Blog every day of June 2011

Last year a group of librarians on Twitter brought together by @flexnib embarked upon a blogging challenge and set themselves the goal of posting one blog post a day throughout June.

It's on again and starting today and I've decided to give it a go and see if I can maintain the pace and write something interesting.

I hope to also revive my blogging enthusiasm which I have to admit has flagged since I started devoting more time to Twitter.

Here's the getting started post from Libraries Interact, the Australian Library group blog, where all the participants names are listed.

Best of luck to all those who have decided to join in, it will be fun to see how we go. I imagine half way thorough the 2nd week will be the time we strike writer's block!

The Twitter tag for this is #blogeverydayofjune

Blogging coverage in Iran elections

I wrote back in November 08 about the political role of blogging in the Maldives election of 2008.

Now in Iran the New York Times live blog is doing a good job covering the Elections and getting on the spot information from bloggers on the ground there:

The wider issue of Iran and blogging is covered in Antony Loewenstein's The Blogging Revolution, Melbourne University Press, September 2008, 9780522854909

Here's a link to Literary Minded interview with Loewenstein on Crikey last year

This quote from the interview seems very pertinent today:

"When visiting a country like Iran – a population of 70 million, the majority under 30 years old and millions of web users – it’s immediately clear that solely relying on state-run media isn’t an option"

Media Participatory Activism Seminar in Perth

A small, but select group of students and academics attended this CREATEC seminar at ECU Mount Lawley yesterday: “Media Participatory Activism”, with the Keynote address delivered by Prof Geert Lovink.

Lovink is a Dutch/Australian media theorist and Research Professor of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) and an Associate Professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). His keynote topic was: “Publish Now: the Cultural Politics of Blogs and Web 2.0”

It was all stimulating, and too much to summarise in a blog post but some brief dots point might give an idea:

• Blogging has moved on from being a separate entity and is now completely integrated into websites and embedded in social networking sites
• Technorati reported on the phenomenal growth of blogging which has probably not yet peaked, but Technorati itself is undergoing changes and their annual report on blogging is no longer happening
• Not enough is being done to map the Australian blogosphere
• World internet statistics show use has reached saturation in North America, but growth in China or India has not nearly reached its peak
• While the predominant language of the internet is still English, Mandarin is growing rapidly and will surpass English within the next few years
• We are now at the end of the Web 2.0 economic cycle
• The world economic crisis is putting enormous pressure on internet companies such as Yahoo and there is concern re the future of Flickr.
• MySpace and Facebook are matched internationally by examples of other social networking sites, which have enormous take up in their countries/languages of origin such as: Studieverzeichnis (Germany) Hyves.net (Netherlands), SkyRock (France/Africa),
• National webs are being created in an attempt to recreate the “nation state” online. One example of a national web is even Australia’s ABC website as it is closed to overseas access

You can follow up on Geert Lovink's work as he has written widely. His latest book is Zero comments : blogging and critical Internet culture, Routledge 2008

A great panel discussion followed consisted of: Mark Balnaves is Professor of New Media at Edith Cowan University, Associate Professor Matthew Allen is the foundation Head of the Department of Internet Studies, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia and Tama Leaver teaches Communication Studies at the University of Western Australia, focusing on digital media and participatory culture.

Web 2.0 and more political change

Another election results that brought unprecedented change recently is in the Maldives, where Asian's longest serving leader has just been toppled.

This one has crept under the radar with all the other political news and optimism this week.

The new leader is in the Maldives is Anni (Mohamed Nasheed) who received 54.21% of the total votes. After 30 years in power President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom received just 45.79%.

According to the BBC World website:
"Mr Nasheed - a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience ... has been a constant critic of the regime of Mr Gayoom over the years and has spent long periods in jail for his political activities. To his supporters Mr Nasheed is a latter day Nelson Mandela, overcoming the hardships of prison to secure an inspirational election win against the odds"

I wrote about recently about all the Maldivian blog activity, and videos on YouTube that were now part of modern electioneering there: blogging in a closed society. Many of the local political activists were spreading online content, from non-government sources, thru their blogs: See a Partial Journey

Interesting, since the end of the election some of these blogs, having served their purpose, have ceased.

Blogging in a closed society

On 28th October there's to be the first ever democratic election in the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives

The currect leader, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has been in power for 30 years and there's a chance he may loose control of the country. The election has gone to a second round, after Maumoon failed to win the first round outright.

In this country where freedom of speech is somewhat limited, by Australian standards, it's not surprising that blogs are where much unfettered political debate is occurring.

A friend pointed me in the direction of mvblogosphere where many Maldivian blogs are listed. The coming Maldives election are a popular topic right now.

"mvblogosphere is an attempt to track, map and analyze the exponentially growing Maldivian blogopsphere, in order to draw a larger portrait of the social, cultural, political and economic structures they represent. "

For background information on the country check out also: BBC Country profile: The Maldives

Australian journalist, Antony Loewenstein, has just published a book, The Blogging Revolution, in which he's reported on bloggers in countries where press freedom is limited, such as Iran.

LiteraryMinded has just interviewed Loewenstein on her blog post Join the Revolution! An interview with Antony Loewenstein on The Blogging Revolution. Here's a snippet:

"When visiting a country like Iran – a population of 70 million, the majority under 30 years old and millions of web users – it’s immediately clear that solely relying on state-run media isn’t an option"

Bill Henson debate on Theatre Notes

It is no surprise to those who follow blogs, that here is where some of the most interesting and current public discussions are taking place.

A fine example is Alison Croggan's independent literary blog, Theatre Notes and its coverage of the Bill Henson debate. In essence the debate is about allegations of child pornography against one Australia's most important artists. Alison's blog has largely provided a more balanced set of views than the histeria being reported in the mainstream media and coming out of the mouths of senior politicans in the land.

In May 2008, when the Bill Henson controversy first broke, Alison Croggan was responsible for getting together the Open Letter from members of the Creative Stream of the Australia 2020 Summit in Support of Bill Henson. Cate Blanchett and many others supported the letter which went out to Australian media outlets.

I am interested in this debate as ECU teaches photography and we hold probably one of the most significant photography book collections in Australian libraries. Our collection includes books of Bill Henson's beautiful art photography. We often find ourselves needing to justify collection policy in response to books far more risque than his.

What also interests me, from the point of view of Web2.0 technologies, is how blog debates can unfold, be recorded and organised and easily retrieved later via the blog labels.

You can follow all the Bill Henson posts and comments on Theatre Notes via the Bill Henson subject label.

Now, Bill Henson is in the news again and Alison has posted today on her blog:

"How is it that an internationally acclaimed photographer, who has been making his art for 35 years without a whisper of complaint from any of his collaborators, has become the local equivalent of Gary Glitter? The mere mention of Henson in some quarters now means "paedophile" and "kiddie porn". And yet - even under the glare of this hostile publicity - the images he makes have been passed by authorities as suitable for general viewing"

To appreciate Bill Henson, I can recommend the Tony Wyzenbeek film The Art of Bill Henson, produced in 2003 for ABC TV, which can be purchased at ABC program sales.

Ozlit Blogs of note, my A list

In my day job as an arts and humanities librarian I’ve been gathering links to Australian literary blogs, so we can recommend some of these blogs to students and link to them from our library website.

Of course there is a wide range of literary blogs: blogs about Australian literature and writers, book reviewing blogs, newspaper literary blogs, writer’s blogs, group blogs, and blogs devoted to particular authors, or types of literature: poetry, young adult literature etc.

I have come up with my A list of the most influential Australian literary blogs.

Matilda, maintained by the indefatigable Perry Middlemiss. Perry should be your first port of call for the latest news on all aspects of Australian literature. He also posts regularly, so your RSS feed reader will pop up a constant supply of posts. Perry gathers together online literature sources from a wide range of sites. I’m currently enjoying his series of “Tim Winton Watch” posts, tracking the worldwide reception of this Western Australian writer's latest novel, “Breath”. Matilda blog has a Technorati authority* rating of 68. (More about Technorati authority below)

Sarsaparilla is a group blog covering Australian literature media and culture. This blog is:
“devoted to discussing books, writing, film and television, theatre and the performing arts, music, publishing, the humanities, reading, cultural studies, and… other things, from a distinctively Australian perspective “. The quality of the content is high and some of the Sarsaparilla bloggers maintain their own individual blogs or websites. The idea of a group blog has huge benefits as the posting load can be spread around. The Sarsaparilla blog's Technorati authority* rating is 47.

Kerryn Goldsworthy has several blogs including Australian Literature Diary which has a Technorati authority* rating of 11.

Kerryn taught literature at Melbourne University, is a former editor of Australian Book Review and a former member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. She works now as a freelance writer and has written about blogging and community in the latest issue of Heat, published by giramondo publishing. Heat is not freely available online, so you will need to subscribe, or ask your library for a Document Delivery copy.

One of Kerryn other blogs, Pavlov's Cat, is a chatty blog which attracts a large amount of reader interaction and comments. Pavlov's Cat is “a mixture of political, cultural and personal observations, opinions and facts … about literature, movies, current events, ideas and anything that seems interesting at the time”. And yes, there's more than a few funny cat pictures there too. Pavlov's Cat has a Technorati authority* rating of 69.

Genevieve Tucker keeps a blog on writing and books: reeling and writhing and she also blogs for Sarsaparilla. Reeling and writhing is well set out and interesting reading. I've only recently discovered this blog, but am returning often now. In December 2006, in The Australian, Genevieve had an interesting article on book blogs: Online, everyone's a critic. Reeling and writhing has a Technorati authority* rating of 10. Check out Genevieve’s post here for a list of Australian literature blogs

Speakeasy is a blog for writing and publishing news, events and markets, published by the Australian Writer’s Marketplace for the Australian and New Zealand writing industry. Australian Writer’s Marketplace also put out the subscription database "AWM online" which ECU Library makes available for staff and students to use. Speakeasy's Technorati authority* rating is 7.

So what is Technorati authority all about, and who decides?

*Technorati is a site devoted to collecting and evaluating blogs and making them available for searching. They are tracking over 112.8 million blogs now.

Technorati assigns an “authority” number rating to blogs. But, you may wonder, how is this so called “authority” worked out? The “authority” rating is based on the number of blogs linking to your website/blog in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has. This is a typical "wisdom of the crowd", Web 2.0 measure of authority.

It’s noteworthy that the more serious blog of Kerryn Goldsworthy, Australian Literature Diary, has a lower Technorati rating than the more popular Pavlov's Cat. I guess this is because more people comment on and link to Pavlov's Cat and the blog really does create an online community. But we have put a link to Australian Literature Diary on our library website, as we think it is the more useful in the academic setting. However, Kerryn has not been too active on this blog lately.

My own blog, the JayGee library log, has a Technorati authority rating of just 2 :( Not many people linking in, yet....

Most of these Australian blogs have been archived by the National Library of Australia's Pandora digital archive which is a wonderful resource, preserving our online culture. Good on you NLA.

My literature links gathered for this post are stored on Delicious under my tag “literature” . I’ll post my B list soon.

I'd be pleased to hear of more literary/literature blogs to add to this list. If you disagree with my list let me know. What is your favourite Aussie lit blog and why?

Blogging and mainstream media

Blogging is hot news in the mainstream media. Newspapers are in a "dammed if you do and damned if you don’t" situation. Upstart citizen journalists can cut into newspaper profit margins, but if newspapers wish to reach the Web 2.0 generation their journalists need to have their own blogs, and many do.

The Australian boasts about 18 blogs and individual blogger popularity can be seen by how many comments each blog has attracted.

Steve Almond, writing in the Oct/Nov07 Walkley Magazine has an article Attack of the Instapundits “Blogs are cheap and easy. They’re like those cable TV shows with all the talking heads shouting at one another. All you need is the means to broadcast and an opinionator”.

More on blogging: on November 8th ABC Radio National Media Report has a special panel discussion on the power of blogging. Among the speakers will be Hugh Martin from APN online Australia, and Pippa Leary, General Manager of Media at Fairfax Digital. You can download the audio, or read the transcript the next day.

In many ways the threats faced by mainstream media are similar to libraries. We need to also embrace the technologies of the digital generation, or risk becoming irrelevant.

Podcamp Perth 07

Podcamp Perth 07 was Oct 27-28 2007 and a resounding success. Thanks heaps to the organisers.

It’s Thursday already and am still trying to get off my butt and write something. If I wait long enough there won’t be anything more to say. It’s all there on the Perth Podcamp Wiki and related blogs already.

For those who don't know, PodCamp Perth is a newmedia community UnConference that helps connect people interested in blogging, podcasting, social media and networks, video on the net, and newmedia together to learn, share, and grow their newmedia skills.

Simone's Blog post has many of the links

Kathryn Greenhill's Blog Fodder was well done and fodder for thought.

Stilgherrian’s presentation Social Media and the 2007 Australian Federal Election gave some insights into politicians and how they use of Web 2.0. How will this change the nature of our democracy?

If the Net Gen are getting their political input from Rove and The Chaser, and from satirical YouTube rather than Howard’s YouTube what does that mean and where is this headed? So I went in search of some satirical YouTube myself and found this hilarious video which has had 37,000 viewings.

Adding humour to your blog

As the build up to the 2007 Federal Election unfolds, the daily newspaper cartoons hit the funny bone.

Did you know the Nicholson Cartoons
can be added to your blog?

The nicholsoncartoons website states

“These cartoons are copyright, but you are welcome to put them on your website or reproduce them for non-commercial purposes, with certain conditions...”

Dealing with Spam on your blog

Who’d have thought you’d need to deal with Spam on your blog. But somehow those pesky spammers can get through the sign in and leave an unwanted message. I’ve had this happen twice recently. Blogger Help has the solution, but it is a pain to have to go in and do this:

You can delete any comments (registered or anonymous) that are left on your own blog, or on another blog for which you have admin privileges.
To delete a comment, first make sure that you are logged in to the correct Blogger account. Then go to the blog and find the page where the comment is listed. Next to the comment, you should see a trash can icon
Click on the comment tdrag it into the trash can icon.
If you can't see the trash can icon, then that is probably because of a caching issue with your browser. Blogger Help has instructions on this also.

Keeping up with everyone's blogs

Now that lots of new ECU bloggers are coming on board, keeping up with everyone's blogs could be a chore. But, there's a solution! It's called RSS and will be covered in Week 3. Read Web Wiz's blog post on Easy Reading which will explain more.

P.S. Western Australia is the Banksia capital of the World and the Mt Barker Banksia Farm is the place to see them all.

Post to your blog via email

Did you know you can post to your blog direct from
email. It's a basic text format and won't include
images, but will help if you want to put a quick post
up, rather than going into the Blogger website.

The instructions are on the Blogger website if you
hunt around.

Go into Settings, then Email, then you need to set up
a Mail-to-Blogger address @blogger.com

The system sets up the first bit, eg jstudent1 and you
put the middle bit. So the address could be something
like: jstudent.study@blogger.com
Then tick Publish, and Save Settings

This is an email address by which you can post to your
blog. You just send the message to that email and the
email subject line will become the post heading.

If you can read this blog posting then it works! Good
luck, jmcg.