end of book!

The thing I liked best about the remainder of the book, was the way it defined and discussed many of the key concepts we have learned in this class. Things such as, podcasts, video blogs, tags, and RSS feeds were all mentioned. It is interesting, because they were all just coming into existence when this was written, and only a few people such as Scoble were using them. And now, people like me, who had never even heard of any of them, are actually learning how to use them.

I also liked the way he defined RSS feeds better than the definition I found a few weeks ago. One point he made was the fact that the information you receive is only the information that you want, unlike email subscription, where your information is often passed on to third parties. He says, “RSS empowers the receiver, not the sender, to decide when the subscription will be terminated.” I like the idea that RSS “recalibrates the playing field, changing the tilt from the company to the user.”

Blog or Die part 4 and 5 (up to 232)

In the first part I like the part “When bad blogs turn good,” it reminds me of this girl mentioned in We the Media by Dan Gillmor that created a blog while she was supposedly dying of cancer but eventually the whole thing turned out to be a hoax. It also proved that nowadays citizens journalists are as good at investigating as journalists. The authors also mentioned the issue of anonymity: How can you have have a real conversation with a character that does not actually exist, or one who might be real but hides his perspective in a cloak of anonymity?
The second part deals with the aspect of subscription and of course not surprisingly rss comes into the discussion. Basically you do not have to go and look for information but it comes to you if you subscribed to receive it. Now rss is not limited to blogs but almost all online media have adopted it so in brief you don’t have to look, the information you want, need comes fromt the sites that you usually like to visit.

May 8, Tuesday Class

Discussion: The Long Tail

Important terms for this conversation:

• Disintermediation: “Cutting out the middleman.”
• The Long Tail: “Products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters.”

Topics of conversation:

• Amazon and the death of the corner bookstore
• iTunes and the death of the music store business
• Craigs List and the death of classified revenue.

Related Commercial Moment
“We have every movie ever made, in every language, any time, night or day,”
“Qwest – Bandwidth – Roy’s Motel Cafe (1999)”.

Places to Go, People to Know:

• The Long Tail Dot Com
• About The Long Tail
• The Long Tail Wired Story
• The Long Tail Book
• Chris Anderson: Wikipedia, Biography

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Final Project
There will be more demo tutorials and we will be discussing the Final Project Assignment
Presentation on getting an RSS feed
I will be doing a demo presentation on getting an RSS Feed using FeedBurner.

Lab
Students will get their own FeedBurner Feeds specific to final. This feed needs to be posted to the class blog. The balance of the class will be devoted to accomplishing these tasks.

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Due This Day:

Put a picture of yourself on your server space
This picture needs to be 300 pixels x 300 pixels. If you were unable to get this posted, bring it to class and we will post it in class!

Blog Post about Your Final Project
This isour first media entry on your Blogger Blog. A link to it should also be on your class blog. This also requires a photo to be posted on your blogger blog for the link to your post, no wider than 375 pixels. If you were unable to get this posted, bring it to class and we will post it in class!

Blog Post about Reading Assignment
Up through page 237 (the end) of Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel.

Due Tuesday May 1, 2007

Blog Post about Your Final Project
The link to your Blogger Blog.

Blog Post about Reading Assignment
Up through page 208 of Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel.

PodTech: Building great sites with Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

About Dreamweaver CS3
This is great for web developers, or those who want to be:

If you create web pages for education institutions and are as concerned as all of us are about accessibility and 508 compliance, in short, you have got to check this out. In this Scoble Show interview Robert Scoble talks with Kenneth Berger, Adobe’s Product Manager for Dreamweaver CS3. Scoble and Berger talk about many of the new features of the new CS3 version of Dreamweaver, including accessibility compliance. There are some great new tools here!

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/04/PID_010899/Podtech_Adobe_CS3_Dreamweaver.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1445/building-great-sites-with-adobe-dreamweaver-cs3-edition-ships-today&totalTime=2075000&breadcrumb=7963fbf3-da11-486f-9a4f-2bef356ebbae]

naked conversations

One thing I liked in this weeks reading, was the chapter on the way blogs affect other parts of the world, and the story of how quickly they can spread information. Le Meur is one of Europe’s best-known bloggers, so when he wrote an open letter to Leclerc, a prominent businessman, in one of his blogs, he hoped Leclerc would somehow receive the message. The speed at which this information reached its’ target audience was pretty amazing. As the book states, “Less than 48 hours after panning one of France’s most influential luminaries, Le Meur found himself sitting across from him in the latter’s executive office.”

I also found it interesting that the amount of bloggers in a country is not proportional to the population. In fact, it has more to do with culture than anything, as more conservative and reserved countries have fewer bloggers than those such as America and France, who encourage society to speak openly and freely. It seems countries that fail to see the importance of blogging are only hurting themselves. The numbers clearly show how businesses in Japan have used blogs to increase sales and reach new markets.

Blog or Die part 3 (up to 146)

The chapter about Public Relations was quite interesting. I never knew that PR had such a bad reputation, but I do agree that they handle the truth a little different than journalists or bloggers.etc. And it’s not an euphemism to say that they lie constantly. I think PR simply say things the way they see it, which is often biased I might add but aren’t they supposed to be anyway? I also find it interesting that the authors see two schools of PR today (command and control/listen and participate).
The next chapter talks about the blogosphere in other countries. I was surprised to learn that Germany had such a low number of bloggers while France’s prominent blogosphere is pretty understandable. Amid presidential elections, blogs must be all over the Internet accross the Atlantic.
I like the part in the following chapter about who should or should not blog. I think everybody should be able to blog or rant for that matter!

Due Tuesday: April 24, 2007

Blog post about your final project topic
What your podcast channel will be about in your own words.

Blog post about reading assignment
Up through page 146 of Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel.

Blog or die part 2

This book is really captivating. the second part mostly revolves around the impact of blogs for small companies. Chapter five is mostly about these small businesses which used blogs and blogging to be out there.
The most important point maybe is that blogging involve a minimum of interest and companies have to be present bloggingly speaking.
Again the cluetrain manifesto seems to be an inspiration for Scoble and Israel but Naked is more direct and shows more energy, and the style is vivid.

Tuesday class; April 17, 2007

Jeremy had to cancel again:

JMC163 Film Fest Wrap Up
Completion of Video Post Midterm Assignment Presentations

One more review of “what is a video blog?”

RSS the next step:
Introduction to Podcasting

Presentation
I will be doing a PowerPoint presentation on Podcasting.

Book Discussion and Reading Assignment
We will be discussing the reading assignment. Up through page 97 due today of Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel. We will also discuss the follow up assignment, 99 – 146.

On The Horizon
Your Podcast Final Project Assignment. Grading info. Second Life???

Lab
RSS 101; RSS assignment.
Go to and register with NewsGator OnLine. Search for feeds, subscribe to them.