It seriously intrigues me that the Danish Newspapers massively resorts to using the web as a major part in their joint campaign to make people read more (print) newspapers (rather than reading online newspapers?). On Avistid.dk, you can find movies by serious Danish film directors, telling stories about how newspaper reading makes you smart. The most recent is "Fingerplan" by Susanne Bier (disregarding the "newspaper reading makes you smart" message, it is actually quite fun as an example of bad pedagogy). You are made aware of the website by for instance adds in the print newspapers with statements from cultural celebrities making the same point and ask people to go online to learn more...

I'm hopelessly behind in reporting this, but some of the infamous members of the Danish blogosphere a little while ago made their own website "Blogtid" with their own video about the backside of "slow media" as a comment to the campaign.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:30 (0) comments

A kind webjournalist I once talked to, remembered my expressed interest in good multimedia sites online and recently sent me this link to: Magnum In Motion, a number of beautiful photoessays. Sound, slide show, a control panel for the show. Aesthetically very pleasing, but Im not sure I would venture to call them "interactive essays" as the site editor does, since you cannot manipulate content at all, but just the order of the playback. Sometimes it is my feeling that people think that because something is multimedial it is also automatically "more" interactive. In reality, it is often "less" interactive, ie. you can actually influence content less because there are many more parameters to program if you wanted to be able to influence them. So quite often when you see multimedia sites, "interaction" does, as in this case, not give you much more than control over the playback function and jumps in a preset menu. Which is fine by me, just dont promise me more than necessary by referring to your content as "interactive".
# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:09 (0) comments

Last night I tried the best quest so far in World of Warcraft. It was small and simple and easy to perform, but nevertheless. It was a class quest for my druid character, and what I had to do was cure 10 sick gazelles by giving them an anti-dote. I ran aimlessly around the Northern part of the Barrens to find them, sick and greenly creatues walking around slowly and once in a while giving off small clouds of weird grey dust. When I gave them the anti-dote they changed colours and became normal to look at, dark-brown, beige and white, and then ran off, lightly. See, apart from the occasional "bring object A from NPC B to NPC B" or "talk to NPC Y", all quests in this game is about klling and looting. This is the first quest in the game (to me) that was about doing something actively "good" and I found that every bit as rewarding as killing Kreelig Snarlsnout (which was rewarding because I took him out from behind withour having to kill an entire camp of razormanes, the point being that if you can save time killing and keep your own character from dying in the process, that gives you a high too...).

Perhaps this particular quest also appealed to me, because I am - after all - the daughter of two vets and very fond of healer characters - but worthwhile pondering in any case. What would happen if there were more quests like this? ("Heal 15 poxplagued children in the derelict huts south of the Forgotten Pools for min. 100 HP each"?). I'd do them happily, but would they "kill the fun" for other people?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:09 (2) comments

New? in the collective storytelling webworld: MemoryWiki. They call it a "StoryCorps". Im starting to feel old, when news like this makes me wonder what here is significantly different from an "old" StoryCorps like The Fray? [which is now on permanent hiatus] - the format is different, but the purpose and the activity is the same, it's all about sharing your stories with others in one place, and themed to make it easier to access them.

Completely unrelated - or is it? Users are telling stories in many different ways. Here is a link to a BBC video feature on the use of mobile phones in disaster reporting "How mobiles changed the News".
# posted by Lisbeth at: 02:15 (0) comments

This article in Danish Politiken yesterday hosts an interesting discussion between Danish players in the Danish Publishing business. The largest Danish book publisher Gyldendal is now seriously moving into the "soundbook" marked by starting to publish soundbooks in mp3 format (I think) at the price of print books. Several other smaller publisher have been waiting for this to happen and have - or are on the way to - publish mp3-books.

Honestly, I havent thought about the relation between books and the mp3-market before, but it seems obvious. And it would be nice, if the digitalisation of data in fact meant that more people got to know literary classics and we could once and for all stop worrying about the future of the book.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:47 (2) comments

What can I say? I have become part of the World of Warcraft guild that Torill has worked tiredlessly to establish and have once again become slightly addicted to WoW! (I had a long period where I was really tired of playing MMOGs after having installed and tested 6 of the kind during my US stay). I have been down with a cold on/off most of this week, so much time has been spent levelling up in order to be able to go on raids with the rest of the guild. For the same reason, I have spent substantial amounts of time here: WorldofWar.Net Cartography. Now Im ready to fight, yeah!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:59 (0) comments

If you want to see an entertaining example of slow smartness as it happened on Danish television in the 60's, go visit the homepage of the tv-seriesKrøniken and click on the link "Mylius og Brøgger i tv-quiz - 20 spørgsmål til professoren"; and see an interesting and amusing example of how the game "20 questions for the professor" were played on air in 1966. Im not sure tv entertainment have improved much since, rather the opposite. And I think (sort of remember) that back then they actually had a real professor lead the game. They dont really do game shows these days, do they?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:59 (1) comments

If you haven't got any new year's resolutions yourself, here's a place to go indulge yourself, enjoying other people's attempt to do something about their life in 2006 - or perhaps you will end up joining the movement?!!. Thiswebsitewillchangeyourlife.com aka Benrikland is the companion website to the "This Diary will change your life" calendar, which each week instructs you to do different things that will change your life (a bit like the Surrender Control sms game). On the website, people can set up blogs chronichling their personal attempts to follow the calendar's guidelines. I've taken a look at a few of them, entertaining reading, it seems like quite a few new blogs have just been started to record the completion of the instructions for 2006.

And while on the subject of things do to in 2006, a English company Stealthtext have developped a sms service with sms which erase themselves after 40 seconds. So here's the possibility to send a real amourous or vicious sms to someone in 2006, while claiming that you never did that....the recipient wont have any proof! (via the Søndag Aften zine). Well, sadly so far the service is only available in England, but anyway...
# posted by Lisbeth at: 17:57 (0) comments