:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 11.15.2005 ::

:: "Taking Back the Web" ::

How wikis are changing our view of the world
By Daniel Terdiman
CNET News.com

Moments after the eye of Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, news agencies everywhere rushed to report the story. But among the quickest to begin offering comprehensive coverage wasn't a formal news organization at all.

Instead, it was a loose collection of self-appointed "citizen journalists" reporting, linking and photographing from Louisiana and around the world. And the organization for which they were working, called Wikinews, wasn't paying them a dime.

"With all of that bad news, it's nice to know that at least one cool thing has emerged from this: The Katrina Information Map, which brings together the power of wikis and Google Maps to create a useful public resource for tracking or reporting flood damage," former Louisianan Matt Barton wrote on the blog Kairosnews. "I see that most people are using the service to inquire about loved ones or report flooding on various streets."

News is one of the most effective uses of an oddly named technology created in 1995 by a Portland, Ore., programmer named Ward Cunningham, which was based on the idea that information should be shared openly and remain accountable to everyone. Known as "wiki," the software allows the creation of Web pages that can be edited indefinitely by anyone with access, regardless of who wrote the original work.

Although initially conceived as a form of communal publishing, the wiki is quickly evolving into a multipurpose interactive phenomenon. As evidenced in the aftermath of Katrina and the London bombings a month earlier, wikis can be a life-saving resource that provides real-time collaboration, instant grassroots news and crucial meeting places where none exist in the physical world.

The popularity and proliferation of wikis are particularly significant in an age of increasing distrust of mainstream media. In many ways, wikis are emblematic of the democratizing principles of the Information Age that seek to give voice to ordinary citizens.

"With the distributed nature of the Internet, you now have the ability for people with common interests to rapidly aggregate themselves and apply their nearly unbounded knowledge of different subjects into cohesive organization in a matter of hours," said Rob Kline a product manager for Marchex who helped create the KatrinaHelp.info wiki. "Because it's distributed, it's global, so when I have to go to sleep, someone else can pick it up and keep working on it."

Read more here.

ALSO
from CNET News.com
Taking Back the Web Day 1
Grassroots 'taste makers' define opinions

Late on a Sunday evening last month, a caravan of mildly intoxicated moviegoers wound their way down a dark gravel road to a shooting range at the outskirts of Austin, Texas.

Most of the cars were coming from an advance screening of the film "Domino," which included an appearance by its screenwriter. The studio had supplied drinks at the theater and was sponsoring a shotgun-toting after-party at the insistence of Harry Knowles, whose "Ain't It Cool News" site of rumors, reviews and industry gossip has a wide following from "fanboy" circles to studio offices.

Hardly a typical release event--but well worth the price of a few liability lawyers to put Knowles in a good mood. For he and others like him are, in effect, defining America's tastes.

"I'm sure we made studio lawyers go into hissy fits," said the flame-haired, larger-than-life Knowles, 33, who called the movie "one hell of a film" in a subsequent review posted on the Web site he founded a decade ago. "But still, we actually got them to loosen up and have fun with their own movie, which is something that rarely happens in this industry."

posted by me

:: 12:51:00 PM [+] ::
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