Psyberspace

2000:November:Feature:Micromedia

Two recent developments are of special interest. Blogger (www.blogger.com), perhaps the premiere weblog developer, has teamed up with Moreover.com to facilitate the linking and annotation of mainstream news articles. Called NewsBlogger (www.newsblogger.com), it’s a potent form of online journalism that will serve to define and delimit new market segments. Also, Cisco just implemented Blogger enterprise-wide. Imagine the avalanche of intellectual capital such a move could precipitate. The Internet has always demanded that business read between the lines. Weblogs raise the bar. Now the challenge is to read between the sites.

Christopher Locke is the co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a New York Times bestseller. Check out the weblogs of his creation at personalization.com (www.personalization.com/blogger) and The EGR weblog (rated R at best) (www.rageboy.com/blogger.html).

Start4all, E-LEARNING Page

DistanceLearning
A collection of links and commentary to the growing literature on distance learning. Started by DenhamGrey 08/15/1999.

“HMMM…WHERE’S THAT SMOKE COMING FROM?”
Writing, Play and Performance on Internet Relay Chat

Abstract

Digital writing is strikingly playful. This playfulness flourishes particularly in synchronous chat modes on the Internet. This paper is a study of writing, play and performance on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). We analyze a “virtual party” on IRC, whose highlight was a typed simulation of smoking marihuana. Three interrelated, yet analytically distinct types of play are discussed: 1) play with identity; 2) play with frames of interaction; and 3) play with typographic symbols. We adopt a qualitative, textual, and micro-sociolinguistic approach, drawing on work in discourse analysis, the study of orality and literacy, and the anthropology of play and performance. In all play there is reduced accountability for action. In the material world, masks and costumes at carnival time liberate participants; here, the ephemeral, non-material medium, the typed text, and the use of nicknames provide the mask. Although the improvisation analyzed here is typed and occurs between geographically dispersed strangers, it has fascinating affinities with “live” interactional forms such as jazz, charades, and carnivals.

PLAYFULNESS IN COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is strikingly playful. Millions of people are playing with their computer keyboards in ways they probably never anticipated, even performing feats of virtuosity with such humble materials as commas, colons, and backslashes. Not only hackers, computer “addicts,” adolescents and children, but even2

User Friendly the Comic Strip – The Daily Static

Books of the Month — IndexNovember 2000

Gordon Graham, the internet:// a philosophical inquiry. Routledge, 1999. Reviewed by Merav Katz.
Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, editors, Global Literacies and the World Wide Web. Routledge, 1999. Reviewed by Virginia Montecino.
Victor J. Vitanza, editor, CyberReader 2/e. Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Reviewed by Joe Wilferth.

Salon.com Audio | First citizen

Listen to Howard Rheingold read from “The Virtual Community.” MIT Press will publish a revised edition of the book in November 2000

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Centered Systems – Home

Second Copy 2000 is the perfect backup product designed for Windows 9x/Me/NT4/2000 you have been looking for. It makes a Second Copy of your data files to another directory, disk or computer across the network. It then monitors the source files and keeps the Second Copy updated with new or changed files. It runs in the background with no user interaction. So, once it is setup you always have a Second Copy of your data some where else.

Thre is not much I buy in the way of share ware… but this one is elegant. Back-up seems to have been a hassle till I had this program.