Stories from March, 2005
NewsILike and Aggregator Artistry
I'm experimenting with NewsILike.com, a new aggregator site put together by a team that includes Jim Moore, Berkman colleague, Darfur activist, and Global Voies ally. Jim introduces the concept of “aggregator artistry”, the idea that aggregators can be a creative expression in the same way that blogging is. NewsILike has...
Video Blog: Baramati Bus Stop
This weekend I completed a short Web documentary on my visit to a mobile computing lab in Baramati, India last week. The video, called Baramati Bus Stop, is about six and a half minutes long. It explores the mobile computing lab, which features two dozen thin-client computers installed on a bus. I also show my visit to a rural primary school classroom, and meeting some of the local village children who aren't enrolled in school -- and thus have no access to the technology. I've made two versions of the video, one without captioning and one with captioning. Both versions of the movie are quite large - more than 45 megs. So you may want to let the video download for a brief time before trying to stream it. Better yet, download the whole thing first so you won't have to worry about it pausing due to bandwidth bottlenecks. The movie is released on a Creative Commons noncommercial/attribution/share-alike license, which means it may be viewed, disseminated and even edited for educational and noncommercial purposes. For those of you who are interested in how I made the video, here are some quick tech specs. I shot the video on a Canon A60 digital camera, capturing about 15 minutes of footage, on location in Baramti, India. I uploaded this footage to my Mac G4 laptop and edited it using Final Cut Pro. Music was licensed from ProductionTrax.com; licenses for four songs cost approximately USD $30. For voiceover (narration) I used Final Cut Pro's voiceover tool, spoken through a LogiTech USB headset mic. Captioning was also done using Final Cut Pro. The total editing process, from uploading footage to exporting the movie as a Quicktime file, took approximately eight hours over the course of several days. Anyway, please check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think. -andy
Newsweek piece on blogosphere diversity and the Halley/Levy challenge
Steven Levy's column in the upcoming issue of Newsweek starts with a quote from Keith Jenkins, commenting on Rebecca's blog, which expressed his concern that people of color are less well represented in the blogopshere than in mainstream media: “It has taken ‘mainstream media’ a very long time to get...
Safe Democracy & the Internet
Recommendations for Safe Democracy: The document of recommendations for the Club of Madrid is on the wiki page here. David Weinberger has posted the IRC for our workshop yesterday.
Media access to the Madrid Summit
Martín Varsavsky, our host at the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security, has been handling some awkward questions about media access to the summit. Over thirteen hundred journalists were invited to the summit, but none are admitted to the main conference hall. Instead, they're set up in the hotel...
Internet, Democracy & Terrorism
Ethan Z and I (among others) are Madrid now, at the Safe Democracy conference, where people from around the world have gathered to discuss how you fight terrorism without destroying democracy. See some news coverage here, here and here. Joi Ito has organized a workshop focusing on internet issues. As...
Dina Mehta on the Indian blogscene
Dina Mehta, a brilliant Indian anthropologist and blogger, just published an article on the emergence of the Indian blogosphere for online magazine Nirantar. Referencing Malcolm Gladwell's new book, “The Tipping Point”, she points to the emergence of “Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen” as evidence that Indian bloggers are emerging as a...
Plagarism is the sincerest form of flattery – Controversy in the Kenyan blogosphere
Ory Okolloh, the Kenyan Pundit and Global Voices ally, is keeping her eyes on an interesting situation in the Kenyan blogosphere – the plagarism of a prominent Kenyan blogger by a columnist for one of Kenya's most respected newspapers. Here's the original post, a mock-job ad for positions in President...
Civiblog – Blog Hosting for Civil Society
Global Voices collaborator Joi Ito has just joined the advisory board of Civiblog, a project designed to give blogs to civil society organizations around the world. Run by Citizen's Lab (a fantastic source of information on censorship and media freedom around the world), sponsored by Tucows and the Walter and...
