vlog 4.0 [a blog about vogs]

Agendas

Adrian — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:02:58 +0000

The next Video Vortex event is being organised and an email arrived listing possible themes with an invitation to suggest others. This is my response:

1. Documentary and online video practice.
Just something with stronger connection to previous genre/form/practices. The rise of informal video making (like blogging before it) has strong connections in relation to some forms of personal documentary. What are they? And what might this mode of making contribute to new documentary forms or practices?

2. Online video and new narratives.
The majority of video online is still a) treating video as a single whole object and b) linear. As far as I know we still haven’t even really managed something like Flickr’s squaredcircle or something with the density of connections that a decent blog manages. Why not? Is this a problem of video in itself so video will always be ‘book like’ (bounded and relatively closed in itself) is this is just the hegemony of heritage media?

International Handbook of Internet Research

Adrian — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:42:30 +0000

Was about to recommend the International Handbook of Internet Research, a new publication until I saw that it is 219 Euros. No disrespect to Jeremy, Lisbeth or Matthew, but that’s a fuck off kind of price really isn’t it? Another nail into the legitimacy of the unpaid labour for publishers that is academic publishing.

Lemon Question

Adrian — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:57:25 +0000

We have a lemon tree in the backyard. Been full of bright yellow sour suckers recently, more than we have any use for. So I’ve been putting them off the front fence in a toy bucket for people walking past to take home. If I’m there we get a thank you, it’s just a nice thing to do and helps make the street feel like a place to live. For various reasons, mainly that the bucket was buried in the sand pit under a lid, I haven’t put any out for a while, so last weekend I picked a shopping bag full and put out a full bucket’s worth. They were all gone inside of 15 minutes. This tells me that one person, or persons (unknown) took the lot, all at once. Now, what is the etiquette here? A sort of Seinfeld question really, isn’t it? I mean, taking a couple, but the whole lot, that’s about one and half kilo’s, the sort of quantity you’d need to purchase. Has this stepped over the mark of the street give away? Should I expect a jar of lemon spread or similar on my doorstep shortly? Or a couple of dollars in the bucket? There’s plenty more lemons there, but I’m not sure that’s the point. How much is reasonable when it is free, for the street?

Bookmarks for July 15th through August 5th

Adrian — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:02:11 +0000

These are my links for July 15th through August 5th:

Course search – Research methods subject at Deakin.
Do we really need to trade in social media currency? – opinion piece on the rise and use of literal forms of social currency.
Digital Culture & Education – International, open access journal that looks like it is based in mainly the English/writing context but pays a lot of attention to multi, digi, whatever literacies.
Ippolita Collective: The situation with the social media – a position paper –
| MediaFront – Open Source module for video in a variety of CMSs.

Contestables

Adrian — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:24:40 +0000

A good problem is one that is contestable. To be contestable it must be grounded in the knowledge of the field. This is how it is tested and contested. As an honours student, what does ‘contest’ and ‘contested’ mean here?

Bookmarks for July 4th through July 9th

Adrian — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:01:03 +0000

These are my links for July 4th through July 9th:

Guidelines for Group Collaboration and Emergence « emergent by design – Nice blog post about how group collaboration needs to be structured.
Social Networks – Extensive bibliography on Social Network References.
Digital Storytelling issue of Seminar.net – Issue of journal dedicated to digital storytelling. Still think digital storytelling is a crock theoretically and politically.
Our data journalism is opening up a world of information | Sustainability | guardian.co.uk – Article from the Guardian about the Guardian's use of data as a new form of journalistic practice.
Reading in a Whole New Way | 40th Anniversary | Smithsonian Magazine – Article about impact of devices like the iPad on reading, shift frm contemplation to action.
UTS: Communication – UTS: Communication honours program – Communication Honours at UTS
UWS: Bachelor of Communication (Honours) – B.Comm honours at UWS

Bookmarks for June 28th through July 2nd

Adrian — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:01:28 +0000

These are my links for June 28th through July 2nd:

Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) – Courses and Programs – The University of Queensland, Australia – Bach. Creative Arts Honours at UQ
Bachelor of Multimedia Design(Honours) – Courses and Programs – The University of Queensland, Australia – Bachelor of Multimedia Des Honours at UQ
Bachelor of Communication (Honours) – Courses and Programs – The University of Queensland, Australia – Bachelor of Communication Honours at UQ
Journalism & Mass Communication Field of Study – part of the Bachelor of Arts(Honours) – Courses and Programs – The University of Queensland, Australia – Journalism and Mass Comm honours at UQ
Communication and Cultural Studies Field of Study – part of the Bachelor of Arts(Honours) – Courses and Programs – The University of Queensland, Australia – Communication and Cultural Studies honours at UQ
Griffith University | Bachelor of Multimedia with Honours – Nathan – Bachelor of Multimedia Honours at Griffith
Griffith University | Bachelor of Photography with Honours – South Bank (QCA) – Bachelor of Photography with honours, Griffith
Griffith University | Bachelor of Animation with Honours – South Bank (QCA) – Bachelor of Animation with Honours, Griffith
Griffith University | Bachelor of Film and Screen Media Production with Honours – South Bank (QCA) – Bachelor Film and Screen Media Prod with Honours, Griffith
Griffith University | Bachelor of Digital Media with Honours – Gold Coast (QCA) – Bachelor of Digital Media with Honours, Griffith
Griffith University | Bachelor of Design with Honours – South Bank (QCA) – B.Des honours at Griffith.
QUT Bachelor of Journalism (Honours) – Program outline, entry details and the like for journalism honours program.
Creative Industries Honours at QUT – Course outline, entry requirements and the like for QUT's Bachelor of Creative Industries (Honours)
Elsevier – The Future of the Journal – Slide presentation from Elsevier's Disruptive Technologies Director. The title alone means this is worth taking a squiz at.
[sudamih] Welcome to the Sudamih website – Uni of Oxford project – Supporting Data Management Infrastructure for the Humanities. If that doesn't give you an idea of what it is about, then I'm afraid nothing will.
Incompetech – Royalty free CC licenced music for use in soundtracks. Can't vouch for the quality, just that they're there as long as you attribute.

iCal to gCal Sync

Adrian — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:12:30 +0000

Something I’ve wanted to do for a while is have two way sync between gCal and iCal. While there have been third party solutions (eg Spanning Sync) I just wanted something that might not have to cost me money. I hadn’t checked for it seems a couple of years, since today I did a search and found that gcal has been able to do this for a couple of years. Best instructions I found are on lifehacker, about syncing desktop calendars to gcal, and my quick test it seems to work a treat. The advantage of this is that I share my gcal calendar with work colleagues, and I can also make it talk to the Groupwise corporate calendar at work, since it involves iCal it will also turn up on my iPod touch, and since it is two way I can add stuff in google or iCal and all will be sweet.

UPDATE: ah, talks to ical and gcal but not to iPod touch via network. So could manual sync them using iTunes but that defeats the purpose. Easy fix: on iPod settings can go into the gmail user settings and turn on calendars. Done.

UPDATE on the UPDATE: bugger. The Great Firewall of RMIT breaks it. iCal is not allowed to chat with gcal from inside the barriers. To make it worse if I try to run iCal on my desktop it launches, get an error related to the gcal account, and it quits. This is major problem. Have to think about next step.

Bookmarks for June 19th through June 27th

Adrian — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:01:13 +0000

These are my links for June 19th through June 27th:

Prezi – The zooming presentation editor – Online service that does presentations. Uses an interesting zooming and panning interface method.
VidMe – New video service that provides privacy options so video can share with world, or smaller groups.
COinS Generator – Bibliographic metadata generator that can generate what you need for things like Zotero.
dev:wordpress [Zotero Documentation] – WP plugin in that lets posts have the appropriate metadata for Zotero.
en.Slow Media » The Slow Media Manifesto – Interesting manifesto about media making and consumption. Not convinced that it is really slow media (in the spirit of slow food) but need to give it a closer look.
5 Enterprise 2.0 Myth Mantras that Must Die :: Personal InfoCloud – Blog that outlines 5 myths about enterprise 2.0. Nicely segues into not only social media more broadly but very particularly education contexts (and myths).
Role of Social Media in Contemporary Marketing –
Tinderbox Forum – Dashboards – Useful discussion about how to create dashboards in Tinderbox. Dashboards can do things like graph how many words, pages, and so on.

How to Write?

Adrian — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 04:07:30 +0000

I’ve started a writing project that has come out of the research leave I had last year. Basically I’m writing draft essays come semi-structured thoughts, which will end up online. I’m using Tinderbox because while my blog has some good stuff in it, I can’t find it easily, and I also want a writing project that grows and becomes more densely interconnected than a blog tends to be. So the writing has been going well, have a prototype site designed but not public yet (currently pretty much the same as I’ve used for the integrated media course notes this year) but I have a dilemma.

The first major part has become a 5000 word node, which means I can also spend a bit more polishing time once I do the publishing in this particular project to turn it into something for publication. But 5000 words! The original idea of writing like this was for something more hypertextual. Shorter nodes that broke off and linked to other bits when new ideas arose. Instead this is pretty much flat land essay. Now, the actual dilemma. I could break this up into more appropriate nodes, rewrite each of these so they are more self contained and not like an essay. The advantages of this are that I know I can write more quickly, more broadly, but also with more detail like this. For me everything is intertwingled (to quote the ever quotable Ted Nelson) and so one reason this node has grown to 5000 words is because this idea leads to this one which leads to this one which then needs more background and explanation.

The disadvantages, for me, of writing more hypertextually though are that if this 5000 word essay became five 1000 word nodes then to turn that into a publishable outcome, which nearly always still means a traditional essay, means taking these parts and reworking them quite a bit to make them work as an essay. It is not, technically, that difficult to do, though can be time consuming. It often involves a lot of editing because to write hypertext hypertextually often means writing things in relatively self contained ways. But the biggest problem is that I find finishing things, getting something from 85% finished to 100%, the hardest, and so that last step – taking it out of Tinderbox and into Word or whatever to roll it into an essay. If it is too distant from that final form then I’m concerned it just won’t happen. Now, that doesn’t matter, the work is published online, out there, available. More available then it will ever be in a bloody journal quite frankly. But I have to tick boxes as part of my position description as an academic, and simply creating and distributing doesn’t tick any.

What to do? Suck it and see is the only option isn’t it? No good trying to solve it here. Let’s try to move to a more hypertextual writing model, less essay nodes, and see what comes of that. Long nodes aren’t of themselves wrong – look at Wikipedia in many ways I think the idea of having most collected on the one page makes a lot of good sense – but if it gets in the way of my thinking and writing practice then that is a problem.