“Every single mainstream outlet syndicates headlines and summaries rather than publishing full-text RSS feeds — even for paid subscribers. They often don’t credit or link to bloggers who break stories first. And don’t get me started on the nuisance of interruptions such as interstitial ads and video pre-rolls.”
Drawn deeper and deeper into that mesmerizing alternative virtual space called Web 2.0, caught in a cybernarcosis that hits me before I’ve even poured my second cup of morning coffee I now read all my news from my Customized Google New Reader fed by social-minded (not Socialist) .rss feeds producers. I’ve just placed three of the most recent .rss feeds by Steve Rubel at the top left where I begin, my daily news headlines, so to speak.
I learned about Micro Persuasion from Jonathan Yang’s (2006a) Rough Guide to Blogging which I found while browsing the stone and glass Cowichan Valley Regional Library’s print and paper stacks. Steve Rubel explores how social media is transforming marketing, media and public relations. See also Yang’s blog (2006b) which complements his recent Rough Guides publication.
While I’m still trying to figure out where I am since (this is obviosly not Kansas) I’m bumping into cyberspace inhabitants of this strange new world. Somehow I feel as though I am blurking unseen, like a voyeur, bordering on scopofilia. But there is so much information on them that I have this illusion that I can get very close to verstehen understanding. What is concealed and what is revealed here?
For now I am just grateful for the Rubies out there. I am going to start keeping track of them so I can remember months from now why I del.ico.used, Dugg, blogrolled, and finally .rssd them. (Blog lexicons really hurts the ears and conjures up some very ugly metaphors.) I think it is time for a poet laureat of the blog to whom innovators turn before creating new terms that will stick for all blog eternity.
One of the emerging concepts in cyberspace is the “deep internet” which came to mean that part of cyberspace that was exclusive, not social, pay-per-use or members-only and therefore in terms of acedemic capital, somehow more profound, valued, authentic, legitimate, timely and quotable. Academic journals are by far the worst offenders. Jstor (you-do-not-have-access) on my screen gives me a feeling similar to the blue screen of death. Main stream media seemed to be going in that direction but I am not so sure now. I can read full-text articles from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Toronto Star and Nunatsiak News (including their archives) with no cost to me. Some require registration which is free and painless. Which is good for I for one would not pay a dime to access information on the Internet. In a way it is like a purist’s experiment. If I can access it for free that so can those who have Internet access but have no capital at all for even a dime-per-factoid user-fee.
Thank you Jonathan Yang I will be harvesting detailed information from your timely publication over the next while. Thank you Steve Rubel for holding a virtual flash light for the net novices who are blindly groping through the dark.
Selected webliography and biblography
Yang, Jonathan. 2006a. The Rough Guide to Blogging. Rough Guides: London, UK & New York, New York. p. 188 www.roughguides.com
Yang, Jonathan. 2006b. Rough Guide to Blogging: The Blog Accessed December 4, 2006.
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