All posts by dispar

books, Google, information management, open access, social bookmarking

Post-Book Culture

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Interesting post about Google’s history-tracking Web History service. In my mind, this service has a lot of potential if it can do some of what Spurl.net, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, ma.gnolia.com, Google Reader’s star and share features, and other “social bookmarking” systems can do. The ideal blogging tool, for me, is one which has enough access to my history that I can quickly insert full links in my blog posts.

Anyhoo… The blog post:

Official Google Blog: Your slice of the web

Printed and bound together, the web pages you’ll visit in just one day are probably bigger than the book sitting on your night table.

Not a new idea. But it takes on a new meaning in the context. Pushes Google’s mission in our faces. To an academic, the prospect of having a way to trace back all of our readings (especially in the context of Open Access)…? Dream come true.

Academia, academic publishing, activism, collaborative learning, Concordia University, enthusiasm, idealism, open access, personal, Teaching

Concordia and Open Access Self-Archiving

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Fascinating talk:

News@Concordia: Stevan Harnad, Maximizing Concordia University’s Research Impact, April 25

Reactions were varied but some of us were able to have a very good chat after the talk. For one thing, it helped me understand the whole “Green OA” issue in a new light. As an idealist non-tenured faculty, I tend to get dreamy about the possibilities for the next step in the Open Access movement. Including in terms of pedagogy and community outreach. But Harnad’s talk really put the focus on the “knowledge ecology” involved in this world of unlimited resources.

To me, Concordia is an interesting case. So far, the university’s online visibility has been quite low, self-archiving is quite rare among Concordia researchers, and people tend to focus on the logistics. But Concordia seems to be on a mission to redefine itself in the broader frame of “forward-looking institutions of higher learning.” Contrary to McGill (Concordia’s “neighbour”), Concordia focuses on such things as flexibility, diversity, community outreach and, yes, even rebranding (which some people dislike). Sure, much of it might be “corporate-speak” to increase enrollment. But the point is, Concordia seems to truly cherish the diversity of its enrolled students. In fact, it’s not positioning itself as the “so elite, just being admitted is enough to get a job” model typical of certain prestigious institutions in the United States. Some people at Concordia are making sure that the message of “going forward to meet new challenges” is heard.

It’s no secret that I like Concordia. As my second semester there comes to an end and as I reflect on my time there, I tend to see this university as a place where true learning can occur. I may only teach one more semester there before I move to Austin so I will enjoy it to the last drop. And, who knows, I might find as many things to like in Texas once I’m settled there.

If Concordia can increase its visibility by engaging itself on the OA route, I’m all for it.

France, hype, podcasts, radio

Balado et radio, version Sarko

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L’effet est saisissant. Arte Radio, la balado-diffusion de la chaîne Arte, s’amuse à faire une parodie de DJ radio, version Sarko. Outre le thème politique, j’apprécie le contraste entre cet extrait et le son habituel d’Arte Radio. C’est en entendant cet extrait que je m’aperçois à quel point la radio me rase et que la balado est plus près de mes habitudes d’écoute.

podcasting

Lessons in Podcasting

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Been recording a lot of things since I got my iRiver H120, last summer. Despite my conscious effort at making sure everything would work, I still made several mistakes and ended up losing some material. Luckily, nothing I lost was mission-critical. Also, since Concordia’s Creative Media Services have been recording my lectures, I was able to really notice the value of having a specific person on the task. Multitasking is fun but it’s often more efficient to monotask.

Seems like we all learn by doing:

Synthesis of Thought: Blog post up for another SfAA session and a lesson learned the hard way

Actually, I mostly wanted to leave a comment but this blog’s TypeKey system seems not to work.

Google, librarians, open access, public domain

Siva on Open Access

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SABREOCRACY.NET (formerly SIVACRACY.NET): An Important Message for the Folks at Google

All I’m asking for is full access for the public to government documents on Google BookSearch. These documents are in the public domain and therefore should not be limited by claims of copyright, by Google or by the Library Partners.

IMHO, these issues will eventually be solved, regardless of the source.

aesthetics, linkfest, Montreal, participatory culture, podcasts, public domain, ramblings, Yulblog

Audio People of the World: "You, Knight!"

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Much to be said about a recent ITConversations podcast episode. Ostensibly, this episode was about the LibriVox success story. (LibriVox is a community project producing public domain audiobooks from public domain books in diverse languages.) Yet, during this conversation, Web analyst (and Microsoft employee) Jon Udell along with LibriVox founder Hugh McGuire managed to share much insight on such varied issues as community-building, project management, grassroots movement, open source development, participatory culture, and aurality/orality.

After the chat, Udell and McGuire followed up, on their respective blogs. Udell developed a useful script to make all LibriVox books into RSS feeds for use in iTunes and other media players. Such a collaboration is an appropriate example of the power of “scratch your own itch” development, described during the podcast conversation. The conversation also prompted Librivox reader Sean McGaughey to describe LibriVox as a killer app. [Update: Blog version of the same description.]

I was led to this podcast episode through a visit to LibriVox reader Kara Shallenberg’s blog. Started listening to the LibriVox podcast after reading about LibriVox on fellow YulBlogger Patrick Tanguay’s own blog. Among other things, LibriVox helped me appreciate Canadian Literature and I’m quite glad that the project may contribute to Montreal’s widespread recognition at the cutting edge of technology and culture.

As an aural learner, I was quite taken by Udell and McGuire’s comments on auditory media. It seems that these two guys really grok what is so neat about sound. At least, their ideas about sound are quite compatible with my own ideas about music, language, and the cultural importance of sound.

We might be in a minority, North Americans who care about sound. Many people (including some online visionaries) seem to care more about visuality. In fact, given the large number of Web designers in the “Web 2.0” movement, it might be said that auditory media have often been considered a subset of “audiovisual content.” Yet there is something to be said about sound standing alone in digital life.

For instance, McGuire and Udell talk about the possibility for people to undertake other activities while listening to audiobooks and other auditory content. Commuting is probably the easiest one to grasp, for most people, and while it might be fun to watch a DVD on a plane or bus, audio podcasts are possibly the ideal “distraction” for (hearing) commuters. Listening to podcasts while moving around has led to very stimulating experiences.

Fans of McLuhan would probably think of “hot” and “cool” media. The difference between video and audio podcasts clearly relates to McLuhan’s ideas about participation.

There’s also the issue of rhythm. While moving images certainly can be rhythmic, speech and musical rhythm seem, to me, to be more readily associated with diverse human activities. No idea where to look for the cognitive side of this but it’s clearly worth investigating.

For lack of a better word, sound is more “abstract” than other sensory experiences. Acoustic signals do have a physical reality but the practise of listening has been used to elicit important ideas about abstract structures in Euro-American aesthetics.

Lots more to talk about but it will do for today.

Montreal, music, podcasts, Québec

No Apology Required

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Not sure why, but I quite like Omnikrom. Their summer hits  are unapologetically poppy and I like the self-deprecating humour which seeps through the whole thing. These guys seriously don’t take themselves too seriously. All the while posing as superstars, which they could well become.

I should go to the free (as in summer beer) Omnikrom and Numéro# Fouf show on May 9.

Omnikrom and Numéro#

Thanks to André Péloquin’s PodMo for including «Été hit» (which he got from La Swompe).

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Testing Slideshare

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It could be useful for course content. In this case, lecture notes from the next to last class meeting of my ANTZ202 Introduction to Culture course. Don’t know if I like what SlideShare did with my slides (they’re less readable than the original). And no Web application seems to support PPTX files from PowerPoint 2007.

[slideshare id=40905&doc=antz202-meeting-13-changes-23141&w=425]

Internet, participatory culture, social networking, statistics, trends, Web 2.0

The Participating Minority

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[Update: The original article was about traffic, not user base. Should have read more carefully. Doh!]

Interesting stats about blogging and “viral participation” from Technorati’s Dave Sifry and Hitwise’s Bill Tancer. Also summarised on Ars Technica.

Bottom line: Despite extreme growth, only small (some would say “positively tiny”) fractions of the user base [traffic] for participatory Websites like YouTube and Flickr contribute any content. New blogs are created but a smaller proportion of them are active. Tagging, however, is taking off.

This can all be fascinating, on a social level. One thing that gets me is that those figures challenge a notion widely held among members of the participating minority itself. Even the usual figures of 10%, given for textual contributions to forums, mailing-lists, and blogs seems fairly low to those of us who write a lot, anywhere. In other words, it might well be that individual contributors are proportionally more influential than originally thought.

So, is this a trend toward less participation or are Internet users finding other ways to participate, besides contributing original content? Maybe users spend more time on social networking services like Facebook and MySpace. Even “passive participation” can be important, on SNS.

One thing people seem to forget is that private communication (email, IM, VOIP…) is alive and well. Not that I have figures to support the claim but my experience tends to tell me that a lot is happening behind closed doors. Oh, sure, it’s not “Web 2.0 culture,” it’s not even Web-based. It’s not even the sixth Internet culture, as it’s more in continuity with the fourth Internet culture of “virtual communities.” But it’s probably more influential, even in “epidemiological” terms, than “viral marketing.”