DLTQ.org

On Saturday, the Norwegian online newspaper aftenposten.no had an article basically telling people to be more careful about what they expose on Facebook. Because, as it says, maybe your potential employer might check out your facebook profile first. This kind of paranoia for the publication of that party picture from 2003 is pretty old, in my opinion, but I guess it is important that the general masses is still aware of the risk.

Myself, I had not properly taken notice of Facebook before I read about it on jill/txt a few months ago. Here Jill Walker also writes the fact: Facebook is the first social network to Really hit it in Norway. Today there are close to 250.000 Norwegian users on it, according to the Aftenposten article.

As with blogging, videoblogging, opml and twitter, I am interested in what possible implications of this can be. What could the popularity of Facebook, in Norway and elsewhere, mean? What can it do for the growth of the civil society? How can we use these networks to do things we could not do before? Things that has more importance than writing on each other’s wall about how good/bad the last Hollywood flick was.

Here is my public Facebook profile - feel free to add me if you have not already done it. Who knows where this may lead.

I have explored twitter a lot more since my last post here on dltq.org, and I have also read a few other articles / blog entries on it. Here are a few:

Ross Mayfield: Twitter Tips the Tuna
Isabella Mori: More on online conversations
Andy Carvin: Can Twitter save lives?
Chris Brogan: 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good

As you can read in the above blog entries, there are different ways in which twitter isused, and there are different visions as to how it Could be used. Here is one example of an exchange I had today:

sbraiden Reading the latest issue of “Develoments” & want to share. Brilliant, free 1/4ly magazine. Grab it: http://www.developments.org… about 2 hours ago from web

dltq @sbraiden: thanks for the link! - any specific articles you liked? i wonder how articles in publciations like this are further discussed about 2 hours ago from web in reply to sbraiden

sbraiden @dltq article called “the road to jubilee” on Bono’s use of the currency of celebrity to influence social/political change/debt cancellation 4 minutes ago from web in reply to dltq

This might seem like just another IM conversation, but it wasn’t. These messages are stored online, becoming parts of sbraiden and my identity on twitter, and we can both look back at them later on. Others could read the messages, become clued in to the conversation or join it.
I like the connections that are loosely connected. Where there are so many open ends that the geist can float throughout the network. Something someone said in a twitter a few weeks ago, maybe, could be the basis for a discussion at a later stage. And because you can link their twitters, their text messages to the system on their way to somewhere, when One Thought comes to their mind and they share it, with the person with their websites, blogs, identities - - because you can do this, you can have different layers of communication that together can become very fullfilling.

Even if I cannot sustain spending the time listening to your 45 minute podcasts every week, or read your 600 word blog entries, I can be connected to you via your text messages - 140 characters long - that are broadcasted to the system. If you take a look at some of my favourites, you will see the style of messages that I collect.

Loosely connected.

Where will the red thread enter the picture? How will we go from eternal fixation on the newest twitter messages on the system to a more focused, concentrated effort to deal with specific problems?

Some of my friends from thepan.org and elsewhere have been preparing Wreck & Salvage for the last months. March 1st it launches.

A teaser:

Check out their auction, bid, and make sure that Schlomo character doesn’t run away with it all.

I have had this post in my pile of drafts for a few days now, so I guess I will go meta with it instead.

The basic point of the draft was

1) Point to this interesting interview with Michael Wesch (yes, the creator of that web 2.0 video). I especially liked the exchange in the comments.

2) Write a bit about blogging in the academic world, and how I wish more professors and staff members (and students!) would put their work out there, in the (viral) networks. Putting it on google video in chunks of 60-minute lecture talks might work for some, but the media is awful to handle then.

3) Write something about the powers of screencasting, something I earlier obsessed a lot over, but which I have not done a lot lately. Mr. Wesch’s video reminded me. [I wanted to write a bit about workflow with screencasting. Wesch mentioned that he uses CamStudio himself. Me, I either use Camtasia Studio or BB Flashback - both are good for their use. While Camtasia Studio records to .avi (which goes well with editing in Sony Vegas), BB Flashback is a much quicker recording/encoding process. Basically, I can use BB Flashback for making a video, showing something specific, and the whole production time could be a few minutes (like with speedvlogging) ]

4) This reminds me of something Mr. Wesch wrote:

The best tools are those that are flexible enough to be used beyond that for which they were intended. The more a web service can build this kind of flexibility in, the better, as it can tap into the collective intelligence of those using the service to extend its possibilities.

(my use of colour)

And with screencasting, we can show each other how we do these things on-screen, like we with videoblogging can show each other how we change 4 tires in 8 minutes.

Basically, that was what I wanted to convey, but I got lost in all the threads. (Now, I need to find different ways to share information along with tidbits of my own commentary. Asides might work, but then again, I am not really a fan of asides. Maybe they will work for me if I work on my template a bit more (I use the brilliant K2). Using del.icio.us might work, but then again del.icio.us is very text-centric. What if I wanted to give a comment through juxtaposing something with a different image or a 3-second video clip? workflow, workflow)

I have not mentioned the Colombia Migration Project here on DLTQ.org yet - and it is about time.

As some of you know, there is a great initiative within the vlogosphere called “Have Money Will Vlog“. It is a system that so far has funded a few projects, and one of these projects is the Colombia Migration Project.

Here I take the liberty to show you one of the videos that have come out of this Colombia Migration Project. It is the story of Rocio, a woman who has lived in the U.S. for 6 years.

Click To Play

[Source permalink]

I imagine what a similar project from here in Denmark would look like. If we had access to interviews with people who come to Denmark as refugees, guest workers, exchange students or otherwise. How they deal with their situation here.

I highly recommend Colombia Migration Project.

Also, feel free to go to HMWV and support the current fundraising project.