December 24, 2004 – 5:12 am
Just for fun, here is some miscellaneous cool weird stuff that’s caught my interest lately… TOP OF THIS LIST: Letters from Bad Santa. Do you know someone who deserves coal this year? There’s still time! Getting a bad Santa letter sent to your personal nemesis costs $2.95, but you can read the letter templates for free — and they’re hilarious! Check it out today. (Thanks to Chris White for this link.) Read the rest of this list…
December 4, 2004 – 1:32 pm
Another roundup of interesting podcasting tidbits that caught my attention over the last month. TOP OF THIS LIST: “Post details: pseudo podcasting, by DJ Chuang, Nov. 19. This frank, detailed article cuts through the hype of podcasting. As I’m discovering, this new medium is actually a fairly complex undertaking. Podcasting combines many technologies and skills, so just about any would-be podcaster should expect to navigate some kind of significant learning curve. Chuang offers advice for novices based on his experience, and also compares text blogging to podcasting. Well done! Thanks! (Read the rest of this list…)
October 31, 2004 – 2:53 pm
This is a collection of wiki-related items which have caught my attention recently. TOP OF THIS LIST: “Journalism’s Future May Be Wikipedia,” by Peter Tupper, “The Tyee” weblog, Oct. 22. Excerpt: “Wikipedia.org, an online hypertext encyclopedia to which anybody can add and edit information, could be the future of journalism. Wikipedia is not only a reference work, it also makes a pretty good newspaper.” (Read the rest of this list…)
September 17, 2004 – 1:27 pm
OK, I’ve found a ton of interesting material this week about a variety of topics. However, I’m short on time. Normally I prefer to say a little bit about why I’m recommending each item, but this week I can’t do that, and I don’t want to let this stuff get too old. So this time I’m just presenting categories and article titles. Hope that suffices, O hungry readers of mine! Of course, I need to tell you what’s at the TOP OF THIS WEEK’S LIST: Wiremine, the bliki of Brian Tol. Again, a bliki is a form of online publishing that combines features of weblogs and wikis. It’s still in the early stages and has a bunch of kinks, especially in terms of usability and readability. Still, I think the bliki is a powerful concept – and it especially holds considerable potential for online learning environments. I can’t wait until IdeaGlue, the bliki tool Tol’s developing, gets far enough along that a semi-geek like me can try it. …Read the rest of this week’s list…
September 8, 2004 – 11:42 am
I was just looking over the contentious-to-do topic in my Furl archive, and noticed that several of the items there are about webfeeds in one way or another. So I decided to throw them together into a special grab bag. TOP OF THE LIST: RSS: Real advantage for marketing and PR, by Neville Hobson, Aug. 16. It seems I’m not the only person who’s talking about how businesses are really missing the boat with regard to webfeeds. This article addresses how businesses could be leveraging both weblogs and webfeeds to their advantage right now. On webfeeds, Hobson writes, “The new reality is that blogs and RSS present a phenomenal opportunity to any organization to embrace these new communication channels and engage quickly, directly and effectively with customers, investors, partners and other audiences. If you can’t start a blog yet, the one thing you should do is RSS-enable the corporate PR and marketing information on your website – and get your press releases out via webfeeds as well as by traditional means. (I’ve yet to find any large company who offers open RSS webfeeds of their press releases from their websites.)” Yeah. What he said. HERE’S THE REST OF THE LIST…
September 5, 2004 – 11:56 pm
CONTENTIOUS already covers a lot of topics – but this blog is a work in progress, and I certainly want to keep my eye out for intriguing new topics of interest to my readers. Therefore, question 8 of my reader survey was: What NEW topics or issues would you like to see CONTENTIOUS cover? The 35 people who answered this question had some interesting ideas…
August 31, 2004 – 7:15 am
A couple of days ago I posted an item on the Poynter Institute’s E Media Tidbits blog concerning some weirdness over webfeeds witnessed recently at Forbes Magazine. See: Forbes and Webfeeds: Now They Get It, Now They Don’t. Check it out – it’s a clear example of how some people in the media (allegedly a [...]
October 21, 2003 – 7:09 am
Now that I’ve completed the major upgrading, updating, consolidation, and reorganization of my e-mail announcements list, I’ll be posting e-mail announcements listing recent CONTENTIOUS postings only every few days, not for each individual posting.
If you want to find out about CONTENTIOUS postings as soon as they hit the Web, your best bet is to subscribe to my RSS feed. (Again, if you don’t know what RSS feeds are or how to use them, read my RSS backgrounder.)
October 17, 2003 – 11:43 pm
This item is an introduction to the new CONTENTIOUS weblog for people who subscribed to the original version of this publication.
October 17, 2003 – 2:56 pm
Frankly, for years now I’ve been fairly annoyed at the attitude I get from many of my colleagues from mainstream media. These are the journalists, editors, and publishers who blithely dismiss online or independent journalism as inherently lacking in credibility. Not only is that belief inaccurate and counterproductive, it’s shortsighted.
I’d like to call to your attention a fabulous posting in one of my very favorite Weblogs, Phil Wolff’s A Klog Apart. Check out the Oct. 17, 2003 entry, How Much of a Journalist Are You, Blogger?, in which Phil discusses the kinds of standards which lend credibility to news reporting, regardless of which individuals or organizations are doing the reporting.
I’m pretty opinionated on the matter of credibility among online publishers. I’ve long held that the credibility of news and commentary stems not from the nature of the publisher but rather from intent, knowledge, and skill. I believe that independent publishers (online and elsewhere) and other types of organizations (such as companies or advocacy groups) can provide news and comment that is as valuable – sometimes even more valuable – than what comes out of many established news organizations. Wolff sets a fine example in this regard.
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