So you want to start blogging, but you're shy...

MySpace fans, want to go International?

Link: BBC - Talk - Interact with BBC community chat and messageboards.

Here's an interesting opportunity to participate in what will certainly be an eclectic and interesting online community, with some terrific media tools and resources, and perhaps an active citizen journalism venture. I will be watching to see how the new Beeb site unfolds. I'm tempted to plunge in myself, but that I'm over-extended at the moment. Still, the temptation may later come over me.

What better community playground, if you are someone who likes pre-existing playgrounds, instead of building your own. Someone I know who has previously worked at BBC hinted to me that this thing was coming, and that it was going to be ground-breaking and nifty-neato-cool! [bold emphasis below is mine]

Link: MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | BBC unveils radical revamp of website.

BBC unveils radical revamp of website

Mark Sweney
Tuesday   April 25, 2006

The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of new media and technology, also announced proposals to put the corporation's entire programme catalogue online for the first time from tomorrow in written archive form, as an "experimental prototype", and rebrand MyBBCPlayer as BBC iPlayer.

Mr Highfield was unveiling the results of the broadcaster's Creative Future review of programming and content before an audience of BBC new media staff.

[...]

Mr Highfield was unveiling the results of the broadcaster's Creative Future review of programming and content before an audience of BBC new media staff.

[...]

Mr Highfield's presentation, Beyond Broadcast, outlined a three-pronged approach to refocus all future BBC digital output and services around three concepts - "share", "find" and "play".

He said the philosophy of "share" would be at the heart of what he dubbed bbc.co.uk 2.0.

Mr Highfield said the share concept would allow users to "create your own space and to build bbc.co.uk around you", encouraging them to launch ther own blogs and post home videos on the site.

The BBC is also running a competition to revamp the bbc.co.uk 2.0 website, asking the public to redesign the homepage to "exploit the fuctionality and usability of services such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia".

At the heart of the play concept is MyBBCPlayer, which will allow the public to download and view BBC programming online and was today rebranded as BBC iPlayer.

"BBC iPlayer is going to offer catch-up television up to seven days after transmission," said Mr Highfield. "At any time you will be able to download any programme from the eight BBC channels and watch it on your PC and, we hope, move it across to your TV set or down to your mobile phone to watch it when you want."

[...]

Here's another article, however, with a bit more of the philosophy behind it, including how the BBC is paying for it (layoffs?!), which also makes me suspect that for all its innovation, the venture does represent a considerable risk for BBC, if for some reason it doesn't take off like gangbusters.

Link: MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | BBC chief unveils plan for future and warns of losing young viewers.

BBC chief unveils plan for future and warns of losing young viewers

Thompson says a 'big shock' is on the way
Blueprint includes revamp of online presence

Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Wednesday April     26, 2006
The Guardian

The BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, yesterday warned that it would lose touch with the younger generation for ever unless it fundamentally changed to adapt to the digital world.

New audience research unveiled to staff revealed that a third of viewers felt the BBC did not make programmes for them. Meanwhile, 60% of 16- to 24-year-olds watch fewer than three hours of BBC television a week, with a quarter of them not tuning in to a single BBC programme. Mr Thompson said there was "a big shock coming", with the pace of audience and technological change "faster and more radical than anything we've seen before".

Unveiling the conclusions of Creative Future, a year-long project to define the BBC's on-air and online ambitions over the next five years, he said it was designed to meet the "creative challenge of an entirely new era in broadcasting".

The resulting plan, which has already proved controversial with some staff grappling with the 4,000 job cuts earmarked to raise £355m a year to help pay for it, includes a range of new ideas across all areas of the BBC.

In news, a new strategy will concentrate on breaking news via the internet and News 24, which will be "moved centre stage", with big names expected to appear on the digital channel rather than traditional bulletins.

[...]

Ouch! Young author's book has passages similar to other published work - Boston.com

Looks like the entire book industry needs Google Books just to do whole manuscript plagiarism checks.

Check out the passages for yourself. It's an open-and-shut case of plagiarism, like something right out of the playbook of that RedState.com dude that lost his blogging gig at the Washington Post.

Link: Young author's book has passages similar to other published work - Boston.com.

Young author's book has passages similar to other published work

By Andrew Ryan, Associated Press Writer  | April 23, 2006

BOSTON --The debut novel of a Harvard University sophomore includes several passages that are similar to a work by another author published in 2001.

Kaavya Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" was published in March by Little, Brown and Co., which signed her to a hefty two-book deal when she was 17.

On Sunday, the Harvard Crimson reported the similarities on its Web site, citing seven passages in Viswanathan's book that parallel the style and language of "Sloppy Firsts," a 2001 novel by Megan McCafferty published by Random House.

Viswanathan, whose book hit 32nd on the New York Times' hardcover fiction best seller list this week, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. When reached by the Crimson on Saturday, she said: "No comment. I have no idea what you are talking about."

Michael Pietsch, the publisher of Little, Brown, said Sunday that the company planned to investigate the similarities.

Similar passages in the two books

"I can't believe that these are anything but unintentional," Pietsch said. "She is a wonderful young woman."

McCafferty told The Associated Press in an e-mail Sunday that some of her readers pointed out the likenesses.

[...]

Viswanathan said last month that she wrote the book during her spare time during her freshman year at Harvard, clicking away on a laptop in Lamont Library.

She is the youngest author signed by Little, Brown in decades, and the movie rights for the novel have already been sold to Dreamworks.

McCafferty is a former editor at Cosmopolitan who has written three novels.

"I do think this is one of the most difficult situations for an author," Joanna Pulicini, McCafferty's agent, told the Associated Press in an e-mail.

Difficult situation for an author? WHICH author? It's difficult for the person who had entire passages from her work lifted and put into another work by some Harvard freshman. It's difficult to see such a person climb the best seller's list when perhaps you didn't.

The ONLY way this isn't plagiarism is if you believe you can stick 100 monkeys in a room with typewriters and eventually one of them will type the complete works of Shakespeare.

An interesting observation by a now-ex-blogger

This one quotation from Sarah's article just jumped out at me.

Link: Why I shut down my blog. By Sarah Hepola.

One morning last month, I woke early, finished a book I'd been reading, and shut down my blog. I had kept the blog for nearly five years, using it as a repository for personal anecdotes, travelogues, and the occasional flight of fiction—all of which I hoped, eventually, might lead to a novel. And then, somewhere between the bedsheets and 6 a.m., I realized something: Blogging wasn't helping me write; it was keeping me from it.

[...]

[What she writes here below... I remember feeling EXACTLY this when forced to crank crap forgettable articles for newspapers, either the stress from constantly meeting new people and feeling shy while at the same time having to commodify them, or the personal humilation at knowing I was just dumping my interview stories into a rote formula. That was in the 1980s, though, so I went into an MFA program in creative writing instead, to learn to write for myself and my own standards again. And now, many many years later, blogs have taken me past the creativity-cramping I used to feel after some of my poems got published in good literary magazines, the fear of writing a poem that was pure crap. Blogs are works in progress, and publications. They're a dessert topping AND a floor wax. Can't beat that.]

Just prior to that, I'd been writing for an alt-weekly in Austin, Texas. What began as a great job had curdled into an anxiety nightmare. I would burn to write a certain profile and then, deadline looming, I would stare at the computer as another beautiful Saturday ticked away. I can remember crossing the street one night and thinking, absently, "If I got run over by a car, I wouldn't have to finish that story!" Don't get me wrong—I didn't want to die. I just wanted a really long extension. Thus my decision to leave the job. Thus my journey to the southern hemisphere. Thus the blog that I started, thinking no one would read it and secretly hoping they would. The blog was the perfect bluff for a self-conscious writer like me who yearned for the spotlight and then squinted in its glare. [...]

Eventually, I began enjoying my writing again. I stopped worrying about deadlines, audience, editors, letters to the editor, all the stuff that had smothered me before. I was writing so fast that I didn't have time to double-think my sentence structure or my opinions. What came out was sloppier but also funnier and more honest. I started getting e-mails from people I'd never met, and they were actually encouraging.

[...]

OK, now here's the bit that's my favorite quotation. Maybe I'll put this line up in the banner rotation on my blog. If it isn't too long.

At times, I started to feel that jokes and scenarios and turns of phrase were my capital, and that my capital was limited, and each blog entry was scattering more of it to the wind, pissing away precious dollars and cents in the form of punch lines I could never use again, not without feeling like a hack. You know: "How sad. She stole that line from her own blog."

[...]

[Isn't that cool? And it's just SO true. I've also felt that way about some rants I've written to a listserv I manage. I never know what's going to bite me in  the butt, or when the stars will line up and the universe or the tenth muse is going to speak through me, so stuff comes out that wouldn't otherwise. I have to appreciate that. But if that's the ONLY place where the universe is channeled through my writing, then I'm pissing away my best ideas too.

It did help a lot when I was writing my dissertation, to be active in private listserv discussions in the Xenaverse, the fandom community I was studying. Invaluable, actually, and I owe those people so much for being a sounding board, and for arguing with me when I got it wrong. Sometimes, now, when I read my dissertation, I wonder who wrote it, because I do feel that the tenth muse, or at least Xena and Gabrielle, were using me for a channel. Doesn't feel like I wrote it at all, and on really good days, I swear the dissertation wrote itself. I don't know too many harried and harassed grad students who can say that about the process, but it was one of the best times of my life.

There's one more bit that the writer has here that I thought was a particularly pithy observation:]

I suspect I'll come back to blogging eventually. It will be something I quit on occasion, like whiskey and melted cheese, when the negative effects outweigh the benefits. Practically every blogger I know has taken their site down at some point—for personal reasons, for business reasons, for boredom reasons. It's no different from the way we have to turn off our cell phones or stop checking e-mail so that we can actually focus on something. As much as I loved writing online, it's a relief writing offline: taking time to let a story unspool, to massage a sentence over an afternoon's walk, to stew for days—weeks, even—on a plot line. What a modern luxury. Now, if I could just turn off the TV, I think I could finally get started.

I've been there and done that, and yes, it most certainly did feel very good. I really started blogging in earnest with Radio Userland in early 2002, and the blog I was posting to at that time (nameless here forevermore) rose up respectably in the blogosphere, and in the mostly tech-blog atmosphere of that time, got linked to by the A-listers of the day, which satisfied me but wasn't the be-all and end-all of my existence, having gone through that previous newspaper experience that drove me into the Arkansas MFA program. Regardless of who linked to me, I was really still writing for myself.

So by early 2003, and for certain by the start of the Iraq War, I was immersed in war coverage at work, putting in a lot of overtime, worrying about some war-bloggers in Iraq who are my friends, and I just needed some time off. I went inward, started learning the I Ching, and filled four handwritten journals in six months. Felt real good. And then I started blogging again. That felt good too. It's called "being your own boss."

Octavia Butler, and what it means to be a shy writer putting your words out there...

Link: Washington Post: Octavia Butler, A Lonely, Bright Star Of the Sci-Fi Universe.

I've been obsessively following all the Octavia Butler obituaries and kicking myself up and down the street for not having found more of her work when she was alive. The more I read and learn about her and her unique sensibilities, I keep wishing I'd have had a chance to meet her. But it is unlikely that I would have, because she was an intensely shy and private woman. Yet the impact of her words ripples across the Internet and the blogosphere while it barely causes a brief blink in the world of mainstream media or even the walking-around life of a lot of people.

Why is this? I hear all the time assumptions about "all people" or "most people" or about how much "people" don't read or think about anything except what they're told to read or think about, and even then, "they" just to respond deterministically, as buttons to be pushed, automatons to be easily manipulated. Folks I work with tell me that such people rule the world. Some mass media types I know even truly believe that sonambulistic masses are all that exist, and in that world view, I guess they are, because the fewer number of people who choose to live their lives in different ways are so marginalized into irrelevancy.

And I think, "Oh, 'those people' must be the kind who never get around to reading the works of Octavia Butler."

Don't think I'm about to go into a "Philistines at the gate" rant, because that's not what I'm drawing a bead on at all.

Rather, I want to simply highlight a peculiar divide, one that may be obvious to many people, so much as to beg the question, but I think it's a divide that we do need to make explicit, make visible, make conspicuous, even if it is obvious.

The divide isn't the so-called "Great Divide" between literacy and illiteracy. I don't believe in that as some kind of magical cognitive shift. It isn't the growing divide between the technology-haves and have-nots either. This is a self-selected divide, but even so, it exerts social force. Power? Maybe, or maybe not. (I do like reading stuff about something called "The Long Tail")

Those on the side of the divide who choose to read and think and do so actively, pro-actively, and interactively seem to be migrating away from passive media, advertising inundation, and rhetoric that insults their intelligence, and TOWARD the Internet, blogs, TiVo, and podcasting, not that they are more intelligent spaces (generally,those spaces are as mixed in intelligence as our general society is mixed, among the ideas that get published and spread around), but rather because the mix of stuff out there yields results for those who do think and actively search and pursue their own research questions or ornery and contrarian questions, or burning personal questions. These people know how to analyze and sort through a mixed bag of information and ideas.

Those who are frustrated in the wild and woolly spaces of the Internet may not have good sorting or analysis skills, or may prefer a passive style of media that rewards a lack of independent curiosity ("push"), or I just frankly don't know what, because I confess I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the motivations of such folks, the idea is so far away from my own experiences. But that is the divide I see self-sorting itself into our society.

Except that I perceive that the active and interactive thinkers, writers, and searchers are more marginalized and disempowered in U.S. culture right now, and the manipulators of the passive masses appear to be strongly pushing for dominant hegemony. This feels counter-intuitive to me, since cleverness ought to trump dullness, to my mind. I rarely see that happening, so perhaps I am wrong. Somehow people with a greater dullness of thought are being allowed to oppress people who are involved with more active thought.

One friend of mine likes to compare the (hermetic?) insider codes of the active online groups to other subcultures that have to move through and remain largely invisible inside a more dominant and restrictive mainstream culture, like the gay subculture, for instance.

This has happened in history, so I shouldn't be too surprised by it, I guess, with the rise of fascism and totalitarianism in the 1930s, with the Inquisition, the medieval period, various so-called "dark ages" when those who want to know less become righteous and demand that all people be like them, while seekers and thinkers are oppressed.

Are Internetties the "freemasons" of our growing dark ages, passing on hermetic secrets in traditions designed to preserve certain kinds of knowledge and skills that are being forgotten in our society as a whole?

I turn to Octavia Butler, just as I would Ursula Le Guin, as in "The Dispossessed." And I see all around me online people turning to Octavia Butler as well. This is a hopeful sign, except when I look outside our closed world of the Internet and the blogosphere fans of Octavia Butler. Where beyond here is her influence felt?

And so the divide widens.

Link: Washington Post: Octavia Butler, A Lonely, Bright Star Of the Sci-Fi Universe.

Octavia Butler, A Lonely, Bright Star Of the Sci-Fi Universe

By Marcia Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 28, 2006; C01

What must it have been like to be Octavia Butler?

There she was, this woman of great intellect, of immense talent, of tremendous passion, and, it seems, so very much alone. Her death on Friday after falling and hitting her head outside her home in Seattle has rattled those who loved her work. She was 58.

There she was, a tall, awkward and shy black girl thinking that she wanted to write science fiction, of all things. A young woman who believed the genre could deal with more than ray guns and transporters, and that she had a right to create fiction that tackled race and class and what it meant to be human in worlds where humanness had all but been obliterated. Publisher after publisher must have been puzzled. How could science fiction be set on a plantation?

Octavia Butler showed them how.

She was an African American woman claiming her space in a literary universe dominated by white men. After years of rejection, she eventually won science fiction's most prestigious awards, the Nebula and the Hugo. She picked up other honors along the way, too, including a PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.

Her following was loving and loyal -- protective even -- for they seemed to know instinctively how precious and powerful and simultaneously tender and fragile a spirit like hers had to be.

"That's terrible, terrible, terrible news," my mother kept saying over and over at word of Butler's death. A die-hard science fiction fan, she is one of those people who gobbled up many of Butler's 11 novels. I was proud of myself for having turned her on to Butler's first work, "Kindred." Soon she was devouring the other works, among them "Dawn" and the highly regarded "Parable of the Sower."

[...]

The public and private lives of Butler, Due says, were remarkable to watch. "It's almost as if she lived in two worlds."

"I'm very happy alone," Butler once told Post writer David Streitfeld. "If I had to change myself into something else, I'd probably be unhappy."

She grew up poor in Southern California, where her father shined shoes before he died when she was a young girl, and her mother cleaned houses. Butler was a young black woman coming of age at a time when black women were mainly invisible. And when she was noticed, it was with unkind eyes. She was six feet tall by the time she was in her teens, a girl with deep brown skin and short hair. She was sometimes mistaken for a man, she would say. Early as a child, she cocooned herself in a world of books and nurtured audacious ambitions.

"She obviously had spent a tremendous amount of her early life feeling very, very alone," Barnes said. "She had no tribe. She didn't fit in any place. Her own family thought she was nuts . . . because of what she wanted to do with her life."

At one time Barnes lived just six blocks from Butler and they would spend time together, having dinner or just talking. One of the questions she seemed to care greatly about was, "Why is it that we are so cruel to each other?" Barnes says.

"The fact that she was so concerned with that made me think she had faced a lot of that" cruelty in her life, he adds.

She explored the question in a field that was forced, whether it wanted to or not, to acknowledge her talents.

"Women in general were rare in the science fiction field, and black women, ha," Barnes says.

She had to cloak her ideas thickly in metaphor, he says. "She was forced to speak through layers of obsfucation." Those challenges may have ultimately made her a better writer but must have taken their toll.

"It was like trying to drive in the Indy 500 with your brakes on," Barnes says. "You burn up."

God, I love that metaphor!

[...]

They worried about her, up there alone and probably pushing herself far too much, both in her writing and her travels. But she was drawn to the Pacific Northwest, they say, with its natural beauty and its opportunities for true solitude. Due wanted to call, but worried about interrupting her writing, the words that seemed so hard to come by lately.

I wonder if in all that aloneness, in all her solitude, she knew just how beautiful she was and that she was loved.

A basic question, but a good touchstone, and well-worth asking

Someone found this site and sent me an email today. I've removed all her personal information, and thought I would post my response to her question about how to start blogging. It is what this site is about, and it is good to go over the basic how-to stuff from time to time. So thank you, to this reader, for asking a good question!

Here's the email I got:

I know there are a million of them...but I want to be a Blogger.

I have no idea where, how to begin.  Basic 1..2...3...is what I need to know.  How to get started , how often you blog etc. If you could lead me as ...where to go to begin??

Here is my response to this woman, whom I hope I encouraged to jump in and start blogging.

Hi there!

The best way to begin is with the first step. You already have an AOL account, so if you just want to get your feet wet for free, go into AOL and sign up for an AOL Journal. You'll be blogging in minutes!

If you want to make a more serious stab at it, say, after you try out your voice a bit and see what things your mind spins onto, what you have to say, I'd suggest an inexpensive paid account at Typepad.com. Typepad is the EASIEST of all the blog software to use, no technical experience necessary at all, and you can get up and running with basic templates they provide for less than $10 a month. This site runs on Typepad. I was a beta-tester for it before it first came out, and I also taught with it last semester at the University of Montana.

The bigger question relates to finding your voice and figuring out what you have to say. This blog kind of addresses those issues, but the truth is, blog content is wide open. Many bloggers try to post daily, but I don't. I think that is just a big monkey on my back that creates guilt and would make me hate blogging, and I LOVE blogging! Since I am the master of my blog domains, I can do whatever I want, and you should do the same with your blogs. Don't let anyone tell you "blogs can only be this" or "blogs can only do that." There are no rules, and you should feel free to make up your own cyberspace universe as you go along!

You have to trust the thoughts that come out of your own mind, and give them voice. You are somebody, and the things you have to say are important. People will find them worth hearing. Go read Walt Whitman, about how he sounds his "barbaric yawp!" (or watch Dead Poets Society). Whitman is like an early blogger, and this most famous of American poets self-published his book, Leaves of Grass, because he believed in what he had to say.

But sometimes a person needs what Richard Hugo called "a triggering town," the thing that sets you off, so instead of staring at the blank screen, you enter into a larger dialogue, an ongoing conversation. I find my best blog entries are in response to someone else, and then I just spin them out beyond the catalyst that set me off.

To this end, a lot of people keep "filter blogs."

A filter blog reads around on other blogs and news stories, provides links to things the blogger finds interesting, and uses those articles as starting points in a dialogue, responding to or commenting on them.

It's like entering into a big parlor where there are many ongoing conversations, and as you mingle through the party, you dip in and talk a bit with this person or that person, as long as you like!

To facilitate filter blogging, there is a really terrific tool to use, very efficient! I like the news feed reader at Bloglines.com. You set up a free account there, and then subscribe (for free) to the blogs or news sites that you like to read. If you don't know any good ones yet, Bloglines will give you recommendations and tips to get you started.

Then, instead of going straight to the blogs, you go to Bloglines and start scanning the headlines of the blogs you've subscribed to. Scan scan scan, then dip into something you like, scan scan scan, then dip into something you like. That's the ongoing parlor conversation.

If you find something that really puts a quarter in your Magic Fingers, then jump in and comment, and be sure to put your blog URL on your comment as well. A lot of bloggers go and visit the blogs of people who leave comments, and leave comments themselves. They also list friendly bloggers in their "Blogrolls," and that's a way of getting the word out about your blog. You can also put blogs you like on your own blogroll, by way of recommending them to others.

This weaves the beginnings of a web of your own personal sector of cyberspace, your "neighborhood." The blog software usually provides easy tools to add lists of links to your site without having to touch any code. You can also put links to books you're reading now, music you're blogging to, movies you've been watching, and recommend those too. Many people start out their blogs by writing their own movie or book reviews after they've seen or read something they like.

That's just the beginning, but once you start, you may find it's addictive. Good luck!

Chris

Oh, PS, here's some basic 1, 2, 3 you asked for.

1. Sign up for a blog account, free (AOL, or Blogger) or paid (Typepad, Radio Userland, others).


2. Look for tools in the blog software to make posting easier, like quick bookmarks for your browser toolbar, so you can post from any page you happen to be looking at. The bookmark will launch a pop-up and create all the code for you. You just add your brilliance!


3. Play with templates, no technical experience necessary. Blog software has a bunch of sharp-looking pre-made templates, so you don't have to design a thing to get up and running.


4. Open a Bloglines.com free account and start reading blogs and news sites. CREATE YOUR OWN DAILY NEWSPAPER. There are other good news feed readers out there (FeedDemon), but Bloglines is fun because it will suggest blogs to people who are just starting out.


5. Read and post comments to other blogs, and be sure to put your blog URL in with your comments!


6. Add blogs you like to your own blogroll menu list. The people you link to may come and visit your site, and perhaps give you "link love" (link to you). In order to get link love, you gotta give link love. But beware, you don't want to be a blog slut, who will do anything for link love! [grin]
   


7. Be creative and have fun!

Just what is a blogger, anyway?

A terrific meditation (compare and contrast really) by Simon Dumenco.

Link: A BLOGGER IS JUST A WRITER WITH A COOLER NAME.

A BLOGGER IS JUST A WRITER WITH A COOLER NAME

Why Blogging vs. Traditional Media Has Been Oversold

January 16, 2006

By Simon Dumenco

I’ve been thinking of what I am -- about what any media person in the digital age is -- since having coffee last week with a 30-something newspaper editor who bemoaned the fact that newspapers keep on setting up blogs as these separate, exotic add-ons to their Web sites, instead of integrating blogging into their usual newsgathering operations. There’s simply no good reason to segregate the functions, he insisted.

And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing -- writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. Even though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, I am not, say, a Worder or Wordder.

It’s just software, people! The underlying creative/media function remains exactly the same.

OK, you might argue, blogging is aesthetically a different beast -- it’s instantaneous media. (Well, since the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, pretty much all media has had to learn how to be instantaneous.) It’s unpolished. (The best blogs I read are as sophisticated as anything old-school media publishes.) It’s voice-y. (The best old-school media I read tends to be voice-y.) It’s about opinion, not reporting. (The best reporting to come out of MacWorld in San Francisco last week was published on blogs.) It’s, well, often sloppy and reckless (and Judy Miller wasn’t?).

[...]

OK, then, you might further argue, the Internet itself treats blogs as structurally distinct things. Well, sure, there are blog-specific search engines (Technorati, Icerocket, blogsearch.google.com, etc.), but the lines between blog and non-blog content are rapidly dissolving. Traditional news organizations and blogs often get seemingly equal weight as news sources in Google News. And just last week, I found out about Sprint’s West Coast fiber optic network outage from the new Gmail “Web Clip” ticker that sits atop my e-mail inbox -- and the clip came from a blog, not a traditional news organization.

So why does the idea of the blogger as The Other continue to persist?

[...]

Of course, the false dichotomy gives rise to internal inconsistencies -- like at The New York Times, which is acting like David Carr is one thing (he’s a columnist!) when he’s doing his Monday media business column and another thing (he’s a blogger!) when he’s doing his Oscar-season dispatches under The Carpetbagger rubric on NYTimes.com, even though both are edited by a Times editor before being published.

[...]

A lot of the tendency to draw lines internally, I think, has to do with the fact that most old-school publishing organizations with online components invested heavily in the ’90s in then-state-of-the-art, but now-cumbersome online publishing systems, which are functionally very different from more nimble blogging software solutions. But over the next few years those legacy systems will be phased out and everyone publishing online will be using some form of what’s now commonly thought of as blogging software.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: In the very near future, there are only going to be two types of media people: those who can reliably work and publish (or broadcast) incredibly fast, and those ... who can’t.

The Media Guy’s column appears weekly on AdAge.com and in the print edition of  Advertising Age. E-mail him at dumenco@gmail.com

 

Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion

David Pogue put me on to this with his email column on curmudgeons! More fun to have with Ben Franklin. Can't beat it.

Link: The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Volume II: Philadelphia, 1726 - 1757 -- Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion.

The Writings of Benjamin Franklin: Philadelphia, 1726 - 1757

Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion

RULES, by the Observation of which, a Man of Wit and   Learning may nevertheless make himself a disagreeable Companion.  

Your Business is to shine; therefore you must by all   means prevent the shining of others, for their Brightness may make yours the   less distinguish'd. To this End,

1. If possible engross the whole Discourse; and when other Matter fails, talk much of your-self, your Education, your Knowledge, your   Circumstances, your Successes in Business, your Victories in Disputes, your own   wise Sayings and Observations on particular Occasions, &c. &c.   &c.;

2. If when you are out of Breath, one of the Company should   seize the Opportunity of saying something; watch his Words, and, if possible,   find somewhat either in his Sentiment or Expression, immediately to contradict   and raise a Dispute upon. Rather than fail, criticise even his Grammar.

3. If another should be saying an indisputably good Thing;   either give no Attention to it; or interrupt him; or draw away the Attention of   others; or, if you can guess what he would be at, be quick and say it before   him; or, if he gets it said, and you perceive the Company pleas'd with it, own   it to be a good Thing, and withal remark that it had been said by Bacon,   Locke, Bayle, or some other eminent Writer; thus you deprive him   of the Reputation he might have gain'd by it, and gain some yourself, as you   hereby show your great Reading and Memory.

4. When modest Men have been thus treated by you a few times, they will chuse ever after to be silent in your Company; then you may shine on   without Fear of a Rival; rallying them at the same time for their Dullness, which will be to you a new Fund of Wit.

Thus you will be sure to please yourself. The polite Man aims at pleasing others, but you shall go beyond him even in that. A Man can be present only in one Company, but may at the same time be absent in twenty. He can please only where he is, you where-ever you are   not.

The Pennsylvania Gazette, November 15, 1750

Another professor fired for blogging?

Like the Phantom Professor, whom I've also written about here, and here. this is another low-status faculty position, or seems to be, if a Ph.D. candidate is a chair of a department at DeVry, even if she does appear to be "Harvard-educated" and a well-regarded teacher. It seems that free speech restrictions and violations of academic freedom occur with more impunity in the margins of academia, in the hinterlands, and at places like DeVry.

Link: DenverPost.com - DeVry ticked at kvetching on prof blog.

DeVry ticked at kvetching on prof blog

When do private thoughts lead to a public flogging?

Probably right around the time you begin posting them on the Internet for everyone to read.

A couple weeks ago, Meg Spohn, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Denver, learned this tough lesson. She was fired from her position as department chair of communications and composition at DeVry University in Westminster.

It began when the academic dean, with whom Spohn had previously enjoyed a professionally cordial relationship, asked her if "she had a minute."

As it turns out, a minute was about all Spohn had left at DeVry, as the dean explained that she was being let go.

Stunned, Spohn cleaned out her desk.

The reasons for the firing, according to Spohn, were vague. The dean explained that the school was aware of her personal website and objected to unspecified commentary disparaging DeVry University and its students.

Spohn denies that she ever criticized any students and characterized her complaints against DeVry as rare and gentle "kvetching."

She believes her firing was a "clear violation" of her First Amendment rights.

[...]

Still, her experience does expose an interesting development.

With the explosion of personal websites and blogs, will employers begin rummaging through what are, most often, spontaneous diary entries in an attempt to regulate the activities of employees?

"Had they told me what was so objectionable, I would have gladly password-protected it, or taken it down or done it anonymously," Spohn explains.

[...]

When I contacted DeVry University - a private, for-profit school - to ask them why Spohn was fired, I received a written statement from Cecil Horst, president of DeVry University/Westminster, through the school's public-relations firm.

"As an academic institution, DeVry University is a proponent of the First Amendment and relies on the free flow of expression and opinion to further the learning process," goes the statement.

DeVry won't comment on a particular employee matter, citing privacy concerns. But it does not "make termination decisions lightly," the statement says.

My dream is for 36-68pt feeds of RSS headlines on this "paper" computer screen, held to my refrigerator with magnets

The idea is that as I stumble down to get my coffee or tea, half awake, instead of puttering around to the increasingly absurd morning news programs on TV, my RSS feeds will insinuate themselves into my awareness instead, with podcasts, vlogs, news sources and blogs.

I'm sick of having to "go to the box" and then enter a news feed reader to interact with my feeds. I want some kind of environmental household indicator of my feed content, and then the option to "go to the box," or to simply touch-screen and scan bits of the feed from that large type, clickable, fridge magnet.

My sense is that "citizen journalism" will develop a much more local and interactive installed base when content becomes more time shifted to our household habits, and less associated with sitting at a desk or table for a more formal "computer session."

People who live more fully in the face-to-face world aren't migrating online the way many of us who inhabit cyberculture do. Maybe they are less dissatisfied with passive media hypnosis and incessant loud advertising. Maybe they are less able to sit still in a chair. Maybe their face-to-face lives are more enticing and distracting than mine is. I don't want to write those folks off to this widening divide of active media co-producers and passive sonambulists who perhaps aren't awakening new neural paths and new thoughts as much as those of us with a higher degree of daily online stimulation.

It's just a thought. I don't want to give up on the percentage of the population that seems happy remaining asleep and programmed by marketers.

So would somebody please invent something like that? Instead of the marketing-driven crap techies are drooling over below?

Chris

Link: MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Paper view technology.

Paper view technology

Katy Duke
Thursday  October   13, 2005

Cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens.

The firm says the low production costs could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle.

The new technology caused a sensation when it was first made public this week at the Plastics Electronics trade fair in Frankfurt.

Siemens spokesman Norbert Aschenbrenner claimed the new screens, which are literally paper thin, can do everything a regular TV screen or computer monitor can do, but cost a fraction of the price.

"The technology makes it possible to put moving images directly onto paper ... at a cost that would make it economical to use on everything from magazines to cigarette packets ... where the moving images would give more detailed instructions than any photo could ever do," he said.

He said that the technology will be used for Harry Potter-style dynamic pictures in newspapers but will probably take a little while to get cheap enough.

"We think that at the moment the screens will appear first in more expensive magazines in the form of high-impact adverts. But as the price sinks we expect them to appear in papers as well, possibly as a really attention-grabbing front page.

"The images are in colour, and can broadcast anything that can be shown on a regular flat screen monitor or TV, although with a slightly lower quality. These could be short film clips or flash animations like those found on the internet.

[...]

   

Spreading a Meme... Me me me me me me!

If you take to drinking a tallglassofmilk, auralizing at the same time (would blowing bubbles count?) you might glance back at this site to see what I'm up to here. Just spreading a meme around, and maybe making a point about music at the same time.

So I stuck it over here, instead of at Serendipit-e, but we'll see if anyone finds it. Ping!

Total volume of music files on my computer:

• 0 (it's a new computer, and I haven't figured out how to transfer my iPod files from my old one yet because of OBNOXIOUS DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGMENT BULLSHIT. I own the files, but I can't transfer MY OWN FILES. Sure, I have enough technical ability to spend an entire afternoon trying to figure it out, but I don't have an entire afternoon to devote to it. I own a legal copy of Microsoft Office, but I can't get it installed on the new machine either. I can't retire the old machine until I get essential stuff working on the new one, so I'm basically screwed by all these "heroic" measures to stop piracy that keep me from using what I legally own without losing X number of days of work, and risking not getting crucial work done because if I screw up, I won't have access to files I need to turn in on deadline. Thanks a lot copy-protection assholes.

The last CD I listened to was:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince CD audio book.

Last acquired:

• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince CD audio book. 

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince CD audio book. 
• All those other Harry Potter audio books (bedtime stories)
• Solo albums of Jennifer Nettles, and maybe Sugarland
• KJ Denhert, Girl Like Me, etc.
• Glass Lounge, Lyn Leon
  

Top five genres:

• audio books
• Blues/non-fusion Jazz
• local artists I know from Atlanta and elsewhere
• News podcasts in iTunes
• I HATE radio, the music industry, pop music, and ANYTHING foisted on me by marketing people. I BOYCOTT THEM. I'll take it a step further: THEY CAN BITE ME.

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton (I am also tagging the unsuspecting with this...):

• shuttering
• Kaleidoscope
• U-Turns
• Princess Entipy
• bigskysquid

Will any of them notice this...?