Parents can help teens choose ‘good’ friends, study finds
Describes a U.S. model of friendship and the impact parents may have in their teenage children choosing “the right friends.”

The results showed teens are more likely to have good friends – ones who don’t fight and who have plans for college, for instance – if they have a warm relationship with their parents and if their parents choose to live in a neighborhood with high-quality schools.

Wonder what Penny Eckert has to say about this.

As for of how parents and their children should interact:

A good-quality relationship is one in which parents and teens participate in activities together, communicate frequently, and express affection for one another.

Wonder what they would say about family relations in, say, Mali or the Philippines.

oreilly.com: Ten Tips for Improving Your Podcasts
From Jack Herrington, author of Podcasting Hacks. Part part teaser, sample chapter, part summary, part discussion.

Emphasis on the audio portion of podcasting. Mostly from the context of “citizen radio,” with few ideas that are really specific to podcasting. Alludes to the diversity of viewpoints in podcasting. Still some notion of what a successful podcast might be like.
Format, schedule, and script are probably the ones which warrant the most discussion. Herrington’s tone is non-authoritative enough that discussion would be possible. Maybe in the Comments section. One major advantage of podcasting in contrast to radio is that duration isn’t so much of an issue. Of course, a show shouldn’t be so long as to discourage download or listening. But if a good discussion is happening in a podcast, there’s little reason to cut it short. At worse, it could be split into shorter pieces. This is rather similar to the open-ended interviews we do in ethnographic research: getting people to talk. Herrington’s tips still allow for this type of freedom but seem to make little difference between a radio show and a podcast.

Granted, podcasting is still emerging and much of its development does relate to radio shows. Yet the advantages of podcasts over commercial or public radio can also be discussed lest we reproduce the mistakes of “Old Media” mimicking their regular content in online form. Podcasting differs from radio as web pages differ from print pages. With the added dimension that podcasts can in fact include video, text, and images.

Blogarithms: The Future of Public Radio
An insightful piece on challenges facing public radios. Well, insightful to one who has been thinking some of the same thoughts. Been meaning to send some ramblings on podcasting so this is as good a time as any.
Was pretty much raised with «CBF Bonjour», the “morning show” on the AM station for Radio-Canada (CBC). All the same, have never been a big fan of radio. Recently started to listen to podcasts with iTunes 4.9. Been observing some trends. And in fact listened to several episodes of “podcasted public radio.”
One thing public radio does that podcasting cannot do is to receive live calls from the audience. For instance, Open Source, the program mentioned by this blog entry, gets calls from both guests and audience members. One thing that’s really easy to notice, though, is that those live shows are very directly controlled, including the calls. Not necessarily for content, though there’s some responsibility in the host’s reaction to calls, but certainly in timing. As can be expected, this often means that no actual conversation can take place because the show is constantly “running out of time” (especially with all those “breaks” which, thankfully, aren’t included in the podcast version).
With podcast versions of live shows, there’s no way to interact with the guests directly. In the case of Open Source, most calls come from Massachusetts (for practical reasons). So we end up with static content controlled by a small group of people. As recording engineers know, “live” rarely translates into good recordings.
Where’s the community here? The local community for the specific station? Not quite as these shows are supposed to be made available to a wider audience. Those whose views correspond to those of the host? Maybe, but angles aren’t typically acknowledged.
Thing is, podcasting do encourage conversations. Some of them live (thanks to Skype, among other things) but many of them “time-shifted” which permits reflection, preparation. Those do encourage community building.

O’Reilly Radar > Google Library vs. Publishers
Yes, BZ time for Google…

Interesting debates with, as with most debates, valid points on both sides. For an end-user, academic, and wannabe-geek, it’s hard not to side with Google (and Tim O’Reilly).

Here’s a nice quote:

another case where old line publishers are being dragged kicking and screaming towards a future that is actually going to be good for them.

The same could be applied to many in the recording industry and other “Old Media” players. It’s quite possible that those who resist so much (the “old line publishers” and music industry executives) simply haven’t been able to look any further than the tip of their collective nose. Some associate it with the typical reactionary attitude of the Old Guard while others might see it as pure myopic greed. Who knows?

Still, it must be said that the arguments mentioned on the publishing side aren’t absurd, though they do center on control and finance (instead of the greater good).

O’Reilly Radar > “Hacker” Term misused again

the end, a word means whatever the white rabbit of popular usage says it means.

Not sure what the “white rabbit” reference is (is it a common idiom in English?) but the sentence is quite similar to the classic Humpty Dumpty quote:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’

Still, the general idea is quite on the target. Words mean by “convention” in that people agree on different meanings for different words. This type of agreement can and does change quite frequently. Some words are more typical of these transformations, especially those words that come to be associated with strong connotations (such as “cool,” “hip,” “queer,” “fresh”…). This runs contrary to the idea some people seem to have that a given word “really means” something very specific and that “improper use,” even in normal conversation, is an error on the speaker’s part. These are people who take a dictionary definition as a fixed association of word and meaning. Thing is, in many cases, the “error” is as much that of the listener who interprets specific words from a specific framework. And that’s staying at the lexical (word-based) level of language, which is rather fluid and only constitutes a fraction of verbal communication. But still…
Contrary to most arguments of “they stole our word,” this piece is much more subtle. Despite the misleading title, Tim O’Reilly seems to accept that journalists and geeks simply have different uses for the same term. What’s particularly interesting is that, as the editor of a book series with “Hacks” in the title (“Google Hacks,” “Podcasting Hacks”…), O’Reilly is actively pushing the geeky acception of the term. As more people buy those “Hacks” books, it’s quite possible that the positive/neutral connotation of “hacker” in geek culture will be more widely understood. Well, as these books are primarily oriented toward the geekier crowd, chances that the propagation would be minimal. On the other hand, as one commenter mentions, the risk is that would-be buyers for these books are put off by the word hack and will likely not benefit from this “campaign” to “clear the word” from negative connotations.

Another interesting thing seems to be that the word “meme” is finding its way in different publications these days. Sure, it’s been popular in some circles for a while, with or without references to The Selfish Gene. It’s just always funny to notice how some words suddenly become part of a micro-trend. Sometimes, it surfaces for a couple of days and then goes back in our passive vocabulary for a while. In some cases, the origin of the micro-trend is very obvious as when one can see everyone has read the same text. And, as everyone knows so well, it’s pretty much impossible to push the propagation of a given word. If it were, marketers and advertisers would have a rather easy job.

Well, to combine these last two things. It does seem like Tim O’Reilly and other participants in the Web 2.0 conference use “meme” to refer to word use in a type of “viral marketing.” A term which takes a life of its own. Or some such.
So, it sounds as if word use, memes, and “hacker” were discussed at Web 2.0. Was Penenberg at Web 2.0?

Wired News: Google’s Boycott Misses the Mark
Penenberg often has insightful things to say about journalism though he does seem to be, perhaps appropriately, “on the side of journalists” in many respects. In this case, it’s hard to take Google’s side, despite all the favourable light shining on Google.
Plus, it’s probably quite true that the privacy concerns won’t go away and that Google needs to address them. Given the importance of privacy for most members of the geek/hacker culture with which Google plays so well, one would think that very clear and explicit statements about privacy would be a priority for Google as a tech company. Maybe they’re just clumsy with public relations…

[As a disclaimer of sorts. Been interested in cultural and social aspects of online activities for a while (since 1993). Never really did in-depth research on any of these issues. Started this blog for fun. Haven’t been trying very actively to attract readership to this blog. Haven’t been involved in the “community” as much more than a casual observer. Can’t really be called an “outsider” but haven’t really tried to become an insider.]

Many-to-Many: the biases of links
Interesting piece of trendspotting on blogging.
Many assumptions. Some are explicitly acknowledged (looking for the gender angle). Some are quite general (“bias” is a bad word). Some define a framework (seeing “power” as measure). And yet some, perhaps the most interesting, come from “blogger culture” itself. In terms of ethnography, some would say that danah has “gone native” in the blogger world. Some comments to the blog entry allude to something similar. Interesting embedded evaluations of blogs (not necessarily as good or bad but as successful and unsuccessful).

An effect of these assumptions and the inside-looking perspective is that blogging is restricted to one specific model. In that model, one’s reasons for blogging are assumed to be “the same as everyone else’s,” namely to attract readership. Other bloggers seem to make similar assumptions in giving advice to would-be bloggers.

A large part of those assumptions can be seen in concepts and ideas that are left undefined. For instance, the “blogroll.” Anyone involved in blogging is familiar with the concept and it’s definitely an essential part of many blogging practices. To some people, it might in fact distinguish “real” blogging from things like corporate weblogs or blog-like “content management systems” which are not to be confused with real blogs. A real blogger is one who reads other blogs, links to other blogs, knows other bloggers, sends links to Technorati and Del.icio.us, lives in the blogosphere. There’s a large number of these in different parts of the world. It does seem that the links between blogs in a given language are stronger than across languages but there are very dense networks of bloggers who seem to represent “The Blogosphere.”
Still, most people are outside this sphere. It includes people without Internet connections, of course, but it also includes people who write blog entries once in a while. Danah’s entry is meant for the members of the ‘sphere, not for the occasional weblog writer or reader.

This isn’t meant as critique or criticism. Just noticed that part of another trend. A trend in blogger identity. The “us/them” of blogging isn’t necessarily between reader and writer (as there’s a large overlap between the two). It seems to be mostly between “real bloggers” and “mainstream media” along with pseudo-bloggers (like corporate blogs).

The Onion | Podcast A Cry For Help

BOZEMAN, MT—The few people close to Mitch Delomme say that he doesn’t realize the implications of his new podcast, an agonizingly personal 40-minute digitally recorded capsule of news, information, and trivia about the chronically lonely pizza-delivery man. ‘I wanted to share something about myself,’ said Delomme, 48, who in the course of his life has been heavily involved in ham and CB radio, personal home-page construction, and participation in late-night community-access cable. Delomme’s podcast is currently available on all major subscription links, where it has attracted no attention.

Well, considering some aspects of podcasting, this spoof isn’t completely devoid of clue.

’05 Annual Performance Review: Albert Einstein
The obvious question: would Albert Einstein be given tenure? It might depend on the location of his appointment. Swiss universities are rather strict in terms of faculty positions.

Wired News: Science Labs Don’t Measure Up

The review amounts to the latest warning over the state of U.S. science. Business groups representing tens of millions of workers recently announced a campaign to prod the nation into improving its math and science education, wary of slipping U.S. competitiveness.

Do schools in, say, Eastern Europe and South Asia need a tv-show like CSI to motivate students toward sciences?