·:[ Sound and Fury ]:·
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Over at ReadWriteWeb, they suggest that the House and Senate start using a white label video sharing service. By sharing their videos via only YouTube or GoogleVideos, they suggest, Congress is giving prestige if not endorsement to these sites.

The Department of Defense has tried this with TroopTube. After banning the use of YouTube on DoD computers, TroopTube would appear to be the obvious alternative. But it appears to be falling down on a number of metrics. The most watched video has less 2,000 views. Most videos aren’t geared for mass consumption though, with title’s like “Kayden opening gifts.” Contrast this with the MNF-I (Multi-National Forces Iraq) channel on YouTube where the most watched video has 3.7 million view and over 2000 comments - positive and negative. While it’s unclear if TroopTube is meant to supplant the military YouTube channels, what is clear is that they aren’t getting the foot traffic. Additionally, the featured videos on TroopTube are holiday greetings, which is just sad in January.

Using YouTube gives the Congress built-in community of shares and comments. Maintaining the same video on numerous sites is likely to over task the Congressional staffers. Remember, no one budgeted for video Web posting last year. All of this work must be done with existing infrastructure and staffing levels. While they might (and that’s a strong might) have the technical expertise to set up a Congressional video sharing site, they almost certainly do not have current funding. And, trust me, much of what gets done in Washington boils down to the funding.

Of course, Congress should consider that Text is still King on the Web and be sure to include transcripts if the videos are talking heads. The most watched videos - the ones that go viral - speak for themselves, such as the CH-46 crash. A short video (under a minute) with an amazing impact. Too much text would detract, rather than improve the experience.

SLOC is another fine acronym brought to you by the Navy. Sea Lines of Communication are vitally important to any trading nation - and have been for centuries. Over 90% of the world’s good are transported by sea. If you trade, you care about the security of shipping lines.

Pirates have always harassed shipping. Although we tend to think of the Pirates of the Caribbean, pirates are rarely so easily identified. They look like fishing vessels until a prize comes into view, when they attack using modern weapons and looking not to hijack a ship’s worth of iPods, but to hold them ransom. Shipping lines have ransom insurance for their crew and their cargo, and often simply pay the price.

Currently, the coast of an ungoverned Somalia is the ripest hunting grounds for these pirates. Many nations have sent warships to the region to assist in the policing of the SLOC. And, now, China is joining. As others have pointed out, this new action is stirring up some concerns about a Chinese Navy that is able to project Chinese power beyond her borders. Certainly many Western nations, including the US, have pressured China to take a responsible role in world politics. But many seem to be nervous about this response. It doesn’t appear that China was specifically asked by any of the current states to participate in this action. At the same time, the action is occurring in international waters and China clearly has a vested interest in protecting SLOC.

What worries me most is the rules of engagement and communication. While the sea is a big, broad area, naval actions take place in close quarters without much room for error. Do the other navies know how to interact and deconflict operating areas with the PLAN?

Forty years ago, the world watched Walter Cronkite talk about…everything. He commented on the Moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, riots during the Democratic convention. Mr. Cronkite set the tone for America. And it was a one-way conversation.

Today’s news is much different. Viewers send in email, videos of themselves, they blog (often in real-time) during significant events. They develop and post evidence supporting conspiracy theories about the Moon landing, the Kennedy assassination and well, everything (except, perhaps, the Democratic convention of 1968). The viewers react to the news and the newscasters react to the viewers. Every morning, Robin on CNN shows pictures of military members sent in by their families. Even the meteorologist shows pictures of interesting skies that viewers provide.
The news is now a conversation, not a broadcast.

And what does this mean to the work place. Do CEOs expect to be able to publish their strategic plan without receiving feedback? Their workers are used to commenting on what they receive, and will do so in the work place. Are the CEOs ready to listen?

The banning of access to MySpace may have long term repercussions for Army recruiting. Working class teenagers, the type most likely to enlist in the military, use MySpace. As many have noted, Facebook (which tends to attract college students) was not blocked.

MySpace may be bandwidth-intensive and insecure, but rather than just block access, the military should seek low-bandwidth, secure ways to allow soldiers to accomplish the same thing. AKO is not the answer, because teens do not develop their online social networks on AKO. The social networks are currently Balkanized, therefore we must leverage the social networks the soldiers have spent years developing. Very often, the *entire high school population* of a soldier is in their “friends” grouping, following their adventures in the Army.

The most obvious answer is to partner with MySpace to develop a more secure, low-bandwidth area of their network.

The military budgets resources (in money, personnel, and logistics) to provide physical mail to our members. A small investment in resources will allow today’s soldiers to communicate with their hometowns, further connecting our military with the American public and improving recruiting opportunities.

Much has been made of the accuracy of wikis - collaborative documents that has an open editing interface. Wikipedia is perhaps the most well-known wiki out there. It’s not 100% accurate, but what is? Other encyclopedias have errors too. Just with this one, they can be fixed. Who in their right mind would use any encyclopedia as a primary source anyway?

The best explanation of Wikipedia is a movie about how one article evolved. See the screencast here: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html

I realize that it has been a long time since I last posted. I’d like to update two earlier posts.

Slideshare has matured. People are using it primarily to share picture shows and how-to presentations about doing presentations. People obviously feel that most presentations can be improved. People “zing” presentations which is a way to mark them for others to see. You can comment on shows, rate them, and mark them as favorites. Combine a slideshow with an mp3 and create a slidecast.

Reader2 has also improved. Links to Amazon and other shopping venues are included. The interface is still clunky though. How much does an Ajax programmer cost these days anyway?

The other place I’ve been spending some time is Shutterfly, which is a commercial site for pictures. They do nice work with books and photos.

As I was wandering around YouTube tonight, actually checking out an interesting explanation of Web 2.0, I noticed that it was tagged as a “video response” to another video. Now, that video was fairly bland and filled with a lot of exposition, while the one my friend recommended was much more interesting.

But it’s the response that I truly found interesting. The idea that people would tape (can I say that? what’s the right verb here?) themselves talking for four minutes in response to watching a video. The method truly turns the posting of videos into a conversation. A decidedly different conversation where the response needn’t actually address the video it is responding to with the added comments to it.

I’ve never been a big fan of sports. In fact, I’ve always been confused and more than a bit irritated that sports scores are considered news. When I was on a command center watch floor, the three channels that were shown were CNN, CNN-Headline News and ESPN. Really.

Imagine my joy at seeing the new Fantasy Congress. It’s pretty much what you think it might be. Draft legislators into your team, earn points for their performance and compete against others. Just drafting my team was an education. Some high performers you might suspect, like Sen John Warner or Sen John McCain. What intrigued me was that a disproportionate number of the high earners were women. Hmmm. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The ability to test physics by writing on a blackboard….I mean whiteboard, is just cool. And this video is at least several months old. Not sure where the technology is now.
YouTube - MIT sketching

As you know, I’m not a fan of PowerPoints, but here’s an interesting idea. Many-to-Many reports that Slideshare wants to be the YouTube of presentations.

I’m not sure about this, because so many slide decks are considered to be internal information. Perhaps in academia this makes more sense than it does to me. YouTube was initially fueled by bootlegged segments of the Daily Show and home-made Funniest Home Videos rejects. I’m not sure where the impetus for people to post and view will come from here.

You need to be invited to use the beta.

The Navy has embarked on yet another reading program. I’m a fan of these, since I’m always looking for something good to read or to listen to in the car. What I’m not a fan of is the format of the list. I’d like a list where I can login, check off the ones I’ve read, search Audible.com, mark the ones I’ve downloaded to my GPS (which BTW has an MP3 player, very nice), search my local library for others, and search Amazon for the rest. Maybe even write reviews, metatag it, search and read other reviews, and add my own recommendations for similar reading.

Is this too much to ask? Okay, I’ve found Reader2. They have some features, but not everything that I really want.

I’m convinced that companies don’t know how to slowly ship anything anymore. Tuesday I ordered some new toys (webcam and GPS). Figuring that the playing could wait and know that we didn’t have any trips in our near future, I opted for the “budget” shipping. 7-10 days, they promised. My webcam arrived yesterday and my GPS is on track to be delivered today. That’s 2-3 days for those keeping score - one day faster than the “standard” shipping of 3-5 days.

Is warehouse space that expensive? I suspect that they have a shipping process and that it’s a pretty efficient one at that. Changing their process to accommadate those of us who aren’t in a hurry is more expensive than changing for the ones in a hurry.

NetFlix is offering a prize of one million dollars to see who can improve their recommendations system. What’s interesting about this (to me, anyway) is not the dollar amount or the problem they’re trying to solve. It’s the way they’re trying to solve it.

Logo designers have long hated the idea of a logo design contest, as they believe that such free work undermines the true value of their profession. Will code developers backlash against this type of thing as well? Or will the Open Source tradition of code development for free and for the spirit of the hunt win out?

Trolling around Wikipedia tonight, checking my watchlist, looking for vandalism on “my” pages, I notice an odd entry on the USMC page. Someone added an external link to The Marine Corps’ My Space. No, really, a USMC MySpace. Yes, and the Corps, in spite being out of the typical age bracket at 230 years old, has over 27,000 friends.

It’s nicely done. A bit understated compared to the sites of some of their “friends”. They have disabled the comments feature, which, given the the FOAF comments, I can hardly blame them.

Reminds me of a story of the Marine Recruiting’s dragon commerical. You remember the one that looks like a video game and then turns into a Marine? When they showed it to the Commandant, he said, “I don’t get it.” And they told him that they weren’t trying to recruit men his age.

While traveling in Phoenix this week, I’ve noticed that outdoor malls have included music in the landscaping. The same with the botanical garden at my hotel. Are we that incapable of going from our cars to the store without being inundated with atmosphere? Personally, I like silence. I think we need more time by ourselves and our thoughts, without distraction.

Also, I stopped by Ultimate Electronics to buy a battery for my pedometer. After finding the right one, the sales assistant asked if I wanted a bottle of water. I was stunned as he went and got one for me. Don’t most stores charge $1.25 for aqua? Is this a desert thing? Still wondering about this.

Not much strikes me as truly innovative, but how about using water to write. Over at Pink Tentacle, they’ve noted how some are using waves to write. The current practical uses seem limited to amusement parks and hotels. Shades of The Abyss anyone?

As this article notes, the Marines are back in Beirut. For those who may not remember, it was 23 years ago, following some deadly terrorist attacks, that the Marine Corps pulled out of Beirut. Now, they’re back, evacuating US citizens. No matter how much I travel, no matter how much I love living abroad, I will always retain my American citizenship, because — when the bombs are dropping — I want United States Marines coming to get me.

Of course, they wouldn’t have to look far. I would be on the doorstep of the embassy, single bag in hand and ready to abandon that.

Where I am today. Relatively interesting workshop on wikis for collaboration.
ColabWiki3A20Expedition20Workshop

..playing with this game.

Falling Sand Game - hosted by Chirag Mehta @ chir.ag

Some of the best information I’ve found about Web 2.0 is coming from an 8th grade classroom.

Vicki Davis, my new favorite teacher, set up a wikispace for her students. She gave them some guidelines and let them those. The result is both a great example of Web 2.0 and a great resource for it.

These students are going to be our employees in less than 10 years. They’re going to come to us with the experience — and the expectation — of working collaboratively online.

I hope we’re ready for them.