I found discussions about the future of journalism and the changes in the newroom in this blog intriguing. Thanks to fellow journalist Dana Batnag who has recently started blogging, I discovered this blog and subscribed to it.
Quickly, here’s a brief description of what it is:
ACFJ Alumni Online is the blog created by alumni of the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism (ACFJ). ACFJ is based at the Department of Communication of the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City.
Follow the discussions here. Here’s one topic generating interesting discussions among the alumni. Here’s one recent.
Bloggers and students were given a chance by Comelec to test the automated election systems last Saturday.
Excerpt from INQUIRER.net.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) invited bloggers and students last week to try out the automated systems that will be used in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections in August.
Initiated by members of Bloggers’ Kapihan , 20 students and bloggers participated in mock elections, where actor Pierce Brosnan won as regional governor for ARMM over mock candidates Kevin Costner, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Al Pacino and Sharon Stone.
“Plurk is getting new shoes today,” the Plurk website says, as it goes under maintenance. Before it was Twitter, now Plurk 
Yes, we Filipinos have to wait for quite a bit for the iPhone 3G.
In this story, Globe says there are no details on pricing yet or the packages it wishes to offer to local subscribers.
Meanwhile, the Apple iPhone 3G is scheduled to launch in more than 20 countries on July 11.
Read the rest of the story at INQUIRER.net.
Have you ever imagined watching the stories from New York Times or Wired on YouTube? Well, you don’t have to, anyway because both publications have their own channels on YouTube, and they have very interesting stories to tell in multimedia.
Check out this episode from Frugal Traveler from New York Times. (New York Times has decided to disable embedding of video clips, shoot).
Or this interesting feature on “Playing the Building” by David Byrne
Okay, I’m “addicted” to plurk, twitter and whatnot. No, they’re not cartoon characters in the latest Japanese anime flick. They’re services that allow people to micro-blog (I believe this will soon land in Oxford as a noun or a verb). As I was browsing through some stories, I found interesting tidbits about micro-blogging.
Why do we do it?
First off, how different is blogging from micro-blogging? The latter involves burst of short messages — 140 characters to be precise. Imagine how many words you can fit into that? For having 20,000+ followers, Techcrunch is perhaps the best example of an effective Twitter.
Micro-blogging is not a fad. It has emerged as a natural way to reach out to people. By that I mean interaction, sometimes in real-time. For instance, have you ever read a real-time blog about travel on Twitter? Well, we have one local example and currently, I’m following it. Tales of the Nomad (run by INQUIRER.net which is a company I work for) provides an example of the power of micro-blogging.
Perhaps you’ve heard about Plurk. It’s just like Twitter but with a twist. Instead of the usual chronological interface where the latest Tweets go on top, Plurk follows a timeline. All updates are posted in a public timeline for the whole universe to see. Look at this example, my plurk account. Plurk takes some getting used to. But it becomes really addictive once you start. One plurker (yes, another new noun to land soon on Oxford haha) says that Plurk is the new YM, short for Yahoo! Messenger. I think this explains it a lot. We love to chat with people. Micro-blogging is one way we can connect or even re-connect with people. For media, it’s another way of getting immediate feedback or even ideas from readers. This is perhaps the most direct medium by which you can give your two cents’ worth on certain issues, vice cersa.
So why do we do it? Well, why not? It’s there. People are there. And we want to be a part of it, this social world of micro-blogging. If you don’t get it, then you’re missing out on the fun.
How will they vote in Maguindanao this August? Comelec shows how.
