting to that realism.
Ingman: For parenting hacks, you're focusing on user-generated ideas - you're not doing all the advice.
Dornfest: The premise is that experts have a place. But the most useful info is from friends and relatives. So we want to be able to collect that info in one place. People are feeling recognized because their advice is being heard and shared. Blogging just lends itself to that.
Ingman: How are your sites fostering collective wisdom?
Corbett: I have a 17 month old who lives on lint and cheerios. When your kid is finicky, it's easy to rant and ask for help. And my readers rushed to help me, giving advice and sharing their own stories. I got practical advice. I have a community to turn to.
Ingman: Each of us has felt a bit let down by real-world networks. Relationships change when you have a kid, but online you can find other parents in the same situation.
Corbett: I'm always amazed when I hesitate to publish something about losing my temper, or when I'm afraid. I never knew that so many people go through this stuff. Everyone was so supportive and grateful that we were talking about it.
Ingman: Since you're writing personal stuff, do you feel you're really under a microscope?
Corbett: Mothers are always held to a higher standard. When a child is involved, people get judgmental.
Gaughran: People can be supportive, but you'll have some folks who judge you. But the overall responsiveness far outweighs the negatives.
Corbett: And it's not about the money. It's the personal, emotional support you get.
Dornfest: It may sounds like a cliché, but we do it because we love it. If you don't, you stop. Otherwise it's not worth the money.
Gaughran: And most of us started blogging before anyone started talking about "monetization." When Dooce started putting up ads, people freaked out. I started with no ads, no designs on earning money. But then the world started shifting.
Corbett: I started ads when I realized so much of my leave would be unpaid.
Evans: Can you make real bucks? It depends on what you mean real. Guess a number and then move the period two places to the left.
Gaughran: I knew someone who just got pregnant, and people were saying quit your job and make it a career.
Corbett: You need to earn this, write every day, give people a reason to come back. Blog audiences are savvy and can smell someone who's in it for the money.
Dornfest: People forget it's like any other writing career. You have to keep at it and produce good, quality content. It needs a strong, compelling voice or offer compelling information. And it's the size of the readership that helps generating income.
Evans: If you start a blog just to make money, you're doing it in the opposite order. This is a different genre.
Ingman: Is it different for dads?
Evans: Most of my readers are probably women. It's different because I can stay away from the drama. I don't think my writing doesn't have much banter; I tell a story and people read it. Male voices aren't as popular as female voices. Women seem to look for a community of other moms, while dads do that less.
Question: Is parent blogging a female space? And is that wrong?
Evans: There's definitely a space for dad blogs. We have a different view. My wife does the dirty work and I teach the kids how to fart. It's a totally different perspective. But wives want to know what men do and why, which is why my readership is female.
Dornfest: My readership is 50/50 because parenthacks is about problem solving. Dads have said that it's a place where they can be fathers. There's a huge opportunities for strong voices in the fatherblogging community. There's room for a lot more.
Tags: blogs | parenting | sxsw
Posted by acarvin at 1:12 PM
March 1, 2007
Josh Wolf, Wikipedia and the Debate Over Who's a Journalist
Earlier this week I was perusing the Wikipedia entry for Josh Wolf, the video blogger who recently set the record for being the journalist with the longest time spent in jail for contempt of court. As I first blogged last August, Josh has been sitting in jail for refusing to turn over footage he shot at a protest in California. A police cruiser was allegedly set on fire by protestors, and the feds demanded that Josh turn over his source materials so they could review his footage. Josh refused, arguing that a journalist shouldn't be force to turn over such materials, and he's sat in jail ever since.
Josh Wolf, as photographed by Amanda Congdon
Josh's case has fueled an ongoing debate among some folks over who is a journalist and who isn't, trying to drive yet another wedge between mainstream media on the one hand, and bloggers and vloggers on the other. Jay Rosen famously wrote two years ago that this particular war is over. Yet the debate continues to flair up in some circles, most recently on PBS Frontline, as Jeff Jarvis lamented this week. It's flaired up on Wikipedia, too - and part of it appears to be my fault.
The day Josh was sent to jail last summer, there wasn't a Wikipedia entry about his predicament. At that moment in time, there was only what's called a "disambiguation page" - a Wikipedia page that links out to entries sharing similar names. So when you searched for Josh Wolf you got a page listing three different Joshes. One of the three - Josh Wolff the soccer player - had an entry already, while two of them - Josh the vlogger and a comic with the same name - did not. To clarify which one was which, Josh the vlogger was labeled like this:
Josh Wolf (journalist) — Independent Journalist Charged With Civil Contempt in RE: Federal grand jury."Josh Wolf (journalist)" was a dead link - no one had created the entry for him yet. So I clicked away and started writing, creating a new entry based on the way it had been worded already: Josh Wolf (journalist). That first entry I wrote about Josh was brief:
Josh Wolf is video blogger and freelance journalist who was jailed by a U.S. district court on August 1, 2006 for refusing to turn over a collection of videos he recorded during a July 2005 anarchist protest in San Francisco, California. During that event, anarchists allegedly set a police cruiser on fire. The district court empaneled a grand jury to determine whether arson charges should be brought against some of the protesters.Because Wolf shot video footage during the protest, he was subpoenaed by the court, which demanded that he turn over the footage to the grand jury. To date, Wolf has refused to comply with the subpoena, arguing that taking such action would serve as a chilling effect to other journalists trying to cover future protests. U.S. District Judge William Alsup disagreed with this argument and found Wolf in contempt of court, sending him to jail. Judge Alsup also denied bail while Wolf makes his contempt appeal to the Ninth U.S
Circuit Court of Appeals.Since then, the article has been edited around 120 times, with Wikipedians adding more detail, just as the media began covering the case more seriously. Behind the scenes, though, it's opened a fierce debate among Wikipedians as to whether Josh is a journalist, even questioning whether the entry should be titled "Josh Wolf (journalist)." The battle broke out on February 8, the day after Josh set the record for journalistic contempt of court, when a Wikipedian charged that the article was biased because Josh "isn't a journalist."
The entry describes Wolf as a "journalist", when his claim on that professional title is tenuous at best. Wolf is primarily an activist, not a journalist. He has no professional credentials as a journalist (his college degree is in psychology), and his journalistic experience -- such as it is -- is mostly limited to school papers, a 6-month unpaid internship with an independent weekly, and contributions to the "Haight-Ashbury Beat", a sporadically-printed neighborhood rag. Otherwise, he's really just an activist vlogger, and one with outspoken anarchist ideology, at that. Vloggers are not necessarily journalists.It appears that the attention and support that Wolf has received thus far in the media far exceeds his merits as a journalist, much less any validity of his defense, and is primarily an expression of the contempt that many in the media and politicians on the Left have for the Bush Administration (a contempt that I happen to share) and due to their umbrage at any perceived threats to the freedom of the press. The media has made Wolf its cause celebre for its own reasons, not because of the merits of his case. I would like to see the entry reflect this view, rather than merely perpetuating the misconception that Wolf is a journalist.
Another Wikipedian, going by the name Cowicide, fought back:
that's the same insult the govt. gave Josh as well... but the Society of Professional Journalists awarded Josh with a Journalist of the Year award "for upholding the principles of a free and independent press." Also, I think it was the New York Times that referred to him as a journalist as well. Unless you have superior credentials to The Society of Professional Journalists... Wikipedia should go with them on this and not you... and certainly not the govt... I mean, if the govt. now determines who are journalists or not... maybe we should just give up on this whole "America" thing and go with straight up communism? Welp, that's not going to happen... not over my dead body anyway. Whether you like what he's investigating or not... he's still a journalist according to the experts on the subject.To this, Wikipedian Wowaconia added:
PBS Frontline spoke to him and asked the question if a blogger is a journalist here. On a separate page they themselves called him "a freelance journalist and video blogger." at This is another example of respected journalists calling him a journalist, these people are experts at journalism and their definition of "journalist" is an expert opinion. If one wants to say that he is not a journalist they should provide references from different experts arguing that he is not or be in violation of Wikipedia:No original research.Anson2995 wasn't impressed:
Oh come on, that's ridiculous. I'm trying to assume good faith here, but it's getting more dificult. You folks are arguing that the issue of whether Wolf is a journalist isn't in dispute. But it's *the central issue* of his case. Arguing over which "expert opinions" carry weight is pedantic, and its a disservice to both this article and the wikipedia process to present a one-sided view of the subject. It's veering towards blatant advocacy.For what it's worth, I personally believe that Wolf is a journalist, but it doeesn't matter what I think or what the folks at PBS think, and it doesn't matter how "experts at journalism" define it. What matters for Josh is the legal definition. In the 9th Circuit's ruling, they spell this out pretty clearly: "The California Shield Law protects a 'publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press association or wire service.' ... Wolf produced no evidence this videotape was made while he was so connected or employed." (You can read the court's ruling in full if you scroll down from this column [1] at the Huffington Post).
So in repsonse to Wowaconia, Cowicide, and others, I submit that the Court's ruling meets your request to provide a reputable source on the subject. Let's add a paragraph to the article which explains that a) there is controversy over whether or not Wolf (and people like him) are covered by laws protecting reporters and b) that many journalists have come out in support of him. But let's not simply pretend that the issue is indisputable. Even if you're the strongest supporter of Wolf, I can't believe you'd favor an article that omit discussion of the central issues of his case
Meanwhile, this particular thread spun off into another debate, entitled "What does this guy do?" One anonymous Wikipedian sniffed:
I've been hearing about this guy [Josh] being a journalist, blah blah blah, and I come to his wiki and see nothing of his work.If his only journalistic quality is that he runs around with a camera and films stuff, then a whole lot of teenagers can be considered journalists...
...to which Cowicide shot back:
What does he do? Apparently, journalism. As I've mentioned above to Bricology, the Society of Professional Journalists awarded Josh with a Journalist of the Year award "for upholding the principles of a free and independent press." Also, I think it was the New York Times that referred to him as a journalist as well. Unless you or Bric have superior credentials to The Society of Professional Journalists... Wikipedia should go with them on this and not your baseless opinion that his "only journalistic quality" is that he "runs around with a camera", etc. BTW, I hope to God we do end up with a bunch of teenagers acting as journalists... America desperately needs them. [emphasis mine, not his]I could go on and on with these replies, but I won't - you can read them yourself. All of this boils down to a debate among Wikipedians over who gets to decide who is a journalist: a court or the journalistic community. What they can't seem to embrace is that the answer includes both. Courts clearly have jurisdiction to decide who is a journalist when it comes to legal proceedings. We may not like their conclusions, but that's what courts do - make legal decisions based on precedence and evidence. But because press shield laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the legal definition of who is a journalist varies with them, often contradicting each other. Does that mean Wikipedia should consider one person a journalist and another person not a journalist simply because of their home jurisdiction? Of course not.
Meanwhile, you have communities of professional journalists determining their own norms, based on their day-to-day practices. While their definitions may not hold up in court, they do dictate whom they consider to be their peers or not. And more and more traditional journalists are embracing increasing numbers of bloggers and vloggers as peers. Granted, the majority of bloggers/vloggers may not produce journalism all the time, nor define themselves as journalists, but that doesn't deny the fact that within those communities, journalism happens. (Three words for you: Fire Dog Lake.)
Many bloggers and vloggers see themselves as journalists, even if it's not in the full-time, professional, disinterested sense of the term. These are folks like you and me - well, maybe you, depending on who you are. We blog, we vlog, we participate in online communities, and sometimes, we craft journalism. It's not necessarily a matter of getting paid - some people crank out amazing journalism just because they're passionate about an issue or a community, and they earn nary a penny from it. Nor is it a matter of how much of your time you commit to doing journalism. I would surmise that less than five percent of my blog entries or videos count as journalism. Does that make me a journalist? When I'm producing journalism, yes. When I'm not, I'm something else - perhaps just a guy who posts too many videos about his daughter and his cats. Even if Josh isn't a journalist full-time, shouldn't his random acts of journalism give him that status - and legal protections - while he's engaged in those acts? Meanwhile, alternative news outlets like Oneworld.net and indymedia.org certainly produce journalism, even if they're engaged in activism in the process. So being an activist doesn't necessarily rule you out as a journalist, either.
It boils down to this: blogging, vlogging and other forms of participatory media defy the categorizations that the law - and some people within Wikipedia - use when deciding who is a journalist. It shouldn't matter if Josh is an activist, if he's engaged in the activity full-time, or if he managed to sell his video to a "real" media outlet. Vlogging is journalism by other means - and at that moment in time, he was doing a service that cannot be separated from journalism. Vloggers may not always strive to be journalists or meet the standards that professional journalists would demand of them, but that doesn't mean that you can dismiss them as being beyond the realm of journalism. The law - and some Wikipedians - just have some catching up to do. -andy
Tags: Frontline | Jay Rosen | Jeff Jarvis | Josh Wolf | journalism | law | media | PBS | vlogging | Wikipedia
Posted by acarvin at 3:15 PM
February 21, 2007
Embracing the B-Listers
Colleen Wilson, Senior Interactive Producer at KQED, spoke during our panel session this morning about their foodie blog, Bay Area Bites. When they first decided to create a blog, they invested a lot of time investigating and participating in Bay Area food blogs. One might assume that the goal was to identify and recruit the A-list food bloggers in the community, but they didn't. Instead, they embraced the B-list bloggers: second-tier bloggers who were good at what they did, but hungry for more. If you're an A-list blogger, it might take a lot of incentive (read: money) to recruit them away from what they're already doing, but bloggers just below that tier are more likely to embrace new opportunities.
Once they selected a team of bloggers, KQED offered them training to improve some of their technical skills, like image editing. They weren't paid at first; they had to prove themselves on the new blog and demonstrate their commitment. After a while, KQED started paying them a stipend - $25 a post. It's not a lot of money, but it was enough to give them a sense of ownership in an important community resource. -andy
Tags: A-List | B-List | Bay Area Bites | bloggers | blogs | food | ima2007 | KQED
Posted by acarvin at 11:12 AM
Brendan Greeley: Blog Fairy Dust is a Myth
Right now I'm sitting on a panel session on user-generated content projects in public broadcasting. Brendan Greeley is talking right now about his role as blogger-in-chief of Radio Open Source, "a blog with a radio show." Radio Open Source has pioneered the integration of radio programs with online communities, engaging the public to discuss the topics of the show, as well as suggest segments, guests and questions. Brendan noted that in recent weeks, around 50% of shows have been suggested by its community members.
In terms of fostering a community around a radio show, Brendan said it's important to help craft expectations, so the public know how they can and can't participate. "Users want to be taught what do to," he said. "And don't be afraid to be a dictator," he added, noting there have been times when the discussion threads on the blog started to break down due to user insensitivity and disrespect of each other. In times like this, the public expects you to lay down the law and put the conversation back on track. Community breaks down when flame wars erupt.
In his closing remarks, Brendan stressed the importance of integrating online communit work into the job descriptions of the entire production team. At Open Source, every producer is expected to blog the segments they're producing, as well as read and respond to user comments. "If people know you're reading the comments," Brendan explained, "they're more likely to behave themselves."
But the notion of changing job descriptions is really important, because it forces the production team to take responsibility for the online content while embracing a sense of ownership of it as well.
"You can't sprinkle blog fairy dust over your program and make it bloggy and beautiful," Brendan said. "You better than anyone in the building know what the show is going to be about," he said. There was a learning curve, but now all Open Source producers write posts, as well as read and respond to comments. "The technical stuff can be solved in a week.... The real question is do the producers on the show, do the news staff, feel an obligation to update the site.... If they're not invested in some way, then the blog will be a dumping ground for things produced a few days ago that you're listeners aren't interested in any more." -andyUpdate- Another great quote from Brendan: "Anonymity breeds contempt." Brendan has discovered that having producers blog under their real names and using their names when communicating via email, users are more responsive because they see the people behind the radio program. And it goes both ways, in my view: requiring people to register to a community and use their real names, it holds people more accountable for what they say, and they're less likely to hide behind anonymity in order to flame another group member.
Tags: blogging | Brendan Greeley | fairy dust | ima2007 | online communities | PRI | radio | Radio Open Source
Posted by acarvin at 10:20 AM
January 17, 2007
New Report Dissects Impact of Web 2.0 on Election 2006
The good folks at the Pew Internet Project have come out with a report analyzing how the public used the Internet and other media during the 2006 election cycle. While the percentage of Americans relying on newspapers and magazines for political coverage declined dramatically over the last decade - from 60% to 34% for newspapers and from 11% to 2% for magazines - the percentage of Americans relying on the Internet grew from 3% to 15%. (Radio remained stable, hovering at around 17%.)
Altogether, nearly half of all Internet users, or 31% of the general population, say they went online to gather political information and exchange it via email. This group, which Pew refers to "campaign Internet users," adds up to 60 million Americans. Nearly one-quarter of these campaign Internet users (23%), appear to be forming "a new online political elite." By this, Pew means these Internet users were actively engaged in online political discourse, including publishing their own political commentary online, sharing someone else's commentary, creating political audio/video, or sharing other people's audio/video. So if you blogged about politics, created a political YouTube video or circulated a political video you found on blip.tv, mazel tov - you're among this new online politirati. Granted, only one percent of these folks posted original audio or video online, but this is the first political cycle in which these tools were readily available to a broad public. But that one percent managed to bring us the Macaca Moment and Conrad Burns imitating a narcoleptic - and this probably contributed to the Dems regaining the Senate. So if you thought YouTube was influential this time around, imagine what'll be like in '08.
In case you're wondering if Democrats and Republicans consume political media differently, it appears they do, but not by much. The Pew data shows no difference among Dems and Repubs when it came to the Internet or newspapers. Democrats were more likely to rely on newspapers as a source, along with CNN and MSNBC. Republicans, on the other hand, were more likely to watch Fox News and listen to the radio. Take note, my NPR brethren! -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:13 PM
January 4, 2007
Introducing NPR Rough Cuts
Over the holidays, NPR launched a new blog and podcast called NPR Rough Cuts. The idea behind Rough Cuts is to open up the radio program development process to the public, giving them a chance to help craft the goals of the show, critique dress rehearsal segments, suggest topics and guests, etc. The first show going through this "open piloting" process is a yet-unamed show to be hosted by veteran journalist Michel Martin, and is slated to go on air later this spring. Please check it out and help us craft this new program! -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:00 PM
November 21, 2006
Bloggers: Give It Up For Fox
Last night I was watching our local Fox affiliate's 11pm news broadcast to see how they were covering the mess surrounding that OJ Simpson book, and at one point they plugged a feature on their website inviting the public to blog there. At first I was surprised, because I hadn't heard of a TV news website hosting blogs for the public. Blogs written by correspondents or contributors, perhaps, but not Jane Q. Citizen. It seemed too good to be true; there had to be a catch.
Ah, here it is, in their terms of use:
You agree that any content you post becomes the property of FIM [Fox Interactive Media]. You understand and agree that FIM and its parent and affiliated companies may use, publish, copy, sublicense, adapt, edit, distribute, publicly perform, display and delete the content you post as they see fit. This right will terminate at the time you remove such content from the Site. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the content posted by you to the Site may remain on the FIM servers after you have removed such content from the Site, and FIM retains the rights to those copies.If at any time you are not happy with the Forums or object to any material within the Forums, your sole remedy is to stop using them.
So that explains it. Feel free to blog for Fox - just be prepared to give away absolutely everything you write on the blog. I find it amazing people are falling for this when there are a gazillion free blogging tools out there, none of which strips away your rights to your own ideas. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:24 AM
August 7, 2006
Lisa Williams Discusses Placeblogging
Here's a podcast of Lisa Williams of H2Otown talking about "placeblogging" - blogs focused on hyperlocal community journalism. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:36 AM
July 6, 2006
The Rocketboom Saga Overtakes the Blogosphere
It's been a surreal 36 hours since Amanda went public with her departure from Rocketboom. The entire blogosphere seems to be totally absorbed by the saga; as of this afternoon, it was the #1 blogging topic according to both BlogPulse and Technorati. Even mainstream media is following the tit-for-tat exchanges between Amanda and Andrew, from BusinessWeek to the Washington Post.
They say any publicity is good publicity; frankly, we'll just have to see about that. Amanda, clearly, is going to have a very soft landing, with public offers from Jason Calcanis and others for sweet deals that would land her in LA, just where she wants to be. Meanwhile, there's a lot of speculation that this spells the end of Rocketboom, but I wouldn't sell Andrew short. He's working like a maniac to line up an interim host. I just saw the resume and photos of one of the leading candidates. For those people who watch Rocketboom just to see a pretty face, she'd fit the bill, but the big challenge will be to find some who was as witty and entertaining as Amanda. Frankly, I'm worried there's some public pressure to turn this into a quest for the "hottest" replacement. But the key thing will be to find someone who's funny as hell and has a distinct personality that can keep people coming back for more. I'd hate to see an Amanda doppleganger. Heck, I'd almost rather preview the candidates by listening to a podcast of their reel rather than seeing them.
Meanwhile, I've been fascinated by the goings-on over at Wikipedia, where people have been editing the entries for Amanda and Rocketboom. For a while there was an attempt by some Wikipedians to merge the two entries together, but that's pretty much a moot point now. What's most interesting to me is watching the Wikipedians try to figure out just what to post on the entries about the break-up. Given Wikipedia's strong desire to convey a neutral point of view and cite primary sources, it's hard for them to glean the "truth" out of the various public statements made by both Amanda and Andrew. Lots of other websites have struggled with this as well. When it comes down to it, unless someone decides to post the long stream of stressed out, ugly emails that flew around the Rocketboom correspondents list over the last couple weeks, it'll be hard to do that. If that did happen, even if it came directly from Amanda or Andrew, what you'd end up with are two very distinct opinions of what actually happened. This already seems to be happening; Amanda's last blog post was a copy of an email she sent to the correspondents list, in response to a previous message sent to everyone from Andrew. This could turn into an email arms race, with Andrew and Amanda publishing the several dozen emails that went back and forth over the last two weeks. Boy, I hope not.
Which one of their stories is more accurate? You might as well split the difference, since it seems there's truth and sincerity behind each of their perspectives. Even having followed the back-and-forth emails, I feel I'll never really know exactly what happened, because each of them believes very strongly that their explanation is the true explanation. Neither of them are lying as a face-saving public stratagem. It's just what each of them truly believes what happened. But it boils down to high pressure, limited resources, creative differences and personality differences. Like Chuck Olsen wrote on his blog yesterday, "Lack of money certainly doesn't help most relationships."
As I've said already, I'm really sad it came down to this. Watching the fight take place semi-privately was ackward and painful, not unlike a kid watching his parents self-destruct along the downward slope of their marriage. I'd hoped it wouldn't have spilled out so publicly, for both of their sakes. But that's what's happening, and the blogosphere seems riveted, in a rubbernecking-a-car-accident kinda way.
Eventually, all of this will blow over. Amanda's left coast career will skyrocket, and Andrew will continue to be the pioneering entrepreneur he is. Until then, the soap opera continues.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 6:23 PM
July 5, 2006
Amanda Leaves Rocketboom
Yesterday, Amanda Congdon announced on her personal video blog that she is leaving Rocketboom. I am so sorry it has come to this. Amanda and Rocketboom producer Andrew Baron had spent the last two weeks struggling to repair their strained relationship. The rift had been growing for some time, and when it came to a head last month, I feared there was no way of repairing it. The two of them tried to solve their differences with the assistance of friends, family and colleagues mediating the conversation. Emails flew back and forth on the Rocketboom field correspondents list. They even decided to put Rocketboom on a summer hiatus to try to work things out, at the urging of many of us on the list. In the end, though, nothing could be done to mend the breach.
Amanda Congdon announces her departure from Rocketboom.
Amanda and Andrew are two of the most creative, hardest working people I've had the pleasure of knowing on the Internet. They turned their low-budget video blog into a force to be reckoned with. And now the future is uncertain. Amanda's moving to LA, while Andrew will push forward with Rocketboom. I know both of them will be successful with whatever endeavor they choose to embrace; I am just saddened they won't be doing it together anymore. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:35 PM
June 22, 2006
Alaa Released!
Just got this email from Julien Pain of Reporters Without Borders:
"I've just called Manal. Alaa has been released 5 minutes ago !!!! But he seems to be extremely tired."
Posted by acarvin at 9:52 AM
June 20, 2006
Alaa to be Released by Egyptian Authorities
Wonderful news coming out of Egypt late today.... It's being reported that award-winning Egyptian blogger Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam will be released by the authorities later this week. "He will hopefully be out and back at home by thursday afternoon," his wife Manal writes on their blog. Elijah Zarwan provides a bit more detail on the Free Alaa blog:
The Heliopolis State Security Prosecutor today told Alaa his detention will not be renewed. Alaa will now spend at least a day on a tour of police stations, and will likely be interviewed at Lazoghly, the headquarters of the Interior Ministry. But he should be back where he belongs, with Manal, within the next 24-48 hours.Congratulations to Manal and thanks to all who worked on his behalf!
Now for the 26 Kifaya protesters and the more than 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood members arrested over the past months...
Alaa has been detailed since early May, when he and a group of pro-democracy activists were arrested by authorities for rallying publicly in support of an independent judiciary. Hopefully the police won't stall his release, and Alaa will soon be reunited with Manal. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 8:42 PM
June 1, 2006
New Report Says US Broadband Access is Up - and Online Creativity is Way Up
The latest broadband report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project offers some tantalizing evidence that certain aspects of the digital divide are finally being bridged. For many years, high-speed Internet access was the realm of the elite - generally made up of white, well-off, well-educated suburban families. According to the Pew report, which surveyed respondents during the first quarter of 2006, broadband access is rising across the board. And who's using broadband for online publishing? You might be surprised. I certainly was.
As of March 2006, 42% of all American adults - 84 million people - had a high-speed Internet connection at home, up from 30% the previous year. Amazingly, the 24 million new broadband users surpass the total number of broadband users that were online a scant four years ago.
Home broadband access, 2000-2006. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.
Whites continue to surpass African Americans on broadband access, with 42% of white households having access, compared to 31% of African Americans. At 41%, English-speaking Latinos have reached parity with white households, but the report does not account for the non-English speaking Latinos, who presumably go online much less. Income and education continue to be major barriers, though. While 68% of families earning more than $75,000 a year are online, only 21% of households making $30,000 or less had access. Similarly, (Interestingly, the strongest broadband growth rate occurred in middle-income households making $30,000-$50,000 a year.) 62% of households with someone completing a college degree had broadband, compared to only 17% of households in which no one achieved a high school diploma. So while progress is being made in terms of the racial digital divide, income and education remain enormous roadblocks.
Home broadband demographics. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.
My first reaction to this data was that the jump in broadband access is a direct result of telephone companies lowering the cost of DSL. Many DSL companies have started to offer introductory rates of $15 a month, less than half the typical rate. Indeed, the average cost of DSL in December 2005 was $32, down from $38 in February 2004. (Cable Internet access remained steady at $41.) So it would seem that cost must have been a major factor in getting new customers to switch. But according to the Pew report, this isn't the case. A whopping 57% of respondents cited speed as their primary reason for getting broadband, while only three percent said their reason was the cost of broadband lowering to an affordable level. This suggests that more people are willing to pay for broadband because of the quality of the speed. Perhaps the reasoning behind this is that so many websites now require broadband to function properly, they're egging households into upgrading their Internet access.
The Pew report also takes a look at how broadband households are using the Internet to publish online content. Overall, 35% of Internet users - 48 million people - have posted content to the Internet. Broadband users are more likely to post online content than dialup users - 42% versus 27%. This is especially true of bloggers and people who manage their own websites. While an average of eight percent of Internet users publish their own blog, 11% of broadband users had blogs, compared to only four percent of dialup users. Similarly, while an average of 15% of Internet users published websites, 17% of broadband users did this compared to only 11% of dialup users. (I wonder, though, how many of the respondents said they published a website rather than a blog because they didn't know the term "blog," since some online journaling tools that are essentially blogs don't use that terminology.)
User generated online content. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.
Perhaps the most interesting finding of the report suggests that user-generate content is being democratized. Historically, online publishing was the purview of the elite. "Demographically, the broadband elite fits a classic early adopter profile for technology users - heavily male, well educated, and comfortable financially," says the report. But even this is beginning to change. More women are posting content online. Among broadband users, 39% of women post online content, compared to 43% of men. And income is becoming less of a factor as well. Among users earning $50,000 or less, 46% of them had published some sort of content online, compared to only 46% of those making more than $50,000. Of course, this doesn't mean that most online content is being made by lower-income users. There are many higher-income users online than low-income users; it's just that there's a higher percentage of online publishers within the lower-income demographic.
Demographics of online publishers. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.
Pew then asked respondents if they had ever done any of these specific activities: shared something they created themselves like a story or a video, created their own webpage, worked on others' webpages, or created a blog. Not surprisingly, young people were much more likely to say yes. While 43% of respondents ages 18-29 said they had done one of these online publishing activities, only 29% of 50- to 64-year olds said yes, while just 18% of those 65 and older said yes. Meanwhile, race appeared to be a small factor, but in a rather counter-intuitive way: while 32 percent of whites said they had done one of these online publishing activities, 39% of African Americans and 42% of English-speaking Latinos had done so as well. So while whites may continue to use broadband in higher numbers, a higher percentage of African American and Latino broadband users are taking advantage of their access as content publishers. Similarly, income and education gaps are relatively minimal in terms of content production: 32% of users without a high school diploma versus 38% of those with a college degree, and 32% of users earning less than $30,000 a year versus 41% of those making $75,000 or more.
Does the Pew report suggest that the digital divide has been bridged? Hardly. The vast majority of low-income and low-skilled households lag behind, and gaps exist among racial groups, albeit less than before. But as we continue to work to give more people the skills and opportunities to go online, it would seem that more people of different racial, economic and educational backgrounds are taking advantage of those skills and opportunities to contribute online content. To me, this validates the whole notion of bridging the digital divide - democratizing cyberspace and giving people a voice.
It's not about access. It never was. It's about what people do with that access. And more people than ever are using that access to be creators of content, rather than mere consumers of it. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:55 AM
May 11, 2006
Letters from an Egyptian Prison: Another Blogger is Detained
Fresh on the heels of Hao Wu's arrest by Chinese authorities, Egyptian blogger Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam has been detained by Egyptian police. Several days ago, Alaa was participating in a peaceful protest in support of an independent Egyptian judiciary when he was picked up by authorities and detained.
His wife Manal writes
Alaa and the rest of the group that was kidnapped yesterday, will be detained for 15 days. They didnt go directly to the prison as we thought, but spent the night at the Khalifa's police station and are supposed to be transferred to the prisons now. The 3 women will go to El Qanater prison, as Tora prison where the rest of the 40 detainees are held has no section for women, and the men are supposed to join the rest and go to Tora prison, but some think that they will also taken to El Qanater prison (which has sections for both men and women).Amazingly, Alaa is blogging from prison. It seems that he's writing blog entries on paper so they can be taken out of prison and posted. In his latest post, Alaa writes
Today it hit me, I am really in prison. I'm not sure how I feel. I thought I was OK but I took forever to wake up. The way fellow prisoners look at me tells me I do not feel well but I can't really feel it.I'd say prison is not like I expected, but I had no expectations. No images, not even fears, nothing. Guess it will take time. I expect to spend no less than a month here. I'm sure that's enough time to see all the ugly sides of prison, to be genuinely depressed.
Meanwhile, bloggers involved in the Global Voices blog have started a "Google Bomb" campaign. No, it's not what you think. A Google Bomb is an online campaign where lots of bloggers all use the same word to link to the same page. In this case, participants - including myself - are linking the word Egypt to The Free Alaa blog. Because Google determines search rank in part by the number of people linking to a site with specific keywords, the goal here is to cause any Google search for the word Egypt to go to the blog about Alaa's arrest. At last check, the site still isn't in the top 100 search results, but hopefully that will change soon.
All bloggers are strongly encouraged to participate in the campaign and hopefully shame the Egyptian government into releasing Alaa immediately. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 10:43 AM
April 24, 2006
The Death of a Video Blogger?
For countless members of the Internet community, video blogging has become a powerful, personal tool for capturing snapshots of life. In one case, it appears to have captured a snapshot of death.
A childhood photograph of Kevin Krutz, part of a montage from the April 15 video blog allegedly capturing Kevin's death
I did not know Kevin Krutz personally, nor was I familiar with his vlog, Questions in a World of Blue, until fellow vlogger Michael Sullivan posted it to the videoblogging list earlier today. Kevin was a 26-year-old film student in Philadelphia who used his vlog to share short videos he produced for school. Many of them are dark and disturbing. In one piece, a twisted surgeon performs unnecessary surgery on a model, ruining her looks, but creates an unexpected fashion craze. Another video uses long, unflinching shots a la Martin Scorsese to capture a man violently assaulting a women at a bar. Other videos feature bizarre, though hysterical attempts to produce stop-motion animation with ground meat instead of clay.
The final video installment, entitled The Last Hours, begins with a slate noting that the video was posted "with consent of the Krutz family." The video itself appears to come from a party; you can hear a friend narrating a home video in which he goes into a bathroom to make fun of Kevin, who appears to be throwing up in a toilet. As the video keeps rolling, the videographer and friend come to the horrifying realization that Kevin is in fact dead. There is blood on the bathroom floor, but it is not clear how he died; the implication seems to be that he passed away after massive amounts of drinking. One friend demands the videoographer to put the camera down, so the last moments we see are of Kevin at an angle, the camera resting ackwardly, as they try unsuccessfully to revive him. We then see his limp body dragged off the screen.
Dip to Black, then another slate saying the film was edited by Dom Miksit and posted by Tim Dunn, concluding with a montage of photographs of Kevin's life, as T Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" plays in the background:
I was dancing when I was eight
Is it strange to dance so late
I danced myself into the tomb
Is it strange to dnce so soon
I danced myself into the tomb....The video is chilling on so many levels, no less so considering the quote posted on his vlog's profile: "Video is a place where all the horror and atrocities you ever dreamed of can be accomplished."
It seems this quote may have been prophetic. However, some vloggers are already speculating that the video is a hoax - a disturbing art project from an artists who relished in disturbing others. Notably, the blog doesn't offer any details of how he died, nor does it supply an address for submitting condolences or donations. I was also surprised that a search for his blog on Technorati or news of his death on Google News yielded zero results.
If the video is a hoax, undoubtedly it will be debated for some time, praised by some for its daring and vilified by others for its inappropriateness. If it isn't a hoax, perhaps with the posting of this video, his family and friends will be able to scare some young person - even just one person - into acting a little more responsibly with their life.
I honestly do not know if it is a hoax. If it is not, my sincerest condolences to Kevin's family for their loss. -andy
UPDATE:
Mystery solved. Kevin isn't dead. But hoax may be too strong a term for it either, depending on your point of view. It seems that the whole thing was a video blogging social experiment to see how the online community would react, and to explore the boundaries of what's acceptable and what's not in the world of vlogging. There's an email to the VIDEOBLOGGING yahoogroup from his video blogging teacher explaining the whole thing:
Kevin is fine and well. Probably tired and overwhelmed since it's the end of the semester, but he's otherwise perfectly fine. I just saw him this afternoon in class.I don't know if he meant the video as a "hoax" -- or a mean trick. I'd
expect it was more of an experiment to see what would happen. It's
definitely in the "vlog dangerously" theme that Stephanie started for
videoblogging week. Perhaps this is over the edge for many of you?? Did
Kevin stretch things too far? And cross some line into something
unacceptable??....Mostly I'm interested in hearing more discussion about whether or not
it was "okay" for him to post such a video. What buttons did he push?
If you are offended or upset or disturbed or frightened or disgusted...
then why? What is it exactly that caused your reaction? If you aren't
any of those things, but have other strong feelings, what is your
reaction? What do you think that's about??
As I noted on the same list before the truth came out, whether or not it was a hoax probably wouldn't change the fact that the video may well indeed lead to a media/blog debate about the cultural boundaries of Web 2.0 in terms of what's acceptable and what's not. Any takers? -andy
Posted by acarvin at 3:48 PM
April 16, 2006
Another Murder, Another Blogger: How Will the Media React?
Ever since I woke up this morning, CNN has been recounting the grisly details behind the murder of 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin of Purcell, Oklahoma. Her body was found in the apartment of 26-year-old Kevin Underwood, who resided in her apartment complex. When police came by his apartment, he quickly confessed. "At that time Mr. Underwood stated 'go ahead and arrest me. She is in there. I chopped her up,"' stated a police affidavit.
Watching the news, I immediately began to wonder if Underwood had a blog. Just last summer, murder suspect Joseph Duncan made headlines because he maintained a blog. After a minute or so of Googling, I soon found Strange Things are Afoot at the Circle K, a blog believed to have been published by Underwood since 2002.
At first blush, it is a typical personal blog, with links to other blogs ranging from John Aravosis' AMERICABlog to McSweeneys, as well as summaries of news stories from around the world. Digging a bit deeper, things get a lot darker. On the blog's profile page, Kevin describes himself as "Single, bored, and lonely, but other than that, pretty happy." He then offers a chilling quote:
If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner? The skin of last night's main course.I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend Easter morning reading the blog of an alleged murderer, but it was hard not to get sucked into this terribly sad story. The blog paints portrait of a very lonely person. In one lengthy post from last September, he recounts his struggle with depression and social phobia, in the context of his secret love for a woman he worked with. She and her boyfriend were in a horrible car accident; he died, while she was hospitalized.
I went to Tim's funeral, and I also went to see Genie in the hospital every day. She did make it through, but she was in the hospital until December 18, the day before my birthday. I went and saw her every day, and I would sit there for hours. Even the days she was unconscious, or so doped up on morphine she barely even knew who she was. Even when she was conscious, she'd still be so doped up I had to help her eat. Most days I was the only visitor she had, her family hardly ever even came to see her. Partly because it was about an hour's drive to even get to the hospital she was at. But I drove it every day, and sat with her every day.I felt like a horrible person. Because in the back of my mind, a voice kept telling me, "Hey, she's single now, just give her a couple of months to get over the loss of Tim, and then make your move." I'd tell that voice to shut up, and stop thinking things like that, but it kept coming back.
In the end, the woman recovered and began dating another coworker, throwing Kevin into further bouts of depression.
[O]ver the last year or so I find myself becoming more and more detached from the world. I almost never leave the apartment except to go to work or my parents' house, and when I do leave the apartment, I walk around like a zombie, with a blank expression on my face, not looking at anything or anyone. In fact, the last couple of months, I've noticed that my eyesight is going, probably because my eyes are getting weak. Whenever I'm out of the house, I never focus on anything, I stare blankly ahead, operating on a sort of fuzzy peripheral vision. The only things I ever really focus on and look at are books or computer screens for hours on end, which strains my eyes further. When I'm not safe in my apartment, I am silent and expressionless, looking at nothing. I have no personality. If someone says hi to me, I either ignore them, or grunt out a small "hi," or "ok," if they ask me how I'm doing. It gets worse every day, I withdraw farther and farther into myself with each passing week.My spirit has been totally crushed. Anyone who looks into my eyes can see this.
I wish I could be like I used to be. I wish I could be like Melissa.
I wish I could be human.
It is probably only a matter of time before the media begins talking about Kevin Underwood as the Murderer-Blogger, rather than just a murderer. The fact that it's possible for anyone with Internet access to delve into an accused killer's mind will no doubt serve as fodder for the Nancy Graces and Larry Kings of the world. I'm concerned, though, that these portrayals will link his blogging habits and obsessive Internet use with his horrific crime, somehow suggesting that blogging too much can drive any young person to pyschopathic behavior. While it's true that previous killers such as Eric Harris and Jeff Weise have been active in online publishing, this doesn't mean that other killers weren't writing things down before the birth of Web 2.0. From Westley Allan Dodd to David Berkowitz to the Unabomber, killers have kept meticulous records of their thoughts, fantasies and actions, yet no one ever makes the claim that keeping a journal somehow increases the likelihood of being a psychopath.
Unfortunately, there's a media fascination with all things Internet related. If a sexual predator hurts a child, it's local news, but if they meet each other on MySpace, it's national news. Simply adding the Internet to the criminal equation sensationalizes it even further, sometimes steering the blame to the technology rather than the criminal.
I've got to wonder, though, if blogs have ever stopped anyone from committing a horrific crime. Go back and read Kevin Underwood's blog, and it's clear that there were times when he was reaching out for help. In the case of the blog entry I quoted above, only a couple people replied initially, offering sincere, but limited emotional support. I wonder if his social network had been stronger, both online and offline, if he could have gotten the support and treatment he needed - and maybe this terrible tragedy could have been avoided. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:03 PM
March 3, 2006
Pakistan Blocking Bloggers Because of Bush Visit?
Over the last few days, Pakistani bloggers have been reporting through the Global Voices email list that the Pakistani government is now blocking all access to Blogger.com. This particular blogging tool is one of the most popular in Pakistan - all blogs ending with the domain name blogspot.com are managed using Blogger.com - resulting in large numbers of bloggers no longer being able to update their blogs.
Some bloggers are beginning to speculate that the virtual blockade of Blogger.com is directly related to President Bush's visit to Pakistan this week. With so many Pakistani bloggers critical of Bush, perhaps the government decided to place a gag order on them so they could roll out the red carpet without any "embarrassing" critiques from the local blogosphere.
Others wonder if the timing of the move is just a coincidence, and simply the first signs of a larger censorship campaign by the government.
"Truth is - it may have very little to do with Bush's visit," writes Indian blogger Neha Viswanathan on the Global Voices e-list. "The anti-Bush protest has hardly found a voice online. I really do think this might be the first of other blocks. This might be on a very experimental basis to see how far they go. The Pakistani govt has hardly had any dialogue with bloggers at all. "
"The other theory is of course the one on Danish cartoons- which is likely," she continues. "But there is so much content on that outside of the blogosphere (the limited one at Blogpsot) that it doesnt' seem to fit together. I wouldn't be surprised if the govt of Pakistan comes up with an IT censorship policy."
Pakistani bloggers are still pondering the motivation behind the censorship campaign. "I have communicated with several bloggers and friends back in Pak[istan]," writes UAE-based Pakistani blogger Omer Alvie. "So far there's no resolution to this problem. Bush's visit in Pakistan is resulting in protests, strike (in Lahore city) and curfew areas in Islamabad. The feeling among bloggers is this is all rather suspect. Neha, might be right this might be on experimental basis. I feel this a a precursor to what the government can do in the future."
Given all the rhetoric Bush has been spouting about free and open democracies in the Islamic world, I wonder if Mr. Bush would take a moment with Pakistan's President Musharraf this weekend and remind him of the connection between democracy and respecting free speech. If he doesn't, I'm sure Pakistan's blogging community will find a way around the blockade and make the point themselves. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:39 AM
February 10, 2006
If Only More TV Characters Were Bloggers
Stephen Baker of Blogspotting pointed out today that Dwight Schrute has a blog. For those of you who don't know Dwight, he's a character on the NBC comedy The Office. It's pretty funny stuff, but as Baker notes, it would be funnier if the studio execs would let Dwight and other TV characters have blogs that could go in any direction, independent of the main story line on the show, and interact with the rest of the blogosphere.
How great would it be more TV characters had their own blogs? (Preferably the actors themselves, that is - blogging in character, rather than a committee of staff writers.)
Just to get things started, here are some TV characters I'd like to see blogging.
Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Anyone who watches this show knows that Larry is one of the most self-absorbed, insensitive characters on television. And that's just when he opens his mouth. Imagine what's really going on in his head?
Horatio Caine of CSI Miami. A control-freak if there ever were one, Horatio would no doubt moderate his comment threads with an iron fist. "Now here's what I want you to blog about, ma'am..."
AJ Soprano of The Sopranos. Don't tell me that AJ doesn't have a blog on MySpace.com.
Sol Star of Deadwood. The most thoughtful and introspective character on Deadwood, Sol only talks when he has something important to say. Yeah, I know, it takes place in 1870. That doesn't mean the guy can't keep a diary for God's sake. Sheesh....
Cassidy Mackey of The Shield. She's gotta know her dad's corrupt.
John Munch of Law & Order: SVU (and half a dozen other shows). John's got an opinion - and a conspiracy theory - for everything.
Randal Pinkett of The Apprentice. Oh, wait a sec.
Paula Abdul of American Idol. Corey Clark is so dreamy.
I wonder who would be on their blogroll? -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:03 AM
February 1, 2006
New RSS Feeds for my Video Blogs and Podcasts
I've finally gotten around to setting up separate RSS feeds for my podcasts and videos. Up until now, I've had just one feed that includes everything on my blog, no matter the media format. Since some users prefer feeds that don't mix media, I now have separate feeds available. That way, if you only want to subscribe to my videos, there's a feed you can use to do that. Same thing for podcasts.
My main blog feed (text, video, audio combined) hasn't changed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/carvinvlogs only:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/carvin-videoaudio podcasts only:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/carvin-podcastsFor those of you who aren't familiar with RSS, please visit this tutorial I wrote for the Digital Divide Network. It explains how RSS allows people to subscribe to their favorite content, as well as create digests of content from blogs and websites from all over the world.
Posted by acarvin at 11:06 AM
January 28, 2006
Hoder's NY Times Op-Ed
As I reported earlier this week, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan is in Israel to encourage better relations between Israelis and Iranians. This morning's New York Times features an op-ed by Hoder lamenting how President Bush discouraged Iranians from voting in last summer's presidential election, which resulted in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being swept into power. Hoder writes
Hoder speaks during a Global Voices panel at the World Summit on the Information Society, November 2005.
The day before Iran's ninth presidential elections last June, President Bush sent a discouraging message to potential voters. Iran's electoral process "ignores the basic requirements of democracy," Mr. Bush declared, and these elections would be "sadly consistent" with the country's "oppressive record." For Iranians, there was no mistaking the American president's point: he was tacitly sanctioning the call that some Iranian exiles and activists had issued for an election boycott, based on exactly this logic.An American administration that had called on other Middle Eastern populaces to vote in flawed elections greeted the Iranian electoral process with nothing but open disdain. It is worth revisiting this odd judgment call at a time when Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections has raised even more questions about Washington's confused strategy of democracy promotion.
That's right: with what appeared to be the endorsement of President Bush and dozens of American-backed satellite television channels that broadcast in Farsi, the disillusioned young people of Iran effectively took one of the world's most closely watched nuclear programs out of the hands of a reformer and placed it into the hands of a hard-line reactionary.
Can anyone now doubt that Iranian elections, however flawed, really do matter? When Mr. Khatami came to power, his declared goals were to establish the rule of law, demand equal rights for all citizens and reconcile Iran with the world. He may not have succeeded in all of those endeavors, but Mr. Ahmadinejad has entered government with manifestly opposite priorities.
Congratulations on getting published in the Times, Hoder!
Posted by acarvin at 11:28 AM
January 27, 2006
Blogging from Death Row
Meet Vernon Lee Evans. He's a convicted killer. And he blogs from death row.
Vernon Lee Evans, as pictured on his blog.
As noted in a recent Washington Post story, Evans is one of the only known death row inmates to have taken up blogging. He doesn't have Internet access at prison, so he relies on a relay system: a volunteer manages the website, posting Vernon's entries after he sends them by snail mail. The volunteer, Activist Ginny Simmons, also passes along questions from the public, allow Vernon to engage as an "amateur advice columnist," as the Post article puts it.
Evans is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on February 6. His blog had been silent for much of the past year, but the flurry of activity prior to his execution may start things up again. Meanwhile, his blogroll is worth a look: the blog divides the links in three different categories based on whether they're for the death penalty, against it, or neutral. There are several sites listed as neutral or against executions, but the spot for sites supportive of the death penalty is currently blank. Similarly, comments on the site from the general public are both for and against the death penalty, some being quite scathing against Vernon personally. It'll be interesting to see if the site picks up more traffic due to the media attention it's getting... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:45 PM
November 10, 2005
What Do Bloggers and Jerry Falwell Have in Common?
Wired.com recently posted an interesting story about a defamation lawsuit in Florida. Eliza Thomas had sued two news outlets because she felt she had been defamed by them while covering her involvement in a right-to-die case (she wanted to pull her husband from life support, apparently). The case didn't get much coverage on TV because it was overwhelmed by the Terry Schiavo case. But there was a lot of discussion about the case in the blogosphere and elsewhere on the Internet.
With her ruling this week, Judge Karen Cole sided with the news outlets. Her reasoning, though, is raising eyebrows, because she takes the position that Eliza Thomas was essentially a "public figure" because of all the online chatter about her case. And thanks to the famous Hustler v. Falwell case, public figures have a harder time demonstrating defamation in the eyes of the court.
For those of you who don't remember the Hustler case, Jerry Falwell sued Hustler magazine because of a parody they featured in which Jerry Falwell recalled intimate moments he shared with his mother in an outhouse. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Hustler. As a public figure, they said in essence, Falwell should expect to put up with criticism and parodies that might otherwise be defamation if Hustler had done the same thing against a private citizen. In other words, it's defamation if you do this sort of thing to John Q. Public, but it's not if you're Mr. TV Personality.
Fast forward to the Eliza Thomas case. Thomas, a private citizen, found herself being discussed a lot in cyberspace because of the legal proceedings surrounding her husband. She felt she had been defamed by the local media outlets, and decided to sue them. But the court took the position that Thomas indeed was a public figure because she had been discussed repeatedly in cyberspace. It wasn't like she was sending out a PR rep to encourage bloggers to cover her; instead, she got mentioned a lot due to the nature of blogs and websites in general wanting to cover interesting legal matters.
In the Wired article, University of Iowa law professor Randall Bezanson said that the judge made a bad decision, in part because Thomas didn't seek out public notoriety.
"(Someone doesn't) become a public figure just because a newspaper or some part of the media picks (a story) up and makes a big deal of it," Bezanson said.
Only time will tell if this case becomes precedent, but legal experts have their doubts. But it will be interesting to see what happens the next time around when a blogger sues someone for defamation. Clearly, Ms. Thomas wasn't seeking attention online, but bloggers are another matter. One could easily argue that the nature of blogging itself is an act of public self-promotion. Does this mean that bloggers or other citizen journalists lose their right to sue someone for defamation because the act of blogging makes them a public figure? I sincerely hope not. Otherwise, millions of us may have far more in common with Jerry Falwell then we would have ever realized... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:55 PM
October 24, 2005
Q&A: How I Record Podcasts and Video
Yesterday my old friend Larry Anderson from the National Center for Technology Planning emailed me about the podcasts and videos I've been posting from Bangladesh. He asked me some questions about the setup I use for creating the content, saying it would be useful to share with my friends and colleagues. So here are some details about my setup, responding to Larry's specific questions.
1. What are you using to record your audio?I have several ways of recording audio. If I'm just sitting in my hotel recording a podcast that doesn't require much audio mixing, I use the internal microphone on my laptop, using the open source audio editing tool Audacity. Audacity allows you to save your files as MP3s and compress them as well. Meanwhile, if I'm moving around while recording my podcast, I use a handheld digital recorder - specifically, an Olympus WS-200S. With 128 megs of RAM, it holds almost six hours of high-quality audio in Windows Media format. I then use the open source tool Easy WMA to convert it into an MP3 and compress it. I wrote a review of the WS-200S when I first bought it.
Some of the podcasts I've recorded have had Bangladeshi music. To mix the music with my voice, I generally prefer the video editing software Final Cut Pro, since I've used it a long time. It's not designed for audio editing per se, but I'm a lot faster at doing it with FCP rather than Audacity, which has a somewhat more technical interface.
2. What are you using to capture your video?
Until yesterday, I was using two cameras: my old two megapixel Canon A60, and my new eight megapixel Konica Minolta Dimage A-200. The A60 (before it was stolen, at least) shoots AVI format video at 15 frames per second, while the Konica shoots Quicktime video at 30 frames. The Konica lets you use the zoom lens while shooting, but its audio is much poorer than the A60. So generally I shoot more often with the older camera; all the videos I've posted so far were recorded with the A60.
3. Are you editing the video in Final Cut or something similar (or iMovie, etc.)?I use Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. I've been using FCP for about five years and absolutely love it. First time video bloggers often use iMovie, which is really easy to use. But I prefer FCP because I can do more complex edits and compress it to my own specifications.
4. How are you getting those rather large files hosted in such fine style?
My blog is hosted by ibiblio.org. They provide free, unlimited hosting for websites that are created for the public interest. I've been with them since the late 90s and am grateful for their generosity. Other video bloggers also use sites like ourmedia.org for free hosting, which I highly recommend.
5. How are you mixing the audio? Do you use GarageBand or Final Cut or something to lay down multiple tracks, then mix those down to a final output?
See my response to question 1.
Lastly, I'll just add a few thoughts on compression. For video, I use a compression codec called 3ivx. It's accessible when I use Final Cut Pro as File/Export/As Quicktime Compression option in the drop-down menu. I click the options button and make a variety of adjustments, setting the codec to 3ivx, lowering the audio quality somewhat (since I often have content that's not CD quality anyway) and setting the frame rate to 15 frames per second.
So that's a quick overview of how I'm recording my podcasts and videos. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:57 PM
October 12, 2005
Blog Anonymity vs. Credibility, Continued
Jon Garfunkel has posted an in-depth analysis about the Deleware Supreme Court case last week that affirmed a blogger's right to anonymity while questioning the fundamental credibility of blogs. I previously posted my own analysis, which you can find here.
Meanwhile, I received an email this morning from Julia Cahill, one of the principals in the case. She and her husband were the people targeted by "Proud Citizen" in his attacks posted to the website in question. I thought it was important to share her perspective, and she's kindly given me permission to post it here:
Andy, my name is Julia Cahill, of the Cahill V Doe case. I think the Jsutice's decision to DISMISS our case is just horrific. The Does 2-4 called me a whore, and such unspeakable terms I am humiliated to repeat them. We also have proof that Mayor Schaeffer, our next door neighbor who had us both arrested for harassment on Thursday, is John Doe. We posted signs on our front lawn saying 'John Doe->' and he had US arrested. just thought I'd let you know there's a human side here as well. With my best regards JuliaThe right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
-- Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas-andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:27 PM
October 10, 2005
Introducing the South Asia Quake Help Blog
The team that created the TsunamiHelp blog last December has now launched a new blog focused on this weekend's disastrous earthquake in Pakistan and India. It's called the South Asia Quake Help Blog. Those of us contributing to the site are using it to relay donation requests, news alerts and other pertinent information related to the quake. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 10:42 AM
October 6, 2005
Online Anonymity at the Expense of Blog Credibility?
While several hundred of us were confabbing at the We Media conference yesterday, the Delaware Supreme Court published its ruling on a case centering on two issues that are at the heart of participatory media: the right to online anonymity and the credibility of blogs.
The case in question, John Doe No. 1 v. Patrick Cahill and Julia Cahill (PDF), began with a series of messages posted to a site referred to by the court as the Smyrna/Clayton Issues Blog. On September 18, 2004, an anonymous participant using the pseudonym "Proud Citizen" posted a message critical of local city councilman Patrick Cahill (emphasis added by the Delaware Supreme Court):
If only Councilman Cahill was able to display the same leadership skills, energy and enthusiasm toward the revitalization and growth of the fine town of Smyrna as Mayor Schaeffer has demonstrated! While Mayor Schaeffer has made great strides toward improving the livelihood of Smyrna's citizens, Cahill has devoted all of his energy to being a divisive impediment to any kind of cooperative movement. Anyone who has spent any amount of time with Cahill would be keenly aware of such character flaws, not to mention an obvious mental deterioration. Cahill is a prime example of failed leadership - his eventual ousting is exactly what Smyrna needs in order to move forward and establish a community that is able to thrive on its own economic stability and common pride in its town.The next day, Proud Citizen posted another statement:
Gahill [sic] is as paranoid as everyone in the town thinks he is. The mayor needs support from his citizens and protections from unfounded attacks....These statements infuriated Cahill, who felt he had been defamed. Cahill and his wife decided to sue Proud Citizen, but first they had to find out who he was. Their lawyers conducted a deposition of Independent Newspapers, owner of the online forum. They revealed Proud Citizen's IP address - the numerical address that can be traced back to his computer's Internet connection. Armed with this information, they soon determined that Comcast owned that IP address, so the Cahills obtained a court order to force Comcast to reveal Proud Citizen's identity. When Comcast received the court order, they informed Proud Citizen, who promptly filed an emergency motion for a protective order to protect his anonymity.
When the case was heard before a judge, the judge ruled that Proud Citizen had defamed Cahill, so it was reasonable to force Proud Citizen to reveal his identity. Proud Citizen appealed the decision all the way to the Delaware Supreme Court, which yesterday ruled in his favor and against the Cahills.
In the court's ruling, Chief Justice Steele laid out their thinking on the matter. Like so many Internet-related cases before it, the ruling took great pains to note the unique nature of the Internet:
The internet is a unique democratizing medium unlike anything that has come before. The advent of the internet dramatically changed the nature of public discourse by allowing more and diverse people to engage in public debate. Unlike thirty years ago, when "many citizens [were] barred from meaningful participation in public discourse by financial or status inequalities and a relatively small number of powerful speakers [could] dominate the marketplace of ideas" the internet now allows anyone with a phone line to "become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox." Through the internet, speakers can bypass mainstream media to speak directly to "an audience larger and more diverse than any the Framers could have imagined." Moreover, speakers on internet chat rooms and blogs can speak directly to other people with similar interests. A person in Alaska can have a conversation with a person in Japan about beekeeping in Bangladesh, just as easily as several Smyrna residents can have a conversation about Smyrna politics.Among the various attributes of Internet publishing, Steele said, is the commonness of anonymity:
Internet speech is often anonymous. "Many participants in cyberspace discussions employ pseudonymous identities, and, even when a speaker chooses to reveal her real name, she may still be anonymous for all practical purposes."For better or worse, then, "the audience must evaluate [a] speaker's ideas based on her words alone." This unique feature of [the internet] promises to make public debate in cyberspace less hierarchical and discriminatory" than in the real world because it disguises status indicators such as race, class, and age.Moreover, previous cases have set a clear precedent about the right to online free expression, harkening back to the golden age of colonial pamphleteering:
It is clear that speech over the internet is entitled to First Amendment protection. This protection extends to anonymous internet speech. Anonymous internet speech in blogs or chat rooms in some instances can become the modern equivalent of political pamphleteering. As the United States Supreme Court recently noted, "anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and dissent. The United States Supreme Court continued, "[t]he right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.""It also is clear," Justice Steele added, "that the First Amendment does not protect defamatory speech." The challenge, therefore, is setting the bar at a reasonable level to allow people to seek redress when they've been defamed, while at the same time not creating a chilling effect that tears away the right of anonymity, effectively preventing the public from speaking its mind. "[W]e must adopt a standard that appropriately balances one person's right to speak anonymously against another person's right to protect his reputation," Steele writes.
We are concerned that setting the standard too low will chill potential posters from exercising their First Amendment right to speak anonymously. The possibility of losing anonymity in a future lawsuit could intimidate anonymous posters into self-censoring their comments or simply not commenting at all. A defamation plaintiff, particularly a public figure, obtains a very important form of relief by unmasking the identity of his anonymous critics. The revelation of identity of an anonymous speaker "may subject [that speaker] to ostracism for expressing unpopular ideas, invite retaliation from those who oppose her ideas or from those whom she criticizes, or simply give unwanted exposure to her mental processes."Plaintiffs can often initially plead sufficient facts to meet the good faith test applied by the Superior Court, even if the defamation claim is not very strong, or worse, if they do not intend to pursue the defamation action to a final decision. After obtaining the identity of an anonymous critic through the compulsory discovery process, a defamation plaintiff who either loses on the merits or fails to pursue a lawsuit is still free to engage in extra-judicial self-help remedies; more bluntly, the plaintiff can simply seek revenge or retribution.Indeed, there is reason to believe that many defamation plaintiffs bring suit merely to unmask the identities of anonymous critics. As one commentator has noted, "[t]he sudden surge in John Doe suits stems from the fact that many defamation actions are not really about money."
"The goals of this new breed libel action are largely symbolic, the primary goal being to silence John Doe and others like him."This "sue first, ask questions later" approach, coupled with standard only minimally protective of the anonymity of defendants, will discourage debate on important issues of public concern as more and more anonymous posters censor their online statements in response to the likelihood of being unmasked.
Justice Steele then goes on to describe the spectrum of content available over the Internet. In the process of doing so, he stakes much of the Delaware Supreme Court's final decision on a principle that would have stirred quite a debate at yesterday's conference: that blog content should be taken less seriously than content produced by mainstream media. To wit (emphasis added):
While as a form of communication the internet is not legally distinct and warrants no special protection above and beyond what traditional forms of communication receive, it is worth noting that certain factual and contextual issues relevant to chat rooms and blogs are particularly important in analyzing the defamation claim itself. Ranked in terms of reliability, there is a spectrum of sources on the internet. For example, chat rooms and blogs are generally not as reliable as the Wall Street Journal Online. Blogs and chat rooms tend to be vehicles for the expression of opinions; by their very nature, they are not a source of facts or data upon which a reasonable person would rely.Steele goes on to cite several cases in which courts questioned the reliability of online content produced by the general public. One case, Rocker Mgmt., LLC v. John Does 1 through 20, noted that
the messages tended to be "replete with grammar and spelling errors; most posters do not even use capital letters. Many of the messages are vulgar and offensive, and are filled with hyperbole." The court continued, "in this context, readers are unlikely to view messages posted anonymously as assertions of fact."Another cased he cites states the following:
"[u]nlike…traditional media, there are no controls on the postings. Literally anyone who has access to the internet has access to the chatrooms."Moreover, "the statements were posted in the general cacophony of an internet chat-room in which about 1,000 messages a week are posted….Importantly, the postings are full of hyperbole, invective, short-hand phrases and language not generally found in fact-based documents….To put it mildly, these postings…lack the formality and polish typically found in documents in which a reader would expect to find fact. "The court concluded that the general tone, context, style and content of the postings "strongly suggest that they are the opinions of the posters."Accordingly, the "reasonable reader, looking at the hundreds and thousands of postings about the company from a wide variety of posters, would not expect that [the defendant] was airing anything other than his personal views....""Apart from the editorial page," he continues, "a reasonable person reading a newspaper in print or online, for example, can assume that the statements are factually based and researched. This is not the case when the statements are made on blogs or in chat rooms." Justice Steele then quotes from Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky's Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse in Cyberspace:
"When one views…allegedly defamatory statements in context - both the immediate context and the broader social context - it becomes apparent that many of the allegedly defamatory statements cannot be interpreted as stating actual facts, but instead are either ‘subjective speculation' or ‘merely rhetorical hyperbole.'"So based on the presumption that blogs and online forums are platforms solely for opinions rather than facts, the court sides with Proud Citizen, aka John Doe (once again, with added emphasis):
Given the context, no reasonable person could have interpreted these statements as being anything other than opinion. The guidelines at the top of the blog specifically state that the forum is dedicated to opinions about issues in Smyrna. If more evidence of that were needed, another contribution to the blog responded to Doe's second posting as follows: "Proud Citizen, you asked for support, I don't think you are going to get it here. Just by reading both sides, your tone and choice of words is [that of] a type of person that couldn't convince me. You sound like the person with all the anger and hate…" At least one reader of the blog quickly reached the conclusion that Doe's comments were no more than unfounded and unconvincing opinion.Given the context of the statement and the normally (and inherently) unreliable nature of assertions posted in chat rooms and on blogs, this is the only supportable conclusion. Read in the context of an internet blog, these statements did not imply any assertions of underlying objective facts. Accordingly, we hold that as a matter of law a reasonable person would not interpret Doe's statements as stating facts about Cahill. The statements are, therefore, incapable of a defamatory meaning.
Thus, in the state of Delaware, it would appear that bloggers, including anonymous ones, need not fear speaking their mind against public officials. The downside, though, is that as far as the courts are concerned, they shouldn't be taken seriously either. What's even more puzzling about all of this is that website in question isn't even a blog. Almost any netizen who's spent more than five minutes participating in online discussions would immediately recognize the site is a bulletin board and not a blog. (The site's hosts even categorize it as a public issues forum rather than a blog.) How and why the courts ended up deciding that bulletin boards and blogs are the same species is beyond me; the same phylum perhaps, but not the same species.
The justices' decision to lump them together does disservice to the thousands and thousands of bloggers who take their blogging very seriously. No doubt, millions of blogs are little more than personal billboards or exercises in navel gazing, while countless others exist solely for the purpose of spreading opinion rather than "facts." But that doesn't mean you should dismiss the work of thousands of bloggers playing the important role of citizen journalists? Even those blogs that are opinion-oriented often have well-constructed, thoughtful opinions. Does that make them less "credible"? Less credible than the newspaper editorials held in such high regard by the court? In the state of Delaware, at least, the answer is apparently yes.
Online Anonymity 1, Blog Credibility, 0. Case dismissed.
tag: We Media
Posted by acarvin at 4:10 PM
October 5, 2005
Hebridean Bloggers
Richard Sambrook of the BBC just mentioned a project in which the BBC is teaching residents in Scotland's western islands to learn how to blog and plug into the online world. Wish I'd known that when I was there two weeks ago. Next time, I guess.... -ac
tag: We Media
Posted by acarvin at 9:51 AM
Other We Media Bloggers
A quick head's up regarding some of the other people blogging from We Media:
Cristian Lupsa of the Committee of Concerned Journalists
Rebecca MacKinnon of Harvard's Berkman Center and Global Voices
Susan Mernit of 5ive
As I spot others I'll let you know... -ac
tag: We Media
Posted by acarvin at 9:29 AM
September 12, 2005
Introducing the Katrina Thanks Blog
At the suggestion of Regina Warren and other members of omidyar.net, I've set up a new blog called Katrina Thanks. The purpose of the blog is to serve as an open space for members of the public to thank donors, volunteers and relief workers for lending a helping hand in the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina. Similar to the Katrina Aftermath blog, the Katrina Thanks blog accepts text, photos and voicemail from anyone who'd like to send a message of thanks. This way, anyone can post a thank-you to whomever they'd like to acknowledge, whether it's a person for donating money, a church or civic organization that organized volunteers, or even a country that sent aid and personnel to the United States.
Instructions:
Email: send a message to katrinathanks.email @ blogger.com. The subject line will serve as the blog entry's title, while the email message itself with be the blog's text. If you include hyperlinks, please send the email in HTML; otherwise the link will not be processed properly. Attachments will not be accepted.
Photos: If you're a Flickr.com user, simply upload a photo and tag it katrinathanks. If you don't use Flickr, feel free to email a photo to turn80church @ photos.flickr.com. If you want to include a title and text with the photo, please give your email a subject line and put the text in the body of the email. One photo per person, please. Photos are displayed automatically in the right-hand column of the blog.
Voicemail: The blog will convert voicemail into podcasts automatically.
Dial 1-415-856-0205 (long distance charges apply)
Enter login 828-828-8888
Enter PIN code 2005, plus the pound key
Record your message
Press the # key to save your message, then the 1 key to post it
Because the site exists specifically as a tool for expressing gratitude to people and entities that have made a positive difference in Katrina relief efforts, please refrain from posting partisan jabs or other attacks; there are plenty of other websites for these political debates. Similarly, spam will not be tolerated.
Please feel free to share this information with friends and colleagues. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:55 PM
September 2, 2005
Urgent Call to Photograph Katrina Victims and Upload Them to Flickr.com
Hi everyone,
Many people have been asking me how they can use their Internet skills to help out with hurricane victims. I've been asking bloggers to blog. Now I'd like to ask photographers to photograph -- and help reunite victims with their families.
I'd like to ask anyone of you who are able to go to an evacuation shelter to go there ASAP and start photographing people with a digital camera. Collect their name, physical description, names of people they are trying to reach, their location and contact information. Similarly, if you're able to get access to a bulletin board of photos of the missing, photograph them individually and collect whatever data is available. We should also do the same for online photo collections of the missing that are scattered around the Internet.
Once you have all of this, upload it to Flickr.com. Flickr is a free photo sharing tool with very powerful aggregating tools. If you're not a member, go to the site and you'll have your account set up in just a few moments.
When you upload photos, you can give them "tags" - keywords associated with that photo. Tags are very, very powerful tools for pooling photos together. I've been using them on Katrina Aftermath to display photos tagged with words like hurricane and neworleans.
Photos should be tagged one of three ways:
katrinamissing: persons who are missing
katrinafound: persons who were once missing but are now found
katrinaokay: persons who are safe in shelters and are trying to reach friends and family.
When you post your photos, please include the tag in the title, such as
KatrinaMissing: John Smith
or
KatrinaOkay: Jane SmithThat way, their status and name will appear in the RSS feed's title tag. Then include all data you have about the person in the description of the photo. Don't skimp on information - include everything you can.
Once people start posting photos, we'll be able to find them here:
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/katrinamissing/
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/katrinafound/
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/katrinaokay/There are also RSS feeds located on each of these pages. We can then use these RSS feeds to aggregate the collections and distribute them to Red Cross field offices, the Astrodome (there will be an Internet lab there soon), etc. I will start aggregating them on Katrina Aftermath and will share the javascript so others can do the same once it's up and running.
So let's get out our cameras and step up to the plate. Let's help in whatever way we can. -andy
Tag: international blogging for disaster relief day
Posted by acarvin at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)
Today: Blog for International Disaster Relief!
International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day is up and running; bloggers have started to post disaster relief-related resources all over the Internet.
I'm aggregating participating blogs in this news digest. An rss feed is also available. You can also follow it through Technorati by visiting this search page or this tag collection.
How to participate:
If you have a blog, post some constructive information about disaster relief. If you're in the US, you'll probably want to focus on Hurricane Katrina; if you're elsewhere, feel free to focus on disaster relief and emergency services relevent to your community or region. When you post your blog entry (or entries!), be sure to include this code:
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/international+blogging+for+disaster+relief+day"
rel="tag">international blogging for disaster relief day</a>Please join us today! -andy
Tag: international blogging for disaster relief day
Posted by acarvin at 9:41 AM
September 1, 2005
New: Katrina News Digests
I've just set up three Katrina-related news feeds. Each one is aggregating content from news wire services, newspapers, blogs and other online communities. I've broken down the feeds into three major categories: Missing and Found Persons, News and Blogs. Here are the links, along with their RSS feeds, in case you wish to use them in an RSS reader; they're also listed in the "related links" section of my Katrina Aftermath blog. -andy
Katrina Missing/Found Persons Digest
Posted by acarvin at 3:53 PM
Sept 2, 2005: International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day
Late last night, tossing and turning in bed, images of Hurricane Katrina coverage echoed in my mind. I started thinking about how the online community has responded to the hurricane. Many people are truly doing yeoman's work, working around the clock to help cover the hurricane and disseminate resources. The coverage on Wikipedia has been extraordinary, as has been the case on Nola.com. Craigslist and NowPublic have certainly stepped up to the plate; even the amazing team from the TsunamiHelp blog, halfway around the world, have done their part by creating a KatrinaHelp wiki. Their generosity humbles me.
And yet as I think about all the work that's been done, I'm somewhat surprised that we haven't seen the Katrina equivalent of TsunamiHelp rise to the top. For those of you who may not remember, bloggers from around the world formed an alliance to publish an international blog and clearinghouse of tsunami-related information. Far and away, it was the best resource out there as the horror of the tsunami unfolded. (Full disclosure - I was a contributing blogger on the site, but I joined rather late. All the credit goes to them.)
Why haven't we see a Katrina-related blog of TsunamiHelp-like proportions? You would think that the US, the birthplace of blogging, would have been able to catalyze a who's who of bloggers to coordinate information sharing, just as TsunamiHelp did. Instead, we've seen a scattering of blogs pop up here and there, doing their best to share information. But it's distributed and dispersed, with no coordination between them.
Meanwhile, I've also noticed that many blogs have gone on with their daily lives as if Katrina never happened. Sure, they may have mentioned it once or twice, but have they posted any Katrina resources? Have they linked to the Red Cross? Have they encouraged people to donate blood? Some, yes. Most, no. Anti-Bush blogs continue to bash Bush, while pro-Bush blogs continue to praise him. Travel blogs continue to talk about travel. Tech blogs talk tech, pet blogs talk pets. Can't we all just take a break and focus on helping disaster victims for just a moment?
We now live in an age of tagging, RSS and distributed computing. Perhaps we don't need to have all of these great bloggers posting to one site, or have bloggers focused full-time on the disaster. All we really need is to get as many people as possible using the blogging tools available of them, posting whatever Katrina-related information they're comfortable with, then use tags and RSS feeds to bring it all together.
Therefore, I'd like to unilaterally declare tomorrow, Friday September 2, as International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day.
If you have a blog, here's what you can do. Sometime tomorrow, take a break from whatever it is you usually blog about, and post something constructive related to disaster relief. You can keep it topical to your blog: for example, if you usually blog about pets, blog about Noah's Wish or another entity working to rescue and reunite hurricane-affected pets with their families. Or, you can just dedicate blog space to listing websites where people can donate money (maybe even challenge people to match your donation), or share a story of a hurricane survivor. This goes for photo bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers as well - there's no reason why this should be text-only.
For those of you outside of the US, you could post about a disaster relevant to your community. Post lists of supplies needed for victims of yesterday's stampede in Baghdad. Post an update on how your family is recovering from the tsunami. Post multi-lingual resources for African families in Paris displaced by the recent apartment fires. Blog about whatever you choose, as long as it supports some kind of disaster assistance in a constructive way.
One thing I'd discourage you from doing, though, is making this political. There will be plenty of time for recriminations about who's to blame, if anyone, for Katrina, and the political ramifications. No doubt this will be a major topic of conversation in the blogosphere, but it can wait. People need help now.
When you've posted to your blog, be sure to include a link to this Technorati tag: International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day. That way, when people follow that link, they'll be able to find a collection of all relevant postings published throughout the blogosphere. There will also be an RSS feed on that page, which can be used to aggregate all of the postings and display them on a single webpage. I plan to aggregate them on my Katrina Aftermath blog; you can do the same. (Later, I'll post a javascript to make it easy for anyone to do this - more soon.) One collection of disaster relief resources, countless bloggers. That's the power of the blogosphere.
So please join me tomorrow and participate in International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day. Take a break from whatever it is you normally blog about - even if it's just for one post - and give back to the Net. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:11 AM | Comments (2)
August 31, 2005
Move Over Pat, Here's Katrina
It's amazing how the buzz around a particular story can change so quickly. Just last week we were all talking about Pat Robertson's rhetorical kerfuffle; now, the focus is clearly on Katrina.
It doesn't take a statistician to know this, of course. In case you have any doubts, though, here's a Blogpulse.com graph plotting how the decline in discussions around Pat Robertson and the skyrocketing of discussions around Hurricane Katrina. It also shows that the Robertson story, even at its peak, doesn't hold a candle to the amount of blog chatter regarding the storm and its aftermath.
As much as I'd love for the Robertson story to drag out, it's time to focus on helping out, saving lives, getting people the information they need to help their families. Pat can wait. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:01 PM
August 26, 2005
The Robertson Effect
Ever since Pat Robertson made his assassination remarks about Hugo Chavez, it's been a real hoot reading the reaction from blogs around the world. The day the story broke, CNN's The Situation Room was able to find only one blogger who supported Robertson's comments. Meanwhile, as anyone who reads Global Voices knows, bloggers from Bolivia to Bahrain have had their say on the controversy.
This seemed like a great excuse to go over to BlogPulse.com and plot some charts to see how the Robertson Effect was playing out throughout the blogosphere. Plotting a graph to see how the phrases "Pat Robertson," "Hugo Chavez" and "assassinate" have been used in blogs over the last two months, you get these dramatic results:
As you can see here, the phrase "Pat Robertson" takes a massive leap over the last few days. Interestingly, there only 2/3rds as many references to "Hugo Chavez," and even less so for "assassinate," even though both terms make impressive spikes of their own. This seems to suggest that a number of recent blog postings dealt specifically with Robertson's anti-Chavez remarks, while a great number of posts were just anti-Robertson posts without direct mention of the event. Perhaps a number of bloggers posted the initial controversy, then continued to post more general comments about Robertson after that.
While playing around with the BlogPulse graphs, I also plotted the same three terms on a six-month scale. Here are the results:
The results, as expected, are similar, but notice the unusual bump in the number of posts related to Robertson back in early May. I wondered what could have happened that week, so I poked around a bit on some news archives. Within a minute or two, I discovered that Robertson made some remarks suggesting that liberal judges were a greater threat to the US than terrorists:
If you look over the course of a hundred years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings. I think we're going to control al Qaeda. I think we're going to get Osama bin Laden. We won in Afghanistan. We won in Iraq, and we can contain that. But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
Way to go, Pat. No wonder there was a spike in the blogosphere.There are few guarantees in life. But Pat Robertson putting his foot so deep in his mouth that he tickles his own tonsils is certainly one of them. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 3:55 PM | Comments (1)
August 25, 2005
The War on Splogging: Fighting an Online Cancer
Doc Searls has an excellent post this morning about the dire need for search engine companies to engage in a war on splogging. Splogging is a term coined by Mark Cuban to describe blogs with no added value, existing solely to trick people into visiting and exposing them to advertising. Splogs are often encountered in two ways: by searching for a key word on a search engine, or receiving it as a fradulent hit through your RSS aggregator. More often than not, they're automated, linking to countless blogs and other websites, using keywords selected solely to attract more eyeballs and click-throughs for their advertising. And automation means that splogs are being created at a dizzying pace, to the point that when you do a search for almost any term, you're bound to get a bunch of hits that are nothing but money-hungry splogs.
With each passing day, I'm seeing more of both, and frankly, it's become maddening. Fortunately, Doc was able to put some real thought into just how bad this has gotten, and how it's an existential threat to the Web. His post offers a simple, but powerful way of combatting splogging: an industry-wide open source taskforce in which search engine companies pool their resources to fight the splogging scourge.
I suggest that everybody in the search engine business, including all the Static Web and Live Web companies I listed above, pool their knowledge and expertise, and beat a cancer that (in my humble but considered opinion) threatens the whole Live Web, including blogging in particular and frequently updated free content in general. Across the search engine marketplace, there is an enormous amount of duplicated effort fighting splogs and other forms of blog spam. There is also an open source solution to this: share the know-how. Even the data (perhaps through a public list of offenders)....Open-sourcing expertise is the right thing to do for the free marketplace we call the Net, as well as for all the responsible leaders there. Especially when we're fighting a cancer as malignant as this one.
I'm really glad Doc, Cuban and other big-time bloggers are addressing splogging. It's more than a nuisance. It's the kudzu of our time. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:15 AM
August 20, 2005
Introducing My Wall of Video
I've just added a new feature to my blog for those of you interesting in video blogging. I call it my "Wall of Video," and it's basically a collection of thumbnails representing the video blogs I've posted to the site. I'm using a script created by the video blogging portal MeFeedia.
The Wall of video will be featured on two pages in my blog. On the homepage, you'll be able to see it in the right column, just under my collection of photos from my photo blog. It'll look something like this, but longer and thinner:
Meanwhile, there's a link below it that will take you to a larger version. That way you can get a better look at each of the pictures to get a sense of what each video is all about.
So far, there are around 30 videos represented in the wall. That's about half of the videos I've posted to the site since 2003. Some of the videos are missing because they were posted in file formats not supported by MeFeedia; the others are missing, I think, because I included more than one link to a video in the same blog entry, which might be tricking out the script. So I'll have to change habits and include only one URL for each video blog entry, rather than having separate URLs for high-bandwidth and low-bandwidth versions. If I create two versions, I'll just blog it twice.
Enjoy... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 6:37 PM
August 3, 2005
Mauritanian Coup D'Etat: A Blogger's Perspective
Mauritanian blogger Rauf writes about the apparent coup that has taken place today in Mauritania. Here's a rough, machine-assisted translation of what's been posted to his blog:
Shootings with heavy weapon were heard Wednesday morning in Nouakchott after the presidential guard had taken the control of several strategic points of the Mauritanian capital, where a military coup d'etat has occurred in the absence of the Head of the State, Maaouyia Ould Taya.As of 5H00 local (and GMT), soldiers of the presidential guard took the control of the buildings of the staff, the radio and national television and blocked access to the presidency and the ministries, according to this source.
According to observers, they also positioned vehicles equipped with heavy weapons and anti-aircraft batteries at several strategic points of the capital.
Five shootings of heavy machines resounded with 10h15 close to the center of Nouakchott, whose streets were emptied gradually, of the population.In the capital, the administrative buildings were deserted and activity was weak at the end of the morning, with only some pedestrians and vehicles in the streets.
I'll try to track down more Mauritanian bloggers - hope others will do the same.
Posted by acarvin at 11:50 AM
July 22, 2005
Ghanaian Blog-O-Rama
Leaving the Kofi Annan Centre, David and I drove across Accra past the sprawling campus of the University of Ghana until we reached the site of my workshop on blogs, podcasts and video blogs. When we arrived, I discovered the cards were stacked against me; the facility had no projector (nor an empty wall on which to project, even if we had found one), and its Internet access was having problems. What those problems were, no one could really explain, but the end result was that my connection was no more than 10k per second.
Frustrating as this was, it was actually useful in a way, given the fact I'd be talking about publishing tools that usually require fast bandwidth. Would it be possible for me to demonstrate video blogging or podcasting on a connection slower than what I had at home in the 1980s? We'd have to find out.
Eventually, a group of two dozen Ghanaians settled into the room. Most of them were professional journalists, some quite well known in Ghana, while the others were technologists or academics. Since we didn't have a projector, I ditched my plan to show lots of websites and instead led a 90-minute discussion on the digital divide, blogging tools and their potential impact in education, politics and community life.
Amos Anyimadu, organizer of the event, then suggested we break up for refreshments on the verandah, then return to the conference room in small groups so people could huddle around me and watch me demonstrate various blogging techniques. We enjoyed the outside breeze while chatting over Star beer and Fanta, then worked our way back inside the facility.
Just for kicks, I offered to demonstrate podcasting and video blogging using fairly small files, neither of which was larger than 750k. I recorded a quick mp3 file while uploading a compressed two-minute video clip of a taxi ride through Accra. In both cases, it took just over 15 minutes to publish each file, plus another five minutes to way for the Web pages of my blog to download while I updated them. The slowness of the process gave us time to talk about what I was doing in great detail - again, an unexpected bonus caused by limited bandwidth.
The participants were very eager to learn more, but some wanted to step back and learn the basics of setting up a blog from scratch. For that, we simply visited Blogger.com and created a blog in about 10 minutes, again slowed down mostly because of bandwidth. They all took copious notes, asking lots of good questions; by the time we were done it was nearly 6pm.
Before heading out, though, one of the journalists pulled out his minidisc recorder and a large microphone; he wanted to do an interview for Radio Ghana. We chatted for about 10 minutes, recapping the topics we discussed over the course of the afternoon. Now if I could only get him to publish the recording as a podcast rather than just a national radio broadcast, then he'd do me real proud. :-) -andy
Posted by acarvin at 6:20 AM
July 15, 2005
Introducing DNA Cousins
For the last five years, I've been involved in researching my genealogy through DNA testing. The tests I've had done have revealed lots of interesting information about my ancestors, but it's also introduced me to a group of nearly 50 people who's DNA has been matched as being so similar to mine that we share a common ancestor. (Some of you may recall when I blogged about getting a DNA match with Ethan Zuckerman - small world, ain't it?)
To help facilitate the sharing of information between our little group of DNA "relatives," I recently launched a group blog, DNA Cousins. I'm not quite sure how the site will play out, but the idea is to give members of this extended DNA family a chance to post news related to family tree research, DNA research studies, etc. So if you're interested in this kinda stuff, please come by and have a look... -ac
Posted by acarvin at 2:15 PM
The Relaunch of Global Voices Online
With all the running around I've been doing the last week setting up video blogs for elementary school teachers and getting ready for my Ghana trip this weekend, I almost neglected to mention the relaunch of a website that everyone should visit. It's called Global Voices Online, and it's a project involving Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan Zuckerman, Joi Ito and an equally amazing group of bloggers from around the world.
Global Voices wants to harness the power of the international blogosphere. When you look around much of the Internet, what you often find is a bunch of blogs run by white, well-educated and relatively well-off people. Sure, there's diversity out there, but it's often ignored or not given the credit it deserves. Global Voices forces you to take note about what's going on in the rest of the world, thanks to the tireless work of bloggers in every corner of the globe. From South Africa to Iran to Uzbekistan to China, Global Voices is a network of articulate, passionate people trying to make a difference at home and abroad.
I've been modestly involved in the project, but I hope to do more. And if you know any good bloggers in far-flung places, be sure to let Global Voices know about it.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:59 PM
June 9, 2005
Art Mobbing the ICA
This evening, I joined a group of Harvard Berkman Bloggers at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art for an "art mob." We would all explore the ICA's current exhibit and blog, vlog and podcast our perspectives.
I arrived at the ICA to the sound of thunderous applause - not for me, but for Afro Cuban artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, who was speaking upstairs. She was standing by a piece made of nine large polaroid photos depicting two Cuban women linked by a string of beads.
Campos-Pons then presented some of her musical works, playing a song called "A Nigger Like You."
"I want to capture the Cuban meaning of nigger," she explained. "It is a word of pride, not of hate."
Wearing what might be described as a tropical prom dress, she kept a crowd of 30 or so listeners entranced by her art and music. Putting a pair of iPod buds in her ears, she began dance slowly and sing over the words of an Afro-Cuban rapper. Half a dozen people joined her for the dance, some voluntarily, some otherwise. I snapped some cameraphone pics until receiving the evil eye from an ICA employee.
Back downstairs, I began to explore the rest of the museum. Not far from the entrance, four enormous paintings of newborns greet you: The First People (I-IV), by Marlene Dumas. Described as "bulbous flailing bodies with oversized misshapen heads," Dumas' portraits beg the question of how early in life one first feels emotion.
Around the corner I spied Warhol's Nine Jackies - actually three pictures of Jackie Kennedy, each repeated three times. the pictures capture Jackie in different emotional states - happy, mournful and stressed. The repetition of the photos add to the emotional impact, the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Steve Garfield videotaped me and interviewed me for his video blog, while Mal Watlington recorded a podcast
Upstairs, Israeli artist Doron Solomons' Father, a 14-minute video, played in a dark room. In the video, we see his young daughter, watching footage of suicide bombers and the destruction they leave in their wake. Then we see the artist standing by a blue curtain as melodramatic music plays. He raises his arm and suddenly his muscles bulge thanks to some poor video effects. The message is that no matter how many Popeye-like strengths he possesses, he still can't protect his daughter from the threat of bombers.
The last installation I visited was Darren Almond's Traction. In another dark room, we see three videos. On the far right, his father talks about injuries sustained as an industrial worker. To the left, we see his mother crying silently. In the middle is a video loop of tractors at work. About a dozen people sat in the room, riveted by the juxtaposition of the father's stories and mother's anguish.
It was a small, but fascinating exhibit, oddly reminiscent to the Sharjah Biennial. I was really glad to have attended - particularly once the group of us retreated to VinnyT's for drinks, dinner and an evening of chatting.... -andy
Technorati tag: ArtMobICA
Posted by acarvin at 10:42 PM | Comments (1)
May 8, 2005
My Open Media 100 Nominations
Technorati and the Always On Network are currently seeking nominations for the Open Media 100, a list of 100 leading pioneers and advocates in the world of open media. Anyone can nominate people for the award; simply post a comment on David Sifry's blog or post your nominations on your blog with the following tag:
So without further ado, here are my nominations, broken down according to the appropriate category.
The Pioneers: Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg; Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive; Jimbo Wales of Wikimedia Foundation.
The Tool Smiths: OurMedia; Wikimedia; Ibiblio.org; Digital Divide Network (because the marginalized and disenfranchised should blog, too).
The Trendsetters: Lawrence Lessig; JD Lasica
The Practitioners: the entire team at Global Voices, in particular Rebecca MacKinnon; the folks at WorldChanging; Karen Schneider; Susan Mernit; Taran Rampersad; education blogging guru Will Richardson; Steve Garfield, Xeni Jardin; Hoder; and (oh, what the hell, what have I got to lose) Andy Carvin.
The Enablers: Joi Ito; Pierre Omidyar (because his foundation gives money to lots of great open media projects)
Anyway, those are my nominations. Hope you nominate some folks as well... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:25 PM | Comments (1)
March 9, 2005
A Review of Nightline's Blogging Episode
Last night, ABC's Nightline ran an episode on blogging which featured a recent meeting of the Harvard Berkman Bloggers group in which I participated. We had known the piece was going to run for a while, so it was pretty exciting to see it on the air. I got featured twice in the piece; I was the dude with the spastic arm movements in the blue sweatshirt with the number 81 on the front. They quoted me talking about the fact that only one-third of Americans read blogs, and also noting that even gossip columnists follow journalistic standards while we bloggers don't.
Also, I was very happy to see that they centered the episode around blogger Maura Keaney. During the Berkman meeting, I'd talked about how the media often portrayed bloggers as people hell-bent on tearing down others -- journalists, politicos, fellow bloggers -- rather than using the medium for positive social change, and that the real power of blogging is empowering a single mother to rally her community to fight local corruption, adopt new municipal legislation, etc.
After the meeting, reporter John Donvan talked to me about this issue, and asked if I could suggest any bloggers doing this kind of positive blogging in the DC area, so they could be profiled in the show. I reached out to members of the Digital Divide Network for suggestions, and soon I got an email from Maura Keaney, whom I put in touch with Nightline. So thanks to the members of DDN, Nightline ended up profiling a real person trying to use their blog to do local good.
Of course, I wouldn't be a responsible blogger if I didn't nit-pick at the program and critique it, so here are a few things I'd wish they'd done better:
Discussion of linking. The program made an attempt at explaining the importance of blogs linking to other sites, but it seemed to miss the point. They described linking like going to a bookstore, opening a book, and finding virtual connections to other books in the store. Close, but not exactly. It's not the connections between the content that's important, it's the connections between the people behind that content. Blog links don't simply point you to other sources; they connect you with people with differing opinions or particular ideas, creating an opportunity to interact directly with them. A lot of this interaction occurs in a blog's comment threads, but that wasn't mentioned either. Blogs are more then just vanity press; they provide context for social networks to interact and debate different issues.
Limited attribution. While bloggers may lack organized standards, they're usually pretty good about attributing their sources, and ABC didn't do that very well. As Steve Garfield writes on his blog, they featured a clip of his video blog from the Berkman meeting, despite the fact his blog uses a Creative Commons license that requires attribution when his content gets used by others. They showed his name for a moment on the screen, but only in passing, and they didn't make it clear the video came from him. Also, many of us who were quoted in the episode - Lisa Williams, Brendan Greeley, Taran Rampersad and myself - weren't identified, even though we were identified in Steve's aforementioned video blog. Personally, I'm not going to lose sleep that they didn't flash ANDY CARVIN, ANDYCARVIN.COM in giant neon letters on the screen when they quoted me; perhaps it's Nightline's policy to not use lower thirds (ie, captions that credit who's talking at a particular moment). But since they even talked about Lisa Williams explicitly, it's a shame they couldn't have mentioned her by name.
No info about who we really are. The show seemed to suggest that we bloggers are a bunch of enthusiasts who like to write about stuff, whether or not we have an expertise in a particular area. That may be true, but a lot of the folks they quoted in the piece actually are real, highly regarded experts. Dave Weinberger is one of the leading thinkers on Internet culture; Rebecca MacKinnon was CNN's former bureau chief in Beijing; Brendan Greeley is a podcasting expert and staff member of Public Radio Exchange. So if you didn't know any of us, you might have left with the impression that we're just a bunch of hobbyists rather than people who write about issues we deal with professionally.
Those issues aside, I still enjoyed the piece. It's easy for bloggers to tear into any attempt by the media to talk about them, like "These journalists don't get it." Some don't get it, others do, and given the number of pieces I've seen about blogging, I thought ABC did a decent job. I'd give 'em a 6.5 out of 10 -- not perfect, but far from totally missing the point either..... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 8:34 AM
February 19, 2005
Steve Garfield's Berkman Video Blog
Video blogger extraordinaire Steve Garfield has put together a 10-minute Web video covering last Thursday's Berkman bloggers meeting at Harvard. A production crew from ABC's Nightline was filming the meeting as well, so it was a sizable crowd, not to mention a lively one. We discussed blogging and journalistic standards for the better part of the meeting. Several Digital Divide Network members took part in the meeting, including Rebecca MacKinnon, Taran Rampersad, Doc Searls, Cedar Pruitt and myself. Check it out if you get a chance... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:33 AM
February 17, 2005
On the Record at the Berkman Center
I just got home from a fascinating night of conversation at the Harvard Berkman Center. Tonight's discussion focused on the responsibility of bloggers to acknowledge to people when they're on or off the record. The topic was somewhat ironic given the fact that the meeting was being filmed by a crew from ABC's Nightline program; along with all the people blogging, podcasting and videoblogging the meeting, the discussion was about as on the record as you could get.
I took a few videos at the meeting, in case anyone is interested.
I'll try to post more later. -ac
Posted by acarvin at 9:46 PM
February 15, 2005
Going Ga-Ga at The Gates
Susanne and I just returned from a weekend in New York City, where I thoroughly immersed myself in The Gates, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Central Park art installation. As some of you know, I set up a community blog called The Gates @ Central Park, which allows anyone to post their own text, photos or mobile phone podcasts to the website. I posted several dozen entries to the site over the weekend, so please visit the site explore them in greater detail. In the meantime, here are some audio, video and photographic highlights from the weekend.
Videos:
- Crowds shouting bravo to Christo and Jeanne-Claude
- The first gate is unfurled
- Billowing Gates
- Exiting a tunnel towards a row of gates
- Walking through the gates, part 1
- Walking through the gates, part 2
- Unfurling, Part 1
- Unfurling, Part 2
Audio:
- Mayor Bloomberg chatting about art
- More from Mayor Bloomberg
- Interviewing three women from Chicago
- Describing the crowd at the grand opening
- Watching a volunteer get injured
- Accompanying Christo & Jeanne-Paul to view gates from the lakeshore
Pictures:
A gate flutters with Central Park West in the background.
Unfurling each gate took most of the morning.
You can see them in every direction.
A view of some of The Gates from across the lake.
The New York skyline in the background.
Row after row of gates.
Posted by acarvin at 3:24 PM
August 13, 2004
TechSoup's Online Discussion on Nonprofit Blogging
Next week, August 16-20, the nonprofit online community TechSoup will host a week-long online discussion about the role of blogging in nonprofit organizations. It looks like it'll be a really interesting event, and hopefully I'll be able to participate for the first few days before heading down to Tampa for a long weekend. (And no, I'm not going there to gawk at the Hurricane damage -- my cousin Serena is having her Bat Mitzvah...)
As part of their prep work for the event, TechSoup has published an interview with me about the history of my blog and the role of blogging in civil society. Check it out if you get a chance.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:07 AM
July 23, 2004
Feedster vs. Technorati at the Democratic Convention in Boston
With just a few days to go before the Democrats start their confab here in Boston, two of the leading juggernauts of the blogging world are getting ready to strut their stuff. Let's take a look at what they've got lined up for us.
Technorati, the blog search engine, was the first out the gate when it announced it was partnering with CNN to offer live on-air commentary on how bloggers were covering the convention. They'll apparently offer a "BlogWatch" on CNN's Election Page, along with new blogs by CNN's very own Candy Crowley and Tucker Carlson. As of this morning, there was no sign of these resources on their site, but they've promised BlogWatch and the journalist blogs in a recent press release.
Meanwhile, Technorati competitor Feedster is wasting no time getting into the act as well. They're now offering politics.Feedster, a feed of the actual blogs published by the 30-some-odd bloggers who've received press credentials for the convention. The site already has a large collection of blog entries on it, but most of them seem to be whatever the last thing each blogger wrote before getting on a plane to Boston, be it on Iraq, Halliburtan, Al Qaeda, what have you.
So, with 72 hours or so left prior to the start of the convention, here's where things stand:
Technorati and CNN: Turn on your TV to hear pundits talk about what bloggers are saying.
Feedster: Visit our site and read for yourself what they're saying.
Feedster, 1; Technorati and CNN, 0.
-andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:47 AM
July 21, 2004
Achieving a Perfect Storm of Blogging Tools for Civil Society
Across the blogosphere this week, folks have been talking about a recent post on Susan Mernit's Blog in which Susan lays out her thoughts on what she'd like to see news organizations do to enhance their coverage of the political conventions this summer. Susan, a media consultant and veteran of the US edtech wars, notes that media outlets appear to have done little to creatively embrace tools like blogs, rss feeds, and social networks such as Orkut.com to make their convention coverage more meaningful for voters.
Among other suggestions, Susan offers these:
Fox News or CNN with Blogger and Picasa or Typepad=Citizen Journalism
Why doesn't one of the larger networks and their local affiliates work with a large blogging service and their photo/mobblogging capabilities to create local citizen/journal reporters who can moblog local campaign and election events and do man on the street interviews?
ALL news entities with Internet Archive and Creative Commons licensing
Why not create an open source media archive for the 2004 election? What if all the major news players decided to cooperate with the Internet Archive and build a multimedia archive for the 2004 election season? And grant a Creative Commons license for use of the materials?
For those of you who read my blog occasionally or see my posts on my discussion lists, you'll know these are issues that are near and dear to my heart. Particularly since my acquisition of a Handspring Treo mobile phone earlier this year, I've been quite interested in the potential of mobile phones as blogging tools for civic journalists. After witnessing first-hand and documenting the harassment of human rights activists at the WSIS planning meeting in Tunisia last month, I've been quite eager to see a broader conversation on the role of blogging as a tool for civic participation, a tool for bearing witness, a tool for engendering change.
So to complement Susan's ideas, I'd like to offer the following:
smartphone + OneWorld TV + Witness.org + CreativeCommons + DailySummit + feedster = Civil Society Holding Political Leaders Accountable
Let me parse this out a bit further, so please bear with me for a moment....
Smartphone. Pick you phone, any mobile phone with the capability to capture audio, photos, video and publish it with text to the Internet. My Treo, for example, uses Mo:Blog software to let me thumb-key text entries to my blog, Phlog.net and Mfop2 help me post photos, while audlink lets me post audio. (Alas, I still post video clips the old fashion way - FTPing them - but I'm working on it.) The Treo isn't a cheap phone, but thankfully it's not the only smartphone on the market -- and they're getting cheaper every month. Who needs a laptop when you've got a phone with a thumb keyboard?
OneWorldTV. My colleagues at OneWorld, with whom I co-publish DigitalOpportunity.org, have a wonderful initiative called OneWorldTV. The site allows anyone with a video camera the ability to upload video clips to a public database, to be used by civil society activists to put together Web documentaries. Have a clip documenting police brutality? (Or poultry workers torturing chickens, as we've seen to our horror this week?) Upload it to OneWorld TV so fellow activists can utilize it and spread the word -- or spread the image, as it were.
Witness.org. This group, co-founded by Peter Gabriel, is one of my favorite NGOs. Recognizing the power of ordinary citizens to document human rights abuses, they distribute video equipment and offer multimedia training to community activists so they can use the technology to fight for better human rights. Think of it as a human rights digital divide organization - they empower activists with technology to address injustices in a whole new way.
CreativeCommons. This initiative simplifies the process of Internet publishers to assign or waive copyright restrictions to their content. For example, I use CreativeCommons on my website so all site visitors know they can use my content freely as long as it's for noncommercial purposes and that they're willing to share my content with the exact same copyright rules. CreativeCommons is more than just a button on your website, though; it adds computer code to your content that makes its copyright status detectable by search engines and other tools.
Daily Summit. During the World Summit on the Information Society last December in Geneva, the BBC and the British Council helped organize a group of British and Arab blogger-journalists to cover the event from every conceivable angle. While other news sources were largely focused on covering public speeches, press conferences, and other events dictated by the policymakers organizing them, the Daily Summit dug deep into the event, displaying a blend of skepticism and wittiness to which so many good bloggers seemed genetically predisposed. Add to that a multicultural, multilingual team of writers, and you had a recipe for solid, real-time civic journalism, with the promotional backing of a major media outlet.
Feedster. This search engine lets you sort through thousands upon thousands of blogs and news sources to find out what's going on in the blogosphere in near-real-time. It takes advantage of RSS feeds, those pages of computer code gobbledygook generated by most blogs each time a new entry is posted. Feedster allows users to find out who's discussing what, where and when with a timeliness that few other resources can hold a candle to.
So what happens when you throw these things into a wok and give them a quick stir-fry? A potential vision for using media to help civil society hold our leaders accountable -- accountable to their policies, to the rule of law, to the universal need for human rights and good government. Tools like smartphones and other handheld devices go well beyond simple email-checking gadgets, even if that's how they're used by the majority of their owners; they're a virtual printing press, microphone and broadcast antenna that fits in your back pocket. Projects like OneWorld TV and Witness.org are helping civil society members document abuses that are going on in their communities by providing technology, training and an international network for disseminating their content. CreativeCommons provides an easy-to-use system for identifying your content as copyright-friendly, with the technical savviness to make it easy to aggregate and search for other content with like-minded copyright principles. The Daily Summit demonstrated how a media outlet can throw journalistic stodginess to the wind and empower a group of creative bloggers to document an important event. And Feedster lets you follow all of it through a smart, en vivo search engine.
Individually, they each serve an important, sometimes vital purpose. Imagine if they were united and streamlined for the average citizen to use. Imagine if CNN or AOL put their support behind it. Susan Mernit has helped elevate the conversation with her musings on embracing citizen journalists. I think she's right, and I'd add that it's also about civil society journalism -- empowering NGOs and individuals to use these digital tools to redress grievances in our society.
So much of blogging to date has been about what you might call "me" journalism -- publishing what I want, when I want, how I want. The tools noted by Susan, and the ones I've added to the mix, hopefully may contribute to a broader discussion of "we" journalism. We must give the power of the pen, the microphone, the camera, the blog, the phlog, the rss feed, to civil society as a whole. Blogging should not be the elite domain of the digitally enfranchised -- those of us who happen to be the most digitally literate and wired to the hilt. Rather, civil society as a whole, both individuals and organizations, should have the skills and tools so they may work in concert for positive social change, whether for documenting wrongs or demanding rights. It may seem naive or impractical, but in an age where terrorists demonstrate their Internet literacy by executing hostages via online digital video, we should demand nothing less.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 4:07 PM
June 11, 2004
Building Online Communities
Hi everyone... I'm just giving a quick demo of blogging for the online communities panel session at CTCNet.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:21 PM
May 3, 2004
Pond Painting
Painting the pond at Boston's Public Garden.
posted from Andy's mobile phone
Posted by acarvin at 9:02 AM
April 29, 2004
Computer Cat
Dizzy hangs out by our computer, wishing he had his own blog.
posted from Andy's mobile phone
Posted by acarvin at 10:02 AM
212-NYC-TAXI
Interior of a taxi traveling from Laguardia airport to the United Nations, April 23.
posted from Andy's mobile phone
Posted by acarvin at 9:32 AM
When Gremlins Attack
Yesterday I had a bit of a scare when I tried posting a photo blog entry to my site and ended up crashing the blog's homepage. So if you came to my site yesterday, instead of seeing my blog entries you would have seen a lot of white space. I was at a complete loss as to what caused the problem: I tried rebuilding the site, reloading default templates, etc, but had no luck. No one on the Movable Type discussion forum seemed to have any suggestions either.
Finally, in an act of desperation I decided to start from scratch and create a whole new blog. It was much easier than it sounds, trust me. I simply exported all 200+ blog entries from my site into an archive, set up a basic blog using the Movable Type Web interface, then imported all of my entries into the new site. All of this is pretty much automated, so I just had to sit back and wait for it to do its thing. I then plugged in the template I'd been using for my original site - the template specifies what the layout of the page looks like - then made sure I had all my site preferences the same as before. Amazingly, the site worked like a charm -- no more uncomfortable white space.
So what I expected to be a weekend of toil and grief turned out to be 20 minutes of cutting, pasting and clicking. Of course, for those of you who didn't visit my blog yesterday, you probably can't tell the difference -- let's just hope it stays that way.... -ac
Posted by acarvin at 9:12 AM
April 1, 2004
MobileBlog: Blogging from My New Cell Phone
Today has been a really exciting day: after months of begging and cajoling, my employer has gotten me the ultimate all-in-one mobile phone, the Handspring Treo 600. The ultimate hybrid mobile device, the Treo is a cell phone, Palm Pilot, email/Web browser and digital camera in one little package.
I'm just getting the hang of using its various features, including the thumb keyboard. So if all goes well, you'll be reading this blog entry, and I'll have succeeded at posting my first mobile blog... ac
Posted by acarvin at 4:57 PM
Contact Me
Subscribe via Email
Andy's Photo Blog
RSS Galore
XMLCustomized feeds:
user comments | video blog
audio version of each text entrySubscribe to my blog:
iTunes (Mac) | iTunes (PC) | My Yahoo | Bloglines | Feedster | TechnoratiSearch
Categories
- Blogging
- Citizen Journalism
- Cool Tools
- Digital Divide
- Edtech
- Election 2.0
- Grandma's Stories
- Human Rights
- Kayleigh
- Media & Politics
- Mobcasting
- Our Cats
- Personal News
- Podcasts
- Public Media
- Social Media
- Sundries and Such
- Travel
- Albania
- Bangladesh
- Bhutan
- Bolivia
- Burma
- Cambodia
- Canada
- Cuba
- Denmark
- Egypt
- England
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Ghana
- Hong Kong
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Jordan
- Laos
- Mauritius
- Nepal
- Oman
- Palestine
- Peru
- Scotland
- South Korea
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Thailand
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- USA
- United Arab Emirates
- Video
- WSIS
Archives
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
- April 2003
- July 2002
- June 2002
- May 2002
- October 2001
- September 2001
- June 2001
- April 2001
- July 2000
- June 2000
- May 2000
- January 2000
- December 1999
- September 1999
- August 1999
- June 1999
- May 1999
- March 1999
- January 1999
- November 1998
- September 1998
- May 1998
- February 1998
- January 1998
- December 1997
- November 1997
- October 1997
- September 1997
- July 1997
- June 1997
- December 1996
- November 1996
- September 1996
- June 1996
- May 1996
- April 1996
- January 1996
- December 1995
- November 1995
- October 1995
- June 1995
- December 1994
- November 1994
- October 1994
Recent Entries
- Highlights from the NPR Utterz-Twitter Experiment
- What Milestones Would You Include in a Timeline History of Blogging?
- Radio Open Source is Back!
- Journalist Shield Legislation Amended to Cover Only Commercial Bloggers
- Ask a Presidential Candidate
- Blogging Where Speech Isn't Free
- The Rise of Mommy and Daddy Blogs
- Josh Wolf, Wikipedia and the Debate Over Who's a Journalist
- Embracing the B-Listers
- Brendan Greeley: Blog Fairy Dust is a Myth
- New Report Dissects Impact of Web 2.0 on Election 2006
- Introducing NPR Rough Cuts
- Bloggers: Give It Up For Fox
- Lisa Williams Discusses Placeblogging
- The Rocketboom Saga Overtakes the Blogosphere
Andy's Work Websites
Mobcasting
Education Sites
EdWeb: Exploring Technology & School Reform
From Sideshow to Genocide: Stories of the Cambodian Holocaust
Travelogues and
Photo Galleriesphoto.spotlight
The 2005 Boston Marathon
Cursed No More: Celebrating the Red Sox World Championship
A Week in Mauritius
Scandinavian Snapshot
Hong Kong Odyssey
WSIS Geneva Photo Gallery
Oman and Dubai Photo Gallery
Susanne and Andy's Wedding
Bali Honeymoon
Rajasthan: Land of Kings
Havana Gallery
Southern Balkans Gallery
Anatolian Fortnight
High Plains Backpacker
Southeast Asia Diary
Susanne's Southeast Asia Journal
The Children of Southeast Asia
Subcontinental Adventure
Andy's Mideast Journal
Etcetera
![Amanda leaves Rocketboom](http://www.amandacongdon.com/pics/unboomed.jpg")
