When not working on finishing my PhD and teaching online journalism at City University I am kept very busy in my role as Director, Creative Industries for Clarity Capital. This involves recommending investments in the creative industries and developing web 1.0-2.0 strategies and sites for Clarity and investee companies. All of the design and development work is done through my company Smoothmedia. Clarity Capital has offices in Canada, Africa and the UK and a range of exciting and successful investments in diverse industries.
Working with Clarity Capital Executive Director Allan Dolan on the cutting edge of corporate web development we actively participate in the ongoing Internet revolution impacting operations, marketing and communications.
So far we have developed the following sites:
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Clarity Capital
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Football Sociology
It is a great pleasure to sit in the Emirates and watch Arsene Wenger's Red Army play Total Voetbal. But for the sociologist the culture around the beautiful game can also be a goldmine of sociological insight and investigation.
For example, the unexpected and rapid departure of Jose Mourinho as manager from Chelsea to be replaced by relative novice Avram Grant. It was fascinating to see the initial press reaction and comment mania in the blogosphere. One particular exchange of particular interest to media ethics and sociology featured the Times Chief Football Correspondent Martin Samuel, the Times editorial staff and their online newspaper readers.
Let me explain. On 19 September, 2007 Chelsea held a series of talks that resulted in the replacement of Mourinho with Grant. On 20 September Samuel wrote a column for the Times that appeared in the daily edition and online. This moment was a massive one for football writers across the country and few are as influential as Samuel. Wenger famously said that Mourinho needed to do more entertaining on the pitch and less in the press room. An icon of the game was leaving and Samuel chose this moment to expound on a particular theory.
"There is no doubt that these ties are strong and, with Abramovich as owner, Grant as manager and Zahavi a trusted confidant of the pair, Chelsea are not so much Russian these days as kosher." (Samuel, Avram Grant appointment makes Chelsea no more than rich man’s plaything, Times).
On the evening of the 19th it was also very interesting to see how few online publications responded within half an hour to the news that Mourinho was on the way out. TV and radio were all over the story but the sleeping administrators of vaunted 24-7-365 online sites remained largely out of view. When Samuel's story went live on the Times site an initial well articulated reader comment was published by "David Silver" along the lines of "... in speaking with others and reading this story on the train we find it the most anti-semitic piece of writing in a major UK newspaper in recent memory".
To understand how this comment got there it is important to note that the Times' online editors review each potential comment posted to the site for approval. So this comment had passed the editorial gatekeeper for the online version of the newspaper. It was shortly followed by a response post by Koldo, Galway, Ireland: "... can in europe, in 2007, a newspaper have an opinion and a comment on israel and its citizen that it is not consider (sic) antisemitic". In typical dualistic fashion for online comments the debate raged on in the form of those claiming anti-semitism and those denying the charge. Yes it is, No it's not ... Yes it is, No it's not ... that kind of thing.
This is where it gets really interesting. Logging in to the story 15 hours later that evening the comment from Silver was deleted, leaving Koldo's response dangling as the first comment on the post, part of an online conversation now interrupted by the editorial staff at the Times. In fact several of the comments claiming anti-semitism in the article were deleted. For a reader arriving at this time, or anytime after, the comments now read very strangely as ... not it's not, no it's not, no it's not, etc. The readily apparent question at this point is who on earth is saying it is?? The remaining fragments of comment make up not so much a conversation as a bunch of censored letters from a warzone.
It is apparent that someone approved the comments, someone advised deletion of the comments, and readers (and history) are left with the remains. An email query to the Times editorial staff asking why the comments were deleted went unanswered. So what about the ethics of deleting a standards meeting comment posted to the public record?
In order to analyse the situation it was first necessary to get a copy of an archived page from the Times that contained the original post. Many Internet users are not yet aware that this facility is available through use of the Wayback Machine that keeps a daily archive of every indexed web page on the Internet.
Or at least that is what I thought. In trying to access a Times archived page from the 19th the software informed that the Times was blocking access to the Wayback automated archiver. Debate on the impact of the Wayback Machine on copyright and intellectual property has been going on since its inception. There have been several attempts to use archived pages from the Wayback Machine in legal cases as evidence and this has also been cited as justification for blocking it. But I had never actually encountered a mainstream media publication that took this approach, let alone one with a long-standing claim as Britain's "newspaper of record".
In the weeks following Grant's appointment Chelsea executives spoke out about a need to stop anti-Jewish chants at games, insisting the club would not tolerate such actions "whether in written correspondence, on the chat pages, on posters or banners or through singing and chanting". Jewish publications ran several stories warning of potential racism. Samuel - who reportedly has Jewish ancestors (if it matters) - wrote another column, this time insisting that Grant's hiring had nothing to do with his faith but was instead just a typical old boys club act. Samuel writes: "Chelsea believe that much of the negative reaction to the appointment of Grant is suspect, but that which is tainted by prejudice can easily be identified and acted upon or ignored, and the rest does not deserve to be disparaged so glibly". Would that be glibly as in accepting comments from your readers into the public domain, subsequently deleting these comments, offering no explanation for the actions and ignoring further public queries for clarity on the process?
So if a tree falls in the internet forest with no one to hear it and it is later dragged away and all evidence of its existence erased, does it make a sound?
For example, the unexpected and rapid departure of Jose Mourinho as manager from Chelsea to be replaced by relative novice Avram Grant. It was fascinating to see the initial press reaction and comment mania in the blogosphere. One particular exchange of particular interest to media ethics and sociology featured the Times Chief Football Correspondent Martin Samuel, the Times editorial staff and their online newspaper readers.
Let me explain. On 19 September, 2007 Chelsea held a series of talks that resulted in the replacement of Mourinho with Grant. On 20 September Samuel wrote a column for the Times that appeared in the daily edition and online. This moment was a massive one for football writers across the country and few are as influential as Samuel. Wenger famously said that Mourinho needed to do more entertaining on the pitch and less in the press room. An icon of the game was leaving and Samuel chose this moment to expound on a particular theory.
"There is no doubt that these ties are strong and, with Abramovich as owner, Grant as manager and Zahavi a trusted confidant of the pair, Chelsea are not so much Russian these days as kosher." (Samuel, Avram Grant appointment makes Chelsea no more than rich man’s plaything, Times).
On the evening of the 19th it was also very interesting to see how few online publications responded within half an hour to the news that Mourinho was on the way out. TV and radio were all over the story but the sleeping administrators of vaunted 24-7-365 online sites remained largely out of view. When Samuel's story went live on the Times site an initial well articulated reader comment was published by "David Silver" along the lines of "... in speaking with others and reading this story on the train we find it the most anti-semitic piece of writing in a major UK newspaper in recent memory".
To understand how this comment got there it is important to note that the Times' online editors review each potential comment posted to the site for approval. So this comment had passed the editorial gatekeeper for the online version of the newspaper. It was shortly followed by a response post by Koldo, Galway, Ireland: "... can in europe, in 2007, a newspaper have an opinion and a comment on israel and its citizen that it is not consider (sic) antisemitic". In typical dualistic fashion for online comments the debate raged on in the form of those claiming anti-semitism and those denying the charge. Yes it is, No it's not ... Yes it is, No it's not ... that kind of thing.
This is where it gets really interesting. Logging in to the story 15 hours later that evening the comment from Silver was deleted, leaving Koldo's response dangling as the first comment on the post, part of an online conversation now interrupted by the editorial staff at the Times. In fact several of the comments claiming anti-semitism in the article were deleted. For a reader arriving at this time, or anytime after, the comments now read very strangely as ... not it's not, no it's not, no it's not, etc. The readily apparent question at this point is who on earth is saying it is?? The remaining fragments of comment make up not so much a conversation as a bunch of censored letters from a warzone.
It is apparent that someone approved the comments, someone advised deletion of the comments, and readers (and history) are left with the remains. An email query to the Times editorial staff asking why the comments were deleted went unanswered. So what about the ethics of deleting a standards meeting comment posted to the public record?
In order to analyse the situation it was first necessary to get a copy of an archived page from the Times that contained the original post. Many Internet users are not yet aware that this facility is available through use of the Wayback Machine that keeps a daily archive of every indexed web page on the Internet.
Or at least that is what I thought. In trying to access a Times archived page from the 19th the software informed that the Times was blocking access to the Wayback automated archiver. Debate on the impact of the Wayback Machine on copyright and intellectual property has been going on since its inception. There have been several attempts to use archived pages from the Wayback Machine in legal cases as evidence and this has also been cited as justification for blocking it. But I had never actually encountered a mainstream media publication that took this approach, let alone one with a long-standing claim as Britain's "newspaper of record".
In the weeks following Grant's appointment Chelsea executives spoke out about a need to stop anti-Jewish chants at games, insisting the club would not tolerate such actions "whether in written correspondence, on the chat pages, on posters or banners or through singing and chanting". Jewish publications ran several stories warning of potential racism. Samuel - who reportedly has Jewish ancestors (if it matters) - wrote another column, this time insisting that Grant's hiring had nothing to do with his faith but was instead just a typical old boys club act. Samuel writes: "Chelsea believe that much of the negative reaction to the appointment of Grant is suspect, but that which is tainted by prejudice can easily be identified and acted upon or ignored, and the rest does not deserve to be disparaged so glibly". Would that be glibly as in accepting comments from your readers into the public domain, subsequently deleting these comments, offering no explanation for the actions and ignoring further public queries for clarity on the process?
So if a tree falls in the internet forest with no one to hear it and it is later dragged away and all evidence of its existence erased, does it make a sound?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Blogger Hacks
Blogger Beta is a minor upgrade for Blogger users who have their own domain and do not use the hosted option. But thankfully the software has been around long enough now that hacks have been created for virtually any missing functionality. The following is a round-up of the ones that are used on this site. All are free and most can be easily modified.
- In order to get Labels to appear on the right navigation column I followed the steps documented in the Blogger Guide to FTP Labels
- Comment functionality in Blogger is a bit clunky. Follow this guide to integrating comments using Blogkomm. This is one of the most challenging hacks to implement but worth it if you make the effort.
- For search engine optimisation I reversed the order of the page titles on permalink pages using this hack from Freshblog. So instead of all my page titles leading with the blog name, the search engine friendly titles start with the title of the story.
- Post titles are clickable on the home page of the blog thanks to another Freshblog beauty.
- My list of archive months was getting a bit lengthy and taking up unecessary space in the right navigation so it was useful to implement this drop-down-menu solution
- Thanks to 3spots and Freshblog for the very cool Popmarks button you see on the bottom of each post that allows users to bookmark or subsribe easily to RSS without all the clutter of buttons for the various services. It took a bit to customise it to my needs but it is easy to customise what services are available through it so I think it will really come in handy in the future.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Cynical Capitalism
One of the most annoying things about living in a capitalist culture of consumption is the way third rate shysters can follow a successful and legal path to material success. Of course everyone loves a good spammer, filling his pockets and your inbox with trash that earns on 5 in a million. That's a sweet five for his flourishing trade. The larger question is why this spamming is a successful social and economic act. But this is not strictly an internet issue.
Television viewers almost have to shield your eyes to watch the new "quiz shows" dominating the late night UK digital airwaves. These guys take it to a whole new level by asking questions like: "Name 13 items commonly found in women's handbags". Viewers respond in mass at 79p per minute on shows like The Mint and Quizmania but miss obvious answers like balaclava and raw/Rawlplugs (trade name for plugs that allow screws to be fitted into masonry walls) . But of course only a portion of viewers can get through the jammed phone lines and most of the money is made from those who don't even get a chance to compete.
Television viewers almost have to shield your eyes to watch the new "quiz shows" dominating the late night UK digital airwaves. These guys take it to a whole new level by asking questions like: "Name 13 items commonly found in women's handbags". Viewers respond in mass at 79p per minute on shows like The Mint and Quizmania but miss obvious answers like balaclava and raw/Rawlplugs (trade name for plugs that allow screws to be fitted into masonry walls) . But of course only a portion of viewers can get through the jammed phone lines and most of the money is made from those who don't even get a chance to compete.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Blogger Guide to FTP Labels
It is odd what gets you inspired to blog again ... and again ... and again. Everyone knows that the trick to succesful blogging is to write quality posts frequently. But sometimes it is just not interesting enough to participate regularly and the Blogger revamp addresses a key issue in opening up the imagination of 21st century bloggers.
Tags have long been an innovative form of taxonomy. Let the users define the terms is a sharp turn from the controlled thesaurus prevalant in so much corporate software. But the successes of Wikipedia and Technorati amoung others has opened up a new set of terms for meta (information about information) tags and descriptors.
In Blogger what is really cool about the idea is that authors can add tags to content and have these "Labels" (categories or tags in disguise depending on your perspective) appear on the site, providing visitors with a crucial piece of access and navigation. Users of tools like Movable Type will be familiar with the ability to create categories for posts but allowing for unlimited terms to describe content extends this concept further.
The following is a guide for how to insert a list of Blogger Labels on every web page of your FTP hosted Blogger blog (like on the right side of this blog under the heading 'Labels'). This interests those who use their own domain names as opposed to the blogspot.... urls of hosted Blogger. The new GUI for Blogger is largely only available to clients with the hosting solution but workarounds are very easy to create for those with domain names.
If you want to add Labels to your externally hosted Blogger blog follow these steps:
Tags have long been an innovative form of taxonomy. Let the users define the terms is a sharp turn from the controlled thesaurus prevalant in so much corporate software. But the successes of Wikipedia and Technorati amoung others has opened up a new set of terms for meta (information about information) tags and descriptors.
In Blogger what is really cool about the idea is that authors can add tags to content and have these "Labels" (categories or tags in disguise depending on your perspective) appear on the site, providing visitors with a crucial piece of access and navigation. Users of tools like Movable Type will be familiar with the ability to create categories for posts but allowing for unlimited terms to describe content extends this concept further.
The following is a guide for how to insert a list of Blogger Labels on every web page of your FTP hosted Blogger blog (like on the right side of this blog under the heading 'Labels'). This interests those who use their own domain names as opposed to the blogspot.... urls of hosted Blogger. The new GUI for Blogger is largely only available to clients with the hosting solution but workarounds are very easy to create for those with domain names.
If you want to add Labels to your externally hosted Blogger blog follow these steps:
- Add a few Labels to blog posts. Just do a couple as these will be test labels. You can add labels at the bottom of each post. Seperate labels with commas, don't use spaces between words (underscores instead) but try and limit yourself to one word labels.
- Background Research. There are a couple of key blog posts on the Web for this idea at this time of writing. The first comes from David Nicholson (Where Magic Lives) in the form of a guide on how to include a "Label Cloud" of Labels where most frequently applied terms appear biggest and least referred smallest. The code for this example comes from a customized install of an exchange between David and a user in the comments at the bottom of the post. Meanwhile Andrew Huey was working on his own solution to getting labels on a left or right navigation as a PHP include. Another Good Source is Freshblog that lists some of the latest hacks available to hosted and unhosted alike.
- It is important to note if your blog posts use an .html extension (or other) or a .php extension. If you use a .html extension you must add the following code to your .htaccess file (ask your host if you don't know where this file is).
AddType application/x-httpd-php .html
If you are using a .php extnsion you don't need to add this info to the .htaccess file. - Open up Notepad or another text editor. Copy and Paste the following code into Notepad and read step 3.
<ul class="labels">
<?php
define('PREFIX', 'url prefix');
define('SEARCH_DIR',
'absolute path to Labels folder');
define('THIS_FILE', 'cloud.php');
if(file_exists(SEARCH_DIR.'_cloud_include_cache.html') &&
filemtime(SEARCH_DIR.'_cloud_include_cache.html')>(time()-(60*60)))
echo file_get_contents(SEARCH_DIR.'_cloud_include_cache.html');
else
{
$output = '';
$files = array();
$dir = opendir(SEARCH_DIR);
while($file = readdir($dir))
if($file != '.' && $file != '..' && $file != THIS_FILE &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;& $file != CACHE_FILE)
{
$files[] = $file;
}
closedir($dir);
asort($files);
foreach($files as $name)
$output .= "<li><span style='color:#990000'>----{-</span><span class='flower'></span> <a href='".PREFIX.
htmlentities($name)."'>".
htmlentities(str_replace('.php','',$name))."</a></li> ";
echo $output;
$fp = fopen(SEARCH_DIR.'_cloud_include_cache.html','w');
fwrite($fp, $output);
fclose($fp);
}
?>
</ul> - You must customize this code for your Blogger FTP weblog. Customize the text url prefix with your own web page prefix for where the labels folder is on your server (eg. www.yourdomain.com/blog/labels would equal 'blog/labels'). Next put the absolute web path to your labels folder where the text in place of absolute path to Labels folder(eg' /www/www/...'). If you use a .html (or other extension) replace the .php code with your extension (eg '.html'). Consult your ISP or support documentation if you don't know this path. Optional is also to replace the color or style options on the appearance of the Labels list in your left or right column.
- Save the file as labels.php and FTP into a root blog directory on your server.
- Customize Template. Less effort here. Insert the following code in the right or left column of your blogger template as desired and read step 6.
<h2 class="sidebar-title">Labels</h2>
<p><?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."location of .php file"); ?></p> - Customize the formatting in the h2 class as required. You need to leave the second and third line but replace location of .php file with your location (eg. blog/labels.php).
- Test the output by publishing. You should see a list of Labels in Blogger. Other things to keep in mind are that you can delete the file (_cloud_include_cache.html) that will appear in your label directory if you want to see changes on your blog Labels list. This file is automatically created to make it so users will not reload the list everytime they visit the web page. The script is very easy on your server and only checks for changes every 60 minutes unless you delete the cache file.
For other interesting Blogger functionality Check out the Beautiful Beat guide to getting recent post functionality on Blogger FTP blogs and the Blogger comments guide (Blogkomm) on this site. Phydeaux3 (followed up by WebWeaver's World) offers an elegant Label Cloud for any Layouts Compatible Templates (blogspot. ... domains).
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Bush Sings U2
For years pundits and analysts have been predicting that video will experience the same treatment as text and audio on the Internet. Social networking sites will dominate, copyrights will be infringed relentlessly, and memes will spread like wildfire. Everyday is seems a new site pops up offering users the web-based ability to upload and rate videos or embed code on sites to share. Some examples are youtube, castpost, clipshack, googlevideo, dailymotion, grouper, ourmedia, revver, vimeo, and vsocial.
In my travels across these sites I watched a lot of fun short clips. There is something for everyone and some of the originality in remixing is really creative. Like this video of George Bush mixed to show him singing U2's epic Sunday Bloody Sunday.
In my travels across these sites I watched a lot of fun short clips. There is something for everyone and some of the originality in remixing is really creative. Like this video of George Bush mixed to show him singing U2's epic Sunday Bloody Sunday.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Crossing the Analog Divide
Most of the hype about new projects on the Internet focuses on integrating new technologies or processes into daily life. But there are countless examples, like BookCrossing (or BXing), of how use of the Internet can inject new life into old technology.
If you are not familiar with the phenomena, the premise is fairly straightforward. Person A registers a copy of a book with the BookCrossing website, scribbles the registration number on the inside jacket, and leaves the book in a public place. Person B finds the book, reads it, visits the bookcrossing website to enter the registration number and jots down a journal entry of their experience (eg. where they found it, if they liked it, where they left it). Person B then leaves the book in a public place, Person C finds it and the cycle of sharing continues.
The website was started in 2001 and was inspired by similar initiatives like phototag.org with disposable cameras (Squid goes around the world in 99 days ... view Squid's pictures), and where's willy or george tracking small currency movements. The idea is to release objects into the "wild" like tracking tagged animals or birds and follow movements and associated narratives through the Internet.
Quite sad to see that the book business is as scared as the music industry of change. According to Caroline Michel, publisher of HarperPress: "book publishing as a whole has its very own potential Napster crisis in the growing practice of book crossing". This approach seems especially absurd in the week that pop history is made by the first single to achieve number one on the UK singles chart based solely on computer downloads. It's just another case of a business model coming under threat, not a business.
Fortune and friends of similar literary taste brought me two copies of Tom Robbins' debut Another Roadside Attraction over the past couple years so it seems like a good place to start. It is already registered with a BookCrossing ID so now I just need to decide the best place to introduce one of my favorite texts into the wild Londinium streets. Maybe on one of those benches in the courtyard of St Paul's Cathedral, or on a bar stool in a ragged southeast London pub, in a capsule of the London Eye, or dropped off the Hammersmith Bridge onto a passing fishing trawler. If you happen to stumble upon it, soak up every word of a cracking read, and release it to the wild once more. Abraham Lincoln could just as well have been describing BookCrossing as books when he said: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like".
If you are not familiar with the phenomena, the premise is fairly straightforward. Person A registers a copy of a book with the BookCrossing website, scribbles the registration number on the inside jacket, and leaves the book in a public place. Person B finds the book, reads it, visits the bookcrossing website to enter the registration number and jots down a journal entry of their experience (eg. where they found it, if they liked it, where they left it). Person B then leaves the book in a public place, Person C finds it and the cycle of sharing continues.
The website was started in 2001 and was inspired by similar initiatives like phototag.org with disposable cameras (Squid goes around the world in 99 days ... view Squid's pictures), and where's willy or george tracking small currency movements. The idea is to release objects into the "wild" like tracking tagged animals or birds and follow movements and associated narratives through the Internet.
Quite sad to see that the book business is as scared as the music industry of change. According to Caroline Michel, publisher of HarperPress: "book publishing as a whole has its very own potential Napster crisis in the growing practice of book crossing". This approach seems especially absurd in the week that pop history is made by the first single to achieve number one on the UK singles chart based solely on computer downloads. It's just another case of a business model coming under threat, not a business.
Fortune and friends of similar literary taste brought me two copies of Tom Robbins' debut Another Roadside Attraction over the past couple years so it seems like a good place to start. It is already registered with a BookCrossing ID so now I just need to decide the best place to introduce one of my favorite texts into the wild Londinium streets. Maybe on one of those benches in the courtyard of St Paul's Cathedral, or on a bar stool in a ragged southeast London pub, in a capsule of the London Eye, or dropped off the Hammersmith Bridge onto a passing fishing trawler. If you happen to stumble upon it, soak up every word of a cracking read, and release it to the wild once more. Abraham Lincoln could just as well have been describing BookCrossing as books when he said: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like".
Labels: internet, literature
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Climate Change Experiment
My Toshiba Satellite laptop is a proud new participant in the world's largest ever climate experiment - a full simulation of climate change from 1920 to 2080. The BBC project uses the same distributed computing software from the University of California, Berkeley that drives SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and the World Community Grid, advancing knowledge of human disease. So while you are doing the dishes, eating dinner or having a snooze your computer can be helping find a cure for cancer, spotting ET in the cosmos or predicting if we are all going to one day live in a great big dust bowl.
Basically these projects ask people around the world to sign up to have a small open source client application installed on home computers. This Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) application runs as a screen saver, using the computing power of millions of distributed machines when otherwise not in use. The client software crunches data in a very efficient way. A BOINC project with a single Linux server can provide computing power equivalent to a cluster with tens of thousands of CPUs. There is no limit to the applications of this type of distributed computing and because the project is open source anyone is encouraged to create software on the platform for specific applications.
Unfortunately the climate change project only runs on Linux or Windows XP so Mac users are out of luck if they wanted to take part in this one. But it has an excitingly quick turnaround with the results of the study to be broadcast on the BBC in May. UK viewers can see a television documentary describing the project on February 20, 2006 on BBC4.
Basically these projects ask people around the world to sign up to have a small open source client application installed on home computers. This Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) application runs as a screen saver, using the computing power of millions of distributed machines when otherwise not in use. The client software crunches data in a very efficient way. A BOINC project with a single Linux server can provide computing power equivalent to a cluster with tens of thousands of CPUs. There is no limit to the applications of this type of distributed computing and because the project is open source anyone is encouraged to create software on the platform for specific applications.
Unfortunately the climate change project only runs on Linux or Windows XP so Mac users are out of luck if they wanted to take part in this one. But it has an excitingly quick turnaround with the results of the study to be broadcast on the BBC in May. UK viewers can see a television documentary describing the project on February 20, 2006 on BBC4.
Labels: internet
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Live Sociology
Visit Faces of Deptford photos
Participating in Live Sociology at Goldsmiths College is an inspiring experience. The first workshop focused on photography as a method of sociological representation. The 20 participants from around the UK are a diverse group with lots of good ideas. Phil Mizen, senior lecturer in sociology at Warwick University, joined me in snapping shutters. He even posed for me. We all went out and took photographs for a couple of hours in the afternoon as a form of experimental sociology in southeast London following an inspiring introduction to the topic from Les Back and some practical photography training from Paul Halliday.
For my project I selected Assignment 1 in the workshop suggestions: "Produce a series of portraits of people in Deptford". You can see the results by visiting Faces of Deptford in the Chris Brauer Media Gallery. The topic of the first workshop was "Redesigning the Observer" and you won't need to look further than the steady gazes of the portrait subjects to understand what this means. Who was the observer and who was being observed?
Live Sociology is similar to the London Project we have planned at City University as a study of London people, places and things through journalism. Interestingly this is the same title as a project Paul Halliday has been conducting in photographing London over the past 15 years. What was fantastic about this workshop experience was interacting with the people. The subject of the photograph featured in this post was a very cool guy. Anyone who participated indicated a willingness at the first question but this gentleman was particularly responsive. In cropping and editing I noticed the Jose Morinho ad in the top right corner. My decision to not include any text of words with each photograph was a conscious one. Introducing the photographer's terms of reference for these photos would in my opinion and in this case only further complicate your interpretation.
Labels: internet, london, photography, sociology
Monday, January 09, 2006
Europe and the Internet
From the inventors of the ball-point pen, Rubik's Cube and fundamental properties of computers comes the most innovative creation of all - a 21st century tech-savvy European. While that might be a bit harsh I'll never forget visiting a German relative in 2001 who was head of IT for a major European manufacturing firm but didn't have a PC in the home (the US enjoys more than 70 computers per 100 people - more than twice the rate of EU country averages). While regulatory bodies in the old world have consistently bemoaned the fact that so much of global Internet interests reside in Silicon Valley, it has always been a frustration of North American visitors that Europeans have been so slow to embrace home computing and related tech gadgetry. Enter Hungary.
According to a Nielson/Net Ratings survey of European Internet use, people who log on in Hungary are 10 times more likely than those in Britain to delete web-monitoring files known as "cookies". This surfing awareness tells you a lot about the level of media literacy in a country that has always been technologically optimistic. It also heralds an emerging shift in the technology landscape of Europe, from west to east.
"The assumption that Western Europeans are more technologically savvy than their neighbors to the east was demolished last week with a survey on Internet attitudes in central and eastern Europe," writes Matt Keating in the Media Guardian.
It is a classic case of emerging economies skipping generations of technology and catching up in hyperdrive to more established markets. See China or Africa for non-European examples of this trend now reflected by eastern Europe.
"Although the use of internet cafes is still important, these nations are more willing to adopt mobile technology since fixed-line connections are not as well established," says Alex Burmaster, a European internet analyst at Nielson/Net Ratings.
So this places Lithuania as the most advanced wireless data country in Europe by being most likely to access the web from mobile phones (42%) and PDAs (12%). And more than three quarters of internet users in Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and Latvia read online newspapers. Almost one in three buy less printed newspapers because of online versions but in a warning to overly ambitious Internet revenue models, 77% would prefer to buy a printed newspaper than pay for an online subscription.
Some further country by country highlights:
According to a Nielson/Net Ratings survey of European Internet use, people who log on in Hungary are 10 times more likely than those in Britain to delete web-monitoring files known as "cookies". This surfing awareness tells you a lot about the level of media literacy in a country that has always been technologically optimistic. It also heralds an emerging shift in the technology landscape of Europe, from west to east.
"The assumption that Western Europeans are more technologically savvy than their neighbors to the east was demolished last week with a survey on Internet attitudes in central and eastern Europe," writes Matt Keating in the Media Guardian.
It is a classic case of emerging economies skipping generations of technology and catching up in hyperdrive to more established markets. See China or Africa for non-European examples of this trend now reflected by eastern Europe.
"Although the use of internet cafes is still important, these nations are more willing to adopt mobile technology since fixed-line connections are not as well established," says Alex Burmaster, a European internet analyst at Nielson/Net Ratings.
So this places Lithuania as the most advanced wireless data country in Europe by being most likely to access the web from mobile phones (42%) and PDAs (12%). And more than three quarters of internet users in Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and Latvia read online newspapers. Almost one in three buy less printed newspapers because of online versions but in a warning to overly ambitious Internet revenue models, 77% would prefer to buy a printed newspaper than pay for an online subscription.
Some further country by country highlights:
- Swiss are most likely to search for a job online
- Bulgarians are most likely to read news online
- Italians are most likely to use a mapping service
- Ukrainian surfers are most likely to research family history online
- Less than one third of Poland's population uses the Internet but over the past five years the number has risen almost twice as fast as in Britain
Labels: internet
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Find Work inside Mechanical Turk
Long have doomsday soothsayers predicted a future end of civilization at the hands of machines. Little did they know that as soon as 2005 we humans would be working hard to accelerate the process.
A new service from Amazon, The Mechanical Turk, currently running in BETA, heralds the dawn of a new era when humans work for machines, completing Human Intelligence Tasks (HITS) on behalf of software and developers. Here's how it works.
While computers are very good at tasks like crunching algorithms and processing vast quantities of data in milliseconds, the limits of artificial intelligence are such that some very simple human tasks are nearly impossible for machines to complete. Like for example identifying if there is a school in a photograph, or if the business on the corner is a pizza joint or a strip club (all right that one can sometimes be hard for us as well). That's where we humans can help the machines out. We have the ability to quite easily identify contextual information in pictures and feed it to computers.
I signed up for the Mechanical Turk and it assigned me a number of HITS that included typing the album name of records by looking at pictures of the record sleeves and looking at some photos of streets in Nebraska to determine which one most accurately showed a particular business address. The tasks were extremely simple and monotonous, like stuffing envelopes. But by sending my findings back to the owners of those HITS I enabled them to complete tasks that would have been excessively costly and time consuming for computers to address.
Intriguingly the inspiration behind the name of the online service as quoted on the Amazon site is the invention in 1769 by Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen of a mechanical chess playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced (see also Ajeeb, Mephisto, El Ajedrecista, Deep Blue) :
"A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen's 'Turk' was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet's doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the mechanical Turk: a chess master cleverly concealed inside."
So one can only guess that the analogy is that by humans completing the mundane tasks on the site for which they get paid between $0.02 and $0.03 per HIT we are the chessmasters and the software is the big hairy Turk. Only it seems the other way around. With us grunting and groaning in our furry suits as we repeat actions over and over again and the software chuckles from the controls, itself the chessmaster.
We can imagine how these types of services will impact the developing world where it may make economic sense to load up a room full of computers with workers making $1/day in virtual sweatshop environments, completing the virtual envelope stuffing for crafty and opportunistic slavemasters. Naturally the more HITS humans create accurately the more valuable their contributions become and pay rates nudge fractionally up. You can visit the site to create your own HITS as a developer or sign up to complete them and pay for your PhDs or whatever. Hmmm. If you complete 1,000 HITS a day that's $20. Too bad my tuition is $25,000/year. That's a lot of record covers and non-descript suburban streets. Maybe leave it to the sweatshops.
See also on the Chris Brauer Media Project:
Saturday, June 18, 2005
BlogScholar - academic blogging portal
It is with great pleasure that I announce the launch of BlogScholar (www.blogscholar.com)!
Blogscholar is a brand new non-profit website designed to serve as a community for academic bloggers. It currently includes a directory of academic blogs, news and polls about the challenges and opportunities of academic blogging, and RSS Newsfeeds by topic from the likes of Noam Chmosky, Larry Lessig, and Joi Ito.
Built with Mambo open source software, the community is designed to be shaped by its users. The launch of Blogscholar as a hub of activity for academic blogging precedes the September, 2005 launch of my PhD research portal Netmodern (The Rebirth of the Sociological Imagination).
So visit to see what's happening in the world of academic blogging or sample blogs by academics generally about academic topics. If you are currently a teacher or student set up an account to add your blog to the directory, read/write comments and contribute news.
After six days of strenuous development from the conception of the idea to the implementation of the site this is a quiet launch, posted here on the perimeter of the blogosphere.
I dedicate the launch of this site to my parents, Jorn and Shirley, both educators, who fostered a healthy respect for learning and sharing knowledge in our house even before I can remember. :-)
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Internet empire mauls Star Wars Kid
There are few stories in the brief history of the WWW that better describe the sociological conflict embodied in humanity's interaction with modern media.
If you are not familiar with the story of Quebec teenager Ghyslain (it's like asking if you are familiar with the Internet), a brief synopsis will suffice as there are countless sites out there providing complete histories of his saga. In 2003 a video of him using a golf-ball-retriever as a light saber and making Jedi sounds was released on Kazaa by fellow students, apparently without his consent. Within five days this video was "remixed" to include special effects, sound and graphics. Here you can watch the original, and the remix (files are windows streaming media and windows player is required). Subsequently and with a little less originality he was remixed into Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Kill Bill, Undercover Brother, the Matrix, and even somewhat unconvincingly in Canadian cult classic Strange Brew.
What kind of insight can we glean into the WWW society that with over 12 million people saving the original video Ghyslain is "the most downloaded man on the Internet" (Paris Hilton is the most downloaded woman)?
Well somewhat unsurprisingly it suggests that sex and geekdom are the two big sellers on the Internet. And while the former attracts widespread appeal in the population both on and off line, it is in the latter that the Internet has uniquely provided a vehicle for voice. For although these videos can be seen from bland to mildly amusing and even hilarious it is in the sociological interpretation that the popularity resides. Geeks are a rambunctious bunch at the moment, organizing their own dinner parties, punts, and parties and though some geeks have been self-identifying forever it has never been easier. The speed of change in technology and the benefits and methods of harnessing technical knowledge to promote a lifestyle of choice has made being a geek more desirable than ever.
Maybe that is why this community seems so determined to embrace Ghyslain as one of their own. A unscientific but nonetheless textual analysis of the comments on many of the major posts regarding the Star Wars Kid reveals traditional themes in this regard. Sixty-four per cent of the over 200 posts that are positive about Ghyslain make some reference or similar to how he is "one of us" or that "we were like you" and how cool it is that he has been "embraced" by the geek community.
The only problem is that there is precious little evidence that Ghyslain self-identifies as a geek or is pleased with the attentions of the community. In fact quite the opposite. The only two interviews available with him are a National Post email correspondence shortly after the video was released where he indicates that he "wants his life back" and a transcript of a telephone call that reads like an iPod advertisement with Jish Mukerji of the now defunct Jish.nu who along with Fark and Andy Baio of Waxy.org helped propel Ghyslain's popularity. Baio and Mukerji were later responsible for the campaign to buy Ghyslain an iPod and some Future Shop certificates as a symbol of their allegiance and support. The only problem again is that none of this seems to be driven by any expressed desire by the Quebec teenager. Could anything be more revealing of the lack of regard for his wishes than the lack of questioning in this interview of whether he wanted them to promote his cause (instead ... Do you also read weblogs????). In a French interview with Radio Canada his lawyer (the family sued the other teenagers who put the video up on Kazaa) indicates that the family had pleaded with all media to stop promoting the story and drawing attention to Ghyslain's situation. Is it a big leap to assume that all media applies to online media?
So before the geeks start slapping each other on the back for a job well done getting the boy an iPod, and starting a campaign to get him into Star Wars III (how about over 146,000 signatures???) it should be noted that all of this goodwill may not have been received as such. Despite repeated pleas from Baio for an update including this one just months ago, the silence from Ghyslain and his family speaks volumes.
Perhaps surprisingly the most lucid response to the situation came from Lucasfilm spokeswoman Jeanne Cole: "We are deeply saddened by this current situation and any difficulties this uninvited publicity might be causing Ghyslain and his family. We have no other statement."
Hopefully we will never know whether the publicity avalanche drove Ghyslain into permanent psychiatric care (his parents indicated that he would be under such care for an indefinite amount of time when filing their lawsuit) or if he felt deep gratitude at his fame and has been reveling in it ever since.
The sociological conclusion is that none of this was ever about the Quebec teenager but instead fed the need for the geeks, bloggers, privacy lawyers, guerilla video editors and star wars aficionados to express themselves through his story. All of the rest of it is just bold-faced speculation, unnecessary and uncomplicated and unfortunately Ghyslain has been forced to embody this meme by an excitable audience. It provides unwelcome support for Thomas Hobbes' view of man as naturally selfish hedonist -- "of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself". Important to note that while Hobbes held this view of the world he also saw that men would rebel against recognizing this indication and would often see themselves as outside but observant of this natural law.
If you are not familiar with the story of Quebec teenager Ghyslain (it's like asking if you are familiar with the Internet), a brief synopsis will suffice as there are countless sites out there providing complete histories of his saga. In 2003 a video of him using a golf-ball-retriever as a light saber and making Jedi sounds was released on Kazaa by fellow students, apparently without his consent. Within five days this video was "remixed" to include special effects, sound and graphics. Here you can watch the original, and the remix (files are windows streaming media and windows player is required). Subsequently and with a little less originality he was remixed into Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Kill Bill, Undercover Brother, the Matrix, and even somewhat unconvincingly in Canadian cult classic Strange Brew.
What kind of insight can we glean into the WWW society that with over 12 million people saving the original video Ghyslain is "the most downloaded man on the Internet" (Paris Hilton is the most downloaded woman)?
Well somewhat unsurprisingly it suggests that sex and geekdom are the two big sellers on the Internet. And while the former attracts widespread appeal in the population both on and off line, it is in the latter that the Internet has uniquely provided a vehicle for voice. For although these videos can be seen from bland to mildly amusing and even hilarious it is in the sociological interpretation that the popularity resides. Geeks are a rambunctious bunch at the moment, organizing their own dinner parties, punts, and parties and though some geeks have been self-identifying forever it has never been easier. The speed of change in technology and the benefits and methods of harnessing technical knowledge to promote a lifestyle of choice has made being a geek more desirable than ever.
Maybe that is why this community seems so determined to embrace Ghyslain as one of their own. A unscientific but nonetheless textual analysis of the comments on many of the major posts regarding the Star Wars Kid reveals traditional themes in this regard. Sixty-four per cent of the over 200 posts that are positive about Ghyslain make some reference or similar to how he is "one of us" or that "we were like you" and how cool it is that he has been "embraced" by the geek community.
The only problem is that there is precious little evidence that Ghyslain self-identifies as a geek or is pleased with the attentions of the community. In fact quite the opposite. The only two interviews available with him are a National Post email correspondence shortly after the video was released where he indicates that he "wants his life back" and a transcript of a telephone call that reads like an iPod advertisement with Jish Mukerji of the now defunct Jish.nu who along with Fark and Andy Baio of Waxy.org helped propel Ghyslain's popularity. Baio and Mukerji were later responsible for the campaign to buy Ghyslain an iPod and some Future Shop certificates as a symbol of their allegiance and support. The only problem again is that none of this seems to be driven by any expressed desire by the Quebec teenager. Could anything be more revealing of the lack of regard for his wishes than the lack of questioning in this interview of whether he wanted them to promote his cause (instead ... Do you also read weblogs????). In a French interview with Radio Canada his lawyer (the family sued the other teenagers who put the video up on Kazaa) indicates that the family had pleaded with all media to stop promoting the story and drawing attention to Ghyslain's situation. Is it a big leap to assume that all media applies to online media?
So before the geeks start slapping each other on the back for a job well done getting the boy an iPod, and starting a campaign to get him into Star Wars III (how about over 146,000 signatures???) it should be noted that all of this goodwill may not have been received as such. Despite repeated pleas from Baio for an update including this one just months ago, the silence from Ghyslain and his family speaks volumes.
Perhaps surprisingly the most lucid response to the situation came from Lucasfilm spokeswoman Jeanne Cole: "We are deeply saddened by this current situation and any difficulties this uninvited publicity might be causing Ghyslain and his family. We have no other statement."
Hopefully we will never know whether the publicity avalanche drove Ghyslain into permanent psychiatric care (his parents indicated that he would be under such care for an indefinite amount of time when filing their lawsuit) or if he felt deep gratitude at his fame and has been reveling in it ever since.
The sociological conclusion is that none of this was ever about the Quebec teenager but instead fed the need for the geeks, bloggers, privacy lawyers, guerilla video editors and star wars aficionados to express themselves through his story. All of the rest of it is just bold-faced speculation, unnecessary and uncomplicated and unfortunately Ghyslain has been forced to embody this meme by an excitable audience. It provides unwelcome support for Thomas Hobbes' view of man as naturally selfish hedonist -- "of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself". Important to note that while Hobbes held this view of the world he also saw that men would rebel against recognizing this indication and would often see themselves as outside but observant of this natural law.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Howling out a first podcast
So what's all the fuss about? Podcasting is growing fast and is part of a revolution in mediums, this time stomping on the turf of traditional radio. I built my first podcast by learning from this tutorial on creating the audio feed, this tutorial on creating the rss to make it available and this feed to get the date format right. I validated my rss to know that it was built correctly.
Everything seems fine so I hope you enjoy it. For my first podcast I chose to conduct a reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, one of my favorite poems of all time. There are a variety of ways you can access the file:
Everything seems fine so I hope you enjoy it. For my first podcast I chose to conduct a reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, one of my favorite poems of all time. There are a variety of ways you can access the file:
- Howl - Allen Ginsberg (rss podcast - ipodder or other required)
- Howl - Allen Ginsberg (windows media stream - windows media required)
- Howl - Allen Ginsberg (mp3 - save to your machine and play)
Labels: internet
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Join the Google Sitemap revolution
Just created my first Google sitemap for the Chris Brauer Media Project. You can see it by visiting this .xml page . Google lists the advantages of creating a sitemap as:
This article explores the options around this new Google experiment.
Developers are a frantic bunch at the best of times but the release of a new Google service offering like this one really gets them agitated. For the intrepid blogger or webmaster keen to create a sitemap there are already a number of wizard and generator options available.
You can install and execute the official Google Sitemap Generator on your web server. This requires some configuration, specific server requirements and preferably the ability to run cron jobs if you are on a unix server. I didn't select this option mainly because I wanted to quickly generate a sitemap to test the service and also because my web host doesn't allow cron jobs. I'd need to find a different scripting option to take advantage of the recurring script functions (eg. generate a new sitemap and notify Google every time you change the content on your site)
Considering Google only released sitemaps on June 2nd there is an incredible number of options already available for small software applications and wizards helping generate sitemaps. Of course because it is the wild west early days of testing for the programs there is a wide variety of stability and quality out there.
There are bound to be many more options available to generate sitemaps so I will try for this initial period of this release to keep this list updated. Send me an email at blog at chrisbrauer.com if you know of other available options and I will add them to the list. Otherwise it is useful to keep your eye on Google groups for the latest discussions on sitemaps.
Obviously my initial submission is a test to see how Google handles my sitemap file but in the future it would be useful to find a solution that automatically handles all the necessary script generation and Google notifications each time my site is updated. It's exciting that there might be a straightforward way of ensuring Google indexes all of your content on a timetable of your choosing.
For more recent Chris Brauer Media Project WWW tips see New Media Notes or Blogger/Blogkomm
- You want Google to crawl more of your web pages.
- You want to be able to tell Google when content on your site changes.
This article explores the options around this new Google experiment.
Developers are a frantic bunch at the best of times but the release of a new Google service offering like this one really gets them agitated. For the intrepid blogger or webmaster keen to create a sitemap there are already a number of wizard and generator options available.
You can install and execute the official Google Sitemap Generator on your web server. This requires some configuration, specific server requirements and preferably the ability to run cron jobs if you are on a unix server. I didn't select this option mainly because I wanted to quickly generate a sitemap to test the service and also because my web host doesn't allow cron jobs. I'd need to find a different scripting option to take advantage of the recurring script functions (eg. generate a new sitemap and notify Google every time you change the content on your site)
Considering Google only released sitemaps on June 2nd there is an incredible number of options already available for small software applications and wizards helping generate sitemaps. Of course because it is the wild west early days of testing for the programs there is a wide variety of stability and quality out there.
- I tried a couple of web-based options, here, here, and here, but none of them worked for me, indexing only a fraction of the pages on my www.chrisbrauer.com site in the generated sitemaps;
- If you are into ASP (which I am not) you might want to try out this ASP sitemap generator;
- If you have a weblog powered by Blogger you can use this hack to get your blogger template preview to generate a sitemap. I didn't choose this option because I want my sitemap to reflect all the content on my site (gallery, blog postings, basic html pages, etc);
- There is a Windows-based option apparently coming soon at this site;
- This Perl sitemap generator is just some raw code that hasn't been thoroughly tested but pick your poison;
- And finally the option I chose to use, this PHP Generator from Tobias. I installed it on my web server, changed the permissions on the files (666 for sitemap.xml and 775 for phpsitemap.php), and ran the script. I picked the directories and file types I wanted to exclude from the sitemap output and it generated a script that was subsequently submitted to Google through the script. I followed up at Google and submitted my sitemap.xml file myself. This is useful as you can track status (my submission is currently pending);
There are bound to be many more options available to generate sitemaps so I will try for this initial period of this release to keep this list updated. Send me an email at blog at chrisbrauer.com if you know of other available options and I will add them to the list. Otherwise it is useful to keep your eye on Google groups for the latest discussions on sitemaps.
Obviously my initial submission is a test to see how Google handles my sitemap file but in the future it would be useful to find a solution that automatically handles all the necessary script generation and Google notifications each time my site is updated. It's exciting that there might be a straightforward way of ensuring Google indexes all of your content on a timetable of your choosing.
For more recent Chris Brauer Media Project WWW tips see New Media Notes or Blogger/Blogkomm
Labels: internet
Monday, June 06, 2005
Blogger guide to Blogkomm
There are three main problems for bloggers using Blogger to power their sites:
- a clumsy comment publishing option that forces users into a different interface (hosted by Blogger) and cannot be integrated into existing web pages;
- lack of Trackback function that can track discussion on a topic across the WWW;
- no category options for publishing different feeds into different categories for navigation and syndication (Update: The new version of Blogger incorporates Labels. See the Blogger Guide to Labels on this site for details.)
This 12-step article looks at how you can address the first problem by integrating comments into your blog using Blogkomm. It concentrates on integration with Blogger, but if you have experience with other blog software or comment integration tools please add your thoughts to this post. After all, I need to wear it in!
So let's get started! I stumbled across the possibility of integrating Blogkomm into Blogger when reading Anne Galloway, a fellow Canadian and PhD student in sociology. Like most Bloggers I am acutely aware when someone is using the same software as me and has some as yet undiscovered functionality available. I followed the link on her blog to Blogkomm, and so began the half-day installation journey documented here.
The WWW is full of stories of people's frustrations at trying to install an not comprehensively documented piece of open source code that promises so much if you could only get it to work. Installing Blogkomm can be a frustrating experience as the intrepid blogger looks to piece together resources from across the Internet with the eventual goal of integrating the commenting system into your blog. It is by no means the only commenting system out there for bloggers using software that doesn't deal well with comments but in the end it provided an elegant and effective solution for me. I have listed the steps I eventually took as contribution to future efforts to install and integrate comments into blogs.
- Visit http://www.blogkomm.com/index.php and try out the commenting system by posting a comment on any of developer Holger Kreis' postings. You can see a number in [square brackets] under each post indicating the number of comments. Click on this link to open up comments for that post. If there are no posts this will simply open up the comment authoring form embedded in each post. Also take a whirl around the admin-demo to get a sense for how you can manage and moderate comments (a nice feature of the latest release of Blogkomm offering some protection against comment spam)
- Click on download on the left navigation and follow a link to the appropriate blogkomm_2_3_final file (either .tar.gz or .zip) and 'open'. Unpacked the file includes a folder 'Blogkomm'. Rename this folder something else and upload to the root directory of your weblog (where your index page for your blog is located ... e.g. for me it is http://www.chrisbrauer.com/weblog/
- There are three useful pieces of support on the Blogkomm website. Open up two browser windows (file > new>window) and navigate to the "how-to" section and the .pdf document supporting Blogkomm 2.2. You will need to consult these documents regularly as you make your way through the install. Also useful if the the FAQ. Open a third window and point your browser to the set-up index page http://root_directory/blogkomm_directory/setup/index.php. Follow these steps that are well documented. You can also configure your setup through the conf file in blogkomm/module/conf on your server for those who don't want the wizard functionality. You should arrive at a point where you have a PHP "code snippet" that you are instructed to insert into your Blogger template.
- At this point you can either go into your Blogger settings and 'hide' comments or just let them appear where they normally would in your blog and when you are satisfied with the appearance of the new commenting system remove them. Also note that blogkomm will pick up the email address you have on file for your Blogger profile, NOT the one you have normally associated with your comments if you indicated that you wanted email notification when comments are posted on your site. So change your profile email address to the one you'd like to be notified on. Insert the PHP code snippet into your template in the location you want the [n] of comments to appear. Also insert the following code at the very top of your template:<?php
if (isset($rem)) {
setcookie ("blogKo_name", $comm_name,time()+1209600);
setcookie ("blogKo_mail", $comm_e_mail,time()+1209600);
setcookie ("blogKo_www", $comm_website,time()+1209600);
}
if (!isset($button)) {
$comm_name = $_COOKIE["blogKo_name"];
$comm_e_mail = $_COOKIE["blogKo_mail"];
$comm_website = $_COOKIE["blogKo_www"];
}
session_start();
?>
This will ensure your admin functions work. - First make sure that none of the stylesheet classes being used are already on your site. Copy the stylesheet data from the blogkomm.css file in the blogkomm directory you unpacked and paste it into the head of your Blogger template. This will ensure that the commenting functions will pick up the appropriate styles generated automatically by the script. Save your template
- Go into your Blogger settings and change the name of the index pages for your blog and your archive to a .php extension (eg if your blog is http://yoururl.com/index.html the new address will be http://yoururl.com/index.php). In archive you can change the name of your archive page (default is archive.html) to archive.php. This step will ensure that your PHP code will work on your blog pages to allow the commenting system to function. When you next publish your entire blog the index page will change to index.php and your archive directory pages (eg months/weeks) will also change. But making this change will not change the individual blog pages to .php extension. You do that in STEP 8. Now publish your entire blog. Don't worry about your existing comments as they are still stored and are not impacted by the implementation of Blogkomm.
- If everything is going according to plan you should see [n] underneath your blog postings. If you are using expandable post summaries on your blog front page like I do, you should see [n] under both the post intro and the full story.
- Now for a bit of the unglamorous slog. I'm sure there is a better way to do this step so don't hesitate to suggest but this is how I did it. In order to change the file names of past individual posts from .html to .php the only method I found that worked was to publish each individual post through your Blogger admin. It seems to be a common challenge but the solution proposed in that forum (to turn off archive and turn back on again) didn't work for me. Oh well, it doesn't actually take that long and it gives you a chance to review all your old posts. Once you have published each individually, publish your entire blog again and all the pages should now have a .php extension allowing comments to function on every page.
- This next step is even stinkier. I wasn't sure what to do about the fact that search engines had indexed all of my blog when the file extensions were .html, also links to my individual posts on other blogs and in forums were aimed at pages with a .html extension. If I left it with my pages being overwriten with .php extensions those links would not work. So I created a quick and dirty redirect page. (Click on this link and hit stop on your browser to view source of my redirect page. Just save the file and change the urls to point to your pages by opening it in a text/html editor) I copied the page as the file names of all my individual posts and added .html extensions. So now in each of my archive directories are a filename.php and a filename.html that redirects to filename.php. When search engines visit or someone clicks on links to .html pages they are redirected to the appropriate .php page. It also helps by not losing any Google PageRank your pages might have. But this took about an hour and was a real pain in the ass. It is also helpful to copy the file into all of your directories as archive directories do not automatically generate index pages allowing access to your file structures online. A common redirect file called index.html can be uploaded into every directory (including your renamed Blogkomm directory) to shift users back to the home page of your blog. If you don't do that this or this can happen.
- To transfer over my old comments I again did it manually by turning comments on in Blogger settings and republishing my entire blog. This led to me being able to see the old comments and the new comment submission form at the same time and transfer over existing comments. Again an opportunity to review blog postings if you haven't had enough of yourself already.
- You can make changes to how the comment form and output appear in your blog by adjusting the content of the appropriate style classes in the HEAD of your Blogger template. These are well commented in the code for you to make changes and you can fiddle with div.blogkbox to control the look of the comment form, and div.blogkcomments for control of the look of the comment output. If you are linking to the stylesheet (eg. link href="/weblog/blogkomm/blogkomm.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet") you need to make changes in the blogkomm.css file.
- Optional is to go into your blogger template and insert the code snippet generated from setup/index.php for adding recent comments to your sidebar. You can configure the number of comments and teaser in module/recent_comments_sidebar.php. You can make changes to the style with the style class div.blogkcommentsrecent.
You can decide for yourself whether it is worth your while to integrate the commenting system into your blog. When I installed Blogkomm to my satisfaction I found it to be a big improvement on the default comments. It is so encouraging that one developer can create something of so much use to everyone. It is really our job as users to provide the supporting noise to help with many succesful Blogkomm implementations.
Please comment if you have any tips regarding Blogkomm, commenting software, or further Blogger extensions.
See: Other web tips in New Media Notes on the Chris Brauer Media Project
Thursday, June 02, 2005
The sweatshops of our mind
One can only imagine the horror on the faces of the organizers of the Make Poverty History campaign when they learned that the white armbands at the heart of the campaign were being manufactured in sweatshop conditions in China.
The news came as delicious irony to those who see such organized movements as fruitless but speaks more to the challenges of management than ethics. Of course we can assume the movement would never have used the armbands if they were aware of the conditions at the manufacturing source. But the fact that such a massive undertaken could be duped after all the manufacturing and shipping is complete speaks to the challenges of not just supporting ethical enterprise but practicing it.
Such are the challenges of working within a system to change the system. By the sounds of the explanations it is as simple as not enough research going into the source of the manufacturing in order to save a buck. Classic economics and it is immeasurably difficult to make yourself immune from opportunism when participating in the market.
But sweatshops can come in all shapes and sizes, or not. Wired contributing editor Julian Dibbell wrote about 'virtual sweatshops' for the magazine in January, 2003 but later questioned whether more evidence could be produced of their existence. It seems that by their very nature sweatshops are a dirty secret or an embarrassing mistake for those who employ them. Discreet little enterprises feeding the culture of consumption in rich societies.
Now you see them, now you don't.
The news came as delicious irony to those who see such organized movements as fruitless but speaks more to the challenges of management than ethics. Of course we can assume the movement would never have used the armbands if they were aware of the conditions at the manufacturing source. But the fact that such a massive undertaken could be duped after all the manufacturing and shipping is complete speaks to the challenges of not just supporting ethical enterprise but practicing it.
Such are the challenges of working within a system to change the system. By the sounds of the explanations it is as simple as not enough research going into the source of the manufacturing in order to save a buck. Classic economics and it is immeasurably difficult to make yourself immune from opportunism when participating in the market.
But sweatshops can come in all shapes and sizes, or not. Wired contributing editor Julian Dibbell wrote about 'virtual sweatshops' for the magazine in January, 2003 but later questioned whether more evidence could be produced of their existence. It seems that by their very nature sweatshops are a dirty secret or an embarrassing mistake for those who employ them. Discreet little enterprises feeding the culture of consumption in rich societies.
Now you see them, now you don't.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
New Media Notes - May, 2005
Are you are a Blogger (if not why not start a blog)?
Need to freshen up?
Read this month's installement of Notes to learn how to:
Need to freshen up?
Read this month's installement of Notes to learn how to:
- create customized google maps
- promote your blog, and
- join the Technorati tagging revolution
- Probably the coolest "how-to" on the WWW right now is this guide to hacking Google Maps for your own devious purposes. This is for advanced Internet users with a variety of web skills. Here's a couple of examples where people in Boston and Chicago have used the maps to chart public transport routes and this is an example of how maps can be integrated with real estate.
- Promote your blog. Get it out there and let everyone enjoy your joys and misery. Be part of the collective. This post from the amazing Robin Good is a great place to start your promotional campaign. Learn about the benefits of RSS syndication. This is for anyone with a blog.
- One of the different things about open source development is the way technologies develop. Technorati is part of a growing movement of sites tracking blogs and implementing a tag structure that announces the start of a progress to a semantic web for next-generation Internet. Pump up your blog by embedding technorati tags using this tutorial. Also for anyone with a blog and listed with Technorati you might be interested in adding the beta Technorati searchlet to your site. You can see it in action in the right column of this website.
Those young enough to remember the early 1990s will look back fondly at the "how-to" environment that stimulated the early growth of the World Wide Web (WWW). For programmers the tools necessary to learn about HTML, Java, SMIL were provided on websites that were probably the Google PageRank 9 sites of their day.
Well the WWW has grown up a lot since that time. There are now over 10 million blogs and tracking on Technorati and creating and supporting the tools to 'write' content is the explosive growth sector of the Internet. The Open Source movement is further driving a shift to creativity and collaboration in design and content. The dominant media is shifting with it.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Drupal Open Source Case Study
I am in the midst of developing a community around a 'NetModern' approach to life. More on that later. But for now just a few observations on the software I'm using to develop the collaborative community (blog, events, newsfeeds, etc).
The emergence of Drupal.org as an open source platform for WWW development is a case study for the benefits of open source ideas.
To say that founder Dries Buytaert is humble about the seed he planted is an understatement to rival saying Mozart could compose. From his basic home page to his consistent disregard for opportunities to personally capitalize on his idea, the Belgian authored the PHP-based platform with the open source frontier in mind. And all he wants for Christmas is a new desktop. Maybe one of the millions of Drupal users can oblige. I know I'll be sending him a card this year.
The software is supported for free by an army of English, Russian, Hungarian, Italian, more Italian, and Japanese developers. The code is rewritten three times a day as bugs are eradicated by sophisticated automated workflows and colaborative development environments.
Support for users who adopt the system is supported by users themselves as the community seeks to solve problems that impact (or could potentially impact) them all. Most issues are resolved within 24 hours. The open architecture allows modules to be developed, limited only by the creativity of the developers.
Numerous communities have implemented Drupal on a massive scale (see the seeds of the Howard Dean web mobilization that changed electoral planning irrevocably) and most recently Bluffton Today, the best implementation of citizen journalism on the web, used Drupal to power its community.
The Open Source movement is in the process of shifting space and no industry or pursuit will be immune. It reflects a social ethic where economic gain is only a single element in a broader lifestyle. It makes self evident the benefits of working together to mutual gain.
Labels: internet
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Virtual Puff of Smoke on the Grassy knoll
Lawmakers in Texas appear content to allow development of a "real-time, online, hunting and shooting experience" to continue. If you haven't heard about this project, buckle your seatbelts.
On John Underwood's southwest Texas ranch PCs are lined up on the dusty sunbaked ground, aiming and firing .22 rifles at the whim of a home user, manipulating a computer mouse anywhere in the world. Users of live-shot.com can take part in target practice and soon hunt real animals from home.
Watching this demo (Windows Media .wmv) cannot help but stir up the thoughts on the implications of this technology and a possible new era of real-life video gaming. Control physical devices in the real world through a virtual interface for points and status. Artists like Stelarc have been working for a long time exploring human machine interfaces, demonstrating for example how a human can be controlled over the Internet when mounted in robotic apparatus.
But the simplicity of integrating basically anything into the emerging ICT network means ideas like live-shot can emerge. Funnily Underwood was inspired to create the website when watching another application of this technology -- webcams set up in the wild to allow website users to take photos of passing animals.
"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A light bulb went off in my head," he told Reuters News Agency.
Issues like this get the best out of the blogging community where opinions range from horror to applause. But I guess the real point is that such things are possible, and humanity has a habit of constantly filling our buckets of possibility. Underwood has responded to critics by emphasizing the hunting access this provides to the disabled although he is open to anyone using his system. A bill is making its way through the Texas state assembly to ban hunting by remote control.
It's not likely to exclusively remain the moral or ethical domain of politicians and policy makers to gauge responsibility in the internetworked world. As civilization adjusts to the presence and possibilities of interacting, providing services and facilitating communities in emerging human/computer networks, we will be challenged to address every application. One can imagine a kind of virtual The Most Dangerous Game, where the answer to the latest who shot JR? or JFK? at least according to the conspiracy theorists ... is a Dell 5100 or iMac.
On John Underwood's southwest Texas ranch PCs are lined up on the dusty sunbaked ground, aiming and firing .22 rifles at the whim of a home user, manipulating a computer mouse anywhere in the world. Users of live-shot.com can take part in target practice and soon hunt real animals from home.
Watching this demo (Windows Media .wmv) cannot help but stir up the thoughts on the implications of this technology and a possible new era of real-life video gaming. Control physical devices in the real world through a virtual interface for points and status. Artists like Stelarc have been working for a long time exploring human machine interfaces, demonstrating for example how a human can be controlled over the Internet when mounted in robotic apparatus.
But the simplicity of integrating basically anything into the emerging ICT network means ideas like live-shot can emerge. Funnily Underwood was inspired to create the website when watching another application of this technology -- webcams set up in the wild to allow website users to take photos of passing animals.
"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A light bulb went off in my head," he told Reuters News Agency.
Issues like this get the best out of the blogging community where opinions range from horror to applause. But I guess the real point is that such things are possible, and humanity has a habit of constantly filling our buckets of possibility. Underwood has responded to critics by emphasizing the hunting access this provides to the disabled although he is open to anyone using his system. A bill is making its way through the Texas state assembly to ban hunting by remote control.
It's not likely to exclusively remain the moral or ethical domain of politicians and policy makers to gauge responsibility in the internetworked world. As civilization adjusts to the presence and possibilities of interacting, providing services and facilitating communities in emerging human/computer networks, we will be challenged to address every application. One can imagine a kind of virtual The Most Dangerous Game, where the answer to the latest who shot JR? or JFK? at least according to the conspiracy theorists ... is a Dell 5100 or iMac.