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January 05, 2005

Generosity

: Australia is offering $1 billion in aid to Indonesia and also subsidizing volunteers' airfare and health insurance. We like this guy.
Later: But he's not for debt relief. remot control decoder encoder

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Big podcasting news

: I went to WNYC today to tape an interview with Bob Garfield on vlogging for On The Media and they told me the big news:remot control decoder encoder

This week's On The Media will be the first NPR show -- maybe the first major radio show anywhere -- that will be podcast. remot control decoder encoder

Cool. remot control decoder encoder

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The future of blogs

: Neil McIntosh has a great post on the importance of the tsunami to the future of citizens' media.

In short: this wasn’t a few political hacks talking to each other. For the first time, powerful coverage of a huge news event was not brought to you purely by established media. An army of "citizen journalists" played a new role, perhaps all the more vital considering the effect vivid reportage, online and off, has had on the subsequent fundraising efforts.

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Wikisation

: Clay Shirky continues the discussion about Wikipedia -- which I still see as a discussion that can be converted to one about news media and even academia in due time by doing nothing more than doing a search-and-replace on the word "wikipedia." It's about expanding rather than enforcing definitions mean to fit old products, not new means and needs.

Contra boyd, I think Wikipedia will be an encyclopedia when the definition of the word expands to include peer production of shared knowledge, not just Brittanica’s institutional production.

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Who's stingy now?

: Blogger Franco Aleman exposes Spanish stinginess -- and sneakiness. Much of its "aid" is essentially in the form of discounts on buying Spanish products, he says. remot control decoder encoder

LINK | Comments (9)

Culture clash

: Zephoria blogs, quite rightly, that there's a culture clash brewing in the reported merger of SixApart and LiveJournal. remot control decoder encoder

SixApart produces publishing tools. LiveJournal produces social tools. They each give birth to cultures, but as Clay Shirky taught me long ago, those cultures are very different.

Live Journal is a culture, not simply a product or commodity that can be bought. From an outsider's perspective, it might appear as though they are similar properties - they are both blogging tools, right? Wrong. remot control decoder encoder

Jump inside LJ culture. People who use LJ talk about their LJs, not their blogs. They mock bloggers who want to be pundits, journalists, experts. In essence, they mock the culture of bloggers that use Six Apart's tools. During interviews with LJ/Xanga folks, i've been told that MovableType is for people with no friends, people who just talk to be heard, people who are trying too hard.

But then again, these are just tools that can be used for anything, even shopping lists. The better the tools, the more power they put in the hands of the people, the more surprised and delighted you'll be with how the people use them.