Tuesday 16 June 2009

VoIP (Skype to you and me)

What is it?

Voice over Internet Protocol systems such as Skype use networks such as the internet to channel digital communication - usually voice calls and video conferences. The key features are that the calls are free when connected to a peer (another subscriber), and tend to be very clear in terms of auditory quality.

Skype was originally developed by Estonian programmers who had been involved with the file-sharing group Kazaa, and grew into a Swedish-based company. In 2005 it was acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion. eBay encourages customers to include Skype contact details in their auction listings. More and more retail and service companies are listing Skype details on their webpages to encourage dialogue with customers.

Several instant messaging (IM) systems also offer VoIP, in particular Yahoo Messenger and MSN (now known as Windows Live). Yahoo adds value to IM through VoIP as well as services such as Yahoo Radio. Microsoft's proposition includes integrating messaging and VoIP with their gaming system XBox.

Ethics and the connected environment

I've already been concerned in another blog about the ethics of monetisation: I don't have a problem with people being paid through advertising for engaging with a wide audience, but as an educator I cannot have a vested financial interest in something which I am encouraging students to use.

But what about the wider issue of obliging people to hook up to a range of networking tools when they might guard their privacy closely? Mostly, of course, it is possible to restrict visibility very carefully: this is fine as long as the student concerned can still complete the learning tasks.

Video sharing

I've posted a new short movie to Youtube. It shows the sun coming in over a field of sheep and is the movie equivalent of watching paint dry. Monitoring the viewings since it went up last night: despite cross promoting on Twitter and MySpace, only about 20 hits. So far I can't get any sensible metrics on this - the location, demographics, etc. of viewers. I might also need to consider tagging it better.

Now I have a comment via FaceBook to the effect that the shaky camera work detracts from the movie. I thought the whole point of these citizen movies was that the quality was so bad that it was good, if you get my meaning. More to the point, there is so little happening in the movie that the shaking is often the only clue that this is a movie rather than a still.

I'm still not sure about the backing music. I chose Flight of the Bumblebee a) because it is a cracking good tune, and b) because it is the right sort of length. But as OH commented last night, with an uptempo tune you are expecting something to happen. Which it doesn't. I might go back and replace Rimsky Korsakov with something slower.

I've also found that embedding the movie in the blog is cool, but next time I edit the blog the embedded item disappears. Next thing to work out is linking new blog posts to Twitter and Facebook.


Photosharing

Cross posting new pictures on other platforms seems to work very well in getting viewing on my pics on Flickr . Linking to a picture on Twitter seems to add 15 or so very quickly (including 5 immediately). This is based on around 90 followers on Twitter. Linking a picture on FaceBook (where I have 53 friends) maybe adds another 5 or so. I can see the results from the Stats page on Flickr, which gives a source for the views each day.

I haven't tried it on LinkedIn: although I have over 140 contacts there, posting photographs doesn't seem appropriate. However, I do list my Flickr page as one of my home websites.

Blogs and Microblogs

19 June 2009
It's Friday, and the #followfriday phenomenon kicks in on Twitter. The idea is that you post a message with this tag suggesting Tweets that other people might want to follow. I watched this happen (search on #followfriday) and there are hundreds coming in each minute. I recommended @cherrymorello - I've no idea who she is but she writes some very funny, subversive posts which always make me smile.

Some subversive political microblogging now: this is the fuss over US Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra's bizarre claim on Twitter comparing his lobbying with the revolutionary turmoil in Iran. Thousands are now posting ironic comments to
@petehoekstra making him the Twitter phenomenon of the week - indeed a meme. Many of these are very witty.@petehoekstra. Examples include
  • teacher forgot to take my attendance today and thought I wasn't there, similar to being the loch ness monster.
  • I got a splinter in my hand today. Felt just like Jesus getting nailed to the cross.
  • I skipped breakfeat, so now I know what it's like to die of hunger!
Similarly, but in Britain this time, @apolicyforDave posted a series of suggestions for the Conservative policy on reality TV. For example:
  • Under the Tories The Secret Millionaire will star all of the Cabinet members
  • Under the Tories Dragons Den will be an endless line of small businessmen being told to f*** off by George Osborne
  • Under the Tories I’m a Celebrity… will be a recruiting drive for MP’s
  • Under the Tories Britain’s Got Talent, but it will be available for sale to the highest bidder
Heard from @ironicapricot that she's just trying to spread the word for music, especially those pieces and composers she is passionate about. Her Twitter numbers are growing exponentially, but the followers on the blog are not. Pity, as the blog is the part that is 'monetised'. What can we learn from this case study?


18 June 2009

Political microblogging
President Obama's Twitter pages today refer to an episode on a current TV show involving behind the scenes and head-shaving. Interesting in two ways: a) his PRs realize that to work the feeds have to be interesting / fun / wacky; b) it links to the movie on FaceBook; c) it recognizes that it has to offer exclusivity (which adds to the coolness). OK, that's 3 interesting aspects, I know.

Followers and Following
Yesterday I reached a milestone - 100 followers (as it happens it was something like @englishpubsandbars. Strange thing is that now they've gone. And I've noticed others coming off the follower roll - which I assumed was Twitter deleting bogus accounts. I wonder now if what is happening is Tweeters clicking to 'follow' you; but when you don't reciprocate, they delete you.

Twitter metrics
I've been looking at Tweetsum following a post on Twitter. It looks impressive and allows you to rate the quality of people you are following and who are being followed - I think. With some playing about, I believe that the algorithm can be manipulated - basically the more you reduce the people you are following the better your score. In other words if you just talk at people instead of listening at the same time you are going to get a better score.



17 June 2009

Building traffic on Twitter


I'm being followed on Twitter by @ironicapricot. This is a student of classical music, a soprano, based in Chicago. She seems to have gained nearly 500 followers in less than a week. How has she done this? There doesn't seem to be a great deal of content to this micro-blog, but the purpose may be to drive traffic to the main blog (also called ironicapricot on Blogger). If so the exercise doesn't seem to have worked as there are only 12 followers (including me). The blog looks really interesting - a daily essay on a classical song.

So what is the strategy? It looks like what ironic apricot is doing is building a Twitter following very quickly by following large number of other random people: she is following nearly 2000 people, of whom about a quarter have responded by reciprocating.

Revenue from blogging

Now I see that Blogger suggests I can Monetise my blog, being paid by Google for allowing customized, targeted advertising on my pages. Then there would be a great incentive to build traffic to the blog. A good incentive to write something powerful and engaging, instead of these random postings.

But what about the ethics? As an educator I can't do this. I can't talk about my blog and encourage my students to visit it if I have a financial incentive to do so. A whole interesting topic, though which I will pursue with other new media applications.

Pretty much most of what I am reading in national newspapers these days could be described as a paper-based 'blog' - containing opinion, analysis, speculation, thought and good writing (sometimes). I'm not sure how long I will be prepared to keep paying out for Sunday newspapers.

Twitter Creativity

The 140 character limit presents a challenge. Write something, then go back and edit it down. Take out verbs, articles... starts sounding like Tony Blair. Worse still it is compromising the style of other things I write.

I am following several witty and engaging Twitterers (such as @cherrymorello and @sybalena) who are using the medium to tell a good story. At the same time some commercial organizations I am following haven't figured out the basic storytelling rules of PR: telling the world that there are only 10 weeks to go until your festival is not exactly setting the microblogosphere alight.


Twitter useability


The ability to hold a conversation is restricted as there is no direct thread. I had a comment from a follower last week saying "Where are they?" "Where are what?" I thought. Completely confused I had to go back through all my Tweets to figure out what he was replying to.

Sunday 14 June 2009

There's always time. This afternoon (incredibly busy weekend course) I was on my way from A to B when I spotted dragonflies. Hesitation - then I ran to get my camera and captured this.

On the way spotted a red kite over Moor Hall - a rare and endangered species of predatory bird - but was too slow to capture it properly

Taking the fear out of blogging

Four years and I have been avoiding this step. Adding comments to other people's blogs is one thing, but setting up something of your own is another. Maybe needed thinking through first? What am I trying to do?
My language continues to expand now that the constraints of Twitter are no longer there. Word count is going up, but unfortunately the value of the content isn't. Starting a blog is like buying a pet dog: it's fun at first, but you have to feed it at least twice a day. What am I going to feed my blog on?
What is this 'monetization' thing with blogs? Do they pay me per view? http://help.blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=21510
I had better read it and find out
So far so good. I like the background, but it isn't easy to read. Time for some more experiments.

And my sentences are getting longer now. Good
I'm trying to avoid the usual chiches of a first blog post. I'm also trying to expand my language and thinking outside the mental constraints imposed by 4 weeks of Twittering in posts of 140 characters. Will it work?