Category Archives: Labels and MetadataBerbercarpet, via Flickr (CC license)
Journalism sudents need the right tools — and skills — for the kinds of careers and opportunities they’re really going to be making for themselves.
Picking up on my post yesterday, Univ. of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams challenged me (and her other readers) to translate my quick list of what j-schools [...]
Here’s something I don’t get, and I’d love it if someone well versed in US copyright law could explain it to me: Why must a copyright notice include a year? Especially if no notice is required for copyright protection?
Having to assign a year to a copyright notice makes things rather confusing in online media. For [...]
Earlier I discussed an innovative public/media relations technique known as a search release. I just happened to stumble across a good example of an organization that implemented this in a smart way.
I like this strategy because it benefits journalists as well as organizations doing outreach, by making information easier to find. In my book, this blows away traditional direct distribution of press releases to journalists.
Here’s the example…
On Jan. 24, Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr said of tagging:
“Tagging is moving against the tide of the net. …In a game of tag, no one wants to be the one doing the tagging. Tagging requires a little extra unnecessary effort that most folks are not only unwilling to make, but aren’t prepared to learn.”
I think he’s right… And I think he’s wrong, too…
Tagging (the process of informally categorizing chunks of online content with user-defined labels, aided by various online tools or services) is surprisingly controversial.
Some people adore it and tag everything they find; others disdain its lack of formality or reliability; and most people either experiment with it sporadically or ignore it entirely.
This morning I stumbled across a thoughtful exploration of tagging from someone who is not enamored with the process or results. Check out “Folksonomy Recapitulates Ontology.” Despite its leaden title, this article offers a fairly plain-language and fair examination of the pros and cons of tagging.
Here’s my response to that article…
Now we’re starting to delve into the truly sensitive and intriguing part of the survey – mentioning personal information that might be construed as non-mainstream, taboo, controversial, or “tangentially sexual.”
SURVEY QUESTION 4: In one weblog you read mainly for business reasons, the author mentions in a posting that he is gay. Your reaction:
The big news here is that mentioning on your professional blog that you’re gay is somewhat risky – but probably not as risky as you might imagine. Still, such a non-mainstream and potentially controversial disclosure should be made in a relevent, gentle context, and considered carefully. Know your target audience.
CAVEATS: All of this depends, of course, on whether survey respondents are being honest – and if you consider informal, self-selected surveys of any use at all.
Here are the responses for this question, and my initial observations about them…
There’s a lot of buzz in online circles these days about tagging and social bookmarking. Are these networking tools relevant to news organizations? I think so, precisely because they’re messy and informal…
As I’ve mentioned before, two web-based tools I use extensively to keep track of important or interesting online information are Furl and del.icio.us. Both of these tools help me file links that I wish to remember or recommend, and allow me to share that information flexibly. Over the last few months I’ve developed my own way of using these two tools together. It suits me, and I think it suits the unique strengths of each tool. So in case it’s useful to others, here’s how I use Furl and del.icio.us together…
I was just reading an item in Dave Taylor’s blog The Intuitive Life, “Technorati tags: Good idea, terrible implementation.” There, Dave voiced this complaint about the inefficiencies of user-created tags (folksonomy). He posed a good question, and I responded in the following comment…
The more I use the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us, the more I’m getting to like it – especially when it saves me work. One task I’m particularly compulsive about is sharing with CONTENTIOUS readers links to interesting sites, articles, tools, and books. For awhile I’d been presenting these as my “grab bag” articles, but that process was too labor-intensive for me to maintain. So now I’ve figured out how to use del.icio.us to keep you up to date on all the cool content I’m encouraging you to explore…
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