Author: dave Page 53 of 75

Last week, I pointed you to an interesting story (The other story that Judith Miller didn’t write) about how New York Times reporter Judy Miller heard information about the Sept 11, 2001 attacks before the fact, but never wrote about it.

In this follow-up post from Media is a Plural, Rory O’Connor  goes a little further into the story and looks at why the story never made it to print.

It’s not quite as interesting as the first item, but it’s of interest to those of us who just can’t get enough of the inside stuff on journalism.

Tags: 9/11, New York Times, media

You know that old saying that sometimes "you can’t see the forest for the trees?"

I think those words of wisdom apply to what’s happening right now with the rise of the Web and the integrated applications that are springing up that are built around it – what we are calling "social" or "Web 2.0" or whatever.

Although there is a lot going on, it doesn’t seem fast enough for some of us (as Lee Hopkins talked about) and we wonder whether the things we expect are not going to happen.

But, like the hiker in the forest who is struggling to see around the trees to find the "forest," the connected future we’re hoping for has already arrived.

Wired magazine has a great article about how yet another established business has had to adapt to the reality of the Web, which has forever changed its market — in this case, it’s the stock photo business. It used to be a pretty lucrative market for professional photographers, but the rise of stock photo agencies circulating images created by "amateurs" has pretty much driven the pros out of the business and forced the companies that used to "own" the business to adapt or get out of it.

The Wired story calls this the phenomenon of the "crowd:"

Welcome to the age of the crowd. Just as distributed computing projects like UC Berkeley’s SETI@home have tapped the unused processing power of millions of individual computers, so distributed labor networks are using the Internet to exploit the spare processing power of millions of human brains. The open source software movement proved that a network of passionate, geeky volunteers could write code just as well as the highly paid developers at Microsoft or Sun Microsystems. Wikipedia showed that the model could be used to create a sprawling and surprisingly comprehensive online encyclopedia. And companies like eBay and MySpace have built profitable businesses that couldn’t exist without the contributions of users.
All these companies grew up in the Internet age and were designed to take advantage of the networked world. But now the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts is attracting the attention of old-line businesses, too. For the last decade or so, companies have been looking overseas, to India or China, for cheap labor. But now it doesn’t matter where the laborers are – they might be down the block, they might be in Indonesia – as long as they are connected to the network.

If I use my own experience as a template, it’s remarkable how much has changed in such a short time. When I was at university, I had a nice, IBM Selectric typewriter that took care of all my essay writing. We didn’t have personal computers. We laid out the campus newspaper with glue and pencils.

I started writing stories for a newspaper on an Underwood manual typewriter. And the office I worked in didn’t have a single computer in the place. All of the phones had wires attached to them and the only way you could go "mobile" was to have a really long cord.

Today, of course, everything has changed. And it’s happening so fast that we’ve come to take it for granted. If something doesn’t work quite right today, don’t worry. Tomorrow, there will be a new version.

When we look back at what’s happened in business communications at the tail end of the 20th and the early part of the 21st century, it’s going to be an interesting read. In the space of a single generation, everything has changed. The "old ways" of doing things don’t even exist anymore – but we might not have noticed because we’re too busy enjoying some of the new stuff.

While businesses will be a bit slower to adopt the "way out there stuff" the speed with which those ideas become mainstream is only going to continue to increase. And I like to think that’s why I’m working so hard to stay ahead of the trend. Because I want to be one of the people that demonstrates how all this stuff adds real value to the business.

UPDATE – Mike at Techdirt has a good post on this story.

Tags: communications, crowd, social, media

Since it’s a holiday weekend here in Canada, here’s a video from YouTube that’s guaranteed to make you feel good. As the tagline says, The funniest 6 minutes you will ever see! Remember how many of these you have done!

And when you’re finished watching (and smiling) catch your breath and read a great article posted on EnGadget about why YouTube needs to get serious about making money, instead of just growing like crazy.

It’s the perfect holiday combination — a really cool find from the hundreds of videos up on YouTube and then a thoughtful piece that looks at the larger picture and tries to help come up with a way to make the whole phenomenon sustainable.

Happy Victoria Day to you! (Thanks Wikipedia.)

Lee Hopkins is a blogger and podcaster from “The beautiful Adelaide hills” who has gained a measure of fame (at least in my world) through his weekly contributions to For Immediate Release, the PR podcast hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson.

I’ve listened to his posts for awhile, but only recently subscribed to his blog. In a recent post, he talked about a new book he was reading, called The Politics of Everyday Life: Making Choices, Changing Lives, by Paul Ginsborg.

But that’s just his jumping off point. From there he moves into a thoughtful discussion about why the concept of “social capital” raised by Ginsborg resonates for those of us involved in the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon.

For me, the late nights and the many extra hours I put into Web2.0 are worth it, every last second. Because I have made new acquaintances and friends I would have been highly unlikely ever to have made without it; I have contributed to a global conversation that has the potential to reshape how the organisations that rule our lives rule over us; I have put my money where my mouth is and put words out into the digital realm where they can be found 20 years from now and potentially humiliate me with their foolish naivety.

Lee’s words echo a lot of what I’ve been thinking about lately, especially in the wake of the Mesh Conference in Toronto this week. I do think we’re in “a time of flux” as Om Malik put it, and the dramatic nature of what is happening will only become apparent in the years to come as we look back and try to make sense of it all. But for me, right now, the on-line community I’m building is as real to me as the brick and mortar one around me — perhaps even more so. Here’s how I put it in my comment on Lee’s blog:

Lee — You’ve hit on a lot of the reasons why the Web 2.0 promise is so alluring. I suspect that much of it is the pleasure of connecting with like-minded folks in far-flung locations. As someone who lives in one city, but has often worked in another and grew up in yet another, I find my on-line community is becoming more “real” to me than the folks who live nearby. That’s kind of sad, but exciting at the same time. In a couple of months, I’m moving from one side of Canada to the other. I’ll be relocating to Victoria (British Columbia – not the other one) at the end of the summer. While it will be difficult to leave a place I’ve been for nine years, I’m excited to be heading to a new home. And the great thing is that my on-line community will effortlessly accompany me. The Web makes us all neighbours, who can chat anytime. Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Too bad you’re not going to be in Vancouver for the IABC conference. But we’ll raise a glass in your honour at the FIR dinner!

By the way, the FIR dinner I mention at the end is a great example of the social web in action. Shel and Neville are hosting a dinner at the IABC conference in Vancouver (which they are both attending.) They’ve invited any of their listeners who are going to be there to join them for a dinner. So far, there’s about 7 or 8 of us that have signed up. It will be a neat chance for a bunch of people who share a unique community to meet in person. I can’t wait.

I received this note in my inbox this morning from MEDIACHANNEL.ORG

Follow the link at the end to read a fascinating story.

EXCLUSIVE Report from Rory O’Connor and William Scott Malone

The (Other) Story Judith Miller Didn’t Write
In an exclusive interview Judith Miller tells the details of how the attack on the US Cole spurred her reporting on Al Qaeda and led her, in July 2001, to a still-anonymous top-level White House source, who shared top-secret NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) concerning an even bigger impending Al Qaeda attack. Ultimately, however, Miller never wrote that story either. But two months later — on September 11 — Miller and her editor at the Times both remembered and regretted the story they “didn’t do.”
By Rory O’Connor & William Scott Malone, MediaChannel.org / NavySEALs.com

http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/index.php?p=176

If you’re looking for more insight into this whole Web 2.0 thing, you might want to check out Inside the Net (scroll down the page), a podcast by Amber McArthur and Leo Laporte.

This week’s episode features an interview with Stuart MacDonald, one of the organizers of the Mesh Conference, which I attended earlier this week.

The podcast is a weekly show, which highlights new applications and people in the Web 2.0 community. It’s always interesting. And it’s just one of several podcasts that Leo Laporte is hosting these days. I highly recommend Security Now, with Steve Gibson and TWIT. And if you want to know what TWIT is, check out the show.

For those of you who were worried by my last post, don’t worry. The fire was a false alarm and everything worked out.

The Mesh conference wrapped up yesterday but I’ve been busy all day and didn’t get around to filing an update until just now. And I see that my last post did generate some worries (although I doubt you were really worried!)

The 2-day event was a real success, in my view. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can see a lot of other blog posts on Technorati or you can check out the conference Wiki, where you’ll find lots of details about what went on. I’m putting together a highlights package for the folks back at the office and I’ll post that here when I’m finished.

For now, let me offer a few of my own insights.

First and foremost, this is a really happening business – this whole Web 2.0 thing. A lot of very smart people are involved and they are passionate about what they’re doing. We talked a lot about how the promise of the Internet (the ability to make so much information available to so many people) which was promised, but not followed through on, with Web 1.0 is now arriving. The advent of improved broadband and more sophisticated business models (and a healthy dose of reality) all makes for an exciting business model that is working.

There are companies out there doing really exciting things and making money at it. Some more than others, of course. Blogging is one area where there is a lot of skepticism about whether there is a viable business model. But personally, I can’t get too excited about monetization. Most of the bloggers I know are in it because they want to be and they’re passionate about writing their blog. If they do end up finding a way to make a few bucks, so much the better, but making money is not the reason they’re doing it. And I’m not sure that anyone could sustain a blog (or an audience) if they didn’t have the passion we admire.

That being said, there is a difference between a business blog and a personal blog. Some blogs, like this one, are a bit of both. And that seems OK. But I suspect that as this segment matures, we’re going to see a stronger separation of the two. The great thing about the Internet is the way it can support both types (and plenty of others as well) so easily. There seems to be a blog about almost everything out there and they’ve all got some kind of an audience.

I’ll wrap this up (because that early morning train arrives early!) by noting that a common thread talked about by everyone at the conference, no matter what their role, was the necessity for transparency in this new world. As Steve Rubel noted, "The blogosphere is the greatest fact-checking machine ever developed." If you lie, or try to stretch the truth online, you will be found out and you will suffer for it.

And that is a good thing.

Tags: mesh06

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I’m sitting in the Mesh Conference, listening to the fire alarm sounding, and everyone is just sitting here. Kind of cool. We’re a bit nervous, but no one is moving. What do you do when the alarm goes off? The building security has just come on and told us to stand by for further instructions, and apparently the fire department is on the way… Strange. But I wanted to post this mostly because I thought it was kind of cool to be able to put this out in real time. Of course, by the time you read it, I’m sure everything will be back in order…or you’ll never hear from me again. Either way, I’ll try to keep you updated.

Tags: Mesh06