Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
Assorted Updates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 20:38I’m spending time catching up on emails, following the Democratic National Convention coverage on sites like the Friend Feed DemConvention room, and generally tweaking and mucking with computers, websites, and so on.
PVR
Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that I purchased yesterday for a project that involves recording parts of the Democratic National Convention coverage. Today, I tried moving the connection back into the office. In the process, I was asked if I wanted to update the software on the video stick.
The software uploaded relatively smoothly, but it took a few tries to finally get the new version loaded and configured. However, when I did, it managed to find lots of digital stations. So, I believe I can now get the HD broadcasts I couldn’t get before. In addition, I managed to reconfigure the wiring and I can load watch and record the television from my office.
I’m sharing some of the videos I’m recording and I spent a bit of time nailing down the best format to use. The Pinnacle PCTV stick supports ten different formats:
DVD 640x480 It takes 47M per minute. Great quality, but too big. DVD LP 640x480 28M per minute. Again, very good quality, but too big. SVCD 640x480 19M per minute. Okay quality, also too big. VCD 321x240 10M per minute. Okay quality. This is my second choice for formats DivX Home 720x480 31M per minute. Very good quality, but too big. DivX Portable 352x240 7M per minute. Okay quality. This is the format I like best. DivX Handheld 144x176 1.5M per minute. Okay quality. Small screen. Not bad for the space. Mpeg4 PSP 320x240 6M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod low 480x352 12M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod High 320x240 12M per minute. Poor quality.
Comments about this site
Recently, one person noted that my welcome message said that previous blog entries were listed on the left. Well, they were, until I upgraded to Drupal 6. Then, I moved things around a little, so the list of articles are now on the right.
Another person commented asking if I knew that I had two different comment systems running. Yes, I know that. I actually wrote a bit about it in this blog entry. I may end up pulling SezWho soon. It slows down the site and doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve contacted SezWho Tech Support and they were going to look at the issues, but that was a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything since.
I should also note that I dropped a lot of underperforming widgets. My site has always been a bit slow because I like to test out any widget that comes along and I’m always slow to remove them. These widgets slow down the site. Now that I’ve removed them, the site may be a little faster.
The Tiara
I was asked if people who pledged to give me EntreCard credits had followed through and some have, some haven’t. Yes, the tiara was small, but it was all that I had. Yes, the girl standing next to me is my daughter Fiona.
Using Social Media
Also, today, I received my first real Shelfari spam. A lot of people feel that Shelfari is spam in and of itself. Miss Anita Weluha wanted to know if I liked the same books as she does. She also wanted to know if I could help her transfer $5 million.
I also received an email from Twitter, letting me know that Sen. Barbara Boxer was now following me. I wondered if this was really part of her organization, or if it was some random spammer. Later, I received an email from “Friends of Barbara Boxer” highlighting her new Twitter account.
Now, its time to get back to paying closer attention to the convention and all the coverage.
Exploring the Tiara
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 22:47At the risk of ruining a good story by explaining it, I want to talk a little bit about the Tiara.
The Backstory
First, let me give you the history. You will notice on the right side of my page an EntreCard. EntreCard is a community website where members drop cards on each other. Each time you drop a card on someone, or someone drops a card on you, you get an EntreCard Credits. These credits can be used to buy advertisements on other people’s websites, objects from the EntreCard shop, or can be bought and sold.
There is also a community forum, where people talk whatever they want. The blogger who writes Designs by Reese commented about being on vacation for a week and seeing the price of advertisements on her blog plummet as well as her ranking as a card dropper. In less than half an hour, her advertising rates were back up to a respectable rate, and she bragging about wearing a tiara and wondering where her scepter was.
eyespi20.com urged her to calm down. Everything is fine, and wondered where Debbie was. Debbie has a blog, Wisdom Hypnosis and often comments in the forum with helpful suggestions about remaining calm and reducing stress in one’s life. Debbie joined in by commenting about losing a tiara she had when she moved, but about how it was one of the best moves she had made.
Reese came back and commented that ‘not many people can pull off the tiara look’. I joined the fun and admitted that I probably can’t pull off the tiara look anymore. People on EntreCard mostly know me by the card that I have up, which pictures my bald head and gray beard. Debbie commented that she would pay to see me in a tiara. Eyespi said she would pony up 1000 EntreCard credits. Debbie picked the word pony and suggested I should appear with a pony. Reggy at fragileheart said she would join in.
Fiona’s riding lesson was this morning, so I told everyone I would pose with a pony while wearing a tiara. Around the house, I tried to find an Tiara. I was hoping I could find one of my daughter’s dress-up tiaras from when she was younger. Like Debbie’s tiara, I suspect that Fiona’s tiaras may have gotten lost in our move. So, I ended up wearing the tiara that my wife wore when we got married.
The picture received several nice comments in the forum as well as on my blog post.
What does this tell us
Lighten up
I'm gonna soak up the sun
I'm gonna tell everyone
To lighten up (I'm gonna tell 'em that)
Well, perhaps the most important part is to not take things too seriously. Somehow, I can imagine Debbie offering that advice as she helps people find calmness and happiness in her hypnosis practice. I think this is particularly important to a wide range of bloggers.
I've got a crummy job
It don't pay near enough
To buy the things it takes
To win me some of your love
Over on EntreCard, there are a lot of bloggers that spend all their time writing about how to make money online. I must admit, I find most of their blog entries dreadfully dull. Granted, I don’t make much money online, but that isn’t really what I’m all about.
My friend the communist
Holds meetings in his RV
I can't afford his gas
So I'm stuck here watching tv
Likewise, many of my friends in the political blogging world are on their way to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. I’ll write more about this later, but I find many of the more serious political blogs also dreadfully dull. I can’t imagine that they get many people, other than those already sharing their views to make it through their blog posts.
Build community
C'mon people now,
Smile on your brother
Ev'rybody get together
Try and love one another right now
Beyond that, successful websites are about building community. EntreCard does a good job of that. Other tools do good jobs of that. You need to tie them all together. What matters is the mesh of social media, and not simply just a blog. I think that is where a lot of bloggers as well as companies trying to get their message out online make mistakes. They focus on too small a community, trying to build bonding social capital instead of bridging social capital, or they end up being just a broadcast oriented site.
But that is a different topic that I want to explore more in coming posts.
So, check out EntreCard and related sites. Find a broadbased community where you can talk, listen and have fun, and if you do something crazy online, let me know.
Video Prep for #dnc08
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/22/2008 - 12:21During the past week, many of my friends who are going to Denver spent time exploring different tools that they can use to get their message back to their family, friends, neighbors and constituents. Even though I’m not going to Denver, I have been playing with new tools as well, helping out friends and, as always, looking for new online tools.
This week, a lot of the focus has been on video, so I thought I would highlight a few of the different tools.
Mogulus claims to be the most powerful live broadcast platform on the internet. You can use their platform to mix live video with videos that you’ve imported from other sites like YouTube.
As a powerful tool, it also takes a little bit of getting used to. Yesterday, I loaded some clips in, mostly that I had shot of various events at Falcon Ridge, and set up a ‘Clips from Falcon Ridge’ storyboard, which plays automatically when I am not broadcasting live.
Today, I brought in a few clips from other sources. Jen Just has uploaded a couple videos to YouTube about her preparation for going to Denver. Her video of all the materials she has received is particularly good.
Lon Seidman put up a nice video about the equipment he’ll be bringing to Denver to capture the moment.
I recorded my own segment as a lead in to these segments which I added to Jen’s and Lon’s segments into a ‘Convention Prep’ storyboard which I also added my auto-pilot on Mogulus. I also enabled both of the Mogulus storyboards to be played as part of video on demand.
I also spent a bit of time trying to figure out the best way to do live broadcasts on Mogulus. I’m not very good at it yet, but I’m getting better. I may try some live broadcasts at some point.
Zannel is an interesting new player on the market, that seems to have an interesting marketing approach. Word is that they will help cover expenses of some of the bloggers going to Denver if they agree to post content on Zannel. Already, there are some good test messages up. For example, be sure to check out some of the videos from Steve at Uppity Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to import video from Zannel into Mogulus, but I have managed to add their feed into FriendFeed. Zannel also has the ability to feed other systems, but because of possible feedback loops or duplicate entries, I haven’t set that up yet.
I’m getting into Seesmic a little bit more now that I have a few friends there. Adrianne from Black Women in Europe and I have been having a nice discussion as she prepares for Denver. According to the most recent update, as of this post, she is in Washington DC, has a new laptop and is going to meet some good blogging friends there.
Adrianne spoke about problems with Ustream. I found it cumbersome and like the other video services better. I don’t know of anyone using Ustream for broadcasting from Denver. If you hear of anyone, let me know.
So, how do we tie all of this together? Well, it seems like FriendFeed might be a particularly good service to use. I’ve set up the FriendFeed DemConvention room. This is a big messy feed. If I find a social media feed from someone that is going to Denver, I add it. We are approaching sixty different feeds going into the room. You have to scan through to see which entries are interesting or not. In addition, when I recognize people who have joined the room, I make them administrators, so anyone can add feeds to the room.
A different approach has been done by Andy Carvin. He has set up the FriendFeed DNC08 room. This room only has eight feeds coming into it, however they are feeds from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and FriendFeed that are tagged in one way or another as DNC.
So, it looks like there will be lots of interesting online content to find and view.
Latest Tech News
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 12:38As I continue to dig out of my emails as well as messages on various sites, I’ve built up a list of various technology developments that have caught my interest.
This is another player in the http://openmicroblogging.org/ space. (Note: As I write this post, the OpenMicroBlogging page simply says, “It works!” instead of pointing to the protocol definition that used to be up there.)
OpenMicroBlogger.com runs an instance of the software you can find on openmicroblogger.org which uses the OpenMicroBlogging.org protocol. Confusing? Yeah. I wished they had used different names the way Identi.ca and Laconi.ca did.
What is nice is that it supports federation, including interoperability with Laconi.ca
Other things that are nice is that it supports OpenID. Unfortunately, it didn’t like the delegation of my OpenID from Orient Lodge to my XRI based OpenID at 2idi.
What was nice is that when I set up a new account there, it set up a new OpenID account at e-cred.org. One the one hand, I would have much rather had my OpenID redirection work, but if that isn’t working, at least setting things up to go to a new OpenID server, instead of having a completely separate authentication system seemed good.
I haven’t looked closely at the e-cred.org server, but it looks nice and I’m wondering if it supports attribute exchange and if they might end up allowing custom attributes. As an example, I’ve been looking to see if we could come up with an OMBprofile attribute for OpenID. With that, and getting OMB sites to support the attribute, when you remotely subscribe to an OMB stream, you could simply use your OpenID profile making for one less URL to remember.
In terms of the federation, it seems to work okay with Identi.ca, but I had problems getting it to work with my Laconi.ba based server.
So, this federation stuff, enabling users of one microblogging site to follow users of other microblogging sites is pretty cool. But what if you use a legacy microblogging site, like Twitter that doesn’t support interoperability? Well, http://bridge.kshep.net provides a gateway between Twitter and Identi.ca. It would be nice if it provided a bridge between Twitter and any open microblogging site, whether those sites are laconi.ca instances or openmicroblogger.com instances. I’m sure we’ll get there.
I have not set up the bridge yet, because I’m concerned about feedback loops, or at least duplicate entries. I may get around to tweaking my network so I can plug in the bridge, but I may try to set up my own OpenMicroBlogger.org instance first.
I’ve mentioned Rejaw before. However, yesterday, I had some good discussions there. It is still very early there, but its looks like it is about to jump the chasm from being just an innovators playpen to being an area for the early adopters. I think it may have blown past Kwippy.com, yet another microblogging site that hasn’t seemed to jump that chasm yet.
chi.mp is currently in alpha, and I haven’t gotten my invite yet. Besides having an interesting URL, it is focused on open standards, like OpenID, Oauth, Attribute Exchange and Atom. They are saying the right things. It will be interesting to see what they can deliver.
Also coming across my transom this week was an invitation to play with blip.fm. As best as I can tell, it is trying to play in the last.fm or Pandora space. Personally, I really like using the Pandora/last.fm mashup. It will be interesting to see how blip.fm fits into this landscape, and if any sort of interoperability emerges.
I’ll play with this a little bit more later.
http://xoost.com
Xoost is an interesting idea. Social searching. Do a search on Xoost. Find out what other people similar to you are searching on, shared interests, which pages they found most interesting, something like that.
It is in beta, by invitation. I’m not sure that there are enough innovators on the list yet to obtain critical mass and make the searches particularly interesting, but the idea is fascinating.
Other’s have encouraged me to check out URTurn.com. When I checked recently, I was told that it was down for repairs and upgrades. There slogan is that ‘Every Click Counts’. I’ll try to remember to check back.
Nurien
Okay, this will end off my list for today. Nurien is another virtual world system. It is supposed to have very good resolution and physics. I’ve seen a video, but that is about it. The video looked very impressive, so I look forward to a chance to explore that in more detail soon.
So, that pretty much catches me up on some of the new technology that has been catching my eye. What’s been catching yours?
Social Media Map – What does it mean?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 13:05Yesterday, I posted an updated Social Media Map on Flickr. mriggen commented on Flickr, “Man, that is one crazy Interwebs diagram!”. Over on FriendFeed, AcademiaConnect.org liked the picture and Bill Anderson commented, “A very intriguing diagram. It's fascinating to look at, but I'm not sure how to make any sense of it. What do you make of it, if anything?”
I suspect that Bill was looking for sense making of what is going on with social media, instead of a simple description of the graph, what the arrows mean and what the over all graph can tell us. However, I will start with the simple description, and go from there
At the very top of the graph is ‘cellvideo’. Coming from it are four arrows pointing to where I send videos from my cellphone, YouTube, Blip.TV, Utterz, and Facebook. Following the arrow through Blip.TV, you will see that Blip.TV is set up to send links to the video to Flickr, Orient Lodge, MySpace, del.icio.us, and Profilactic.
Looking at it on a macro level, a lot of arrows feed into the aggregators FriendFeed and Profilactice. I probably should have added some other aggregators like MyBlogLog, LifeStream and others. A lot of arrows come out of ping.fm. Other sites, like Utterz and Orient Lodge end up being key hubs in the middle of things.
It was actually Bill that got me thinking about this. A while ago, he complained about multiple duplicate messages showing up in my FriendFeed. If I send a message with ping.fm to fourteen different services, and each service shows up in FriendFeed (or Profilactic, Lifestream, or others), you can get some very annoying duplication.
This can get more complicated if I post something on Orient Lodge, which then feeds Twitter, Identi.ca and other sites, which all feed FriendFeed.
So this raises lots of questions. To what extent should you feed from one system to another? How do you decide when to feed and when not to? How do you decide when to aggregate and when not to?
I don’t think there are easy answers to any of that. On the one hand, you can view each system as completely separate silos. Blog posts go on Orient Lodge. Pictures go on Flickr, microblogging goes on Twitter. Videos go on YouTube. If you approach things like this, then aggregation to an aggregator isn’t a problem.
Some people adopt this approach because they are afraid of Google penalizing duplicate content. I think this fear is unfounded. I don’t know how Google penalizes duplicate content, but my content changes shape between different services, and it isn’t the sort of duplicate content that I would think Google is concerned about. Google is much more concerned about link spam. Copy the same block of 150 links to 150 blogs so each blog gets extra incoming links; I’ve seen blog posts like that and I can imagine Google being more concerned about that.
Yet content cannot easily be broken into silos. Videos are made up of pictures. The pictures tell stories. Beyond that, you may want to get your story out on as many sources as possible. Personally, I want people to be able to easily find my content, independent of which sites they prefer.
This leads to the next problem, as illustrated by the comments I received on the Social Media Map. One was on Flickr, two were on FriendFeed. None where on Orient Lodge itself, which is what I like my primary focal point to be.
Now, I have been working on bringing in comments from other systems. Currently, it works well with comments on FriendFeed about Orient Lodge posts, as well as with Disqus. This blog post consolidates some of the comments, but there is the issue of how to consolidate comments, and for that matter simply not to miss comments on one of the less frequently used social networks.
All of this brings me to my final concern, for right now. It is possible to feed content from one site to another via various APIs, feeds, protocols, etc. Some of these feeds can introduce latency. So, instead of sending something just to Twitter and letting other people pick up the RSS feed from Twitter, when they get around to it an hour or two later, I’m using things like ping.fm or posterous.com to send my messages to as many services at the same time as possible.
However, federation with the Open Microblogging protocol could end up being a step towards a better approach. If I can find one place that sends my messages, no matter what content or form, to all the different sites I would like it, that would be great. If I could find aggregators that would better manage duplicate content, that would be great.
These sort of tools still seem a ways off, and instead we have people building lots of similar systems, trying to get their part of the mindshare of people in social media, and I suspect things will only get more complicated before they start becoming cleaner.
