Wikia (another Jimmy Wales enterprise) has announced that if you have open software you want to run, to provide an app that produces open contents, it’ll be your server for free. OpenServing will provide free hosting, free bandwidth and free CPU time…and you get to keep 100% of any ad revenues you raise. It seems to be focused on apps that create content (e.g., blogs), but I believe it’s open to other apps as well.

Cool! [Tags: openserving wikia wikipedia jimmy_ wales open_soiurce]

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What’s up with youth? Why don’t they settle down, get a job, and stay the hell of my lawn, you darn kids!! Aaarrghhh.

danah boyd says: “For the average teenager in the US, if you’re not on MySpace you don’t exist,” she says, just as in Europe if you don’t have a mobile phone, you don’t have a social life.

Friendster was the precursor of MySpace she says. It was populated by freaks, geeks and queers who rebelled against Friendster’s hostility to them. They’d make fake profiles, which Friendster tried to kill off. MySpace went after the people being kicked off by Friendster, including musicians. Music is cultural glue for young people, danah says. A symbiotic relationship grew between bands and fans. The fans invited their friends. They started engaging with their friends. MySpace made the “mistake” of allowing html in the forms, so kids hacked the pages, creating highly personal spaces that people feel they own. A culture grew among those trying to figure out how to hack MySpace profiles.

MySpace profiles were based on Friendster’s, based around dating. But because you can list your friends and comment, it becomes a public conversation space. This causes a shift in what it means to be a friend. They’re writing not only themselves into being, but writing their entire community into being.

Top 8 lets you choose who your best friends are, in public. “Any decision you make about this are wrong.” Nowhere in our public lives do we list who our friends are.

What’s happening at MySpace is very similar to what happens in the rw. Kids are trying to figure out status. But, online social networks have “persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences.” Kids sent the norms based upon the invisible audience they assume is there. She points to Stokely Carmichael having to decide how to speak on TV, the way he spoke in DC to politicos or in the south to congregations. There is no right choice, she says.

Kids on MySpace are constantly being pummeled by marketers, she says. Marketers want to be friended by teens. To teenagers, email is nothing but spam. “That’s what MySpace is turning into.” It’s a huge struggle. “I don’t know if MySpace is sustainable.”

The future is obviously mobile, she says. But how? What will it look like? We’ve assumed Net neutrality: Anyone can build something and put it out there. But not on mobiles. So, how do we take that next step?

[Great talk. Everyone knows danah’s brilliant, but she’s also a brilliant presenter.] [Tags: danah_boyd myspace leweb3 social_networks]

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The panel on the future of broadcast seemed to me to have the right religion. They talk about control returning to the group formerly known as the audience, including control over schedule as well as content.

Now there’s a session on and by video bloggers. Vinvin of Bonjour America is a popular favorite with the crowd; the clips are amusing. Xolo.com shows a cllip of some vlogging they did for Mini Cooper, over which they were given complete creative control. He shows a clip from Invisible Children. Mobuzz.tv showed a Rocketboom-y clip, complete with an Amanda-ish post-ironic presenter. anil of Mobuzz doesn’t think TV is dead.

The panel is cut short because one of France’s presidential candidates, François Bayrou (UDF), is here. “I came because the blogosphere is very important to me, espcially as a candidate not necessarily supported by the powerful traditional media.” (laughter) There is the danger, he says, that political control might be taken by industrial forces, especially the media. “The only space for completely free speech is now the Internet.” He says the Dean campaign showed how powerful a force it can be. And, he says, the Internet embodies a new vision of society. It enables citizens to be not merely pasive recipients of information but to be active providers. [I don’t know French politics or where he stands on issues, but he is very likable.]

Now he’s joined on stage by one of the most important journalists in France (Jean-Pierre Something…sorry). Le Web 3 is being taken over by the need to break out of broadcast strictures. in other words, it’s turning into a media circus, as the media say.

The Important Journalist begins what seems to be a longish question, but he’s interrupted by the moderator who instead takes questions from the audience, to the applause of the audience. Ah, media hostility? What doesn’t it deserve?

Q: You say we should all work together, but what’s the relationship between the leaders and the lead at this point?
A: Our French crisis is deeper than any crisis in the past 50 years. It needs a new answer with some very precise reforms. The old right wing is divided and weak, as is the old left wing. I will build support among democrats among both wings. So, what kind of relationship? Control by citizens. It’s very important to me that citizens can control and lead, and today we have the tools to control, the tools to lead. The Internet is one of these tools. Yesterday we didn’t have the tools to control because radio and television are not tools to control and understand, not tools to teach.

Q: Why are politicians so clear about the importance of the Internet but the Internet is absent from education?
A: I was among the first to stress the importance of technology in education, in abook in 1990. But the tech may not be sophisticated enough yet. E.g., translation software isn’t quite there. And I believe in the crucial imjportance of a one-to-one human relationship between teacher and student; tech will never be able to replace that mysterious relationships that makes something unclear become clear.

The Important Journalist does not get to ask a question. But he comments briefly afterwards, saying the old and new media should work together. [Stage two of grieving: Bargaining.] [Tags: tv television broadcast politics udp Francois_bayrou howard_dean vlog]

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At Le Web 3 (formerly Le Blog), Shimon Peres has just held a Q&A session. (I missed his presentation itself because, having not eaten for 36 hours, I opted for breakfast.) Instant standing ovation. I was surprised that an Israeli was so warmly greeted, which shows what I know.

Le Web has turned out to be a seminal conference. 1,000 people from 36 countries. Lots of networking. Very high energy. (And almost all male speakers.)

I speak this afternoon, presumably on “Blogging Our Way to Democracy.” I completely rewrote it this morning and will rewrite it again this afternoon. And then, after I talk at 5pm, I will rewrite it in my head over and over. [Tags: leweb3 shimon_peres israel ]

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I’m at the Reykjavik airport, waiting for the flight to Paris for Le Web (formerly Le Blog, and before that Le Usenet and, originally, Le Cuneiform). It’s 1:30am (or “6:30am” as they say in Icelandic). I love Iceland, and not just for its physical beauty and for putting letters together in impossible combinations simply for my amusement. No, I love Iceland because there’s free wifi in the airport.

Tired? Moi? Not a bit! Why, if I were tired, would I be willing to generalize about a country based on 50 minutes in its major airport?

Later: In Paris. At the conference. It’s packed. Lots of great people here. I’m too tired to blog. Or talk. Or sit upright… [Tags: leweb3 reykjavik iceland]

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I’m trying yet again to install Linux to use as a desktop machine. Ubuntu won’t install because it tells me there’s “no RNG,” which apparently is a random number generator.

Any way around this? (I’m trying to install Ubuntu 6.10, desktop edition, on a pretty new Intel machine.

I can’t say that Kubuntu handled this error very gracefully: No explanation, no hints, no joy :( [Tags: ubuntu linux]

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Global Voices has put up a new search box that uses Google Co-op so you can search the 4,800 regional, non-European, non-US blogs the editors of Global Voices follow. So, now you can find out what bloggers outside of Europe and US are saying about, say, the Iraq study group, global warming, or Mel Gibson… [Tags: globalVoices blogs search ]

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At the symposium I’m at, we’re discussing how long the conference wiki should be left up and editable, which raises the question: What is the past tense of wiki?

[Tags: doep puzzle wiki]

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The Washington Post asked four guys whether Bush is the worst president in history. It’s a silly question, of course, but elicited really interesting responses: Foner Brinkley Cannato Greenberg.

Brinkley is my favorite of these. He concludes that although Bush is probably not the worst, “He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president.”

I am certainly not convinced W is the worst ever, if only because “worst” is such a rich term with so many possible axes (and axes to grind). So, I’ve put together my own list to weigh the pros and cons, in no particular order…

[Tags: bush politics]

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The U of North Carolina social software symposium has a wiki with session notes and more… [Tags: unc social_software ]

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