Is this really journalism?

The internet still making life un-fun for Round Rock teens

2007-06-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

Juan Romero didn't want to get in trouble, he just wanted to show off some of his graffiti tags on his myspace page. Unfortunately they were the signature tags he used to tag the brand new Round Rock skate park and they were a felony punishable by up to two years in jail.

bummer

The cops used the myspace page to ultimately bust him, but they worked off a lead given to them by a passerby who recorded Romero's license plate with a camera phone.

double bummer

*Note: these are actual pics of the park, it's a beautiful work of art

Citizen journalists shake up Austin

2007-06-05T16:31:00.000-07:00

Two really fascinating recent and local developments in citizen journalism.

This week Kevin Brown was shot, reportedly in the back, by an Austin police officer. The video of the shooting comes not from a car-mounted camera but from bystander Kendrick Stanley. I'm unclear as to whether he gave or sold his footage to the Austin American-Statesman or if they picked it up via a distributor like pluck or Youtube, but the paper is running it heavily on their website. At the end of the day this civilian video will play a major part in sorting out this controversial shooting.

In the same vein, administrators at Stony Point High School in Round Rock are trying to convince Youtube to remove a video of a fight between students in the hallway of the school taken on a student's cell phone.

The term "citizen journalism" may not have quite caught on yet and people may not even know they're doing it, but citizen journalism is alive and well.

"Networked journalism"

2006-08-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

It's scary to be working in a field where the language of the industry is still being developed. In the past year I've heard terms come and go to describe what's happening in this new era of journalism: "Web 2.0", "nonlinear story telling", "new journalism".

The next big term appears to be "networked journalism", and I think it's an idea that's valuable to the field, and much less theatening sounding than "citizen journalism", which implies a demise of the news business. Rather than taking a scary situation and polarizing it more with "citizen" vs. "traditional", "networked journalism" involves a journalist interacting with the public and linking out to other news sources and editorial sources. I wonder if the rhetoric of "network" comes partly from the friendly term "social networking"

Read more about this powerful new development, as described by Jeff Jarvis, here.

Women and blogging

2006-08-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

The BlogHer conference just recently wrapped up and they seemed to have come to some powerful conclusions: namely that "women are the power of web 2.0". Blogging gives them a sense of community (dare I say sorority?), and allows them to achieve personal and professional independence.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than with my own cousin, Megan Salch who wanted to spend more time with her baby and started an online blog and business that would allow her to stay at home. She's doing very well and just recently was named "Mom of the month" on the Houston Moms website.

I see a lot of feminist criticism nowadays about women rejecting the workforce after having a child and wanting to stay at home..but maybe they can do even more innovative work there?
Technorati Tag: Houston blogging mom women

Creative Commons collection

2006-08-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

I've been aware of the Creative Commons license for a while now, but it hadn't occured to me how important it was until I interviewed my mom, a librarian, about the commonality of copyright infringement in her daily job. She wasn't aware of the Creative Commons, and spends lots of time trying to cover the school's ass from teachers publicly showing movies, kids copying and pasting and the administration incorporating corporate logos into cute school promotions. Only a small portion of what she deals with is online copyright infringement, but I think the attitude of free downloadig bleeds into what people think is appropriate in daily life.

This blog is dedicated to offering the best and most useful creative commons licensed media online including music and ebooks. Unfortunately my mom has been saddled with educating the school in respecting and identifying copyright, but this site might make it a bit easier.
Technorati Tag: Creative Commons copyright

Do I work tonight?

2006-08-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a friend who works at Austin's Saba Blue Water and he pointed out that one thing he likes about the job is that the restaurant emailed the employees their work schedule every week.

It surprises me how many managers today are still operating with printed excel spreadsheets or, worse yet, pen and notebook paper work schedules. There's lots of special internet software to facilitate it for even the dumbest of bosses, such as WhenToWork and ScheduleAnywhere. My boyfriend works at Brackenridge hospital and is able to access his schedule via a special physician's site at AmIOn.

With the ability to contact other employees, switch shifts online and see your schedule anywhere I'm not sure why more companies aren't doing this.
Technorati Tag: Austin jobs

SOS podcast

2006-07-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

Looks like podcast tours are the hot thing in Austin right now, as the Save Our Springs alliance releases an audio tour of Barton Springs pool. The tour features thirteen points of interest around the natural spring-fed pool and even maps them out for you on a topographical photo. They also feature a flash photo tour using the same audio clips if you're not really into walking. (found via Austinist)
Technorati Tag: Austin podcast

i Don't buy into your damn campaign

2006-06-30T12:00:00.001-07:00

Saw an ad, for the I Don't campaign, featuring zombies wearing ipods on page 10 of these week's Austin Chronicle. Since zombies and ipods are two of my favorite things in the world (after cats and blue cheese) I had to check it out.

Of course no one spend lots of money on color ads and fancy flash websites unless they're selling something, you have to dig a little bit before you find out what it is in this case. After being called a sheep and a member of the itatorship, I finally realized they were trying to insult me into buying the Sansa e200 mp3 player. I almost hate to write about this all here because I'm playing into their clever little marketing bullshit. They're probably laughing at me right now.

The most insulting part of it all though was when I realized the "new comic" I'd been reading in the Chronicle for the past few weeks was ALSO AN IDON'T AD!!! That's right Austinites, the Flocking Hell strip that has appeared at the bottom of the Page Two editorial is selling your ass a music player.

Curse you social marketing.
Technorati Tag: Austin Mp3 Advertising

Downloadable Austin audio tours

2006-06-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

These are really cool, I'm just resentful because I had the idea a few months ago and didn't have the equipment to do it. Austin Chronicle clickguides are downloadable guidebooks and listings that can be loaded on a mobile device like PDAs or iPods just like an Mp3 song. They have them for several districts around town including SoCo, The Warehouse District and Sixth and Red River.

They are designed by the company CitizenPod, the same company who helped make an iPod guide to SXSW and Austin City Limits Festival. It's hard to tell if this is an Austin-based business or not, but many of their projects are from Austin so I'm going to go ahead and assume they are (if someone knows otherwise, please tell me).

I also happen to know that the Blanton is working on a downloadable audio tour of the museum, but in the meantime they have ecards and neat multimedia exhibits.
Technorati Tag: Austin Mp3

Bloggers turned DJs?

2006-06-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

I suppose the line between an Mp3 blogger and a DJ is really quite slim: One collects music and shares online, the other collects music and shares it on the dance floor.

So I should have been less surprised when I got a flier for a party this week where the DJs are listed as The Rich Girls are Weeping, an Mp3 blog. Their name isn't followed by a web address or even written with a .com at the end, nor do they have a title next to their name. Neither of them, from what I can tell, are experienced DJs either.

Funny how nowadays a blogger can become a DJ, a DJ can become a blogger, a blogger can become a celebrity. I think Andy Warhol would have giggled at the way the internet has affected celebrity.
Technorati Tag: Austin Mp3 blogging

Know me, know my blog

2006-06-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

I try not to get too terribly personal or philisophical here, the fact of the matter is, it makes for boring reading. However, I've had this conflict turning over in my head and it applies to every unemployed young person and not simply myself.

In light of this whole fired-teacher-nudie-pics ordeal, my parents and boyfriend have been chiding me about some of my internet content. They don't like my blogger profile pic, they say employers don't want to hire pirates. They don't like my art I've posted on flickr, they say employers don't like the F-word. They don't like some of my blog entries, employers don't need to know my personal life. All this may be true, but the unique quality my blog offers to the prospective employer is a full snapshot of me..not the polished me my resume will tell you about, but the full me.

I've sanitized much of what I publish online. I realize it's public, just as I distinguish workplace behavior from free time behavior, but I refuse to filter out so much that I disappear and that readers only see words rather than the woman behind them.

Yes, there will be employers who look at my blog, and yes, I'm sure some of them will shake their heads and disapprove. But there will be some that see a person who is as passionate a writer from 5pm to 9am as she is from 9am to 5pm. A person with a rich life that adds to her knowledge and skill set. I want them to see a person, not just an employee. If they come away seeing only the bad things about me, then they've truly seen the forest for the trees.

P.S.
If anyone IS interested in seeing that boring old resume, you can contact me for a password to the link on the right.

Technorati Tag: Austin privacy jobs

Tamara Hoover UPDATE

2006-06-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

Extensive news coverage has turned this teacher's suspension into a city-wide discussion, and many people have been accessing the offending pictures through my blog. Since I originally posted the link, most of the nude photos have been removed with the number of photos in the Tamara gallery dropping from 265 to 187, so that's 65 photos deemed offensive that you won't be seeing anymore. If you want to make up your own mind, I suggest you look at the cache where some of the original thumbnails are still visible.

On Monday the district voted to continue termination proceedings, but she may still appeal the decision. However she has drawn overwhelming public support (she had 9 friends on her myspace page when I wrote my first blog, she now has 573), particularly from the Austin American-Statesman's comments section.....ah, how I love interactive journalism!

UPDATE:Photographer Celesta Danger has addressed the removal of the photos on Tamara's myspace page.

Technorati Tag: Austin internet teacher

Is porn hurting us?

2006-06-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take advantage of a moment when the people of Austin are discussing sexual morality in regards to the Tamara Hoover case, and I'm going to use it to talk about a book I've been reading called Pornified, which may as well have been called "How Internet Porn is Hurting Men, Women, Children and Couples". It's a loose segway..but I'll take it.

Focusing on strictly the consumer end of porn, Pornified tells how internet pornography has transformed America: Men are becoming desensitized to sex and consequently, only increasing violence and hard core activity impacts them. Pornography brings lying into marriges and confusion for women about who to be, and how to be a good partner.

Unlike most anti-pornography literature it's doesn't preach, author Pamela Paul backs her data with facts and interviews. It's made me hate internet porn both for the producers and the consumers.

Um..plus it uses quotes from controversial UT journalism professor Bob Jensen who was dismissed from his church this week!

Technorati Tag: porn austin women

My blog is not radio, your radio is not a blog

2006-06-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

As though I didn't have enough reasons to be annoyed by radio already, this morning I was listening to the Bobby Bones Show on Austin station 96.7 Kiss FM when the DJs started doing their morning blogs, blabbering on about what they did this weekend.

As though people (particularly radio listeners) weren't confused enough already, Kiss FM has to go confusing them even more. Let's look at the etomolgy of the word blog: it originated as a combination of the words "web" and "log", with the important word here being "web". Now Bobby Bones, your radio show is no more a blog than my blog is a radio show, not even if you play sounds of keyboard typing in the background while you speak.

It upsets me when companies, trying to stay current, adopt technology (or in this case technological terms) that they don't understand. Stop using our airwaves to confuse people!
Technorati Tag: Austin

Fader magazine goes PDF

2006-06-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

In that past I posted a blog about local Austin magazines that were publishing only through downloadable PDFs. Now Fader magazine claims to be the first magazine to do the same. They are offering their entire summer issue for free as a PDF with an RSS. Blogger Steve Rubel offers up the term "magcast" for this new type of publication. Other candidates include podzine, pubcast, magcast or iZine.
Technorati Tag: Journalism

Austin teacher suspended for nude photos

2006-06-10T23:29:00.001-07:00

I got a myspace bulletin today about a local Austin teacher who has been suspended from her job and is facing being fired over images taken and posted by photographer Celesta Danger.

The teacher, Tamara Hoover, taught art at Austin High School where she has excellent reviews. You can read her personal account on her myspace page where she's raising funds to fight her case, but basically a student tipped off teachers about photos of Ms.Hoover and she was escorted off the campus and deemed ineffective.

I don't know how long she has been teaching at the school, but nude photos of Tamara were posted as recently as June 2005. I would hardly describe them as pornographic but probably not something she would want all her students and their parents seeing. The site does contain some homoerotic and S&M themed photos, including full frontal nudity.

I myself have learned the hard way that once something is out on the internet it's done, and it's there for the world to see. I worry that she may have had something in her contract that did prohibit this type of activity, and that her case won't stand a chance.
Technorati Tag: Austin

Online classes

2006-06-06T15:06:00.000-07:00

My particular division at the University of Texas may be technologically retarded, but the rest of the school isn't.

I'm currently taking an online course in the school of information, and it's been really fun just to see what technology they're employing to make it work. I receive my class bulletins through an RSS feed, I converse with my professor via AIM, throughout the lessons there are hyperlinks to additional sources so you can learn more about what intrigues you and webcast video lessons are common. I'm not really sure how all those online degrees operate, and if they use this same sort of process..if anyone has any insight please let me know.

I'll keep you updated on what it's like to learn this way and the course's successes and failures.
Technorati Tag: education

Time.com

2006-06-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

In this week's June 5th issue of Time magazine they put a full page spotlight on Time.com. Time is one of my favorite magazines but lately they had been replaced in my heart by the New York Times because of their publications multimedia content. It looks like Time is trying to catch up and, like everyone else, face the future of journalism.

Some of their coolest features include:

Sphere It, a search engine next to their stories that lets you look at what various blogs are saying about that topic
Mulitmeda packages in a format very similar to the NY Times, including one on War in the Congo
Book excerpts
A collection of the week's best political cartoons and photographs
A full blog section with its own layout that looks more like a traditional blog layout rather than a modification of the rest of the site. All the blogs have RSS and deep linking.

Technorati Tag: Journalism

Love in the information age

2006-06-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

I guess you're not as apt to notice a phenomenon when you're part of it. Lately my boyfriend and I have found ourselves lying in bed together with a laptop each, quietly surfing instead of watching TV. We're together, we're entertained and I feel like even though we're working seperately, we get more out of it because we inevitably end up sharing links and learning new things about one another. It makes what's normally a private activity into something shared.

Writer Nick Currie is looking at love in the information age and is exploring the phenomenon of couples surfing the web together. He's put out a call for comments for his upcoming story for WIRED and is exploring questions like:

do couples touch while they surf together?
does it enhance or impair their communication?
is there anything subversive going on, i.e. secretly flirting on IM or looking at porn while you're with your partner?
if they're looking at sites like youtube, has surfing come right back around to being television watching?

Plus Nick has an eye patch, and I think it's cool.

Technorati Tag: Love

The next big thing

2006-06-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

If parents are wondering where the next place kids will be going to soil their minds and waste time looking at and buying crap, start by looking at these sites. The magazine of online media, marketing and advertising along with Buzz Marketing Group has picked the following sites as the next places to be:

Technorati Tag: Teen

Social networks for the rest of us

2006-06-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

Myspace gets a lot of flak for being a pickup site or a wellspring for teenage trouble, but the site has refined a concept for social networking that is amazing and unignorably popular. Today many other specialized social networking sites are expanding on the idea and giving adults their own uses for the technology.

My boyfriend hasn't checked his myspace in over a month, but he informed me the other day he has just posted his 1000th entry on a car forum site, I suggested he visited carspace or rideroom.
My mom and her friends might be able to find another use for social networking outside of spying on their kids with Martha Stewart's new site.
And finally, one of my favorite parts of myspace is still being able to stay intimately up-to-date with friends who are far away. Sites like famoodle and cingo are applying this to families and helping them share photos, stories and important dates with one another.
Or if you want to just meet strangers try fo.rtuito.us.

Technorati Tag: Social Networking

LoveYourArea.com

2006-06-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

I saw this website advertised on the side one of Austin's pricey downtown lofts. It's a really neat flash site that allows you to go around a map of the city and click on little photo essays that people have made that represent their immediate community. Oh yeah..and it also sells you houses..but whatever. It's a really neat idea sponsored by AvenueOne Properties and lets you see a lot of the small attractions that are uniquely Austin but so particular to one community that the general public may never see them.
Technorati Tag: Austin

Lisense plate web link

2006-05-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

The car in front of me in traffic today was from Florida, and I thought it was interesting that Florida has their state web address on their plate. I'm not sure the license plate is the most effective spot for a web based ad, since the viewer is so far from a computer, but it's a neat idea. If anyone knows of other states that do this please let me know.
Technorati Tag: Florida

I'm schoolin casino cinema

2006-05-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

While watching Casino Cinema on Spike TV host Steve Schirripa introduced the show with the wikipedia definition of "Casino Cinema". He made some little joke and then said "well I'll have to email wikipedia and tell them to add that".

And I laughed at his ignorance.
Technorati Tag: wikipedia

iShoe

2006-05-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

ipods have morphed into a lot of different things: jewelry, audio recorders, day planners. This is the first time i've seen them as a pedometer. For a clear explanation of how it works view the website here, but basically a transmitter in the shoe broadcasts into your music what your speed, distance etc. are and later you can download the info into your computer and track your progress.

Blog site boingboing belives hackers will find some interesting ways to modify the transmitter.

Daily Texan's lagging online

2006-05-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

The web editor, Jonathan McNamara, of U. of Texas's student newspaper, The Daily Texan, wrote a scathing critique of the paper's website and their selling out to internet developer College Publisher. The Daily Texan publishes in a template hosted, designed and managed by College Publisher for free...well sort of free. In exchange they have to have a fat load of ads and are stuck inside a template design not to mention College Publications is a division of a youth marketing firm. Jonathan complains that the University has talented students who could design and manage the site themselves if they were just given the opportunity, and offers the Texan's alternative publication, NOT hosted on College Publisher, as an example of that.

The Daily Texan is one of the nation's most respected college papers, so I think they need to lead the way in online journalism and give their online division what it needs to become a lab for multimedia students to learn about online news. An online news site is more than just a place to plunk information. It's a place to have discussions, to interact, to allow students to share, to expand on stories. McNamara makes a really good arguement, and I applaud him for using (a pretty good portion of) his last senior column to fight for the school's future.

Technorati Tag: journalism

Online is journalism's destiny

2006-05-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

Every little budding journalist at the University of Texas gets their class work published in the school's newsprint publication, The Texas Journalist. For some students this is the first time they've seen their work in print.

But not this year. No, this year if they want to see their work they're going to have to log on here because the school decided to go exclusively online. They wrote a special article to reassure all those doomed print majors that going online was a "matter of necessity rather than acceptance of print?s demise", but the rest of the article actually goes on to say that "publishers know the well soon will run dry". And who did they come to for help? That would be me, in the web publishing class, who used simple html in a style sheet to publish the publication.

This is the first time I've majorly seen the journalism school accept that online is our destiny, so it still boggles me why they aren't teaching every student multimedia skills. Frankly I'm glad they're not because it ups my chances of employment.

Technorati Tag: journalism

Ethics of citing Social Networks

2006-05-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a class paper about the ethics of journalists citing Wikipedia, social networking sites and blogs and wanted to share some interesting points.

Many journalists are quoting directly from the bio and comments sections of social networking sites. I cited an article in my local Austin American-Statesman where a murder suspect's screen name "Ilovemoneyandhos" and his love for the movie Scarface were given as examples of his violent tendencies. I know that these pages are technically public, but the kids who publish them are writing them for their friends and the content is often exaggerated. Journalists should be realistic and fair with what they quote.

Just because the information is public domain, doesn't mean it should be reproduced in the story and journalists need to have sensitivity about this. An article in Higher Ed magazine about students creating a group to mock their TA quoted directly from the comments on the site, published a screen shot of the page and published all of the girl's names from their facebook page. I don't think reproducing this material made it any better for the TA, nor was publishing the students names necessary. One blogger made a good point that nowadays with google news an article can stay around for a long time, and if those girl's names are searched in the future this story will come to haunt them.

Technorati Tag: journalism

Preschool mp3 player

2006-05-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Wow, finally an mp3 player I can't kill! These new preschool mp3 players and digital cameras are hooking kids on technology early. They even come with headphones specially set to protect hearing. One thing the mp3 player uses that I'm surprised hasn't been done before is that it connects to Fisher Price's own music store designed to match the player and with songs and stories specifically for that audience. Im surprised Disney hasn't done this making a whole Disneyfied sort of itunes that would promote all their preteen actor/singers. (found via BoingBoing)
Technorati Tag: mp3

Pirate myspace campaign

2006-05-02T17:25:00.000-07:00

I like that a company is at least being transparent with their viral marketing. Disney is working with myspace to market Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead man's chest. Myspace picks one of the movie's friends as a winner to distribute the exclusive trailer on myspace. They also get to join the press junket as a myspace correspondent. I'm not sure how much the distibution is worth, seeing as how the winner got the secret trailer on Monday and it was released to everybody by Tuesday, nonetheless it's an interesting new era of marketing.

Oh..and the trailer looks really sweet!
Technorati Tag: viral marketing

Free Austin WIFI!

2006-04-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

It seemed pretty amazing to me when the city of San Fran started discussing a city wide free wifi system. Well, the same idea has planted itself in Austin. Granted it's not city wide and we are nowhere near the size of San Fran but this morning Mayor Will Wynn launched the wifi which spans from townlake to sixth street, and from Lamar to the interstate. In the coming months the system will be expanded to East Austin and Zilker Park. I wonder how this will change the digital divide on the east side.
Technorati Tag: WIFI Austin

College blocks Myspace

2006-04-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this in hopes that that guy in the library who's always on the one computer with a scanner but he's not scanning he's looking at Myspace, will see this. A Corpus Christi community college blocked Myspace after students started logging onto it so much that it was slowing down the network. 40% of the daily internet traffic on Del Mar College's computers involved Myspace, and officials deemed it to be "interfering with legitimate instruction."

So hey guy....get off that damn computer..I need to scan something..you're preventing my legitimate instruction.
Technorati Tag: myspace

Show me the money

2006-04-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

One of the most terrifying and exciting aspects of online journalism is that it's an evolving business model and no one knows quite yet how to manage it. I've been thinking about this a lot since one of the creators of blogburst came to visit my class, they basically syndicate the very best blogs and let news organizations cull through this content and use it as they please. Bloggers get little or no compensation from these deals, but they do get recognition. I just wonder how long good blog content can keep coming as long as "recognition" is the only compensation. More papers are asking their reporters to blog, or to multitask and make up online content (such as reporters taking video or audio) but they aren't paying them any more for doing this. I love the ideas of open source and citizen journalism, but I also worry that news organizations are seeing citizen journalists as a way they can cut back on staff; and that open source is just furthering that idea that the internet is a place where you can get everything for free. Talented, hard-working people should be paid for their hard work and talent, and the renegade spirit of the internet makes consumers believe that everything (especially good news and entertainment) should be free.
Technorati Tag: blogging

Myspace on Tyra Banks Show

2006-04-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

Tuesday's episode of the Tyra banks Show was entirely about Myspace and was a pretty interesting view of the site. Her main focuses were sexual hookups and internet celebrity.

Former Baywatch star Jeremy Jackson (remember little Hobie?) was one of the most disgusting talk show guests I've ever seen, bragging about the hundreds of women he's screwed via myspace. He also talked about how he uses the site for club promotion, but mostly he talked about doing it.

Her other guest was "internet vixen" Christine Dolce who has become just a huge giant star all based on photos of her in her "destroyed denim" jeans. Vanity Fair has called her the queen of myspace and she has 706,000 friends. It's such weird marketing where your customers or audience are called your friends.

Another part I found really intriguing and would like to write a story about in the future is myspace celebrity imposters. As Tyra was making her own page she looked at all the other imposter Tyra Bankses. It made me wonder what compels people to do that, who they are and what it provides them, if they correspond with people and who writes to them.

I was also impressed with the show's website. In addition to a synopsis of every show they also include hyperlinks out. Pretty cool.

Technorati Tag: myspace

Austin gossip blog

2006-04-16T06:06:00.001-07:00

One of the blogosphere's mini celebrities has started a new Austin blog. Ellen Simonetti, or the Queen of the Sky, was the infamous Delta Airlines stewardess who was fired for hosting spicy photos of herself in uniform on her personal blog. It was sort of a precedent setter for how companies deal with employee's personal blogs. Anyhow QOTS is from Austin and has started a new blog that tries desperately to stalk celebrities and stir up shit. So far I haven't found out anything I didn't already know...President Bush likes eating at Jeffrey's, no way!? I think she struggles to write about things besides herself. I like how she includes herself as a celebrity in the "celeb sightings" entry.

Technorati Tag: blogging

Blogging as a tool

2006-04-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

One of the points raised this week at UT's Symposium on Online Journalism was whether blogs were really anything more than just a web publishing tool. After all, they're used for so many different things in so many different way that what defines a blog is getting looser and looser. I tend to agree with this statement and would like to share one way in which I use blogging as a tool. For my Women in the News class, my group will be posting our criteria, research and final conclusions in a blog in addition to taking in the comments and feedback of others, and communicating amongst ourselves. The blog format allows us to all publish, and all be able to access the information 24 hours a day. You can watch our project, focusing on the concept of modern feminism through the eyes of Cosmopolitan and Bust magazines, here. You can also view a past project on the gentrification of East Austin that I have also run through a blog here.

Technorati Tag: blogging

My first flash mob: Pillow fight

2006-04-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

A great pillow battle was waged on the grounds of auditoreum shores with small skirmishes continuing into the night in the crosswalks of south congress. This was my first experience participating in flash mobs. I know this isn't Austin's first but it did seem to draw a ton of media coverage. Most people I spoke to found out via myspace or craigslist and the turnout was about 200. You can find more images (and quite possibly the WORST photo of me ever) here.

Technorati Tag: flash mob

SXSW text message

2006-04-06T22:31:00.001-07:00

SXSW hosted this giant TV screen at one of the festival's biggest venues. It showed a phone number where people could send text messages and camera phone pics and have them shown on the screen within minutes. Such a great idea to find lost people, share your images or just be clever. Mind you they never did show my text message (maybe because it insulted the band on stage, "the Towers of London are a bunch of talentless haircuts"). I wonder if they were censoring? They also organized a service where you text messaged the name or club name to SXSW and they would send you the show time or band playing, respectively. Like I said in a previous post, SXSW is doing some pioneering in using wireless technology to make their event more fun and fluid.

Technorati Tag: text message

Photo Story

2006-04-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

View my photo story of the Snook11 screen printing company

Technorati Tag: photoblog

Cam whore

2006-03-28T22:04:00.000-08:00

Four years ago as a college freshman I wrote a paper for a sociological deviance class on the topic of webcams as a loophole for underage pornography and the dynamic between the viewer and the cam "actress". I knew the danger because I had experienced it first hand, hosting my own show when I was in high school. In hindsight I realized this behavior was unsafe and I wondered why more parents weren't aware and more articles weren't written.

This recent New York Times article profiles one "cam whore" and explains how many teens are duped into sexual acts and nudity in exchange for friendship and gifts. The in-depth story reveals some of the most frightening parts, that the adults who watch these videos communicate with one another as to what teen is revealing the most, they steal the images and archive them and frequently sell them to porn sites. All these great new technolgies like high speed internet, video chat and paypal have facilitated this..some computers today even have cameras directly built in.

The risks of myspace have become widely publicized in the past few months but this is the first major article I've seen on "cam whores". Hopefully both the law officials and parents will start catching on to this hidden practice.

UPDATE:On April 3rd Justin told his story to the house committee on capitol hill, warning law makers that "Unless something changes, the child predators will win often enough that dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of children will be lost forever"
Technorati Tag: webcam

Radio Disney

2006-03-26T23:43:00.000-08:00

I put forth that myspace will play a major role in teaching and setting standards for blogging because it has such a huge young audience. I think Radio Disney will do the same for podcasting, as I was exploring their site it seemed to employ a lot of tech savvy. It gives kids several ways to download a podcast and offers banner ads they can put into the html of their webpages (so the listeners basically advertise the site..smart). In the blogosphere the big concern is about their use of ads; they've taken on a big ad contract and will start editing ads into their casts starting in June. A big company like disney will set the standard for how products will be marketed to kids in this medium and what the worth of podcast advertising is.

Technorati Tag: podcast

Britannica vs. Wikipedia

2006-03-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

My mom is a middle school librarian who regularly helps kids with research in books and online. When she checked her e-mail this morning she had a message from Encyclopedia Britannica addressing a recent study by Nature magazine comparing the accuracy of Britannica's entries to those of Wikipedia. Their findings suggested that the encyclopedia was only slightly more accurate than Wikipedia. Out of 42 articles reviewed by experts 162 errors were found in Wikipedia, 123 in Brittanica.

This new open source technology is clearly threatening to a company like Britannica, and they wanted to make sure my mom knew why the study was wrong and why wikipedia was no good and why she should keep on buying new sets of books every 5 years for near $600. You can read all 7000 words of Britannica's response here, but in short they argue Nature used the wrong entries from the encyclopedia, the headline of the article was misleading and some things they thought were errors were in fact correct.

update: Nature's response can be found here

It's going to be interesting to see how this fight evolves in the future: if Brittanica will adopt some sort of open source exclusively for experts, if wikipedia will institute some sort of expert review.

Technorati Tag: wikipedia

myspace adds RSS..and no one notices

2006-03-19T15:07:00.000-08:00

Myspace blogs were previously only available to other myspace members, and they could "subscribe" to them and have updates alerted through their myspace account. After several hacks were created to add in RSS, it seems myspace has responded and added a feed to every blog. I only noticed the feed on mine today, it seems they were added very quietly some time in February. Evidently it is a very simple feed, quite similar to livejournal. I searched for articles on the addition of RSS and could scarcely find any. Remarkable considering they host over 27.7 million blogs and growing. They have also added podcast enclosure. In my last blog I put forth the question: how are people supposed to learn these new technologies? Looks like myspace may be one answer.

Technorati Tag: myspace

Podcast ignorance

2006-03-09T21:28:00.000-08:00

Spin magazine has been progressive in connecting their print publication to music resources available online. During a redesign a few months ago they added a section in front with a list of "music you need to download now", mostly live or remixed songs unavailable to the mainstream. They also include a section for podcasts, where they feature five broadcasts a month. Admittedly I, a multimedia journalism student, have yet to listen to any of them, and apparently no one else is either. In the new March issue's 2005 reader's poll under the category "Best podcast", #1 is SPINsider (spin's own podcast), the second is Blink 182 frontman Mark Hoppus' Hi My Name Is Mark. And the last one is simply the statement "What the fuck is a podcast?".

This has to mean that so few people voted in this category that there was no third winner. I consider myself highly tech savvy but it was only this week that I learned how to even download a podcast. There's a real gap in people learning how to use this new technology and I'm not sure how they're supposed to do it.

One of the reasons Hoppus' site seems to be successful is that at the top of the page he tells how (in plain english), using itunes, to subscribe to his podcast. He also talks openly in his blog about his tech difficulties, and in a really relateable way about what intrigues him about the internet. Podcasts still has this air of tech savvy that seems inaccessible to the mainstream, not to mention the word "podcast" is a misnomer. People need to stop being made to feel stupid or behind the times and just be flat out told how to use podcasts.

Technorati Tag: podcasting

Fox uses myspace: Black.White

2006-03-05T18:59:00.000-08:00

Well Fox has started using myspace. For the debut of their controversial new FX series Black.White, the commercials don't refer viewers to a fxnetworks.com website but to their myspace page. This is a genius little bit of marketing for a show that people want to talk about; hundreds have already commented on the photos of the race switched families as to whether they pass. The show, which premieres March 8th, already has 26,502 friends and 1,224 comments in their forum. Utilizing myspace music applications, Executive Producer Ice Cube has recorded a song, Race Card, which they offer for download on the site as either an mp3 or a ringtone. This simultaneously advertises Ice Cube's new album "Laugh now, cry later".

This form of advertisement is known as viral marketing, and relies on people's word of mouth and social networking to exponentially pass an advertisement'ss message. FX entertained huge success last season with their page for Nip/Tuck's villian The Carver and seem to be replicating it with Black.White.

Technorati Tag: viral myspace

Girlstart successes

2006-03-05T18:35:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that I volunteer with Girlstart in the Web Divas program, which aims to get girls interested in computers and web development. The past two sessions we've been teaching them to write html and make web pages. To see a room full of 7th graders working with a language that was always so intimidating to me is really neat, they were having tons of fun, figuring out problems on their own and helping one another when they couldn't. Putting this education in a fun format that appeals to their natural skills as females is the key. I also think that putting them in a classroom without boys makes the process easier and less distracting. In short I'm really proud of these girls, they hand coded all of this html and they deserve to show it off.

I also want to urge other women to volunteer or donate to girlstart. Many of the girls who come to the Saturday sessions are minorities and I think having more woman of color teaching the program would show these girls that a future in the tech industry really is possible for them.

Technorati Tag: girls internet girlstart

plugged into SXSW

2006-02-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

This week I was witness to an amazing example of the internet age. In 90 minutes Waterloo records sold 1,400 SXSW wristbands, and another 2,000 more by 5pm. This was ALL in walk up sales, no internet or phone sales.

Photo courtesy of the Austin American Statesman

But what's really amazing is that ticket sales were only announced the day of the sale in a print publication, and word was able to spread quickly enough the night before that there were hundreds of people there to buy tickets. SXSW is a model of wireless connected activity, the type of people that come to this festival are tapped in.

Waterloo Records announced a secret sale the night before via text messages to list subscribers. SXSW blogs and forums buzzed with people with tips from insiders. Waterloo didn't need to publish their release date, they had a whole league of people doing it for them.

Secret industry parties don't stay secret for long, somebody blabs and it's all over the internet weeks before the festival. The official SXSW website features downloadable mp3s of nearly every band. Mobile bloggers have a field day at the festival with mini cameras and audio recorders.

Technorati Tag: SXSW

Computer on the TV

2006-02-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, no faster did did VH1's Web Junk take off then Bravo's Viral Video appears. And even with the total slew of material online they've managed to use almost all the same clips as Web Junk (President Bush screws up, SNL "chronicles of narnia" rip offs, pinky the crazy cat), with even worse commentary. One big difference between the shows is Web Junk shows the clips in all their pixelated glory, Viral often goes and finds the original video and shows it clear and crisp, not to mention they take clips directly from their OWN shows and use them! Kind of defeats the point doesn't it? If you aren't using the internet clip then you're just doing another funny video show like Maximum Exposure or America's Funniest Home Video.

And this is only the start, evidently NBC is planning Carson's Cyberhood and USA is basing a show around the website Ebaums World. Cyberhood plans to award people for their videos, maybe they should hire Bob Saget to host the show instead of Carson Daly.

Looks like reality television has taken the next step: real people are not only the subject but the producers and distributers too. These shows also bring up issues of ownership that have been ciruculating for a while when video sites or their TV counterparts use clips from TV shows or commercials, such as with NBC requesting their clips being pulled off of Youtube.

Technorati Tag: television

PDF publishing

2006-02-25T10:57:00.000-08:00

The idea of online web 'zines has been around for a while, as has the idea for photocopied street 'zines. What I like is the new fusion of paper style publishing in an online format; putting a PDF of the magazine on the web so that readers can click through the pages just as they would flip through the pages. My friend at Austin based magazine Misprint started doing this. While they do print and distribute some copies, they don't use advertising and they have a limited budget so they publish their magazine as a pdf in the order you would read it with split pages just as if it were in your hands. Austin magazine Box also publishes in this manner.

I realize that part of the appeal of magazines is the tactile experience, the luxury of buying something you don't need, carrying it on the bus etc. But there are UK magazines that I'm not willing to pay $100 for a one year subscription, but would be happy to pay a smaller amount to have access to a digital copy in this format. I actually prefer the PDFs to reading the stories online because I don't lose any effects of the layout and I'm seeing everything in context. I think as digital and print media start clashing and sorting things out this will end up as one of the solutions.

Technorati Tag: pdf magazines

AT&T and blogging

2006-02-19T22:48:00.000-08:00

I saw this sign on an Cap metro bus this week. The two things that surprised me were that blog (even in a city as connected as Austin) is regarded as a common enough word that it's used in a big bus campaign and secondly..I wasn't really sure what it meant or what AT&T was promoting.

(note: this is not my photo but one just like the bus i saw)

On their site they define the term blog, and it makes me wonder if people who haven't heard of blogs or are learning about them will come to connect them with AT&T. It's neat that they're trying to facilitate a new technology, but I get the feeling they're more trying to exploit it and get the corner on the market (which is weird since blogs were created so no one could corner them). Their Project D.U. appears to be a blog aggregator and they also sport their own reader program. They have incorporated a few top blogs, such as Arjan writes in their "network" in exchange for running a fat ad on the blogger's page.

But what are they selling? High speed internet, because after all "a majority of the systems that publish these blogs require a high-speed Internet connection and the blogs can only be updated only as rapidly as the author's connection will allow." Seems a little deceptive. I think AT&T, like many other companies in relation to the internet, are trying so hard to stay ahead of the game but they don't really know what they're doing or how to utilize it.

Technorati Tag: blogging

Museum Podcasts

2006-02-19T22:46:00.000-08:00

You know those dorky headsets you can rent for ten bucks at the museum desk that give you some dusty old professor giving academic blah blah about the paintings?

Well replace headset with ipod, replace ten bucks with free, replace dusty old professor with anyone, and replace blah blah with poetry, music or humor. Several museums across the country have started putting their art tours as mp3 podcasts online where visitors can download them before they visit. At SFMOMA they'll even give you a discount on admission if you show them your loaded mp3 player.

A group called Art Mobs has taken museum tours out of the museum's hands entirely. Instead of just giving listeners history, they may give them feelings. Working with university students the group has made a collection of podcasts touring the Marymount Manhattan College's 8th floor gallery. Their next target? The New York MOMA.

Myspace is their space too

2006-02-12T22:27:00.000-08:00

This summer when UT student Colton Pitonyak killed a woman in West Campus local news outlets used facebook.com as a source of information for Pitonyak's photos, interests and background. Well it seems that just because it may be "your space", doesn't mean it's free from the prying eyes of parents, employers or police.

Those photos of you snorting coke and flashing at mardi gras aren't just being viewed by your friends, and young people are forgetting that what's published online goes to a global audience. Searching for a person's page is easy as typing their name in the search option, so using an alias doesn't mean anonymity. The moral of this story? If you wouldn't want your mother to read it, don't post it.

When I was looking into writing a story on graffiti artists I contacted one via myspace. He treated me very skeptically, saying that police have been using myspace to bust artists. I figured he was just being paranoid until I found this article.

Evidently there are several conspiracy theories as to what's been done with all this information people are so willingly giving up about themselves. I don't buy into all of them, but just as people are beginning to question all the information google controls they should consider what's happening with these networking sites.

Technorati Tag: myspace

Safer dating through the internet?

2006-02-11T13:44:00.003-08:00

I noticed a billboard advertising this website on 24th street near my college campus. Online background research has been touted for employers and adults for a while now, but Safe Date is the first time I can recall seeing it directly targeted at young women. The site is all pastels, and while there are photos of men, it seems clearly directed at women. For $10-$70 a person can submit their date's name and birthdate and get a history of their past addresses and a sex offender and criminal database search. Even more intriguing, for $30-$70 one can become a "certified dater" where they willingly run through the gauntlet (it doesn't seem accidental to me that men are more prominently featured in this section's photos).

While it's difficult to search criminal databases outside of professional services like this, there are ways you can access this information for cheap. For a free sex offender search in Texas visit the state's database. For about $4 one can search Texas criminal records database. While I'm sure this site is well intentioned I encourage women to remember that things like domestic violence and date rape are rarely reported to authorities, don't think that throwing down money for a search means your date is free of a dangerous qualities.

Technorati Tag: dating

Shuffle life

2006-02-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

I loved having 1000 songs at my fingertips, but after the sixth time I had to take my ipod in for repairs I finally realized it was not the right mp3 player for me. On that fateful sixth occasion the apple store clerk literally had me list all my activities and told me which of them I couldn't do with my ipod..what's the point if you can't jump on a trampoline or gogo dance? This is when I went shuffle.

Flash players are where it's at, cheap and near indestructible. I've ceased to think of my shuffle as an electronic device and simply think of it as jewelry, I've "pimped my player" and now it even looks more like an accessory.

It seems this technology is becoming so integrated into people's lives that it's given birth to ipod jewelry. The player is totally removed from it's original design and is just another wardrobe piece.

So in December I reasoned that if flash players were so easy to use and so sturdy and so easily decorated, why weren't there more kids models available. The day after I had this genius idea I opened the Toys R Us catalog to find this. In a genius move to hold on to customers who may have outgrown the doll but are familiar with the brand Bratz has designed a lipstick mp3 player, priced from $45 to $85 with 256MB memory.

Technorati Tag: ipod

House pet blogging

2006-02-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

I thought I was just clever as hell when I made a myspace page for my friend's cat Napolienne. Clearly I have once again underestimated the weirdness of the web, meet Catster and Dogster. I know people who still don't have time to maintain their own myspace page and these folks evidently have enough for them and their beasts. And the worst part is I can't really tease them because I've been engaging in my own pet blogging.

It was a weird sort of pleasure I got anonymously hiding behind Napolienne's identity and writing sassy messages to my friends. Deciding what music she would like, what background she would choose..she's got 33 friends! I suppose the anonymity combined with profiles like this being free encourages people to do crazy things. Seems that maybe this ties in with my sex blog?

Technorati Tag: pets

Sex online: Too much information?

2006-02-06T22:28:00.000-08:00

The web is an amazing tool for learning and discovery, and its given people a private place to explore embarrassing medical or sexual questions. But bear with me for a moment in the idea that perhaps a person can get TOO MUCH information, they can delve deeper than they mean to, and that the anonymity encourages them to act in impulsive ways. It's similar to the problem of people self diagnosing and treating medical concerns online...even though you are researching you are not an expert, your information can be bad or misinformed and you may be reading something inappropriate for your situation.

I started pondering when I stumbled across this article that discusses the phenomenon of husbands discovering their homosexuality online, and hiding it from their wives. Internet sexual content seems to generally be associated with men so I was wondering how this is affecting women, surprisingly nearly three quarters of men and women have had sex with someone they met online. The web is also such an open door for infidelity, the casual encounters section of Craigslist is one of the sites most popular areas. I worry that the internet increases people's isolation and can encourage deviant behavior..just because bondage may pop up in the search hits for "sex", or trannies may pop up in the search hit for "gay" doesn't necessarily mean that the two terms should be connected for the person searching.

Other links I read for this post:

Technorati Tag: sex internet

VH1 sees the future of entertainment

2006-02-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

Newscorp bought myspace in july and has yet to do anything with the purchase. It seems they're having trouble translating the internet into television entertainment or news vehicle. Well VH1 has taken the lead in marrying the idea of user created online content into a television program with their new show Web Junk. In October VH1 purchased online film aggregator ifilm and is using those silly clips that normally get passed around in e-mails, to make a up a television show of the weeks funniest films. The show and the site really feed off one another; the show sends users to the site, they can download clips to their myspace pages or upload their own clips and tune back into the show in hopes of seeing them. It's also a cheap-as-hell way to make a TV show. It's really only a matter of time before Rupert Murdoch figures it out and has a myspace equivalent.

What's strange to me is their choice of host, comedian Patrice O'Neal, whose commentary is loaded with racial references and put downs. Perhaps they saw putting a black host as a way to balance out the predominantly white videos?

Technorati Tag: mtv internet

Tech opportunities for women

2006-02-05T16:15:00.000-08:00

A study of the supply of information technology workers in the United States estimates that if the number of women in the IT work force were raised to the level of men, the shortage of IT workers that currently exists would be filled says the Congressional Commission on the advancement of Women and Minorities in Science Engineering and Technology Development

For six months I've been volunteering with Girlstart , an organization aimed at bridging the gap between boys and girls in technology. It's been really exciting and fulfilling to see these 7th grade girls coming on Saturday, of their own free will, to learn about computers and really enjoying it to. By the end of four hours they had web pages and were glued to notepad tapping out code, largely without my assistance. It's fun to teach and I'm glad to give them something I never had BUT it's scary to see them coming up from behind me with youth and knowledge on their side

Update: Technorati Tag: girls journalism

Tools of the trade

2006-01-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

Macromedia Flash is a revolutionary storytelling medium, when I think of the term "multimedia journalism", flash is what I think of. Combining video, text, photo and audio all into one package that's compatible on many platforms, and can be refined into a sleek and usable presentation. But for news sites flash is still regarded as a way to tell in-depth stories, and is too slow for breaking news. While coding can be time consuming, the technology and equipment
available today makes it possible to collect and publish news in flash fast enough to compete with print. By training journalists to design flash templates where info can be dropped in, this medium can be best utilized.

Technorati Tag: flash journalism

The death of print

2006-01-25T07:39:00.000-08:00

No one told me what "multimedia journalism" meant when they introduced it as a major at my University of Texas orientation. I was already into my junior year before I realized that it's what I was always searching for, and where the future of journalism lie. Multimedia focuses on the internet, and is still the bastard stepchild of journalism at my university..frowned on by broadcasters and news writers as a hack medium. This blog will chronicle evidence of the internet stepping forward as the top source for information and news.