Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

Anyone who has had a blog for any length of time will identify with Emily Gould’s essay Exposed, in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Gould is a blogger, former Gawker.com staffer and writer, who shares some of the pitfalls of a life lived publicly on the internet. While it is her story, it is far from unique.

We live in really interesting times. The internet has shortened the time it takes for news and information to circulate. I typically learn about things first via email or someone’s blog and sometimes hours later via mainstream media. We’ve got at our disposal email, listservs, websites, blogs, social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, viewer produced content sites like YouTube and even XTube, to communicate with others, form networks of friends and associates or create our online persona.

The downside, as Gould’s story illustrates, is that many of us put too much personal information online and everything we put online is permanent. People you don’t even know are now privy to your innermost thoughts or your home movies. Almost all of us can be Googled. A year ago, when I was actively job hunting, I checked my blog stat tracker and noticed a visitor from one of the places where I had applied. We just never know who’s out there reading

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My favorite television series, The Wire, may have concluded its five season run here in the U.S., but season five hasn’t aired yet across the pond in the U.K. (British visitors to this site are advised not to read my old posts on the subject or you’ll find out how it ends.)

English fans of the series are just now getting introduced to some of the actors. The Guardian newspaper has a print and audio interview with actors Felicia “Snoop” Pearson and Jamie Hector, the characters “Snoop Pearson” and “Marlo Stanfield.” It must be strange to still do interviews about characters they stopped playing months ago but also disheartening to know they may never see roles that juicey again.

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Last Wednesday I attended a staged reading for a new play still in development, by an exciting young playwright I first told you about months ago. Katori Hall, who wrote Hoodoo Love, is working on a project now titled, The Mountaintop. The story is set on April 3, 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee and involves a conversation between Dr. Martin Luther King and a motel housekeeper with special insight into the future.

Hall has an excellent gift for the English language and an engaging and insightful way with her storytelling. This particular story is unusually daring, for her use of real people in fictionalized events and her connection of King’s dream to present-day reality. The staged reading was done through the Lark Theatre Playwright’s Workshop. No word on when or if a full production will be staged.

Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II of England has her own YouTube channel.

The Royal Channel, The Official Channel of the British Monarchy, was announced this week as the newest way the Royal Family will communicate with their subjects. After releasing her traditional Christmas speech in the form of a podcast last year, this year, the 81-year-old monarch will post her message both on television and on YouTube.

A spokesman at Buckingham Palace says the Queen has always embraced the use of new technology. In her first Christmas broadcast 50 years ago, she waxed lyrical about the advent of television.

The Queen is to appear at around 1500 GMT on Christmas day, but before then, viewers will be able to watch past messages as well as archive and contemporary footage of Britain’s royal family.

Well, well, well. Another one of those exclusive �top blogger� get-togethers took place in New York Wednesday, and nobody invited me! Hmmmph!

WNBC, the flagship station of the NBC television network, invited 130 of who they consider the most-read bloggers in New York to a special NYC Blogger Summit. From what the news report suggested, it looks like the station wants to try to form an alliance to use bloggers as a corps of grassroots news correspondents. If you can�t beat �em, hire �em, I guess. They aren�t exactly offering money however, more like access to WNBC news reports and video footage. If you can�t beat �em, corrupt their sites with your mainstream media content, apparently.

Now from the brief glimpses of the blogger hordes seated in the audience section of the studio where Conan O�Brien tapes his show, it seemed like a replay of that less than diverse group that Bill Clinton pulled together up in Harlem. I spotted just two Black faces, one of them Nichelle, and two Asians, one of them Jen Chung from Gothamist.com. Despite the presence of WNBC techno-geek correspondent Sree Sreenivasan, perhaps they too think bloggers come in one flavor.

Anybody else get an invite…or not?

Sad and funny at the same time.

It is interesting to me to see how the Internet has replaced the public library as a major research institution. Instead of getting up out of our homes and traveling across town to check out books and actually read them, many people instead log on, Google and expect to find answers to their many questions.

On one level I suppose it is about convenience and ease. You don�t have to get dressed to Google. But there is also the ability to ask questions and research topics about which there are no simple or easily found answers. Gossip and rumor don�t often make it into books�there are libel laws against such things�but anything and everything can find its way onto the Internet.

Every day I check my tracker to see how many folks have come to this blog, from which referring websites, through what searchengine queries, and where they are located geographically.

It amuses me how some of the same searchengine queries show up every day. Nearly every day, someone, somewhere, queries �Robin Roberts, is she gay� referring to the host of ABC�s Good Morning America. Almost as common is the same question posed in reference to Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Dhani Jones.

Now, queries will look for all of those words in every website and post the results. Because the word �gay� has appeared on this website on more than a few occasions, that will put this site on the results list. I made reference to Robin Roberts when I wrote about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Roberts is from the Gulf Coast and shared her take, and I linked to her story. Thus, Robin Roberts will also show up on this site. Similarly, a link I have over on the right for Dhani Jones�s website, will put him on a results listing.

But let me state for the record for the next person who is curious about the sexual orientation of Robin Roberts and/or Dhani Jones and does a Google search:

�There is NO information on Bejata.com that will definitively state the sexual orientation of either Robin Roberts or Dhani Jones. Nothing posted on this website will identify either of them as gay.�

Hopefully future search queries will cause the above sentence to show up in the list of results and people will stop coming here looking for the answer.