]I must have impulse control issues. I posted the following on my corporate blog yesterday — Here’s how not to (spam) comment (spam) — because a comment spam broke by heart. The person who did it was 80% there, he just #failed where he could have maybe won me over (because my blogs don’t get a lot of comments and I am lonely and generally treat commenters — even shameless self-promoters — kindly since they’re all I have!)
Citizen media
Six years ago today, a video revolution was born
It’s hard to fathom now, but six years ago YouTube, free video hosting and democratic video sharing didn’t exist. Then, six years ago today, Ourmedia.org burst onto the scene and helped launch a video revolution.
The “media” part of social media has become so engrained in our culture in such a short time that it’s worth looking back at how quickly things have changed — and why it matters. (
The king of podcasting’s eye-popping numbers
If you’ve spent any time in the tech world, then you surely have run across Leo Laporte, who runs a podcasting empire from his home base in Petaluma, Calif.
I’ve bumped into Leo at a dozen tech events over the past few years, from the Portable Media Expo (photo, now BlogWorld, in 2005 to South by Southwest and BlogWorld Expo in 2009 to appearing on his TechTV show, then in Toronto, in 2005 and speaking with him on a panel at the Producers Guild. Leo’s a friend.
These days, I watch his TWiT netcast on my Roku device and subscribe to his podcasts and listen to them at the gym.
Why isn’t law part of the social media conversation?
At BlogWorld Expo earlier this month, I ran into attorney-podcaster Christina Gagnier (pictured above), and we got to talking about the law, since we met a few years ago after publication of my book Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation.
Christina, who describes herself on her Twitter account as an “IP & Tech Lawyer, Online Strategist, Information Broker, Tech Policy Geek,” remarked that she was struck by the fact that BlogWorld had absolutely zero panels about the intersection of copyright law and grassroots media.
She then invited me to sit in as a guest on the new TechZulu Law show that she and co-host Lisa Borodkin launched earlier this month. Here’s a link to our discussion.
GroundReport: Citizen journalism gets richer
Five years ago we launched Ourmedia.org as the first free hosting and sharing site for video and digital media (yes, before YouTube). Secretly, I wished that more of the videos, photos and text dispatches coming through the door were high-quality citizen journalism reports.It took a few years, but citizen journalism has grown up. Exhibit A: GroundReport, a citizen journalism site with an international perspective.