Fare Thee Well

Well blog, it's been interesting. We've had good times and we've had bad times. I've tried to be good to you and in return you've taken all the text I've written on you. There's a chance I may not be seeing you again, and if that's the case I hope you'll forgive me for abandoning you to the cold cellar of forgotten blogs. Know that you'll always have a place in my heart even if some day you 404.

Take care blog.

Love Always,
Dustan.

Blogging about House about Blogging

Ah House. I can always count on you to be on the cutting edge of culture.

"Privacy is a relatively new concept"

"I'm blogging"
"And I'm reading her blog!"

This episode was consistent with my opinion of blogs.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/130896/house-private-lives

News Tweets

The other day I talked about Twitter as a reliable form of reporting. I linked a couple of Twitterers to illustrate my point.

While logging onto twitter today I was also notified about http://topsy.com/ a search engine powered by tweets.

It's an interesting way to stay on top of information of interest to you in the rather cluttered Twitter universe.

Ciao for now!

Poll's are closed. Results are in!

I'm pleased to announce the final results of my poll about the most important form of media on the net. After an intense race the numbers don't lie. Out of one voter, one person considers blogs to be the most important form of media on the web. Thanks to all who participated!

Twitter

So as the world is coming to discover, one of the major players in news distribution is twitter.

Around the world people are tweeting and what this has created on the world wide web is a literal web of information.
When breaking news hits, the first people on the ground are no longer reporters and photographers. It is the ordinary people with their cell phone cameras and internet access taking pictures and tweeting.

Want the low down on a local restaurant? Check out their twitter feed.
Example : http://twitter.com/ninetenlajolla

Want to know what your favorite author is up to? Check out their tweet.
Example : http://twitter.com/neilhimself

It's news at the ground level and although the above examples are specific to a business and an individual, when disaster strikes you can get in on the ground level just by linking around the twittersphere by their trending topics.

If the purpose of the news is to report objectively but we are all worried about the monetarily backed news television skewing reporting then perhaps conglomerate news is outdated and it's time it went the way of the dodo anyhow. What does a twit have to gain by their reporting. Ratings? Money? Or just the satisfaction of informing the public.

Oh and now that I've blogged this... I'm tweeting about it.

News Dissemination in the Blogtwitbook-o-sphere.

I've been thinking about the inevitability of the spread of information today. I think that this is an important concept to discuss here because the overload of information in the world is facilitated through the same mechanisms that make the dissemination of information nearly impossible to stem.

"Should the news report on information that's harmful to the troops?"
No that's stupid, the american public don't need to know troop movements and troop strength it doesn't tell you anything useful but it might tell the enemy something useful.

"Okay well what about taking pictures of injured or deceased soldiers?"
It's a completely different situation go for it. It might cause mental distress but it's not going to kill anyone else.

These are not difficult questions to me.

I think the difficult question is: "Even if news should be censored in some cases, is it possible?"

News travels almost instantaneously. its almost like we don't have any control over most of it, except by sheer overload...
A friend was telling me that her friend found out her husband had been shot (one of the lakewood officers) on facebook.

How ridiculous is it that someone can learn of the death of a loved one over a social networking site before they are notified.

I heard about the earthquake in Haiti because i logged onto facebook and some girl had set her status to: "My heart goes out to the earthquake victims"

In the military world, many service-members use facebook and twitter to stay in touch with family back home while deployed overseas. A stray status update without regards to operational security could be just as damaging as Geraldo Rivera drawing troop movements in the sand.

Fox News apparently has their lawyers pulling any videos of the original broadcast that are posted but here's a spoof.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6qWPJ2OCAc&feature=related

Additionally Fox news uses twitter to do their reporting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY0Vf6FL_wk

it's an interesting evolution, for lack of a better word.

Viral Videos

Greetings, it's been a while since i've posted anything. Today I was browsing youtube and pondering just how much crap gets uploaded to youtube. Every now and then though something stands out.

During the 2008 Presidential Election a video was posted on Youtube by Barely Political. According to its wiki, "I Got a Crush... On Obama" received over one thousand views in the first 5 hours of its youtube life. To date there have been over 17 million views of the original video. Those numbers are pretty staggering considering that youtube space is free to upload to.

This video among others showcases the power of viral videos. The effects on the Obama campaign are hard to quantify but if any publicity is good publicity it certainly must have been worth the price. Free.

Although viral videos have been around for a while, it's the first time I can remember seeing a political viral video, and I think that in the future we may see more of this type of media in the world of politics.

Here's a link to the original video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

iPad Unveiled

A New Way to View

I have always been a big supporter of Apple since I first started using a Macintosh as a kid. Their products are sleek eye candy, their operating system has always been sturdy and easy to use, and pocket-tech like the iPod and iPhone are a pleasure to use.

And now the iPad.

I've been hearing a lot of complaints from the internet. "It's just a big iTouch." "It's xbox huge, why would anybody want to carry it around." Why wouldn't you just carry around a laptop?" And these complaints all seem reasonable. It's questionable if Apple has really produced anything special or new here.

It doesn't really do anything that existing products don't already do it's large there is no multi-tasking and the price... Starting at $500.00 and topping out at over $800 is a little prohibitive.

So who is this product for? Certainly not for someone who just wants an eBook reader the Nook and Kindle are cheaper. The price tag excludes the average iPod owner. Certainly it's not for someone that wants the real power of a laptop. So it must be for someone else.

There are people that love their iTouch and their iPhone's and their eBook readers. That gets to be a lot of technological riff-raff floating around in your bag or your pockets. The way I see it the iPad condenses this mess into one gadget. That is where its strength lies.

With 10 hours of battery life it's significantly more resilient than a laptop, while still allowing you to stay connected to the information superhighway. It has useful applications, it has your phone, and a giant screen for viewing documents on an actual screen. Do you like scrolling through documents on your phone? I don't.

With all the forms of media available there are a million different gadgets out there to view them with and the iPad keeps them all in one easy to carry and easy to use tablet.

And it does it while looking good.

Some Key Terms

The glossary of terms embraced by the internet are many. Some of them are self-descriptive: Viral, social-networking, texting. Others are more whimsical and require a little more explanation: Trolling, blogging, emoticon. Here are a few that I think will be useful to be familiar with while reading this blog.

Blogosphere:
a.k.a. blogland -or- blogistan -or- blogspace -or- blogdom
The shared intellectual space inhabited by bloggers (people who blog). It is actually more than the space, it is the community of bloggers itself and their collective voice.

Viral Marketing:
A clever form of marketing in which the user is actually promoting the company that provides a service.

Blog:
a.k.a. blogger -or- blogrolling -or- weblog -or- Web log
A Web site (or section of a Web site) where users can post a chronological, up-to-date e-journal entry of their thoughts.

Troll:
a.k.a. trolling
Online it originally meant the act of posting a message in a newsgroup (and later on a blog) that is obviously exaggerating something on a particular topic, hoping to trick a newbie into posting a follow-up article that points out the mistake. In general, to "troll" means to allure, to fish, to entice or to bait.


The above definitions are courtesy of http://www.netlingo.com/ and there are many more. It's a great reference for anybody unfamiliar with the ever expanding scene of internet distribution.

Welcome to Information Overloaded

The last 20 years have seen vast changes in the way information is distributed. With the rise of the internet information is no longer controllable by major media conglomerates. A dedicated individual with a computer and internet access can reach millions of people. This has created far-reaching ramifications straight from the pages of science fiction and changed the way we look at information.

Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, Tumblr, Digg, CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CSPAN, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal. I could go on but the mediums of distribution are nearly infinite, confined only by the creativity and motivation of the mind. But within this vast network of information the Truth is not so clear anymore. The fact is that we have so many choices vying for our attention that it's hard to know where to look.

In this blog I'm going to examine the many forms of media available to us and the many ways in which we can access and view this media. The rise of the information overload. Stick around.