“When the telephone connection between these two terminals is made, the newest form of electronic journalism lights up Mr Howards television.”

Maybe something which has few links with social media or online customisation (the two major themes of this blog), but Robin Wauters (Techcrunch, Plugg.eu,…) posted an intersting and -in my view- entertaining video from 1981. In the video above you can watch a news report from these prehistoric internet days. Journalist Steve Newman investigates a new system (called The Electronic Examiner) which connects home computers with a server. After two hours of downloading (!) you could read the newspaper (“With the exception of pictures, ads, and the comics” ). User Richard Halloran (who “owns a home computer”, the caption in the news report says) seems quite satisfied with the service.

The Electronic Examiner was thus launched some twenty years before Krishna Barat, a principal scientist at Google, would develop Google News (and it was some 25 years before Google News left its beta phase).

via: Robin Wauters - Techcrunch

Social media play an important role in sharing experiences, thoughts, feelings … During Obama’s Inauguration Day a lot of people used social media to get/stay connected with others and thus being part of that historical day. Some numbers:

During Obama’s inauguration Twitter reported five times more tweets.

But also on YouTube, this week only 332 000 new videos  containing the tag “Obama” were uploaded and 17 000 with the tag “Inauguration”.`

The full report can be found on Mashable

Sometimes I wish I could use a sewing machine in a proper way! Unfortunately, even sewing on a button is a mission impossible!

After checking out Spoonflower,  I again felt the urge to learn some basic sewing tricks. Spoonflower is a website where you can design your own fabric. And although I can just design, order and buy my fabric … it isn’t enough, you have to do something with the fabric. But enough about my sewing disability. So Spoonflower offers custom digital textile printing. Everyone can upload an image, choose the arrangement (do you want your image being centered or repeated?) and have it printed on cotton. So if you just can’t find the right design for those new curtains, why not creating the pattern you’ve always wanted? And what’s more: every week, there’s the Fabric of the Week contest, in which the Spoonflowers decides which fabric they would like to buy. The winner of the contest not only gets 5 yards of the fabric for free, but his or her design will also be offered for sale in the Spoonflower Etsy Shop, for one week.

Another similar site is Bonbonkakku. This Finnish site is for fabric, what Threadless is for T-shirts. The basic principle in both sites is the competition, only the subject is different. In the case of Bonbonkakku, every fabric designed will be published on the site for viewers to see and vote on. The fabrics that get the most votes are chosen to be sold on the Bonbonkakku site. So anyone can upload and submit a fabric design to the competition and if the design gets selected, the winner gets a  heap of fabric, with his/her design on it. Furthermore the winning design  will also be sold on the site.

I think it’s time, I’m taking a sewing class!

Source: Spoonflower, Bonbonkakku

Katrien already wrote on the perils of using Facebook. I now found an interesting work on using Facebook for activism. On the site of DigiActive, a volunteer organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact, you can find “Introduction to Facebook Activism” written by Dan Schultz.

Because of its massive user base and the free applications one can create and install Facebook is too interesting to ignore. This small guide (its only 15 pages long) contains some pro & cons of Facebook activism, a practical guide for setting up activists events and three examples of Facebookactivism: Monk’s protst in Burma, Help Fouad Campaign from Morocco and the Free Kareem Campaign from Egypt.

The most interesting content is off course the analysis of these three different campaigns as it gives an insight on how a sometimes spontaneous action evolves into a massivley supported cause on Facebook and what problems and questions could then pop up (for example, the lack of anonimity in these sometimes dangerous campaigns).

Download Introduction to Facebook Activism (pdf)

Source: DigiActive

In the intro of his Phd (Defending my Bastard Culture!) researcher Mirko Tobias Schäfer writes about two TIME-magazine covers depicting the man/woman/group/… of the year.

The first one is the well known cover from 2007. A computer screen is depicted and in fact mirrors the reader looking at the front cover. The text on the bottom of the page says it all… “Yes, You. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world”. Though this image has been widely used (and thus maybe loses a bit of its importance) it still is relevant as it refers to the so-called participatory culture (popularized under the term Web2.0).

The second one dates from 1983. Time Magazine did not elect a Person of the Year, but choose the computer as the Machine of the Year. The man in front of the computer is almost blanked out and sits alienated in front of the screen not even touching the keyboard.

Schäfer sees as a reason for this emancipatory evolution from a ‘machine in control’ to the ‘user in control’ the development of the computer as a work medium to a life-medium (work, leisure, friendship, family,…) and the great amount of content which ordinary users can publish online.

These are not ’shocking’ conclusions, but the way they get depicted by these TIME-covers, covering almost 25 years, is beautifull & illustrative.

So, last week I started sharing my Blurb-experiences with you. Meanwhile I finished collecting the pictures and text for my book and Blurb-day - the day I had been waiting for - arrived: I could finally upload my own book to the Blurb-website.

And then, it happened: an error!  Booksmart encountered a technical glitch and needs to close down!! My enthousiastic feeling changed in frustration. However, I wouldn’t give in: so I kept on trying but after approximately 25 times, I changed tactics and send a mail to the customer support.

I have to say it: I love their customer support! Thanks to Megan and Jeremy, I was able to order my book. Each time, I received an answer within the day! When I couldn’t upload the book making use of the Booksmart-software, they offered another option: uploading it throug YouSendIt. Yesterday evening, I received a mail from Jeremy with some very good news:

Hi Katrien,

Good news: we were able to repair the error! Please note that to do so, we had to remove the 3 lines of “byline” text on the spine (BookSmart can encounter trouble when there is more than one line of spine text).

Your book has been uploaded to your Blurb.com account and is now ready to be ordered (or will be ready in 10 minutes).

I can only say that I had a very good experience with Blurb, thanks to the great work of customer support! Thanks Megan and Jeremy!