Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation of America, spoke this afternoon at Beyond Broadcast about creating new business models to support social media. He noted that everyone is presenting a business model based on charity or advertising. Mark contended that social media has to be based on civil society. Distribution is not the problem, attention is the…
Category: Media Reform
Beyond Broadcast: Community Dimensions of Media
Just arrived at Beyond Broadcast. Here are some notes I’m taking as I go along: Panel II: What the emerging participatory web media services are doing I walked into my first panel on “Emerging participatory web media services” with Paul Jones from ibiblio and Skip Pizzi from Microsoft. The conference room was packed by several…
Ninjas like Net Neutrality and Hot Dog on a Stick
Ask a Ninja has weighed in on the Net Neutrality debate, presenting it as a comparison between the girl at Hot Dog on a Stick and Robin William’s brother. Not particularly intellectual rigorous, but hilarious nonetheless. Produced by Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of Beatbox Giant. Great, now I have to go get a corndog…
What I do in under 1,000 words
I have this constant problem of finding really, really interesting work that is almost impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t work in my field. The only job where that wasn’t true was my brief stint as a 911 dispatcher in Los Angeles. Other than that, it’s been a lot of awkward pauses at dinner…
Net Neutrality as Seen through Halo
Those clever guys at “This Spartan Life” have created a really cute public service announcement on the Net Neutrality issue as told by characters in the X-box video game Halo. Good job, guys! As they say, you can’t fight for Net Neutrality using plasma grenades. Darn. (Originally seen on Gothamist and BoingBoing.net.)
I’m officially a “media blogger”
I just found out that the Media Bloggers Association has added me to their list of member blogs, despite my meanderings into cat blogging. The MBA is: a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of "blogging" or "citizen journalism" as a distinct form of media; and helping to…
Net Neutrality versus “Civil Rights On Demand”
In a potentially divisive move, several prominent civil rights organizations have agreed to work with Verizon to provide public interest video programming for their new FIOS (fiber optic) video-on-demand service. According to a press release from Verizon, the initial groups who have signed up with the "Community Studio" include the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights,…
Beyond Broadcast conference in Harvard next week
Fresh from my Yale "Access to Knowledge" conference a couple of weeks ago, I will be in Harvard next week for the "Beyond Broadcast" conference sponsored by my new favorite institution, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The goal of the conference is: to create an opportunity for interaction between active participants in traditional…
My entry in Internet Marketing Contest: “Defend the Internet”
Ok, so here’s my brilliant idea for how to market "saving the internet" for Jeff Pulver’s viral marketing contest: Internet Defender. It’s a flash-based video game that highlights the increasing restrictions and bottlenecks being put up by ISPs. A side-scrolling shooter, similar to the classic game Defender, the set-up would be a web surfer trying…
“Save the Internet” marketing contest – $1,000 prize!
Jeff Pulver has decided to put his money with his mouth is, stop just blogging about preserving the principles of Net Neutrality and the end-to-end principles and do something. Jeff is sponsoring a viral marketing contest to save the internet. Here’s his pitch: We need to harness your individual genius and our collective genius (for…