Things continue to go well with Rita Mae’s adjustment to her “forever home” (as they like to call in in pet rescue circles). In fact, the only member of the household that RM seems to have an issue with is the vacuum. I’ll let the footage do the talking on this one:
research and writings at the crossroads of journalism, cultural anthropology, technology, and reading.
Archives for posts with tag: media
Julian Dibbell is going to be speaking at RIT this Wednesday. Julian, an associate editor at Wired, is an awesome guy and someone whose been involved in, and writing about, cyberculture for years. His latest work, Play Money, is an exploration of the various economic systems that have developed in various virtual spaces. At RIT he’ll be speaking on “Ludocapitalism – A few ways of making real money from a virtual economy, and what they mean.”
I first met while at the University of Chicago. Julian’s input was really helpful for me while writing my thesis. We touched base again late last year at the American Anthropological Association Conference. Again, I got a lot out of the conversation. So if you’ve got the chance, come out and hear him speak.
Here are the official details:
- Topic: Ludocapitalism – A few ways of making real money from a virtual economy, and what they mean
- Time: 7:30pm (the talk will be followed by open q&a time from 8:30-9)
- Location: Liberal Arts (Bld 6), Room A205
Julian Dibbell
My office mate just introduced me to the PicLens web browser plug-in. It’s pretty incredible. This cross platform plug in can grab a collection of photos, like those in my flickr account above, and converts them into an interactive (Apple aesthetic) gallery. The resulting user experience is elegant and totally engaging. Give it a try!
THE LOOP has soft launched. A news r&d project, run by Rochester’s Gannett paper, the Democrat and Chronicle, the Loop is a college focused news magazine. What makes it unique is that the end result has been developed and created by a team of students from 8 of our area colleges (basically everyone but the University of Rochester). One of my students from the School of Print, Heather Hynes, is responsible for the visual design of the site.
My involvement with the project has been as an adviser and a researcher. Basically, I’ve spent a few days a week in at the D&C sitting with the team, discussing online content production, and getting their views on the news. This is all part of my grounding for the work I’ll be doing at Cornell. It also is material I’ll be bringing back to my courses this year at RIT.
Oh, and all the cool kids have installed the Loop Facebook App and follow the Loop on twitter.
Man, what a week. A ton of interesting developments in media and the online communities that I’m interested. Here’s a quick recounting (if for no other reason, so I can get it down).
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, becomes an “overnight” YouTube star with his brilliant little ethnographic film Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl=[/youtube]
He then takes it a step further and posts it to the Mojiti site where visitors can tag it with their own comments. While the Wesch’s video can be taken to task for what it doesn’t contain, it’s a great little peice and it will be interesting to see how this affects the production and distribution of ethnographic films.
Bloggers at the Libby Trial
As I mentioned in an earlier post, bloggers and citizen journalists got direct media access to the Lewis Scooter Libby trial. Their content is being syndicated by the AP. This has brought more attention to the field of Citizen Journalism.
New York Time Editor Talks About its Online Future
Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times dropped what seems to be a bombshell in an online interview:
Sulzberger went on to break down how the online model would actually be more cost effective for the times. It’s the first time that I’ve seen anyone acknowledge this.
Edwards campaign hires and sticks with bloggers
The gist is this: John Edwards campaign hired Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, two well known blogging pundits to help manage his online presence. A number of groups, most notably the Catholic League, protested the move noting that Marcotte and McEwan have made a range of inappropriate remarks about Christians and other groups on their personal blogs. Edwards ends up stuck between a rock and a hard place:
Edwards, via his official blog, announces that while the content of the posts in questions “offended” him, he keeping Marcotte and McEwab on his staff. Both Marcotte and McEwab post their own responses as well. This one has it all, clashing of speech communities, pundits, journalists, and politicians. I can’t claim to have my head wrapped around it yet. I expect were going to see a lot more cases like this in the weeks and months to come.
Yahoo launches Pipes
I’m not quite sure how to describe it. Pipes is a new visual programming tool from yahoo for combining data feeds. Like I said, I can’t quite explain why yet, but I think it’s important. If for no other reason its going to allow non-programmers to begin to create web applications mash-ups. I’m still not quite sure what I need to mash up. But if I can figure that out, I’ll let you know.
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I’m sure there’s more. There always is. I’ve fallen out of touch with things at YouTube. To my knowledge there still hasn’t been an official announcement about revenue sharing to the community. Still lots going on across the board.