The New Media Diva

I’ve been in London for a few days. Just got back. Wading through email.

I have a dear friend named Mat. We took the CELTA course together in 2003 and were part of a rag-tag group of expats who hung out at Lady Hamilton’s pub just off of Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. Our group did the usual commiserating (and joy sharing) about life in Switzerland, culture, politics, music, family life and so on.

Mat moved back to Australia, but kept contact with everyone over Skype and Facebook. He’d hit me up on Skype when our time differences worked out. The last time I saw Mat was in August 2007. He was in Switzerland and called me up out of the blue for lunch.

About month later he was dead. An athlete (marathoner) for most of his adult life, Mat collapsed and passed over while on a morning run back in Australia. He was 39.

Every time I open Skype, I still see him on my contact list. I’ve never had the heart to delete him. Today, just out of curiosity, I double-clicked on his name to call him, just to see if anyone would pick up. Of course, no one did, but the account still seems to be active.

This made me wonder about my own online history. What if I got hit by a bus (or tram in Zurich’s case)? Who would close out my Skype, Facebook, Yahoo, Friendfeed, Seesmic and the other accounts all over the Web?

Who would notify the folks hosting my websites? Would my husband even know who to contact?

Would I turn into some weird, static, internet ghost?

In addition to Mat’s Skype account, his Facebook page, at least the listing (we hadn’t “friended” each other there), still seems to be active.

Perhaps this is the modern world’s answer to immortality.

Well here’s a headscratcher: The Annenberg School of Journalism is shutting down the Online Journalism Review. Editor Robert Niles posted the announcement today:

After a decade, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication has suspended publication of OJR.

One of OJR’s goals over the years has been to help mid-career journalists make a successful transition from other media to online reporting and production. I’m pleased to say that USC Annenberg will continue to provide support in that area, through the Knight Digital Media Center. I encourage OJR readers to click over to the KDMC website and its blogs, if you are not already a regular reader there.

The decision to suspend OJR for now means that I have left the University of Southern California. But I am not going offline. I will continue to write, daily, about new media and journalism at my new website, SensibleTalk.com. I hope that many of you will click over and visit me there.

No reason for the shut down was posted. Shoot, this has me more upset than the eXile story.

At first I thought it was one of its jokes, but apparently Russian satire magazine eXile is shutting down.

I say shutting down and not “being shut down” because, according to founder Mark Ames, its western financial backers flew the coop after the Russian officials launched an audit of the magazine’s offices, leaving them without enough dough to operate. You can read the entire saga here and here.

I wasn’t a frequent visitor to the site. Even though I checked out War Nerd from time to time, there are only so many half-naked blondes I want to look at, and the satire mostly went over my head. I’m sure I wasn’t in their target audience.

It goes without saying that the audit by Russia’s Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage is probably bogus, at least from a western point of view. With new Russian president Dmitri Mevedev sure to continue on his predecessor Vladimir Putin’s path, probably quite a few editors of alternative shops are sweating. Take Moscow Korrespondent, for example (not that it was a true alternative). It was shut down after sparking rumors that Putin was going to leave his wife and marry an Olympic gymnast young enough to be his daughter.

But, also using the Putin story as an example, if Ames and his crew were as hip and tuned in to the government as they claimed to be, did they not see this coming? Ames actually seems shocked in the Radar articles.

As for the backers that “fled to the hills” (whom Ames states are “western”) I find that odd. What is the background of these backers that they run just at the slightest hint of trouble?

Now eXile is waging a fundraising campaign to keep its operations up and running (I’m not sure about the status of the campaign since Ames’ latest Radar article starts with “The Exile is shutting down):

We’re shakin’ your dust from our ‘Nam boots and setting up a new site somewhere not so allergic to truth, boobs and gory jokes. Maybe we can get Eritrea to give us a home. I volunteer to be the eXile’s Eritrean rep right now.

The thing is, it takes money and we have none, zero, aren’t even getting paid any more. We need help. That’s what this mayday is about. You want us in the foxhole with you, fighting against all that’s good and decent in the name of all that’s funny and honest? Then cough it up, soldier!

I wish them luck.

Corvida hipped me to Phil’s RSS Reset challenge (hmmm…guess it’s a challenge) over at Scribkin in my RSS post below. Phil was nice enough to hook me up with an invite to Toluu to help get me going with the challenge. (Thanks Phil).

I’ll have to admit that I wasn’t familiar with Toluu at all until I read it about on Phil’s site. It seems to be a feed-sharing site (perhaps like del.icio.us I guess). I need to play with it more before I find out what to do.

Phil and Corvida are dumping all of their feeds from Google Reader and starting fresh, only adding new feeds according to the following rules (from Phil’s site):

• Keep feeds that track web site buzz (business-impacting).
• Allow feeds such as Disqus, Intense Debate or other low-volume feeds that are necessary for timely work decisions.
• Allow adding as many Google Reader Shared Items feeds as needed.
  From Rash: I don’t use Google Reader. I tried and failed. Too much stuff was moving around, so I’ll be dumping my stuff from bloglines. If I see the need to go back to GR for the challenge, I guess I’ll have to do it. Quick question though: Why is bloglines still in beta after *how* many years?
• Allow adding of aggregate, smart or keyword-filtered feeds such as RSSmeme FriendFeed Friends or TechMeme.
• Allow adding smaller site feeds. We set the upper limit for a small site to be 200 at the time of adding. This can be re-visited if the number is too small.
• Allowance process: If a site feed is so unique that it is not being covered by the processes defined above, an allowance will be made to subscribe to a direct feed to any site. The number of allowances can not exceed 10.

Yikes! That’s a tall order, but I’ll sign on the dotted line. I need to read more of what Phil is doing so I can get going. More soon.