CivicActions

We at CivicActions have helped clients to develop "Social Media" websites which enable members of a community to bond around shared media for fun, learning, advocacy and transformation. One of the principal aims of this development has always been the empowerment of individuals and communities to rise above the echochamber of monolithic media channels by accessing wider sources of content and even by becoming the media makers themselves.

Now YouTube, the current granddaddy of Social Media sites in the videosphere, and best known for "America's Funniest Home Videos"-style fare, seems to be growing into a role of crucial and transformative importance: leveling the playing field for presenting disparate eyewitness views of something as profound and inflammatory as the current Hizbollah-Israeli conflict -- unfiltered by editors, advertisers or even production values. It's chaos, but somewhere in the triangulation of a million lens-eyes, we can hope that the complex truths of such difficult circumstances may be brought to light in ways that don't fit neatly in between car commercials.

Here is a release of MapThing. This Drupal 4.7 module allows people to create a Google Map for their website and display a CiviCRM group plotted on it.

3.4 magnitude quake from the USGS:

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc40183688.html

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/122-38.html

This is a short conversation with Jakob Lodwick of Connected Ventures. BarCamp is happening at ConnectedVentures' office. Jakob works on CollegeHumor.com and Vimeo.com, a video sharing and social networking site. Yesterday Jakob lead a talk about soft links in social networks. I talked about it a little bit in my first podcast from yesterday. Basically the idea is that there isn't just one type of connection between people, we have different connections, social networking applications should recognize that. The machines should be able to learn the strength of our connections based upon how we give our attention. If I look at your flickr pictures all the time, but not the photos of another contact, then flickr should stop showing me the other person's and show me more of yours.

I just talked to Chris Messina of Flock and formerly of CivicSpaceLabs about Microformats, Flock, Attention and BarCamp.

Chris is one of the Founders of BarCamp and seemed to be pleased with the outcome so far here in NYC. He was also happy to answer way more than three questions, even given the late hour...

Listen here

barcamp