Guardian (UK) reports that “Bangor University is proposing to sack eight of its 12 librarians because students can find the information they need on the internet.” But you can bet that the librarians aren’t going quietly.
Author: Paul (Page 133 of 147)
I wrote about Mercora, the P2P radio application, back in September when I got a tour of it during FOO Camp. I was impressed then and remain impressed. They suck in that they don’t support Mac or Linux, but they are good in that they allow real micro-radio stations on the net interationally.
The Wall Street Journal just published an article (subscription only) covering Mercora and other P2P radio offerings. The big news is that some solid agreements have been worked out with the RIAA.
Disclosure: I was introduced to Mercora by James Lussier, who’s Norwest Venture Partners just ponyed up $5 million in new funds and appointed Jim to the Board of Directors of Mercora.
WUNC did a new interview with Blood Done Sign My Name author, Tim Tyson, yesterday. I didn’t get to hear it (yet), but it’s in the archives and available in MP3 (go in about 12 minutes unless you’d like to listen to Congressman Mel Watt).
I’ve written quite a bit about Tyson and Blood Done Sign My Name here earlier.
Larry Lessig writes of what he learned from his West Wing experience. Hint: it has to do with connections, Harvard and others. Brief and worth the read.
Friday. Got to hang with Dave Winer for lunch and for a little look at ibiblio. John explained Osprey (for enabling bitTorrent). Got Dave lined up with Ruby and Brian for the evening. A very good connection for all of them.
Dinner with Anton, John E, Phil and Sue Meyers, Fred and Sally and Dan Gillmor. Good to see Phil and Dan reconnect and to hear them talk about the future of news. The rest of us were interesting too, but these two are the ones.
Saturday. Bloggers Con. Much written on this below and on the wiki. Successful beyond our wildest hopes.
Lunch with Henry Copeland (of Blogads) at Allen and Son. Others had escaped to Franklin Street. But we needed to give Dan a culural experience.
Dinner that night with Dan, Dave, Ruby, Brian, and Carrboro Alderman Mark Chilton at Tallula’s (see Conis entry). Good talk of wireless networks, towns, blogging and new technologies including podcasting.
Sunday. Off to G’boro to visit the folks at the News and Record where John Robinson and Lex Alexander are leading the paper into new areas of interactivity, transparency and citizen involvement. JR and Lex had invited local bloggers as well.
Good to spend time with Ed Cone and to have an expansive discussion of G’boro history and futures with him.
Dinner with faculty from SILS and JOMC — Jeff Pomerantz, Tom Kelleher, Deborah Barreau and Martin Kuhn (Martin is a PhD student who will be faculty soon enough). Talk here about new Public Relations developments through blogging and the net. Ethics. News libraries and access to archives and law.
Monday. Dan visited my class on Emerging Tech and Issues. The class has read his book and so Dan could also talk about his view of Silicon Valley and the future of jobs in tech and the internationization of all things tech especially.
This led nicely into a lunch with Matthew Szulik of Red Hat. Matthew was just back from India. Good talk about internationalization, open source attitudes outside the USA, varieties of attitudes toward intellectual properties and the like.
Got to spend more time with Matthew and even got to hear TJ explain the differences between covers, mash-ups and remixes.
Fred explained Lyceum to Dan.
Dan’s talk drew a nice crowd even on a rainy afternoon. He went over what he means by citizen journalism and about information sharing in the form of news. Good discussion followed and went on before I had to cut it off at 5:15.
Exceptional evening with Jennifer O’Bryan, Megan Barrett, Frank Daniels, Bob Young and Brett Dougherty. I cannot begin to capture all the good fellowship and talk that was had. I can say that few Americans can carry on such an indepth discussion of Canadian Football or even more specifically of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as can Brett. I am impressed in a very odd way. Bob, who owns the TiCats, had as you might imagine some amusing insights into the business of Canadian Football. I was sorry to hear that the TiCats’ mascot Bengal Tiger had passed on.
Just winding up a good and long visit with Dan Gillmor. Not only was it great to meet Dan and to spend time with him, but I also managed to catch up with some old friends and to meet some new neighbors and to get a peek inside the experiment at creating and maintaining an online town square at the News and Record.
I’ll be spending most of today catching up with the work that I set off to the side while spending the good time with Dan and others. But that is a a small cost.
The folks that work at ibiblio really made the whole, occassionally complex, visit a delight by digging in and helping out often above and beyond the call and by being creative and smart about it all.
We should have Dan’s talk online shortly and the bloggers con as well.
Dan’s ideas about how to help organize citizen journalists and how to make news more of a conversation are world-changing, but built on close observation and exerience reporting on technologies in Silicon Valley.
We’ve been having a great visit with Dan Gillmor, author of We The Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People this weekend.
Today Dan will be speaking to my class in Emerging Technologies and Issues.
Then later today:
Dan Gillmor public talk
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism for the People, by the People
Monday February 14, 3:30
Freedom Forum Conference Center
Carroll Hall, UNC
Learn More
[to be filled in later]
Visit with Dan Gillmor to the News and Record. Escorted by Ed Cone, we meet with a good number of the N-R staff lead by John Robinson and a fair number of G’boro bloggers including a reconnection with Dave Wharton who is now a Classics Prof at UNC-G and a blogger.
More on the very interesting Town Square idea that N-R is working to develope, etc later.
[to sleep perchance to dream]
So the News and Observer didn’t cover the Triangle Bloggers Conference (that I can see) despite the 150 folks showing up (see conference blogging notes — they are all over now). Great feedback and surprising folks. Who knew that Henry Copeland lived here now (he of blogads) or Blog for America‘s Matthew Gross — just for starters.
But the News and Observer did take about 1/2 a page and dedicate it to my Valentine’s poem, Unapproachable Edens, in the Sunday Reader section.
The online version doesn’t preserve the stanza breaks so I made an improved version (the copyeditor in me insists on it being right).
For dinner last night, some of us from the the Triangle Bloggers Conference went to a great Turkish restaraunt in town called Tallula’s. I had made reservations in advance (you have to and still you are likely to wait a while). The person taking my reservation asked me to spell my name. I did.
When we got there, we had no reservation! But someone did named “Conis” and that person had my same phone number.
I reminded myself that Turkish is a phonic language. The C in Turkish is closest to our J. Made sense to me, but the hostess was confused. “I am “Conis” and you can call the number and I will answer.”
We had a great window seat.
It all came off rather well despite having grown to over 5 times the size of attendance that we had originally anticipated. Good discussions. Good behavior. Good people meeting good people. Props to Anton for getting this going and making it happen. Props to Fred for being on top of the wireless access and much more. Props to Jen O’Bryan who made it possible for us to know each other’s names and sites. Props to TJ and John for taping the event. Special thanks to Ed Cone and to Dan Gillmor for leading discussions. Thanks to the folks at lulu.com for providing the drinks and donuts.
What was it like? There is a nice collection of live-blog postings on the conference wiki. If you have notes, pictures and/or live blog entries, please add yourself.
I’m learning what went on from the wiki myself. When you are in the middle of things, you don’t get to pay the attention that you’d like to –especially if you are me and the laptop that you brought ends up being the one projected for folks to see the blogs in question and then it starts dropping the wireless at random intervals –grrr. my ancient T-book needs to be traded in.
Sally Greene took some pictures.
First here’s what Murphey Hall looks like from the outside and what the room for the conference looks like. You enter from the middle of the building and go behind the Ashcroft-offending status. Do not show these statues on televisions during the Super Bowl. Dave Winer is here blocking David so that he will be decent for viewing.
Anton reports news coverage on WCHL, this morning in Chapel Hill Herald. I did brief interviews for the Daily Tar Heel and for WUNC. Blogomania continues.
Jen O’Bryan is printing name tags based on the sign-ups on the wiki, so sign up or look like a luzer with a hand written tag tomorrow.
Nice story in the Chapel Hill Herald about the Triangle Bloggers Convention tomorrow! Arrgh! We need signage and more. But all will be great in time. The room is very high tech and very nice. Power outlets are built into every seat. The place is covered by a wireless mesh. There are cameras. There are projectors. There are cushioned seats. This is uptown.
Lulu.com is bringing coffee and pastries. Don’t bring them in the auditorium tho.
![]()
His piano is done up like a casket and he has his mojo working.
9 skinners
Keep it simple
Don’t Mean a Thing (If it ain’t got that swing)
Black Widow
Cotton Fields/Good Night Irene
Makin’ Whoopee
Dis, Dat or D’udda
Holdin’ Pattern
Tell Me You’ll Wait
The Monkey Speaks
–break–
One 2 am 2 Many
Witchy Red
Shadows (the Shadow Knows)
Barber Blues
Right Place, Wrong Time
When the Saints Go Marchin’ In
Glory, Glory Hallelujah (When I lay my burden down)
Ain’t My Fault
So Long
–encore–
Such a Night (If I don’t do it, Somebody else will)
Gwine ta see Dr. John! over at the ArtCenter’s American Roots Series.
Dave Winer writes that he will be in Chapel Hill Friday thru Sunday of the Triangle Bloggers Convention. That’s tomorrow for the Friday and the day after for the TriBlogCon.
Dave’s organizing a Sunday brunch at Crooks.
Dave also writes that his talk at the News and Record will be podcast thanks to Brian Russell.
Larry Lessig writes that he will be portrayed by actor Christopher Lloyd tonight on West Wing.
The West Wing site describes the show like this:
THE WAKE UP CALL
9pm 2005-02-09 ALL NEW!IRAN SHOOTS DOWN PASSENGER JET AND IGNITES CRIES FOR RETALIATION; ROGER REES, CHRISTOPHER LLOYD GUEST-STAR —
On Valentine’s Day, an Iranian fighter jet accidentally shoots down a British passenger plane — killing 100 people — but C.J. (Allison Janney) is reluctant to awaken the President (Martin Sheen) even as the hawkish British prime minister considers bombing Iran’s nuclear reactors in retaliation. After learning that the passenger jet was mistaken for a U.S. spy plane, Bartlet calls in British ambassador Lord John Marbury (guest star Roger Rees, “Cheers”), as they debate whether a strike is the perfect excuse to wipe out the atomic sites or if it will set back reform movements in the rogue nation. Elsewhere: Abby (Stockard Channing) and C.J. war over the President’s schedule for rest; Toby (Richard Schiff) and a legal professor (guest star Christopher Lloyd, “Taxi”) try to pound out a new democratic constitution with representatives of Belarus — and everyone keeps dodging the traditional White House appointment with Miss Universe. TV-PG
Donald Sizemore who grew up in Oxford, NC. Took some pictures of the sites described in Blood Done Sign My Name. Lynch or Lynching Hill. The Teel Store now the Red and White. The Teel House (not protected by Klansmen now). The building behind which Henry Marrow was murdered (now Triangle Plaza).
A friend writes that he is tired of old recordings he made and digitized sounding like crap. The problem is that they were digitized using early versions of RealAudio when doing any sound at all that you could receive over dial-up was a welcome accomplishment. Now we expect more. Much more. At least MP3.
But so many of us, including collections on ibiblio, went straight to .ra files that much of that information will be lost soon as technology improves and our demands for quality increase.
Saving sounds and pictures in proprietary formats like .ra wasn’t brilliant but it seemed the only way at the time.
In the Internet Poetry Archive, we have rare readings by Czeslaw Milosz and Margaret Walker for example. You will hear them in .ra, but I have tapes hidden here in a safe place. But not safe enough. They need to be in an atmospherically controlled archive. A few more years and the tapes will be sticky.
While I’m at it: Does anyone know a a way to migrate from .ra to any other format? I know the quality will be terrible, but to have the sound at all would be great.
One idea is to take the audio out from a computer playing the .ra and route it into the audio in of another computer capturing the audio.
Melva Fager Okun writes to tell about photos taken by her son, Will, in Chicago of an unusual gathering. One in particular caught my attention. The Rubber Band Man, himself, Bootsy Collins (this is Will’s photo), the star of P-Funk and member of the George Clinton messengers for the true Funk. Take me up in the Mothership!
For all of Will’s photos from the last month see his site.

Recent Comments