As with all these things though there is a workaround solution. I’ve just installed a Facebook application called RSS Graffiti which seems to do the same thing (import posts from the blog) and which actually works. It’s important that it does so since the value of the Facebook update is that it should be (almost) immediate. If anyone has another suggestion that could improve on this do let me know.

Last year, in the unit ‘Home Page to Tweet: Networked Society and Social Change’, we talked a great deal about the nature of the Facebook ‘friend’ and the value of strong and weak ties in instituting social and personal change: the friend of your friend’s friend can actually influence your health and even make you happy/sad! We realised that one of the problems with Facebook is that it doesn’t differentiate between different types of friend. I’m sure nobody would claim that all their Facebook friends had the same ‘status’ as friends. Yet differentiating between them in sharing ideas, images, videos etc. is complicated/near impossible.  It might be OK when ‘friends’ are limited to a social circle deriving from school, or even university. But when you want to share some things with friends, some things with work colleagues and other things with absolutely everybody, it gets difficult.  One solution I’ve just come across suggested by Niley Patel involves creating three simple lists: people I trust, people I don’t know well, and limited profile. Here’s how Niley explains the difference between them:

People I trust: These are your main dudes and ladies, your closest friends. You’re only going to put 10-15 people on this one, max. My friend Will’s version of this list is named Inner Circle; mine is named True Blue. It’s the VIP list, so treat it accordingly — people have to earn their spots.

People I don’t know well: Virtually everyone else you know goes on this list. It’s the one for friends from class, or the people you only see at parties, or friends of friends. Remember, you really don’t know that many people well — anyone you wouldn’t trust to keep those pictures of you on spring break in Mexico under wraps while you run for Congress goes on this list.

Limited Profile: This is everyone you probably have to be friends with but that you don’t really want seeing your profile. Your boss, your little cousin, your mother. You’re going to lock this list down tight.

He then goes on to give a step by step guide to set this up on your own profile.

I think it’s a sensible system to take more control over what you share and how you share it. The more that Facebook becomes a window onto our online worlds, the more we need to take control and manage what can be seen through that window.

What you may not realise as you click and send on these smart phones is that encoded with that photo is specific data not only about the camera used, whether with flash or without, the lense, etc. but also the longitude and lattitude indicating where the picture was taken. This location based data is stored thanks to geo-tagging. Now most digital cameras don’t automatically geo-tag photos. But smart phones do. It’s their default, meaning that its shipped like that. In order to turn it off you have to read the manual and change some settings. We shouldn’t under-estimate the default settings of any gizmo we buy or website we visit and contribute to: it directly effects what the majority do and can make or break the company introducing it.

With that bit of background you might want to pop over to ICanStaulkU which uses that data to plot very precisely where a person is who’s uploaded a photo and tweeted it to their followers on Twitter. It may sound a bit creepy, but in fact, the site has been set up to raise awareness about the power of the default and the ways in which such data can be used. So, a quick example:

Here’s the tweet collected on the I CanStaulkU Twitter feed.

That message has been generated from chrispople’s Twitter account

When he uploaded this photo onto yfrog

Most interesting though is the way that the geo-positioning from that photo has been instantly loaded onto a Google map giving his precise location.

Now although I’m showing the different elements here on a blog post by capturing the screen I’m looking at, if I use this on my smart phone then that access is in real time. I can know where chrispople is seconds after he uploads his photo.

You might not think this is a big deal. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly fashionable to disclose location information as we physically surf the city.  Services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and now Facebook Places are capturing the market for the fashion thereby linking the online social network to the offline, physical meeting up of friends or even friends of friends. That same information is also being harnessed by groups monitoring abuses in civil and human rights and is one way in which new communications technologies (particularly mobile phones) are being used to hold governments to account.

But to disclose such information accidentally, now that’s another question … isn’t it?

And now a video reply pointing out how hopelessly wrong Tracy’s attempt is. One of the things I find interesting here is the way in which this particular YouTuber is responding in a quasi-dialogic way with Tracy’s video. YouTube is being used increasingly as a medium of comment – which, in a curious way makes it almost conversational.

Students who followed the ‘Language in Society’ unit in Level 5 will recognise Tracy’s unusual use of ‘dialect’ here – we would use ‘accent’ to talk about the features she’s demonstrating. They’ll also recognise that she really has produced a mashup of different geographical and social features of English which nobody, on this island at least, actually speaks.

It is funny and it has garnered numerous funny responses – including this parody. But what if she’s successful? If she actually teaches hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of North Americans to speak with her variety of British English? In a cruel irony of cultural globalisation could we find ourselves in some distant future importing and appropriating an accent which now, in 2010, we’re deriding?

Maybe not. Maybe it’s time for a coff-eh instead.

We know why Google was named Google. But where did the name Archie come from? Answers in the comments please – there’s a prize!

I have no theories whatever about anything. I make observations by way of discovering contours, lines of force, and pressures. I satirize at all times, and my hyperboles are as nothing compared to the events to which they refer. There are many people for whom ‘thinking’ necessarily means identifying with existing trends.

“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perception and arbitrary values,” wrote McLuhan, pointing out that electronic culture is no more corrupt in this sense than is print culture, or the preliterate culture of poetry, song, and myth. Language is a type of technology, too, McLuhan noted, anticipating and rejecting the moralism of modern-day Luddites.

Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force.” By giving up our resistance and allowing our minds to travel ahead of the coming changes, McLuhan allowed some chance that we will rescue something of our humanity or invent something better to replace it.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8590252774210592969&q=manuel+castells&total=14&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0]

Abstract

Debate on the social role of the Internet has centred on whether its use will tend to isolate or connect individuals, undermining or reinforcing social ties. This study moves away from this focus on more or less connectivity to explore the degree to which people use the Internet to make new friends and, thereby, reconfigure their social networks. The analysis identifies those who create new ties through the Internet and investigates under what conditions these online ties migrate to face to face settings. The analysis is based on data from the 2005 Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS), a national probability sample survey of individuals aged 14 and over in Britain. The findings indicate that about 20 per cent of Internet users have met new friends online, and about half of these individuals go on to meet one or more of these virtual friends in person. Sociodemographic characteristics, such as being single, shape patterns of Internet use, and are related to the greater propensity of some individuals to make online social relationships. However, experience with the Internet and the ways people choose to use the Internet, such as for chatting or communicating more generally, are most directly associated with who makes new connections over the Internet and who does not. These findings suggest that the Internet plays an important role in reconfiguring the social networks of many users. Also, multivariate analyses indicate that the dynamics of online friendships are driven more by the idiosyncratic digital choices made by users of the Internet than by any mechanistic social or technological determinism.

Although social networking sites are in their infancy, we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where to friend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on college campuses (where not using Facebook can be a social handicap). But we are only beginning to come to grips with the consequences of our use of these sites: for friendship, and for our notions of privacy, authenticity, community, and identity. As with any new technological advance, we must consider what type of behavior online social networking encourages. Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong? The Delphic oracle’s guidance was know thyself. Today, in the world of online social networks, the oracle’s advice might be show thyself.

see

See new book.
Also Mediasnackers (GBR) The BBC are launching a new project called School Report inviting 12 and 13 year olds to create news items which will be published on a dedicated project website. The BBC have created lessons plans, newsroom tips and additional support to promote involvement in the project.