Convergence and Technology: The Changing Media Landscape

From xplanevisualthinking on YouTube:

This is another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit MediaConvergence.Economist.com and ShiftHappens.Wikispaces.com.

Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Design and development by XPLANE. You can follow us on Twitter at @xplane

 

What is Web 2.0?

This video gives a nice overview of Web 2.0 if you were curious about the history and application of it.

 

WebWarrior: Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs

Last week, we asked for members of our FHK Facebook Group to nominate “WebWarriors,” who are politically conservative and effectively using Web 2.0. The first response we received was from Dan Schmucker, who nominated Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, saying:

“She takes needed and courageous stands consistently against national governments lacking insight and the spineless media’s complicity in Islamofacism.”

Indeed.

Pamela is in the top 2,000 blogs on Technorati (under atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com), and has a Google Page Rank of 6/10 (under atlasshrugs.com), demonstrating that she is effectively using outgoing and internal links and categories effectively, and that her content is fresh and original, so that she’s had nearly 10,000 links to her site in the last six month, from over 1,100 blogs and websites.

Creative use of RSS feeds (via FeedBlitz) lets Pamela’s readers keep updated daily through e-mail, VOIP, IM or Twitter.

A quick Google search under “Pamela Geller” also reveals that Pamela has used effective online profile management through social networking and her contacts in the mainstream media.

Thank you, to Pamela Geller, for being our WebWarrior of the Week, and to Dan Schmucker (visit Dan on Facebook) for nominating her. As Pamela says:

“Western civilization hangs in the balance. This blog is part of the solution. Get your heads out of the sand and fight the Great Fight. The Jew may be the canary in the coal mine, but you my friends will be next. Changing the World one Word at a time…Citizen Journalist, Citizen Soldier” – Pamela Geller

If you’d like to nominate a “WebWarrior” (a conservative using Web 2.0 effectively) e-mail Jenn.

 

WolframAlpha – Making the Web Computable

Remember in Star Trek, when crew members aboard a space ship were able to simply say, “Computer,” and then ask the computer some question about a planet, civilization, or fellow crew member? In reply, Computer would rattle off a bunch of information, some bits more useful than others. It was all very cool and futuristic.

Well, thanks to WolframAlpha.com, that’s almost not “futuristic” anymore.

The main difference between what we are calling “Web 2.0″ (the internet as we have known it over the last few years) and “Web 3.0″ is the integration with current technology of databases in ways that are useful and meaningful to us, also known as the Semantic Web (also see a video, here).

In the video below, Stephen Wolfram explains his new “computable knowledge engine.” You need to be a little smarter than I am to think of intelligent queries for this search engine right now, and it’s so new that everyone is still in the “let’s-play-with-this-and-see-what-it-can-do” phase, rather than the “oh-cool-this-is-going-to-save-me-a-lot-of-time-!” phase that it will be in shortly after we all figure out what it can do, and after it’s beefed up a little. But keep an eye on this one. It promises to be a key player in the development of the web.

Click to view video – Video will open in a new window.

Click to view video – Video will open in a new window.

 

Also see:

• About WolframAlpha
• #WolframAlpha Discussion on Twitter
• Mashable: Five Things that WolframAlpha Does Better (And Vastly Different) than Google

 

Web 2.0: Machine is Us/ing Us

Describing the evolution of computer language, Michael Wesch of Kansas State University concludes that the web is changing everything –including concepts of copyright, authorship, ethics, family and ultimately our very own sense of ourselves. It’s also one of the most innovative presentations by a college professor!

 

Twitter Shrugs

In December, we discussed, “Where will Twitter go from Here?” In preparation for the New Year 2009, Twitter made it clear that it intends to become a revenue-generating site. The question was how to do that.

What we’ve seen since then is more and more third parties seeking to create revenue-generating third-party applications based largely on Twitter. Examples are PostLater.com, BudURL.com, SocialToo.com, and Dossy’s Twitter Karma, all of which offer free versions of their service with paid upgrades or requests for donations.

Well, Twitter recently made some changes and upgrades, which rendered many of the third-party applications temporarily inoperable, and panic has ensued. Some folks are really angry.

While I’m a little bit disappointed that I can’t check my Twitter Karma this morning, I can’t honestly say I’m surprised to see this happening. While some fantastic software has been developed using the free open-source development model, it was a Utopian idea that was not sustainable, as evidenced by the fact that truly industrious developers have been using the the free software only until they can figure out how to tweak it and make a profit.

Other problems innate with the open-source environment is that there is no way to protect truly unique ideas, and no practical way to stop spammers and hackers from using the code for nefarius purposes.

So what’s the answer? More regulation? Regulation has a long history of creating more problems than it solves, so I won’t be supporting any moves in that direction.

Over the next few years, however, what I believe we’ll be seeing is a clash of civilizations – the relative anarchy of Web 2.0, vs. the civilized world, where people are able to copyright their creations, and are required to take responsibility legally for those creations, and are able to make a profit on those creations.

Will this increased involvement of the legal system in the Web 2.0 environment lead us down the path of socialism or capitalism?

Also see:

• Twitter OAuth “Temporarily Disabled”, Developers Left Hanging
• Web 2.0 is…(a lie).
• Where will Twitter go from Here?

Web 2.0 is…(a lie).

Regular FHK readers know we keep our language “family friendly” around here, and avoid the use of vulgarity. So, I debated long and hard with myself about posting the following video here, which drops the F-bomb as an attention-getting opener directed toward an immature audience.

During the rest of the 5-minute interview, however, “The Great Seduction” author Andrew Keene insightfully and straightforwardly addresses with the folks from TechCrunch at the 2009 The Next Web in Amsterdam many of the concerns we’ve been discussing here at Ft. Hard Knox regarding the group-think mentality prevalent on the web, and the Orwellian double-speak therein. It’s worth a listen.

Wednesday Web 2.0 Q&A

The idea for this new feature, and the questions for this week are from Ben Hodge, of Kansas Progress. If you have questions you would like answered in upcoming posts, or if you have additional story ideas, please e-mail Jenn.

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Q. Can you explain twitter to me? My understanding is that if I really thought way too highly of myself and thought that people would care about what I was doing every 10 minutes of the day, that I would “twitter” them. But why are other groups on twitter, when RSS does almost the same thing?

A. Twitter is a developing phenomenon. Yes, there are some people that literally use it to keep in touch with their “friends” throughout the day, but there are a bunch of conservatives there now that are using it for legitimate networking purposes. Check out TCOT, (the feed is here)and TCON (feed).

 Even if you don’t really do much with your account there, however, any posts you do rank very high in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). You can use Twitterfeed to have your Twitter account automatically updated with your blog posts, too, which is a very convenient feature. You do NOT have to tell anyone what you’re having for lunch or where.

In fact, for general networking, it’s probably better not to do a lot of “small talk” (a little is fine – lets people know they’re dealing with a real person). Also see: Twitter, Twitter Everywhere

Q. Which [social networking] sites should I join…How often must they be updated?

A. It’s really a good idea just to at least “reserve” your name on the major social networking/bookmarking sites. It usually takes just a few minutes, and you really don’t have to keep MOST* of them updated. It’s amazing what a political adversary can/will do to ruin your online reputation. The added advantage of these is that many of them give you a chance to enter your own blog URL, and that will help you with linkage.

Facebook, Linked-IN, and Twitter are the “Biggies” right now. YouTube is great, even if you just set up an account there for the purposes of watching (not uploading). Naymz and Plaxo rank high on the search engines, too.

 Beyond that, it’s just really up to you. There are hundreds of these sites, and you have to draw the line somewhere. The next tier down would be del.icio.us, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg, and Propeller.  Stay tuned for an upcoming study to be released soon on which news, indexes, and social networking sites rank highest on Google.

*How often to update? Well, keep in mind that with the social networking sites, you tend to get out of them what you put in, so it’s good to be active in at least a couple. We have received (unconfirmed) information that Twitter may soon start deleting accounts that are over 180 days old. Also, some search engines give less weight or refuse to count links that are over six months old, so it’s a good idea to check on your accounts, even the ones you’re not “active” on at least twice a year.

 Q. [In terms of Search Engine Optimization], if [the links I put on Social Networking sites] don’t “look like” links, but merely show the URL, does that matter?

A. Some social networking sites, such as Facebook and Digg.com, don’t allow “hyperlinks,” (text that points to another URL) or any text that contains html. You won’t need to worry about this for SEO, because the search engines are reading the source code, and will recognize the link, anyway.

This is a valid question to address, however, because on your own blog posts, you can maximize the benefit of internal and external links by properly using “anchor text.” In a nutshell, this means that it is better to format a link to your blog like this: Ft. Hard Knox, rather than like this. For more information on anchor text, see Don’t be Link-Lovin’ in Vain (Judiciously using ‘Anchor Text’).

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A Right Way and a Wrong Way to ‘Do New Media’

Eric Odom has a good post over at the #dontgo Movement, describing the current conflict between the Republican establishment and the center-right blogosphere. Basically, the Republicans want to control the message and the bloggers won’t be controlled. Odom also has some great advice for how state-level Republican groups can avoid this problem in the future. Here’s an excerpt:

I believe that it can be seen as innocent to misunderstand something such as new media, but I also believe that if you refuse to admit you lack the understanding, and instead assert yourself king of the realm, you FAIL.

As you can see, the Virginia GOP establishment, along with several key GOP insiders, have committed the ultimate new media sin. They did this by attempting to inject themselves into the Virginia blogosphere as a dominate resource that, according to them, will be the “ONLY major Republican blog in all of Virginia”.

[...]

When pitching yourselves as “A project of the Republican Professionals Network”, you should probably be professional enough to consult with actual bloggers to ensure you know the following.

1) A site built by Yahoo Hosting is not ground breaking in new media. In fact, it’s rather archaic.
2) A site with no RSS feeds that claims to be a “blog”… really?
3) A “Helpful Links” page that doesn’t link to a single Virginia blog is not really helping your pledge of being a new media source
4) If you’re going to ask me to volunteer, perhaps you should tell me what I’m volunteering for, and what I can do to help.
5) You should really have a phone number somewhere on your website
6) Admit you were wrong, get over it, and move on

Nuff said…

Obama and McCain Campaign Cyber Attacks Came from China

Although warned of the possibility earlier this summer by the Secret Service and the F.B.I, both Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s campaign networks were compromised by hackers from China. Large amounts of policy related information were downloaded.

According to China Digital Times, the hackers successfully downloaded large amounts of information from both campaign networks. It is not known if the Chinese hackers were government-sponsored.

Financial Times.com reports that the details of this attack were first revealed by Newsweek. Experts on the Obama team thought the attacks either came from China or Russia.

The Secret Service alerted both campaigns after security breaches were detected and then both campaigns hired “private cyber security companies to address the breaches.”

Chinese military hackers broke into the Pentagon system last year causing a “most serious breach of the military’s computer network.”

AmPow

One of Great Satan’s new media monsters in the New Millennium is also home to choice cats of Great Satan’s intelligentsia. Super smart brainiacs like Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Ledeen, Claire Berlinsky routinely hang with others like unto themselves at the essential, especial Pajamas Media.

Named after the big bad blogosphere that took out CBS Eye Guy Dan Rather biased last time presidential electile dysfunction afflicted Great Satan, Pajamas Media is fully crunk with sweet treats, hot tips and provocative prescriptions.

Stirred, never shaken into that volatile mix of brain cell phat writers, researchers and policy gurus is the pro victory, Yay! Great Satan PHD Dr. Donald Douglas.

Scoring an exceptional coup, the hot doc was thankfully seduced to submission for commission of a detective style in depth look at a certain Slim Shady and financial chicanery starring in the lead role of Donkey Party’s “That One”

This is significant.

Hailing from the “…the land of the bomb ass hemp beat – a place where you never find a dance floor empty…” SoCali Poli Sci guy Dr D has enjoyed a nigh unprecedented run of influence, recognition and prestige in the very short year that the good doc’s site “American Power” has blitzed it’s way into the blogosphere at an exponential rate.

Happy BDay AmPow! And heartful congratulations on breaking in to the top tier of Great Satan’s new media.

No surprise, Am Pow’s trajectory has been remarkable thanks to the saavy insight, exceptionally researched articles and a super cool personable approach that makes it all the more real – applicable even.

An excellent example to others in the field and a real guide and mentor in an era where a keystroke never disappears, Dr Douglas’ bona fides are well intact.

To be sure, Dr Douglas’s article is most likely the first of many.

Sweet!

art – “AmPow!” by AmPow Fangrrl#1990

Cross-Posted from GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD

Is it Illegal to Link to a Government Website?

From Paul Jacob’s Common Sense:

Shocker: Criminal Web Links!

Aliens take over government! Soviets control U.S. weather! Ancient Mayan temple has Sandisk flash drive!

If you’ve ever been to a supermarket, you’ve seen these and other ludicrous mile-high headlines blaring from the newsstands.

Here’s another impossible headline that might issue from the pen of any zany, unscrupulous tabloid fabulist: BLOGGER TREATED AS CRIMINAL FOR POSTING WEB LINK TO CITY AGENCY!

Not a concoction, I’m afraid. The city of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, did indeed harass a blogger named Jennifer Reisinger for linking to the website of the city police department. No alleged libel, alleged copyright violation, or other alleged crime. Ms. Reisinger and her lawyer believe the threat was retaliation for her role in trying to recall the Sheboygan mayor, Juan Perez.

Intimidated by the unprecedented cease-and-desist order she received from the city attorney, Reisinger at first removed the link. But then, after being threatened with a criminal investigation for her dastardly providing of information, she hired a lawyer. The lawyer advised her to restore the Web link, which she did. The mayor’s office dropped its threat, but Reisinger is suing anyway.

Mayor Perez and his henchmen deserve to be stomped in court — if only to pre-empt similar stupidity and contempt for First Amendment rights by other vindictive politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

For more info, see:

• Harvard Info/Law: Again with the Linking
• Out-Law.com: Mayor’s opponent sues city over order to remove web link
• WebProNews: Don’t Link Me Bro
• Sheboygan woman files landmark case over Web links
• The Citizen Media Law Project

The Internet Patrol

‘Web 2.0′ in Just Under 5 Minutes (The Machine is Using Us)

From Dr. Michael Wesch, of Digital Ethnography explains Web 2.0 in five minutes.

 

Glide America Launches, Providing Access From Main Street To Elected Officials

Glide America has just launched to provide direct access to Washington, DC from ordinary citizens to have their voices heard in a direct line from voters to their elected officials.

Glide America’s technology combines the ability to disseminate information regarding government initiatives and deliberations and provides citizens with the technology to organize and act, which includes advanced communication and collaboration tools to make a citizens voices heard by their elected officials.

From the official news release, accessible with a subscription to PRNewswire for Journalists.

Currently information is accessible on the internet from news sites, blogs and official government sites. Government contacts are available through official government directories. Software exists to prepare documents and communicate. Forums exist to vent frustrations and express opinions in social networking and other web 2.0 sites. Who has time to sift through all of that? Glide America provides a total solution. It brings all of those things together into an active community with the capacity for the ordinary citizen to make his appeal directly to the appropriate government officials with public transparency into the timeliness and quality of the official response.

Glide America features include:

Government Transparency & Accountability- tracks government officials’ responsiveness to citizens through statistical analysis of response times to citizen emails and other online communications. Monthly reports will include statistical data on response rates from the officials.

Government Address Book- It is being called the “People’s Rolodex, of federal government contacts which are integrated into the Glide America email account the site offers the citizens that join.

This Rolodex will contain extensive government contact information, including phone numbers and email access from your computer and/or mobile phone. The contact information includes access to Congress, Senators, Government Departments, etc…

Advanced Communication & Collaboration Tools- This includes integrated email, group organization and online meeting applications which allows the user to individually or collectively communicate with fellow citizens and Government Officials.

Additionally the Glide America site offers group discussions and the ability to add any documents, images, videos, audio files, bookmarks, contacts or calendar events to the group discussion and well as tracking tools to determine whether their messages are being read and how long it takes for officials to respond.

Others tools provided:

• You can quickly and easily send large group emails as individual personalized emails bypassing spam filters that are programmed to flag emails that contain many recipients.
• You can easily manage multiple email lists and group discussions.
• You can opt in to receive automated email notifications for upcoming legislation.
• Issue Management Group Discussions are automatically created for upcoming legislation for you to participate in.

Information Portal – This will offer the latest news on legislation, politics and business with links to informational sites including official government, candidate, election, news and other sites.

Dynamic Desktop/Apps/Hard Drive – Offers 10 free GBs of storage in the Glide America free account free and compatible word processor, presentation application, spread sheet and other features.

Once signed up to Glide America, it provides a desktop which automatically updates information on the presidential campaign and pending legislation with links to learn more, voice your opinion and join group discussions.

The service also provides the ability of File Synchronization where the user can sync their home computer and your work computer for secure access to any file from your mobile phone or desktop in a group discussion, online meeting or email exchange.

According to TransMedia’s Chairman & CEO, Donald Leka, “Our institutions of government are precariously faltering in their ability to serve the best interests of the American people. The American people must reassert themselves in the governance of this great nation and Glide America is a vehicle to that end.”

Leka continues on to say “Glide America is change initiated by the American people through their cell phones and desktops and we are thrilled to provide this innovative service to our fellow citizens.”

After creating the Glide America account, which takes only a few minutes, the desktop includes tabs for Desktop, Glide HD and Portal.

The Desktop offers icons which lead to email, creation of your own Glide America website, account tools, profile tools, groups, access to the tools mentioned above, photo editing, calendars and more.

The Glide HD tab opens to offer access to your files you have saved in the Glide America account, including videos, documents, groups, bookmarks, the desktop and calendar and more.

The Portal provides one click access to other links and websites.

Glide America can be accessed at http://www.glideamerica.org/

 

This and more from Susan Duclos, at Wake Up America, and Digital Journal

 

Sen. Inhofe gets all Web 2.0

I received an e-mail last night after the Senate vote on the Bailout Bill from one of my Senators, Jim Inhofe (R-OK), to let me know he’d voted “No!” on the bailout bill. I was encouraged in the e-mail to go to his blog, and let him know what I thought.

Of course I wanted to thank the senator for listening to the voters, and standing up to do the right thing, casting the unpopular vote among his peers.

So I visited the blog, joined the site, left my comment, and started exploring. The Inhofe web site and blog have incorporated some great Web 2.0 features. There’s a place for bloggers to join the blog roll, and a place for members to contribute blog posts. There are various ways to share the content including e-mail, and a few social book marking and social news sites (Digg, reddit, del.icio.us). There are feeds to the various sections of the site, a newsletter sign-up, a Youtube channel and Flikr photostream, and (naturally) lots of opportunities to contribute financially to the campaign.

Kudos to the Inhofe campaign for venturing into this wild, wild world of Web 2.0!

I would recommend one fairly implementable step – the “Connect” section in the lower left column of the site is a great feature, but all of the links there need to be to Senator Inhofe’s profile on all of those sites, not just to the home page of those sites. Some are configured correctly, and some are not. For example, if I click on “YouTube” in that section, I am directed to the Inhofe channel on YouTube (that’s good!). But if I click on the Digg or reddit links, I’m just taken to the main page of those sites. (I love that widget, by the way – we need to see if we can find one of those for Ft. Hard Knox – ideas, anyone?)

Overall, however, this is an excellent step in the right direction for a campaign to take, in a world that is becoming increasingly digital. Congratulations to Sen. Inhofe and his campaign staff. (Oh – and thanks, again, for voting “no!” on the bailout bill.)

Michelle Malkin has information on what to do next about the Bailout Bill, on Kill the bailout: Operation Hold The Line