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The VP debate: Candidates, questions, and queries [Official Google Blog]
Google tracks the trends of search terms during the vice-presidential debate, to show how use of search is helping make people (or rather, some people; the curious and critical ones) better informed when they assess what the candidates say.
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If information is the currency of democracy, as Thomas Jefferson allegedly said, then during last Thursday's vice-presidential debate between Senator Biden and Governor Palin a lot of people used Google Search to get a bit wealthier, metaphorically speaking. Using Google Hot Trends, we can see some of the more interesting things that people were researching, and you can do the same to follow along yourself during tomorrow night's second presidential debate.
Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008
Technorati's annual survey, including stats, demographics, quotes and stabs at defining the phenomenon of blogging. My favourite is from Seth Godin, “The word blog is irrelevant, what's important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that
The web's future is a 'village' [BBC]
Research by Hewlett Packard on what attracts and maintains attention. It's a combination of novelty and intimacy. More from HP's Social Computing Lab http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/scl/
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"We noticed that there is an interplay between what people pay attention to and novelty. But novelty fades and the clicks on the Digg stories decay. We can predict the shape of that decay." And to do that, Mr Huberman said his co-workers developed a complicated algorithm that can predict how a website can more effectively present its content to make users stay longer.
P2P traffic drops as streaming video grows in popularity
Several trends implicit in this: people are using the internet a lot to try things out, or experience them, not just to grab and own them. And maybe this suggests the future of media is in the cloud rather than on your hard disk.
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PlusNet's Dave Tomlinson offers a bevy of traffic statistics from the ISP's previous year, including the fact that streaming traffic is up—way up. Streaming has jumped by 168.9 percent in a single year among PlusNet customers, even as total traffic jumped a modest 26.5 percent. Streaming traffic, the majority of it video, currently accounts for 6.6 percent of all PlusNet traffic.
Spreading tales like coffin nails [Lost ConsCIOusness]
A foraging assessment of Twitter.
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Someone asked me the other day why I was not on Twitter? I mumbled something about the fact that the last thing a fox needs is more sources of distraction. But sitting in the Japanese takeaway waiting for my order I have had time to reflect. As an outsider Twitter seems to do 4 things - it helps reduce the essential loneliness of existence and connects us with the rest of our species (which reminds me of Italo Calvino and Mr Palomar but that’s a fox distraction); it is a quick and easy way of broadcasting news and status to friends, assuming we have either news or friends; related to that it helps us socialise by allowing us to tell people which bar we are in; finally it acts as a web of connections, hares sit up and dart hither and thither and sometimes it’s a hare worth following. All good things but again, as a fox, is the upside greater than the risk of vastly more shiny baubles cluttering my view and distracting me still further?
Hairbrush divas help generate online royalties, says MCPS-PRS [Music Week]
Self-made fan videos, miming to their favourite hits, are starting to generate non-trivial royalties.
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MCPS PRS managing director of broadcast and online Andrew Shaw explains that a number of tracks in this list were boosted by self-made videos online. “The trend for posting self-made videos is driving the number of performances on the websites we license,†he says. However, he warns, “Lots more performances of music are needed online to generate meaningful royalties since each download or stream is individual in comparison to the wider audience numbers achieved by broadcasts on traditional media channels such as radio or TV.â€
Fanbase: An Adobe AIR App for Music Fans [Read/Write Web]
Combining streamed music and video with fan chat. Currently exclusive to Atlantic records.
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To create Fanbase, Atlantic Records collaborated with imeem, the music social networking site that lets users upload, create, and listen to music. Through the integrated imeem music player, Fanbase will automatically capture the latest music from any particular artist and stream it directly into the player. Fanbase's video content comes from YouTube and Brightcove and the chat feature is provided by Meebo.
Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers? [ReadWriteWeb]
Interesting piece on an emerging role which could be converging with/taking over some of the functions traditionally assigned to PR.
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A community manager can do many things (see below) but the most succinct definition of the role that we can offer is this. A community manager is someone who communicates with a company's users/customers, development team and executives and other stake holders in order to clarify and amplify the work of all parties. They probably provide customer service, highlight best use-cases of a product, make first contact in some potential business partnerships and increase the public visibility of the company they work for.
OpenTaste
A new open standards initiative to make your attention data more portal. Not sure how it relates to APML yet, but apparently Strands are behind it. (via Paul Lamere)
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OpenTaste enables independent developers and website operators to develop web-scale tools and APIs for storing and sharing taste information between OpenTaste-enabled web applications. OpenTaste technology allows you to personalize your Internet experiences, keep your preference data private, and share it as you choose.
Music fans looking online for guidance [vnunet.com]
"Nearly eight out of 10 consumers are turning away from professional music reviews and looking online for guidance when buying CDs or downloads" according to latest research from a Scandinavian e-commerce company.
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The latest Trust Index research from e-commerce firm Avail Intelligence said that many listeners are turning to online music stores or social networking sites for opinions on new albums or acts. Recommendations made while browsing music stores such as iTunes or social networking applications such as I Like on Facebook proved popular for 40 per cent of respondents. This was just pipped by the opinion of family, friends and other shoppers at 41 per cent of respondents. Although the internet is proving a popular place for sharing music tastes, many are still divided on its effectiveness as a delivery platform.
Wikipatterns
Guidance on developing your wikis, based loosely on Christopher Alexander's pattern language.
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Looking to spur wiki adoption? Want to grow from 10 users to 100, or 1000? Applying patterns that help coordinate people's efforts and guide the growth of content, and recognizing anti-patterns that might hinder growth - can give your wiki the greatest chance of success.Wikipatterns.com is a toolbox of patterns & anti-patterns, and a guide to the stages of wiki adoption. It's also a wiki, which means you can help build the information based on your experiences! Beyond this site, there are many other additional resources.
Musictoday® -- Empowering Fan Connection
I haven't looked at this in detail yet, but it's interesting (some might say 'worrying') to see LiveNation providing a site that enables fans to create their own fansites. I think I'd be more inclined to roll my own, but I can see that some might like it.
Net Gen Nonsense
Useful to have someone debunking the whole millennial/digital native classification
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This blog is dedicated to debunking the myth of the net generation, particularly as it relates to learning, teaching and the use of technology. By using this forum I hope to start a conversation around this issue and promote an informed discussion of strategies that postsecondary institutions can use to harness the power of Web 2.0 and other learning technologies that is based in fact not rhetoric.
Urban Computing and its Discontents by Adam Greenfield, Mark Shepard (Book) [Situated Technologies Pamphlets]
Interesting pamphlet, available for free download on Lulu
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The Situated Technologies Pamphlet series explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: How is our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics, and other “situated†technologies? How will the ability to design increasingly responsive environments alter the way architects conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing and what do technologists need to know about cities? Situated Technologies Pamphlets will be published in nine issues and will be edited by a rotating list of leading researchers and practitioners from architecture, art, philosophy of technology, comparative media study, performance studies, and engineering.
Will fake business blogs crash and burn? [BBC]
Feature on how corporations are 'flogging' blog culture, creating bogus word of mouth comments, and generally abusing user generated content to give the impression of positive reputation.
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Optimists have spoken of the way in which the "one-way street" of corporate communication has been replaced by a "conversation" between businesses and ordinary people. But at the same time, some firms have been trying to con the consumer by pushing their own propaganda on websites while pretending to be the voice of the people. Companies caught out posting these bogus blogs - or "flogs" - include Sony, L'Oreal and Wal-Mart, while a whole vocabulary has gradually emerged to describe their actions.
Towards a Value-Added User Data Economy [Read/Write Web]
More on data portability and its benefits.
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In the long term, it's in everyone's best interests for data to be as portable as possible. For users, data portability means that we can invest time and resources into new platforms on the web without the fear that the work we create will be locked in to that network or otherwise lost to us. It also offers the possibility that we can take our compiled work in one place and let another service process that data to create new kinds of value for our benefit. For example, being able to export our reading history from one service would enable other services to immediately recommend new experiences they can offer based on our tastes elsewhere. The music website Idiomag, for example, can look at our public history on Last.fm and build from that history a customized music "magazine" about artists we would likely enjoy. That's just one kind of service that could be enabled for users by data portability.
Why is data portability important for web personalization? [Strands Blog]
Somehow I missed this when it was published a month ago, but it's an important and interesting argument for portability of users' attention data, based on improving the quality of personalisation in web services. More power to Strands in advancing this.
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However, the dataportability.org initiative suggests we may have reached a turning point. The DataPortability project taps into the strong conviction engendered by the do-it-yourself nature of the web 2.0 movement that individuals should “have control over their data by determining how they can use it and who can use itâ€. This extends to an inherent belief that that it has not been a lack of effective technology that has held back this new culture of open data sharing, but rather, business models that have been over-reliant on laying a proprietary claim to some portion of that data.
Pew/Internet Study Offers Insights Into Consumer Behavior [Coolfer]
Latest research snapshot of the state of play in digital music. Seems to reinforce the trend that, while the impact of digital media on discovery and purchasing is growing, the old mass media and the old formats continue to count for the majority of the a
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A new study by the Pew/Internet & American Life Project titled "The Internet and Consumer Choice: Online Americans Use Different Search and Purchase Strategies for Different Goods" (main page, 42-page PDF of study) examines how Americans use the Internet to buy music and search for information. It offers great insight into the importance of pre-Internet mass media like TV and radio as well as traditional word of mouth, and it shows how different age groups have different preferences for formats and pre- and post-purchase behaviors.
This study echoes many of the things I have written lately, such as the continued prominence of the CD and the importance of mass media in music discovery. Digital is growing and important part of the music marketplace, but I urge everybody to keep in mind that offline behaviors and purchases still play the dominant role.
What anarchism can teach us about organisations in the internet age [Simonsays]
Picking up the same meme that <a href="http://alchemi.co.uk/archives/ide/is_web_20_a_man.html">I covered last year</a> ;-)
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I’m reading one of those great Very Short Introductions to… from Oxford University Press at the moment about Anarchism. I cannot recommend it highly enough as a thought-provoking bridge between political theory and changes the internet is creating for business and society.
Google helps the web to go social [BBC]
Google seems to be offering to add a layer of social interaction across sites that have limited opportunities built in. Another step towards social networking as a feature, not a destination (as a Chris Anderson has put it).
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"Many sites aren't explicitly social and don't necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard."
Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester, told BBC News: "Google is tapping into the 'all things social' heat of the moment, but it's adding a different perspective, not as a data source and social network 'owner' but as an enabler."
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