Media
Media
Insightful questions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/08/2007 - 20:38Back in August, 2004, MSNBC had a poll that the only way to answer it was to buy into Republican talking points. To which, I created my own poll asking ' What are the journalistic implications of MSNBC's recent poll?’
This poll came to mind for me this evening when WTNH asked, “Should students be held accountable for what they post online?”
That is sort of like asking, “should people eat cheese?” It completely depends on the context. Many people probably should eat cheese, but people with severe lactose intolerance probably shouldn’t.
The problem, of course, is that this question was asked in the context of Avery Doninger being punished for what she posted online from home, by the school administration.
Perhaps an better analogy would be, “Should advertisers abandon WTNH when it posts polls that lead to a lack of understanding of the story they are trying to cover?”
Other people have suggested other polls like
"Should students be monitored 24-7 by the government?"
Should school administrator's be allowed to trample student's protected speech?"
"Is it okay with you if government officials usurp your parenting authority in your home at 9PM?"
“Should administrators be able to punish citizens for exercising constitutionally-protected free speech?”
And my favorite,
“Should school administrators be able to hold former students accountable for poorly worded polls that they post online, including having such students rights to speak on television removed?”
These questions, with the possible exception of the last, would get more closely to the real issues of the Avery Doninger case.
What questions do you think WTNH should have asked, or should we be asking of WTNH and their advertisers?
Logos
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/07/2007 - 21:25 |
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Contest: Come up with the best name for each logo or for the set of logos as a group.
My proposed group name is
'Just say no to bad corporate logos'
Colin McEnroe suggest that the Republican Convention on should be called:
This Is Your Elephant on Drugs
Poets and Writers for Avery
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/07/2007 - 08:26It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written anything about the Avery Doninger case. Things have been moving slowly and surely in the background. The next big event is the Poets and Writers for Avery. It will be happening in Litchfield next Sunday.
Andy Thibault provides a schedule for the day. Bob Morris provides the background.
MyLeftNutmeg provides a place for progressives to get together and discuss the issue, and there is a Facebook Group. Please, join the communities of people supporting Avery.
Most importantly, this is a fundraiser. Please contribute and spread the word. Add the ChipIn Widget to any sites that you have.
We all need to work together to defend our freedom of speech, and I hope to see many of you at Poets and Writers for Avery.
Another canary sputters
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 09/26/2007 - 11:06If you've been reading the Connecticut section of this blog, you will have heard plenty about Avery Doninger, the student in Burlington, CT, who was banned from running for re-election to class office after writing a blog post critical of the school administration. In addition, students were barred from wearing T-shirts showing their support of her.
I am proud to now have a 'Team Avery' T-shirt.
Well, this isn't an isolated event. Today, I read over on the John Edwards blog as well as on DailyKos about a student who received a one day in school suspension for wearing a John Edwards T-Shirt.
As I've posted in both places, students around the country need to gather together to fight to maintain their basic freedoms.
White Labeled Social Networks
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/25/2007 - 16:08At the OMMA show, there were several vendors out their touting their white-labeled social networking tools. My initial reaction resembled that of the beloved NPTech humorist kitty cat. Yet I have to admit that my work in Deanspace (as talked about in Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope, was essentially my part in creating white-labeled social networking tools several years go.
I spent a bit of time talking to four different vendors. I’ll list them here in the order in which I spoke with them.
The first vendor I saw was The Port. The are located down in Atlanta and have a .NET based system. Their clients include the Atlanta Falcons and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. They are also partnering with Convio as they reach out to non-profits and other associations. They focus on providing the infrastructure and having others handle community outreach strategies, design issues and so on. They are not doing anything with XFN, microformats or OpenID.
They do have a sample site up. I set up a page there, as well as a blog. They support RSS and have a widget in beta.
The second vendor was KickApps. They started early in 2006. They are based in New York and use Java as their underlying software. I was told that their main selling point was that people could get up and running very quickly with them, where other firms the engagement process could take several months. They did not have a demo community available.
The third vendor was CoreSpeed. They came out of enterprise project work, and tout their interconnectivity to back end enterprise systems. They are based on PHP and SOAP. They mentioned BMC software as a client, but wouldn’t give details about what any of their clients had done with data gathered from the portals citing client confidentiality.
They partner with What a concept! “the first social media agency in the Southeast.” Sherry Heyl, CEO was “a key organizer of SoCon07, the first Social Media un-conference in Metro Atlanta and is currently planning SoCon08”.
Like ThePort, CoreSpeed has a demo white labeled social network up and running at CoreSpeed Community. I’ve set up an account there as well. They provide the ability to import external blogs, Flickr photos and much more. They support RSS. They even have OpenID support was part of their “ID Hub”, which they describe as a work in progress. Unfortunately, I received errors when I attempted to use my OpenID.
The final white-label social network firm that I visited was Prospero. As Miranda’s father, I’ve always had liking for the name Prospero. In addition, they had cool swag; refrigerator word magnets with words like Live, Moderation, Share, Believe, Message, Today, Build, Smart, Think, Attract, Blog, Chat, Cool, Engage, Community, Social, Widget, Create, Crazy and others.
They are located in Boston and their software is .NET based. They grew out of the old Delphi communities and have iVillage as a lead client. They talked a bit about their abilities to deal with moderation issues. They were live blogging the event, but didn’t have a demo site available to use.
One other company that I visited was Reality Digital. They don’t speak of themselves as a white-label social network provider but as a “A hosted service platform for storing, sharing, managing and monetizing user-generated content including video, photos, games, text and more”
One of their clients is Lonely Planet. I’ve always loved Lonely Planet travel guides and the idea of Lonely Planet TV is very appealing.
So, while other people spent time talking about where to place their banner ads to maximize clickthrough, some companies are providing services to help make marketing a meaningful part of people’s conversations.
