If you watch the beginning of this video, Ron Paul explains that his fund raising efforts are not being directed by “his people” - it is a grass roots group of people working in his behalf.
If we could do the same thing with newspaper and broadcast websites - we too could be champions of community. We need to figure out our message and stick to it.
Categories: innovation · web concepts
Tagged: broadcast, community, newspaper, Ron Paul, youtube
Mashable posted a story called “Facebook Launches Community-Driven Project to Add Foreign Language Support“
Facebook is turning to their own platform and community to help translate the site into other languages. The company has launched an app called “Translations,” that is a community effort to make the site available in your language of choice. The goal, according to Facebook, is to make the site “available to everyone, everywhere, in all languages.”
ReadWriteWeb posted an article called “Most Promising for Web 2008: Open Source Movement“
Likewise we think there is no single Web company that is more promising than… the open source movement, a loose-knit group that aims to make a huge impact by tying all Web companies together.
I am a recovering Microsoft fanboy. It is so interesting to watch and participate in the open source movement. It is so much more friendly (in nature) that some of the corporate models.
Take for instance the MySQL movement - that is really just indescribable.
Categories: future · web concepts
Tagged: 2008, open source, readwriteweb
The New Your Times posted an article today called “Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft“
The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives.
It is an interesting discussion. I think the tipping point will be when the digital generations get to late college and early career. They will insist on more and more cloud computing which is which Google lives - at this point Microsoft had better have a solution which seamlessly integrates the office experience with the desktop and mobile via the internet - or be gone.
Categories: new media · web concepts
Tagged: google, internet, microsoft, office
hmmmm…I’m not sure how to take this post from InfoWorld about crowdsourcing.
What differentiates crowdsourcing from focus groups is that focus groups typically bring a select number of people together in one location for a set period of time, whereas most crowdsourcing initiatives are open-ended, soliciting feedback from a swath of geographically dispersed participants who share little in common other than an interest in the topic at hand.
OK - but I think that is why crowdsouring is cool, it is context sensitive.
“If a problem is that hard to solve,” Tabb says, “then no one else is solving it either. If your competitors have figured it out, then you can copy them. But if no one has figured it out, then [the problem is] worth revealing.”
That makes sense…but the magic comes in the interpretation.
For many organizations, crowdsourcing has become synonymous with predictive markets, which create and tap a community of people to help predict the outcomes of certain scenarios, such as a presidential election. Such markets have the potential to provide invaluable data that goes well beyond what can be gleaned from focus groups, especially when linked with granular demographic information about the participants.
OK, now we’re on the same page…this is getting better.
Crowdsourcing success very much depends on the quality and quantity of participation.
As “The Wisdom of Crowds” author Surowiecki says, “Set aside the question of trying to reach outside the organization. One of the things that companies need to do a better job of [is] tapping the collective knowledge of the people inside their organizations. Just doing that would be an important first step.”
This is a good, somewhat long, article. Takes a great look at may aspects of crowdsourcing and comes it a great conclusion!
Categories: innovation · web concepts
Tagged: crowdsourcing, infoworld, statistics, wisdom of crowds
Here’s a post from Robert Scoble about the idea of interactive video.
Nat Kausik, CEO of Asterpix, shows me more of the ways that video creators can use Asterpix to add links to certain parts of the video, to interact with the surrounding area, to add clickable areas to the video, and much much more. This is some of the coolest video technology I’ve seen lately and will let us create new kinds of interactive video experiences.
Sure seems like the “thing to do” as more TV goes to the internet and internet to the TV. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to click on something “on screen” and see more information about it. Or maybe have multiple plots or storylines and you could follow which one you were interested in.
Categories: innovation · new media
Tagged: innovation, interactive, video
Gizmodo has a good post called “The Ultimate 700MHz Auction Guide: What It Is, Who’ll Win and Why You Should Care” - I’ve been keeping an eye on this auction, because it really seems to have a big impact on the internet and the future of all electronics for the next few years.
Interesting Gizmodo comments:
Why Would Someone Pay BILLIONS for It?
Every frequency band has slightly different physical attributes. The 700MHz band penetrates walls fairly easily and travels well, making it perfect for either cellular or long-range wireless broadband
Google’s statements of late haven’t been very enthusiastic about the prospect of winning; the ol’ college reading between the lines says it’s not planning to. But, it did get the open access provisions it pushed for, so there’s really no need to finance the network on top of it.
Verizon winning the C block pretty much kills previous utopian notions of a mythical third pipe, outside the grasp of the vested telcos, bringing glorious open internets to us all.
Not sure what all this means yet - but it will definetly be interesting to keep an eye on and see what comes of it all.
Categories: future · web concepts
Tagged: 700MHz, auction, google, internet, verizon, wireless
There are so many posts about how young people give away too much information about themselves with social networking and user generated content sites.
The amount of data collected by services like Facebook and MySpace is immense. At no point in history has so much personal information and content been aggregated and shared in the fashion that these types of services make possible. Online privacy has been a hot-button issue for some time, but the evercreepier assaults on privacy (like Facebook’s Project Beacon) have created ever-stronger calls for more online privacy laws and protections.
While I really think people have to be conscious about what they post, but I think we really have to try and understand that the younger generations are not like old ones. These dudes and dudettes have grown up being more expressive and are OK with information being available.
Sometimes there is something to be said for people who have full transparency - it’s the old concept of the devils I do know about are better than the devils you don’t know about!
Categories: future · new media
Tagged: community, privacy, social networking, UGC, user generated content
In a post from the Tech section of the New York Times “Entrepreneurial Journalism in the Facebook Age” Saul Hansell brings up some good points:
Every now and then, I meet someone idealistic and perhaps foolish enough to want to embark on a career in journalism. Until recently, my advice was largely the same as anyone had given for many decades: Find a gig where you can write — a small town paper, freelancing for an alternative weekly, a business trade publication (my route). If you’re good, the story went, you would find you way to bigger publications and forge a career.
Today, it’s hard to give that advice, when the economic underpinnings of all those places you were supposed to be trying to work for are so shaky. Is there any good advice other than to learn how to trade mortgage-backed securities? I’m not sure that that opening an account on Blogger and hoping for the best will pay the rent.
This is truely an interesting time - it seems the “old media” giants are starting to wake up.
It seems to be a great time to be starting out in journalism. Just don’t ask advice from anyone who has been in the business for more than five years.
Categories: future · new media
Tagged: entrepreneurial, facebook, journalism, New York Times, Saul Hansell
Nothing earth shattering or revolutionary - but good solid stuff.
Most of what I share about how to blog I’ve learned by doing, usually by trial and error. The same can be said as it applies to growing traffic to my blogs over the years.
Categories: web concepts
Tagged: facebook, social media, twitter
|
Twitter del.icio.us links
