The Google Reader Blog has an interesting feature addition to Google Reader. Google Reader in many ways is the lifeblood of my web experience. The fact that I can

Catch up on latest news
Keep an eye on latest trends
Be inspired by great web thinkers
Gain insights into web research

What would I do without my morning fix of RSS feeds with Google Reader?
But now Google Reader has added “four improvements to give you more sharing control and help you easily find other people’s publicly shared items within Reader.”

You can now “find people with public shared items and subscribe to their shared items with …read more

Both Forbes and MediaPost’s Online Spin newsletter discussed the idea of a “social nervous system” or the concept of the Hive mind that the new social media world has created, and it really got me thinking. There is a palpable, frenetic energy associated with a lot of the social networking going on. There’s always something happening on one of the networks around the world.
orporations and businesses are only just starting to twig to the fact that they need to be involved in social media, on several fronts – not just blogging or twittering or having a facebook page. There needs …read more

I’ve lost count of the number of newspapers which have gone under since the beginning of the year. We’re not even through the first quarter of the year and yet, many (except those in the business who are desperately staying on top of every single death)  have simply stopped counting the number of traditional news outlets that have disappeared.
The latest in the series of death knells is the Rocky Mountain News – Denver’s 150-year-old daily newspaper. They are shutting the doors today and limping off into the sunset.
There’s lots and lots of people who are jumping up and down and …read more

Online and citizen journalism have been around for ages – you know, at least four years, which is at least a century in internet years, but it appears that a school superintendent in Minneapolis didn’t get that memo.
Students from the Fairbault, Minnesota High have taken their newspaper online in response to the demand they shut their paper down from the superindetendent when he wanted to review an article about a teacher in advance.
While there are many touting the fact that this is a win for citizen journalists and lamenting the fact that there are still need for online …read more

On December 20th, a Continental flight slid off the runway mid-take off. There were some minor injuries, and of course, the whole thing made the news.
What’s different about this crash however, was the fact that Mike Wilson live-tweeted the whole thing.

Wilson has since been interviewed on several mainstream media stations including NBC, Fox News, and more. A Google search for “denver plane crash + Twitter” yielded more than 22,000 results.
It looks to me like 2008 was the year that Twitter started to go mainstream. It’s becomming the go-to for many for breaking news – the Denver crash was reported on …read more

I’ve been thinking about the whole traditional media/new media thing – everyone trying to figure out will happen to traditional media in the future. I’ve been mulling over thoughts around this for a while now, but haven’t been able to gather all my thoughts into one cohesive post. And then, I came across Chris’s post entitled All Tomorrow’s Armies and realized that Chris managed to coalesce all my thoughts!
Stay with the old at your own risk. All tomorrow’s armies are equipped and ready to embed. We don’t need to gather. We have our own dial tone. We connect and …read more

Vancouver is home to the 2010 Olympics, as much of the world is aware (and those who aren’t aware have more important things on their minds).  The city is enveloped in a flurry of activity, getting everything from buildings, athlete’s villages, and ski jumps ready for the onslaught of tourists, athletes and media that will descend onto our fair city.
Recently, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (aka VANOC – you know, the bigwigs in charge of all of the Olympic everythings in Vancouver) began a four-day “World Press Briefing” for more than 250 visiting journalists and media managers. There was some serious …read more

This evening was Vancouver’s monthly Third Tuesday, where Mhairi Petrovic, the founder of Out Smarts, explained how to sell social marketing to the traditional marketing decision makers. Raul (aka Hummingbird 604) live-blogged the event.
The information was fantastic, and I thought it needed a wider audience. The full post from Raul is here, but the salient points are below.

Some of the primary objections to social media that traditional marketers have to social media include: 
1) “We already use social media” Complete misconception –  having a website or a facebook page is not participating in social media.  
2) Perceived as a tool for only the younger set. This is a …read more

We just had a (somewhat pointless) federal election in Canada yesterday. There’s generally supposed to be a blackout ban on televising or broadcasting the results  until all of the polls across the country are closed. Because of our geographic spread, polls in Newfoundland closed more than 3 hours before those in Vancouver had. In fact, when the polls closed in Newfoundland, I still hadn’t voted in Vancouver.
The CBC is reporting today that the broadcast blackout was “broken” by the use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Canadians with an internet connection were among those who could find their way …read more

This is a follow-up post for the presentation Lisa Thomas-Tench gave this evening at Net Tuesday. Lisa has worked with community and capacity building organizations around the world and traveled to Africa last year to build schools and work in the communities.
The main thing that Lisa wanted to make sure came across during her presentation was that online supportive international projects are subject to the same challenges as standard, off-line charitable donations. Many people don’t realize this, and tend to assume that because it’s online, it’s going to be easier.
There is an absolute explosion of social networking for social causes …read more