Certainly, Global Voices is very interesting, especially if you take a look at the online life of a country as interesting as Mexico as I did.  There were a couple of things that impress me more.

The first thing is the diversity of the various subjects reported. Once you there you can basically read post from the roll of woman in technology to street art, soccer, same sex marriage, etc. There are many subjects being discussed and that, in my opinion, build a very strong portrait of the Mexican society: a diverse and multicultural country.

The different posts are not necessarily up to date; there is low level of engagement from readers. In the Spanish version, however, there is more activity, more interactions between bloggers and readers.

There is other particularity in Global Voices related to Mexico. Many of the people who actually post comments are Mexicans who lives abroad. I found this interesting since maybe Global Voices could be acting as a bridge between Mexicans who speaks mainly English and content originally generated in Spanish but presented in English in Global Voices.

But not everything is gold in Global Voices. As you can see in some comments, some readers criticizes the way Mexico is portrayed through the different subjects. Here, wrote an user call Diana, “are more important things going on in México like the 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Baja California leaving thousands of people injured and harmed since the event last Easter. I don’t know why nobody here talks about it.”

As Global Voices defines itself, it “seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.” In the case of Mexico, I think that is particularly true.

After the interesting discussion about Wikipedia I continue to rely on this tool as an expression of our currents times in which one of the key components of the information is the immediacy.

There will be mistakes in Wikipedia, but I think that the openness and the transparency within it will act as its verification system because the information is promptly corrected by other users.

Particularly for educational institutions, Wikipedia and the Internet as a whole will continue to play a key role in the way students are educated.

According to David Perry, an assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, “we do a fundamental disservice to our students if we continue to propagate old methods of knowledge creation and archivization without also teaching them how these structures are changing, and, more importantly, how they will relate to knowledge creation and dissemination in a fundamentally different way. No longer is an encyclopedia a static collection of facts and figures (although some of its features might be relatively so); it is an organic entity.”

This concept of an always changing knowledge is fundamental in the new economy, which is based on knowledge. From my perspective, the free creation and dissemination of content is a trend that is already established. The challenges are for the traditional institutions (the media, the universities, the academic institutions, etc.) to move forward. Otherwise, in a couple of years they will be in a hidden forgotten bookshelf.

First a disclosure: I grew up in the hard copy book world. So for me, as a principle, a traditional encyclopedia is by far more trustworthy than Wikipedia. That being said, I recognize Wikipedia as a new way of collecting knowledge, ene that is more suited for the current times when everything appears to go online.

Advantages

Wikipedia has many advantages. First of all, it allows for the unrestricted collaboration of users. As a result, its content is based on the knowledge and vision of a great variety of people. It also has the advantage of immediacy, ie publishing near real-time knowledge. For example, every time an important event happens, one or more Wikipedia contributors immediately register it on the site.

The fact that it is an Internet tool makes it easily available to a wide audience. In addition, search engines guide the user directly to the knowledge they are looking for. This means significant time saving. Another advantage is that the content in Wikipedia can be easily shared.

Risks

Clearly, perhaps the biggest risk is that Wikipedia’s content is not based on scientific criteria. This can be a problem especially when editors use unreliable sources or information that is not confirmed. In this sense, encyclopedias are developed using a proven methodology that ensures rigorous information.

Off line

Encyclopedias’ greatest disadvantage is the fact that most of them are not online. Wikipedia has taken advantage of this particular weakness. The accumulated knowledge of an encyclopedia can not be accessed as easily as Wikipedia’s. And in the era of Internet accessibility and portability these are key features.

In conclusion, both tools have advantages and disadvantages. What is a fact is that more and more people are using Wikipedia. The digital age is here and the editors of the encyclopedia should understand that as soon as possible.

If before buying a product you can go to the Internet and get feedback about it from other consumers like you, unfiltered, why would you to go to a store and buy the same product only with a salesman’s feedback? That question is surely in the mind of many costumers today. And, of course, retails businesses know that. That is why there are creating new possibilities for costumers to interact with products.

A few years ago, retailers had complete control over the way they did business. They introduced their own innovations, at their own pace. With time, they used e-commerce as an extension of the physical stores or as a new way to lure potential customers. E-commerce, however, has become a business tool in its own right, and is  starting to rule the way retailers serve and interact with costumers, on and off line.

Internet has done a lot to empower consumers. The time when they bought products and services with no other comparison than what was available at stores is gone. Traditional commerce is being highly influenced by trends and marketing techniques from e-commerce.

The truth is that today, consumers are able to do –and say- a lot of things about products that they were no able to do before. E-commerce has allowed them to express and share their opinions about products and services. The sense of reality –a costumer telling his or her experience to another costumer, with no intervention from the sellers- adds the impression that it is possible to avoid official information (often perceived as byas) about products or services.

In fact, a product’s success today not only depends on the company’s marketing strategy, but also on the consumer’s reviews and opinions.

A costumer today wants to hear about products not just from the sellers but from other consumers. More and more, the perspective of buying products with no other reviews than that provided by sellers makes  no sense.

For that reason, retailers have begun introducing written customer reviews and web testimonials about products in their stores. In many ways, this trend imposes a new reality for retails: from now on, they don’t only have to consider customer feedback as a tool for analysis but they have to incorporate it into marketing strategies since consumers have come to expect it as part of their decision making process. For marketing, this also presents a challenge when crafting messages since people are becoming more responsive to the real rather than embellished messaging.

Is the client always right? Thank to e-commerce, that is finally true.

The experience

I had never tried online gaming before so this was a new experience for me. Although I understand that I need to spend more time in the in-world, I think I got a good sense of this new world, specifically from Second Life . There are some things that surprised me, which I describe as follows:

• The levels of participation. It was a surprise for me to see the amount of people getting involved in this type of virtual activity. Second Life alone has more than 18 million accounts registered.
• The many possibilities for PR and marketing. Second Life offers many different spaces to participate with strategies such as product placement and word of mouth campaigns. It is not just about contacting people. The software gives our profession a new scope to effectively reach certain audiences. Those spaces include retail, education, traveling, and working spaces which open up a whole new dimension of interaction. In fact, there are big names in business going into Second Life. Here a couple of examples:

• The level of confusion. For a new user, I had a hard time figuring out how to play, or more specifically, what to do in the differents places.  As John Suler stated in The psychology of Cyberspace, “I found the maps confusing and unhelpful. The search engine offers a list of popular spots, but almost all of them were rated “mature” and involved sexual content of one type or another.”

What I concluded:

• If you have to take full advantage of social online gaming, you need to spend a lot of time on it. In a world where almost everything happens in real time, is portable and easy-to-do-it, I found that games like Second Life will face tough challenges in terms of getting users time.
• The fact that Second Lifes requires users to install and run a proprietary client is also a threat for these services. Actually, there is a growing competition taking advantage of Second Life’s limitations.
• I think these types of games will remain a growing component in the future. What will change, though, will be its portability.

In 1870 there was a big, big company that owned everything from oil, to railways, to trucks, pipelines, trucks, distribution channels. That company was Standard Oil, founded by John D. Rockefeller.

Today, 140 years later, there is a company that owns everything from Internet search engines, applications, email, private information, online advertising, satellite search. That company is Google and, according to many people, the giant from California could be a problem for all of us just like Mr. Rockefeller was many, many years ago.

So the first thing here is. time changes but not people.

Lately, we hear many people talking or writing about the growing power of Google on the Internet. And this has generated fears regarding the effects this could have for businesses and people.

In my opinion, Google’s exponential growth presents two main risks:

One is for the business and development on the Internet. As we saw in the Standard Oil case, the more power a company accumulates, the less the competition.
Reporter Stanley Levy says it better: Google’s massive computing power and bandwidth give the company an undeniable edge. Some observers say it’s an advantage that essentially prohibits startups from trying to compete.

On the other hand, there are many issues related to user privacy and the way Google manages private information. According to Wikipedia, The policies and practices for which Google has been criticized include its use of others’ intellectual
property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people’s privacy, censorship of search results, and the energy consumption of its servers. Much of the criticism of Google pertains to issues that have not yet been addressed by cyber law.

Certainly, the are many issues to be discussed. But I think we still have to wait a little bit to see if Google would become the new Standard Oil

I see the web as a gigantic ocean information. To keep up with all the topics that interest me, both personally and professionally, I try to organize the information flow I receive from the sources that I follow.

Basically, I use these two general criteria:
• What is new, to see what are the trends and new tendencies in a variety of fields.
• Things that I interested on, to keep the track on those subjects I most like.

So to successfully navigate it I use a couple of resources in order to filter information of my interest.

Twitter
Among those tools, the number one is Twitter. I follow about 300 people, most of them experts in fields like innovation, creativity, storytelling, social media, design. video, and related content. I am interested see what people like Guy Kawasaki, Peter Cashmore, Chris Bogan, Brian Solis and many are sharing. I also follow companies and blogs that offer updates and links on what I am most interested in. I found amazing the quality of the information I am able to reach through those methods.

Google Reader & Delicious
On the other hand, I also surf the web through Google Reader. I use it as a way to get specific content from magazines, blogs and newspapers. It helps me to better organize the flow of information coming to the many places I tag. I like Delicious to bookmark those contents that I like to read later.

Leading sites

There are a couple of sites and blogs that I regularly check to see what is new. Among them are:

Mashable
Smashing Magazine
Alltop
Business Insider
NY Times
Adsoftheworld
Adverblog
Fastcompany
ReadWriteWeb
TED
TechCrush
O’Reilly Radar

Videos & storytelling
Videos and storytelling are another of my favorite subjects. I keep updated of it by taking a look at places like these:
Vimeo
Animonoto
TED
Fora.Tv

I think a Bill of Rights for the Internet is a good idea only if it reflects the spirit of openness with which the Web was conceived. In other words, the Bill should respond –in content and structure- to the current times and avoid being a copy from the past.

One of the most important issues facing a Bill of Rights for the Internet is that it lays down rules on the content.

I think designing and enforcing a Bill of Rights will face several challenges, especially with regards to its implementation because one of the web’s characteristics is that it is a free, unregulated space. It will be difficult to agree on who will enforce the Bill and who will oversee possible violations of the rules.

As blogger Nair Blirt asks himself, who is deciding upon the rules and regulations that will go in the Bill of Rights? What makes one opinion more important thatn other regarding what should or should not be included? Isn’t it the point of the social web that it is open and inclusive, and there is no hierarchy or authoritative figure? In the world of the social web, I thought all women, men, children, animals, vampires and Vulcans are created equal.

What would be interesting to know is whether future Internet users will voluntarily assume the tenents of the Bill of Rights.  If a majority community does, then we could have a group

That was the question that Mash, a yahooanswers.com user posted a month ago in the public wall of that forum. To his surprise, he didn’t get many answers. In fact, he received just one, from the user name Asker:

Claimed to be: Justin Hall but not sure

read this story

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1025_3-6168681…

The link took Mash to a 2007 article from CNET News that basically concluded that “Someone, somewhere created the very first Web log. It’s just not quite clear who”.

Although identifying the “first person who did ________ (fill in the blank) is always an intriguing task, it has proven very difficult to say with precision who was the first blogger ever. This is perhaps because, as Scott Rosemberg wrote in Say Everything, blogging “was no invented; it evolved.”

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was to discover that the very foundation of what became known as the Internet was built from various perspectives and through the participation of many different players.

The Internet pioneers, indeed, began blogging with different intentions. Some of them wanted to share personal information.  Others saw it as an aggregator of content to create access, while yet others saw blogging as a business opportunity, a new platform for self promotion or simply a new professional space.

From reading Say Everything one concludes that most of those pioneers agreed on something: they viewed the web as something different.  For them, the internet was not another channel of mass communication but a new platform that allowed a new type of interaction, one without too many filters or too many rules.

So as we can see, maybe Mash will never get a satisfactory answer. Neither will we.