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 Ton Zijlstra is on to something. He describes blogs as "personal presence portals", and then goes on to describe the "awkwardness" that we feel when we go from 'knowing' someone through their blog to meeting them in person. His solution to that is simple: acknowledge the awkwardness explicitly in the first face-to-face conversation, and then work through it. Jon Husband chimes in with the observation that on-line 'presence' is still foreign to us, and we need to learn how to use it, much as at one point in our lives we first learn to use the telephone. So why is it that learning to use the telephone is childsplay, while learning to use blogs, especially when 'enriched' with Skype VoIP telephony, IM, wikis and webcams is so awkward, so hard? It all comes down to the subject of Ton's post: presence. Ton refers to this article that defines presence as a high-quality simulation of actual personal existence, high-quality implying socially rich, perceptually and socially realistic, transporting (in both senses of the word), immersing, and natural. Do blogs, with or without add-on multimedia tools, provide a high-quality simulation of the author's existence, do they have presence? To understand why this question is meaningless, we need to turn to the guru of media, Marshall McLuhan. In his landmark book Understanding Media, almost half a century ago, he explained the difference between media and tools. Communications media are place holders for content, for the message ("the medium is the message"). Communication tools are technologies that deliver the content, the message . In today's electronic age, he said, the two have become blurred together. So my communication media decision tree from last year, reproduced above, while useful, is somewhat flawed, in that it mixes the two together. But if we want to understand blogs, which are part media, part tools, we need to unblur these distinct characteristics. The best way to do this is to understand what, in McLuhan's terminology, the constituent parts of blogs are extensions of. The telephone, a communication tool, is an extension of the ear and the voice. Radio is a communication tool, likewise an extension of the ear and voice, but the radio program is a communications medium, an extension of the programmer's memory (and, if we tape it, an extension of our memory as well). Blogs, like newspaper columns or news digests, are essentially communications media, extensions of our memories, place holders for our ideas and messages. They are not really extensions of our brains, because they capture, like a snapshot, our thinking at one point in time. Although we can try to make them conversational and describe our thought processes in a blog article, they do not, in their simplest form, allow the reader to truly engage our brains in real or close-to-real time. Now, blogs also have two communication tools included: a publishing and subscription tool (RSS), which does transmit our messages (very well), and the rudimentary comments 'thread' functionality which, like a poor web forum, does allow some dialogue with the author and with other readers. The thread is a (lousy, and because it's asynchronous, jerky) extension of our brains. To some extent the Internet itself is a communication tool that disseminates our blog comment; it is the blog's 'printing press'. And by that analogy, RSS is like the delivery truck that takes the newspaper to the subscriber's house -- both are communication tools, though RSS is clearly the superior delivery vehicle. So what? Well, there is a huge amount of discussion about how to make blogs better, how to use them in business, and what their future is, none of which makes the essential distinction between their role and value as communication media and their role and value as communication tools. I would argue that the critical functionality of blogs, both in personal and business use, is as a personal communications medium i.e. a storage space for everything of consequence in our memories, and everything of consequence in that other extension of our memory, the filing cabinet (and its electronic analogue, the 'My Documents' folder). As I've said in my posts on the future of blogs and in my future state visions, I think blogs will eventually (and properly) morph into purer, simpler versions of this one critical functionality -- they will become the proxies, the substitutes for our memories, for use by friends and business contacts when we're busy or away from the high-presence communication tools, by vendors to ascertain our need for their offerings, and by ourselves as a place to organize, store and access our own thoughts and memories, thus freeing up more of our real memories for new ideas and perceptions. There have been some interesting articles lately by people who say that making and keeping huge numbers of dynamic lists and notes, instead of trying to keep all that in our memories, we can actually enrich our brain's power, our intellectual effectiveness and even our intelligence by 'freeing up memory and brain CPU'. Next-generation blogs could be perfect for that, not only freeing up our memories but also allowing others access to our ideas and learnings. So to that limited extent, blogs have presence -- they can be excellent simulations, surrogates, proxies for our personal memories. But what if we need more context to be able to properly understand the message, or effectively use or build on the content of this virtual memory? Then we need high-quality, high-presence communication tools, not communication media. We are rapidly moving towards a convergence of several 'online' communication tools: telephony, e-mail, IM, and potentially voice-mail and videoconferencing. Right now, the content, the stored messages of these various tools are unintegrated, but voice recognition and transcription is quickly improving and we will soon be able to 'record' conversations in any of these media in one simple, intuitive way, and with Simple Virtual Presence we will also have a simple intuitive way to connect with people using any or all of these media. Then we'll need a 'bridge' to allow each of the participants in a conference to see anything in the blog/virtual memory of any of the participants. Until that day arrives, blogs get high marks as a communication medium, but barely a passing grade as communication tools. If the technology developers understand the distinction, and start building tools that are properly engineered for simple, seamless connectivity, then one day the blurring won't matter, and the integration between media and tools will be complete. |
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DENVER, CO - August 17, 2004 - NewsGator Technologies today announced an agreement with U-WIRE to offer college media content to NewsGator Online Services users. U-WIRE annually syndicates over 50,000 articles and 10,000 photographs, all produced by student journalists. Over 50 new feeds from U-WIRE are being added, including collections of the best news, opinion, entertainment and sports content from nearly 750 college media outlets in all 50 states and 15 foreign nations. The content is syndicated to several professional partners such as NYTimes.com, Dow Jones Interactive, Lexis-Nexis, Yahoo! Sports, and now NewsGator Online Services.
"Our agreement with NewsGator Technologies enables U-WIRE to reach a broader audience and provides further exposure for student journalists from many of the nation's finest college newspapers," said Matt Rehm, Director of U-WIRE. "This is the first time that the U-WIRE feed has been syndicated via RSS, and we are excited to do so in conjunction with NewsGator, the industry leader in RSS content aggregation."
NewsGator, the leader in the explosive RSS category, continues its leadership position by adding rich premium content through its unique online services. Users who subscribe to NewsGator Online Services can access their content from any web browser, on any email client that supports POP3 and on their mobile wireless devices. This sophisticated system ensures that subscriptions follow users wherever they go, users never have to read the same content twice unless they choose to, and it supports multiple subscription lists so users can have separate, but overlapping, subscription lists at home and at the office.
"We're excited to announce this comprehensive licensing agreement with U-WIRE," said Greg Reinacker, CEO & Founder of NewsGator Technologies. "College news and sports stories are a very popular request from our users, and we’ve partnered with the industry leader in this area to provide them."
NewsGator's other partners for premium content include InfoWorld, CMP Media, and several other well-known publishers. Additional premium content partnerships will be announced over the next few weeks.
NewsGator Online Services is a subscription service, and is available at http://services.newsgator.com. Pricing starts at $5.95/month per user. The new U-WIRE feeds are available to subscribers at http: //services.newsgator.com/subscriber/PremContent.aspx.
About U-Wire
U-WIRE is a free content exchange for college media, annually syndicating approximately 50,000 articles and 10,000 photographs, all produced by student journalists. U-WIRE's daily feed is a collection of the best news, opinion, entertainment and sports content from nearly 750 college media outlets in all 50 states and 15 foreign nations. U-WIRE’s daily feed is also syndicated to several professional partners such as NYTimes.com, Dow Jones Interactive, Lexis-Nexis and Yahoo! Sports. U-WIRE was founded in 1994. It is now a subsidiary of CSTV: College Sports Television, which is comprised of two primary business units – College Sports TV, the fastest-growing independent cable network, and College Sports Online, the number one online destination for college sports news, information, scores and analysis.
"Living Room" Interface Allows Users to Read Selected Content, or Watch On-Demand Video Content
DENVER, CO -- April 13, 2004 -- NewsGator Technologies launched NewsGator Media Center Edition today, which allows users to read syndicated content feeds on their TV with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Both text and multimedia content is supported, with an interface designed to be used with a remote control from across the room. NewsGator Media Center Edition shows information that has not already been viewed on another device by synchronizing user subscriptions with NewsGator Online Services.
Audio and video content is only one click away. Users see visual cues when a feed contains multimedia content; they can then instantly view this content using the remote control. There are a number of featured feeds for the launch, including a video feed from Microsoft.
This is the latest step in the "any time, any place, any device" strategy that distinguishes the NewsGator product line. Users typically use more than one device throughout the day, such as Microsoft Outlook at work, a mobile phone on the road, a web browser in their home office, and a TV in their living room. NewsGator Online Services allows users to read one set of content from any of these devices, without any duplication. The combined power of NewsGator Media Center Edition and Online Services offers customers a productive and fun way to access their personalized subscriptions and information from any device, whenever they need it.
"NewsGator Media Center Edition is a great example of cutting edge ISV innovation on the Microsoft platform," said Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft Corporation. "The deep integration of technologies like XML and RSS, combined with rich multimedia, and presented on a device as pervasive as the television, gives consumers access to the information they care about, where and when they want to view it, truly delivering on the vision of a connected home. We're proud to work with NewsGator to help bring this innovative application to market for our mutual customers."
NewsGator Online Services also includes other three content reader editions, which allow users to read content they have subscribed to from any web browser (with Web Edition), any email client (with POP Edition), and from a mobile wireless device (with Mobile Edition), which is a powerful feature for road warriors who use mobile devices to access information while on the road.
The service also provides exclusive, subscriber-only content to its subscribers, as well as the ability to search for content that matches a specific keyword or URL, and return that content in a feed.
NewsGator Media Center Edition is included with the NewsGator Online Services subscription service, and is available immediately at http://services.newsgator.com. Pricing starts at $5.95/month per user.
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