I Jaikued today … I don’t think I shall again.
I tried Jaiku today since it’s been discussed a lot recently as the ‘other’ Twitter (even though Jaiku was around first, I think).
First impressions of Jaiku – a lot more tools, more fleshed out, I like the idea of comment threads on individual messages, it’s less about popularity per se, and more about a small tight-knit group (I think). The recent explosion of interest and use of Twitter seems to have people trying Jaiku as well, but from my few hours of use, the massive influx of users has left Jaiku with more speed problems than Twitter’s recent scaling and capacity issues.
However, the appeal of Twitter for me is its simplicity … it has very few tools and the posts (Twits) are primarily self-contained. The ‘@’ reponding has evolved socially, but I don’t imagine it’ll grow to get all that complicated.
More to the point, for me, Twitter is a sometimes food and I like my procrastination (or ‘continual partial prescence’ if you must) simple and no fuss.
links for 2007-04-12
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Apparently a Tunisian – “Astrubal“ – released a 1984-styled mashup long before the US: ” the hammer shatters a screen where Tunisian president Ben Ali is speaking. The final image [is] of a Tunisian girl opening her eyes…”
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Extremely compelling use of Google Earth to expose the attrocities in Darfur: “In collaboration with Google Earth, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has brought together compelling visual evidence of the destruction in Darfur.”
links for 2007-04-11
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“All of the above might sound totally egotistical since it implies that I am in any way the author of my own success. The reality is that Henry Jenkins can do all of these things because Henry Jenkins isn’t a person. He’s a brand.”
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Craigslist vs common sense …
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# 70 million weblogs
# About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or…
# 1.4 new blogs every second
# Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37% -
Video in which Cuarón answers questions about Children of Men, the DVD, the doco and the politics behind the whole thing!
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YouTube gets politicial …
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“In this Photoshop tutorial, I’m going to reveal you some of the nice Web 2.0 logos, how you can draw their logo exactly the same (well, not really 100% though) with Photoshop.”
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Sorry to debunk a good proto-urban myth, but soldier Kevin Garrad was not saved from a bullet by it striking his iPod. Rather his iPod took the bullet but the body armour underneath stopped it!
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Great to see the New York Times reviewing fan-made mashups on YouTube. Case in point: Virginia Heffernan on the excellent Seven Minute Sopranos.
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An iPod flash mob party took over London’s Victoria Station Friday. An estimated 4,000 dancers turned up for the spontaneous event before four vanloads of police moved in to break up the gathering. Videos, too.
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Wonderful little YouTube mashup of hyper-masculine 300 with “It’s Raining Men” as a soundtrack. [Via Chuck]
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By Eli Horwatt [Via Chuck]
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Interesting DVD essay (or YouTube essay in the case of this version) about comic book adaptation, DVDs and the interplay between the two. (Flow TV, 5, 11, April 2007). I wonder if the clips will stay on YouTube all that long …
Happy Easter
I’m away from the blog, away from the internet, away from Twitter and away from email until Tuesday next week as I simply must finish some writing and would also like to spend some real quality time with loved ones.
I hope everyone has a Happy Easter break, whether it’s of religious significance to you or just a welcome long weekend.
Although I posted it last year, I’m going to sign off for the next four days with my favourite (irreverent) Easter videoclip, The Easter Bunny Hates You …
Apparently I’m in Vogue
You’ll forgive the title to this post, I’ve never been able to let a good pun go and I doubt I’ll ever be able to use that one again. It’s true, though: I was interviewed about a month ago by Cathrin Shaer, a New Zealand-based writer for Vogue Australia who was writing a piece on life online. She was trying to do an awful lot in one article (talking about MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Second Life, etc.) but somehow my name came up and I ended up talking with her for almost an hour about the complexities of interaction in different online modes. Clearly the bit that stuck was about Second Life. Here is the snippet from that interview which appeared today in ‘A life less ordinary’ (Vogue Australia, May 2007):
Tama Leaver, a lecturer at The University of Western Australia whose research interests include exploring how humans interact with technology, has used Second Life for business meetings: “Most of the people working in my field are spread across the globe. I’ve participated in teleconferencing, but it’s better of have a conference in Second Life because you’re all in a room together, rather than just disembodied voices.” Apparently, even if you’re meeting with a bunch of serious academics, it doesn’t matter if you look like a cartoon character. “There’s a great parallel in animated films,” Leaver explains. “We understand what’s going on in an animated character’s face — most people understanding what Shrek was saying.”
Not exactly mind-blowing stuff on my part. Also, I suspect there are a few sentences Shaer could have left in since there was somewhat more space and substance between talking about academic discussion in Second Life and Shrek (for the record, I’ve never met anyone online or offline who looks like Shrek – while the facial features might be there, no one I’ve met was actually green). That said, it’s interesting to see interest in social software spreading as far as Vogue. (Although I was a little surprised that they didn’t use any Second Life screenshots for illustration – and what they did use seemed like a bad high school art collage – perhaps the Vogue graphics people didn’t actually make it in-world).
links for 2007-04-04
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“Education is not a hobby to be slotted into a lifestyle. Without care in the construction of curriculum, the fun and flexibility of sonic mobility will crush the discipline required for motivated learning.”(Nebula, 4, 1, March 2007, pp. 19-30).
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“We hope something new comes through in these statements, and that they will perhaps suggest more creative ways of approaching the kind of debate that has been generated around “the recent events” they relate to. “
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An excellent essay by Greenblatt, particularly effective in linking contemporary politics and Shakespeare through the tale of Bill Clinton’s specific take on Macbeth. (New York Review of Books, 54, 6, April 12, 2007).
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“UK Teachers are calling for much tougher restrictions to protect staff from “cyber bullying” by pupils.”
links for 2007-04-03
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“Forget handwritten notes passed around class, terse phone calls and SMS – MySpace is now the tool of choice for teens looking to give their lovers the flick.”
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A new MySpace launched and house drama with 80 x 90 second episodes, each having a 12-hour exclusive launch on MySpace before appearing elsewhere.
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“Because networked publics provide a space for teens to gather and share their lives, it is not surprising that the intimate acts that must be made visible take place here. While the online publicness of teen relationships horrifies many adults,…”
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NASA’s April Fools picture of the day: “Americans Defeat Russians in First Space Quidditch Match”
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“… a nifty new tool called bFree that takes the contents of a Blackboard course and creates a free-standing website out of it. While one wonders how it handles the parts of a course that really shouldn’t be on the open Web …”
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“Breaking with established practice, the EMI Group announced today that the record label’s digital catalog would go on sale over the Internet without built-in copy restrictions.”
links for 2007-04-02
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YouTube’s news and politics editor Steve Grove asks Phil de Vellis questions about the “Vote Different” ad and the future of online video.
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PoliticsTV.com has the first interview the 1984 Mash Up Creator, Phil de Vellis. Lots of interesting things about the future of politics in here. 🙂 [Via Jill]
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An interesting Stop Cyberbullying Day Flickr photo post bySherri Jackson/Lasadh, whose Flickr photo was plagiarised and used as as the template for one of the images Kathy Sierra uses to illustrate the threats made against her.
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One of Google’s better April Fools hoaxes: GMail Paper … your Gmail printed for free, with targeted, printed ads.
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“… a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.”
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A list of all the April Fools hijinx from across the interwebs…