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Link blogs, light blogs, blogs on the side; found treasures and half-formed thoughts - it turns out that many members of the ReadWriteWeb team are also publishing on Posterous , Tumblr and other casual blogging platforms. These are the places you can learn about the people behind the news and analysis here at ReadWriteWeb. Where you can find cool little videos and images that we want to share but that don't cross the thresh-hold for full-scale RWW blogging. Publishing and reading on these platforms is a lot of fun. We've listed some of the fun blogs published by members of our team below. We'd love for our readers to share links to your sites like this if you have them. Sponsor Richard MacManus , our Founder and Editor, writes about his travels outside his home in New Zealand, music, books and art using the Soup.io platform at VelvetsFan.com . I, Marshall Kirkpatrick , maintain a Posterous blog at Marshallk.posterous.com . I post a lot from my phone there, I post images and random thoughts about life in Portland, Oregon, my chickens and the tech news industry. Morning writer in Florida Sarah Perez uses Tumblr at sarahintampa.tumblr.com to post "random pictures, videos and infographics I come across on the web," she says. Portland based morning news writer Frederic Lardinois scored the cool domain DishWasherOnMars and uses it to post "stuff I don't get to blog about and that I want to share with my Twitter followers." Morning news writer Mike Melanson records his experiences as a hyper-mobile blogger in Austin, Texas on his Posterous blog . RWW's webmaster Jared Smith shares "(hopefully) useful tidbits about Web development, UX, and other geeky pursuits" on his Posterous from Charleston, South Carolina. Portland based Enterprise and ReadWriteCloud writer Alex Williams uses Tumblr at AlexHWilliams.com . "Hazard is my middle name," he says and he's not kidding, it really is. He calls it "my place to feed my personal interests." Production Editor Abraham Hyatt is in Portland, too and publishes "just your run-of-the-mill photo blog" on his Posterous . Eugene, Oregon based research team member and ReadWriteStart contributor Audrey Watters uses Posterous too. She says it's "where I post my ideas too long for twitter and too malformed for my blog." Portland-based Justin Houk , a member of the research team here as well, calls GeoPDX.net his "say anything, speak my mind, and voices in my head blog." How about you, dear readers? Where is the ReadWriteWeb community posting their found items, fleeting thoughts and other curated digital ephemera? We'd love to know, so share your link in comments below. We'd love to know what these services mean to you, too. Discuss
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Fun Blogs: Where We Post For the Love of It
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A fight just broke out down the street from my house. Yesterday, a dog in my neighborhood had one of its legs amputated. That's the kind of news I like to know and so I'm very excited that MSNBC's hyper-local news aggregator EveryBlock has expanded this week to include services in Portland, Oregon. EveryBlock is one of scores of competing services that serve up public records, social media content and local announcements on a neighborhood by neighborhood, or in this case block by block, basis. What does it mean when the most successful of these services rolls into your town? 12 hours into the experience, here's what some people in the local (human) media geeks have to say about it. This conversation offers a unique view into the front-line battle to offer news consumers more and faster information about our own neighborhoods than we've probably ever had before. Sponsor Does existing local media consider EveryBlock a threat? Local TV news personality and new media experimenter Stephanie Stricklen doesn't. "I can't think of any reason why it's not awesome," she told us. "Any time you bring another source of information into a city, especially one where you can access info about such a small geographic perspective, I like that." "No matter what you think of online journalism, everything is changing and the more players that come to the table the better we are all. We serve different audiences. The local TV stations could never have the time to visit every single block every day, there's not enough people, not even the newspaper could." Might local human reporters use a service like EveryBlock to find stories they should investigate and put in context? "Absolutely," Stricklen said, "I can see myself using something like this." As I write this story, some kind of animal problem has been reported at an intersection near where I live and an experimental short film screening was just blogged about by a neighborhood arts organization. The films aren't my style, to be frank, but I love that I am aware of the event. In fact, many of the updates from public records are maddeningly unclear. Many others are so trivial that lots of readers wouldn't consider them news. The health department visited the Chinese restaurant down the street and found the ice-scooper stuck handle-side down in the ice machine! Some lady said she didn't like the tapas restaurant on Yelp. Someone just flagged down a police car, but EveryBlock has no idea what it was about. To this EveryBlock's Dan O'Neil says: "Are there gaps in EveryBlock's knowledge? Yes. Are there gaps in human knowledge in real life? Yes! There's a comment field, help us out!" Is this a newswire of completed stories? No, this is something different. (But it is complete publishing of the public records your taxpayer funded agencies make available, O'Neil points out.) To be honest, I like reading that kind of stuff. Maybe you do too. As O'Neil says, "we do have a wider definition of what news is." Not everyone feels satisfied with the level of detail being provided or the absence of filtering the signal from the noise. It's hard to imagine machines replacing the human storytelling that journalists provide. The machines could augment that journalism, though, and there's lots of room for them to do an even better job of it. Where Humans and Machine Work Together EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty told us in January that the organization had hired a full-time editor to research various government agency codes in order to articulate public records in a more human-readable way. "It's one thing to publish public records; it's another to make sense of them," he said. EveryBlock's O'Neil told us that editor's name is Paul Wilson and said Paul put in hours interviewing Portland municipal staff in order to translate the data fields the city publishes into the format EveryBlock now publishes. O'Neil says those municipal staff members are unsung heroes, especially Rick Nixon of the Bureau of Technology Services. "It's a very complex endeavor to publish regularly updated data," O'Neil says. "Portland has excellent meta data and contact info, but a lot of times it's hard to get to the expertise and for those experts to explain it to someone else. When it's not your job to answer phone calls from web developers and tell them what spreadsheets mean, it's tough. We're in a weird gap time. In the future the expectations and questions we bring to data will be more common and it will be a part of peoples' job descriptions - but the people in Portland should be commended for already really trying to figure out what these things mean." Portland makes a lot of this data officially available as part of its brand new CivicApps program, but EveryBlock worked with the county restaurant inspection agency to get that data in particular through other channels. "We're cycling through 5,000 restaurants on a nightly basis," O'Neil says, "and the restaurant inspections in Portland are the most plain language content of all the cities we look at. It's great to see those people speaking in human and not just municipal language." Home Team Geeks "What will be really exciting is to see what Portland's indigenous community of developers and web journos do with the content the city is making available," says Steve Suo, Editor and Executive Vice President of Portland's real-time, white-label EveryBlock competitor NozzlMedia . Nozzl is made up of long-time newspaper guys, now building something for the future. (See our write-up of Nozzl: " Welcome to the Age of Robot Reporters ") EveryBlock's arrival in town happened just days after the city's celebrated opening of a substantial amount of new data through CivicApps, and with help from the city. Nozzl thinks it can do a better job of putting this data into context. "The more eyes you have on the data, the more insights we'll see brought to bear," Suo says. "We're currently adding all the same Portland data for our Portland metro news customers," Nozzl co-founder and CEO Steve Woodward says. Woodward says that in addition to prioritizing context and serving white-label customers, Nozzl pulls from more sources of data, covers a broader geographic area, and focuses on real-time data. "EveryBlock will tell you what crimes occurred near your home over the last several days. Nozzl will give you information about that siren you hear at this very moment." EveryBlock's O'Neil basically says bring it on , pointing to Portland's mere 5 minute delay on 911 call data and his site's real-time bulletin feature. These are remarkable times. There are services like EveryBlock, Nozzl, Outside.in , Fwix and more all battling it out to best serve us users with new and innovative ways to drill down into more details about our immediate physical surroundings. EveryBlock is the biggest player in the game, though, and our awareness of hyper-local news here in tech-savvy Portland has probably been changed for good. Discuss
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The Day EveryBlock Came to Town
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A ReadWriteWeb Guide Ever since its inception, the Internet has blurred the boundaries between author and audience. Whether you're a blogger, a pillar of the printed word, a podcast coinnaseur or a developer dealing with the latest CMS, navigating the next step in Internet publishing can be a feat. So, hit up these 10 events at SXSW Interactive 2010 to say goodbye to Gutenberg and hello to the interactive, multimedia, real-time, crowdsourced and community-funded future of online publishing. Sponsor This is part of a series of ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW Interactive 2010. If this guide isn't your cup of tea, be sure to check back for more information soon! ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income Wanna ditch that desk job for the cubicle-less life of a professional blogger? What better way to kick off your SXSW Interactive 2010 than with a book reading from the editor and founder behind ProBlogger , Digital-Photography-School.com , and Twitip , three blogs that collectively reach over 3 million unique readers a month. Before you get into any panels predicting the death of this or that, let's start off with how you're going to start a blog and become rich, wealthy and wise. The Revenge Of Editorials If book readings aren't your bag, then how about a workshop on how to get to the bottom of all this content we create by the second? "As the Internet has accelerated the creation of all types of content, it's become more and more difficult to sift through that content and find something of quality. We've tried it with machines and even mass consensus but the results are either wrong or lowest common denominator. The irony in all this is that we really need other humans to help us. The vast breadth of content on the Web only highlights what we've always relied upon: the valued opinion of others." Critical Tits: Rights, Cameras and the Immediacy Age What happens when every member of an audience suddenly becomes an author? Eyes from every angle and a battle over the right to create versus the right to privacy. Come watch as CNET News ' Daniel Terdiman and Burning Man's Andie Grace surely take two separate sides on this issue. "The EFF recently argued that Burning Man's not as open or nurturing as people think, and uses the DMCA to control photographers' rights. This caused a firestorm of controversy, forcing Burning Man to say its interests are protecting its trademark and attendees from being exploited by unscrupulous photographers. This panel will explore the tensions and the legal/community issues this controversy raised." Funding Your Projects from the Crowd "Crowdfunding inverts much that is wrong with traditional funding by breaking down the barrier between creators and audiences, and turning fundraising into a interactive experience. This panel brings together several perspectives from the world of crowdfunding to explain different approaches to raising money from the audience for bloggers, artists, podcasters, developers, filmmakers, musicians, and more." Wikipedia Gets an Upgrade: Collaborative Video We can't really get away with talking about the wild world of online publishing without mentioning one of the founding fathers of all that is interactive and communal - Wikipedia . But can Wikipedia really take the next step and go to video? "Wikipedia is the most successful collaborative experiment in human history. Now it's getting a big upgrade: video. OGG Theora video paired with open source tech by Kaltura is evolving the wiki and prompting some big questions. Can wiki video work as well as wiki text? What does video mean to the Wikipedia community? How long until Grandma can hop in and improve the video entry on her favorite old crooner?" Transmedia 2010: Are We There Yet? While we're at it, not only have we left the printing press in the dust, but our standard categorization and assembly of media may be on the way out too. So, let's throw the baby out with the bathwater and get to talking transmedia . And you thought Wikipedia might be complicated. "The promise and possibilities of transmedia storytelling have been on the horizon for several years. The concept involves immersive storytelling that utilizes multiple media outlets concurrently to enhance and advance the narrative. Some see this as a better way of totally involving an ever more fragmented and distracted audience. So join us for a "late breaking" assessment of the state of the movement. Has transmedia finally arrived?" ReadWriteWeb's Party Continuing along with the idea of traditional and less-traditional media, we'd love it if you stopped by our party on Sunday night! We're cohosting with NPR, PBS and a few others at KLRU's Legendary Austin City Limits Studio. We'll have live bands, Tex-Mex nosh, margaritas - the quintessential Austin experience. Free shuttles will be available at the Hilton. How To Save Journalism With Drew Curtis of Fark , Jeff Webber of USAToday , Kelly McBride of The Poynter Institute and Matthew Palevsky of The Huffington Post , find out how the Internet is going to save, not kill, jouarnalism. "Much has been said about the death of journalism, but little has been offered in way of solutions. This panel will focus on solutions instead of problems, consensus viewpoints from both old and new media, and offer new insights into the operational structure of journalism and media for the 21st century." A Brave New Future for Book Publishing Bringing it back down to a realm we've almost forgotten, what about the life of the good old book? What's coming next? Will we break out of the binding? "Call SXSW 2009's infamous ''New Think for Old Publishers'' (aka ''Geeks School New York'') a missed opportunity. How did book publishing become the last media industry to embrace digital and how will this change? New publishing models, strategy and a brave future for books and we who love them." R.I.P. Content Management System What better way to end your SXSW 2010 with a timely prediction of the death of CMS as we know it? "The medium is the message. On the web, the medium is community. This shift has made legacy CMS products as outdated as scribes and printing presses. Open source technologies are disrupting this market and moving into mainstream enterprises. Join Drupal founder Dries Buytaert as he discusses how social publishing will bring content and community together." Those are our SXSW Interaction recommendations for publishers of all stripes. If you've got suggestions or feedback, let us know in the comments! See you in Austin, folks! Discuss
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SXSW 2010 for Publishers
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Due to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints filed by Microsoft, whistleblower website Cryptome [link to a backup version of the site] has been disabled by its ISP, Network Solutions. The complaints were due to the fact that Cryptome published a 22-page Microsoft Global Criminal Spy Guide. Microsoft claimed copyright infringement, Cryptome's editor refused to budge, and the site was taken down this afternoon. Cryptome has previously published similar guides from Facebook, AOL, Yahoo and Skype; the site has been threatened but never before actually disabled. Sponsor The Microsoft document was originally published on Feb. 20. Microsoft demanded that Cryptome remove the PDF, and when the editor refused, Cryptome's ISP sent a warning: If the document was not removed by Thursday, the site would be disabled. However, the site was taken down Wednesday afternoon. The reason Cryptome refused to remove the PDF of Microsoft's so-called "spy guide" was that editor John Young believed its programs, which make it easier for law enforcement to obtain user data, showed "improper use of copyright to conceal violations of trust toward its customers," according to an interview with Geekosystem. "Copyright law is not intended for confidentiality purposes," he continued. "We think all lawful spying arrangements should be made public Microsoft should join the others who openly describe [their] procedures." Young named Cisco as one such company. Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a call today, "We find it troubling that copyright law is being invoked here. Microsoft doesn't sell this manual. There's no market for this work. It's not a copyright issue. John's copying of it is fair use. We don't do this anywhere else in speech law." For example, in cases involving libel or trade secrets, said Cohn, "You go to court, you make a case and you get an injunction. You don't just file a form. DMCA makes censorship easy." Cohn also noted she feels the reason Microsoft actually wants the document removed from the Web is because, for a large corporation with millions of users and an aggressive PR agenda, the document raises concerns and sparks conversations the company would rather not confront. "It's part of a very intense political debate about the role of intermediary companies like Microsoft aiding surveillance for law enforcement. It's embarrassing for Microsoft for their users to see how much the people who carry their email have arrangements with law enforcement. "All of the people who carry our communications are an easy conduit for our government to spy on us, and a lot of people are unhappy about that. It's a legitimate public debate, and Microsoft doesn't want to be part of that debate." We hope that Microsoft does, in fact, release their stranglehold on Young and his site and take part in a conversation with their users about how their data can be accessed by others, including law enforcement. We've reached out to them for comment and will update this post if and when we hear back. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts in the comments. UPDATE: Still no word from Microsoft, but here's that document they really don't want you (or anyone else) to see. We hope to hear from a Microsoft representative soon to discuss the intentions and implications of this guide. Thanks to Glenn Davis of Geekosystem for the tip. Discuss
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Microsoft Kills Watchdog Website Due to Leaked Documents
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