Social Blogging

Controversial Director Lars Von Trier tackles religion and horror in Antichrist, the new film starring William Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as parents who experience horror while grieving at a cabin deep in the woods More>> THEATRE MUSIC Springsteen, Wonder and others celebrate Rock Hall By Nekesa Mumbi Moody The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honors …

If you are interested in finding out the key media trends, the events and the new communication technologies that are shaping your future, in this issue of Media Literacy Digest, open education advocate George Siemens, explores and reports on new fascinating stories and insights and their impact on learning, work and society.

Photo credit: Robert Mizerek

Inside this Media Literacy Digest:

• Social Media Time - Nielsen’s research states that 18% of time spent online is spent on social networking sites and services.
• Social Search - Google just announced Social Search. The service helps you “to find publicly available content from your social circle“.
• The Web In 5 Years: More of Now - Interesting thoughts from Eric Schmidt - CEO, Google - on the web in five years.
• Go Grandpa! - By now, I think the view of innate generational differences in technology use has been sufficiently debunked (see Mark Bullen’s Netgenskeptic site). NY Times highlights the appeal of technology among the elderly.
• Communicating Complexity - I have been following Indexed - a site that uses simple visuals to communicate complex relationships and interactions. For example: The relationship between information and confusion.
• Falling of The Cliff - When change happens in a networked environment, it is rapid. We have seen it in the financial markets, music industry, TV (YouTube), and, perhaps at it is most pronounced, the newspaper industry.
• A Personal Cyberinfrastructure - At Open Education in Vancouver in August, Gardner Campbell argued that cPanel could be used as an LMS.

Here all the details:

The mother of Ashleigh Hall, a teenager allegedly killed by a man she met on the internet, has urged social networking sites to stop people creating false on-line identities.

Michael Jackson’s death this past June ended his planned comeback tour in London; but Kenny Ortega, the director of the tour, gained access to the hours of rehearsal footage Jackson was filming and turned it into the documentary This Is It, currently in theaters for a limited engagement.

Facebook said Thursday a California court has awarded the social networking Web site $711 million in damages in an anti-spam case against Internet marketer Sanford Wallace.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 2:20 PM PDT Twitter warned users Tuesday of a new phishing scam on the social networking site.

A new music feature rolled out by Google Inc. Wednesday will bring its U.S. searchers one click away from listening to a full-length song.

Rob Aboudi, an IT consultant who lives and works in Chelsea, is a quintessential “early adopter”–a gay man who has the financial means, motivation and patience to try out new technologies and acquire the next generation of highs-tech gadgets.

Which are the critical skills needed for today online successful journalists? What do you need to know and do to compete with bloggers and independent reporters springing up all around you?

Photo credit: Robin Good

Right now, at the end of 2009, newspapers are buzzing around a report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations which states that the average weekday circulation of nearly 400 dailies in the US slid 10.6% from April to September, compared with a 7.1% decline during the previous six-month period.

What is worse, this steep decline in newspaper circulation (which obviously has a deep reflection in advertising revenues) takes place when the whole publishing industry worldwide is suffering from one of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

What is the formula that online journalists can adopt to get through this long tunnel?

Alan Murray of the WSJ identifies some key skills that online journalists need to acquire to keep themselves valuable to their publishers:

• Have a sincere passion in what they are doing
• Be fast to cover a piece of news and be willing to post multiple times a day
• Build a community of loyal supporters and always engage readers
• Use social media tools like Twitter to keep in touch with the buzz
• Know how search engines work to drive traffic to their content

Most importantly, online journalists should be able to learn how to utilize a balanced mix of editorial and marketing techniques and tools in their normal day-to-day work. Being capable of writing great content and knowing how to distribute it and market it efficiently online is definitely one of the most valuable pair of skills an online reporter must have:

The art of a good blog is figuring out the right mix between the piece that you know is going to get maximum search engine hits to the piece that really defines what you are doing that is uniquely valuable. That second piece might not bring in as much traffic, but it is the piece that is going to keep the traffic once you get it in the door.

In this video interview, Alan Murray, online executive editor of The Wall Street Journal, paints the profile and the key skills needed by online journalist wanting to become indispensable asset to his newsroom.

Here all the details:

Drag Me to Hell is an entertaining, exciting horror film from Sam Raimi, who returns to the genre in excellent form after Spider-man 3. MUSIC Gold And Green By Brian Callaghan Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush make up the country superduo, Sugarland.

Written by Frederic Lardinois / October 26, 2009 12:30 PM / Social Search just went live in Google Labs .

FBI officials say they have rescued 52 children in a series of raids around the country aimed at under-age prostitution.

‘Back to Black’ singer Amy Winehouse has reportedly reunited with Blake Fielder-Civil, just three months after their divorce was finalised.

BERKELEY: Facebook and Twitter stars on Saturday shared lessons learned with young entrepreneurs aspiring to be the next hot technology firm.

LEONARD Kleinrock never imagined Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube that day 40 years ago when his team gave birth to what is now taken for granted as the internet “We are constantly surprised by the applications that come along,'’ Mr Kleinrock said as he and others at the University of California, Los Angeles prepared to throw the internet a 40th …