Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Thursday, August 17, 2006

connecting a mac to two networks

after days of not being able to have my iMac connected to both a wireless internet connection and my local router with the printer and hard drive the answer has finally come to me, and so I share with the online world ...

the brilliant tech that I spoke to last (in a line of three) pointed me to Network Port Configurations in system preferences > network > show. simply drag airport above built-in ethernet. voila. all works well in the land of computers.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Back in March of 2005 I wrote about the mass media’s emphasis on male bloggers in Who’s afraid of the white male blogger?. Today I ran across a Pew study that backs up my assumptions that the blogospehere is not male dominated.

This excerpt from WIMN’s Voices sums it up rather well:

Listen up, corporate journos: time to stop reporting on all those “here’s a photo of me on a picnic with my pet fluffy and a Photoshopped Lindsey Lohan” stories about bloggers. There’s a more socially relevant story to be told. A small but growing (blog readership and blog ownership have increased dramatically in recent years, Pew shows) army of young, racially diverse, fact-checking bloggers - half of whom are women, and a nearly a third of whom are politically motivated - are engaging the public debate every day.

This Pew study doesn’t only shed light on the demographics of the blogosphere - it raises some very basic questions about the demographics of sources quoted in corporate news reports about blogs. If bloggers are approximately 50% female and are racially diverse, why are white men still the majority of bloggers quoted and discussed in print and broadcast reports about blogs (that is, reports not focused on porn, or on predatory threats to girls with MySpace accounts)?

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

In a criticism of updated content in Wikipedia, CNN details a play by play of changes to information on Kenneth Lay’s death. What they fail to mention is that open-source journalism in formats such as IndyMedia encourages readers to take self-responsibility in fact checking—something we should all do with corporate media as well. The benefits to open formats for such information ARE the changing, the fluidity, and the multiple sources. These are not downfalls ...

However, that it was the encyclopedia rather than the “news” being updated is strange.

But the real question is ... did he fake it?

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

When the copier became an accessible means of production, waves of activists began using them to self publish and connect with others through zines. With Google Video and other methods of sharing video without high production and distribution costs, documentaries seem to be more common and more outspoken. Are documentaries this decade’s activist communication tool?

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

check out fremlinvision

Monday, June 26, 2006

It’s funny to see all the places my business was pushing toward RSS and blogs a couple years ago start using them now. And now we’re closing down our blog in favor of an email and print newsletter. I’m much more excited about variable data printing these days, and other forms of printing, than the online publishing. And I think the online publishing has brought this about for many—a renewed interest in words and ideas in concise published formats. Maybe the next new thing is print.

It looks like the job opportunities in the digital print field are booming. Certainly something to keep an eye on.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

I’ve been working on converting the media literacy project I completed last year to this new site format. It’s now up at thefremlin / medialit.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

the Empire is putting out The Hooligan in place of the arts & entertainment section that used to run on Thursdays called This Week. They claim it’s so they have something interesting for the 18-35 crowd and draw in new readers. But here’s a tip for you—the only time I ever bought the Empire was on Thursdays for the This Week section. A key to why they’re really changing it is in the linked article above—NO ADVERTISEMENTS.

But let’s play dumb and pretend that Morris Communications really cares about people in Juneau, and more specifically the dwindling “young” crowd that this city keeps trying to attract to town or at least keep in town ...

Why not ask us what we want? We might start with something like more interesting topics and better writing.

Tell us what’s happening outside of Juneau as well as in, but not with the AP Wire because we can read that in an RSS feed before your paper can be printed and distributed.
Tell us both sides to a story, not just the easy one. So there’s a huge debate going on in the political world of Alaska about gas and oil and pipelines—how does this tie to the rest of the world? How does this tie to alternate fuel sources and what does that mean for Alaska? Listening only to the legislators is like getting all your news from corporate press releases.

For local flavor, tell us what young people in town are doing, tell us about the businesses they start and the concerts they organize and why. Tell us why they all work more than one job, why they stay in Juneau anyway, what they’re doing to change the place.

Hell, get really daring and tell us how much we rely on specific cruise lines for our income and how we often bend to their will. Oh wait, if you did that we’d lose all our funding ... can’t have that. Bend baby, bend.

I mean, the Empire is cute and all with it’s Police & Fire section noting the garbage bears, but there’s no meat. And sure, we certainly need something in this town telling us the art happenings, but that’s only coming out once a week. We need real news every day.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Forbes is suggesting the use of ”guerilla marketing” for small businesses. There are a few things about it that seem off. First of all they claim hiring guerilla marketing professionals (an oxymoron in itself?) can cost up to 8% instead of the standard 4% allocated to maketing. Secondly, they say that the concept of guerilla marketing is getting to really know your clients rather than plastering large scale “old-media” with blanket advertisements. And thirdly, the Top Ten Techniques are oddly standardized.

When I think of guerilla marketing I think of graffiti, plastering walls and bulletin boards with fliers, and in general using low-cost options to get information out. This is contrary to everything Forbes is advocating. There is nothing daring or alternative about their top ten list (send out cards to top clients off season, give out information in newsletters or speeches, answer questions through your website...). Ok, I’ll give them the littering of library books with business cards as something a little daring for business—but wouldn’t it be better to run off a really cool bookmark and place that in books instead? But for the most part all of the suggestions seem to be marketing—nothing new about it.

Friday, June 09, 2006

There is something excessive in the wording of this: MEDIA SAFETY A Guide for Parents from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

While the effects of media have been studied for years, using the term safety makes it all seem more of a scare tactic than a genuine attempt to help people become literate. Granted, violence and fear are hot topics. Why not play on them for the purpose of promoting all things while it’s trendy? If that’s what you’re after ...