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“It sounded like a Vegas slot machine. My computer was just going ding ding ding.”
Veronica McGregor, a former NASA correspondent for CNN, on the number of ‘followers’ of her tweets. McGregor micro-blogged on Twitter on behalf of $420 million Phoenix Mars Lander, and had nearly 10,000 followers as the Lander touched down on Mars.
“I have had enough of political correctness.”
Richard Barnbrook, of the British National party, on a blog in the Telegraph, blaming immigrants and the Labour Party.
“I’m viewing FriendFeed as a “best of” collection of my friends’ online content.”
Bryan Person, on the ’social aggregator’ FriendFeed that pulls in feeds from blogs, Flickr, delicious, and Google.
“It’s absolutely true that the Web site and the newspaper are not synchronized. I say that’s a good thing.”
Jonathan Landman, Deputy Managing Editor or New York Times, responsible for the paper’s digital journalism talking of the difference between a great web experience and a great newspaper experience.
“The individual, the company, the nation that is best at avoiding distractions in the future will have an enormous advantage in the competitive marketplace.”
MIke Elgan, on “Is there a cure for the distraction virus” about how these internet-based ‘agents of distraction’ (Facebook, YouTube, Slashdot, Drudge etc) are causing huge productivity losses and what it means.
“Now inside a web page, you’ll be able to fly through San Francisco or see a 3D model of a cabin with exactly the view out the window of the mountains.”
Google’s Paul Rademacher on its 3D visualization capability of Google Earth.
“When you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you…”
Sharon Stone, whose controversial comments at the Cannes Film Festival about China’s earthquake, became her own bad karma.
“He’s gone; the policy—strategic non-communication—may still be in place.”
Jay Rosen, analyzing the tell-all book by the ‘jerk at the podium,’ president Bush’s former press secretary Scott McClellan.
Journalists are a tough breed. They put up with a lot, and the worst part of it right now is that (unless they are media critics) that they have to write about every other industry but their own that’s going through a huge upheaval. “Newspapers are still far from dead, but the language of the obituary is creeping in,” said the 2008 ‘State of the News Media Report‘ at Journalism.org.
The story of Chris Page, a Mesa journalist and theater critic is a sad obituary on the profession. He was found dead. He had recently moved from the beat of art critic to online journalism, but was recently laid off, said his former employer, the East Valley Tribune.
Online journalism, apart from media itself, is in the thoes of change and reinvention. Newsrooms are being rejiggered overnight with the impact of ‘networked journalism,’ interactive media, and the inroads into news distribution from new technologies.
But the fact remains: we still need boots on the ground, and smart people who cover the story be it about culture, economics, sports, or politics with more depth, not less. Society infatuated by Google search results and “measurement” doesn’t place enough value on these boots and these beats that feed our newsreaders and our online ‘papers.’ Dedicated, award winning professionals like Chris will be surely missed.
I often state that I am turned off when a company tries to make an ad out of a logo, because it demonstrates (a) that the strategy is based on an inflated sense of the mark, and (b) an assumption that we consumers have this great love affair with a company’s name and logo.
This execution from Honda Accord in the UK is admirable, because it tries to demonstrate the tagline (“The power of dreams”) and the slogan “Difficult is worth doing” using not the logo but the brand name.
What was unusual was that this TV ad was broadcast live yesterday at 8.10 PM on Channel 4, using 16 skydivers who form the five letters H-O-N-D-A during a free fall. Before the ad ran, an announcer prefaced it by calling it a ‘live break.’
But while this is entertaining, un-commercial like, and creates some buzz, what exactly does it demonstrate about the car? That difficult challenges are something you could overcome while driving an Accord? It doesn’t compare it to other stunts such as Adidas’ Imposible is nothing work on the vertical face of buildings (during the Olympics). To me it seemed more like “Honda is so cool, we thought you’d skip the bathroom break and see our name in the clouds.”
We have broached this topic here before, talking of grammar and accuracy. In the world of journalism this comes up a lot, and the deputy manager of New York Times’ digital journalism addresses this well.
The need to scoop, to deliver news as it breaks and the expectation of accuracy butts heads in a medium that has two formats, or two delivery systems. Very interesting insight by Jonathan Landman into how the Times juggle datelines, feedback and the challenge of ’synchronizing’ both products.
In a previous piece Landman talked about a “continuous news” reporter, which is no different from the experience of communicators in other fields. No story is static, so whether it’s a press release or a microsite, I find myself in the continuous news mode.
*Cross posting from ValleyPRBlog.com
I am a frequent reader of the State department’s blog, Dipnote, that attempts to give a human angle to foreign policy -beyond the press releases, official statements and ‘code words’ we have come to know so well.
Dipnote links to an @Google interview with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her British counterpart David Miliband (a MIT graduate who happens to have his own YouTube channel, and blog.) This interview is hosted on …YouTube. Suddenly foreign policy via social media doesn’t look so dry.
Rice makes an excellent, passionate albeit slightly flawed analysis of Iraq; between her and Miliband, you get a sense that this is the kind of discourse we (and the world) missed in the last eight years. I’m not saying that social media made this happen, but without doubt these discussions were stifled by the old media that only permitted slogans and sound bites. Only at a venue like this could she say that “we are not, as a government, ever going to ‘improve’ the image of America.” That’s what the people of America do best, she concedes. Which is another way of saying that the government should not be in the business of image building.
The new managing editor of Dipnote, Luke Forgeson, calls the blog the online version of a town hall meeting. As Miliband observes elsewhere, “diplomats need to reach out beyond governments to talk to people – at home and around the world.”
Long live analog networks!
That’s the feeling I got after attending two graduation ceremonies this month at Brophy and NAU. It confirmed my belief that networks belonging to the much derided ‘analog’ era are not about to lose their mojo. The more I write about and inhabit social networks, the more I am convinced of this. Just because we can and do upload our photos to Flickr and Picasa, and just because we can program our phones to ping us when someone writes on our Facebook Wall doesn’t mean our digital lives are superior.
Here’s the set up: At Northern Arizona University, the commencement ceremony was streamed live off the school web site, but the bleachers were jam packed. At Brophy, at my son’s high school graduation on Saturday, the group of giddy high-schoolers seated in front of us continued to take photos of themselves on camera phones, announcing “Myspace picture!” “Smile, you’re on Facebook!” etc. Damn digital natives, huh? Not quite. The reality of it was, this ‘band of sisters’ invested three hours in an overcrowded gymnasium to witness an analog event and cheer on their friends. Uploading those analog moments onto their social networks was only ancillary to being there.
Analog is the glue. The ‘band of brothers’ theme was a strong theme at the Brophy event with many speakers –faculty, the valedictorian etc– giving credit to that human dimension of the four years gone by. This, in a school that has all but replaced text books with tablet PCs! Yesterday at home, these digital natives were not geeking out over an Xbox game, or bluetoothing each other pictures from their camera phones. Instead they indulged in something involving old fashioned analog tools of pencils and paper: A game of Pictionary!
Having been involved in a pandemic flu exercise here at the Decision Theater, this lede about avatars coming down with a flu, flagged my attention.
But the story in the Canadian Press is more about how social networks and other online tools are being used as an extension of (rather than a replacement of) our communication efforts in social spaces. Where as we once relied on traditional surveys and expensive campaigns, we now have Facebook, virtual worlds and something called ‘proximity marketing.’
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