Social Blogging

Filed under: social software

Yes folks, it is the end of an era — or at least, the end of this blog as we know it. Our Social Software coverage has been subsumed by a larger entity, although without the usual acquisition rumours, inebriated launch party (complete with Flickr RSS feed) or sudden influx of VC money. Our own Download Squad will be proudly taking over coverage of news in the social software space, so tune in over there for your daily fix; set your new bookmarks to the Social Software category or the main Download Squad site, and reorient your voracious newsreaders to the Social Software RSS feed and/or the Download Squad main RSS feed.

Thank you, and good night.

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Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world’s leading online communities.

Filed under: AJAX, collaboration

From the same nice people who brought us that dishwasher churning away in the next room comes an exiting new way to visually brainstorm and collaborate with your friends! Ok, so it might not be all that “new,” and some of you might not find it particularly “exciting,” but dammit, I thought it was cool. Developed by General Electric, Imagination Cubed (hence-force to be known as I^3, for the self-serving purpose of me not having to type it out each time) is another one of them multi-user online whiteboards. As I said, nothing particularly special about that. The cool thing about I^3 that sets it apart from other similar tools is the fact that there are no accounts, and therefore, you never have to go out of your way to make sure your friends and co-workers are registered. Simply visit the site and invite up to 2 other people to simultaneously use your white board. When you’re done, you can print your final product, see a replay of what happened, or save the white board for later. I can see this being really useful for those times when you are trying to explain to their mother-in-law how to use tivo to record “Today in Cats,” and that she needs to “push the green button, not that one, the other one, I mean the big green button shaped like a rhinoceros, here let me draw it for you!” You can also add text to your drawing, change the background color, and display a grid to help you draw more geometrically.

Wrap all this up in a delicious nougat AJAX interface and you’ve got yourself a winning web 2.0 application. Now, if only they could find a way to monetize it…

Via Lifehacker

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Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world’s leading online communities.

Filed under: social networking, social software, social news

“Friend-what?” you might be asking, but it’s true: Red Herring is reporting that Friendster, the ill-fated social networking that (I think) started it all, has been granted a patent on social networks. Following a great tradition of painstakingly clear patent language, Friendster owns the patent for a “system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks”.

Whether Friendster will use the time-tested ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, take em to court’ strategy is yet to be seen, but to their credit: they apparently applied for the patent (issued June 27 of 2006) way back in the day, before they fell from their perch.

[via Slashdot]

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Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world’s leading online communities.

Filed under: search engines, social networking, reputation

Jookster mashes up web archiving, social networking, and ranked searching to provide a new service that I think has some interesting things going with it. After signing up for a Jookster profile and installing the Firefox tool-bar, users have access to personalized searches and instant web archiving. Clicking on the Jook This button in the tool-bar instantly archives a copy of the page you are visiting and indexes it for search. You can go back at your convenience and search through all the pages you have jooked. The cool thing about Jookster however is not the fact that it can archive and index content, Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 has been doing this for ages. The cool aspect of Jookster is the social aspect. Adding buddies with similar interests expands your search results to include things jooked by them, and their buddies, and their buddies buddies, etc. You can specify how many degrees of separation you want to search. The search results are ranked by how many degrees the person who jooked a page is away from you. This feature brings in a concept that has been much talked about at the Supernova conference this week; the fact that outside of the web, we use trusted contacts so look for information, and judge the quality information based on the what you think of your friends. Jookster brings this idea to the web, and I think it could be the start of something big. Imaging searching for information on the ecosystem of the amazon rain forest and being able to see that a biologist you know had jooked a result; wouldn’t that immediately reassure you that the information there would be good stuff?

I think Jookster is a great idea, and even if it turns out that it is one of the many startups that will go belly up in this boom, I’m confident that the underlying ideas it embraces will be something that we are using for years to come.

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Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world’s leading online communities.

Rupert Murdoch and Billy Bragg: you have to wonder how these guys got in bed in the first place. It’s a notion that’ll induce Scanners-esque head explosions and I wouldn’t spend much more time it, as the avowed socialist Bragg has taken his toothbrush and, we presume, did not let the door hit him on the way out of avowed capitalist Murdoch’s crib.
Irked by terms of service that apparently gave MySpace “a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute” his music, British songwriter Billy Bragg pulled his music from the social networking site.
Bragg’s MySpace.com page offers this explanation: “SORRY THERE’S NO MUSIC,” because “once an artist posts up any content (including songs), it then belongs to My Space (AKA Rupert Murdoch) and they can do what they want with it, throughout the world without paying the artist.”
As Publishing 2.0 notes, the falling out is a harsh reminder of the lengths MySpace will go to compensate for not owning any of the content (read: the underlying value upon which much of the enterprise depends) posted on its sites and of MySpace’s still-showing Web 1.0 roots.
Naturally, MySpace chalks this all up to a bit of sloppy lawyering.
“Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist’s work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends,” Berman says. “Obviously, we don’t own their music or do anything with it that they don’t want.”
Whew. Well, I’m relieved; how about you? As we all know, when someone dismisses the tiny print in a contract as “legalese,” that part is immediately invalidated, right?

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Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world’s leading online communities.

Filed under: mapping, mashups

MySociety.org, a British tech nonprofit project that builds and showcases new tools for civic good, has released a beautiful series of maps illustrating various transportation data sets around England.  See, for example, this sample map showing whether public transport (bus, light rail best is in red) or a private automobile (blue) will get you faster from the Cambridge station to any other part of the country.  (Cambridge is in the bottom right hand corner, nearish London.)  The project has created many other maps as well, illustrating a variety of data.

This is interesting, of course, primarily as a proof of concept.  I’m sure it was time consuming and expensive to create, but that won’t always be the case.  If organizations like public transportation agencies expose their data via APIs then I can imagine that displays like this will only be a matter of processing power, which is only a matter of time.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to see a map like this for any trip you were planning?  “I’m at 44th and Killingsworth in Portland, and I’d like to go to 15th and Belmont.  If I’m willing to be dropped off within a few blocks, would it be faster to go by light rail or car?  How long is it likely to take me to get to a particular spot?  That particular place I’m headed isn’t a public transportation dead zone, is it?”  Oh the questions you could answer!  This is just one of many maps  MySociety has published,  which is a good thing in light of Margaret Thatcher’s famous (attributed) quote - “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.”

Found via WorldChanging

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Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world’s leading online communities.

Here the best 2008 media literacy tools and resources hand-picked from George Siemens's weekly Media Literacy Digest published here on MasterNewMedia Photo credit: Dawid Krupa and t_rust mashed up by Robin Good In this collection you will find the best resources and hundreds of tools relevant to your personal growth, learning and educational resources, as well as to social media, video and business that Dr. Siemens has picked, collected and reviewed for you. Here this unique collection:

In this first 2009 issue of Media Literacy digest George Siemens focuses on cloud computing, connections in social networks, changes in education, and on a cool resource for education technology-related conferences. Photo credit: Cyprien Lomas And to make 2009 an opportunity for personal change and innovation, George Siemens has decided to experiment a new way of dealing with his everyday tech life by embracing the cloud computing lifestyle. What does that mean? Cloud computing is a way of referring to using software and data that do not reside locally on your computer, but which reside on public commercial services accessible from anywhere you have an Internet connection. So, no need to be confined to your own machine to access your data, you just can use any computer connected to the Internet et voilà, you're set. The jump to cloud computing is often much smaller than one would think as many have already adopted web-based software and tools which are now integral part of their workflow. Take Gmail, Flickr or YouTube; both the software and the data in these cases are all in the cloud. And if you are not quite ready yet for the dive into the cloud, you can still go home with some cool new tools to try out immediately. Dr. Siemens features in fact to a brand new software list by Jane Hart with the likely-to-be top tools you may want to consider for adoption in 2009. To dive in, is the only wise step if you want to make you greater sense of the disruptive changes that our society is facing. Here all the details:

Social media marketing, ad management and optimization, diagnosing AdSense revenue drops, the brand ambassador model, are just some of the hot topics included inside this showcase of the best advertising and internet marketing articles published this year here at MasterNewMedia. Photo credit: Giuseppe Ramos If you want to monetize your blog site, attract potential advertisers, improve your advertising revenues, or deploy efficient market strategies, you can find most of what you need to know right inside this small collection of in-depth guides and reports. Check it out. Here all the details:

A look at the future of technology and trends in this issue of the Media Literacy digest. Photo credit: Jay Cross In this issue: George Siemens deals with changing paradigms in education, a new report about the Twittersphere, two interesting studies on the importance of video games in online learning, and a top ten of everything that's going to be hot in 2009. What seems to be crucial for Dr. Siemens, is the access people have to educational resources. Media trends and technology role in our lives are the bread and butter of this weekly digest. Here you can find education-related pointers and tools that may help you make greater sense of the deep changes that new technologies and media are bringing. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

If you want to get some ideas and inspiration about how you could use online video to significantly increase your company social media marketing impact, look no further. I have collected here for you the very best video marketing examples of some popular corporate brands. Photo credit: Elizabeth Engle Video marketing on the web is positively one of the most effective ways in which companies of all sizes are taking up the social Web as their preferred marketing channel. Though, there is not an official set of categories for videos used as social media marketing vehicles, I have divided the set of video examples I have selected here for you, in three different categories that differentiate the video format and typology of use:

a) Video Tutorials: Tutorials explain in a short video what your company / service / tool is about, and how it works. There is nothing like a short, immediate video to communicate effectively with your customers. b) Viral Videos: Maybe these should be labeled, "wanna-be viral videos", as there is no way to tell if a video is going to get "viral" before having published it. These are generally funny, spectacular or ironic videos that rapidly gain a huge popularity on the Internet by the sheer power of word of mouth and linking from other sites. c) Commercials: These are the classical video ads, sometimes with a sprinkle of new ideas and designed to have a long shelf life on both traditional TV and the Web. d) YouTube Channels: These are video company channels to collect all their TV commercials and any user-generated videos or feedback from passionate customers.

Media analyst and social media marketing expert Peter Kim has grouped on his own web site a terrific collection of social media marketing examples, providing a list of companies that use social media marketing to sell their products and services on the Web. Among the many cool examples available in Peter Kim's huge list, I have personally selected the very best online video examples that have been recently used by commercial companies. Here all the details:

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch suggests a new possible scenario for your online identity. Google and Facebook may soon be the only companies controlling the way most of you are going to identify yourself on the Web. Photo credit: kaipata Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect are two new and competing services which provide you with the ability to login into your favorite social network, as well as to access an increasing number of your preferred content publication and distribution services: from YouTube to Delicious and more. The key new thing here, is that by adopting one of these online identification systems you can log into all of these web-based services by using always the same credentials. For example: popular site TechCrunch has already started using both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect to allow its readers to login into the site social community by using their own Facebook and Google credentials. Similarly, the commenting system Disqus has also been thinking about integrating these two same services by the end of the year. But is this really a cool thing, from all standpoints? As George Siemens points out in this Media Literacy digest issue, Facebook and Google already own the majority of the digital content you share on the Web. Your e-mail, photos, music, contacts, are all mostly stored on their servers. Given this situation, how smart is it to allow these two companies to be able to also start monitoring all of your moves and actions online? Should they be the ones to control your access to your social network, blog comments, and to everything else you do online? This, along with other hot technology issues and new interesting media and education-related resources, makes up for another rich media literacy digest, showcasing the deep and disruptive changes new media technologies are bringing into your lives, and the good questions you should ask yourself before fully embracing them. Here all the details: Intro by Robin Good

This is my own video on the future of education, that completes and extends what I was able to deliver this past Wednesday at LeWeb in Paris. Photo credit: Giorgio Montersino Here below you can see two videos. One is the original recording from my LeWeb presentation and the other one extends and completes what I did not say on stage. I contend that we are about to see a deep change in how we look at education and learning in the coming years. The deep changes we have been witnessing in the worlds of mass media, advertising, marketing and communication in general, and much of what we have been labeling under the 2.0 title needs to be harmonized with our educational approach to schooling inside society. If we have come to appreciate the value of collaboration, sharing, co-creation, mashing up, bottom-up contributions and grassroots media creation, as well as those of listening to customers, of starting true conversations, of opening to critical feedback, and to suggestions from all your clients, we must also be able to see that these same principles and approaches can be transposed and utilized effectively in delivering a more valuable educational experience to our kids. a) Teaching is not learning, b) What are the things we really need to learn, c) What is the context and resources in which a new educational paradigm can emerge, are the key issues that I bring forward in this video presentation. I must thank once more LeWeb organizers Loic and Geraldine LeMeur for having provided me with this great opportunity. Here the video:

Virtual worlds offer exciting opportunities in online learning. A virtual world is a fully customizable 3D environment on the Internet where people can meet, talk, and interact with each other as if they were in the real world. The big deal is that you're not just a screen name or a still picture, but a three-dimensional individual that you can personalize as you want. Photo credit: h-l-n If you have ever attended an online seminar or a virtual university lesson you may already know how this works. You join a virtual room, the presenter / teacher shares his screen and his voice with attendees, and you can enjoy a presentation, a course, or a panel without leaving the comfort of your own place. What is less fascinating about the whole learning-at-a-distance process, is that you usually end up being just a screen name or a still picture, and you can't really interact with other people in the room like in the real world. The opportunities for any interaction among participants are very limited because there's not your whole "persona" sharing its experience with other people. That's exactly why virtual worlds, and their most popular platform Second Life, can be venues to effective virtual learning approaches. Since in a virtual world the opportunity to interact with other people becomes fully immersive, and it is not just limited to screen-sharing or videoconferencing, a virtual environment constitutes a potentially much better alternative for educators and learners. In Second Life you have a fully-customizable projection of your "alive self", not just a screen name or a picture. You can perform many actions in a fashion that is very similar to what you normally do in your everyday life. Walking, talking to other people, visiting places, attending events, and more. And it's very easy to understand how the whole thing works. George Siemens is an educational technologies and media expert who strongly supports the use of virtual worlds for educational purposes. In this weekly media literacy digest, he strongly disagrees with those academic environments who find the use of Second Life too complex to be considered as a valid resource for online learning. But, as every week here on MasterNewMedia, Dr. Siemens also provides you with other pointers, facts and resources that can help you and me to make greater sense of new emerging technologies and their impact on the way we learn, understand, and deal with the world in these fast-changing times. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Microsoft and Apple believe that your digital life is as important as your real one. That's why the two companies are betting time and resources to develop a technology to help you manage all your personal information across different devices. Photo credit: lumingopereira The goal of Live Mesh and MobileMe is to have all your personal data privately stored in a virtual environment, the "cloud", which takes care of syncing all your content across your mobile phone, your laptop, or your PDA. Say you have a calendar appointment planned in your home computer, but not on your mobile phone. These virtual platforms "see" that appointment is missing, and add it to your mobile calendar, so that you don't have to worry about synchronizing all of these different devices together. Learning, education and media technologies scholar George Siemens analyzes such technology-driven trends to understand what issues we may have to confront with in the near future and how to best prepare yourself for them. In this weekly digest, George Siemens brings back many interesting news stories, facts, and reports about new technologies, helping those seeking to get the opportunity to get a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the disruptive changes our society is going through. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano