Hummingbird Mentality

Think I’ve finally figured out this moblogging business. Hello world!

Subsequent to posting a link to the (UCD?) ‘Killer Coke’ Bebo page a couple of days ago, it seems the popular page has disappeared. Although never one to underestimate my own importance, I sincerely hope this is not a chilling effect of questioning Bebo’s censorship policy at last weeks Social Network Webcamp. The TCD campaign, which recently succeeded in renewing the Trinity campus Coke produce ban, still has an active Bebo page.

I’m not involved in either campaign, and not sufficiently informed to judge either sides merits, but more information is available here - pro coke, anti-coke, and here’s the ubiquitous wiki.

Perhaps this is something DRI should look into?

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that with podcasts - as with many areas of search where the desired result is loosely defined - it’s difficult to find new things to your taste. I’ve put together a short podcast outlining the stuff I’m listening to at the moment. Hope it’s of use to some of you.

Download: Podcasting Eats Itself - 17.9megs

Here are links to the shows I recommend in the podcast..

This American Life
1 Up Yours
Two Irish Geeks and a TV
Love and Radio
In Our Time
Starship Sofa
This Week In Tech
Slate Magazine Daily Podcast

Apologies for the performance of this site over the past week, my host Dreamhost seem to be going through one of their periodic screw ups (always of greater length and severity than admitted to on their status page). This has meant that all of the sites I host, including Trinity FM and Technolotics, have been reacting slowly or not at all. Hopefully the situation will resolve itself over the next few days.

In other news, my wonderfully creative friend Andrew and I were having so much fun producing astoundingly erudite and informed reviews for TFM, that we decided to break out a site dedicated to our own elitist brand of music criticism. Check out the new site, Gil-Martin Writes.

Many thanks to John Breslin for organising Irelands first Webcamp, last Wednesday 7th March. The afternoon was an enlightening look into the development, search, analysis and productive uses of social networks.

I’ve wiki’d some notes on event. Ina O’ Murchu of DERI should be posting videos of the talks in due course.

Particularly interesting was the response of designated Bebo’s spokesperson, Mark Tarbatt of webvertising firm Generator, to my questions about potential Bebo censorship. The impression Mark (whose firm seem solely responsible for selling branding on Bebo, at least in Ireland) gave was that, in the event of a conflict between a user video or community (the example I provided was a hypothetical ‘killer coke’ video on Votetube’s bebo profile) and a Bebo advertiser, such a user or community could be removed. This seems credible given that Mark stated Bebo’s recent adoption of comment moderation occurred not in response to problems of user abuse or sexually explicit spam, but to satisfy the desire of Coca Cola (a bebo advertiser) to prevent ‘harassment’ on it’s branded bebo site.

A quick search of Bebo indicates the existence of just such a conflict.