sports talk

in the spirit of kevin cott's new blog (the former intern for the sports guy) i wanted to throw something new up here so if someone sees the interminable post i left on his blog and wants to check me out, they won't think i'm a total geek who does nothing but talk about digital communication issues (that was from a class last semester).

now, back to watching baseball. happy april everybody.

Microsoft's new classifieds

The Microsoft company is planning on debuting a classified service that seems like a more personalized version of ebay to me, according to this CNN.com story.

My big question about stuff like this is market saturation. Ebay is obviously a widely-used site, and although I've never used craigslist it seems like those two and Microsoft's version, called "Fremont", do basically the same thing.

Will they all take away users from each other? It can't be that expensive to support sites like that with advertising, but at the same time, what's the point of creating rival networks along those lines?

Vindication

This gem was in the NYT Sunday edition.

I've been critical of the wikipedia idea all along, only to be reassured that the feedback loop that accompanies a dumb network like that would go a long ways toward ensuring that bad information wasn't disseminate d on the net as truth. Now, a real-world example of someone who has been wronged by the almighty wiki.

I respect this Seigenthaler guy, and the way he handled the bad information. The original poster who said he was involved in the JFK assassination made their post anonymously -- another feature of wikipedia I don't especially like -- and it would have taken quite a court battle to find out the identity of the poster. As I argued in my law paper this fall -- and the Delaware Suporeme Court agreed with me in Cahill v. John Doe -- people who post material on the internet should have the right to remain anonymous.

Friday discussion

Props to Hannah and Amber for Friday's discussion...probably the most enjoyable and informative one we've had all semester, even though we had two fairly random and mutually exclusive readings.

I think the best part was talking about emergency responses and how the web can make it easier for people to learn about emergencies. My general response to the Wired article about an online clearinghouse for emergency information that was automatically sent to places like malls and schools (it's undergoing a trial period in Portland, Ore.) was the same as a lot of other things we've talked about when it comes to using the web as a clearinghouse for information. The best comparison for this system, as Dr. Carroll pointed out, is it's basically a wiki for emergency information. As with wikis, I'm leery of a system where anybody can add information, as I have pointed out here on my blog before. It's a tradeoff...if anybody can submit emergency information, you're going to need a feedback loop wherein information can be verified by numerous people, thus affirming the power of a dumb network. However, in the time it would take for a feedback loop to work, it would defeat the purpose of alerting people to an emergency.

Thje other major problem with this system is the fact that there are still lots of people, even in America, who aren't connected to the internet. I have no data to back this up, but I have a hunch the majority of the people who were stranded in the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans when Katrina hit weren't web-enabled.

last Friday discussion wrap

A few quick points left over from our discussion of music file sharing and Hawthorne Heights from the last Friday we had class...

I about went out of my gourd at Hannah's anecdote about her downloading habits. (Since Sony's new digital technology prevents CDs from being ripped onto a computer, she buys CD's but then has to download the tracks so she can listen to them on her computer, since there isn't a stereo in her room). She should take that one to the folks at Sony. Idiots. Already there have been a couple of lawsuits against the company, and there will be more to come with that digital reproduction tech.

I need to check out Myspace (maybe after the semester ends and I'm not buried under an avalanche of crap). While the concepts of how Hawthorne Heights (the band) spread their music via the web, and I think it's a great idea. What I don't get -- and this is a microcosm of my attitude toward the blogging world in general -- is who has the time to sit and listen to random music on the internet.

Maybe it's my busy schedule and the fact I was brought up on dial-up internet. I need a break.

The blog vs. totalitarianism

Interesting NYT article about a young woman who is using the internet to surreptitiously defy the authorities in China (pictures are slightly on the risky side, but it's very relevant to what we've been talking about in class).

The story didn't go into great detail about what her posts actually say, it focused more on examples of the live video-type stuff she shows (it's suggestive, but not pornographic). Of more interest to me was the examples of other blogs kept by Chinese. If you didn't know, the Chinese government works ridiculously hard (actively trying to block anything that smacks of democracy) to censor what the Chinese people see and do on the internet. To show up in suggestive poses, like our friend Mu Mu does, is to push the envelope even further.
She'd better hope the government can't find a way to trace her, because no one would probably ever see her pictures -- or see her in real life -- again if they did.

Another point of interest in the article: discussion of the mascots for the 2008 Olympics. The mascots that were developed were praised by the press, but roundly criticized by blogs, which the article says are the best indicator of true public opinion.

Does this government care at all about the welfare of its people? Rhetorical question. It's a disgrace.

The Great NYT Whale

What would I do if I were the New York Times and an entire news and information ecosystem depended on me?

Hmmmm...

The reason this question is asked is because newspapers as we know them are definitely dying out. A big reason for that, cited in digcomm class is that newspapers have lost a lot of credibility with the general public. That's the reason blogs are becoming so popular, however, blogs are still largely dependent on the reporting of big news organizations like the NYT. So we can't really resign ourselves to a total purge of all newspapers and just focus on blogs to get our news.

Well, I still can't come up with an answer after a day and a half of semi-serious thought. I agree that we can't do away with newspapers. Part of that is my old-fashioned side that still screams newspapers are still trustworthy (I'm sure I get a lot of that from the fact that I too am a journalist and consider myself a largely trustworthy one at that). I honestly don't see newspapers making many more changes from where we are now. I think the New York Times Select edition will become more of the norm in American newspapers everywhere, as more and more people get fast internet access and prefer the speed and convenience of online (I think the same people who used to pay for printed subscriptions will eventually get around to subscribing to well-developed online ones). TimesSelect is basically a news filter, allowing readers to quickly navigate through stories that they're the most interested in (TimesSelect involves more than that, but that's the stripped-down explanation). Eventually everyone will get around to getting wired and using stuff like this.

As far as newspapers and their credibility, I think credibility is evolving. In much the same way that the American people lost a lot of faith in their elected officials after the Watergate fiasco in the 1970s, newspapers will run a similar course and eventually people will start to trust them again or stop reading the news altogether. In our crazy world, none of us has the time to gather the news for ourselves. Unless we develop a governmental news-gathering association (a la the BBC, which is well-run and could serve as a potential model should we ultimately pursue that route), we're just going to have to go on reading what major news organizations publish for us.

One other government-related idea: Pass legislation that more strictly regulates and privatizes news outlets, in a similar fashion to the Communications Act of 1996 but for print and with tougher standards. It ain't happening, as long as soft money and political lobbying groups still exist in America, but it would be worth looking at.

Diffusion of Innovation wrap

I didn't have a lot to say in the class discussion on diffusion of innovation theory, mostly because it's hard for me to get my mind around the communication methods of corn farmers in Iowa, but here are a couple quick thoughts that are much overdue.
I wonder how the people who study stuff like this justify their existence. Obviously, the Iowa corn farmers and the doctors in Illinois ( I think that was where the example study took place) don't listen to anyone who isn't in their circle when they're making decisions about what they do. In the doctors' case, it was a new drug, in the farmers' case, it was a new kind of hybrid seed corn. The way both spread was through word-of-mouth among farmers and doctors, respectively, and not because some suit from a university said it was better. So why study diffusion of innovation theory? Even if we understand better ways to get information out to people, is it going to do any good if they don't listen?

digital comm project

Random observation about our digital communication class project (a multimedia web design thing, there will be more buzz in this space about it when we actually complete the thing). It will be interesting to see how the concepts we've talked about in class, like word of mouse/ant theory, will be put into practice once we actually get it on the web. How is the word about it going to get out? I'm sure all of us will put something about it on our blogs, and tell our friends, but I still don't see how anyone outside of our families and classmates will find this presentation (which should turn out to be freakin' sweet). Then again, could we end up like Mahir the Turk (I tried to link to his mucho estupido web site, but it wouldn't load. Maybe he finally gave up on trying to have sex with as many women as possible.) and become cult sensations.
Who knows? We'll know in a couple of months. I hope we have a way of tracking the hits on that site.

Update on file-sharer Grokster

I had thought that Grokster, the file-sharing giant that lost a key Supreme Court case last summer, was done. According to this article in the NYT, Grokster has now agreed to a settlement to completely discontinue distribution of its file sharing software.
I kinda have to agree with the entertainment companies on the whole music file sharing thing. While I'm definitely in favor of First Amendment freedoms, I don't necessarily agree that we should all be able to exchange music. I know the record companies and musicians make a ton of money off the public anyway, but it's still a copyright violation to give it away for free. I don't equate music with "information" ( I feel the same way about movies).