Idea Lab

Looking for the Mouse in Media: Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus

by Jay Rosen
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Ever wondered: where's the time going to come from for all these nifty open source ventures people are planning? Clay Shirky says we got plenty. He just gave an extremely useful and imaginative speech to Web heads about where we are in media time. Shirky, who teaches in a different program at NYU, has a new book out: Here Comes Everybody ("The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.") But this speech stands alone. You can read it here, but you should really watch him here-- after reading this post. The clip is less than 15 minutes. It lets you think along...

• May 6, 2008
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Web 2.0: Blogtropulus vs. the Legacy Press Room

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

One of the most telling juxtapositions at this week's Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is taking place on the third floor of the Moscone Center, where the traditional press lounge and the bloggers lounge (dubbed Blogtropolus, above) were set up side by side. As someone who inhabits both worlds, I was fascinated by the study in contrasts. Both rooms have wireless access, but there the similarity ends. Enter the press lounge and it's akin to stepping into a public library: about 18 tech reporters are hunkered down at their laptops, sitting around small tables with nary a whisper....

• April 25, 2008
• 6 comments

Tools the Power Geeks Use

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

We just wound up our Innovation Israel tour of Israel's tech community, and I'm in awe of the Silicon Valley alpha geeks I traveled with during the week. (Here's our group blog: Travelinggeeks.com.) Anyone in the media, publishing or tech business should be interested in the software applications and Web 2.0 tools (on the Web and on the desktop) that these folks use on an almost daily basis. Robert Scoble Scobleizer Firefox (web browser)FriendFeed (social media sharing) Google Reader (RSS news reader)Techmeme (a tech news dynamic link aggregator)Twitter (social network) GoogleTalk (live chat on Windows) Gmail (email) WordPress (blog software)Flickr...

• April 18, 2008
• 1 comment

Report from Digital Hollywood Confab

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

When my book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation came out in 2005, the Hollywood studios were still doing everything in their power to resist the onrushing wave of the personal media revolution. These days, it's a far different story. Hulu, the online video portal backed by NBC and News Corp., is about to launch, and talk in the hallways at Digital Hollywood this week is all about how to embrace our digital destinies. Talk during the panels is not about how to build a better Facebook but how to build a widget that gains traction on Facebook. Will...

• October 31, 2007
• 6 comments

Community Media Toolset

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

A few months back I proposed a project to the Knight News Challenge around community media tools. In a nutshell, the thought was to start a project to provide publishers, editors and developers at community media/citizen media sites with a suite of social media tools to enable a much richer degree of participation by the public on these sites. Now, plug-ins, scripts, guides and tutorials may sound pretty unsexy. But if you're just starting out in this field and want to add your voice in a meaningful way, what can you do besides start a blog? A community media effort,...

• October 15, 2007
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