DailyDirt: More Than Words, Is All I Have To Say...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The meaning of words change all the time, and they may be changing faster than ever before. It's hard for traditional dictionaries to really keep up with new words, but linguists are trying to record and categorize all the sounds they're observing. It ain't easy, but it's interesting to keep track of all the ways our language changes as people around the world are increasingly connected. Here are just a few examples.

• Teenagers communicate in weird ways sometimes, making sounds that aren't words (but still have meaning). There's a difference between "duhhh" and "duhhyy" -- and you should be insulted by the latter. [url]
• Many terms of endearment are almost universal, like "baby" -- understandable in several different languages, but some cute names are not. Japanese women are commonly referred to as "an egg with eyes" as a compliment, but that doesn't quite translate well in English.... [url]
• According to some linguists, young women are the leaders of language fads that spread into everyday conversations. For example, Webster's New World College Dictionary (Fourth Edition) includes the use of "like" as a way to add emphasis -- as in "It's, like, hot." [url]
• Verbal profanities are stored in a different part of your brain than where most of your language skills reside, and cursing has been part of our language for centuries (if not longer). Some of the worst obscenities in Latin focus on body parts and sex, so it seems like the subject matter of curse words hasn't changed that much in a while. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: communication, cursing, dictionary, language, latin, linguistics, profanities, teenagers, terms, tone, verbal, words

DailyDirt: Non-human Intelligence

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Humans aren't the only animals on our planet that can communicate with other members of our species. As we study more of our fellow creatures, we continue to find surprising instances of intelligence and thought and problem-solving abilities. Here are just a few examples.

• Japanese scientists have created images showing how a thought moves through the brain of a zebrafish. The brain activity doesn't look particularly complex, but it's a start -- and it could lead to a better understanding of how other brains work. [url]
• Slime mold doesn't have a brain, but it can figure out complex problems -- if we give set it up under the right conditions. The slime mold Physarum polycephalum can navigate a maze and find the shortest path when given a map made of carefully-placed food. [url]
• Almost anyone who has observed ants closely knows that ants can communicate via trails of chemicals (pheromones) and by touching each other -- but some ants can also communicate using sounds. Researchers have recorded some of the sounds, and they've seen ants respond to the recordings as if their fellow ants were calling to them. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: animal intelligence, ants, brains, communication, intelligence, pheromones, slime mold, smart animals, thoughts, zebrafish

Kickalicious Uses YouTube Video To Get A Tryout With The NY Jets

from the YouKick dept

The stories of how YouTube has lowered the barrier for entry into the entertainment business are becoming common enough that they're no longer the shock they once were. Justin Bieber got himself noticed on YouTube, of course. Add to his story that of Rebecca Black and Gangnam Style and we begin to see YouTube as a steady platform for musical stardom. While there are certainly examples of movie magic happening on YouTube as well, this has long been the realm of music and weird memes.

That's what makes the story of Norwegian futbol player Havard Rugland so much fun, now that his YouTube kicking video has gone viral and led to a tryout with the New York Jets football squad. The video itself is insane, nearly as insane as Rugland potentially becoming an NFL kicker when he doesn't know a thing about the game.

The events leading to an NFL tryout from that video began when Rugland's futbol team disbanded. He had a booming leg, but now he had to figure out what to do with it. Apparently the Rockettes weren't hiring, because Rugland turned instead to videos of NFL kickers, studying how they performed their craft.

Using tools not typically associated with athletic prowess — YouTube, Facebook, Skype and Gmail — Rugland parlayed a homemade video that went viral into a tryout as a kicker with the Jets last week. He might be the first professional prospect to replace college football experience with social media savvy. In the four-minute video, posted on YouTube in mid-September under the title “Kickalicious,” the left-footed Rugland pulls off some of the most amusing tricks with a football since Lucy began duping Charlie Brown. It has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

If you took the time to watch the video above and have managed to put your jaw back in place, all you really need to know about it is that the video has been independently verified as real and un-doctored. After the video went viral, a former NFL kicker in the States found it and connected with Rugland via Facebook. From there it was a simple matter of networking before Rugland was working out with American coaches. Soon after, the New York Jets came calling.

[Jets Assistant General Manager Scott] Cohen was reluctant to give details about last week’s workout but said the Jets saw enough to conclude that Rugland had a chance to play in the N.F.L. Rugland said the Jets wanted him to return for a workout in March. He added that he planned to spend the next few months in Norway practicing field goals and kickoffs (he is leaving the trick shots behind).

Rugland has also hired an agent, Jill McBride Baxter. After Rugland’s tryout with the Jets, Baxter said, the Oakland Raiders, the Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles expressed interest in him.

He'll have to impress in March, but Rugland looks to have a good shot at becoming the first NFL football player resulting from a viral YouTube video.

Filed Under: communication, football, futbol, havard rugland, kickalicious. youtube, social media

News Corp. Finally Realizes Locked Up, iPad-Only News Publication Was A Dud, Shuts It Down

from the about-time dept

Back in 2010 there was all sorts of buzz around News Corp. investing a ton of money into a "secret" project to launch an iPad-only paywalled publication called "the Daily." Before it even launched, we explained why this was a bad idea that missed the point. We also highlighted Rupert Murdoch/News Corps' long list of failed internet projects -- with the large majority of them flopping because they were about trying to create "broadcast" style properties online, without recognizing that the internet is more of a communications (many-to-many) medium than a broadcast (one-to-many) medium. And, of course, soon after The Daily launched there was evidence that very few people cared.

To be honest, given all the bad press about how few people were reading it, combined with stories of staffers jumping ship soon after it was launched, I had kind of figured that The Daily had already been shut down. However, the latest news is that News Corp. is finally putting it out of its misery and shutting it down, giving most staffers 3 months severance. A few staffers are being folded into the NY Post:

News Corporation also announced that effective immediately, Jesse Angelo, the founding Editor-in-Chief of The Daily and long-time Executive Editor of The New York Post, will assume the role of Publisher of The New York Post. As part of a digital restructuring initiative, the company will cease standalone publication of The Daily iPad app on December 15, 2012, though the brand will live on in other channels. Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post.

Mr. Murdoch said: “From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term..."

Apparently the site was losing $30 million a year.

Perhaps this should stand as a response to the people who insist that giving away newspaper content free online was "the original sin" of the industry and they should have focused on paywalls. Paywalls don't help you build up "a large enough audience." The link above quotes a reporter there saying: "It was a really cool, hip product. I think this is nothing more than bad timing." I'd say it was much more of a bad model -- both business model and delivery model -- than "bad timing."

Filed Under: broadcast, communication, failure, paywall, rupert murdoch, shut down, the daily

Huh? Skype Thinks That If You Hate Twitter & Facebook You'll Use Skype More

from the say-what-now? dept

We've seen some bizarre advertising campaigns in the past, but I'm really left scratching my head about Skype's new ad campaign, the sole focus of which seems to be about bashing two other popular services: Twitter and Facebook. Now, I use all three of these products -- but I use them for very, very different purposes. Skype is useful for all sorts of things, but it's an entirely different kind of service than Twitter or Facebook. And, actually, I stay in touch with plenty of people via Twitter and Facebook. More importantly, bashing Twitter and Facebook doesn't make me any more interested in using Skype. It's not like I'm suddenly going to say, "Hey person I normally communicate with via Twitter, thanks to this advertisement for The Skype, I now wish to have a real time audio or video chat with you." No, as always, I use the different tools for what they're good at, when appropriate.

I get that Skype wants to position itself as a social network, but it's not. It's a communication tool -- and it's good at what it does -- but attacking other services that don't compete with it doesn't make much sense. In fact, if anything, it leads me to think less of Skype. I really do find Skype's instant messaging and voice/video features quite useful. But over the last few years, the company has increasingly cluttered its interface and consistently made it more and more annoying, rather than more and more useful. The fact that it now thinks the proper strategy is to attack services that people use in totally different and completely non-competitive ways, only makes me think that Skype has lost its way and its vision. That makes me, a paying customer of Skype, concerned that the company is increasingly focused on chasing some silly strategy that will continue to make my life worse as a consumer. Such a stupid ad campaign just makes me wonder if I should be exploring real alternatives to Skype.

Filed Under: advertising, communication, competition, social networking
Companies: facebook, skype, twitter

Nintendo Fans Hijack Twitter Hash Tag Meant For Nintendo Of America CEO And Are Promptly Ignored

from the it's-called-connecting-with-fans dept

On Friday October 21, Nintendo America's President, Reggie Fils-Aime, took to Twitter in a bit of PR for some recent announcements from the company. However a lot of Twitter users took this to mean that he would actually be communicating with fans. Sadly, he did nothing of real note on twitter. Fils-Aime posted a total of seven tweets in a span of about 8 hours. Of these tweets, 2 contained the same announcement, two were about news already reported by the press all over the web and the rest were "open" questions asked to the Twitter community.

I am not sure what Fils-Aime had in mind for this Twitter promotion, but the fans were expecting a conversation. You can really see this when you take a look at the history of the #Regginator hash tag on Twitter. Many of the fans took the time to answer the questions asked and even to ask questions of their own. One prominent theme running over this event was that of a project called 'Operation Rainfall'. This group is dedicated to convincing Nintendo of America to release a number of popular JRPG titles in America, most of which already have English translations as they are sold in England.

Nintendo, sadly, is deaf to these requests. They have made it pretty clear that those games will not be seen in the States. On top of this, the Wii is region locked and games imported from Europe are not playable on American Wiis. In response, a number of blogs and gaming sites around the web have taken the task of teaching people how to mod their Wii consoles to bypass region locks and play these games. In the process, this exposes a lot of Wii users to the ability to not only play imported games, but also homebrew and potentially pirated games.

Ignoring all of this is not how you connect with fans. It is also not how you meet the needs of underserved customers. By ignoring fans of the Wii, not only on Twitter but for many months prior, Nintendo is risking more customers modding consoles, which we all know they hate. My advice for Nintendo is to actually connect with fans and listen to what they want. It might find some cool ideas that will increase sales -- especially when you claim that your top exec is going to be communicating on Twitter.

Filed Under: communication, fans, roger fils-aime
Companies: nintendo

Some Old Guy Can't Come Up With Any New Ideas; So He Says There Are No New Ideas & It's Twitter's Fault

from the is-this-crap-worth-publishing? dept

Quite a week for the luddites out there. First we get Rob Levine's silly screed about the internet killing off a bunch of industries that are actually thriving. And now we have the NY Times publishing absolute tripe from Neal Gabler, bizarrely and ridiculously claiming that the age of "big ideas" is over, and it's all the fault of Twitter and Facebook. It's incredible that the NY Times would publish such absolute garbage. Nowhere does Gabler actually support his thesis.

It's yet another example of "back in the old days" mythological thinking, where someone, who only remembers the "highlights" of a bygone era, is upset that there's a lot of other stuff going on in the modern era as well. Gabler points to a bunch of "big thinkers" from the past -- Einstein, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Betty Friedan and others. And then insists that no one like that is showing up today -- or if they are, they're being ignored. This is, plainly speaking, ridiculous. He points to Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt as "big thinkers" of today who are mostly ignored. Really?!? All three are pretty widely known, and I'd bet are pretty much equally known in the world as his initial list at similar points in their life and career. Gabler just seems to have an arbitrary standard of how well known certain "big thinkers" are.

The real crux of Gabler's argument appears to be that we're all doing too much of that tweeting and stuff, such that we no longer have time to think. And his scientific evidence to back this up is... oh look, absolutely nothing.

It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed. Of course, one could argue that these sites are no different than conversation was for previous generations, and that conversation seldom generated big ideas either, and one would be right.

BUT the analogy isn’t perfect. For one thing, social networking sites are the primary form of communication among young people, and they are supplanting print, which is where ideas have typically gestated. For another, social networking sites engender habits of mind that are inimical to the kind of deliberate discourse that gives rise to ideas. Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show. While social networking may enlarge one’s circle and even introduce one to strangers, this is not the same thing as enlarging one’s intellectual universe. Indeed, the gab of social networking tends to shrink one’s universe to oneself and one’s friends, while thoughts organized in words, whether online or on the page, enlarge one’s focus.

Can't there just be a rule? If you ever trash Twitter because someone tweets about eating a sandwich for lunch, we all just agree that person is too clueless to listen to any more? That tired old line has been used so often and the only thing it shows is one's ignorance of Twitter.

But more to the point, Gabler is reminiscing about a world that never existed. "Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show." And in what world did millions of people sit around and discuss theories, hypotheses and grand arguments? Sure there are some places where some people did that, and they still do. In fact, those "theories, hypotheses and grand arguments" appear to happen much more frequently, in much more detail and with a wider audience online these days. I often find out about them via the smart people I follow on Twitter.

And while social media may not have enlarged Gabler's intellectual universe, it has massively enlarged mine. Thanks to Twitter specifically, I've been able to meet tons of fascinatingly smart people I never would have met otherwise. Sure, not all of it is brilliant talk, but Gabler seems to make the same fundamental error that so many "back in my day" people make: which is to assume that because a tool can be used for random conversation that somehow cancels out intelligent conversation. I can talk about the sandwich I ate for lunch and I can discuss big intellectually stimulating ideas.

But Gabler seems to have this view that because some people discuss stuff he finds beneath him, they can't possibly also be discussing important stuff. He also seems to ignore that back in his mythical "good old days" people discussed equally as ridiculous things:

The collection itself is exhausting: what each of our friends is doing at that particular moment and then the next moment and the next one; who Jennifer Aniston is dating right now; which video is going viral on YouTube this hour; what Princess Letizia or Kate Middleton is wearing that day. In effect, we are living within the nimbus of an informational Gresham’s law in which trivial information pushes out significant information, but it is also an ideational Gresham’s law in which information, trivial or not, pushes out ideas.

If Gabler thinks that there wasn't similar gossip and banal discussions back when he wasn't an old man screaming at kids on his lawn, he apparently wasn't paying very close attention to what the people around him were discussing. There are plenty of "big ideas" out there, contrary to Gabler's claim, but the only really stupid one I've seen lately is this one... from Gabler. With that I'm going back to reading some more interesting and thought provoking ideas... which I most likely found on Twitter.

Filed Under: communication, ideas, neal gabler, people, social media

Turntable.fm Showing How Sharing Music Is Communication

from the the-shared-experience-is-what-makes-culture dept

We've already talked about just how amazing Turntable.fm is for its users. The key point we made was how it totally makes music social in a way that's incredibly powerful. I noted how much it reminded me of when I was an actual DJ on the radio many years ago, where so much of the fun wasn't just in playing music, but in hanging out with a bunch of friends and playing music together. Others are recognizing this as well. In one of the most splutteringly gushing reviews of the service, ever, Sam Grobart at the NY Times highlights this same key point by noting that sharing music is communication:

It doesn’t matter if you start a room with some nearby cubicle mates or with friends scattered across the globe: what you begin to realize — almost instantly — is that taking turns playing music with friends is a kind of communication. One song leads to another. Music, enjoyable in and of itself, becomes a sort of shorthand when played among people who have shared memories attached to it. Someone plays a song that was popular when you were college, then another friend plays another song from that same period and — just like that — you’ve traveled back in time. It’s like you’re all sharing in the same inside joke.

And this feeling is reflected not just in the choice of songs, but in the comments that friends post. Someone digs a lost hit out of the crates and the message board lights up with comments from friends (O.K., my friends) saying things like “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and “my head is exploding.”

Using Turntable can even help you make friends with people you only know in passing. If you’re D.J.-ing in a room with co-workers, you may never have realized that you and the guy across the floor both like Afropop. Now you have something new to talk about at the soda machine.

Later, he notes: "When your old college roommate surprises you with that Deee-Lite song the two of you used to rock out to, you know it’s more than just music: it’s a message."

Indeed. After writing my original post on Turntable.fm and how it reminded me of hanging out and DJing with a group of others -- people who I was close friends with at the time, but have mostly lost contact with -- I reached out to many of my former co-DJs to talk about setting up a "reunion" via Turntable.fm. It's hard to use Turntable.fm and not recognize that sharing music is a very legitimate form of communication.

In many ways, it's a further manifestation of a point about culture that Julian Sanchez raised a couple years ago, about how culture is built off of shared cultural experiences. It's the sharing part of culture that makes the culture valuable. If only you experience it, it just doesn't have the same power. Turntable.fm's key reason for being so addictive is that it's one of the first operations, whether on purpose or not, that has effectively taken that key aspect of culture, and turned it into a service.

However, separate from just how Turntable.fm highlights this key point, I think it also helps explain why the legacy recording industry and many politicians have made so many wrong and counterproductive moves concerning dealing with music in the internet era. Rather than realizing that music is communication, they look at it solely as a unit of content. When you view music as a unit of content, even as the fans of music actually view it as a form of communication, you're going to clash. That's because many of the ways that people communicate via music break down the concept of music being a unit of content. And, in the end, that's what a lot of the legal and policy battles have been about over the past couple decades. A very large group of people are communicating with music... and some big legacy players are simply not set up to even comprehend that, let alone cater to it.

Filed Under: communication, culture, music, shared experience, sharing
Companies: turntable.fm

Detroit News Anchor Realizes How Twitter Has Changed How He Engages With Viewers

from the silverfish-hand-catch! dept

One of the key points we tried to hammer home at our Techdirt Saves* Journalism event in June was the importance of realizing that news organizations are really in the business of building community. So many in the news business focus on the belief that they're in the "news" business, but that's never really been the case. The news has always been the piece that brings together a community (and the business of a news organization has usually been to then sell that community's attention to advertisers). The biggest problem that news organizations face these days isn't scary "news aggregators," but that there are now many, many, many other communities that people can join, and most of them treat their members a lot better. Many traditional news organizations, in contrast, seem to have a rather condescending view on "community." They lock up comments, they complain about readers, and they focus on just delivering the news, not engaging with their community or enabling their community to do anything useful.

Thankfully, that's not true of all news organizations (or individuals within news organizations). More and more are recognizing this important point, even if they do so in unexpected ways. krharrison points us to a great block post from Stephen Clark, a newscaster for a local Detroit TV station, about his realization of how Twitter is changing the way he relates to the community of folks who watch the news:

As I've reported in this blog before I have had a very long one-sided relationship with the people who watch my newscasts. I talk, they listen. If they had something to say to me they yelled it at the TV screen like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Twitter changed all that. I can now hear you and I can now answer you...

I can't speak for the dozens of people who check in regularly every night... sometimes at 6 or 7:00.. but mostly 11:00. I don't know exactly what they get out of it except a kind of cool experience of actually conversing in real time with the guy on TV. But I can tell you what I get out of it. For the first time in years I actually feel like I'm talking to someone rather than at them. Frankly it's energizing!

Of course, the next step is to go beyond just talking "to" them and to talking "with" them. But that will come. In fact, getting to that point, Clark explains an amusing way that the community tried to connect with him, picking up on the recent Old Spice commercial meme of "Silverfish Hand Catch!", where some of his viewers started saying that if 100 people retweeted the request, Clark would close the broadcast by saying the line on TV. He didn't get the 100 retweets, and admits that he wouldn't have said it anyways (noting he probably would have lost his job), but he did do an "air" silverfish hand catch surreptitiously, to let folks know he was paying attention.

But, much more interesting was the realization he had while all of this was happening:

It was all a bit silly sure, but I realized something else was going on. The audience of our 11:00 newscast wasn't just talking to me... they were talking to each other! I felt like Alexander Graham Bell when he made his first call to Watson. The backchannel worked!

I know that many folks around here still like to mock and dismiss communications tools like Twitter, but many people are realizing what powerful tools they are for conversations and for building communities where none really existed before. And, in businesses where community and relationships are everything, that's quite powerful for those who figure it out.

Filed Under: communication, community, culture, journalism, news, stephen clark
Companies: twitter

Columnist Claims Italy's Google Verdict Makes Sense

from the someone-edited-that? dept

Ted Rall is a columnist/cartoonist, who, a couple years ago, wrote one of the most ridiculous opinion pieces we've seen in a long time -- suggesting that the answer to newspapers' current economic woes is that they should all take their websites down. That column was so full of economic and legal ignorance I thought there was a good chance that it was actually satire -- but people insisted he was serious. Now reader Mandy alerts us to a new column from Rall that again is so devoid of basic logic that I wonder if it's satire. This time he's standing way out on a limb arguing that Italy got it right in finding three Google execs criminally liable for a video some kids posted to Google Video.

Rall's reasoning once again defies logic. He seems unable to comprehend the difference between a publisher and a tool or service provider. Instead, he just insists that Google (and any other online service provider) should be forced to carefully review and fact check every piece of content uploaded before it can be available. Apparently, he doesn't quite recognize what he's asking for. On YouTube alone, more than 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute. And that's just YouTube. Rall also suggests that every blog post, every Tweet and every Facebook message should first be reviewed by an editor before it can be posted.

I think this really goes back to Rall's previous clueless column. He can't stand competition, so his solution is to put in place ridiculous free speech destroying rules and regulations to effectively kill off the internet, because someone might misuse it. His argument is based on the scenario that what if he ran a story falsely accusing you of being a drug-addicted child pornographer. He claims -- falsely -- that if he just published it online, there's nothing you can do about it. He later admits he's lying by saying you could sue him, but he brushes that off by saying no one would sue him because he has no money. Of course, people sue for libel all the time -- even those with no money.

But the really scary thing is that Rall seems to think that basically destroying the freedom to communicate and to express yourself online makes sense, just because the tool might possibly be used to spread a false statement. Does he not recognize the unintended consequences of this? Does he not realize that his "suggestion" for fixing the internet is effectively how much of China's internet censorship program works? Does he not think there might be more effective ways of dealing with such situations? For example, if Rall were to falsely accuse you of being a drug-addicted child pornographer, and it's clearly bogus, then you have an opportunity to fight back, and point out that Rall is wrong, destroy his reputation, and make sure he never gets another job again. Why not let free speech combat free speech?

Instead, Rall seems terrified of free speech, and would prefer that it only come from the "professionals" like himself.

Filed Under: communication, editors, filters, free speech, italy, ted rall
Companies: google