Book Reviews

Smart Mobs : The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold

"A vivid mural of thenew frontier of the mobile Web."- Fast Company . Smart Mobs takes us on a journey around the world for a preview of the next techno-cultural shift. The coming wave, says Rheingold, is the result of super-efficient mobile communications-cellular phones, wireless-paging, and Internet-access devices-that will allow us to connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere.Rheingold offers a penetrating perspective on the new convergence of pop culture, cutting-edge technology, and social activism. He also reminds us that the real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself but from how people use it, resist it, and adapt to it.

It's a must read for people interested in mobile and social technology. The book is engaging and offers an insightful introduction to social and network theories.


The New Community Rules : Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg.

Blogs, networking sites, and other examples of the social web provide businesses with a largely untapped marketing channel for products and services. But how do you take advantage of them? With The New Community Rules, you'll understand how social web technologies work, and learn the most practical and effective ways to reach people who frequent these sites.

Written by an expert in social media and viral marketing, this book cuts through the hype and jargon to give you intelligent advice and strategies for positioning your business on the social web, with case studies that show how other companies have used this approach. 

 If you're fairly new to all thing related to 'Social Web' you might fing this book interesting, as it offers excellent insights into using social media as a marketing channel. But if you're someone who already nows his way around the social web and how to handle social media, you might find it to be a bit boring, as did I.

The Sciences and the Arts

When I did a little brainstorming on what to write about in this particular blogpost, my brain did a runner with the science part in mind. But upon thinking about the arts connected with social web it came back singing, dancing and smiling.


The first thing I wrote down in my notebook in thick bold letters was: deviantART. 

DeviantArt has been around for a while. The community is large and the site is fully featured. It's a great place to just look at art and what people are doing. There's just so many people posting there that you can see tons of stuff. The site puts the artwork in the forefront. The profiles really showcase the art and you can just look at someones profile or go to the art with very few clicks. Some of the other sites take a bit more work to actually see a full sized image: clicking through to searchs, profiles, albums and then finally artwork.

Another thing that came to mind was Designflavr. Designflavr is a moderated art and design showcase built upon user submissions. It's a really great site. You can sit back, browse through beautiful art and let yourself get inspired.

I definitely recommend those two sites if you're worn out and need some new input :)

Privacy & Security

When it comes to privacy and security issues on social networks, the sites that are most likely to suffer from issues are the most popular ones.All it takes is one single person to cause a major damage.But security issues and privacy issues are two entirely different things.A security issue occurs when a hacker gains unauthorized access to a site's protected coding or written language.Privacy issues, those involving the unwarranted access of private information, don't necessarily have to involve security breaches.Someone can gain access to confidential information simply by watching you type your password.
But how can you protect yourself from those with malicious intentions?Below are some helpful tips regarding security and privacy while using social networking sites:

• Ensure that any computer you use to connect to a social media site has proper security measures in place. Use and maintain anti-virus software and keep your application and operating system patches up-to-date. 
• Use caution when clicking a link to another page or running an online application, even if it is from someone you know. Many applications embedded within social networking sites require you to share your information when you use them.   Attackers use these sites to distribute their malware. 
• Use strong and unique passwords. Using the same password on all accounts increases the vulnerability of these accounts if one becomes compromised. 
• If screen names are allowed, do not choose one that gives away too much personal information.
• Be careful who you add as a “friend,” or what groups or pages you join. The more “friends” you have or groups/pages you join, the more people who have access to your information. 
• Do not assume privacy on a social networking site. For both business and personal use, confidential information should not be shared. You should only post information you are comfortable disclosing to a complete stranger. 
• Use discretion before posting information or  commenting about anything. Once information is posted online, it can potentially be viewed by anyone and may not be retracted afterwards. Keep in mind that content or communications on government-related social networking pages may be considered public records. 
• Configure privacy settings to allow only those people you trust to have access to the information you post. Also, restrict the ability for others to post information to your page. The default settings for some sites may allow anyone to see your information or post information to your page; these settings should be changed. 
• Review a site’s privacy policy. Some sites may share information such as email addresses or user preferences with other parties. If a site’s privacy policy is vague or does not properly protect your information, do not use the site.

Government / Citizen Journalism

If you look in the dictionary for the definition of 'citizen journalism', you should see a picture of Dan Gillmore. Gillmore wrote the first blog at a newspaper website. He also wrote the book 'We the Media' on the subject of grassroots media and now he runs the Center for Citizen Media, a joint project of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkely and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

The Idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.

Although these acts don't go beyond simple observation at the scene of an important event, they might be considered acts of journalism. The average citizen can now make news and distribute it globally, thanks to the wide spreading of so many tools for capturing live events. An act that was once reserved for established journalists and media companies.

According to Jay Rosen, citizen journalists are "the people formerly known as the audience," who "were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from

one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all. ... The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable."[source]

Corporations / Marketing

Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects.

Every project creator sets their project's funding goal and deadline. If the project succeeds in reaching its funding goal all backers' credit cards are charged when time expires. If the project falls short no one is charged.

Since our launch in April 2009, more than 24,000 creative projects have been successfully funded by awesome people from around the world.

In this blogpost I want to introduce you to two of them.



The first one would be: Goblins Drool, Fairies Rules! It is a card game of rhyme and reason for kids of all ages. It got 1,186 backers and 'earned $27,127 -> funding successful.



The second one would be: Mythomania, Season 2.
Mythomania is a show about cartoonist by cartoonists.

I've always been frustrated with the, well, cartoony way cartoonists have been portrayed in television and film. Outside of "Crumb" and "American Splendor," it's rare to encounter a depiction of someone obsessed with the comic artform that has any semblance of verisimilitude. The main problem, of course, is that most of those films and shows were not created by cartoonists. Mythomania is a show about cartoonists by a cartoonist.

Teaching and Learning

Salman Khan is talking about a revolutionary new education system. The basic idea is: students inform themselves about their new subject at home, via podcasts. In the actual lecture students will be encouraged to either ask questions or do some exercises.

Social Gaming

Does World of Warcraft ring any bells? Hell yeah, sure it does, right?! It's one of the most played massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) with roughly about 10 million subscribers!

Personally, I must admit I'm not such a big fan of WoW. I tried it, it kind of sucked and got boring much to fast (Quests like "Kill 10 pigs." or "Kill 40 thieves." always makes me want to hit the ESC-Button asap!).

But some months ago I stumbled upon a game called Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I was (and still am) positively surprised. I mean...sure it also got monotone quests like: "Kill 10 jedi.", but these tasks got wrapped into such nice cut-scenes....makes it all more bearable :)
Not to forget the story you experience as you level up your character, superb!

Social Networks

The Small-World Phenomenon.

A social network exhibits the small-world phenomenon if, roughly speaking, any two individuals in the network are likely to be connected through a short sequence of intermediate acquaintances. 

This has long been the subject of anecdotal observation and folklore; often we meet a stranger and discover that we have an acquaintance in common. 

It has since grown into a signicant area of study in the social sciences, in large part through a series of striking experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and his co-workers in the 1960's. Recent work has suggested that the phenomenon is pervasive in networks arising in nature and technology, and a fundamental ingredient in the structural evolution of the World Wide Web.

Milgram's basic small-world experiment remains one of the most compelling ways to think about the problem. The goal of the experiment was to nd short chains of acquaintances linking pairs of people in the United States who did not know one another. 

In a typical instance of the experiment, a source person in Nebraska would be given a letter to deliver to

a target person in Massachusetts. The source would initially be told basic information about the target, including his address and occupation; the source would then be instructed to send the letter to someone she knew on a rst-name basis in an eort to transmit the letter to the target as ecaciously as possible. 

Anyone subsequently receiving the letter would be given the same instructions, and the chain of communication would continue until the target was reached. 

Over many trials, the average number of intermediate steps in a successful chain was found to lie between ve and six, a quantity that has since entered popular culture as the "six degrees of separation" principle.

Collaboration.

1. Forming - Storming - Norming - PerformingNo, I'm not going to be explaining these stages of group development for the umpteenth time. My fellow social web bloggers already did, so if you're interested in knowing more about the theory, you're welcome to check out this little handy thing on the right called 'blogroll'.As I once wrote a seminar paper about group development and dynamics I know fairly well what Tuckman's talking about, and I have to say: Yes, he kind of nails it! Whether you look left or right, almost every group that's just starting out passes these four stages, some faster than others.
2. Group DynamicsYeah, group dynamics, something that's fascinating me. I always like to pass time, sitting in the train for example, just watching groups of people, trying to figure out who's their leader and who are 'the others'.
3. Team BuildingWait...what? There are companies making money out of organizing 'team building activities'? Want too!I very much like the 'Wild West' - theme: you'll run a town and learn gunslinging skills so you can keep the law. Yee Ha!
4. Creative CommonsCreative Commons, in contrast to the old copyright ('all rights reserved'), allows it to multiply, spread and make work of others public to the world,  just 'some rights reserved'.
5. Are we finished yet? Well, yes, I feel like I just wrote tons of bullshit...Anyways, I try to make the next update come quicker, maybe. I just don't feel like writing and maintaining a blog :/

Blogs, Microblogs and Podcasts.

1. Podcasts. I never really had the urge to search for good ones. Honestly I may have listened to four or five in my whole life, so yeah, you could say I'm just not interested in these kinda things...Though I would give it a shot if I happen to stumble upon a good (meaning funny, interesting and NOT boring) one.
2. Twitter. Personally I have absolutely no use for a Twitter-Account. You're restricted to 140 signs and most of the tweets I actually read were made up of one acronym after the other, or tweets consisting of shortened links to a longer version of your tweet, 'cause people want to chirp more then the allowed signs, etc. etc. etc. That's not at all appealing to me. (For informing my fellow human beings of my tedious activities I tend to update my Facebook status.)I prefer tumblr as some sort of microblog. Mainly because I don't have to use those ugly shortened URLs, and it does not limit you to 140 signs. I even think you can really set it up as a 'real' blog. You may not have all the features blogger has to offer, but the rudimental elements are all available.I am inclined to use it for 'archiving' pictures and quotes I find inspiring though for that purpose you could also use weheartit.
3. So far, so good. I successfully wrote my first actual post. Wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Initially I wanted to include some pictures of a dead Twitter birdie and a deaf man with headphones on, but my Wacom just died on me yesterday. However... you can always imagine I inserted pictures, right? :)
Anyways, let me know what you think about Twitter and if you have some very interesting Podcasts, link them to me, I may get bored one day ;)

This is frustrating.

No seriously, it's damn frustrating, all this CSS and HTML stuff which I kind of forgot over the last few years. I guess it's dementia finally catching up with me.

Well.

I never thought I'd start a blog, but here I am, trying to think of something to write... apparently I've got some serious input problems.

Regardless: be prepared for some disastrous English! :)