On the Blogging and Cultural Virtues of Twitter

in Web/Tech | February 18th, 2009

twitterimageEar­li­er in the month, we made the leap into the world of Twit­ter, prompt­ed part­ly by Makeuseof.com, which men­tioned our site in a Twit­ter-relat­ed arti­cle. (Thanks Mark for that.)

When we first cre­at­ed our Twit­ter feed, my hopes weren’t espe­cial­ly high. And while I’m still not com­plete­ly sold on the per­son­al uses of Twit­ter, I’m def­i­nite­ly lik­ing the way that it works for a blog­ger. For starters, Twit­ter has giv­en us insight into who actu­al­ly reads Open Cul­ture. Since we start­ed things in Octo­ber 2006, I haven’t known much about who vis­its the site. I’ve been fly­ing in the dark, to be hon­est. But now Twit­ter gives us a snap­shot of our reg­u­lar read­ers. Because you can see who sub­scribes to your Twit­ter feed (some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen with RSS feeds), you can get a feel for read­ers’ geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion, their gen­er­al age range, and most impor­tant­ly their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al inter­ests — all of which helps us tai­lor the blog’s con­tent a bit bet­ter.  

Still more perks come from our sub­scribers. Twit­ter gives you the abil­i­ty to see who your “fol­low­ers” also fol­low. And that inevitably means that your sub­scribers, shar­ing sim­i­lar tastes, will turn you on to new and dif­fer­ent sources of information/inspiration. Essen­tial­ly, your sub­scribers help you devel­op intel­lec­tu­al affin­i­ty groups that pro­vide good grist for the mill. In addi­tion, our read­ers also do their own microblog­ging on Twit­ter, and, here again, their short, pithy 140 word “posts” have sur­faced inter­est­ing con­tent that we bring back to you … with prop­er attri­bu­tion, of course.

Based on our brief time with Twit­ter, we’ve put togeth­er an ini­tial list of cul­tur­al­ly-redeem­ing Twit­ter feeds. Have a look, and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Of course, this list will grow over time.

Last­ly, if you’re not on Twit­ter, it’s time to get on and see if it works for you. Join here. And if you want to sub­scribe to our feed, click here and then click “Fol­low.”

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Academic Earth Goes Live

in Web/Tech | January 28th, 2009

The open edu­ca­tion move­ment got a lit­tle stronger this week with the launch of Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth. Run by Richard Lud­low, a new social entre­pre­neur only a cou­ple of years out of Yale, Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth brings video lec­tures from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties into a cen­tral­ized user-friend­ly site. What you’ll see here is an impres­sive ear­ly imple­men­ta­tion of where Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth plans to go. Take con­tent-rich videos from uni­ver­si­ties, orga­nize the videos well, make the visu­al expe­ri­ence attrac­tive, add per­son­al cus­tomiza­tion func­tion­al­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to engage with the con­tent, and you have a very use­ful ser­vice to bring to the world. I first start­ed talk­ing with Richard back in the fall and am real­ly glad to see his site now ready for show time. Check it out in beta and watch it grow.

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Google and the Path To Enlightenment

in Books, Google, Harvard, Web/Tech | January 26th, 2009

In the lat­est edi­tion of The New York Review of Books, Robert Darn­ton, a promi­nent French his­to­ri­an who now runs Har­vard’s Library sys­tem, puts out a tan­ta­liz­ing idea: “Google can make the Enlight­en­ment dream come true.” Hav­ing set­tled its law­suit with pub­lish­ers and authors, Google is now steam­ing ahead with its effort to dig­i­tize mil­lions of books and cre­ate a vast dig­i­tal library avail­able to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions every­where on a sub­scrip­tion basis. (The fees apply to copy­right­ed texts only, not to those in the pub­lic domain.) This opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Google can ful­fill the Enlight­en­ment promise of democ­ra­tiz­ing knowl­edge, enrich­ing the intel­lec­tu­al mar­ket­place, and dif­fus­ing the ideas that have the great­est social ben­e­fit. The ques­tion is whether Google will actu­al­ly make this hap­pen. Will Google’s pri­vate inter­ests line up with the pub­lic inter­est? Will the com­pa­ny keep the dig­i­tal library open and ful­fill the hopes of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jef­fer­son? Or will the pur­suit of prof­it grad­u­al­ly lead Google to dri­ve up prices and close off access? Giv­en the recent con­duct of the bank­ing com­mu­ni­ty, it’s hard to remain opti­mistic that mar­ket-dri­ven insti­tu­tions will act altru­is­ti­cal­ly. Yes, Darn­ton acknowl­edges, Google seems to be start­ing off with good inten­tions. But what the com­pa­ny does long-term with its near monop­oly on online infor­ma­tion is any­one’s guess, and it’s entire­ly up to Google to do the right thing. For more on the Enlight­en­ment and Google’s online book ini­tia­tive, you should dig deep­er into Darn­ton’s piece. Also you can join The New York Review of Books group on Face­book, or fol­low it on Twit­ter.

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The History of the Internet in 8 Minutes

in Technology, Web/Tech | January 6th, 2009

We have here a short, catchy ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary that explains how we get from the 1950s to the inter­net that we know and love today. Along the way, it cov­ers inven­tions rang­ing from time-shar­ing to file­shar­ing, from Arpanet to Inter­net. Have a look…

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The YouTube Presidency

in Current Affairs, Web/Tech, YouTube | November 16th, 2008

We’re about to wit­ness the begin­ning of the YouTube Pres­i­den­cy, as The Wash­ing­ton Post has dubbed it. When Barack Oba­ma takes office in late Jan­u­ary, he plans to give a new twist to a long­stand­ing tra­di­tion. The week­ly pres­i­den­tial radio address will now “air” on YouTube, mean­ing that you’ll be able to access the pres­i­den­t’s mes­sages in video, when­ev­er you want, on one of Amer­i­ca’s most traf­ficked web sites. The upshot? Some­one may actu­al­ly lis­ten to these week­ly mes­sages.

This move is part of Oba­ma’s effort to use tech­nol­o­gy to com­mu­ni­cate more direct­ly with the Amer­i­can pub­lic. It’s a way of bring­ing FDR’s fire­side chats into the 21st cen­tu­ry. In addi­tion to har­ness­ing the pow­er of Web 2.0, you can expect to find a lap­top on his Oval Office desk, a first for any pres­i­dent. And, if Oba­ma has his way, he might get to hang on to his Black­ber­ry as well. (See this piece in the NY Times.)

In the mean­time, here’s first of the YouTube videos that Oba­ma has launched dur­ing the tran­si­tion. Watch it below:

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Free Tech How-To Books

in Web/Tech | October 22nd, 2008

Thanks to Boing­Bo­ing, you can get free access (for 30 days) to three pop­u­lar tech man­u­als:

• JavaScript: The Defin­i­tive Guide
• Learn­ing Perl
• Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

Get details here

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Your Digital Magazine Rack

in Web/Tech | October 21st, 2008

A quick fyi: All­top is a new web ser­vice (cre­at­ed by Guy Kawasa­ki) that aggre­gates RSS feeds about pop­u­lar top­ics. Name a top­ic and they bring you sto­ries from “the best web­sites and blogs” on the issue. If you want to see a sam­ple of what I’m talk­ing about, you can take a look at the area where All­top was kind enough to list Open Cul­ture. We’re in their col­lege sec­tion. But you can also find hun­dreds of oth­er top­ic areas here — art, books, health, writ­ing, cof­fee, human rights, you get the pic­ture.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

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Writing on the Margins of the Web

in Web/Tech | October 7th, 2008

Today, the world can begin to explore a new web app that will undoubt­ed­ly hold appeal for book lovers on the web. The app is called Reframe It, and it lets you write in the mar­gins of any web page, much as you’d write in the mar­gins of a book. And, even bet­ter, it lets you share the com­ments with oth­ers, turn­ing mar­gin­a­lia into some­thing of a pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion. (Watch the video below to see what I mean.)

Reframe It is being released today in beta. To give it a try, you can down­load the free Fire­fox or Inter­net Explor­er Reframe It brows­er exten­sion here. Give it a try and feel free to let us know what you think.

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