Speaking of Twitter

A post came through the WPA listserv this morning about Twitter. Kathy Fitch posted:
...here are a few of the many available examples
of folks noting, interrogating, formulating, analyzing, resisting, and
attempting to influence Twitter patterns:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Twitter%20Etiquette

http://hivetalk.info/2007/07/28/7-enterprise-uses-for-twitter/

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson ("social
proprioception"--perfect..)

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/twitter-style-guide.aspx

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/03/15/eight-ways-twitter-is-useful-profession
ally/

http://ubernoggin.com/archives/161

http://www.jangro.com/a/2007/01/18/why-i-hate-twitter/

http://tangerinetoad.blogspot.com/2008/03/10-things-i-hate-about-twitter.htm

Twitter only for geeks?

Is Twitter only for geeks? So how much Web 2.0 is really filtering down to the average user? I find my daughter (who is 14) and my students are very engaged with Facebook, and YouTube (as viewers, not as creators) but really not so much with other Web 2.0 technologies. And really, they are not even that engaged with old internet technologies. Many of our students cannot manage an email attachment. (Or a Save As... to use an even older technology.

So Twitter is for geeks? I look at it as excluding me because I don't text message. I am "connected" enough with my email and the chat program that I occasionally use.

I also use Facebook, but I try to not be a resident of a "creepy treehouse"

So how critical is the use of Web 2.0? And how do we make students engage the media that they use instead of just consuming? Questions, questions. And no answers.

New Media... Readings?

Joyce Walker, Textural Textuality

Lev Manovich, Generation Flash

Cheryl Ball, Heading South

They Rule

The Ball and Walker articles are certainly fun to click through, almost like Living Books I am not sure, really, how to respond to those, though. The non-linear method of organization makes it hard for me to "read" and, yet, I am not sure how to "play" them. I didn't feel that the affordances for entering the text were clear. While I enjoyed exploring the sites in the context for this class, I would not explore them if I were looking for either entertainment or information. I am more comfortable with a left-menu or top-menu structure that makes clear where materials are. They actually remind me of really sophisticated Hypercard stacks.

The "They Rule" site on the other hand, I found very interesting and engaging. I only stumbled a tiny bit over the navigation. Once the initial stumble was over, I began tracking connections. Whoever would have guessed that Aramark (who has my university's catering contract) is only three people separated from AutoZone? I wonder if Kevin Bacon is actually listed on the site somewhere?

Will the Internet Fill Up?

Can the Internet fill up? A story in Digital Trends suggests that it might.

A new study by US company Nemertes Research has warned that increased demand for bandwidth could see the Internet running out of capacity by 2010.

With increased amounts of data being transmitted, that could mean severe slowdowns and possibly even Internet gridlock. The study estimates that $137 billion needs to be spent to upgrade networks to make them completely fit for purpose.

“It may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube," the report stated.

That would cause problems, but the longer-term effect could be more drastic. The lack of bandwidth could well stifle the next generation of companies.

And what is causing this band width crisis? You guessed it: new media.

Is this science fiction? A panic attack? Perhaps, but AT&T has issued a similar statement:

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.

They blame video and "user-generated content being uploaded." Now, did I miss something, but didn't the internet start out as "user-generate content"? Granted, the tools are much more accessible now than they used to be. Of course, this may all be a scam to justify "priortizing" content,

Although Cicconi's speech did not explicitly refer to the term "Net neutrality," some audience members tackled him on the issue in a question-and-answer session, asking whether the subtext of his speech was really around prioritizing some kinds of traffic. Cicconi responded by saying he believed government intervention in the Internet was fundamentally wrong.

Net neutrality is the idea that all content should distributed equally, without regard for who generates the content or who is searching for it. In reality, the case seems to be that network users tend to get priority on their own networks. For example, one reason my video for class does not always work, at least according to Bridge Control, is that my signal has to go through multiple vendors. And, say, ComCast gives priority to ComCast users rather than to the SBC/AT&T user waiting to get through.

So how might people priortize in the future? Perhaps according to whether I am shopping at JC Penny or Chico's? Kohl's or Ann Taylor? Maybe priorities are for sale.

Video Players

By opening up video codecs, so that people do not have to have expensive software like Flash really opens up the legit market. More open source choices are always going to be better for the web.

Sun Tackles Video Codec
By Paul Krill, InfoWorld
Saturday, April 12, 2008 1:00 PM PDT

Looking to boost the Web, Sun is working on a royalty-free and open video codec and media system, company officials said Thursday afternoon.

"The main benefit is that you don't have that now and there are markets, key markets like the Web, that are in need for the Web 2.0 experience a foundation of royalty-free for the media element," for audio and video, said Rob Glidden, global alliance manager for TV & Media at Sun.

Detailed at the Sun Labs Open House event in Menlo Park, Calif., the project is called Open Media Stack or the Open Media System. It was derived out of Sun's Open Media Commons initiative for development of royalty-free and open solutions for digital content.

Currently, proprietary solutions are relied on, such as Adobe's Flash or royalty-bearing specifications like H.264, Glidden said.

OMS is a recent project. Asked about the availability of OMS technologies, Glidden said, "Stay tuned. I have no announcements on any commercial implementations or time frame."

OMS video is to be based on H.26x technology.

What is Sun's catch? Granted they have a large number of products for sale including software, storage, systems, and services. But they also distribute StarOffice with documentation and support for a fee and OpenOffice for free. OpenOffice is open source and is compatible with MS Office. NeoOffice, the Open Office port for Mac even opens Office 2007 files. It is truly lovely.

My one minute video

Having no idea where to find a motif to create a visual of, I had decided to find shadows around my parents' home in the Ozarks. Somehow this morphed into filming shadows while my family worked (i.e., tagged and vaccinated) the cattle. Of course, by the time they got started (and I got out there) it was noon. At noon, there are no shadows. So I just started filming. About half way through my tape, I decided to focus on the tools that they used to move, contain, and work the cattle.

I used Adobe Premiere Elements, which provides an image of the material in the scene, so I used the scene view to organize the clips. Because this was so short, and all the material was similar, I am not sure how helpful more planning would have been except as an exercise in planning. For a longer piece, however, more categorizing would certainly be necessary.

I added an audio track, which was not really part of the assignment, but I thought was appropriate. One of the men in the film has a blue grass band. The music is Blackberry Blossom, performed by Big Creek Bluegrass.

Who owns what?

The guy who designed the original storm trooper costumes for Star Wars has been making and selling the costumes to enthusiasts. Lucasfilms is objecting and has filed a cease and desist. So who owns the costume design? As materials stay in the popular culture for longer and longer thanks to home video sales, this becomes more and more of an issue. Disney is usually the one who makes outrageous copyright demands, demanding exclusivity to images and stories they ripped off from the public domain for years past any kind of precedent. Now Lucasfilms is in the mix.

They should just be really, really happy that any fanboys survived the sequels. I know my Star Wars enthusiasm died in the wake of Jar Jar Binks (and was buried deeply after the pastoral ad nauseum romance of Anikin and Amidala).

But seriously, who should own the costume reproductions? The artist who created them or the movie that used them? I tend to favor the creator. I guess I come at this from a journalistic perspective, but it seems that Lucasfilms got first rights, and second serial rights, and even foreign first rights. But it seems as though the author ought to retain some reprint rights.

Makes me long for more Woody Guthries. People who played his music without permission were more likely to be seen as potential friends rather than people who must be stopped at all costs.

Wysocki (again)

Wysocki is making me appreciate Kress.

In "Seriously Visible" Wysocki takes on two chestnuts, two things that "everybody knows." The first is that "hypertextual documents are by their very structure supposed to encourage readers into more active and engaged relationships with texts and thus with each other" (37). The second is that "documents that give more weight to their visual rather than their verbal components ought not to be taken seriously or ought to be relegated to children and the illiterate" (37).

She describes & analyzes two multimedia texts, neither of which I am familiar with. I am not sure, really, what the intended audience or purpose was of the text. Possibly they are art "books" showcasing work by a particular audience? Their interface reminded me of the Living Books that were produced for children, not because they were visual, but because they were so interactive. Living Books make extensive use of sounds and animations when images are clicked. Leap Pad learning systems do something similar, with sounds only, though, not animation.

I wonder if adults typically click around electronic texts in the same way that children do. Perhaps if the goal of the piece is entertainment? Most adults I know typically use computers to seek information or play games, and even the games seem to be more goal driven than randomly exploratory. Children, however, seem more willing to explore. I don't know if that comes from being "digital natives" or if that behavior diminishes with age. That would be an interesting study-- I'll put it on my list.