Bottomfeeder 2008

It’s been 10 years since the Cluetrain Manifesto was nailed to the Internet door. A project called Cluetrainplus10 is marking the anniversary with 95 posts on 95 different blogs, one for each of the manifesto’s theses. Thesis #7:

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

Was blogged by Chris Brogan, who had this to say about today’s gig economy on the Internet:

This thesis, which deals with the hyperlinked organization, is a way of suggesting that orgs restructure and break out of being silo-driven. It also reminds us that there is a web of connections, not individuals standing out of context or connectivity. Ten years after the manifesto was written, I feel that the businesses currently weathering the storm of this economic downturn are those who have taken this idea into the organization and executed on it.

Successful freelancers think this way. They consider the world as a web of resources that they can tie together in different ways to make projects happen. Gathering resources into a useful configuration is how the web functions. Businesses can take advantage of this train of thought by considering how to build their executions from a project-minded perspective, and by considering non-employee business relationships to be part of the resource chain.

See CDC emergency alerts on Twitter

Government Looks Online To Spread Word On Flu : NPR 043009:

References to swine flu in the blogosphere are far surpassing the actual spread of the virus itself. As the government tries to get in front of the rapid spread of information, it’s learning some important lessons about how social media is used in crisis situations.

Within a few days of news of the flu outbreak, the term “swine flu” quickly became 10 times more popular on blogs and Twitter than references to the peanut butter-related salmonella problems earlier this year, according to Nielsen Online, which tracks online traffic. It’s already three times more popular than references to Britain’s instant TV singing sensation, Susan Boyle, whose YouTube clips have been viewed by many tens of millions of viewers.

“And it hasn’t ended. If anything I think the buzz levels are going up,” says Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president for Nielsen Online’s digital strategic services. “Twitter has really incubated this real-time culture,” he says, particularly because followers of that social network can post short messages either from their computer or their cell phone. That kind of constant access promotes the faster spread of news, he says.

And that’s a kind of rapid outreach the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, are trying to harness. The CDC, for example, had a few thousand Twitter “followers” to its emergency-alert service. By Wednesday morning, it reached 40,000 subscribers.

Tabla Beat Science – Sacred Channel, on Blip.fm. Thanks to lodro.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama participate in tree plantings at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington on 4/21/09. [Official White House Photo by Pete Souza]

See the White House photostream on Flickr. Who knew?

Creative Commons explains why the White House chose a CC license instead of acknowledging that the photos belong in the public domain:

The microblogs have been a-buzz this morning about news of the launch of the official White House Flickr stream featuring photos from Obama’s first 100 days in office. While the photos are licensed under our Attribution license, one could make the very strong argument that they’re actually in the public domain and can be used without attribution (though one would have to be careful and respect the personality rights of the private citizens featured in some of the photos). The photos are likely in the public domain because they are works created by the federal government and not entitled to copyright protection. As you might recall, the Whitehouse.gov’s copyright notice indicates as much.

Why would the White House then choose Attribution for their Flickr stream? Simple, unlike communities like Wikipedia and Thingiverse, Flickr doesn’t allow their photographers to choose Public Domain as an option to release their work to the world. So the Obama team must have picked the next best option: Attribution only.

Swedish Court Rules Against Pirate Bay

On Friday, a Swedish court ruled against the founders of the popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay and found them guilty of assisting in the distribution of illegal content online. Mats Lewan, an editor at Ny Teknik, explains what the verdict means for file-sharing, for Sweden, and the world.

A Twitter Revolution in Moldova?

When 10,000 Moldovans filled the streets in protest last week, it was characterized as the ‘Twitter revolution.’ But now that the dust has cleared, what role did Twitter really play? And was it a revolution? Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, tells the tale of the tweets.

Advertising Disclosure in Social Media

Increasingly, companies are paying users of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to hype their brands online. The Federal Trade Commission has responded by updating its rules to make sure ads are identified as such. But author and blogger Andy Sernovitz says regulating the ads will be difficult.

DIY Gaming

Video game sales are astronomical, but like the music and film industries before it, the game industry has become dependent on predictable and expensive blockbusters. But now, as writer Clive Thompson explains, creative independent games are adding to the gaming ecosystem. And Microsoft’s Boyd Multerer explains how amateur game designers can now create their own games for the Xbox console.

A Tribute to Al Patriot Librarians

Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom for more than 40 years, Judith Krug died last week at the age of 69. We remember the librarian who crusaded against censorship and railed tirelessly against efforts to ban books.