ABOUT CLICKED

The modern news consumer ignores Weblogs and online citizen journalism at his own peril. But not everyone has the time to keep track of what's going on the Web. With this blog we hope to track the highlights of what's being discussed online so when news breaks from the Web, we're ready.

Will Femia is a Weblog enthusiast who, through good fortune and dumb luck, was introduced to the form as his position as chat producer for MSNBC.com careered into obsolescence. On any given day, Will can be found having already spent an unhealthy amount of time squinting at a computer screen.

Send a message to Will at spotter@msnbc.com



Profiles in profiles

Posted: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 11:28 PM by Will Femia

Critical mass and social network fatigue - "How many networks can one person join? How many different identities can one person sanely manage? How many different tagging or photo-uploading or friending protocols can one person deal with?"

Speaking of filling out an absurd number of accounts and profiles, Brilliant New Startup: Useless Account - All you do is sign up for it.

Speaking of making a mockery of social sites, Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing - Linkbaiting is the practice of writing Web pages in a way that they'll specifically appeal to high traffic social linking sites.  As he points out at the very beginning, there is a lot of talk about linkbaiting lately.  Enough talk that I have to wonder how long these tricks will be effective before people see them as a ploy and avoid them on purpose.

Speaking of people immersed in social networking, Commuter Click: Say Everything - "As younger people reveal their private lives on the Internet, the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll. The future belongs to the uninhibited."  What I hope to learn by reading it is what we can expect to happen as the networked and profiled generation grows up.  Will they value privacy more or less?  Will the people who grew up with a camera built into everything carry on with digital voyeurism and exhibitionism or will it get old?

Pittsburgh gets a Metroblogging site.

Who cut all the faces out of your Skymall catalog?  This guy.

What hands can do.  Yet another in a recent string of hand shadow/puppetry.

Fotolog overtaking Flickr - I don't know if it's evident yet, but I've been trying to find a way to feature photos the way I do links and videos.  Digital photography is such a huge component of online culture but so far I haven't found a convenient way to track it.  I mention this by way of explanation that I'm prone to clicking online photography links more than usual lately in search of insight.  This link doesn't offer any answers to my question but it does make for some good beard stroking on what makes sites popular and the context of the U.S. Web in the global marketplace.

Speaking of photography links, More megapixels, better photos: Fact or fiction?  The question is whether the techniques used to fit in more pixels actually ends up reducing light sensitivity and increasing "noise."  The accusation is that consumers assume that bigger is better so camera makers are in a pixel race that de-prioritizes picture quality.

The pimped out john - You're meant to enter the contest to win it but surely you'd not want to put that kind of time in on the throne.  Bolt it to a Laz-E Boy and you've got something though.

A Kirkland cafe with no prices - This is out near Seattle.  You pay what you want.  So far it's not a total disaster.  I have to think that's a reflection of the location.  Otherwise, what's the difference between this place and a soup kitchen?

I've been waiting for someone to chafe at Hillary playing the 9/11 card so much.  She needs to find a new drum to beat.  I even found her sudden buddying up with rescue workers distasteful.

These Photoshopped animals are really well done.  They look like the kind of thing that comes from a Worth1000 contest but I can't find the original link (though I did spend time poking through the current "snackimals" contest).

How the press can prevent another Iraq - What do you think, is the press capable of this? Would it really have prevented the war in Iraq?  I'm dubious.

I hate Macs - Those "I'm a Mac. I'm a PC" ads manage to spark a backlash abroad as well.

Michael Yon tells the compelling story of a suicide bomber in Iraq thwarted by a villager who sacrificed himself to save his neighbors.

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Comments

Your wish to have a toilet bolted to a la-z-boy has already been realized -- I just happened to run across this JibJab item last night, then saw your post this morning. 9th pic down has what you described, among other interesting ideas: http://www.jibjab.com/jokebox/jokebox/jibjab/id/202947/jokeid/60922

Beth, St. Louis, MO (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 10:17 AM)

LOL! Beth, those are awesome toilets, but I wanted the peripherals on a Laz-E-Boy, not the toilet.

Will Femia (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 11:16 AM)

"is the press capable of this?" - I have to say yes. The 4th Estate adds context to what we hear and how we hear it. It is capable of pointing out that the "Emperor has no clothes". Yes, there is high risk to the media that if they point out the lies they may be accused of bias (this is true whether pointing out a Democratic lie or a Republican lie, just a different group getting all up in arms about it). I think the media can amplify the drumbeat, can simply pass it along, or can show it to be hollow. In the run-up to Iraq, the media amplified the drumbeat almost across the board (not just Fox I mean). If they just repeated what was said, it would have had more people asking hard questions. Had they investigated things, it would have had a profound effect. You have to remember that Congress also consumes news information, and they also hear from their constituents (who are stirred by what they see and hear via news media). If journalists were pointing out problems with what Congress and the people were being told, many of the Democratic Senators and Representatives would have been able to have a back-bone and challenge the President. But, with the strong rhetoric from both the White House and the press, the people wanted action (or to be saved from the menace).

Paul, Alamo, CA (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 12:03 PM)

When I read articles that have a UKy tone, my inner-voice reads outloud as 1 of 4 Young Ones; I think this a (p)Rick voice. Less slang articles get the O'Toole treatment. I loathe Macs too.

ithink_ithink (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 12:05 PM)

Re: Megapixels. I read somewhere that a 100 micron by 100 micron square was the smallest "pixel" the human eye can detect, and therefore there are about 5.6 million pixels in a standard 8X10 object. So if you have a 6 megapixel camera (and a really good printer), you can replicate photo quality images, and if you aren't going to print above 8X10 or do enlargements, then you are just wasting money on higher megapixels.

Alex, Lawrence, KS (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 12:48 PM)

Its really discouraging that the people teaching the next generation of journalists aren't teaching them to report the news or to simply check ALL sources. Instead its sending the message that they need to take an active role in forming public opinion and shaping the events as they happen. Encouraging them to distrust our elected leaders and "understand" the Enemy. Directing them to activly speculate on the motives of someone(which in my mind verges on liable) with or without any comment from that person or group. While I also encourage skepticism and objectiveness. This article seems to take it a step beyond into encouraging newswriters to create the news and form public opinion in order to prevent war. Its not the job of the press to take an active role in determining whether this nation should or should not go to war. The sacred duty of the press is simply to convey information. To often they overstep their bounds and include opinion and speculation rather then facts and reports.

Dan E., Chicago, IL (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 1:37 PM)

Thanks for linking the Pittsburgh metroblogging site. My native city still suffers from archaic stereotypes, but it's more technologically current than people think (for example, the Golden Triangle - i.e., downtown - is wireless). There's already a great "Pittsblogh" community, so it's nice to see another addition.

LV (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 1:40 PM)

Oh, and on the digicam megapixels issue: I don't buy anything without major research, and I learned researching digital cameras in October that most people really don't need more than 5. The quality issue has to do with the size of the sensor chip used in the camera. Say a manufacturer releases a model upgrade where Model A has 4mp and Model B has 6mp. If Models A and B have the same size sensor chip, that means the manufacturer had to reduce pixel size in order to fit more pixels on the same size chip. That simply means each pixel holds less information, and noise increases. However, if the manufacturer leaves the pixels the same size and rather uses a proportionately bigger sensor chip for Model B, then more overall information is taken in and quality increases. That's one major difference between the small point-and-shoot cameras and the SLRs - generally, the latter have bigger sensors and actually take in more information.

LV (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 2:03 PM)

Dan E, I have to disagree with you somewhat (although I agree with most of what you said about excesses). The role of journalists has to be more than just a press-release repeating outlet. The reason we make such a big deal about a "free press" in other countries is because all Governments tend to want to control and manipulate information. It is in the nature of big organizations, whether government or corporate or unions or whatever. The press is intended to be the mechanism that protects us through collective resources we do not have by ourselves; it is notable that the "blogosphere" is also giving us common people another collective outlet, but that does not let the news organizations off the hook, given that they have more access to sources and resources. Further, we are supposed to be able to trust news organizations because they can damage their reputation if they do things wrong - bloggers come and go and have no such worries.

Paul, Alamo, CA (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 2:51 PM)

Today Will Femia at Clicked posted a link to Jon Udell's article, Critical mass and social network fatigue. In the article J...

Ukulele & All That Jazz (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 6:27 PM)

Will Femia (Sent Wednesday, February 07, 2007 11:17 PM)

I went to the Nieman Watchdog link hoping to find an insightful article. Instead, all it I got was BDS. He says, "Pay attention to international opinion." Well, let's see: The French thought that Saddam had WMD; the Germans thought that Saddam had WMD; the Russians thought that Saddam had WMD; Bill Clinton thought that he had WMD and none of them are exactly big fans of GWB. So, who in the international community should we have listened to? His next point was, "What do people in other countries think? Why should we be so different?" Well, French and German companies were making millions off the totally corrupt Oil for Food program and Russia is looking to set up an OPEC type organization with Iran to manipulate the world price of oil. Is it possible that those countries had their own reasons for wanting the situation to remain as it was? Journalism is in a sorry state. And I am no fan of the current administration and and I have no problem with reporters exposing any lies or deceit from them. But they aren't the only crooked stick in the pile. What about the Jamil Hussein stories? What about the fake photographs from the Israeli-Hezbollah war last summer? What about UN soldiers raping girls from one end of Africa to the other? Had Froomkin addressed how the press handled some of those issues, I would have taken what he had to say more seriously.

John in Cincy (Sent Thursday, February 08, 2007 12:09 AM)

Paul thanks for your comments, and I have to say that I agree with you. Free Press is a very important aspect of our civilization and society. However, I think that the biggest source of manipulation comes not from government, but the coporations. If we limit news sources to reporting information, information that can and must be verified and sourced, then we eliminate the temptation and ability for manipulation to a large degree. The problem I have is that once a "reporter" takes the information they've gathered and forms an idea with it, they cease to be a reporter covering news, and become a pundit projecting his ideas into the "blogosphere". Ideas belong in the realm of public debate, not in the news. The news is there so that we can all form our own ideas based on the available information, not so that someone can tell us what the right conclusion is. Unfortunatly it seems the world is moving into a fusion of journalism and commentary. The things should be kept seperate if only to make sure that we are all forming our own ideas and not simply following the directions of whoever is passing the news along to us this week. Its not enough that CNN provides the liberal side of the news, and Fox the conservative side. We need to have a true unfiltered source of information in order to be active, concerned and responsible citizens of the USA and the Earth.

Dan E, Chicago, IL (Sent Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:34 AM)

Will You must have scads of readers curious @ this: cnt-w will close your links @ 70 percent of the time, the remainder require going to the menu. (use Firefox) What's up?

David Dietrich, Temecula, CA (Sent Thursday, February 08, 2007 1:02 PM)

Hi Dan. As I said, I agree with your point about excesses, including losing the "wall" between the editorial department and the journalists. I also agree that news corporations are very worried about ratings and ad revenue. The trick for a journalist is to dig deeper than just passing along "raw" news. This is because there is no such thing. All sources (including your own eyes) are only telling part of the story. So, a journalist needs to make sure they get enough parts of the story to give us enough actual *information*, which is what you mean by raw news. Obviously, every journalist is plagued by their own biases - this has always been true. The problem these days is that more and more seem to wear them on their sleeve, rather than try to overcome them. I personally think you have to get the same news from both inside and outside a country to really get a better picture, since biases tend to reveal themselves quickly!

Paul, Alamo, CA (Sent Thursday, February 08, 2007 1:17 PM)

Thanks from the brand new, baby-size Pittsburgh metroblog! The 'Burgh has lots of great blogs and we're happy to join them.

Carolyn (Sent Thursday, February 08, 2007 4:19 PM)

The photoshopped animals reminded me of another site you might have seen. Check out HumanDescent.com. It does the same thing but with animals photoshopped onto human faces. Pretty awesome!

T. Locy, Mannsville, NY (Sent Friday, February 09, 2007 3:06 PM)



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