From Pew Internet:

One Quarter of Teens Are Super Communicators

The Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction — a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others. 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation:

* 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys
* 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys.
* 19% of Online boys post video content online, compared to 10% of online girls who have posted a video online where others could see it.

47% of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.” Many teens, however, limit access to content that they share.

[Tags: teens media digital_natives participation collaboration blogs everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Someone I would have been so happy to see after all these years – 30- of them! – came up to me this morning and asked me, “Do you remember me?” Oh do I hate that question! I don’t remember what I had for breakfast, my previous address, or my own feet. Is there ever a time when “Do you remember me?” is a socially ok question to ask?

And, by the way, throwing in hints only makes it worse. How many times do you want me to acknowledge that my memory is crap and I am utterly self-involved before we get around to re-establishing our old bonds?

Yes, I am a cranky old man.

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Here’s a worrisome report on AT&T’s willingness to inspect packets, filter out what it thinks are copyright violations, and limit peer-to-peer interactions. Because the reporting is sketchy and is coming through an advocacy group (that I support), I’m not perfectly confident that this is the whole story. But as a partial story, it’s damn disturbing. If Net traffic needs to be “shaped” (i.e., packets purposefully blocked or delayed) because of technical limitations, the carriers are the last people I trust to make decisions about what’s important and acceptable. And that, to me, is the essence of the argument for Net neutrality.

[LATER that same day:] And here’s why we shouldn’t trust the carriers to decide what “content” is most important to deliver and to deliver well: According to the NY Times, “Comcast is already the world’s largest buyer of content, and it is spending about $4.5 billion a year to assemble content from around the world to offer on demand.” The people who make money selling content are the last ones who should be deciding which content to prefer./ [Tags: net_neutrality at&t ]

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From StopBadWare:

StopBadware.org, the consumer protection initiative developed to combat badware, today released its report on Sears Holding Corporation’s (SHC) “My SHC Community” software application, finding it to be badware because of inadequate disclosure of extensive tracking and data collection and because the application does not identify itself while running.

Sears has already announced that it’s going to mend its ways. (StopBadWare.org is a project led by the Berkman Center and the Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute.)

[Tags: stopbadware malware sears kmart ]

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Vista’s photo manager has a built in tagging facility. Yay!

But I couldn’t figure out how to apply tags to photos until I checked the built-in help. The photo manager shows you your photos on the right and your list of tags on the left. I kept trying to drag tags onto the photos. Nope. You have to drag your photos onto your tags.

This strikes me as weird. It’s less convenient because when you drag a photo, you are dragging a translucent image of the photo, which makes it a little hard to see the list over which you’re dragging it. It’s do-able, but it’s not as easy as dragging a little bit of text onto a great big image.

So, why would Microsoft design it this way? All I can figure is that the designers were thinking that tags are like categories: Bins into which things go. For most of us, however, tags are labels that get attached to things. It works either way, but the “containment” metaphor seems inappropriate for tags… [Tags: tagging vista categories taxonomy folksonomy everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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The DeclareYourself page encourages 18 year olds to register to vote. In fact, you can register at the site. There are a bunch of videos by the Reno 911 gang which are funnier in the execution than in the concept (in my 57 year old opinion). (The 911 folks are disguised as middle-aged men, with a couple of women in bikinis next to them.)

I wonder if any of the videos actually do get anyone to register. Is there really an 18 year old out there waiting to be encouraged by Hayden Panettiere before registering?

[Tags: election politics reno_911 ]

* * *

As if in answer to my question, Joe Marchese at MediaPost reports “Declare Yourself’s most recent “viral video” [one that, much as I love McLovin, I didn’t find particularly funny] has attracted over 600,000 views, and online voter registrations have gone up significantly.” Ok then, although this doesn’t peg the increase in online registration to the DeclareYourself site. I’m glad the site is there. It seems like it can only do good. I’m just wondering how much good it does.

Also, the post notes that Norman Lear is behind DeclareYourself.

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Some time in the early evening of February 11, I’ll be conducting a very special (as they say in the entertainment biz) Web of Ideas session about how the new business models for music are affecting music…by interviewing BradSucks, who will also favor us with some songs.

I’m a big fan of Brad’s, so I’m quite excited about this.

[Tags: bradsucks music ]

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On the Canadian train I was on this morning, the signs in the bathroom were in English, French and Braille. Nice. But I actually don’t understand. How do the blind know that there’s a sign there in the first place? Are they supposed to run their hands over the walls of the bathroom looking for the “Please be courteous and leave this bathroom clean” sign? Or are the Braille signs for the partially sighted?

[Tags: braille blind ]

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Andy Carvin (in a tweet) points to the Wikipedia entry on the phrase “Viewers like you.” All part of the Web’s dismantling (and reassembling) of the traditional notion of topics.

[Tags: wikipedia npr andy_carvin everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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For no reason except perverse nostalgia, here’s one of the most effective political commercials ever:

I am David W. and I do not approve that message or the corrupt, pro-Rich Guy administration that produced it. Nevertheless, it’s some darn good politics-as-advertising.

And, here’s a clip from last night’s debate showing some of what I like about Edwards:

Much as I admire Obama and recognize that he brings something fresh and important to the campaign — and I will happily work hard for him if he’s the nominee — this is one of those rare times when there is hope (yes, hope) that we could make some real and fundamental progress against the institutionalized forces that have constrained our vision and our possibilities for so long. But only if we’re willing to take them on. That’s the only way we’re ever going to see the sort of changes we need in the face of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Telcom and all the rest of the gang.

That would be a real morning in America.

* * *

And, what the heck, I saw some clips on CNN of Bush talking about the economy a couple of days ago and he sounded like he couldn’t even muster 32% enthusiasm for what he was saying. This is not the clip I saw, but it’s similar in affect:

[Tags: politics reagan bush edwards marketing advertising ]

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