CogBlogged from ‘November, 2007’

I’ve not thought much lately about the phenomena of the twitterverse, in fact, using twitter has become part of my regular routine antics that it really becomes less of an object of attention itself- its the flow that means something to me. This came to me during some reflection at the NMC Regional Conference at Tulane last week, not because it was obsessively tweeted. Actually it was seeing and connecting with colleague Kevin Creamer from University of Richmond. We’ve crossed tracks the last few years, some blog comments here and there, and I’ve read a few things on his Pandaemonium blog. Pretty sporadic. We may have had 2 RL conversations, or less. But following Kevin’s twitter this year, I had this compendium of more bits of Kevin-ness than previously possible. I knew some places he goes for coffee, some activities he does with his kids, the technologies he was researching [...]

Errorbook posted 14 Nov ’07, 3.52pm MST PST on flickr Too popular for its own good? Will the groovy ship Facebook sink under its own weight? I dunno, but a raft of these screens are not all that enticing for me to spend time here. Too bad the poke thing always works…

Now I am Mobile posted 13 Nov ’07, 12.01pm MST PST on flickr I am using a new wireless broadband thingie I got which now allows me to access the net where-ever I go (as long as I get a digital signal from my mobile provider, Alltel). The Franklin wireless CDU-550 USB is one of the few cards that work on Mac OSX (someone tell those providers that Apple has 15% of the laptop market and growing), which was a cinch to set up (excellent instructions from EVDOInfo). Here in Phoenix I am getting about 600 kb/s download, and now I have a backup when the home/office connection from Qwest goes south. I almost feel modern ;-) Photo taken as well with my new Razr phone, uploaded directly to flickr. This will save me bucks and hassle at airports lacking free wifi, hotels and their rip-off charges, and kludgy conferences [...]

If you see a van driving around your neighborhood with a roof mounted tripod hoisting a big black ball, smile as it may be folks from Google snapping photos to appear as part of the expanding Street View capability of Google maps. According to Boing Boing, that is how the 360 street images are being gathered, a special 11-sided camera. The word is that google uses a van rather than a black beetle: image from Boing Bong, May 31, 2007 I used this as a demo in Australia for my “Being There” presentation; back in September I found they and added parts of downtown Phoenix, and I typically pulled up at the corner of 7th St and Jefferson to zoom in on Chase Field baseball stadium (at the time, there was still hope for the Diamondbacks). But in the time since, I see the blue lines of Street View now [...]

Just to prove I am really not as technical savvy or know it all about the web as some of you fools think; today I absently blundered into a nifty piece of Google tech that is, oh, about two years old. A bunch of people will comment, “Oh heck yes, I knew about that like 8 years ago…” Good. I was looking for some info about a New Orleans benefit CD I bought at last week’s NMC conference. Searching in Google, I fell into Google Music search… oh this was new as of December 2005. So if you type in any Google search hole the name of a band, singer, album (help me out, are they still called “albums”? “CDs” do they even exist in these days of single song sales???), and your search results likely will include an album cover and links to more info. So if I search [...]

Closing keynote for the NMC Regional Conference at Tulane is Not Since the Great Depression: The Post Katrina Documentary Impulse and New Media by Michael Mizell-Nelson, University of New Orleans, Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (Collecting, Preserving, and Presenting the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita). Assembling content for an online database project regarding hurricanes Katrina and Rita provides daily opportunities to assess personal and community losses throughout the Gulf Coast. It also puts one into contact with the vast array of documentation efforts flourishing along the coast, particularly New Orleans, which serves as this catastrophe’s “Ground Zero.” Each individual’s story constitutes one invaluable piece in the immense debris field stretching from Texas to Alabama. New Media drives the documentation of the tragedies and ongoing recoveries; similarly, New Media must assist in making these invaluable materials accessible to both web surfers and scholars. Collecting what has already been [...]

Thanks to Marie C here at Tulane for sharing this BBC Story, In pictures: Nepal dogs honouredImage from BBC Nepal is celebrating the festival of Tihar, its equivalent of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. In Nepal, on the second day of the feast, special honour is bestowed on dogs. On this day, called Kukur Pooja or Kukur Tihar, its canines are garlanded, adorned with the Hindu powder of blessing, the tika, and given festive food including sweetmeats – jalabis. According to the Hindu scripture, the Mahabharat, dogs accompanied Dharmaraj Yudhisthir on his journey to heaven. There is also a Hindu belief that dogs guard the underworld. Go Nepal! Let’s Celebrate Tihar!

Here I get to try and blog my own presentation (?). 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story presentation by Alan Levine at NMC Regional Conference at Tulane. So this is not a detailed blog coverage- pretty much as I said in the talk, the entire pile of stuff is freely, openly available for use, re-use, lining bird cages at http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+ways. This is the workshop I prepped for workshops done during my October 2007 Australia tour. [download MP3] 51.2 Mb 1:14:05 The idea for the 50 Ways came at a time early in the summer of 2007 when I was taking notice of new web -based tools like Voice Thread and Slideshare’s Slidecasts that made it easy to create audio narrated slides shows. I knew of flickr based tools for assembling slideshows, and I began to wonder if there was a whole range of these kinds of tools. At [...]

i’ve waxed and waned over the years on activity of blogging from conference session, but have found it refreshing to do 3 so far from the NMC Regional Conference at Tulane. At times, it helps to reinforce listening, but the act of trying to notate, look up URLs in other tabs, is tiring, especially for a poor typist like this dog. And I have seen colleague recently go to twitter to jot notes from sessions- sometimes doing 10 in a row. I’m not judging that, but stuff in twitter has little or no shelf life. I find it useful when folks conference tweet with a relevant URL, that is useful, but OMHO, typing quote by quote just clogs by tweetbox. But having a decent set of notes in a blog post has a better recor for later use, at least to me. I cannot say I will do it consistently, [...]

Digital in the Wild: Community Using Technology in Post-Katrina New Orleans NOLA Blogger panel session at NMC Regional Conference at Tulane. A panel of five community activists (Ted Cash, Bart Everson, Alan Gutierrez, Sandy Rosenthal) will present their perspectives on how the levee catastrophe in New Orleans catapulted the need for digital information and communication in the community. In various ways, the panelists have each been involved in using technology since the storm to assist in the transformation of the city. They will share their perspectives on why technology has been critical to the lives of New Orleanians since Katrina, and how. Moderated by Chris Reade – never expected to be involved in rebuilding or recovery. “Digital in the Wild” coined by Alan Gutierrez not about “cool new tech”- technology was not even the pivotal role. After the storm, you would ave thought a Treo would be useful, but it [...]