Amsterdam is picking up the new Google Buzz social networking tool that was announced last week. Google has linked Buzz to Latitude as well (depending on the privacy settings). This means that people can see where their friends and what they’re doing. It’s interesting that not only your friends are visible, but all Buzz users nearby. This opens a lot of possibilities for creative minds and discussions on the privacy issues!
LG Digital has announced that a full A3 sized e-paper that will be introduced in April. The novelty in LG’s latest marvel, is that it makes the physical distribution and the every day hustle of printing millions of newspapers obsolete. The Gutenberg era of mechanical reproduction is changing into digital reproduction. The smell of ink and the touch of fresh paper soon will be nostalgia. Newspaper corporations are sluggish and conservative in their approach to new media. The distribution costs rise dramatically and the product is a static, disposable, environmentally unfriendly medium. What is the USP of a news paper? Is it the content? The Smell? Selling Paper? Selling emotion? A combination of these elements? In this post, I will briefly elaborate on the contemporary distribution. And I will propose a distribution model that is based on digital reproductivity and its positive effect on the contemporary environment, distribution and costs.
This year for the first time, I am going to organize a Happening. What is the plan? ‘Hap-poken-ing020′ is set to be a spectacular and spontaneous event that will harmlessly disturb the public domain of Amsterdam’s Dam square. It’s a funny way to (1) mobilize people, to (2) bring the Poken to the attention, to (3) connect to new interesting people and to (4) get some experience in the organization of such an event.
“Happenings invite us to cast aside for a moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and (one hopes) life. Thus a Happening is rough and sudden and often feels ‘dirty’. Dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything, including the visitors, can grow a little in such circumstances.” (Kaprow 1961, Art News 60(3) p.39)
With this philosophical perspective in mind, I will ask you to join me on Saturday the 9th of May. At exactly 13:00PM, everybody with a Poken will gather in front of the Dam’s Palace. When the church clock hits 13:00PM, everybody will have the opportunity to start connecting and exchanging their Poken identities. Please, do not start gathering before the given time. Otherwise, this happening will lose its effect.
Interested? Go to the website and subscribe to Hap-poken-ing 020!* Some press will cover the happening as well! *Of course, I will be very discreet with your personal info.
(Engels)
This scenario will illustrate the possibilities of social media like twitter to have a positive and substantial influence on ordinary life. In this case, the “flow regulator tweet” will very efficiently regulate the flow of people waiting in line and therefor Twitter could make waiting obsolete.
Imagine this: You have an appointment at the local district for the application of a social benefit, because your boss hasn’t extended your contract you haven’t got an income. At the counter, an employee reads you the following instructions: Go to Twitter and search for: ‘adamlocalaffairs’. ‘follow’ this account and send this message: “dontbsquare: @adamlocalaffairs #form16″. Next, you’ll open your favorite twitter application on your mobile phone and setup the instructions. The first message you receive is “adamlocalaffairs: @dontbsquare you’ve got 18 people before you in line. This will take approximately 30min.” Now, instead of waiting in line, you take a walk to the nearest coffee shop. Because, you haven’t got the resources to buy a cup, you have to put up with watching people drinking coffee… Meanwhile, the following tweet is popping up: “adamlocalaffairs: @dikkidik please, show up at counter 6″. You are wondering how many people are still before you waiting in line. So, you tweet: “dontbsquare: @adamlocalaffairs ?number”. Immediately, you are receiving “adamlocalaffairs: @dontbsquare still 8 people before you in line. this will take another 15min.”
next, you are done looking at the people drinking coffee and you’ve decided to gently return towards the local district. Within a minute, you receive this message: “adamlocalaffairs: @dontbsquare please, show up at counter 4″. At this counter, the employee of the local district helps you with the appropriate administration and within a couple of weeks, you will be able to buy yourself a cup of coffee again.
I think that twitter or similar social media could make the ordinary life a lot easier and definitely more efficient. It is not being said that we should be totally depending on these technology, but a minor increase of new media adaptation is welcome.
(Engels)
Every university- or college student has to deal with books to build a foundation on your knowledge within a field of expertise. My learning method is no different than method other students use. This is my method; the first step is using my magic marker to highlight important text. Then I’ll collect the marked area’s and will write them down in a chronological order by using MS Word. finally, I will summarize the most important bits into a readable and coherent text. As far as I know, their is not really a practice of working together in summarizing lectures. Google Docs has the functionality, but I don’t use it often…
I think it would be interesting, as an experiment, to find out if Twitter.com would be a helpful medium to summarize text in a cooperative manner. Thus, collectively building a summary using Twitter.com.
I started of by summarizing Lawrence Lessig’s ‘Free Culture’ (creative commons licence) and putting the important bits into Twitter.com. The result is an bunch of lines (summary-bits), which are structured as followed. A line starts of with the chapter name, e.g. Introduction. It is then followed by quoted text, the author and a page number.
Screenshot of Twitter
A disadvantage I immediately did come across, was the lack of ability to post a comment directly targeted at (under) a twitter post. Howe ever, that’s just not the way Twitter.com (wants to) function(s). If you leave a comment, it will – based on the time of the post – show on top. Twitter’s monologue-logic prefers time over context. Tweakers.net is totally different, but its tree-functionality works!
Tweaker and context-based comments
Another disadvantage of Twitter.com’s functionality was the inability to filter posts. As a result, users have to start reading the summary-bits backwards. Users prefer to read the summary-bits in a chronological order.By using the Twitter-API, I am able to change the summary-bits into a data set, which can be modified. In the picture below, the result of the data set is showing. Because, I’ve used a consistent ‘syntax’ within the text, filtering the data set was easy.
Using Twitters API
To conclude this little experiment. I think it’s very interesting to think about cooperative ways of writing summaries and micro-blogging. Twitter.com is not the best medium as it is. Due to the lack of direct commenting and filtering. But altering its functionality, for example using its API, will create opportunities. So, I do recommend a forum based structure, like the tweakers.net example. However, building a Twitter clone with adjustments would be the best solution for writing summaries in the future.()