This is just exciting because I sat in on Liz Pullen’s seminar during the Social Media Camp at Internet Week New York 2009.  What I didn’t notice was that Jolie O’Dell from Read Write Web posted an interview that she did with her later in the day.  The Social Media Camp is how she got on my social media radar, and I started following her on Twitter after that. I got a link to it today via the @Twitter_Tips stream.

One point in their discussion that I think is very interesting is Twitter trying to distance itself from being defined as a social network.  That’s a bit odd because it is a social network.  It’s a micro-blogging social network. However, with the shift from being able to search bios and follow people who might interest you based on their location or based on their interests or causes they support, you get their suggested users list of celebrities or other notable people.  The problem is with people who have a huge number of followers, Twitter is primarily used as just another broadcast network.  There are many types of broadcast networks.  Honestly, the celebs that I follow I don’t pay much attention to.

This is particularly so regarding the ones who only tweet inspirational quotes. It’s not original. I can and do look up inspirational quotes when I need them. BTW, who made you Gandhi? Following is such a passive sport that, even for the celebrities cut from pretentious cloth, I can do it without much disruption and there is that hope that they’ll say something insightful. Some do from time to time and stay on my list. However, after one too many inane bits of information there are others that are simply not broadcasting anything interesting and I just stop following them.  Again, their follower numbers are so big that it’s no loss to them and there is no loss to be because there wasn’t a conversation or interesting information.

In contrast are the people who have something interesting or informative to say.  I look forward to their tweets.  Also, there is the social network function that comes into play.  I do converse with some people. Most of these people I know.  Others I converse with because we share an interest.  I have juvenile diabetes (insulin dependent or type 1), so I tap into and converse with other diabetics.  I talk to people in NYC.  Of course, I converse with people in the social media field and other bloggers. Those are all social networks that I’m a part of and that Twitter helps me maintain on some level.  It’s a bit disingenuous to ignore that level of social interaction.  Twitter is used for many things including social networking, business promotion, broadcasting, etc.

It’s so interesting that people are smart enough to look at the sociological implications of social media independent of the ROI analysis.  Granted there is, of course, a place for ROI in the context of business.  However, everything ought not be based on profit.  Social media is also fun.  It’s bringing people together in a new way.  It’s interesting to see what people do with it and also how people react.  I’m usually most amused by the Luddites who see social media as a harbinger of all that’s bad with the world. Having sociologists take it serious and analyze it in-depth also validates my like of it and involvement with it.  We all like to be validated from time to time.

Resource:

Tweepsearch – allows you to search Twitter bios.

It’s easy to forget that we’re in the World Wide Web, sometimes.  I mean, we’re just living in the same place, day after day.  It’s hard to remember that there’s a whole world of people out there who are doing things, and browsing things, in order to achieve their own goals and dreams, or even just to pass the time.

And then a colleague on Twitter, Chad Sansing, happens to mention this really cool draft of a 7th grade leadership curriculum that’s making some small waves on the web.

And I think, Hey, I used to teach 7th grade leadership… I bet that would be useful to me...

So I check out the link.

And I find that HolyKaw at Alltop.com, has picked up my picture from Flickr, and made something of a big deal out of it… 2200 visits to their site, and a good 500-600 clickthroughs over the last few days to my Flickr account, in order to see the image itself on its original home.

Or, you know, you can see it here, and click through on the image to the original Flickr site, and see it in its original home.

Anyway, it never ceases to amaze me, the ways in which the Roundabout Web comes back to turn and return to itself, the snake Ourobouros eating its own ever-elongating tail.

The social world online is filled with conversations and ideas from people all over the world––creating a massive amount of networks. In order to protect these individual users and their growing social networks––from individuals and companies seeking to exploit and prey upon their rights to share and socialize––a Bill of Rights for the online social world is necessary. Just what would I want in my Bill of Rights for the social web to include?

When I think of a Bill of Rights I think:
Declaration of liberties
Asserting fundamental rights of people
Ground rules
Statements that establishes human protection

Bloggers and tech gurus, Marc Canter and Joseph Smarr, two of the pioneers in the effort to create and promote a Bill of Rights for a social web, have proposed three key components: Ownership, Control, and Freedom. Of course this has created a ground–floor for others to debate. Blogger of Read Write Web, Josh Catone advocates the protection of personal data, which he states “should include personal data like your age, interests, location, and who you associate with, and attention data like the DVDs you’ve viewed, or the blog posts you’ve read.” This brings up a good point! Just how many people should know how obsessed I am with a certain actor on CSI Miami by the amount of my youtube video views of the show?

Blogger and architect of the cross-browser library xWinLib, Steve Repetti, expounds upon protection and the originally proposed key components, by adding his key elements––privacy, usage, and control; users having the right to share and take–away not just personal data but also posts. Shouldn’t I be allowed to delete my anonymous post to an ex-boyfriend––that I really didn’t intend on sending––without someone tracking it?

I must agree with the originators. Ownership. Control. Freedom.

I just can’t help to wonder about how much protection of my personal and usage data will be given/allowed without restriction. Isn’t that what its about? Would companies, even the company I work for––that relies on online lead data––allow users to opt-in and opt-out certain and or all data from social sites at our own will? This topic––a Bill of Rights for the social web––has created buzz. I hope it creates more than a buzz! I hope it creates laws and universal standards for companies and networks to follow, so that individuals don’t feel like prey in our own homes on our computer as we express ourselves.

Follow up to previous post on Augmented Reality. Click the link below to read the story from Read Write Web about the highly anticipated release of Layar’s AR application for the iphone.

Layar Augmented Reality Submitted to the iPhone App Store

Shared via AddThis

Click here or on image above to view demo on YouTube

Visit Layar Website

Most professionals know by now that drunken party pics on a Facebook page and thoughtless posts can be a sure way to kill off future employment prospects or land you in hot water with your boss.

For those of you who like to let your hair down on the site or don’t want companies accessing your personal information every time you take a Facebook Quiz, Read Write Web has a solution.

The Web technology site offers a 5-step, easy-to-use set of instructions to keep you safe and your privacy in check.

The instructions use graphics of Facebook menus to make it easy for anyone to turn on some sophisticated privacy filtering on the site. (That way you can still be friends with the boss, but she doesn’t have to know which politicians you voted for.)

They also show you how to keep companies from accessing personal information about you and help you limit who can find you on Facebook Search.

Click here to see the instructions. Makeusof.com also has a pretty good set of tips on how to increase your privacy on Facebook.

A fairly conclusive Hitwise chart revealing the visit fortunes of Facebook and Myspace over time – from an interesting article on Read, Write, Web on How Facebook beat Myspace: From College Dorm to Platform

On KARN radio on Monday, political bloggers Blake Rutherford and David Kinkade commented on how new media has finally arrived in Arkansas, and how blogs and social networks will play an even bigger role in the 2010 election cycle (one that’s already sure to be exciting given a certain U.S. Senate race) as more Arkansans become politically engaged, bloggers break news alongside traditional media and candidates rally supporters in online spaces.

This week, a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project outlines emerging trends in political and civic engagement, and it will be interesting to see if some of these findings play out in Arkansas, so often the final destination for new social and technological movements. Below, some of the Pew study’s key findings and some brief comments:

Whether they take place on the internet or off, traditional political activities remain the domain of those with high levels of income and education.

There’s obviously been some hope that the Internet might be the great equalizer in terms of political engagement by the haves and the have-nots. But the Pew study finds that this simply hasn’t happened yet. Pew notes, of course, that much of this is tied to broadband availability. In Arkansas, of example, you’re much more likely to have high-speed Internet access if you are more affluent and live in a larger city.

But:

At the same time, because younger Americans are more likely than their elders to be internet users, the participation gap between relatively unengaged young and much more engaged middle-aged adults that ordinarily typifies offline political activity is less pronounced when it comes to political participation online.

So youth might be a leveler, in terms of political activities by folks in vastly different economic classes. And, Pew says, so could blogs and social media, because the bigger group of people who use those Internet media are aged 18-29:

There are hints that forms of civic engagement anchored in blogs and social networking sites could alter long-standing patterns that are based on socio-economic status.

Pew says “hints,” because we don’t yet know whether we’ll see a generational change in civic involvement, or merely a “life-cycle phenomenon that will change as these younger users age.”

(After the jump, more findings by the Pew study.)

Other findings include:

The internet is now part of the fabric of everyday civic life. Half of those who are involved in a political or community group communicate with other group members using digital tools such as email or group websites.

Which of course relates to this:

Respondents report that public officials are no less responsive to email than to snail mail.  Online communications to government officials are just as likely to draw a response as contacts in person, over the phone, or by letter.

Politicians and government officials often (and should) treat e-mail communications from constituents with as much urgency as they treat written communication. And it’s likely that they should strive to treat all online communication with constituents with that same urgency, whether it be on places like Facebook and Twitter, as more people use those spaces as their primary points of communication.

And finally, there’s this:

Those who make political donations are more likely to use the internet to make their contributions than are those who make charitable donations; however, large political donations are much less likely to be made online than are large charitable donations.

Politicians of all shapes and sizes, running for all offices from constable to President of the United States, must have some type of online fund-raising initiative. Not only is the cost of raising money online almost nothing, online will increasingly become the please to raise money. Still, the big chunks of cash are likely to come offline, which perhaps is as it should be.

You can read the full report via this link.

More

Study Finds Web No Equalizer For Civic Engagement – AP

Online Politics Leads to Offline Activism – The Hill

Online Politics Reserved for Rich – BBC

Social Media Is Slowly Changing the Demographics of Political Engagement – Read Write Web

Yesterday, social media faced it’s first serious, and seemingly co-ordinated, attack. Twitter, Facebook, Google apps engine and Live Journal were all affected by a DDOS attack that had Twitter out of action for about 3 hours. The sites affected are now working together to investigate the attacks.

There have been different theories knocking around about who is responsible – some say 4chan, some say Iran, some say Conficker. Whoever, or whatever it was, brought the social media industry to its knees for the longest period of time I can certainly remember.

Where did you go during this time to communicate?

I headed to Friendfeed and kept an eye on Read Write Web and Mashable to see how things were progressing.

What is interesting is that there was a feeling of helplessness, very much one of a cable being pulled out and an uncertainty exactly of what to do, within the group of people who were affected. Quite what this says about us, I’m not sure.

But it made me think – where would we go if this had been a permanent blackout? Would have all gone our separate ways, ending all of the small connections we’ve made, or would we have all stumbled back into each other on a different platform?

Where would Twitter users migrate to, if Twitter disappeared tomorrow? Would it be Freindfeed, Tumblr or back to Facebook?

My initial reaction was Friendfeed because it is real-time and I have imported all of the feeds of the guys who I follow on Twitter over to this platform. Others did the same. The thing is, since Twitter came back to life, I’ve not returned to Friendfeed to check on my inbox, as I know my contacts would respond to me on Twitter anyway.

That feeling of loss and helplessness was not pleasant and indeed was almost disorientating, strange though it seems, Twitter’s ability to connect instantly one person to another, and then end that connection is even more compelling when it’s not there.

One of the more annoying/good Twitter campaigns so far, has this week come from the Moonfruit team, who have been goving away Macbook Pros everyday in return for the simple addition of a hashtag at the end of a tweet. The idea is simple, the execution even simpler, but what about the moonfruit spam? My personal opinion on this one is that although the idea is clever, the execution has been poor, and the boasting about the success is just downright horrifying. It’s all well and good telling the PR community about the good job you did, but a BBC Technology Correspondent?

Adverts on Twitter are becoming increasingly more noticeable (or not) according to Read Write Web who have picked up on the sponsored links appearing on Twitter’s homepage. I don’t think this is a huge issue as I generally use Tweetdeck, and until they begin to flood me with ads, or updates beging to appear in my actual stream, it has very little affect on my use of the service.

There’s been a huge storm over a ‘new’ video promoting Internet Explorer 8 which shows a woman throwing up over her laptop – not a smart move by Microsoft if this is actually by them. I’m not going to embed it here as I don’t really think it’s that suitable, if you must, try looking for it here. What the video has done is actually caused a self censoring of many and a line of decency to be crossed – for once the Internet has reacted badly to something seemingly thought of as just a little bit of fun, and it’s been pulled.

Oleh: Waraney

Read Write Web beberapa hari lalu membahas berita dari The Associated Press tentang rencana Federal Trade Commission (FTC) di Amerika Serikat (AS) untuk memonitor undisclosed sponsored conversation atau tulisan-tulisan dari para blogger yang melakukannya karena menerima imbalan dari sponsor namun tidak mengungkapkannya kepada publik. FTC bukan hanya akan memonitor, namun juga menerapkan aturan-aturan baru tentang sponsored conversation.

FTC mengambil langkah ini karena praktek-praktek undisclosed sponsored conversation sudah semakin banyak ditemui. Masalahnya, blogger-blogger sering memposisikan diri mereka sebagai pihak yang independen, sedangkan tulisan-tulisan dan rekomendasi mereka dipengaruhi oleh hubungan mereka dengan sponsor. Seperti yang diungkapkan oleh Rick Cleland, assistant director advertising practices division di FTC:

Peraturan dari FTC tersebut akan mulai berlaku efektif pertengahan tahun ini, dan akan menjadi langkah pertama dari FTC untuk memonitor dan mengendalikan blogger. Menurut Read Write Web, walaupun blogger bisa saja bilang bahwa imbalan yang mereka terima tak akan mempengaruhi isi tulisannya, tak ada yang berani menjamin klaim independensi tersebut. Di sisi lain, campur tangan pemerintah dalam hal ini juga belum tentu dapat memecahkan permasalahan.

Bagaimana dengan di Indonesia? Saya sampai saat ini belum pernah melihat atau mendeteksi rekan blogger yang melakukan undisclosed sponsored conversation. Selama ini teman-teman saya yang beruntung mendapat sponsor selalu mengungkapkan fakta ini, baik secara langsung dalam tulisan di blognya, maupun dengan memasang iklan sponsornya di blog mereka.

Mungkin suatu saat dunia online Indonesia akan mengalami masa-masa ramainya sponsored conversation, baik yang undisclosed maupun yang disclosed. Karena saat ini belum ada aturannya, sebaiknya kita yang melakukannya mencoba untuk menerapkannya dengan sebaik mungkin. Bisa dimulai dengan membaca tulisan dari Jeremiah Owyang, “How To Make Sponsored Conversation Work“.

You read that right folks. A new app is being released with versions on the Blackberry and iPhone that will allow you to connect each device to your favorite online project management application, Basecamp. For the full post check out:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kompass_will_take_basecamp_mobile_for_the_first_ti.php

Kompass, the company producing the new software says the new application will allow devices built on Blackberry, Android (Google’s Mobile Operating System) and the iPhone will all have access to their Basecamp and control their accounts.

Unfortunately, complete access isn’t available, but you can visit the Kompass website and sign up for Beta testing and they may send you an invite to use and test the software.

Readwriteweb published data looking at who is getting hired at the moment in tech. The main companies hiring are in Software and IT, social media and social networking companies, as well as marketing and advertising firms. Indeed, 15% of the 420 jobs that RWR had reported on were in social media – the second highest category. I told you, Social Media is the place to be…

Rupert Murdoch announced that he wants to start charging for online content from his virtual properties, claiming “The current days of the Internet will soon be over”. This will only end in disaster for Murdoch – people will instantly be driven away from reading his content as it will be findable elsewhere. We are in an age where news is instantaneous and netizens want their information served up quickly and for free. His ideas will throw us back to the dark ages – we’ll take a rain check on this for now.

Twitter search is to evolve, using an influence ranking system to help categorise content. Just how they will work out this influence rating, they’ve not yet announced – we wait with baited breath.

Twitter will also now be using bit.ly as their main URL shortener, a move that will see their traffic shoot up. Ow.ly for example currently gets 57% of it’s traffic from Twitter – Bit.ly will soon be looking at an explosion.

Tomorrow is a big medical day for me. I’m nervous, but I shouldn’t be. I have the pre-op assessment prior to my nasal surgery on the 19th. I’ve been taking blood pressure readings all week at home, in case I do my usual of getting hyped up when I see a doctor or nurse and inflating my score. Then I’ve been called to see my GP, because a routine blood test has shown my cholesterol is still high, and the receptionist muttered something about the renal score, too. However, it is a routine appointment.

Today has been unspectacular. We’ve had the new cats speyed and microchipped. I’ve been starting to get some things ready for return to duty from Sunday onwards. Amongst other things, I’m going to be hosting several groups of children from a primary school at one of my churches – about ten half-hour slots in a day – talking about ‘my job’ as part of their RE Week.

Here are a few more links that might interest you.

The Evangelical Alliance issued a press release in which it encouraged churches to set up networks of ‘flu friends’ if swine flu takes hold. They suggest partnering with local surgeries and other appropriate organisations. Note, the full text is a Word document download.

One of my circuit colleagues, a URC minister in charge of an ecumenical church, has begun blogging today. Welcome to the blogosphere, Nigel Warner.

N T Wright on parallels between Luke 2 and 24.

Lots of blogs on men and singing in church, following a Daily Mail report. Here’s one to start you off.

Read-Write Web reports on the United Methodist Church listening and responding to social media.

The 150 best Hubble space images ever.

The best take on the introduction of ID cards in Manchester?

The once static web has evolved into the “read-write Web” offering new opportunities for online interaction, collaboration, and learning particularly through the use of wikis (West and West 2009, 1). Wikis provide a common environment where produsers can actively participate in the co-creation of information and knowledge, and the collation of collective intelligence. This co-creation of knowledge evolves in the shared space as produsers write, discuss, evaluate, edit, and reflect with the ultimate goal of completing a common project and developing sources of information. A dynamic community is established and fostered through ad hoc structures and a multitude of interlinkages between various pieces of information (Bruns 2005, 102). Consequently, all produsers are equally able to make valuable contributions in a more fluid approach towards the community’s collective intelligence via a wiki.

In contrast to wikis, blogs like mine are generally posted by a single author and while I invite readers to post comments (please do) there is no specific design for multiple authors, group collaboration or edits to my posts. This blog is linear in design and comments left have to be approved; whereas, wikis are dynamic and allow participants to edit, change, or delete any content they desire with limited moderation.

An application of a wiki within the field of health is the UBC Health Library wiki. This wiki was developed with the intention of increasing the efficiency of health librarians as information retrieval experts in the digital age. With a wealth of knowledge to tap into, the use of a wiki was seen as the best way to share this expertise and expand the collective intelligence of those who access and contribute to the wiki on a global scale. As contributors have to register with the project leaders of the wiki before adding or altering content, the UBC Health Library wiki is evident of the element of structure that exists within wikis, while maintaining more fluid hierarchies through the ad hoc nature of produsage processes. An example of a wiki that encourages open participation, without any barriers to the sharing, accessing or editing of content is the Raw Living Wiki designed as a resource for anyone interested in the raw, vegan, organic live-food diet and lifestyle. The essence of wikis based on elements of produsage within the “read-write Web” are often considered controversial as anyone, anywhere, can edit the content of the wikis.

Traditionally, people have accessed and placed trust only in the contributions of accredited experts. Wiki projects can bring field experts, community leaders, practitioners and patients into the collaborative space. The contributions of experts can be supported, and often outperformed, by enthusiastic ‘amateurs’. Clearly, a Nutritionist could outline the benefits of a vegan diet, but the collective intelligence of the community is undoubtedly enhanced by incorporating the perspective of a vegan living the raw lifestyle day to day.

As wikis function as an information source and a platform for knowledge co-creation through open content, it is important that people are able “to distinguish the credible, authoritative voices of fully formed issue communities from the vague, uncertain voices haunting the as yet less developed areas” (Bruns 2005, 133). This is a particularly important issue when obtaining valuable and reliable health information within the professional – amateur hybrid that wikis, and indeed produsage itself, support.

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, And Beyond: From Production To Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

West, J. and M. West. 2009. Using Wikis for Online Collaboration. USA: Jossey-Bass.

By: Waraney

Mark Penn, CEO Burston-Marsteller dan Presiden Penn, Schoen and Berland, dalam sebuah tulisan yang dimuat di koran The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) edisi 21 April 2009 menyatakan bahwa saat ini di Amerika jumlah blogger profesional hampir sama dengan jumlah pengacara, dan bahkan lebih banyak dari programer komputer atau pemadam kebakaran. Menurut Penn, di negaranya sekarang ada lebih dari 20 juta blogger. Dari jumlah tersebut, 1,7 juta orang mendapat keuntungan dari profesi tersebut, sedangkan 452.000 orang menjadikan pekerjaan tersebut sebagai sumber pendapatan utama.

Artikel yang sangat menarik itu sayangnya memiliki beberapa kelemahan. Pertama, data statistik yang digunakan Penn ternyata kurang kuat. Kedua, WSJ ternyata tidak memberlakukan batas api yang jelas terhadap artikel tersebut.

Komentar-komentar pembaca serta artikel-artikel sanggahan (antara lain oleh Waldo Jaquith dari The Virginia Quarterly Review dan Frederic Lardinois dari Read Write Web) dengan telak mengungkapkan kelemahan data statistik dalam artikel Penn dan mempertanyakan interpretasinya.

Penn merespon dengan menyatakan bahwa sampai saat ini data-data yang digunakannya adalah yang terbaik yang bisa diperoleh saat ini. Ia mengakui bahwa studi yang lebih mendalam sangatlah dibutuhkan, dan di masa yang akan datang ia harus melakukan studi orisinil tentang permasalahan ini.

Kritik terhadap kelemahan kedua antara lain diungkapkan oleh Jeremy Wagstaff. Dalam tulisannya, Wagstaff menyoroti ketiadaan batas api dari WSJ terhadap artikel Penn, yang menyulitkan pembaca untuk memutuskan apakah artikel tersebut ditulis oleh wartawan, atau opini yang ditulis oleh orang luar. Terutama karena Penn adalah CEO perusahaan PR kelas dunia yang keberadaannya di ruang publik sudah tentu dalam rangka mewakili kepentingan perusahaan, klien atau industri kliennya.

Tulisan Penn menarik buat saya karena, terlepas dari kelemahan-kelemahan data di dalamnya, ia mengingatkan bahwa sepanjang pengetahuan saya belum ada studi yang mendalam tentang dunia internet di Indonesia. Kita mungkin bisa tahu berapa jumlah orang di Indonesia yang punya blog, Facebook, Twitter, dan Plurk. Tapi berapa banyak dari mereka yang benar-benar mengandalkan profesi blogger sebagai mata pencaharian utama?

Di tahun 2007, Budi Putra, mantan wartawan Tempo, menjadi blogger profesional pertama di Indonesia. Berapa banyak orang yang sudah mengikuti jejak Budi sejak saat itu?

 There’s not a lot to report today on the cat front. Debbie had a long phone conversation with a woman who runs what amounts to a clearing house for people who cannot keep their pets. We’ve expressed an interest in two separate pairs of cats, and now await a call back regarding arrangements to visit them.

In the area of church and sabbatical, there is also little to say today for delicate reasons.

So instead of the usual, I offer you a pot-pourri. (No, not popery, Mr Paisley.)

Here are some interesting links I came across. 

Some Video Fun 
How about Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody played on old school computer equipment?

(Via the weekly Mojo magazine email.) 

Here’s a parody of the Christian worship – ahem – ‘industry’:

Jesus Stuff 

Not a link, but a couple of great quotes from an interview with J John in the Summer 2009 issue of New Wine magazine, pages 10 and 11:

If we are all witnesses, does that mean we are all evangelists? 
Not everyone is an evangelist, but everyone is a witness. In a court of law, you have a lawyer who takes the facts and presents them in a convincing manner. As an evangelist, that’s what I do. I take the facts and try to get people to the point where they are convinced that Christianity is true. An evangelist will communicate much more of the substance of Christianity.

But if you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a witness. And a witness in the court stands up and says, ‘Well I don’t know very much, but let me tell you my story.’ Everyone that’s a follower of Jesus has a testimony of what Jesus has done for them. Therefore everyone can answer. It’s not hard at all.

How do you approach people of other faiths? 
I don’t get defensive. Rather, I ask questions such as: in what way does your faith help you in your life, give you confidence for the future or help you face death? I reveal cracks in their philosophy and show them that in Christ, we have a confidence and a hope. But I wouldn’t ever put people down. All we have to do is lift Jesus up.

(This material copyright New Wine Magazine and used with permission.)

Chopping down the Sunday tree: radical thoughts on how to approach a potentially dying church from Graham Peacock. HT: Maggi Dawn.

Mr Tweet recommended Mike Todd on Twitter to me. I found his blog, Waving Or Drowning, and among a feast of riches I found in this post a brilliant quote from Brian McLaren about what Christians might consider to be a proper view from the economic crisis. Do read it. He says that we might contemplate recovery in the way an addict does, in which case we don’t want recovery to be a return to our old addictive highs, but a facing of the addictions.

Tech
1st Web Designer: 28 Online Photo Editing Sites To Have Fun With - via@problogger.

Read-Write Web has great first impressions of Wolfram-Alpha, not a ‘Google killer’ search engine but a ‘computational knowledge engine’ that will cross over into Wikipedia’s domain. TechCrunch reports there will be a public preview on Tuesday, streamed live from Harvard.

We all like to keep up to date with the latest Internet technological innovations, here’s a list of the best blogs to keep an eye on to read about startups first:

1) Killer Startups
2) Venture Beat
3) UK Tech Crunch
4) Crenk
5) Read Write Web
6) Tech Pluto
7) Tech Start Ups
Mashable
9) Tech Pulse 360

What other blogs do you read to find out about the latest happenings on the web?

It’s being reported that a computer virus called Conficker.C will be launched on April 1 (Fool’s Day). So here’s a comprehensive guide to 7 Resources to help you prepare for Conficker’s D-Day (Courtesy Read Write Web).

At Read Write Web, Marshall Kirkpatrick explains why he would shell out 50 bucks a month for his Twitter account:

I’m a news writer for a living. Using Twitter, I find news stories to write about. Such good stories, so fast and so often that I wrote a year and a half ago that Twitter is paying my rent. A couple of news tips a month that lead to stories that blow up big on Digg and the investment would be worth it to me.

Kirkpatrick also says that Twitter is far more effective at finding stories than as a marketing tool:

The fact is, Twitter isn’t a terribly effective promotional vehicle. If you’re Dell and publishing links to discounted computers, you can make some big sales, but content publishers aren’t going to see traffic numbers from Twitter. TechCrunch has a quarter million followers on Twitter and they report referring visitors per month that are probably equivalent to a half day’s worth of their total traffic.

It’s not about broadcasting your message. It’s about listening to a very targeted group of thought leaders in your industry and occasionally interacting with them. Think your industry doesn’t have important people using Twitter? Go do some searches at Twellow.com – you’ll probably be surprised.

I’ve been a bit poorly this week and not written as much as I’d have liked to. I have managed to get some reading in this week thankfully!

So, here’s some stuff you might have missed…

Over at read Write Web they reported how Digg’s rate of growth is much quicker than Facebook’s, when comparing their respective ages. Why’s this important? Digg is the holy grail, in terms of getting traffic through a third party referrer. It’s estimated that a front page of Google can get your brand in front of 300 million pairs of eyeballs – imagine that on a Facebook scale.

I read this post by David Armano in which he discusses how brands are slowly ctaching up with the idea of social media and actively getting involved:

Brands, companies, businesses and individuals are going to learn by doing. If you want to make money building your consulting business around their efforts—help them. Or get the hell out of the way

Over at Robert Scoble’s blog, he wrote a post titled SXSW 2009 will be known as the “SMS & location explosion SXSW”. Robert looks at how SXSW “it’s clear that this year is going to be remembered for when location exploded onto the scene.” Now of course would be the ideal time to talk about geo-location tagging, location based gaming and the like. But I won’t, that’s an entirely different blog post altogether.

Mypsace this week introduced Fotoflexer’s new editing photo software to allow their users to perform basic tasks such as cropping, flipping, removing red-eye etc. Ok so it’s not AMAZING, but it’s simple software that will but Fotoflexer in the hands of millions of people.

Scott Monty wrote a short but very enlightening piece on marketing to Generation Y’ers (that’s me folks) which said that GY to take notice of ads on social networks, but think they’re irrelevant. Scott makes the point that it’s important for marketers to “provide value and be contextually relevant to why they’re there in the first place. Don’t interrupt them with your ads and expect results.”, here here.