Firstly, there’s no denying appeal of video. I’m aware that increased computing power and ubiquitous high bandwidth (even on our mobile devices) has made video easier to use than ever. But I still have two serious questions about the move away from the text-based blog format.

People read while at work.
Yes, slackers. They’re everywhere. I wonder where Digg, Reddit, and even Gawker to some extent would be without the ability for people to silently read and entertain themselves. A 10 minute web video, no matter how engaging, will never be able to replace the ability of someone to read an amusing article while the boss is away. Yes, Cracked’s Top X insane facts you wouldn’t believe articles would probably translate well to video. I wonder where the people who are reading their articles are reading them?

Are they reading  at home where they are choice media users (Xbox or Phone or Laptop or Ipad or Kindle etc) or at work where they are not choice media users, e.g. they only have access to a desktop.

Has People’s Patience Suddenly Increased?
Jakob Neilsen has for a long time posted research showing that you have fractions of a second to capture a user’s interest when they come to a webpage, and at about the 10 second point, users become impatient and leave the site.

More than 10 seconds, and you break the flow. Users will often leave the site rather than trying to regain the groove once they’ve started thinking about other things. (full article here)

Gawker cites the ability to insert 15 second commercials in between (and as many sites do currently, before) content displays. Is video content so much more compelling that users are breaking the norms of web use for video content?

If so, then truly there is a sea change at work in the way people use websites and digital media? Or are we witnessing a new wave of wishful thinking. Just as the Ipad will save magazines, can the world of ubiquitous streaming video save the TV and commercials model that the industry is accustomed to?

Though I am being critical of the model, I don’t necessarily know the answers to these questions, but I will surely be following how this pans out.

Throughout my career I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been surrounded by talented web designers, developer, writers, and programmers with similar values.  But often times it is an uphill battle and a struggle to be heard. Accessibility comes with it the stereotype of “unsexy,” “bueaucratic,” and worst of all can sometimes be perceived as anti-design. I admit, there’s not a lot fun in creating text equivalents, or shelving that slick looking flash/javascript element in order to meet the legal guidelines,  but the payoff is huge.

The web, as in the public realm, is nothing if we don’t build it to be used by all people. Can a plaza really be a public plaza if it’s not able to be used by a person in a wheelchair? Can a website really be a public website if it can’t be used by a blind person?

This lawsuit represents the first time I’ve seen accessibility requirements in the news. They’ve been around since I first began working in higher education, and certain aspects are becoming easier to maintain. HTML 5 looming on the horizon looks like a more accessible way to work with content previously restricted to flash.  Tools like Chrometic have taken all the guess work out of ensuring your site is visible to those with various forms of color blindness. In short the job of being accessible is becoming even easier.

Hopefully accessibility stays in the press. The Penn State lawsuit coming on the heels of blind people suing United Airlines over website inaccessibility and ticketing policies, has created venue where we can discuss in earnest what we can do to make the web truly accessible and available to all people all the time.

• “Pesticide free.” Unlike stating that your product is organic, saying it’s pesticide-free is a claim not subject to any kind of third-party oversight. So it may be a lie. “People concerned about pesticide residues should look for certified organic produce,” says Cummins.

Organic, as regulated, does not mean pesticide free.  The law permits the use of “botanical pesticides”  (.pdf). Colorado State has a list of pesticides that are acceptable in Organic farming, and as you will see on the list some of them are labeled as very dangerous and are indeed known carcinogens. New pesticides are reviewed by the National Organic Standards Board to see if the compound is acceptable for use in organic farming.  Although these compounds are said to break down more quickly and therefore their residue is less likely to make it to the supermarket- there is an important nuance here that is being overlooked. To equate “organic” with the words “pesticide free” is a fallacy. It’s simply not true, and consumers, community and family members are being misled.

I am not denying the body of research that claims that organic produce will reduce the risk of exposure to pesticides. An article published in Food Additives and Contaminants points out:

While the risks to health associated with dietary pesticide residues are still uncertain and subject to debate, risk is relative, and lower exposure undoubtedly translates into lower risk. Consumers who wish to minimize their dietary pesticide exposure can do so with confidence by buying organically grown foods.

So yes, organic produces a “lower risk” of pesticide exposure, but it does not eliminate it. The real issue with the advice given by Cummins to avoid the word “pesticide free” in favor of the strongly regulated term “organic” is that it advises consumers to distrust the two words that actually mean what they are looking for.  The want pesticide free in many cases, and  the words “pesticide free” can actually mean pesticide free whereas the word organic never means pesticide free. She’s right, they’re not regulated so they could mean anything, but unlike Whole Foods, Wegman’s, or some other anonymous supermarket, the Farmer’s market is the one place where you can actually interact and talk to the farmer and find out what they use on the crops. Most farmers aren’t keen marketers and will be honest and up front with you. If you can find a farmer that you trust, you might actually be able to obtain food that is pesticide free with no quotes around it. We’re not talking a regulated term. We mean in honest words that mean what they should mean.

Organics are big business, and they rely on the misconception that they’re pesticide free to sell their goods. They’re not going to change their approach, but consumer advocates, community organizations, and those genuinely concerned with ordinary people not being fooled at the farmer’s market should be more upfront about what organic actually means. and what it doesn’t mean.

The discussions between Verizon and Google have rekindled interest in “Net Neutrality,” the idea that the companies that provide access to the internet may discriminate between the types of data being transmitted, and in consequences, even the websites or type of data that is being accessed. Net Neutrality advocates point out that this might create an “artificial scarcity” or worse, result in a collapse of the freedom of expression that exists on the internet today.

I’m not here to write an essay on Net Neutrality, especially not when Wikipedia covers it so thoroughly, but I am here to point out that the end of Net Neutrality for mainstream end-user Internet Service Providers would put Higher Education back in the position of power when it comes to information.

If ISPs adopt the “Cable TV” model: (great comic here) the price of information, or the free exchange of non-branded ideas might by stymied. For the low price of 30 dollars a month (or even less, 10 if you have one of the few remaining budget ISPs), you can read as much content as you want, no matter who has created it. If an artificial scarcity in non-marketed information is created, suddenly, higher education: academic presses and the like, are back in control. The Internet took their title as the place to go for the free exchange of information and it could be theirs again. In a world where the media is more tightly controlled, higher education could be the place that removes all of those constraints.

I am not an advocate for this scenario; I feel as if it would be regressive. To take away information from all people and put it back in the hands of a few gatekeepers feels particularly dangerous. But, some of the ramifications of Net Neutrality have not been fully explored; in fact, it seems there’s many interests that stand to be big players and are yet standing silent on the sidelines.

Another factor contributing to the durability of the past is that the cost of each photo taken with a camera is essentially zero. When I was young I had a polaroid camera. The value of each of the ten photos in that package was high. In other words, I only took pictures of what carefully warranted it. The 35mm camera with film represented a reduction in the cost of the photo, but not one to where it was negligible. One roll of film would result in a carefully selected 24-36 photos. With a digital camera, one is likely to have hundreds of photos of a given event, and with the reduced opportunity cost of effectively zero once the camera is purchased, the negative as well as the positive are likely to be documented.

Much has been made of how with aging, the elderly tend to prefer/remember better positive and good times rather than the negative ones. Additionally, any mementos/photographs they have will likely have undergone several rounds of selection pressure and therefore are seem more likely to be positive.

What I’m speculating is that there is a generation of computer literate youths whose past is immortalized in thousands of photographs (as well as other digital files) and that without societal and physical pressure to clean out these archives, it seems possible that the past and nostalgic baggage may weigh heavier on well-connected individuals.

I think this would be an intriguing area of study which represents a counterpoint to the still en vogue concern about young people “living their lives in public.” I’m also interested in how what is kept privately may effect these same  people

For example, here is a quote from a recent CNN.com article discussing the “quit facebook” movement:

“More than 2,700 people had pledged to quit Facebook on the group’s website Monday morning…By contrast, more than seven times that many people are fans of former “Top Chef” contestant Kevin Gillespie’s beard. A fairly random user-created page called “I Love Facebook” had roughly the same number of members as the “Quit Facebook” page.”

Other major magazines are skipping the more accurate random poll and simply cite the number of facebook members a group has to indicate support. Business Week cherry picked a single “Boycott BP” group (out of many) to illustrate a ground swell of support.  Even ReadWriteWeb gets in on the fallacy of using Facebook group data to critique another inaccurate survey.

So where is this going?
Clearly the fallacy that CNN and other news agencies using the number of people in one  Facebook group to compare against another is that the nature of the “like” button is not taken into account. Facebook group counts suffer from “selection bias.”

Firstly, users are more likely to be exposed to causes for which they are already sympathetic too from friends with similar view points. The same person who signs up for Pro-Obama groups may not be exposed to Pro-Republican groups. Secondly, there is no “dislike” button; therefore many news agencies commit the fallacy of using this data while ignoring that a lack of members indicates a lack of support or that a fast growing  group indicates a groundswell of support. This is simply not true. Many users do not like anything; therefore their views will not be counted. If one out of every 3 people disagree with a cause, but it still gets one Million members, those 3 million go completely unmeasured. If only 1.4 million people Support our vets on Facebook, does that mean that the other 298.6 million automatically do not?

I think we have to be careful of using Facebook group information to tell us anything at all, and I think our news agencies have to be a little less hasty to use Facebook group data when a real survey of people’s opinion is what the story really needs.

Do more people want to quit Facebook than support Kevin Gillespie’s beard? Unfortunately, I guess we’ll never know.

So I listed two jobs on this site called Fiverr. I offered to paint a 3 x 5 index card with an abstract painting for five dollars; I also offered to write a song about the topic of a person’s choosing for five dollars. Quickly, I was inundated with jobs.

Paint me a Picture
This job was all about me. I stated simply that I would determine the composition of the paintings. I had thought about trying to keep costs down so I went with a very inexpensive medium that I had a large number of lying around from working on my thesis. Yes, I used index cards. I also then chose to only use leftovers of paint that I had from previous projects. The mistake I made was offering to send the images by mail to the people who had ordered them. This is only a net loss of 45 cents; however,  was not aware, many people in the United Kingdom were also avid users of Fiverr, and I ended up taking a hit of nearly a dollar per picture.

Cost of supplies: $0
Cost of Mailing: .40 – $1
Fiverr’s Cut: $1
Total Profit: ~3.50 per image.
Time taken: ~45 minutes per painting
Earnings: about $4.60 per hour of work

I quickly realized that despite the costs of the supplies being zero that I was making below minimum wage by doing something that I enjoyed. I had successfully monetized my hobby!  But at what cost? By doing paintings that I worked hard on, was I cheapening the work of those who do paint for a living? (See the Paintings that I made)

Sing me a Song
I also offered to write people a song about a topic of their choosing. I had done improv music with my friend over the years and it never seemed hard. Put a couple of chords together, sing some funny words and presto! song! The first job was relatively easy- it seemed- write a short song about a friend who had been betrayed by her boyfriend.

I had come up with a chorus pretty quickly; however, I remembered that songwriting is serious work. And then to be funny?! I could have written anything and maybe gotten the five dollars; however, I felt the pressure of this being my first job. I poured over the lyrics, re-wrote them.  I turned on the camera and began playing. Yes, it takes more than one take to nail a song. It took about ten takes before I came up with a version I thought was worth five dollars.

For a five dollar song, I spent nearly three and a half hours writing and trying to get it right. In the meantime I had about ten other requests for songs. I was trying to write all of these other songs and maintain some level of quality, but it was impossible. I eventually succumbed to pressure and had to cancel all of the jobs. I had about ten fragments, but nothing that I felt was worth five dollars.

So were my standards too high? Perhaps. I admit that I could have been the one holding myself back. But also, was I myself undervaluing what I had once taken so much joy in? Music was surely worth more than I was getting paid for it. After Fiverr’s $1 cut, I earned just under $1.15 an hour for my work.

Lessons Learned?
Unlike previous experience with five dollar work for hire like the short lived Brijit.com, I realized that doing this work for five four dollars was a bad deal for artists and creators. I put more work and effort into what I put out there than five dollars could buy.

But perhaps Fiverr wasn’t the right venue, two of the users I sent my work to did say I was “bargain.”

What an amazing bargain! houseofsuns created a beautiful and unique piece of abstract art and I would highly recommend this gifted and creative artist. – Petrichor

Hilarious song… it would have paid $10 for it… luckily it was a bargain at $5. Would totally recommend this guy for personalized songs! -JessicaHoek

In the end I’m not sure. Is Fiverr.com a bad deal for artists and creators? Or was it a bad deal for me because I undervalued my own work?

Currently, Digital Scholarship is not valued or accepted on par with traditional methods of academic valuation. By that I mean: journal articles, monographs published by academic presses, and books. This creates a system that could potentially handicap the brightest and the best, young scholars aiming for tenure track positions. As digital scholarship is not valued, they will likely hold on to their work until they are able to secure a traditional avenue for the release of their work.

This is an okay model in that those bright students will be able to secure themselves tenure track positions in higher education which is their goal; however, as information and the release of knowledge is no longer controlled by higher education and academic presses, anyone could release a significant body of research for free on their website. The cost of publishing a book on your own is prohibitive; the cost of publishing a book on the internet is zero in many cases.

Walking through that door
If the best, brightest, or those holding out for tenure are withholding their work, who will then take the opportunity to publish their work for free?  I believe it will be those with little to lose: Scholars outside of tenure track positions and experts outside of academia. If a student has invested many years in research and still is unable to find a tenure track position, it seems that there would be much more to gain by just releasing it for free. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick demonstrated quantitatively during her presentation at the Digital University Conference, she achieved a wider reach with her website than would have the average release at an academic press.

It seems that the opportunity is ripe for young scholars to publish their work and seek recognition outside of academia. Perhaps success won’t be measured in terms of books, sabbaticals and grants but instead in speaking engagements and recognition. Chris Anderson again mentions this in his book Free that there are other forms of currency once can use in the marketplace of ideas. Among these currencies are Reputation and Attention. Could young scholars holding back their ideas awaiting validation from the current institution be costing themselves valuable time in accumulating recognition?

I’m simply speculating at this point, I don’t know what might come out of the current state. What I do know is that I speak with a great deal of young scholars and there is a disillusionment about the value of digital scholarship, a frustration about the lack of jobs in the marketplace, and a strong sense of idealism and opportunity. The direction of digital scholarship might not rest in the hands of Academia, but instead it might rest in the hands of young scholars who now have an alternative means to express their ideas.

This is the hope of much of the innovation in energy. A discovery of something like “cold fusion” or other clean and perpetually abundant energy source would render all current energy companies obsolete and cause them to scramble. How would they stay relevant? What could they offer in a world where energy no longer requires stewardship? How could they turn a profit?

This day has not come for energy companies but it has come for higher education, who in some ways are the “Oil Companies” or information and knowledge. Higher education is no longer the gateway to all of the world’s knowledge. It is all out there and nearly all of it is free.

Yesterday I attended the Digital University conference at the CUNY Graduate Center and many of the panelists and attendees were questioning how can the role of expertise and higher education remain relevant in a world where peer reviewed journals and academic presses are no longer the only means to express scholarly research. Less mentioned was the business model of academic presses and fundraising that are in serious jeopardy as a result of the shift to digital scholarship; however, left undiscussed was the total economic model. If information is free, what is the role of the scholar in society as a whole?

Survival in a world of abundance.
I have a bias towards looking to music for answers because of the work I’ve done with record labels, band promotion and being a bit of a musician myself. Music is not about selling the art anymore; the digital revolution has made the music abundant. Musicians have adapted to a new model where the money is made by touring, by selling value adds like hand-crafted CDs, t-shirts. What can higher education learn from this?

Perhaps a shift back to the emphasis what a scholar brings to the information. No longer is there a focus on “the book” as a measure of success and worth, but instead speaking engagements and even teaching can be a more effective primary goal. The role of the scholar is shifting from a model of the learned hermit to an active, engaging and accessible personality that can share her knowledge with the world. So although academic presses are struggling and information is ultimately unable to be controlled anymore, the one way scholars (and higher education) can continue to exert their expertise is by performing. And in the world of information, that performance is called teaching.

2009:   Capitals defeated Rags in 7 after trailing 3-1

2004 Montreal Canadiens defeated Boston Bruins in 7 after trailing 3-1

2003 Minnesota Wild defeated Vancouver Canucks in 7 after trailing 3-1

2003 Vancouver Canucks defeated St. Louis Blues in 7 after trailing 3-1

2003 Minnesota Wild Colorado Avalanche in 7 after trailing 3-1

2000 New Jersey Devils defeated Philadelphia Flyers in 7 after trailing 3-1

1999 St. Louis Blues defeated  Phoenix Coyotes in 7 after trailing 3-1

1998 Edmonton Oilers defeated  Colorado Avalanche in 7 after trailing 3-1

1995 Pittsburgh Penguins defeated Washington Capitals in 7 after trailing 3-1

1994 Vancouver Canucks defeated Calgary Flames in 7 after trailing 3-1

1992 Pittsburgh Penguins defeated Washington Capitals in 7 after trailing 3-1

1992 Vancouver Canucks defeated Winnipeg Jets in 7 after trailing 3-1

1992 Detroit Red Wings defeated Minnesota North Stars in 7 after trailing 3-1

1991 St. Louis Blues Detroit Red Wings in 7 after trailing 3-1

1990 Edmonton Oilers Winnipeg Jets in 7 after trailing 3-1

1989 Los Angeles Kings defeated Edmonton Oilers in 7 after trailing 3-1

1988 Washington Capitals defeated Philadelphia Flyers in 7 after trailing 3-1

1987 Detroit Red Wings defeated Toronto Maple Leafs in 7 after trailing 3-1

1987 New York Islanders defeated Washington Capitals in 7 after trailing 3-1

1975 New York Islanders defeated Pittsburgh Penguins in 7 after trailing 3-1

1942 Toronto Maple Leafs defeated Detroit Red Wings in 7 after trailing 3-1

Go Sabres!