4 posts tagged “internet”

kenyatta came up with the idea of Know Your Meme last year. When he told me about it, I didn't realize the importance of having a show like Know Your Meme - a show that just reports on Memes with a "scientific" approach .

So with ellie, jamie and a great researcher chris J menning - oh and great editors - this show is one of the best video blogs out there!

What I think makes Know Your Meme stand out is the insightful writing and damn good research.
I love that kenyatta writes the scripts in a way that do not give simple answers for why something becomes a meme. Chris conducts AMAZINGly thorough research - they don't these kind of research skills in school. Then kenyatta frame it in the larger context of internet culture. The the kenyatta magic is the best at the end of the meme video - where he gives  the macro perspective of the sociologically meaning of the meme.

After a few months past their start up period - I feel that Know Your Meme has finally found its rhythm and knows to work with their resources. 
 
And of course the writing wouldn't matter if there wasn't such a great crew, a great researcher like chris, great editors and a great company to build off of - rocketboom! 

Here are some of my favorites since they started last year. Check it out and add this to your RSS feed!

it was only today - Day #4 of the San Diego fires - did my friends on the East Coast start calling me to make sure I was not on fire and that my house was not burning down.   This map demonstrates how truly catastrophic this 1 fire  (of  8 other large fires) is- not because it shows how big this 1 fire is is, but because it shows how it compares to the city of Manhattan.  Oh my NYC-Centric friends - the world doesn't make sense unless it is put into the context of your world? (I am not being 100% sarcastic, I am one of those NYC-centric people)

The stupid media has only been focusing on LA's celebrities up until today - and then they realized - wow the Malibu fire is sooo miniscule compared to the fact that the ENTIRE COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO IS BURNING DOWN!

Even my friend Roger in Sweden knew about San Diego's fires before my friends on the East Coast. That's horrible!  He said the video he watched of the SD fires on  Day #2, Monday - reported that the SD fires were worse than the LA fires.  This is SWEDEN!!!!!!  Can you believe that?

What's worse - I and many other bloggers in SD have been posting about what we are going through - so it's not like we've been silent.  This clearly shows a need for more sophisticated and different levels of information reporting - if I and many others have been flickring and voxing about this for days and the large media conglomerates failed to pick up on the seriousness of this - it is clear something is wrong with how certain news is highlighted while some are ignored - and this also shows that we need a different outlet that focuses on first-hand accounts from bloggers and etc.   
This happens all the time around the world - bloggers were posting about the recent Myamar/Burma killings of civilians - but it took a while for "official" news outlets to pick on it.  This happens all the time in Africa and China.   Just because people are writing about it online does not mean their information will get picked up. We need a new kind of media outlet that will be good at doing just that - specializing in first-hand online accounts.  There is nothing democratic about the internet. hmm this sounds like just the kind of service Kenyatta has been talking about creating!

You can read my other thoughts about the distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here.

this was photo overlay was created by tim

Congrats Josh for completing the Odeo (Sonic Mountain) Acquisition of  FireAnt and for going on board to be their VP of Product Development!   Jen I am sooo happy you came in at the right time! 

Josh writes: When we first launched “ANTs Not TV” at Vloggercon in January 2005, there were about 20 active videobloggers – we knew each of them personally and worked with most of them to create those magical RSS feeds with enclosures. It was amazing to see all these video channels updating over time and to watch them in a unified experience. There was nothing else like it. It was clear that something powerful was happening. It was a new kind of television, and yet it was not like TV at all – it was open to anyone and the possibilities seemed endless...

While FireAnt had its share of struggles along the way as a start up, I’m encouraged that the ideas we helped pioneer have grown incredibly stronger over the past few years. This “Not TV” (now more often called “Internet TV”) is really changing the media culture, and it’s having profound social effects. The medium is enabling new voices and conversations. The playing field is being leveled – the barriers between “Internet TV” and “TV” are disintegrating."