The Facebook Nightmare Scenario

A great video on YouTube shows what it would be like if Facebook were made real. It’s very funny and a little bawdy by my prudish American standards, so don’t watch with your kids, and turn your speakers down to […]

ShopText Melds Magazines With Digital

Image via Wikipedia Hearst Magazines recently announced it’s rolling out ShopText, a system that uses text messaging to link print products with online. Readers of print can text a keyword to a number, and receive samples, buy products, or access […]

Is Twitter’s Hockey Stick Meaningful?

While it may be a fluke, it may be meaningful that, as Hitwise notes, Twitter has hit the hockey stick in growth, a tipping point of adoption and use that may herald a more mainstream place for the micro-blogging platform.: […]

Will Texting and Twitters Kill Email?

There are many signs that email is threatened as the primary mode of communication between individuals. From record levels of spam (96.4% of all email is spam, some claim) to its incompatibility with cell phones, email is threatened with being […]

Blog-based Peer Review Experiment: Mixed Results

An experiment in having a book peer-reviewed online has concluded, and the results are detailed in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The book entitled “Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies,” examines the importance of using software design […]

Journals: Salvation through Conversation?

The mainstream media may be registering the revolution, but is it too late? A recent New York Times story reveals in all its glory how younger readers parse news through social media. One focus group participant is quoted saying, “If […]

New Sources for Book Publishers?

A new book publishing venture called Fractal Press seeks to anthologize blogs and publish the resulting books using print-on-demand technologies. An interview with co-founder Navanit Arakeri can be found on Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 blog. Arakeri will start with personal […]

Web 2.0 Critiqued in “First Monday” Issue

The March 2008 issue of the online journal First Monday is entitled, “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0.” It’s worth a look. Some pieces are especially provocative, including “Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation,” “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance,” […]

A New Video for Author Rights

The Association of College & Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) have created a short video designed to familiarize researchers with some of the issues around author rights. A slide […]

Reinventing the CDC via Mashups?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US (the CDC) has always been a network. It’s role is important and impressive. But can disease surveillance be accomplished in new ways? An interesting site is http://www.whoissick.org, where people stricken […]

CrossRef and Blogs

CrossRef recently announced a plugin for WordPress, the popular blogging platform (and the one this blog uses), showing yet again that citations are not vestiges from a bygone print age but are part and parcel of the permanent Web. CrossRef […]

Does Twitter Change the Conference?

Scientific presentations have long been semi-private displays of new data and speculative findings. The nondescript conference room, the slide or PowerPoint presentation, and the somnolent audience — all trademarks of the live meeting event, and all part of why these […]

A False Choice

“Wisdom of the crowds” vs. “expertise” is a common contrast these days, with the social web being scrutinized for failings and weaknesses by people who think there’s still a chance of turning back the clock. This week was an interesting […]