How would the Twitter generation have coped with 9/11? (PC Pro blogger)

This is another interesting article by the PC pro blogger Barry Collins.

Barry is thinking of Sept 11, 2001 and how technology today would change how we would have heard about such an event now. There were few camera phones around in 2001 and social networking at least on the scales of twitter and face book has not yet taken off. There were still bulletin boards and other internet forums you could log on to which did much the same things but these were perhaps not as mainstream as twitter and facebook. Barry missess this point slightly and suggests there was no comparable internet media source.

What Barry imagines is that the minute the plane hit the first tower the internet would be awash with photos, tweets and status updates about the attack. The rumours would fly around the internet until the truth was lost. As Barry points out the established news media struggled to keep up with the unfolding crisis and was full of rumours that day.

Barry goes onto point out there would be no censoring of the material went out. Everything would go out onto the internet. Could you imagine if someone had been streaming live onto the internet from inside the twin towers. Now imagine if 100's of people were doing it. I recently saw a documentary which included lots of personal video footage from outside the twin towers, from streets or apartments. These were very raw and emotional even 8 years on. I am not sure I can imagine the horror of watching footage of someone trying to get down the stairs in the twin towers hearing a rumble from above and then a few seconds of film before the signal breaks. There is footage from camera crews that were close in to the towers that are already quite shocking to watch. Do we need such emotional scars on our public psyche? Are we immune to events reports in this fashion? Would uncensored material actually cause emotional distress on a grander scale, in the future could people who were not even there suffer post traumatic stress could a similar attack paralyse the entire population. As the gap between reality and virtual reality decreases could it feel like we were actually in the middle of the crisis ourselves rather than just a spectator.

I remember the tube attacks in London in 2005. It started off with a news article about delays on the underground due to an electricity supply problem and went on from there. I followed the story on the urban 75 forums where people who had been caught up in it started posting. It was faster, personal and more raw than the mainstream news.

One of the problems with citizen media is that often people will take footage on their mobile phone and not help. I remember a few years back hearing about a horrific crash where a family was killed and the police not only had to deal with the accident but deal with motorists going the other way slowing down and using their mobile phones to get footage of the accident. Is there a legitimate reason to take such footage or have we turned into ghouls looking to get the most raw uncensored footage on the internet to get the highest views on you tube ever? Have we forgotten about the human lives destroyed?

Did Stephen Fry and Twitter really score a victory for free speech? (PCPro)

This was a very interesting blog article from the PCpro writer Barry Collins. Nearly everyone will have heard about the parliamentary question that was subject to a gagging order. Depending on who you listen to Twitter and Stepehn Fry in a blow for democracy and free speech spread it all over the internet, proving that you cant gag free speech or perhaps proving the "twittering classes" are willing to break the law.

The article basically points out while everyone is giving each other high five's in getting information which should have been in the public domain out, what happens when information that shouldn't be released is broadcast on twitter.

Twitter is a public lynching waiting to happen. Technology has allowed us to move on from throwing stones to throwing tweets, we can all act now on rumours and gossip and devolve ourselves of responsibility to join the mob mentality. How long before a name is given out on twitter in a horrific criminal case which leads to an assault or worse a public lynching. How about national security information which jeopardises security or criminal cases. Twitter is not above the law and people that tweet should be aware that they may be breaking the law by releasing confidential information. The consequences of a major breach in security or information released which lead to damage or injury would be dealt with seriously by the law courts.

Mob mentality has always been a problem but with lightening fast technology where rumours are trusted more than official news organisations mobs can easily be mislead or mis-guided and dire consequences may arise. We have yet to see the potential of twitter to cause mayhem, lets hope we are prepared when the time comes.

With Freedom of speech comes responsibility, the responsibility of knowing when to talk and when to shut up.

The Review of 2008

Well what a year 2008 was, a grand total of 94 posts starting with the review of 2007 and ending with the great beaver escape.

With 94 posts I kept a nice solid average of 1.8 articles per week and although I was trying to get to 100 articles I didn't want to push it and I am very happy with the final result.

Snow watch continued through the early part of the year with lots of false starts and only the odd snow flake. However in November / December there were also some false starts making the 2008/09 season look slightly more promising.

In February I was woken from sleep by my first ever earth quake. In April I talked about my little theory of how really only one person is needed to decide a political election. In May one of my only two articles that month was an open letter to Steven Spielberg telling him how he could have done the new Indiana Jones movie Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) properly. In June there was a story about the first beaver dam in the UK.

In July I wrote about the rise of the urban shepherd. In August I wrote perhaps the best joke article of the year where I lampooned research about hearing pictures on the computer screen. In September I approached the entire range of subjects usually covered in my blogging including a playlet entitled "Single for Bicester Town". In October the credit crunch was really hitting hard and I wrote several articles about the capitalist economic model and the folly of chasing continuous growth. In November I wrote about the new tradition of the emergency Christmas box. Then finally in December just before Christmas I reviewed a heart warming best seller about mans best friend.

What a year it has been and what potential 2009 has for so much more.

Happy new year and have a good 2009.

Warning sounded on web's future (BBC)

Well it would appear that the BBC has finally worked out what the rest of us already know, you can't believe everything you read on the internet.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee (No I don't know who he is either, but with a "sir" in front of his name I am busy bowing down and tugging my forelock) has come up with the idea of a "trustworthiness" labelling system for websites.

Sir Tim has set up the WWWF, and to be fair trustworthiness is just one of his aims. He wants to make the web more accessible not just to those of us in the West. Sir Tim wants to expand the web beyond just text to reach those through the web who can't read or write. He also wants to increase mobile web browsing and the usage in Africa . Basically he wants to bring the web to the world regardless of wealth, ability, status and location.

A very noble endeavour.

My take on it is that we need to separate opinion from fact and make some attempt at peer review or evidence based labelling. If an article has credible supporting evidence or is more factual than opinionated then it gets a higher rating. Perhaps any news site could have assessors who are trained and vetted for suitability and experience, who can then rate articles.

The web is a very interesting place with every view represented but off the beaten track away from the main brands such as the BBC and CNN how do you know who to trust especially on the basis of one article. Trust can be easily built on a series of articles but on one short article it is more difficult to judge. This is where bloggers have their niche, they can earn trust and reliability from their readership but how many bloggers have internal standards or a code of practice.

'Stray Matter' - utter genius!

Sometimes I come across a site where I think my photography could be so much better, sometimes I come across a site and think wow I'm never going to be this good. On very rare occasions I come across a site which makes me want to cry and throw away my camera because any photograph I ever take will only be one millionth as good as this.

Of course the rarest gem of all is a photo site with good picture descriptions. Yes, there are sites with good technical or factual descriptions. Yes, there are sites with OK poetic descriptions which complement the picture nicely but none where the link is seemless or where you cant separate the text from the picture.

A picture says a thousand words but a picture with a thousand words says a million words.

'Stray matter' is a photoblog that does all the above and more, it blows my mind far out the other side, how can a photoblog be this good.

Evocative is one word I could use, often haunting, combining the photo with the text puts you right into the picture making it a living breathing landscape.

Utter genius.

Thank you to Scotty for permission to use a thumbnail image.

Happy Birthday Blogger

Well yesterday the 23 August 2007 was bloggers eighth birthday and today this is post number 200 for my humble blog.

Two milestones in two days, congratulations all round.

Movies teach us that any celebration of a successful job involving lot of standing up, clapping whopping and mass hugging. Does that really happen, or does everyone just relax and thank whatever deity they worship and head for the pub / home / any other similar place.

Stumble upon

This is another kind of social bookmarking site that I have discovered and I have to say it is cool I might even say it is the best thing since sliced bread.

Basically you sign up for an account specific some interests, download the firefox / IE toolbar and then stumble through the web. This means basically click on the stumble icon and it will take you to a random page. However the neat thing is it takes you to a popular page which has been rated by other users.

It takes you to some really great stuff that you would just not discover otherwise, already with in about five clicks I have found a awesome photo site 'young gallery' and a page of haiku error messages.

Plus if you don't like the page you just hit the stumble button again.

Of course when you look at a site you can give it the thumbs up or thumbs down to adjust the rating. This simple interface has the simplicity of the google search page. Of course it has plenty of other options to explore as well.

This is just what the web has been crying out for, it is such a great idea it will probably be snapped up by the big companies and be renamed 'google stumble upon'.

"Next time you want to wander the Web, forget about Googling it. Stumble it."

- The Wall Street Journal

Social bookmarking

There are all sorts of things you can add to blogs to make things user friendly. Looking at various other blogs there are all sorts of icons at the bottom of the post so you can bookmark it at whatever bookmarking site you like.

I wanted to add a couple of links for any user that wanted to do this, especially as it may not always be easy to bookmark an article if I have linked to another web page.

So I had a look round and digg.com and del.icio.us looked to be the most popular / practical. I already think technorati is a good site so Iwanted to include that too.

I had a look round for some simple guides on how to add buttons to the blogger template and found this excellent primer for digg.com Add Digg button to Blogger or Blogspot. The good thing about it is the techniques can also be used to position other similar buttons.

Then I moved on to add a del.icio.us button. I couldn't quite find what I wanted on their site and a google search didn't turn up any gold nuggets. So I went back to the Tips for new bloggers and came across the useful free tool they use to bookmark their posts. A useful widget from addthis.com. This widget basically lets the user choose which site to bookmark the page too including all the usual suspects and some unusual ones as well. So this stylish little icon at the bottom of my posts can be used to bookmark articles just about anywhere.

A job well done I think, so enjoy. I have also signed up to digg.com and del.icio.us so I may be back later to report on how things go.