Now that Valenti is gone, will the MPAA finally get a clue?
MPAA: We are committed to fair use, interoperability, and DRM
Come on, gang! Give this a little bit more thought! You can do it!
Rethinking Peer-Review and Journalism
Can’t find more information just now but on the latest episode of ScienceTalk (SciAm‘s weekly podcast)
Scientific American editor-in-chief John Rennie discusse[d] peer review of scientific literature, the subject of a panel he recently served on at the World Conference of Science Journalists
I hope there will be more openly available information about this panel and other discussions of the peer-review process.
Though I do consider the peer-review process extremely important for academia in general, I personally think that it could serve us more if it were rethought. Learning that such a panel was held and hearing about some of the comments made there is providing me with some satisfaction. In fact, I’m quite glad that the discussion is, apparently, thoughtful and respectful instead of causing the kind of knee-jerk reaction which makes many a discussion inefficient (including in academic contexts).
Is Canadian Tire Corrupting Our Youths?
No, I don’t mean TV ads…
Ethnography and Technographics
This one certainly made the rounds among observers of online activities, but I only just got the link through a comment by Martin Lessard, the insight-savvy YulBlogger and “Internet culture” describer.
The Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li’s Blog): Forrester’s new Social Technographics report
Many companies approach social computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? I get from it the same reaction as from effective ethnography. Not really a “Eureka!” moment. More of a “Doh!” moment, when you suddenly realise what was really happening around you.
This ethnography-like insight is even more obvious in the report itself (a review copy of which I got through email, thanks to Forrester’s excellent policy for content use). In that report, Li et al. define different user types in a manner not incompatible with our tendency to classify, in ethnography as in cultural life. Like ethnography, the report is showing the relationships between those different profiles (instead of stereotyping or “profiling”).
Sure, the proportion of creators is an important factor for Old School market research. But, what’s more important, is that different people adopt different behaviours in different contexts. Obvious, but important.
The report talks about age and gender differences, provides evidence for the changes in the Internet 6 ecology, and manages to treat Internet users as human beings. “All in fifteen pages or less!”
Again, this report isn’t groundbreaking. But it can be really useful as a representation of cultural patterns for technological adoption (MS Word document). (As it turns out, this issue came up in an exam I gave today… Wish I could share the textbook page on early-adopters in cultural change.)
There are other blog posts about this report, including some advice for marketers:
Companies seeking to engage customers with these new tools need to understand where their audiences are with this categorisation and then create bespoke programmes for them.
As per Larry Wall’s ethnographic training, diagonal thinking. “There’s More Than One Way to Do It.”
Post-Book Culture
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.
Concordia and Open Access Self-Archiving
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.
Balado et radio, version Sarko
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.
Lessons in Podcasting
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.
Siva on Open Access
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.
Audio People of the World: "You, Knight!"
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.