THE BEST TABLET IS THE ONE YOU HAVE WITH YOU

The Tab is roughly the same size as, but thicker than Amazon’s Kindle, which ironically I sold when I got my iPad. Prior to iPad ownership, my Kindle would go everywhere with me because of its small size, light weight, stellar battery life and integrated connectivity. And I do mean everywhere: the device would fit in my jacket pocket or could be thrown — figuratively, not literally — in the car or in a gear bag. The Galaxy Tab offers me that same level of portability, while the iPad doesn’t.

Read: Why I Just Dumped the iPad (Hint: Size Matters)

…What’s intriguing for me, since I blog for CNN Tech, is the overall civility and engagement expressed in the comments here. Yes, there are a few fanboys and flamers, but generally it’s pretty civil — and Tofel is participating constructively.

Meanwhile, on CNN, I’m sure that a post which critiqued such a popular product would have generated an immediate torrent of vicious personal slurs — toward the author, and toward other commenters. And if the author was female, the sexual innuendo and sexist comments would be out in force.

I’m not knocking CNN Tech. I’m just saying it’s interesting to see the cultural difference from one venue to another.

Hat tip to Steve Yelvington for pointing to the GigaOm article.

Here’s a quick rundown of my own changes, and contributing reasons for them. I’d be curious to hear about other people’s personal media evolutions, too. Please share your own experiences in the comments below…

1. More conversation and annotation, less exposition.

I’m an avid user of two social media channels: Twitter and Delicious. Through these, I’ve gotten used to quickly stating what really needs to be shared or communicated. Most of the points I want or need to make don’t require exposition. Generally just a brief statement, or a link with context, will suffice. This is why the vast majority of my posts to this blog have been syndicated from links I’m saving and annotating in Delicious.

Personally, I think this is a gain, not a loss. For most things, I prefer more efficient communication. It allows me to cover more ground — and to learn more.

What’s lost? Not eloquence, since I was never very eloquent. However, continuity and context can suffer. Often it can be difficult for others (or for me) to follow my trail of breadcrumbs, to connect all the dots in order to see a larger picture. Yes, I still want a “me collector“.

2. More text, less voice.

I’ve never been much for talking on the telephone. I even squirm at face-to-face conversations that go on for more than about 20-30 minutes at a stretch.

Instant messaging suits me much better. It’s a key way that I keep in touch with the people who matter most in my life. Every day I text-chat with my current and former intimate partners, close friends, colleagues, and more casual friends. I’ve been able to connect with these people more substantially and meaningfully through instant messaging than by relying primarily on phone or voice.

I like the pace of IM conversations. They’re either very fast and functional (“Got a quick question for ya…”) or they ebb and flow over an hour or more. Depending on the conversation or person involved, I don’t like to feel the constant pressure to respond immediately that exists in phone or face-to-face conversations. In IM chats, pauses generally aren’t awkward, so conversation feels less forced. Even better, my attention is free to wander, as it is prone to do, without me seeming rude or uncaring.

What’s lost? I still see local friends face-to-face quite often, so I don’t feel I’m lacking conversation there. But I do make less effort than I probably should to reach out by phone to people who are important to me but who don’t use IM. So there is some relationship impact there. I do tend to prioritize people who are available via my preferred communication channels.

3. News: Listening up, reading down

It’s been many years since I read much news in print. But in the last couple of years I’ve found myself relying almost entirely on audio news podcasts for my daily fix of what’s happening. I prefer to listen to news while doing things: making breakfast, cleaning up, working out, running errands, strolling the neighborhood, etc. I don’t just sit there and listen to news, and I almost never watch video news podcasts. When I have to sit there for news, whether for reading or watching, I get antsy.

It’s not that I don’t read online news at all. Every day, I read a lot of online news — but rarely any more than headlines and the first few paragraphs of most online news stories. I’m one of those people who’s more likely to glance at the headlines and summaries on Google News (especially on my phone) a few times a day, and to maybe click through to a couple of stories.

There are exceptions: When an article is highly recommended by a friend or colleague, or when it’s extremely relevant to my specific circumstances or interests, I’m likely to read it through to the end. Quite often, for online news I really want to read, I’ll use Instapaper to transfer the content of that web page to my Kindle. I’m not crazy about reading long-format content in my web browser. I prefer an e-book reader. Both the Kindle device and the Kindle iPhone app offer me a great e-reader experience.

What’s especially interesting to me is that through audio news podcasts I feel a very strong loyalty to several mainstream and niche news brands (NPR, Slashdot Review, etc.). However, when reading online news via a web browser, I feel almost no brand loyalty. I have a strong preference for news aggregators over news sites. It’s very rare that I visit the home page of a news site.

What’s lost? For me, nothing. Do habits like mine hurt the news biz? I don’t think so — especially since it’s the only way I feel any loyalty for specific news brands these days.

4. Journaling: Sharp increase

2009 was an emotionally wrenching year for me. I sold my house, ended my marriage, transitioned to a very positive post-marriage relationship with my former spouse, moved from Boulder to Oakland, left my cats behind for now, downsized my possessions to fit into a single room, got knee surgery, dealt with knee surgery rehab, traveled a lot, had a very short and unhappy relationship with an unsuitable partner, began a much more rewarding and happy relationship with a very suitable partner, watched my cousin die from afar, and some other stuff…

Most of this I would never blog about. Some of it I wouldn’t tweet about, either. But I do write about it all, in my paper journal.

Yes, when it comes to working through difficult emotional stuff, journaling tends to work best for me. And this year I filled up three of them. That’s a lot for me. There have been times in my life when I didn’t journal much at all. For the past couple of years I’ve been journaling a lot, and it keeps me sane.

I like doing some writing that is only for me. And I like doing it by hand. I like the feel of a fine-point felt-tip pen on the creamy paper of a Moleskine journal. It feels deeply personal and intimate. I think better about how I feel when I journal. I understand myself and my life better. I forgive myself more, I allow myself more. I don’t worry about covering all bases or responding to critics. And right now, I need all of that.

5. Twitter as antidepressant

I’ve noticed that when I’m feeling low energy or in a down mood, spending a few minutes scanning Twitter tends to engage and energize me. I follow a lot of very interesting people and organizations on Twitter. Any time I dip my toes into that Twitter stream I always find something interesting, amusing, heartfelt, friendly, or useful.

…Yes, there’s some drivel and occasional nastiness. But I tend to unfollow people who get boring or mean there. So I’ve got a pretty high-quality Twitter stream.

I like that Twitter takes so little effort to read. (Similarly, I dislike Facebook because its interface is so chaotic.) I feel no pressure or desire to “catch up,” for me Twitter is all about right now. If I’m feeling lonely or bored or isolated, it’s an easy way to reach out to people I know. I respond often to other’s tweets, both publicly and by private direct message.

In a year of so much personal upheaval, having an instantly available ambient sense of my friends around me, and what they’re into, has helped keep me functional, balanced, and happier than I would have been otherwise.

The downside? Yes, sometimes Twitter can be too distracting. When I was having some especially hard times in my life earlier this year, I definitely used Twitter to procrastinate and distract myself. But that seems, for me, to be more a function of how I’m doing, rather than anything inherent to Twitter.

…Anyway, those are the changes I’ve notices in my own reading/writing patterns. What about you? Please comment below.

Just yesterday I learned that on Twitter (a social media service I use a lot), if I begin a tweet with an @ reply (such as: @lisawilliams said…), that tweet will only be seen by people who not only follow me but who ALSO follow the Twitter user named after the initial “@”.

You’d think I would have known this already, but every once in a while something major slips by me. Twitter changed how it handles “@ replies” a few months ago — something that caused considerable controversy on the service. It was a controversy I happened to miss. But thanks to the kindness of a stranger, I’m now caught up on the issue and can offer some useful tips.

I’m writing about this issues because it has significant implications for how I’ll be doing live coverage of events via Twitter.

Whenever I’m at an event (such as a conference, talk, or arts event) that I think might also interest some of my Twitter followers, I tend to “live tweet” it — posting frequent updates about what’s being said, what I’m seeing, reactions to what’s happening, etc.

I do this so much, and have gotten pretty good at it, that I have attracted many Twitter followers because of it. So I’ve decided to explore offering live event coverage as a professional service.

BUT: What if only a fraction of my nearly 5,000 Twitter followers have the opportunity to see my live coverage? And what if those people are already, in a sense, part of the “in crowd?”

That’s the situation when I start my live tweets with “@”.

Yeah, big problem. Especially if part of the value I bring to the table with live event coverage service is the size of my Twitter posse.

Fortunately, it’s fixable…

Here’s what I have been doing:

When I live tweet — especially when I’m covering what’s being said at an event — I’ve tended to use a format like this:

@scottros: “I envy journalism students now. You all have the opportunity to publish. Just start publishing now, whatever your passion is.”

…That is, the first thing I do is identify the speaker in a way that people can find and follow that person on Twitter. Then I deliver the quote. This makes sense for reading, but not for how Twitter works now.

Some Twitter users hack around this by inserting characters like “.” or “r [space]” before the @. This is apparently sufficient to trick Twitter into serving those tweets up to all your followers.

It works, but I don’t like it.

I believe in trying to make tweets read as naturally as possible, within that 140-character constraint. It’s challenging, but I’ve come to think of it as an art form. Well, at least a useful writing skill.

In my experience: Being as readable as possible on Twitter counts. It encourages more people to follow you, retweet you, and interact with you.

Too many people use Twitter’s character-count constraint as an excuse to get cryptic or vague in order to save space. The problem is, when people have to think too much (or at all) to decode or interpret what you wrote, you become less interesting. And you’ll only succeed on Twitter if you’re interesting.

My proposed solution:

Here’s what I’m going to try: From now on, when I’m live tweeting and quoting someone, I’ll begin with the quote, and end with the attribution in parentheses. That would only add one character to my current style.

For example, the tweet I shared above would look like this:

“I envy journalism students now. You all have the opportunity to publish. Just start publishing now, whatever your passion is.” (@scottros)

If I live tweet that way, then ALL of my Twitter followers would see the tweet — whether or not they also follow author Scott Rosenberg on Twitter.

What do you think of this approach? Please comment below.

I’ll try this out tonight. I’m attending a book signing, which I’ll be covering for Oakland Local. It’s fun stuff: Local illustrator Chris Lane will be discussing his new book, Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection. (Event details)

Once I try this live-tweeting strategy, I’ll get a sense for whether and how well it really works. But you let me know what you think.

…Yeah, this seems like a minor, picky point of style. However, given how Twitter now works, it would vastly increase the audience for my live event coverage.

I thought other Twitter users might find this info useful as well, especially journalists and others who do live coverage of events or breaking news via Twitter. After all, I can’t be the only avid Twitter user who missed this, right?

…Oh well, maybe I could be, I dunno.

In my own defense, when Twitter made this change back in May, I was at the apex of several major, stressful life changes — including selling my home of 12 years, downsizing my possessions to fit in a single room, and relocating to a new and very different city. I remember seeing the #fixreplies hashtag, but at the time I didn’t have the mental energy to figure out what people were talking about. My bad.

Anyway, I’m very grateful to Alex Howard (@digiphile on Twitter) who kindly pointed out to me this change in how Twitter works last night. I was live-tweeting a talk that Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything and founder of the intriguing new Mediabugs project. Alex liked my coverage, which he only saw because he also follows Scott on Twitter. He wanted more people to be able to see what I was doing, and kindly clued me in about the implications of starting with @.

RESOURCES:

Alex directed me to his discussion with Leslie Poston about implications of the @ reply change. This is quite thought-provoking and readable. If how people actually connect via social media matters to you, give it a read.

More recently, blogger Patrix covered this issue: Understanding Twitter @Replies Behavior. The comment thread here provides considerable clarification.

Finally, it’s important to understand how Twitter distinguishes between replies and mentions.

(For more context on failure, see this consummate resource.)

Perhaps more than any other She’s Geeky session, this one resonated with me. Right now, I’m in the process of ending my marriage, relocating from a community I’ve loved and called home for nearly 14 years, entering midlife, and dealing with much emotional backlog that has accumulated while I’ve kept busy busy busy for so many years.

That’s a lot of stuff to handle, on top of work and ordinary life. Frankly, it’s been hard for me to admit to myself — let alone anyone else — that because of all these issues I am not currently operating at the 1000% (not a typo) level I typically expect of myself, and often deliver.

So first, here are my tweets from this session, followed by some results of my mulling on this. Note that I deliberately did NOT identify speakers, except for prompting questions by Susan Mernit. Discussing failure leaves people vulnerable, and the attendees of this session agreed to make it a safe space. Everything appearing in quotes below is from an attendee…

Now at @susanmernit’s epic #shesgeeky session on failure… A topic I know well….. Big taboo on discussing it, though!

@susanmernit: It’s important to understand what caused your failure and what kind of failure was it, and what you learn.

Lesson from failed startup in a tech incubator program: “I realized that I was not the best fit for my own company — thankfully before I got too committed.”

“The problem with deciding to pull the plug on a project is that I was worried about what folks would think/say. Was my reputation at risk?”

Depending on how you define success: What’s failure, really? Success can = maturity/objectivity to admit something’s not working.

“Often when I’ve had failures, it’s when I ignore my gut, try to just work harder instead of admit what’s happening.”

“Women tend to be very hard on ourselves, and the possible consequences of failure loom larger than reality warrants.”

“In Silicon Valley, when a man’s startup fails, it’s a one-off. When a woman’s startup fails, it’s treated as normal, expected.”

“Because women are expected to fail in business, you feel guilty about failing because you think you’re feeding that stereotype.”

“Men tend to have more mentors. That helps cushion failure and encourages risk-taking. Women fly without a safety net more often.”

“Men often act like they’re doing their ventures on their own, but they really have much support. Women usually ARE on their own.”

“Men are socialized to compete within their brotherhood. Adolescent girls usually don’t experience healthy competition.

Author and podcaster Dan Sawyer noted here via IM: “Great stuff you’re tweeting. Tell Susan it’s got me shouting and cheering over here. It’s very true, and women need to hear it. Particularly the part about doing ventures on their own — that’s a social camouflage, and it’s complete bullshit. The thing is, all of us guys KNOW it’s bullshit — we usually don’t realize that women DON’T know it. And yes, we are trained from birth to compete with each other like boxers — enemies within the ring, friends once the bell is rung. Men who can’t keep that collegiate spirit are not well regarded by other men, even if they’re successful. Actually, reading your tweets on this REALLY helps me understand a couple female friends who had hereto baffled me.”

Recommended book on women’s attitudes toward failure & competition: Peggy Ornstein, Schoolgirls

Susan Mernit asks the group: When you do have a failure, how do you process it?

Attendee mentions Julie Wainwright, CEO of Pets.com: her company failed the same week that she got divorced. Great essay by Wainwright on getting stronger.

“We all have hindsight on how we could have avoided failure. It’s hard to really own that you just made a mistake.”

Susan Mernit asks: Why do we always think failure is always “wrong?”

“If you don’t take the opportunity to learn when you hit problems, that’s probably more a failure than anything else you can do.”

One attendee keeps a running list of every time she took a list and it paid off: motivation tool.

Retweet @senia: Doesn’t one need the time to step back in order to learn from failure? If always running, no time to analyze.

Me: Especially in online/social media, you can get excoriated very fast and very publicly for failing. You need to be able to deal with that without freaking out.

Susan Mernit asks: When you have a big failure, how do you move forward than that? What’s the next step?

“Immediate coping skill for big failure: ask for help right away. Don’t close yourself off.”

Some attendees disagree, prefer to process failure alone/internally first.

“When you fail a team and feel personally responsible, it’s important to remember it’s not ALL on you.”

“I now know that when I’m going in a wrong direction, I need to speak up right away. I can’t depend on other people to be my voice.”

“What’s weird in tech community is that sharing failure is uncool. It only happens in small private circles an limited ways.”

“No one in tech really wants to talk much about failure because it’s such a perception-based business.”

Important context for failure: “The lousy economy is happening. Everyone’s vulnerable. Have some compassion.”

“I feel like if I grieve a failure, I’ll be weak — even though it’s a natural process. I know that’s stupid, but I still do it.”

ReTweetTrends asked me: Doesn’t one need the time to step back in order to learn from failure? If always running, no time to analyze.

I reply to ReTweetTrends: Yes, it can help to step back, take time to process failure. But sometime, that option doesn’t exist.

“For women, it’s easy to take one failure and pile on: ‘I’m fat. My company failed. I burned this potroast.’”

INITIAL RESULTS OF MY FAILURE-RELATED MULLING

Failure is inherently energy-sapping. When you (by which I mean “I”) have an experience that gets consciously or subconsciously labeled as a “failure,” that just sucks the wind right out of the sails. I suspect this is part of what makes it so difficult to move past failure. It’s a definition that halts momentum.

Is the concept of failure a problem? It does seem that the essence of “failure” lies mainly in the labeling. After all, it’s just another experience — and all experiences have positive and negative aspects and connotations. Since it’s inherently energy-sapping and problematic, would it help to just ditch the concept? Are there any benefits to having a concept of failure?

The disease model of failure. The taboo about discussing failure intrigues me. We act as if it’s contagious, that it spreads via admission, not commission. As scared as we are of failing, most of us (especially women) appear even more scared to discuss it — similar to how people used to whisper “…cancer…” Even trying to listen compassionately to someone else discussing an experience of failure makes many people squirm. Do we think it’s “catching?”

Not talking about failure is a bigger problem than just failing. Failure is a deeply emotional and social experience, and humans are social creatures. Most people seem to need to do at least some emotional processing to get through hard experiences and learn from them. Simply talking things over with a compassionate listener can help us handle the emotions, process the experience, and move on. It also helps others by giving useful insight, information, and validation of feelings that otherwise might leave us feeling isolated and powerless.

Group failure is harder to discuss. When you fail by yourself — or you’re in a position to assume all the blame — it can be much easier to process the failure by discussing it. But when others are significantly involved, it gets harder to discuss the failure because you run the risk of transgressing their desired privacy boundaries or otherwise making them vulnerable or putting them at risk. The litigious nature of business and the competitive nature of tech make it especially difficult to openly discuss failure in these spheres.

Gender differences in failure experiences/discussion? The attendees of this session seemed to agree that women and men experience, process, and weight failure differently. I’d be curious to see a group of men, and a equally mixed-gender group, engaging in a similarly themed discussion to see whether the points and mood are different. I do believe, however, that in U.S. society women are expected to fail and are more likely to be “punished” or “blamed” for failure — and thus may have more reason to fear failing, or discussing failure.

…I’m still mulling all this, but thought it was time to write about it. In the meantime, what thoughts does this spark in you? Please comment below.

This is a better deal for me, since generally I don’t talk on the phone much — except last month. I was working on a magazine feature story that required many interviews. And also, since I got known as a source on the role of Twitter in covering the Mumbai terrorist attacks, I was called by several reporters (including ABCnews.com) to give interviews on that topic.

Last night I got my cell phone bill. It was about $70 more than I expected — because I’d exceeded my allotted minutes. Ouch.

That’s the trouble with being in the media business, and many other fields: You can’t always control how much time you’ll have to spend on the phone in a given month. Which means you can’t always control the number or timing of the minutes you’ll use. Which is why cell-only folks need other options for making and taking calls that allow you to control costs.

Enter Skype…

I’ve used the VOIP phone service Skype for a couple of years, but mainly for conversations with people who also are already comfortable with Skype. But most of the time, the people who want to call me and talk for a while, or who I need to call, either don’t use Skype or prefer to talk by phone. Which means all those calls count toward my cell phone bill. And when too many of them pile up in the same month — Ouch!$!

It seems to me that these days everyone with broadband access should get a free Skype account and learn how to use it to make and receive voice calls. All Skype-to-Skype calls are free on both ends. It costs you nothing to extend this money-saving courtesy to your cell-phone-only, Skype-using contacts.

Once you’re set with that option, then when you’re scheduling or starting a voice call that might last more than a couple of minutes, you can ask people whether they prefer to talk by phone or Skype. Why should they end up paying for you to call them?

You can use Skype on any computer with broadband access (as long as the service isn’t blocked, which I suppose could be the case from computers at some companies, libraries, net cafes, etc.). You’ll need either a built-in microphone, or a wired or Bluetooth headset connected to the computer.

So far Skype not really something that will work from a cell phone. Understandably, cell carriers are averse to supporting Skype calls, since they can’t charge for those minutes. Skype and other VOIP services are a huge, looming threat to cell carriers and landline providers.

Quality and reliability: The sound quality of Skype calls is often startlingly clear. In my experience, Skype calls overall have far superior sound quality to cell calls. As for reliability, the frequency of sporadic problems (weird echoes, brief delays or audio gaps, or dropped calls) seems no worse than that of cell phones. I’ve found if Skype starts getting flaky in the midst of a call, if both speakers pause for a few seconds, the trouble usually clears up.

Here are some other ways you can use Skype to save money:

• SkypeOut. You can make calls from Skype to landline or cell numbers. This currently costs 2.1 cents/minute, with no limit on minutes. You can pay as you go by depositing money into a Skype Credit account (which you can set up for automatic recharge if you like). Or you can get a Skype subscription for no per-minute charges, which costs $3/month for US/Canada only ($6/month to include Mexico, $10/month to call landlines and cells around the world).
• SkypeIn gives your Skype account its own phone number which can be dialed from any landline or cell phone. This way, anyone can call you from any phone and you won’t have to worry about paying for cell phone minutes. It costs $18 for three months to get a SkypeIn number, or $60 for a year. You get free voice mail with this. UPDATE: It’s even cheaper than that. People who purchase Skype’s Unlimited U.S. and Canada subscription currently can save up to 50 percent on buying an online number (now called SkypeIn) for a year. Details.

Skype makes even more economic sense if you telecommute, travel to locations with broadband Internet access, talk a lot to friends or family who aren’t local, or are self-employed. Even if you want or need to keep your landline, no long distance or international calling fees apply to Skype calls (whether to other Skype users or regular numbers).

Skype also offers video calls, conference calls, and lots of other features — even with a free basic account.

You don’t need to use Skype for every call — just consider it an option to control your cell or long-distance bills, and to offer a courtesy to the people you call.

If you don’t like Skype, there are plenty of other voice-over-Internet (VOIP) services you can join. I’m sure some of those vendors will leave comments to this post promoting them. But Skype has a big advantage: the huge global popularity of free basic Skype accounts means you probably have more opportunities to make and take calls that are free on both ends (Skype-to-Skype) than with other services. Also, Skype is dead easy to install and use on any computer platform — so the setup and learning curve is minimal.

I can’t think of any reason not to at least get a free Skype account and learn it. Even if Skype someday dies or other free VOIP services become more popular, learning to use this kind of communication tool is as important as learning how to send and receive e-mail, or dial a phone number. Plus it won’t cost you anything — and it might help you control costs.

(NOTE: This is a rewrite of an article I originally published yesterday on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits. That version was written specifically for journalists, and including information on recording calls via Skype.)

That’s what Horn Group VP Susan Etlinger did earlier, for the PR/Blogger panel her company is hosting tonight. She’s one of several Twitter users who helped launch this hashtag simply by adopting and promoting it:

hashtag

Susan Etlinger helps launch a hashtag by using it.

And here’s the fruit that this kind of coordination can bear: Check out the #PRblog hashtag

…So: what’s a hashtag, and why is this so important?…

A hashtag is just a short character string preceded by a hash sign (#). This effectively tags your tweets — allowing people to easily find and aggregate tweets related to a topic, person, or event. For instance, for the recent Thin Air Summit, many Twitter users included #TAS08 in their tweets. Take a second now and check out that link to see how easy that hashtag made it to follow the action during and after the event. That’s much easier than trying to find and follow everyone who happens to be tweeting that event. It’s also a great way to discover new people you might want to follow on Twitter.

RESOURCE: The Wild Apricot nonprofit technology blog offers a great tutorial: Introduction to Twitter hashtags. This explains how to use hashtags in tweets, and follow them via Hashtags.org. However, you also can follow a hashtag simply by searching for it via Twitter search.

It’s essential to coordinate, promote, and use hashtags at least a few hours before an event starts. That way, your Twitter followers will know that the event is happening, and how to follow it. They’ll also know how to spread the word of the upcoming coverage.

Ideally, use the hashtag in promotional tweets a couple of times before the event — and include in those tweets a link to the event’s info page, if any, so people know what you’re talking about.

Then, just before the event starts, do what Susan did and post a heads-up on the hashtag. Then just make sure you include the hashtag in all your event tweets. The easy way to do it is to leave it as a snipped on your clipboard. But if you’re typing it manually every time, double-check your spelling before you post! A misspelled hashtag won’t do folks much good.

This kind of coordination would have been a big help at last night’s Changing Media Landscape panel at the Columbia Univ. school of journalism. Sree Sreenivasan assembled a stellar panel of media innovators, it was worth watching. (See Columbia blogger Greg Bocquet’s wrapup of the session.)

Columbia live-streamed this session on Mogulus, which provides a chat room for backchannel discussion. That is helpful — but it’s kind of a walled garden, and it also demands a fair amount of dedicated attention. Aside from the audio portion, that kind of live coverage is not the kind of thing you can have running “in the background,” to follow while multitasking — which is what a lot of Twitter users do.

Some people at the Columbia event or watching on Mogulus were live tweeting it — but they weren’t using a hashtag. In fact, they didn’t choose and start using a hashtag (#cml2008) until the session was almost over. Unfortunately, this meant that very little of their Twitter coverage was easily findable. It was also harder for their Twitter followers to promote this live coverage.

Why should Columbia j-school care about hashtags and live Twitter coverage of their events?

• Expand public discourse and awareness with a key community. Columbia is teaching new media, and Twitter is where more and more thought leaders, innovators, and new media enthusiasts hang out. These are the people who would be especially interested in panels like this — and who would forward to their followers (“retweet”) posts that resonate with them. Best of all, you get this benefit by requiring a minimum of effort from the community. They don’t have to go to your streaming video site and log in to participate in a small, closed chat unconnected to the rest of the internet. They just follow the Twitter hashtag.
• Gauge community reaction. People live-tweeting your event will do more than report on what’s happening — they’ll comment on it. They may even praise it, or criticize it, or raise questions. And other Twitter users may react to those tweets. If all or most of that discourse includes the event hashtag, it’s easy to follow later and get a sense of what people thought and felt about the event. This is often important after the event as well as during, since people tend to mull things over and debate.

What do you think about hashtags for live Twitter coverage? Do you use them? Got other tips? Please comment below.

UPDATE SEPT. 15: I’ve launched a new series fleshing out this discussion. See Being a Citizen Shouldn’t Be So Hard! Part 1: Human Nature

When it comes to information that helps people function better as citizens in a democracy, how important is local, really?

Geographically defined local communities are the focus of the new Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Earlier this week, I posted this comment (and this one) on the Commission’s blog questioning the Commission’s assumption that community = local.

Don’t get me wrong: I love that Knight is trying to determine what kinds of information people really need to function as citizens today. I agree that’s a crucial line of inquiry these days. However, I’m concerned that by assuming those needs are inherently tied to “local,” the commission could miss a very important (perhaps the most important) part of what “community” really means to people today.

I was honored to see this very thoughtful response to my comment from Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He made several good points, including this excerpt…

“We chose to look at information needs of communities defined by geography because our democracy is structured along geographic lines. …But [our premises may be wrong]. Or they may be premises that are less relevant going forward, given a population more interested in other ways to bond. As Amy suggests, the younger the citizen, the more likely it is that his/her communication preferences are digital and are more focused on subject matter and areas of interest than the physical community or political subdivision where they happen to live or send their kids to school. That reality will surely influences our thinking.

“And maybe the conclusion we’ll reach is that the powerful force of new communications is so strong that, if a community in a democracy needs informed participants, we need to redefine communities. And maybe that the future structure of our democracy needs to be changed to fit the way we get information — not the other way around.”

That’s pretty big-picture, powerful stuff. I’ve been trying to envision how to move this conversation forward. But there’s been a problem.

I’ve been stricken by writer’s block this week. Believe me, it’s not often I’m at a loss for words, but this has been that kind of week. So although I’ve been reading the discussion I sparked, and thinking a great deal about these issues, I haven’t yet pulled my own thoughts together into a new blog post. This weekend, I hope to accomplish that. So stay tuned to Contentious.com, there’s more to come.

In the meantime, several other people have chimed in on this discussion. Here are some links to their posts and comments

• Defining an alternative to mass vs. niche media, by Donica Mensing
• I also posted about this topic to Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits on Monday. Check out the comments.
• Our Continued Wishful Thinking about “Media Localism”, by Adam Thierer. He published this back in July, but it’s relevant to this discussion.

“Dissent needs to go mainstream. It is already clear that a wide range of new and looming realities of the twenty-first century will demand creative and even radical new ideas from America about who we are, how we live, and how we deal with the rest of the world. Even Fareed Zakaria, in his fairly optimistic new book, The Post-American World, worries that America’s sclerotic political system (the “sensationalist” press included) is too consumed with trivia and sustaining the status quo to respond effectively to a world in which, as he writes, “on every dimension—industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural—the distribution of power is…moving away from American dominance.”

Thanks to Kim Pearson for the tip.

I’ve been hearing the rumor, and Gizmodo claims it’s true: Apple is supposed to debut the next-generation iPhone on June 9, during the keynote address of its Worldwide Developers Conference. I would expect it to go on sale in the US pretty soon after that. (But of course, you never really know with Apple.)

Apparently this new iPhone will include 3G network compatibility. That’s really important for people who want a true multimedia content creation and distribution tool, not just a phone. It’s also likely to have real GPS — which is far more accurate and useful than the crappy fake GPS the current iPhone uses (based on cell phone tower triangulation). That’s important if you want to accurately geocode the content you create (photos, video, etc.).

BUT… the new iPhone is not likely to be the complete Max Headroom device that journalists and mobloggers really need. Because it’s not likely to get a much better camera (currently just 2.0 megapixels). And it’s not likely to support a Bluetooth keyboard. And it’s not likely to get a built-in video editor. So it’s still meant mainly for mobile content consumers, not creators.

In other words, the new iPhone still won’t be as good a product as Nokia’s N95 already is — at least not as far as journalists and mobloggers are concerned.

Nevertheless, I might soon end up settling for an iPhone — unless Nokia pulls its US service act together damn quick. (Specifically, before the new iPhone goes on sale in the US.)

Why? Because the new iPhone might be barely good enough for much of what I need a mobile device to do. More importantly, Apple has proven, through its service practices, that it stands behind its products and cares about customers’ experience after they buy. Apple understands and respects that users of high-end phones run their lives on those devices, and thus cannot tolerate being without them for more than a few days at a time.

Meanwhile Nokia’s dearth of US local service centers, requirement that customers ship damaged or dead phones to Nokia at their own expense, and warranty that allows Nokia up to 30 days to return a phone — plus its risky, clunky, PC-only firmware update process — convey the message that Nokia doesn’t really care much about its US customers. (At least, not after they fork over $500-$700 for an N-Series phone.)

And when it comes to must-have, multi-use mobile devices, service quality is at least as important as product quality. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that, for me, service is more important — since evidently I am willing to compromise (within reason) on the product I want in order to get the service I need. I doubt I’m the only journalist/moblogger willing to make that tradeoff.

That said, I know that Nokia has recently woken up to the fact that its US customers are so very displeased with their service, and they are starting to try to make amends. Here’s where that’s at so far…

Today, Nokia blogger Charlie Schick writes that Nokia Care USA (Nokia’s US service/support division) is now “interested in getting directly engaged” with discussing US service issues in public with US consumers.

Charlie’s helping Nokia Care craft a plan to conduct this conversation “over the next few weeks,” since “We here at Nokia Conversations have taken this discussion as far as we can. And I do not think we or this site are well suited to take this discussion where it needs to go.”

That’s some progress — but it many not be fast enough given Apple’s plans and US consumers’ impatience.

Charlie also noted “I do know that in the past three weeks the head of Care USA has been exploring and working on something concrete that she attributes to the conversation going on [in the Nokia Conversations Blog]. I do not have the details, so do not want to say anything further until the head of Care USA is ready to tell us the whole thing. Indeed, we are trying to give them some space so that they come out on their own and speak for themselves.”

That also sounds interesting — but once more, time is of the essence.

What I want to know is: Will Nokia take most of the risk of their fancy phones off US consumer’s shoulders? Specifically, will they devise a way to guarantee that they will repair, replace, or deliver loaners for damaged or dead N-Series phones to US users within, say, seven days? (For a start — 2-3 would be a better goal. Apple already moves that fast.)

Most critically: Can and will Nokia USA put that kind of solution in place by the time I can buy an iPhone? (Or very shortly after that launch.)

We’ll see. Meanwhile, tick, tick tick, Nokia… I still hope you succeed in the US, but it’s really up to how fast you’re willing to move at this point.