Category Archives: Culture: new media

New media links

I like keeping an eye on new media around the Web. While I’m out in Chicago leading a workshop (with no time to produce a video), I’ll share some links to sites that have got me thinking about new ways to use new media. Check these out, and see what you think….

Just reading the titles of the sessions for Podcamp Boston 2 is already making me think. How about “Podcasting on the Cellphone [and] Building a (near) Realtime Audience”? And then there’s “Podcasting as a Tool for Non-Profits: What does it take to do a high-quality podcast for your organization?” Or how about the session titled “What is the sound of your brand?” Link.

I’ve been following an online animated video called Unleashed. The animation is minimal, but effective. The sound quality is exceptionally good. The whole online show is low-budget but very effective — and the basic structure should be relatively easy to replicate. Link.

Speaking of low-budget, “xkcd” is a very low-budget online comic strip. The drawings are crude, but the strip is funny and has developed a huge online following. Once again, this structure would not be hard to replicate. Link.

All these sites represent new ways of delivering new media content online. The real problem, as always, is coming up with content that people will want to have delivered to them….

One Web Day 2007

How would you like to change the world in the future? — that’s one of the questions asked by the organizers of One Web Day. I changed this question a little bit, and asked how the Web should change in the future. Short answer: we need better Web navigation, and better online content.

Watch the video, and see what you think — and if you think you could have done better than I did, you’re right, so get out there and make your own online video! New media can change the world — but only if you help create it. (3:03)

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

One Web Day 2007

I’ll be participating in the 2007 edition of One Web Day, this Saturday, September 22. The organizers of One Web Day are encouraging us all to make short videos and “post them on blip.tv or youtube or dotsub.com tagged onewebday2007 .” If you don’t make online videos, they’re suggesting you write something on your blog or Web site. And if you don’t have a blog, write a nice juicy comment on someone else’s One Web Day post. Their suggested topics include how the Web has changed your life, how you hope the Web will change the world for the better in the future, or even something you’ve done online with people in other countries.

Here’s a short version of their manifesto:

The internet is made of people, not just machines. It’s up to us to protect it. We can use OneWebDay around the world to raise awareness of the threats to the internet — including censorship, inadequate access, control of various kinds — and to celebrate the positive impact of the internet on human lives.

Since I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister, my One Web Day post will probably bring up Tim Berners-Lee’s essay WWW, UU, and I. But I’m thinking that I might want to explore the links between visual art (especially performance art, conceptual art, and video art) and the Web. Check in on Saturday, and see what I come up with.

Update, September 18:

Tim Berners-Lee has posted his One Web Day video, and he uses his video to talk a little bit about the future of the Web. Of course he talks about net neutrality, and says that a key aspect of the Web is the fact that anybody can connect to anybody; that’s something we must keep in the future.

He also warns against “web rot,” which occurs when people design Web sites carelessly: “they don’t make good HTML, they don’t close their tags.” He encourages all those of us who make Web sites to validate our HTML. (Admission: my Web site does not validate because somewhere, somehow, I used two invalid div id values. Rats. At least I closed all my tags. And I’ll correct the div id value problems RSN.)

PodCamp Boston 2

Coming up soon: PodCamp Boston 2, from 7 p.m. on Friday, October 28, through 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 28. According to their Web site, “PodCamp Boston 2 is the new media community UnConference that helps connect people interested in blogging, podcasting, social networks, video on the net, and new media together for three days to learn, share, and grow their new media skills.” Link to PodCamp Boston 2.

Although I’ll be tied up Saturday during the day, looks like I’ll be able to attend the rest of PodCamp. I’m going for three reasons:– (1) I love new media; (2) I’m fascinated by the UnConference phenomenon; and (3) I’m still trying to get organized to do a weekly video on this blog and maybe PodCamp will provide enough info and inspiration for me to make it happen.

If you’re planning on going, post something in the comments to this post, and maybe we can get together.

The Tatler

Before there were blogs, there were other periodicals with writing that ranged from the profound to the distinctly ephemeral. In 1709, Sir Richard Steele brought out the Tatler. According the Lewish Gibb, his motives were far from idealistic, which led him to create something new in literature:

Steele brought out the Tatler because he wanted money, and the result was something new in literature. Not that a periodical publication was in itself a new thing, but this one had unusual qualities. In accordance with its motto it took the whole range of social activity — quincquid agunt homines — for its province. [The Tatler, Richard Steele, ed. Lewis Gibbs. London: J. M. Dent (Everyman’s Library), 1953, p. vi.]

I’m reading through Gibbs’s selection from the Tatler. It sounds surprisingly contemporary. There’s a short piece on what will happen to the news-writers if the war with France should end. Speaking of a news-writer named Boyer (who sounds as if he could be a pundit on Fox News), Steele says, “Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands, Boyer has slain his ten thousands….He has laid about him with an inexpressible fury; and made such havoc among his countrymen as must be the work of two or three ages to repair.” And so the war must continue in order to give the news-writers and pundits worthy subjects. Perhaps this is why on July 5th, 2007, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press didn’t question George Bush’s unsubstantiated claim that the Al Qaeda operating in Iraq today is the same Al Qaeda that leveled the World Trade Centers, as reported in Media Matters, for if the Iraq War should end, consumption of the news media would drop. Updating Steele for today’s world: “It being therefore visible that our society will be greater sufferers by the peace than the soldiery itself, insomuch that the New York Times is in danger of being broken, and the very best of the whole band of journalists of being reduced to half-pay; I would humbly move that proper apartments, furnished with laptops, Internet connections, and other necessaries of life, should be added to the Veterans Administration hospitals, for the relief of such decayed journalists and pundits as have served their country by reporting and commenting on the war.”

Of particular interest to the readers of this blog, the Tatler commented on the clergy of the day. Steele commented on a certain clergyman who spoke a little too harshly and gesticulated a little too wildly in the pulpit: “As harsh and irregular sound is not harmony, so neither is banging on a cushion, oratory; and therefore, in my humble opinion, a certain divine of the first order, would do well to leave this off; for I think his sermons would be more persuasive if he gave his auditory less disturbance.” Such sweet viciousness! Would that Steele were still alive to comment on early 21st C. preaching, which has sunk to lower levels than even early 18th C. preaching. But Steele commented on more than preaching, he also commented on the sloppy prayers offered by a certain vicar — “In reading prayers, he has such a careless loll, that people are justly offended at his irreverent posture; besides the extraordinary charge they are put to in sending their children to dance, to bring them off of those ill gestures.” What would Steele have said about some of the Unitarian Universalist prayers I have heard uttered? –to think of it makes me shiver with delicious imaginings.

UU Bloggers meet

Chris Walton, editor of the UU World magazine, and Deb Weiner, Director of Electronic Communications, both of the Unitarian Universalist Association, hosted a reception of Unitarian Universalist bloggers.

I was fascinated to hear about the different ways Unitarian Universalists (UUs) participate in the blogosphere — including writing a personal blog, writing a blog as a religious professional, political blogging, Live Journal blogging, and writing as a regular contributor for someone else’s blog.

Below you’ll find a list of the bloggers who showed up….

Continue reading →

Blog nightmare

My sister Abby, who is a children’s librarian, writes a blog called “Children and Books.” She does book reviews, writes about the librarian’s life, and other good stuff. Everything was going fine — until a week and a half ago when her blog stopped working.

First, she wrote to her Web host, Deerfield Hosting, to see if something was wrong on that end. Dennis of Deerfield Hosting (who is wonderful to deal with — he administers my Web sites, too) said he could find nothing wrong on his end, and suggested reinstalling the blog. Abby asked me to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I worked on the problem for several hours, and came up with absolutely nothing. At last we decided to back up the old blog, and reinstall it, as Dennis had suggested.

Except that Dennis wrote another email to Abby saying that he thought he had found the problem. Abby had posted an entry on her blog that she had written in Microsoft Word format, simply cutting and pasting the Word document into the blog. But Word embeds all kinds of peculiar characters in its word processing documents, and it looks like some of those peculiar characters bollixed the blogging software and/or the MySQL database on the server.

To make a long story short, I installed an entirely new blog on Abby’s Web site, and now she’s going to have to laboriously move her old blog over, post by post, to the new blog. All because Microsoft Word is a horrendously flawed product. I’m now looking for a new word processor for myself. And if you use Word, please don’t use it to write drafts for blog posts or comments.

Increasing social connectivity in this corner of the blogosphere

Discover Magazine has a great, short piece on the connectivity of the blogosphere:

The blogosphere is the most explosive social network you’ll never see. Recent studies suggest that nearly 60 million blogs exist online, and about 175,000 more crop up daily (that’s about 2 every second). Even though the vast majority of blogs are either abandoned or isolated, many bloggers like to link to other Web sites. These links allow analysts to track trends in blogs and identify the most popular topics of data exchange. Social media expert Matthew Hurst recently collected link data for six weeks and produced this plot of the most active and interconnected parts of the blogosphere.

Link with incredible graphic. (Thanks, Techyum.)

And who’s at the center of this vast social network? Daily Kos, BoingBoing, Michelle Malkin, gadget freaks, porn lovers, and sports fanatics. Good grief. People who blog about religion and culture don’t even show up. Which doesn’t surprise me — bloggers in my tiny corner of the blogosphere don’t talk to one another much, we don’t link to one another’s posts, and basically we don’t exploit the potential of social connectivity that exists in the medium of blogging. To change that a little tiny bit, here are some links to the best blog posts I’ve read recently:

ck at Arbitrary Marks posts a thoughtful video commentary on women blogging without having to deal with stalkers and crazies (I’ve already commented over there, no need to repeat here): Link.

Will Shetterly is moving “It’s All One Thing” from Blogger over to Live Journal. He promises less religion, which probably means more science fiction. That works for me. I’m liking the new cat story: Link.

Jeremy at Voltage Gate provides links to dozens of bloggers who have bioblitzed over the past week. I’ve been following his links to some very cool ecosystems from Ontario to Panama, and enjoying citizen science in action: Link.

Abby at Children and Books has a great post about teaching, where one of the kids she’s teaching gets a complicated concept. Short as it is, this post is really sticking with me, and I’m still mulling it over: Link.