Global Voices

from Wikipedia: “Global Voices Online is an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists that follow, report, and summarizes what is going on in the blogosphere in every corner of the world. It is a non-profit website/project started by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, growing out of an international bloggers’ meeting in December 2004, and is founded by Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon. In 2008 it became an independent non-profit incorporated in Amsterdam, Netherlands.”

Quinn Norton, “Bloggers Shrink the Planet” Wired (12.21.06)

Colleen Kaman, “A Conversation with Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices Online” Center for the Future of Civic Media (9.25.07)

Ethan Zuckerman, “Technologies and Emerging Democracies: Building a Better Gatekeeper” (video lecture) MIT World (10.8.08)

Metavid

from Wikipedia: “Metavid is a free-software  wiki-based community archive project for audio video media. The site hosts public domain US legislative footage. It was started as a thesis project of Michael Dale and Abram Stern under the advisement of Professor Warren Sack in late 2005 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Its continued development is supported by a grant from the Sunlight Foundation.”

“UCSC receives $157,000 to support open archive of Congressional proceedings” UC Newsroom (5.7.07)

Michael Dale, “Democratizing the Archive: An Open Interface for Mediation” (thesis) (6.06)

Sunlight Foundation

from Wikipedia: “The Sunlight Foundation is a 501(c)(3) educational  organization founded in April 2006 with the goal of increasing transparency in the United States Congress. The foundation encourages citizen and blogger participation by aggregating  existing information and digitizing new information.”

“How Sunlight Foundation Achieves Government Transparency (interview with Ellen Miller)” Web 2.0 Expo (4.09)

Mark Glaser, “Sunlight Foundation Mixes Tech, Citizen Journalism to Open Congress” MediaShift Idea Lab (4.4.07)

Kristina Shevory, “Ellen Miller: Make Washington More Like the Web” Wired (9.22.08)

Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Sunlight Foundation Funds Six ‘Apps for America’” Readwriteweb (4.20.09)

Spot.us

from Wikipedia: “Spot.Us is a non-profit organization designed to bring citizens, journalists, and news publishers together in an online marketplace based on crowdsourcing  and crowdfunding methods and principles. It was founded by David Cohn, who received a $340,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to pursue his idea. Spot.Us currently focuses primarily on projects in and near the San Francisco Bay area, where it is headquartered. It plans to expand its scope to a national or international level.”

Sarah Kershaw, “A Different Way to Pay for the News You Want” New York Times (8.24.08)

Sarah Perez, “The Future of Journalism Will Be Radically Different (interview with founder David Cohn” Readwriteweb (4.6.09)

David Cohn, “Spot.Us Adds Assignments, Widgets, Story Updates in Revamp” MediaShift Idea Lab (2.23.10)

Demand Media

from Wikipedia: “Demand Media, Inc. is a privately held online media company that operates leading online brands such as eHow, Livestrong.com and Cracked, and is known for creating online content based on a combination of measured consumer demand and predicted ROI. The company also provides social media platforms to existing large company websites and distributes content bundled with social media tools to outlets around the web. The company employs an algorithm that identifies topics with high advertising potential, based on search engine query data and bids on advertising auctions. These topics are typically in the advice and how-to field. It then commissions freelancers to produce corresponding text or video content. The content is posted on a variety of sites, including YouTube (where Demand Media is one of the largest suppliers of videos) and the company’s own sites such as eHow, essortment.com, livestrong.com, Trails.com, GolfLink.com, Mania.com, and Cracked.com.”

Jefferson Graham, “Knowledge is the Power behind Popular eHow Website” USA Today (10.25.09)

Daniel Roth, “The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model” Wired (10.09)

Rochard MacManus, “Demand Media Is a Page View Generating Machine – And it’s Working” Readwriteweb (8.25.09)

Lou Kerner, “Demand Media Will Be The First $1 Billion Tech IPO Since Google — Here’s Why” SF Gate (4.20.10)

NEW: Steven Kydd (founder of Demand), portion of the Q&A of his keynote address, International Online Journalism Symposium [included a commentary by Austin Ries] (4.23.10)

NEW: “Online Monetization Strategy That Will Save News Publishing” AlwaysOn (2.1.10)

Foursquare

from Wikipedia: “Foursquare is a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices, and also a game. Users “check-in” at venues using text messaging or a device specific application.[1]  They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges.” The service was created by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai; Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball, which Google bought in 2005 and shut down in 2009.”

Doug Gross, “Foursquare takes lead in where-am-I apps” CNN (3.12.10)

Caroline McCarthy, “Is Foursquare’s growth boxed in?” CNet (3.19.10)

Nick Bilton, “Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses” NYT Bits Blog (3.9. 10)

Michael Calore, “SXSW: Geeks Defend Their Foursquare Turf” Wired Underwire (3.17.10)

Chatroulette

from Wikipedia: “Chatroulette is a website that pairs random strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.”

Nick Bilton, “The Surreal World of Chatroulette” New York Times, (2.19.10)

Marc Parry, “Chatroulette Lures Students With Low-Stakes Socializing” Chronicle of Higher Education (4.25.10)

Jon Stewart comments on Chatroulette, The Daily Show (3.4.10)

Julia Ioffe, “Roulette Russian” The New Yorker (5.17.10)

And remember, you’re encouraged to use the comment-space in each of these posts to share articles you’ve found, other links, even ideas.

One Laptop per Child

from Wikipedia: “The One Laptop Per Child Association, Inc. (OLPC) is a U.S. non-profit organization set up to oversee the creation of an affordable educational device for use in the developing world. Its mission is “to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.”[1]  Negroponte states that the mission is to eliminate poverty[2]. Its current focus is on the development, construction and deployment of the XO-1 laptop and its successors.”

Andy Greenberg, “The $75 Future Computer” Forbes (12.22.09)

Ryan Paul, “OLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development” Ars Technica (1.7.09)

Chloe Albanesius, “OLPC Unveils Roadmap, Plans Tablet for 2012” PC Magazine (12.23.09)

First, TWO recent privacy snafus on Facebook — one I briefly mentioned in class, one that emerged today — and the political inquiry emerging:

BBC News, “Facebook fizes embarassing security flaw”

Xeni Jardin, “Yet another Facebook privacy risk: emails Facebook sense leak user IP address” Boing Boing

Caroline McCarthy, “Facebook’s Impending Fight with D.C.” CNet

Then, some commentary about these recent issues, including the changes we discussed in class.

Matt McKeon, The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook (amazing diagram of how privacy defaults have changed.)

Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facebook’s Eroding Privacy: A Timeline

Mathew Ingram, “The Relationship between Facebook and Privacy: It’s Really Complicated.” Salon.com

Clive Thompson, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” New York Times (good article about the News Feed controversy)

Ryan Singel, “Facebook’s Gone Rogue, It’s Time for an Open Alternative” Wired Epicenter