Technology360

Second Earth

There's a terrific article with this title by Wade Roush in the July/August issue of Technology Review which describes a mind-expanding but imagined mash-up between (e.g.) Second Life and (e.g.) Google Earth -- to something called a metaverse.  I've long thought that Second Life and its cousins were a natural place for visual storytelling, and particularly for educational applications.  This makes it irresistible.

Link:  Technology Review (free registration required).  Related video (no registration needed).

Update 5 July 2007:
Also see Andrea L. Foster's, Virtual Worlds as Social-Science Labs.  Link:  Chronicle of Higher Education.  --Dennis

Gorman and Shirky on authority vs. openness

The Britannica Blog has hosted a very interesting exchange of essays between librarian Michael Gorman (ex-Dean of Library Services at California State University, Fresno) and Clay Shirky, teacher (New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program), writer and consultant.  I've been reading Shirky for years.  It's the openness vs. authority argument; Wikipedia vs. Encyclopædia Britannica (though of course, not just that); or, in book length, David Weinberger's Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (reviews) vs. Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture (review).

Gorman begins with The Sleep of Reason, Part I (11 June) and Part II (12 June).

To which Shirky responds with "Old Revolutions Good; New Revolutions Bad" (14 June).

Gorman continues with The Siren Song of the Internet, Part I (18 June) and Part II (19 June).

To which Shirky responds with The Siren Song of Luddism (19 June).

Gorman continues again with Jabberwiki: The Educational Response, Part I (25 June) and Part II (26 June).

The Britannica Blog follows up with other responses:  Publisher Roger Kimball (The New Criterion, Encounter Books) also contributes to this debate in Technology, Temptation, and Virtual Reality.  Doctoral candidate (U. C.-Berkeley) danah boyd in Knowledge Access as a Public Good (27 June).  Reference librarian Thomas Mann in Brave New (Digital) World, Part I: Return of the Avant-Garde and Part II: Foolishness 2.0?.

I've not gotten through the essays in the last paragraph yet, but so far it's good reading.  --Dennis

New Media News Digest, 6/12-6/19/2007

Sondra Russell works for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and writes the following News Digest on a weekly basis.  I think it's a very nice piece of work, but it's distributed by email only.  So she's given me permission to quote it here so it can get RSS distribution and also be seen by people outside of public broadcasting.  Her email address is srussell [at] cpb [dot] org.  --Dennis

SONDRA’S SUMMARY

> The top story this week is that CNN and YouTube are co-sponsoring presidential debates.  As reported in the New York Times last week, CNN will host a debate between presidential candidates with questions culled from YouTube.  This highly hyped event may serve as inspiration for public broadcasters who are experimenting with new ways of engaging audiences during the 2008 elections.  Some are already wondering if the hype will match up to the reality – the YouTube clips are still going to be curated by the CNN team and host Andersen Cooper will provide follow-up questions, thus mitigating some of the populist nature of the Web.   

> The key theme this week is that cellphones are more important than televisions to the 26 and under crowd.  An infographic supporting a New York Times story about various networks’ ambitious cellphone initiatives indicates that both cellphones and computers are more important to younger generations than television. And this is before the iPhone is even released. 

 > The think piece this week is that NBC announced an online educational venture.  By leveraging its vast news archives, iCue (“Immerse, Compete, Understand, and Excel”) will serve as a supplement to Advanced Placement high school courses in American History, Government, and English.  Cost?  $10M.  Business model?  Subscription fees from schools and advertising on the site.  As pubcasters consider exploring the online space, there may be some lessons learned (both positive and negative) from NBC’s foray.

New Media News Digest, June 12th – June 19th, 2007

TELEVISION

Fox Entertainment Signs Internet TV Distributor Brightcove

From PaidContent: "Fox has tapped online TV distributor Brightcove to provide its networks and studio with ad-supported internet video channels. The pact will also give Fox the ability to target its broadband video directly to specific demos."

Sony Offers Web-Streaming Device As Option on HDTVs
From the WSJ: "The fight is intensifying in the battle to bring the Internet -- and all the video available on it -- to a television near you. Sony will include its Internet streaming device as an option in all of its new HD television models this year."

HD programming wars: Comcast says 800 HD channels by 2009
From ArsTechnica: "At a press conference I attended at CES early this year, DIRECTV proudly announced that it would have 100 HD channels available by year end. Comcast is trying to trump its competitor by saying that it will have over 800 HD channels by that time."

INTERNET

YouTube Passes Debates to a New Generation
From the NYT: "YouTube, which is owned by Google, and CNN are co-sponsoring a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates on July 23 in South Carolina, an event that could define the next phase of what has already been called the YouTube election."

Cellphones and Computers Rank Higher Than Televisions in the 18-to-26 Age Group
From the NYT -- an infographic in support of a story about broadcasters creating mobile content indicates that younger generations prefer their computers and cellphones more than their televisions.

Yes, the Screen Is Tiny, but the Plans Are Big
ESPN isn't alone. Other companies, like CBS and MTV, as well as news organizations like The Associated Press and magazine concerns like the Hearst Corporation, are investing in original cellphone content.

Canadian New Media Fund Gets $27.3M from Government
From CBC: "Administered by Telefilm , the Canada New Media Fund was created in 2001 to support the development, production, marketing and distribution of original Canadian new media projects in both official languages."

Ad Revenues -- Up 16% Online, Down 0.3% For Radio

From TNS Media Intelligence: "Internet display advertising is projected to lead the market with 16.0 percent growth in 2007. Network TV expenditures are expected to increase by just 1.3 percent. Small declines are also projected for Radio (-0.3 percent)."

RADIO

Big Radio Makes a Grab for Internet Listeners 
From the NYT: "Confronted by a slow erosion of listeners who are turning to iPods, podcasts and other sources for entertainment, the radio corporations are trying to merge their over-the-air music and D.J. chatter with the Web."

EDUCATION

NBC Developing Educational Site for Students
From the NYT: "The network is to announce an online venture intended as a supplement to Advanced Placement high school courses in three subjects: American history, government and English. The effort draws heavily on its exhaustive film and video archives."

Confessions of a Podcast Junkie

Graduate student Carie Windham has written a great article on the personal and educational aspects of podcasting.  Link:  EDUCAUSE Review [pdf version]  --Dennis

Building conceptual bridges to a new media world

Jon Udell writes:

When Ryan Sholin’s manifesto on the future of newspapers appeared the other day, the blogosphere cheered loudly. “Great summary,” said one commenter, “Too bad they’re not listening.”  ¶  “They” are the newspaper writers, editors, and journalists — and the J-school teachers — whose attitudes and skills require a major overhaul:

Get over the whole bloggers vs. journalists thing…

…you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.

Although everything on Ryan’s 10-point list is devastatingly true, it’s important to consider all the reasons why “they’re not listening.” ...

Link:  Jon Udell.

The P2P mistake at Ohio University

The president of BitTorrent, Ashwin Navin, writes:

Ohio University recently informed students that the use of peer-to-peer technology has been banned from the campus computer network. The reasons cited range from network congestion to malicious software to piracy.  ¶  While the university acknowledges that there are legitimate uses of P2P technologies, the blanket ban on the technology stands.  ¶  By instituting this ban, Ohio University has demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of P2P technology's value and role on the Internet. Furthermore, the school has closed its doors to innovation and shirked its responsibilities as an educational institution. ...

Link:  CNet News.com.

Also see Eric Bangeman's, Schools take wait-and-see approach after Ohio U bans P2P traffic.  Link:  Ars Technica.

Also see Ohio University announces changes in file-sharing policies.  Link:  Ohio University press release. 

File this one under cutting off your nose to spite your face.  --Dennis

Learning Guitar for Free (for Now) on YouTube

Frank Langfitt had a great piece on NPR's All Things Considered yesterday about people who are teaching guitar over the Net, specifically, using YouTube.  Included in the story was this about the seemingly asinine copyright rules under which we live:

... But if learning pop songs for free online sounds too good to be true, it may be.  ¶  John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, says most of the songs Sandercoe and Taub teach are under copyright. He thinks it's only a matter of time before a licensing company orders YouTube to take them down.  ¶  "There's a very strong argument that the re-use of well-known chords in the sequence the instructor played them would be a violation of the copyright," Palfrey says. ...

Link:  NPR.  Be sure to listen to the audio version of this rather than just reading the transcript.  --Dennis

The Digital Horizon

In spite of its geographically constrained name, the Iowa DTV Symposium is a very good national meeting, sponsored by Iowa Public Television, that happens each fall in Des Moines.  This year, IPTV asked Todd Mundt, himself a very savvy "newmediaite," to interview several of the speakers.  They've just posted seven of these (about a half hour each, Real and downloadable M4V formats) online.  The interviews feature yours truly; Michael Geoghegan, author of Podcasting Solutions: The  Complete Guide to Podcasting; Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University; Maryann Baldwin, director, Magid Media Futures; James Pence, marketing director, Teacher's Domain, WGBH; Sara Linner, executive producer of new media, Nebraska public television; and change consultant Rob Paterson.  Link:  Iowa PTV.

The PowerPoint for my session at this meeting, "Opening the Gate: Expanding Local Service Through Online Content Partnerships," is now posted to the essays and presentations section of this weblog (left).   --Dennis

Google OpenCourseWare

Open courseware is a movement in higher education to make course materials available to any interested party.  The best known one is the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative, with over 1,200 courses covered, but there are others in the U.S. and elsewhere.  David Wiley of OpenContent has put together a Google OCW page where you can do metasearches across all of them.  Thanks to Joseph Hart at the EduResources Weblog for the tip.  --Dennis

Larry Grossman on Digital Opportunity Investment Trust

Larry Grossman is a former president of PBS and also had a long distinguished career in commercial television.  He's co-chair (with former FCC chair Newton Minnow) of the Digital Promise Project, which is sponsoring an initiative to create a Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DO IT) that would utilize modern digital distribution technologies to support the public good.  The initiative has been around awhile, so if you're wondering what they've been up to lately (or have never heard of it), check out a speech that Grossman gave a few days ago at the University of Nebraska.  Link:  Digital Promise [pdf].  --Dennis