From September 2005 to June 2006 a team of thirteen scholars at the The University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication explored how new and maturing networking technologies are transforming the way in which we interact with content, media sources, other individuals and groups, and the world that surrounds us.

This site documents the process and the results.

An Internet of Things

This is the report that folks have been chit-chatting about for a couple of weeks or so now. The Internet of Things. I just got a copy of the report and went through the first chapter. It resonates with the spime and blogject research vectors. It#039s 100 Swiss Francs — about $78 US. A book budget from the division would be swell..

Why do I blog this? I think an in

Submitted by jbleecker on December 3, 2005 - 4:15am

Receiver #14 Out — Thanks Vodaphone

Vodaphone's excellent series of insightful, culturally-aware essays on the mobile society has just released Issue #14. Pick it up..it's free!


Issue #14
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Mobile services are constantly breaching new boundaries, and will have an enormous impact on the logistics of life — both in terms of productivity and social networking. But the one most important basic feature will always be the ability to dynamically connect everybody with everybody else. So the question is: What do we want to bring together, exchange or take with us, and how can we do this when we're out in the field? This time around, receiver levels a look at applicability issues — how can we work, learn, cooperate and know better using mobiles?

Submitted by jbleecker on December 2, 2005 - 8:14pm

Brett Steele speaks to Networked Publics, 1 December, 4.30pm

Brett Steele, the Director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London will be speaking to Networked Publics on the methods of networked pedagogy that the AA is employing.

The presentation will take place at 4pm on Thursday, 1 December, in the second floor conference room of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, 746 West Adams Boulevard.

Make sure you read the street signs carefully prior to parking, as at 4pm parking is permitted on only a section of Adams.

Submitted by kvarnelis on December 1, 2005 - 2:39pm

Conference backchannels: distributed intelligence or divided attention

Nicolas Nova calls out this recent paper on "back-channels" at conferences.

Conference backchannels: distributed intelligence or divided attention:

Jacobs N, Mcfarlane A. (2005) Conferences as learning communities: some early lessons in using `back-channel’ technologies at an academic conference - distributed intelligence or divided attention? Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Vol. 21, No. 5., pp. 317-329

Submitted by jbleecker on December 1, 2005 - 5:10am

what hath the pod wrought?

Quite a day for iPod/vPod-related announcements...and its not even 10am yet (well, PST). Among them:

It's a Mod, Mod World: Podcasting has been called the ultimate in personalized media, since most podcasts are produced by amateurs for small, specialized audiences. But the real ultimate in personalization may be a podcast for an audience of one -- you. That's the promise of Modcast, a technology developed by Florida-based Bind that enables a podcast listener to choose which segments of a show to hear, then have a customized audio file generated on the fly. Other companies, such as Podcasternews.com, are also experimenting with modcasting -- which suggests that customization may be a big wave in podcasting's future. TechReview

Submitted by todd on November 30, 2005 - 11:27am

The Last Mile and the Threat to the Net

In Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes, at Linuxworld.com Doc Searl comments on the threats the Internet faces from. In this lengthy piece, Searl suggests that the combination of mergers among broadband carriers and the continued hatred of the Internet by the same entities poses tremendous danger to the future of networked publics. Searl's position is something that I've mentioned before in my response to Chris Anderson's talk on the Long Tail. For in the rapidly elongating Long Tail of microcontent and—as Mimi Ito underscored for us—the even more quickly proliferating cultural sphere of amateur cultural production, we are perversely reversing the undoing of big media that marked the last forty years. If my concern in that post was with what might happen to, say, Indy labels if artists can just go directly to iTunes, or what power entities like Google or even Flickr begin to have over us, Doc Searl reminds us that the much-vaunted free access that we have to the Internet is an illusion, not reality. In an earlier article for Cabinet Magazine, I explored the highly-centralized structure of the Internet itself and, in particular, the peering arrangements and physical structures created by the Tier 1 carriers. This article turns our attention to the last mile. Read on for more.

Submitted by kvarnelis on November 29, 2005 - 11:37pm

French Broadband

One of the interesting developments discussed at last week's IDATE conference is the recent rise of cheap broadband in France (current penetration is about 30%). For example, for 30 euros per month, free.fr offers 20Mb/s internet access (ADSL 2+), unlimited VoIP calls within France, and 75 channels of digital television (including the obvious suspects, plus some eclectic offerings such as Russia's RTR-Planeta and Al Jazeera Children's Channel). An additional 125 digital channels can be had for an extra fee. This also makes video on demand viable. One interesting example is vodeo.tv which distributes about 8000 francophone documentaries for a fee roughly equivalent to what you'll pay to watch "Desperate Housewives" on your iPod.

Submitted by fbar on November 27, 2005 - 9:51am

alternatives to panelism

my hope in writing this this blog entry is to get some debate going amongst theis site's readership about approriate conference models for netpublics. i've thown in my two cents from the experiences i've had in organizing events, i hope others can do the same.

after its last meeting, the netpublics group started looking at lovink and scholtz's description of their experiences in putting on the free-cooperation event in theit text the abc's of conferencing. lovink and scholtz's critique on panelism rings true to experiences i have also had in organizing events.

Submitted by mtuters on November 26, 2005 - 8:29pm

Craigslist Turns to the News?

Happy Thanksgiving, but perhaps not for old journalism. News sources such as the San Francisco Chronicle and Editor and Publisher are covering Craigslist founder Craig Newmark's announcement that he will be working on new technology "to help people find the most trusted versions of the more important stories." This does not mean that Craigslist will itself host the service, Newmark later clarified on his own blog.

Submitted by kvarnelis on November 24, 2005 - 11:34am

Writely

A couple of months ago, Stowe Boyd at Corante reviewed Writely, a free collaborative web-based word processor compatible with Microsoft Word. Many of Stowe's criticisms (such as the Firefox funkiness...even new versions of Safari work well enough) have been addressed and I was delighted that my various collaborators who had previously largely shrunk from on-line collaborative writing eagerly embraced Writely immediately.

Writely could still be more wiki like. Why should our documents wind up so disparate? Why can't they be more easily linked together? Collaboration needs some work although it is the first thing on their list after Thanksgiving. But Writely has strong promise for such a new product and could give services like Socialtext a run for their money. In any event, Writely is worth a look for any project requiring networked, collaborative writing.

There's an interview with the people behind writely at Emily Chang's ehub, a blog on Web 2.0 applications that's worth visiting as well. The main page, which I'm adding to my RSS feeds, is here.

Submitted by kvarnelis on November 22, 2005 - 1:06am

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