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Personal Blogging Groups

Insurance May Ease Monetary Sting for Bloggers Sued Over Posts

“You wouldn’t publish a newspaper without liability insurance, so you should take the same precautions with blogging, if you have any kind of audience or readership,” said Granju, 41, a Knoxville, Tennessee, resident.

The cost of defending against legal action can range from $5,000 to at least $100,000 if the case goes to trial, said Ron Coleman, a trademark lawyer at Goetz Fitzpatrick in New York. Of the 256 lawsuits dating as early as 1994 through April tracked by the New York-based Media Law Resource Center, damages were awarded in 17 cases, totaling $43.9 million.

» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Behemoth Blogs Taking Over The Web

In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing articulates a point made so often about the Web that it's nearly catechismal. Blogs, he says, have torn down the power structure of old media. "Decentralization and democratization" are the law of the land, offering “a podium to Americans of all ages and backgrounds to contribute.” This is a notion that bloggers and web gurus have been touting for years. In his 2006 book, An Army of Davids, for example, “Instapundit” blogger Glenn Reynolds argued that “markets and technology” empowered “ordinary people to beat big media.” And this June, internet sage Clay Shirky assured an audience at a TED event that the old model, where “professionals broadcast messages to amateurs,” is “slipping away.”

» The Atlantic [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog

The Web, however, is a big place. And the many thousands of troops who use blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to communicate with the outside world are not always in tune with the Pentagon’s official voice. Policing their daily flood of posts, videos and photographs is virtually impossible — but that has not stopped some in the military from trying.

The Department of Defense, citing growing concerns about cybersecurity, plans to issue a new policy in the coming weeks that is widely expected to set departmentwide restrictions on access to social networking sites from military computers. People involved with the department’s review say the new policy may limit access to social media sites to those who can demonstrate a clear work need, like public information officers or family counselors.

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?

Just about everyone, from the general public to news executives, has an opinion about the future of journalism. Now, the Federal Trade Commission is stepping into the debate.

The commission is planning two days of workshops in December — titled “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” — to examine the state of the news industry.

More often, the F.T.C. tends to organize workshops related to consumer protection issues like mortgage fraud. But Jon Leibowitz, the F.T.C. chairman, says the agency has taken a look at other industries, through workshops on hospital competition, food marketing and the patent system. Journalism’s future falls in the agency’s purview, he said.

» NY Times - FTC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

FOE "feed over email" - U.S. tests system to break foreign Web censorship

The U.S. government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet.

The "feed over email" (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Read it quick: this article will self-destruct in eight hours.

Computing and communicating through the Web makes it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview; a lost or stolen laptop can expose personal photos or messages; or a legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating or just embarrassing details from the past.

Vanish is a research system designed to give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service.

For example, using the Firefox Vanish plugin, a user can create an email, a Google Doc document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment — specifying that the document or message should "vanish" in 8 hours. Before that 8-hour timeout expires, anyone who has access to the data can read it; however after that timer expires, nobody can read that web content — not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data. That data — regardless of where stored or archived prior to the timeout — simply self-destructs and becomes permanently unreadable.

» Vanish / Washington edu [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Beyond Newspapers v Bloggers

Blogging has gone beyond the snip-it-and-comment approach that riffs on the journalism of others while doing no conventional reporting of their own in the sense of gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. The commentary has broadened into a concern with subjects that newspapers are no longer interested in.

» Public Opinion [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Parenting Blogs May Be Held Liable for Product Reviews

The FTC Considers Raising the Bar for Online Product Reviews by Parents, for Parents.

» ABC News [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

A Hollywood Blogger Feared by Executives

“Did you see what Nikki just wrote?” That would be Nikki Finke, a well-traveled newspaper reporter who has found her moment as a digital-age Walter Winchell.

In the three years since she started Deadline Hollywood Daily, a daily blog about the entertainment business, her combination of old-school skills — she is a relentless reporter — and new-media immediacy has made her a must-click look into the ragingly insecure id of Hollywood.

“I really don’t see covering Hollywood as all that different from covering the Kremlin or the federal government,” she said. “I’m always fascinated by closed societies that don’t want prying eyes.”

» New York Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Google Engineering Director Spells Out Vision for the Future of Digital Books

Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy spelled out the vision at a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Clancy stressed the importance of making it possible to buy the digital books in traditional bricks-and-mortar bookstores, as well as online.

"Right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem," he said. "A huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. It's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model."

Dan Clancy comments:

People look at the settlement [with the Authors Guild and the AAP] and think that that is Google's vision for what the future looks like for books. And in fact the settlement is what we figured out for these predominantly out-of-print books, so it's more about the past. And in fact we've done a lot of thinking about what is the role we want to play going forward in a digital book world, for new books.

There are [three] things we put as requirements.

One is I believe people want their books stored in the cloud.... For most people, your library is something that you don't pull books off all that often, but when you need it, you want it to be there. That's where a cloud really works. You're not going to actively manage it, but you want to make sure that five years from now, [it's there].

Number two, I think it's critical that there's diversity of choices in terms of retailers that you work with.

Now one of the things with the cloud is that the consumer needs to trust that the person who's providing the cloud will be there. So you don't trust the cloud to some new startup that you've never heard of, or some small local bookstore, that you love to go to.

But right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem. And in fact a huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. And I think it's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model.

So part of our model is to figure out we're going to syndicate for our partner program all of the books we sell that are new, so that any bookstore can sell a Google edition and find a way that people can buy them in bricks and mortar stores as well.

And then finally, our model is you should be able to read on any device.... Our model is some people will read [our books] on a laptop, some will read them on the phone, some people will read on their netbook, and some people will read on their e-reader. And we'll work with any reader provider that wants to make it so they can get their books from the Google cloud....

So the principles of our future world is trying to build this world where there's lots of retail players, read on any device, but it's still stored in the cloud. And as we talk with publishers and booksellers, I think this is the right model, because we're trying to make what would be an open model that encourages competition

» Blog2 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Will anyone pay for anything?

The idea for Revenue Bootcamp held on the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, Calif., developed earlier this year after some people realized that upcoming conferences focused only on "social media . . . basically gathering eyeballs, but nobody was talking about monetizing people . . .," Guy Kawasaki explained in his opening remarks.

» Revenue Bootcamp
» Building43 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Harnessing Bloggers, Any Way They Can

Companies are increasingly sponsoring blogging events, paying for bloggers to attend tech conventions and even paying bloggers hundreds of dollars for postings or viral marketing campaigns. “Word of mouth is a very powerful tool,” said Mr. Mercurio, who added that the company uses things ranging from Amazon.com consumer ratings to market research like focus groups as part of its product research. “Consumers are increasingly investigating products online.”

» New York Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Twitter launches '101' business course in benefits of microblogging

Twitter is a communications platform that helps businesses and their customers do a number of useful things. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you've had a great--or disappointing--experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

» Twitter 101 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Applications of Social Networking to Medical Treatment

Tony Ferraro, President and CEO of 360Hubs and Dr. David Stone, a practicing psychologist, former Harvard Fellow in computer science and now a Visiting Scholar in GSAS joined us at the Berkman Center to speak about applications of social networking technology in the treatment of trauma survivors.

David began the presentation by discussing his experience with clinical services in technology, specifically Second Life. As a practicing psychologist, David has worked in Second Life within specialized communities, and took us on our a tour of Mormon community with a woman named Lois who has multiple sclerosis.

[ MOV ] play video » harvard.edu

Blogger's Code of Conduct - Tim O'Reilly's Draft

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
   We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we'll delete comments that contain it.
   
   We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
   - is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
   - is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
   - infringes upon a copyright or trademark
   - violates an obligation of confidentiality
   - violates the privacy of others
   
   We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
   
2. We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
   
3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.
   When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.
   
4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
   When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible--see above) and ask them to publicly make amends.
   If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.
   
5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
   We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
   
6. We ignore the trolls.
   We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them--"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it." Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

» Tim O'Reilly / radar.oreilly.com

über bloggers

It's no secret that bloggers are becoming increasingly influential. But Arrington is part of an emerging crowd of writers who use their narrowly focused blogs, such as hyperlocal real estate reports, green guides, or Web 2.0 startup reviews, to establish themselves as thought leaders. These new influencers are taking a page from the blog networks Gawker and Weblogs Inc. and turning rapid-fire, around-the-clock blog patter that makes and shapes the news into a hot new online media model.

Companies are directing more efforts toward buttering up these New Media players, often feeding them exclusives that play well with their targeted audiences. And for marketers who are increasingly comfortable with spending money on blogs, advertising with these opinion leaders provides instant cachet.

Think of these as the digital version of potent, passionate trade press writers. They swarm every novelty in areas like tech, creating problems and buzz for companies and innovations. They report news and publish it alongside analysis of newspaper stories and company releases. These posts are salted with strong doses of personality, sparking discussions across the Web. By melding their own insights and opinions with the aggregated views of others, they're starting to gain leverage. "In a time-starved world, people—especially decision-makers—have very little time, but do not want to miss being in the know," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer at advertising firm Publicis Groupe Media.

» Business Week

Mapping the Blogosphere as social network

Discover Magazine has an interesting article on mapping the blogosphere, reporting on the work of Matthew Hurst. Hurst put together a 3D map of the blogosphere, with bright spots represent sites with the highest number of links and isolated islands represent closed communities like LiveJournal. The study also identifies other islands like sociopolitical commentary, gadget hounds, sports fans, and, um, porn blogs.

The blogosphere is the most explosive social network you’ll never see. Recent studies suggest that nearly 60 million blogs exist online, and about 175,000 more crop up daily (that’s about 2 every second). Even though the vast majority of blogs are either abandoned or isolated, many bloggers like to link to other Web sites. These links allow analysts to track trends in blogs and identify the most popular topics of data exchange. Social media expert Matthew Hurst recently collected link data for six weeks and produced this plot of the most active and interconnected parts of the blogosphere.

» discovermagazine
» map graphic

A Cambridge company that pays doctors to post medical observations on its website, including reports of drug side effects, has quickly incurred the wrath of pharmaceutical makers.

Sermo Inc., founded by a surgical resident-turned-entrepreneur and backed by $3 million of venture capital, is promoting the website, sermo.com, as a novel Internet community. It's a password-protected private forum where raw postings by doctors can be viewed, for a fee, by Wall Street investment firms.

With its debut two weeks ago, the Sermo site generated debate by prominently featuring postings from several doctors saying that Pfizer Inc.'s cholesterol-fighter Lipitor induces vivid and repeated nightmares in some patients as well as a posting by one doctor that said the diabetes drug Byetta, marketed jointly by Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly and Co. , was associated with "sudden death" in 50 patients.
Via: Boston Globe
Via: Sermo

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Social Network

A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals, indicating the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. The term was first coined in 1954 by J. A. Barnes (in: Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish, "Human Relations").

Social network analysis (also sometimes called network theory) has emerged as a key technique in modern sociology, anthropology, Social Psychology and organizational studies, as well as a popular topic of speculation and study. Research in a number of academic fields have demonstrated that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.

Social networking also refers to a category of Internet applications to help connect friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a variety of tools. These applications are covered under Internet social networks below, and in the external links at the end of the article.

Introduction to Social Networks

Social network theory views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. In its most simple form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social capital of individual actors. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.

The shape of the social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More "open" networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling social holes).

The power of social network theory stems from its difference from traditional sociological studies, which assume that it is the attributes of individual actors -- whether they are friendly or unfriendly, smart or dumb, etc. -- that matter. Social network theory produces an alternate view, where the attributes of individuals are less important than their relationships and ties with other actors within the network. This approach has turned out to be useful for explaining many real-world phenomena, but leaves less room for individual agency, the ability for individuals to influence their success, so much of it rests within the structure of their network.

Social networks have also been used to examine how companies interact with each other, characterizing the many informal connections that link executives together, as well as associations and connections between individual employees at different companies. These networks provide ways for companies to gather information, deter competition, and even collude in setting prices or policies.

via [ Blog Circles ] tags blogcircles, blog circles / blogcircles

Wanted: Blog Talent - Opinion Leaders/Writers For BlogCircles

Are you ready to become an online leader of a community of people who share your interests? Every Blog Opinion Leaders's mission is to create an simple, intuitive and gratifying experience for people interested in this topic.

The Perfect BlogCircles Writer/Editor has...
- A true knowledge of and a passion for this topic
- Commitment to creating informative, "what you need to know" posts
- A dedication to building and updating a comprehensive links directory
- Strong writing and editing skills

via [ BlogTalent ]

Social Software

Social software lets people rendezvous, connect or collaborate by use of a computer network. The term came into more common usage in 2002, largely credited to Clay Shirky who organized a "Social Software Summit" in November of that year. Shirky defines social software as "stuff that gets spammed."

The more specific term collaborative software applies to cooperative work systems. The study of computer-supported collaboration and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (the name of the major conference on these issues) are closely associated with the software design issues.

Examples

Blogs or Weblogs

Blogs, short for web logs, are like online journals for a particular person. The owner will post a message periodically allowing others to comment. Topics often include the owner's daily life or views on politics or a particular subject important to them. There are many websites that address the history of blogs, like The History of Weblogs and weblogs: a history and perspective.

Blogs mean many things to different people: ranging from "online journal" to "easily updated personal website." While these definitions are not wrong, they fail to capture the power of blogs as social software. Beyond being a simple homepage, or an online diary, some blogs also allow comments on the entries thereby a discussion forum, have blogrolls, i.e., links to other blogs which the owner reads, and/or have trackback which allows one blog to notify another blog, creating an inter-blog conversation. In summary, blogs engage readers and build a virtual community around a particular person or interest. Examples include Slashdot, LiveJournal, BlogSpot

Wiki

Examples include the original Portland Pattern Repository wiki, MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki, and possibly Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource. The status of Wikipedia and related projects as "true" Wikis or as "typical" wikis has been questioned.

Social Network Services

Social network services allow people to come together online around shared interests or causes. For example, some sites provide dating services where users will post their personal profiles, location, age, gender, etc, and are able to search for a partner. Examples include ArtBoom, Orkut, Friendster, Linkedin, Tribe Networks, Freecycle Network, 24eyesand Cybersocieties.

Realtime Social Networks

A hybrid of the web-based social networks and instant messaging technologies, realtime social networks have recently emerged and are beginning to take both shape and popularity. Some examples of this include Imeem, which allows users to share blogs, files and instant messages, which creates a social network dynamically, in realtime, depending on where the user is currently located.

Social Bookmarking

Some sites allow users to post their list of bookmarks—or favorite websites—for others to search and view. The object is for people to meet others with whom they share a common interest. Examples include blinklist, del.icio.us, furl, Spurl.net, and Connectedy.

Collaborative Real-time Editing

Simultaneous editing of a text or media file by different participants from different internet-accounts.

Virtual Worlds or Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Virtual worlds and Massively shared online games are places where it is possible to meet and interact with some other human in an virtual world which usually looks like the reality. Some popular applications are Second Life, The Sims Online, There. A recent free software and open-source initiative is Solipsis.

via [ BlogCircles ] tags blogcircles, blog circles / blogcircles

Collaborative Software

Collaborative software, also known as groupware, is application software that integrates work on a single project by several concurrent users at separated workstations (see also Computer supported cooperative work). In its modern form, it was pioneered by Lotus Software with the popular Lotus Notes application running in connection with a Lotus Domino server; some historians argue that groupware was anticipated by earlier monolithic systems like NLS.

Software becomes more valuable when more people use it and thus Metcalfe's law applies. For example, calendaring becomes more useful when more people are connected to the same electronic calendar and choose to keep their individual calendars up-to-date.

The more general term social software applies to systems used outside the workplace, for instance, online dating services and social networks like Friendster. The study of computer-supported collaboration includes study of the software and social phenomena associated with it. These are covered in different articles.

Overview

Collaboration, with respect to information technology, seems to have many definitions. Some are defensible but others are so broad they lose any meaningful application. Understanding the differences in human interactions is necessary to ensure the appropriate technologies are employed to meet interaction needs.

There are three primary ways in which humans interact; conversational interaction, transactional interaction, and collaborative interaction:

Conversational interaction is an exchange of information between one or many participants where the primary purpose of the interaction is discovery or relationship building. There is no central entity around which the interaction revolves but is a free exchange of information with no defined constraints. Communication technology such as telephones, instant messaging, and e-mail are generally sufficient for conversational interactions.

Transactional interaction involves the exchange of transaction entities where a major function of the transaction entity is to alter the relationship between participants. The transaction entity is in a relatively stable form and constrains or defines the new relationship. One participant exchanges money for goods and becomes a customer. Transactional interactions are most effectively handled by transactional systems that manage state and commit records for persistent storage.

In collaborative interactions the main function of the participants' relationship is to alter a collaboration entity (i.e., the converse of transactional). The collaboration entity is in a relatively unstable form. Examples include the development of an idea, the creation of a design, the achievement of a shared goal. Therefore, real collaboration technologies deliver the functionality for many participants to augment a common deliverable. Record or document management, threaded discussions, audit history, and other mechanisms designed to capture the efforts of many into a managed content environment are typical of collaboration technologies.

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A weblog about the interests, the curiosity, the passions, of bloggers. BlogCircles reveals the smart edge of the culture: style, places, things, and trends that intelligent, successful, and independent bloggers want, need, and ought to know about. It has no limitations other than the imagination and intelligence of its writers. BlogCircles is less restricted, less predictable, than any other blog and has as its single goal to thrill and challenge its readers.

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Keyword Tags

BlogCircles (tm) dot com / Personal Blogging Groups

• Collaborative Strategies
• Collaborative Tagging
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Systems
• Task Collaboration Software
• Folksonomy
• Community Collaboration + Consensus

tags: blogcircles, blog circles / blogcircles