Locative Media & the ´Groninger´ Police
At this moment 30 policemen of Korps Groningen are being trained in the use of a handheld computer which gives the user all kinds of information on the site he surveils. The I-Pac, as the device is called, will give the policeman a warning when he passes a house of which the occupier has unpaid fines, a criminal history, or is wanted. The policeman can acces data of any past criminal activity in the area he visits, and send data to headquarters like a call for backup. Spokesman Pieter Boomsma thinks that backup will arrive faster because the I-Pac gives the exact location of the officer in need. The Groninger Police is the first policedepartment in the world to use such a device. When the use of the I-Pac is a succes, the handheld will be given to all policemen in the Netherlands.
While nothing is decided yet, it looks like (note: article is in Dutch) consumers will be forced to pay extra taxes on their mp3 players and TiVo-like recorders, a kind of pre-penalty for the copies they will ‘inevitably’ make. These taxes are already added to the cost of blank media (dvdr’s, etc.).
The article says the money goes to the artists hurt by (il)legal copying, but I wonder how much goes into the RIAA’s budget for fighting piracy with lawsuits and technologies that make sure we can’t copy anything anyway (I’m thinking in cool cybernetic loops again, sorry). They expect the law to work for them, and they like to police the law (DRM).
In other news (also in Dutch), conservatives are looking to kick under-25 year-olds off welfare. But surely it’s the record and movie industries who are the real ‘welfare leeches’ of our time?
Watching the Mark Foley scandal make its way from a newspaper blog to political blogs to the front pages of major newspapers, I was intrigued with how various actors got involved (and by actors I mean places, things, terms as well as people). I started wondering if there was a way to measure the effect on perceptions of these related issues/persons/etc.
Tasks:
- Check the codes in the posts if the layout looks messy.
- Check the comments through Manage > Awaiting moderation (delete spam: “mark all as spam” > “moderate comments”).
- Update the blogroll.
- Write a post on a new media related subject that you find interesting.
- Moderate our joint gmail account: mastersofmedia.
Joe Trippi seems like a cool, idealist guy who is very fanatic for the good cause, in this case the democratic party and issues like healthcare and poverty. His growing up and getting into politics reads like a novel; you almost start feeling the same as Trippi during all his ups and downs. Miserabely failed campaigns, opportunistic candidates, personal problems,nothing is left unspoken.
Trippi is a experienced campaigner and so there are a lot of things to be learned from this book. The way it handles new technologies though might turn out to be a bit too optimistic.
Trippi tells how the Howard Dean for President campaign got involved in using the internet as a means of getting popular around the country. After initial distrust by the candidate himself and his staff a cooperation with the website MeetUp.com turns out to be such a enormous succes that Trippi gets a carte blanche. They start a blog and organize meetings for Meetup.com-members all over the country. At the end of the year a larger sum of money has been donated to Howard Dean than to any democratic candidate in history.
The book is very interesting to read, but maybe for the wrong reasons. The look-behind-the-scenes is amazing. At one point Trippi tells the story of a candidate who makes a pro-choice ad, and then decides he might as well make a pro-life ad as well; the filmequipment is paid for anyway! Secondly, the story of a candidate getting more and more popular, breaking records, and then finally making a fool of himself in front of millions of people reads like a boys book. The messian messages of democracy coming back, people getting involved again and the old elite getting blown away sounds, only two years later, a bit old fashioned though.
The problem with Trippi’s look on the developments in the Dean campaign might be that he was too close, and got too caught up in the enthousiasm of everything that now he thinks we’re at the dawn of a revolution.
The revolution will not be televised, but we’ll sure ass hell be able to see it on
YouTube…
Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business and culture is a collection of interviews interlaced with a few (short) articles about weblogs. The book is from 2005, which is cool since the subjects talked about are often fresh in your memory, and a slightly more balanced view is given of the blogosphere (as opposed to the over?enthusiastic literature from the earlier blogging days)
However, the book is still generally blatantly enthusiastic. It features two or three articles with a nuanced or reserved tone about the future of blogging, but most of the content is mainly shamelessly celebrating the blogphenomenon. With that said, reading the book could be compared to eating chocolate – you know it’s bad for you, but it tastes so good! As long as the reader keeps in mind where the authors are coming from and that there is no direct voice given to the opposition of the blogosphere, it is a good read and leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling of (careful) optimism and hope.
Hugh Hewitt reviewed in 3 minutes:
We The Media (2004) is the book that launched Dan Gillmor’s career as an authority on journalism and blogging. In his first book Gillmor, once a former professional musician, lets us take a peek at the past, present and future of the two.
Starting off Gillmor sets the tone by reminding us of the roots of blogging. He traces it back to the days of Usenet, forums and Compuserve. But he doesn’t leave it at the companies and the media, he also traces back the audience who are now actually using the blogs. Radio talkshows, where listeners could phone in to let themselves be heard and participate in show, also stand at the roots of blogging.
Not many people can say they have been a space tourist, and blogged their experiences at the same time. In the previous weeks the news has been full of Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist who spent 20 million dollars on a trip to space. If you want to know how the space travel was as a personal experience for her, read the blog at http://spaceblog.xprize.org/
News from Nokia: This company will offer a widget service that will allow clients to download special applications to their mobile phone. I thought this would be an interesting post, since we are using widgets to add tools to our own blogs!
How does it work? A user sends a text message to Nokia and Nokia will send a text message with the software needed back to the user. When this software has been installed the user can make a connection with the Internet to look at the various widgets and download the preferred applications on his mobile phone.
For now the service is free, users will only pay for the data transfer.
Widgets can be downloaded here:
(You can also find more information on this website (In English))
We’ve got Blog is a collection of thirty four articles about weblogs compiled and edited by John Rodzvilla. It was published in 2002 during which blogs had been around for three years. As well known blog essayist Rebecca Blood puts in the introduction ‘The articles in this collections are early reflections on the weblog phenomenon’. But the reflections are rather superficial and the subtitle ‘how weblogs are changing our culture’ doesn’t seem to get answered.
This question is inspired with a discussion I had this afternoon on IRC with my fellow Utopians. I believe there is already some literature out there about the trustworthiness of information on wikipedia. Below I will paste the chat (slightly edited). Since this issue strikes at the heart of what we study, it’d be neat if we could discuss about it in either the comments or in class. We may be able to change some mindsets at the University of Victoria! :)
Dr. Goggin was a bit annoyed by a cartoon made by Peter van Straaten on a conference for students. Campus.tv made a little report!
The Department Of Media Studies is proud to present
Dr. Patrick Crogan
(more…)
The marketplace at the social network Hyves is an example of online collaboration. Theorist C. Shipley makes a distinction between cooperation and collaboration: “Collaboration is a much less involved affair [than cooperation] in which sole, independent participants advance separately.” The pages display a web of classified advertisements. Through the marketplace the members of the social networking website can make full use of the dynamic space by exchanging products, knowledge and services.
CafePress is an online retailer that produces and dispatches a large variety of user-customized products on demand. Opening and operating a basic CafePress shop is free. After creating a shop, you can proceed to select products and upload files, such as images to print on t-shirts, bags, bumper stickers and more. This can be graphics, catchy quotes, etc. The cool thing about CafePress is that you don’t have to worry about production, distribution and storage.
CafePress also has an affiliate program like Amazon. When someone you refer makes a purchase, you can earn up to 20% of product sales.
One way of commersializing your blog is signing up to Amazon affiliate-program.
You can have a virtual bookstore on your website by linking to pages at Amazon. If links from your site result in sales, you get a commission (4% to 8,5%). When a link from a site is part of this program, there will be an identifier at the end of the URL so Amazon knows who to credit for the referral. Participants are supposed to clearly indicate that they are affiliated with Amazon.
I found two nice articles about optimizing your blog:
- 31 Days to a Building a Better Blog Project on Problogger (almost an overload of tips)
- 5 ways to building a better blog by Neil Patel on Pronetadvertising (especially the visibility section is useful)
Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk science fiction writer, asks what new media does for writers. He talks about the creative process of writing, the restrictions and politics, the uselessness of Microsoft Word and.. blogs! Apparently, comic book writers and stand-up comedians stand a better chance of being good bloggers, the short story format just wouldn’t work. The lecture is over an hour but worth it.
Link Via Boingboing
I wikied the writer Hassan Bahara, whose book Een verhaal uit de stad Damsko I used for writing my thesis. As I promised, I added a few internal and external links. It’s my first wiki ever, but I think I’ll write some more :)
Thom Meens, “ombudsman” (some kind of public relations person any… Any suggestions for translation?) for the Volkskrant is not satisfied with the current structure of the Volkskrant (a newspaper) blogservice. A member of a pro-pedophaelia political party had a blog on Volkskrant blogs for months and, understandably, they weren’t very happy when they found out. To what extend can Volkskrant be held accountable for publications of the bloggers on their service? Thom Meens wants to have some sort of blog control mechanism. Is this in conflict with an important aspect of public blogging, namely the freedom of the blogger to post what he or she wants? Can a newspaper blogservice ever be a place for free, independent expression?
Read the whole article here (in dutch)
‘Pro ana sites’ heten ze: internet sites waarop bezoekers elkaar aansporen om door te gaan met afvallen, hoe ongezond dat ook is.
Uit recent Amerikaans onderzoek blijkt nu dat die sites een gevaarlijk effect hebben. Regelmatige bezoekers van pro ana sites maken drie keer zoveel kans in het ziekenhuis te belanden. In de VS zijn de internetpagina’s al langer verboden, in Nederland niet.
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