Microsoft wins key standards battle

The Office Open XML code used by Microsoft to enable content exchange among different software - thus facilitating the storage and future use of documents - has become an international standard after months of controversial negotiations.

Global or Local?::Africa's Social Media Conundrum

Mark Glaser is traveling this week, but we’re happy to have Sokari Ekine filling in as a special guest blogger. Ekine started the award-winning Black Looks blog in 2004, and covers challenging issues such as gender, sexuality and racism. Glaser will return to the blog next Monday.

“Web 2.0 [is] a venture capitalist’s paradise where investors pocket the value produced by unpaid users, ride on the technical innovations of the free software movement and kill off the decentralizing potential of peer-to-peer production.”

Reading the quote above you get the feeling we are being seriously ripped off but still we all — well a good percentage of the world’s cyber addicts — continue to spend our days on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and all the copies from all corners of the globe including Africa.

Evolution of African Blogs::How Bloggers Covered Kenya Violence, Deal with Racism, Sexism

Mark Glaser is traveling this week, but we’re happy to have Sokari Ekine filling in as a special guest blogger. Ekine started the award-winning Black Looks blog in 2004, and covers challenging issues such as gender, sexuality and racism. Glaser will return to the blog next

Monday.

 

found in Social Networks Around The World

Microsoft building political blog aggregator

Microsoft is building a new site called “Blews” that scans the blogs to determine what are the hottest news stories. …

Nine Ways to Build Your Own Social Network

Here are reviews of nine white label social networking …

State of the news media online 2008

The audience for online news is growing, but news sites are not growing in advertising revenue as quickly as other types of Websites, according to the annual State of the News Media report. …

BBC releases social networking guidelines

The BBC has published two new guidance notes about the use of social networking sites. …

Arkansas State Talk::The New Rules of Media

Last week, I had the honor of giving a speech at Arkansas State University, as part of their Lecture & Concert series — at least, once I made it through the mechanical mayhem of American Airlines cancelling dozens of flights the same day I flew out. I also got to address a few classes in the College of Communications there, and meet with students who put together the school newspaper.

Demystifying Wikipedia::How to Be a Model Wikipedia Contributor

Wikipedia — like Google or CNN — is a name we recognize immediately when mentioned in conversation. The collaborative online encyclopedia currently ranks 8th on the Alexa list of top web destinations. Ask anyone sitting in front of a computer to find information for you on any topic. While most might turn first to Google, many others will turn to Wikipedia. It seems there is an entry for everything on Wikipedia and almost every one of my own burning questions have been answered by a quick consultation there. I’ve even said here that I would feel somewhat impaired in my daily tasks without Wikipedia.

 

 

MobileShift::The Blessing and Curse of the iPod Touch

Here at MediaShift, we have had some less than perfect experiences with mobile devices and the Internet. Earlier this year, Mark wrote a manifesto about what would make for a smarter smartphone. And last summer I grumbled about the bad time I was having with my new smartphone. The Treo 680 was under-delivering in the one area that had convinced me to purchase the phone in the first place: surfing the web.

CIA enlists Google's help for spy work US intelligence agencies are using Google's technology to help its agents share information about their suspects

 

First Monday's Strange Article

Michael Zimmer of the Information Society Project at Yale Law has put together an interesting collection of pieces in the most recent edition of First Monday. The articles generally hit on some of my favorite topics, subjectivity, control, and surveillance in new media networks. I was a little disappointed by one of them, however. Not so much because it was wrong any any particular issue, but more because the author made all the right assumptions, but used out of date or out of place examples to make his point.

Tracking Data And The Importance Of A-Signifying Semiotics

The stars are not aligning for my blogging habits. I've caught a cold after returning from SXSW. One of these days I'll be able to put up another real entry, but today I only have a string of thematically connected links.

Read these in order and pay special attention to the third. Together they form what might be a typical Swarming Media entry.

2008 April Fool's Day Jokes

In april+fools+jokes

It's April 1st again and that means there will be stupid pranks, fake news and lots of links that turn out to be RickRolls. Many people are annoyed because April 1st has become overdone on the Internet. There is a lot of truth to this. It can be difficult to determine what is real and what is not. There are also a lot of jokes that suck - but it is only one day and it will be over soon. Below are a few Internet April Fool's Day highlights - both good and bad. If you want a longer list check out Wikipedia's exhausting list of April 1st jokes.

Tactic: Is Not Strategy

So far I have been writing about the tactics of digital activism without explicitly stating what a “tactic” is. However, a recent e-mail from a DigiActive team member showed me that in fact the definition of what a tactic is - and how it is different from strategy - is not clear. The purpose of this post is to clarify that critical difference between tactics and strategy and how they relate to digital activism.

When explaining the difference between tactics and strategy, I find an analysis of the roots of the two words extremely helpful. Strategy comes from the Greek work “strategos” meaning “general.” Tactic comes from the Greek work “taktikas” meaning “foot soldier”.

As you can see from the image below, the strategy (general) guides the tactics (foot soldiers) within an activist campaign. Tactics are the actions which allow you to achieve your strategic goal.

Littler Big Box::Can Electronics Stores Evolve in the Digital Age?

There’s something almost laughable about shopping for digital cameras or television sets at typical big-box stores such as Target, Circuit City or Best Buy. You are usually greeted by row after row of devices, with very little explanation of how they are different — perhaps with a few bullet points on a tag.