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Sunday, June 11, 2006 |
Unveiling the Ourmedia Learning Center and Open Media Directory.
Ourmedia is proud to announce the unveiling of the Personal Media Learning Center as well as the Open Media Directory.
The Learning Center is an ongoing project with a simple aim: to help people engage in the participatory media movement by showing them how to create videoblogs, podcasts, screencasts, digital stories and other emerging media forms.
There are sections on Video, Audio, Multimedia, Images and Text. In addition, we have what will undoubtedly become a deep Topics section. We're starting out with the subjects of Personal media - Getting started, Citizen journalism, and Copyright & the law.
We have a lot of needs in fillng out these sections, so if you'd like to write a tutorial, share an article, or create a screencast, video or podcast that would be helpful to people, see our guidelines and contact me. This is media training of the people by the people.
The Open Media Directory is a clearinghouse of dozens of different sites where you can find legal, podsafe music, audio and video clips. For anyone who wants to add a music soundtrack to their online video or add music to a podcast, the Open Media Directory is a treasure. Thanks to the UK's David Holmes, the directory's editor, for pulling it together for us.
These projects represent a significant step forward for Ourmedia. We've been promised new servers this month, so look for more improvements in the site in the weeks ahead.
[unmediated]
12:46:18 PM 
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Now Journalism Jobs are Being Outsourced.
David Cay Johnston writes a commentary for the Newspaper Guild, saying:
(O)nly a fool would think that newsrooms will escape a trend that has already ended the careers of aeronautical engineers, software designers, auto workers, machinists, call center workers and growing legions of other Americans. Indian firms like Hi-Tech Export solicit work from proofreading and copy editing to polishing novels and rewriting technical documents into plain English.
Journalists have been cheerleaders, for the most part, for the outsourcing wave. Meanwhile, other economic factors have threatened their employment much more. The professionals have much more to worry about now than Indian workers. [Center for Citizen Media: Blog]
12:45:53 PM
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Don't Ape This at Home. What's the first thing you do when you decide to eat nothing but monkey chow? Start a blog, of course. Plus: A commencement speech you can watch in your underwear. In Table of Malcontents. [Wired News: Top Stories]
12:44:49 PM
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Amanda on CNN.
Download File
Reporting live on tape from my hotel room atop the Parc 55 hotel in San Francisco, here's my encapsulated edit of the best parts from CNN's interview with Amanda Congdon from Rocketboom.
[unmediated]
Also, same source:
Amnesty International launched a new ad campaign that is incredibly creative and powerful. The tagline is "It's not happening here but it's happening now" which is hammered home with these transparent ads. The ads "transport" issues in countries like Iraq, China, and Sudan to your local landscape. This is one of the best awareness campaigns I've ever seen. [Thanks jk]
12:35:55 PM
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(Some of) Dave Pollard's Links for the Week - June 10, 2006.
Why Wal-Mart's Move to Organics Will Make Things Worse: Michael Pollan in the NYT explains that embracing organic (or anything counterculture) while still insisting it adhere to the old business model (slash costs, buy everything offshore, squeeze suppliers) is counterproductive, creates fragility in the market, and corrupts innovation and sustainability rather than contributing to it. This is why big established companies make lousy innovators, and why they're unsustainable. "To say you can sell organic food for 10 percent more than you sell irresponsibly priced food suggests that you don't really get it — that you plan to bring business-as-usual principles of industrial "efficiency" and "economies of scale" to a system of food production that was supposed to mimic the logic of natural systems rather than that of the factory." Thanks to Umair Haque for the link.
Freedom to Fascism: Trailers for libertarian Aaron Russo's new film. I am not a libertarian, but I can see how this idea has appeal. It is in a way the antithesis of Korten's argument: Korten wants us to work together to create states that focus on collective well-being not unequal wealth. Russo wants us to dismantle states because they cannot ever be trusted to do so. Both are appealing to both progressives and conservatives. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link.
Writing for Yourself: A brilliant essay on fiction writing by author Barbara W. Klaser. Teaser:
Of course the writer needs to learn the basics, hone her skills. Then, after writing for self, she needs to be willing to let someone edit her work and be open to revisions. The two-minute rule [you have to grab your reader in the first two minutes of reading] makes sense, too. Something in any story needs to draw the reader’s interest in as soon as possible, unless the writer just wants to hide her novel in a drawer and bring it out to read on her own now and then.
But I think a writer needs to begin any work of fiction out of love, a personal hunger to write it. Something has to draw the writer in, make it worth the effort, and perhaps make it impossible not to write.
...And Other Creative Undertakings Require Intention, Too: And coincidentally (or synchronistically) Jeremy Heigh also writes about the importance of intention, rather than commercial motivation, driving artistic or any other creation (it also applies to entrepreneurship). This post of his is sheer poetry:
I was looking at a bit of art yesterday. A small, elegant sculpture made of marble. Polished, flawless, stationary; it seemed to dance. This morning, thinking of dreams and aspirations, the image of that sculpture slipped unbidden into the mix.
There are parts of life that flow as water. And there are others (those where goals and intentions are relevant) where definite choices must be made. Choices that act as chisels, or hammers, or sandpaper, or drills. Decisions that drive directly and ruthlessly in a single direction. Deliberate action.
Creating art and creating dreams can be a long, tedious, intentional process. But both art and dreams require a set of intentions instead of a series of responses. [How to Save the World]
12:18:06 PM
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