Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.27.09 Entering Second Life

Just registerd for what I think will be a really cool new media experience in Second Life. I will be attending an Event on The Power of Youth Voice. “What kids learn when they create with digital media”. You should sign up if you have children as I think this will be pretty awe-inspiring.

FYI – Second Life is new to me, too, so let’s learn together! Remember, Mutt Media was created to keep you plugged in to the latest trends, help you keep up and take the fear out of new technology.

My Second Life avatar name is Brooklyn Macpherson if you would like to attend. Let me know if this is of interest to you and if you have any questions about how to set up in SL….Here’s the link to Holymeatballs.org if you’re interested!

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.14.09 Reprint of Clive Thompson on "Real-Time Web" thanks to Brian MacCormick

The following piece was sent to me by Brian MacCormick

Interesting, so take a look and consider how you are getting your information and ask yourself, “Is this the best resource?” Consider the timeliness of data collection and reporting the next time you go looking to “Google”.

Clive Thompson on How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind
By Clive Thompson 09.21.09

When Michael Jackson died on June 25, millions of people flooded onto Google News to find the latest information about what had happened. The spike in traffic was so massive that Google suspected a malware attack and began blocking anyone searching for “Michael Jackson.”

It’s a funny story, but it illustrates how the Web is changing. People increasingly turn to the Internet for up-to-the-minute information about, well, everything—blog postings about celebrity antics, status updates from friends, and pictures and videos of political events as they unfold, like the protests over the Iranian election. Studies have shown that these types of search requests are on the rise.

Pundits call it the real-time Web. It’s upending the Internet as we’ve known it, and it’s not something that Google can easily dominate.

For more than 10 years, Google has organized the Web by figuring out who has authority. The company measures which sites have the most links pointing to them—crucial votes of confidence—and checks to see whether a site grew to prominence slowly and organically, which tends to be a marker of quality. If a site amasses a zillion links overnight, it’s almost certainly spam.

But the real-time Web behaves in the opposite fashion. It’s all about “trending topics”—zOMG a plane crash!—which by their very nature generate a massive number of links and postings within minutes. And a search engine can’t spend days deciding what is the most crucial site or posting; people want to know immediately.

So a new generation of search engines like Tweetmeme, OneRiot, Topsy, Scoopler, and Collecta are trying to redefine what makes a piece of information important.

Some of these sites offer a Digg-like indexed front page that displays hot topics, while others just include a simple search field. But most of them rely heavily on Twitter. When a burst of tweets citing a particular subject or URL emerges, it’s a “signaling event,” as Rishab Ghosh of Topsy puts it. To make sure they’re not just getting hoodwinked by spammers, these new search engines employ some clever tricks, like crawling tweeted URLs and discarding those that land on sites containing spamlike language. Most disregard Twitter users who behave like spambots—for example, ones that follow thousands of people but have very few followers themselves.

Other ploys abound. OneRiot has a toolbar that lets users flag an interesting post immediately. Collecta actively imports blog posts and tweets so they appear in search results less than a second after they go live, rather than the hours it can take regular search engines to catalog the same info. “We want to be limited only by the speed of light,” Collecta CTO Jack Moffitt jokes.

The result is something curiously different from regular searching. If you hunt for “Michael Jackson” on a traditional engine like Ask.com or Bing, the vast majority of the links remain the same day to day. Authority changes slowly on the “old” Web. But real-time search engines deliver different, updated results almost every time.

The creators of these new engines argue that their goal isn’t to answer questions— à la Google—but to organize experience into a keyhole glimpse of what the world is doing at this very moment. “It’s exactly what your friends are going to be talking about when you get to the bar tonight,” OneRiot executive Tobias Peggs says. “That’s what we’re finding.” Google settles arguments; real-time search starts them.

Edo Segal, a pioneer in real-time search, thinks the field is going to explode as updates become more automatic, with our devices autoreporting where we are, how we’re feeling, and what we’re doing and seeing. Old-school search will never vanish, but real-time news will create a society where we have an omnipresent sense of the moment. “Google organized our memory,” Segal says. “Real-time search organizes our consciousness.”

Mutt Media | The Daily Bone 9.23.09 Guest Blogger, Jake Schlessinger on the just-announced Microsoft Courier

Today’s installment is provided courtesy of my son, Jake. He’s into technology of all kinds and is really pumped about Microsoft’s announcement today about the Courier, which looks to be a fantastic product and one that I have been waiting for. Since I like to encourage him and I happen to be on board with where his interests lie, I invited him to be my first Guest Blogger.

Just an aside, I have to give him a plug for the video he made which has become something of a sensation with over 65,000 views on YouTube. Click here to check out CODFreek’s Top 10 Call of Duty Weapons.

If you like what you read and his insights, please leave a comment…I’ll be sure he gets it. So, without further adieu…

Microsoft announces in-development Tablet

Today while going through my normal subscriptions on YouTube, I found a video from one of my favorite YouTubers, SoldierKnowsBest, who does a bunch of reviews and gives you updates on the latest and greatest in the tech-world.

photo courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

Usually he favors Apple products so if he makes a video about a Microsoft product, you know it’s something to look in to. Today he posted a video about the just-announced Microsoft Courier. This is a revolution to multi-touch products. It is essentially a double tablet, which means that it has two 7-inch multi-touch screens that fold into the shape of a book. It is similar to the iPod Touch but has many more advancements to it. Although it is just a late-prototype, if it comes out to be as good as it looks, it will be the next must-have product.

Take a look at this; it’s so cool.

Expected launch date late I hear is sometime in 2010 or 11, but you know how these things go. They are calling this a “late prototype” but the video above seems like it’s just a computer-generated animation. Still, I’m psyched. Apple doesn’t really preview their products which maybe just makes them smart….this way, we are surprised and wouldn’t know if something that was “leaked” didn’t quite get off the ground.

This has been Jake Schlessinger reporting for Mutt Media.

You stay classy San Diego.

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 9.13.09 Watch this cartoon from YouTube on Twitter From: "SuperNews!" An animated sketch comedy series airing on Current TV

Loving this video!

Got to give credit for one of my virtual classmates (Vanessa) at the New School for posting this video to our class blog and calling my attention to it.

This cartoon was posted on You Tube and is a funny commentary on all of the current chatter surrounding social networking, micro-blogging and the like.

Hope you enjoy it. Post your comments! Thanks, Vanessa

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 9.9.09 An old favorite: The Machine is Us/ing Us. Take a look at the (r)evolution of web 2.0

The Machine is Us/ing Us

No doubt some of my readers are familiar with this video, but even if you’ve seen it before, it’s great to watch.

Take 5 minutes out of your day and learn about the (r)evolution of web 2.0.

Let me know what you think. I never get tired of it!

Mutt Media | the Daily Bone 9.7.09 uSocial services to "buy" your Facebook friends

Mutt Media disusses stealth marketing using uSocial

Usocial was just launched but has already caused a stir. Facebook is claiming that uSocial violates its Terms of Service which prohibit users from sharing their passwords with a third party. What does this mean? A user can have their account taken down if an allegation such as this is proven. Mr. Hill has stated publicly that not only is this unlikely, but that

“Unless they actually say anything, unless they make it known to Facebook or Twitter that they’ve actually bought my services, there’s absolutely nothing they (Facebook or Twitter) can do.”…In the end the thing is that I’m not actually ever doing anything against the terms of service — it’s the actual users who purchases my services (who is),” he said.

Mutt Media | The Daily Bone 8.31.09 Tweetlater changes name to Social Oomph

Tweetlater changes name to SocialOomph -service remain the same!

One tool that I find really useful in managing my Twitter account is located on a site I’ve talked about before (previously) called Tweetlater.com. (check out my blog entry from Positano on 7.3.09).

Tweetlater.com (now called now called Social Oomph [socialoomph.com]) is a service I use for myself and Mutt Media Clients that provides statistics and automation of your Twitter account, while still enabling you to keep it personal. You can use this free service to track and vet your potential followers and you can set up automated personal responses to push at the appropriate time. Other great features? You can set your account to automatically follow anyone you approve to follow you, or you can not follow, block or even report an potential follower as spam – all at a time you find convenient. All you have to do is login and go to manage your account(s). You can maintain and manage several and instead of getting inundated with notifications, you can set aside time as desired to go through and vet.

It’s a great service that you can administer yourself and it’s also a service we provide to our clients at no additional charge if we already have you on our roster. Send us an email or post your questions right here.

Social O

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 8.22.09 Interesting article on the "Debate" over Media Studies Programs. Did you know there was one?

Article Reprint discusses Media Studies in Education

The following is an article I came across that I found of interest.

This article discusses an ongoing debate as to the validity of Media Studies in University environments. As someone who is currently immersed in a course of Media Studies at the New School (NYC), I can assure you that my classes are not only engaging, but deal in the most current, relevant and revolutionary of subject matter and instruction. My curriculum is focused on balancing the history and evolution of Media and it’s various theorists and theories as well as a great infusion of the most cutting edge advances in the industries that have grown from those.

Of course, teaching institutions vary greatly but my program has been around a long while and the courses are taught by learned professionals in their fields.

Enjoy and as always, your comments are welcome! Thanks to Social Media Mind on Twitter for leading me to this….

In defence of media studies

How do we judge if a subject is easy or difficult? Condemnation of media studies reflects a fundamental confusion about its aims

David Buckingham
Saturday August 22 2009
guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/22/media-studies

It’s unfortunate for teachers and students that the exam results always come out in the midsummer silly season. It seems to guarantee a flurry of tiresome political rhetoric, in which their hard work, and the realities of contemporary education, are entirely ignored.

This summer’s great education debate has seen frequent mention of media studies ? a subject that is now a byword for dumbing down. Media studies, we are told, is one of those soft options now being offered to the deluded students of our state schools; while the privately educated elite are being stretched by real, hard subjects like physics and maths. Admissions tutors at a few elite universities apparently look down on such soft options. And shadow education secretary Michael Gove has even proposed that schools be allocated more points in the league tables for hard subjects than easy ones.

If anything is a symptom of dumbing down, it is the willingness of politicians and pundits to pronounce on things they know nothing about. But why would they bother to find out? It is so much more convenient for them to represent media studies as just a matter of ignorant chavs sitting around watching telly.

Much of the discussion of media studies reflects a fundamental confusion about its aims. On the one hand, it is chided for being not vocational enough: after all, media studies GCSE isn’t going to get you a job in the BBC. Yet on the other, it is condemned for not being academic enough: it is, quite hilariously, a Mickey Mouse subject.

But how might these arguments apply to other subjects? Do we judge the value of English degrees on whether they equip students to become professional literary critics? In fact, the employment rate of media studies graduates is higher than in most other humanities and social science subjects; and most of them are getting jobs in media-related professions, however precarious they may be.

The charge of being insufficiently academic is one that media studies students ? who routinely struggle with the complexities of social and cultural theory ? would find quite ridiculous. The academic study of the media dates back more than 80 years, and there is a vast body of scholarship on the sociological, psychological, cultural and economic dimensions of the media.

Indeed, there are many academics researching and teaching about the media at Oxford and Cambridge, and at most leading “old” universities. Meanwhile, competition for places on media studies degrees is intense, with required grades often much higher than for other subjects.

How do we judge whether a subject is easy or difficult? Is art difficult? For some it is as easy as breathing, but for others it is something they will always struggle to master. For some, maths must seem like a soft option, while for others it will forever remain a closed book.

The suspicion of media studies is very similar to that which greeted sociology in the 1960s, or English literature in the 1920s. Then, the suggestion that young people might study books in their native language rather than just in ancient Greek and Latin was little short of scandalous.

Now, the idea that young people might study the media of modern communication seems equally scandalous. Newspapers have been around for more than 250 years, the cinema for more than 100 and television for more than 60. Perish the thought that schools should recognise, and interrogate, their existence.

This suspicion is fuelled by some who work in the media, but who seem to regard what they do as somehow unworthy of serious critical attention. Or perhaps they find such attention threatening?

By all means let’s have a serious debate about how we teach media studies, and what it can achieve. But that debate needs to be based on more than ignorance and narrow-minded prejudices about modern culture.

guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2009
Registered in England and Wales No. 908396
Registered office: Number 1 Scott Place, Manchester M3 3GG

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 8.1.09 The best things in life are not necessarily free – music downloader pays hefty price

Joel Tannenbaum ordered to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading 30 songs

This is the second post I’ve done recently about court cases involving illegally downloaded music.

My first blog on the subject was on June 19th when we talked about the Minnesota woman who was ordered to pay $80,000 per song ($1.92 million) for her illegal downloads.

Today we talk about a guy named Joel Tannenbaum, a Boston University student whose penalty was not quite as steep – he only has to pony up $30,000 per song or a total of $675,000.

One question – isn’t it simpler and cheaper to just pay for your downloads?

I get it. Some people think listening to music is their G-d-Given right. Well, that’s a nice thought. But here’s another….what about the artists? I can get on board with the philosphy that the record companies are making out like the real bandits – they do. But when you download your music on the sly, you are short-changing a lot of people who worked on the record, including not only the celebrity artists, but many musicians whose names you do not know.

This is how they make their money! Back in olden times when I was a kid, we had to go out and actually buy the whole album just to hear that one song we liked. And, we could only play that album on a turntable or on a low-quality cassette tape or later, a CD.

Digital music is fantabulous…it goes with you everywhere and you can select your preferred artist, genre and create your playlists to accompany any activity you can think of.

Pay the .99 cents! They really mean it.

Mutt Media | The Daily Bone 7.23.09 Facebook usernames can now be changed!

Remember several weeks ago when I blogged about the addition of a new feature on Facebook and urged you all to claim your unique user name?

There were screams of caution during this process as Facebook warned you to choose your name wisely and carefully, as you would be stuck with it forever.

Well, forever is sooner than we all thought. You are now able to change your facebook username if you did not choose wisely and carefully. This is great news if you selected that you find unbearable and cannot live with. The not-so-great news is that there is, as time goes on, less and less of a selection to choose from.

Tip: Pick a name that you don’t have to spell out for everyone, that is easy to remember and that reflects you or your business in some way and above all, will stand the test of time.

Caution: Facebook now claims that you will only be able to change your name once. I wouldn’t bet on that seeing as they reversed this policy so quickly after the launch of this new program, but in the interest of full disclosure, I thought I should mention it.

MySpace, in case you use it, also has this feature. It really does make it easy to have people who are looking find you.

So go forth and claim your (new) URL Just login to your account. Go to settings, then your account and click on change next to where it says “User Name”

You can find us at

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